A Disappearance in Donegal (episode 232)

Transcript

Music

Jake:
[0:05] Welcome to hub history, where we go far beyond the freedom trail. To share our favorite stories from the history of boston, the hub of the universe.
This is episode 2 32, a disappearance in Donegal Hi, I’m jake.
This week. I’m talking about a celebrity professor who worked in the shadow of the Harvard secret court that purged the campus of gay students and faculty.
Arthur. Kingsley Porter grew up in wealth and privilege, expecting to follow his brother into the family law firm before experiencing an epiphany that drove him to become one of the world’s foremost experts on medieval european art and architecture.
After a midlife revelation led to an unconventional lifestyle, his little family sought refuge at their irish castle and their offshore cottage Until he disappeared under mysterious circumstances in the summer of 1933.
But before we talk about the mysterious disappearance of Kingsley Porter, I just want to pause and thank our latest sponsors,
James K recently gave a second generous cash contribution on Paypal, and Jeff s became our latest supporter on Patreon.

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[2:09] Her husband Kingsley hadn’t been gone for long. When lucy porter began to worry, he left their cottage on Inish boffin a windswept island just off the coast of Donegal What?
About 10 30 When Lucy came out to meet him about 10 minutes later, Kingsley was nowhere in sight.
On one hand, he was known for his long hikes. What I guess they’d call hill walking on the other side of the pond.
Some people even claim that he had paid £2 to every family on the island to purchase the right to walk where he wanted with no complaints.
But on the other hand, it wasn’t like him to disappear like this, especially in the midst of a gathering storm.
As a concern grew lucy checked around the cottage and with the neighbors, a task that was quickly accomplished, since there are only about 40 or 50 houses on Inish boffin today, and there were fewer in july 1933.

[3:06] Enlisting a friend’s help.
She widened the search, picking her way through the sea cliffs toward a cave she knew Kingsley visited sometimes.
By the time they had searched the cliffs and beaches around the tiny village of Meenlara on the eastern end of the island. It was almost noon, finding nothing and becoming ever more desperate. They widen the search.
The middle of the island was sheep pasture, where it would be hard for someone to disappear. So they moved to the more remote western end of the island.
The cliffs here were higher and more rugged and it took more time to search them before four PM.
Though lucy was sure that they had searched the whole coastline and no Kingsley more Islanders joined the search and they combed the entire island as the thunder rolled in the rain stream.
Down after dark, the search party threw in the towel.
As the storm abated. A neighbor agreed to row lucy back to the mainland where her friend, the painter George Russell was waiting.

[4:07] She reportedly greeted him and said Kingsley will not return tonight. Kingsley will never return.

[4:17] Where do the disappearance reached the us quickly? And the Boston Globe carried a brief piece on July 10.
Although it twisted the details. Turning Kingsley’s hike into a boating accident.
Arthur Kingsley Porter noted. American archaeologist has been missing since saturday morning from his bungalow and Inish boffin island where he lived part of the summer.
Porter left the island in a small sailboat and has not been seen since.
The most severe thunderstorm in years occurred in the district saturday and it was feared that his boat may have been struck by lightning are met with some other disaster.

[4:54] Why was a middle aged hiker’s disappearance in an irish storm news here in the hub.
Arthur Kingsley porter was a bona fide celebrity. Harvard Professor of classical art and archaeology who some people claim was a real life inspiration for indiana jones.
The next day, the Harvard Crimson noted up until a late hour last night.
No further news have been received about dr Arthur Kingsley Porter internationally known archaeologist and William Door Boardman, professor of fine arts at Harvard,
who is believed to have drowned off the irish coast In a small sailing boat, saturday afternoon when a severe thunderstorm swept the region,
He was sailing to Glenview Castle from a small summer bungalow on Inish boffin island when the storm arose.

[5:41] That’s right. While lucy and Kingsley Porter’s weekend getaway on Inish boffin was described as a hut, a tiny rough stone cottage with a fast roof.
They were the sort of people who could afford to keep an actual castle as their summer home nestled in the hills of Donegal.

[5:59] Kingsley was from old money in Connecticut. His biographer, lucy Castigan described his father’s side of the family is combining economic privilege with the finest pedigrees in education and his mother’s side as,
one of the most influential families in Connecticut, possessing great wealth, but also having an old family tradition that no amount of money could buy.

[6:22] Arthur. Kingsley porter was the youngest of three porter sons.
Born in 18 83 in darien Connecticut, which was already a wealthy bedroom community for commuters who would take the new haven railway into new york city Each morning,
the three boys grew up swimming, boating, sledding, hunting and hiking whenever they could.

[6:42] In her book, Glenn v mystery, Castigan found out that young Kingsley’s grades disappointed his parents though, they continued to express deep affection for him and his brothers,
After his mother died when he was eight, Kingsley’s father pursued a number of much younger women before being declared insane and losing access to the family fortune.

[7:02] Castigan speculates that it was this time when he was around 11 and attending private school in Stanford, when Kingsley became more socially withdrawn in bookish with a series of family tragedies, ultimately pushing him into academic excellence,
lawsuits between his brothers and father over the family fortune dragged on into Kingsley’s teenage years while he sought refuge in books and nature.
By this time he was attending a new york prep school alongside Rockefellers and carnegies, but summer break was a time to escape.
He’d spend the warm months fishing in the Adirondacks, tracking through the Grand Canyon or big game hunting in Canada.
In the meantime, his father remarried twice. His oldest brother, Bletchley was struck by lightning and killed while on an expedition in Arizona, and the lawsuits surrounding the family fortune were finally settled.
Finally, at the dawn of a new century, a Kingsley porter escaped into academia, Being accepted to Yale in the fall of 1900, where he followed a course of study that anticipated that he’d follow his surviving brother Louis into a legal career.
During the school year, he spent any free time he had in new york city, which was familiar from his prep school days.
Summer was mostly given to hunting in Newfoundland.

[8:23] When his father died in 1901, Kingsley inherited the equivalent of a modern multimillion dollar fortune.
He was 18 years old and described as 6′ 1″ in height. He had blue eyes, light hair, and a fair complexion.
He had a high forehead, along face, a small mouth and chin, and he possessed a greek nose.
Kingsley possess. Kingsley possessed many advantages, including a strong, slender physique.
He was shy and reserved with the look of a poet, but he was also friendly and modest, which brought him a circle of close friends for the handsome young millionaire, with the Keenest intellect and a congenial though sensitive disposition.
The world was indeed his oyster.

[9:11] A few months after their father’s death, Kingsley and louis embarked on a grand adventure to take their minds off their loss and spend a bit of their inheritance.
They took a cruise from new york through the mediterranean to the Middle East.
From there, the porters left the cruise and continued on to India and East Asia, returning to the U. S. Through Canada and taking a rail excursion across the rockies.
Young Kingsley was hooked not only on the luxurious travel that he could now afford, but in the wealth of history, culture, art, and food to be experienced in far away lands.
After graduating with honours, 4th in his class at Yale in 1904, Kingsley Porter decided to spend the summer touring Europe before settling down to study law and join his brothers firm.
While traveling through France. On this tour, Kingsley visited the 11th century Coutances Cathedral in Normandy where he had an epiphany later described as a nearly mystical experience,
in a book about romanesque architecture, Janice man writes,
but his life was derailed from its expected course by a transcendental experience inspired by aesthetic encounter with the medieval on foreign soil.

[10:27] Porter never publicly disclosed the epiphany that changed his life.
It was only revealed after his death in a memorial tribute by his devoted wife, lucy, who wrote,
one day in front of the Cathedral of Coutances there suddenly shined a light around him and it was as if you were in a trance when he awoke he knew he could never be a lawyer.

[10:51] Instead of joining Lewis’s law firm when he returned to the States. At the end of that summer, he enrolled at Columbia University’s graduate School of Architecture.
He studied at first to become a practicing architect, then shifted his focus to architectural history.
Over the next few years, he would divide his time between the classroom and new york city fishing trips upstate and research trips to europe Before publishing a seminal 1000 page treatise in 1908,
Porter himself thought of it as a travel guide for american tourists interested in european architecture, but it turned out to be much more.

[11:31] Janice man called it the first scholarly history of medieval architecture written by an american and lucy Castigan called it an immense achievement.
The first work to use careful examination of documentary history to accurately date evolutionary changes in gothic and romanesque architecture.
In his book Crimson Letter, Douglas Shan tucci rights At only age 25.
When he was a student at Columbia School of Architecture in New York Porter published medieval architecture, its origins and development,
like his book, Porter was a knockout as emcee ross and his biographical sketch of Porter is observed.
The book’s impact was huge because he relied solely on firsthand study of documents and dated landmarks at that time.
This was the most important contribution made by an american scholar to the history of medieval architecture and one that was to revolutionize the whole method of writing on the subject.
Harvard of course came calling.

[12:35] Before Harvard came calling Kingsley Porter taught at his alma mater for a couple of years as an associate professor of art history.
But he became frustrated when Yale refused to create a department of art history.
Even when he offered to write a personal check to endow the department, he briefly worked for a commission that catalog that damaged under french churches and cathedrals during World War.
Then in September 1920, the Harvard Crimson reported, There will be a number of distinguished editions to the university teaching staff of 800 men when the university opens its gates.
Next Monday, it noted that among the new faculty would be to former Yale professors, noting that one would be teaching french history and,
the other Yale edition to the Harvard staff is a Kingsley Porter, the leading american authority on medieval architecture, who is to be professor of fine arts, spending most of his time in research.

[13:33] By this time, Kingsley Porter was a married man somewhere between his epiphany and a french cathedral and has offered a personally funded art history department at Yale.
Kingsley Porter had found time to fall in love.
He first laid eyes on Lucy Bryant Wallace at a party when he was 28 and she was 35 and they both felt an instant connection lucy a gondola Connecticut finishing school, Yale and Columbia.
She could hold her own in any conversation with Kingsley about art, sculpture and architecture.
Plus she was the only heir of a wealthy Connecticut factory owner, which didn’t her.

[14:14] They flirted by letter in person through the summer of 1911, got engaged that december and they wed in a small private ceremony. The next june.
They enjoyed their honeymoon in the Adirondacks so much that they decided to take a second one in ITaly, this one stretching to several months and establishing the pattern of travel that would mark their married life.
Kingsley choosing destinations based on interesting churches or cathedrals, lucy keeping them organized and on schedule.
Kingsley jotting careful notes about the latest sculpture inscription or symbol that caught his eye while lucy made the professional quality photographs that would accompany his articles and lectures.

[14:56] When it came time for lucy and Kingsley ported to set up shop in Cambridge campus housing wouldn’t cut it for them.
They wanted no part of Harvard’s drafty old heaps of brick nor the shabby apartments and tenements that made up so much of the rest of the town.
Instead, they purchased the last house on what had once been known as Tory Row, anchored on one end by the brattle estate.
Now the Cambridge centre for adult education. The eponymous brattle street had once been home to the elite of the massachusetts Bay colony, including the lease, ruggles, leech, mirrors and vassals.
During the siege of boston, George Washington took over the abandoned mansion of loyalist john vassal, which was later owned by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and is known today as the Longfellow House Washington’s headquarters, national Historic Site.
This was just the sort of neighborhood that the porters wanted to be associated with 1921. They bought Elmwood at the other end of brattle street, which had once been the estate of royal Lieutenant Governor thomas Oliver, john vassals brother in law.
After the 1774 powder alarm, Oliver was forced to resign his post abandoned as a state and fleet of the protection of the British Army.
In Boston Elmwood was one of the properties named in the 17 79 Confiscation acts allowing the state of massachusetts to seize property owned by crown officials and notorious tories.

[16:25] Kingsley Porter’s obituary in the Proceedings of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences notes that the property was then purchased by a founding father.

[16:36] When he moved to Cambridge, he bought Elmwood formerly the house of Elbridge Gerry, one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence and later of James Russell Lowell, the poet,
The porters added fresh distinction to the venerable house already rich with associations.
They entertained students, friends and distinguished visitors.

[16:58] Castigan biography describes the couple’s early days in Cambridge,
Lucien, Kingsley were delighted with their new home at Elmwood it was the perfect home for a Harvard lecturer since there was ample room to turn part of the house into a study area for students.
Their plan was to purchase Elmwood and to carry out important renovations since the old mansion was in very poor repair.
From the winter of 1921 to the summer of 1926, they carried out major alterations,
including electrical work, roof and chimney repairs, carpentry, painting and decorating grounds work, plumbing and repairs to the heating system.
The porters finally took up residence in Elmwood when all the major work had been completed in October 1922,
Their new home was an imposing 12 roomed mansion, complete with formal dining room, library, wide lawns, guesthouse and carriage house.
The building was noted for its wonderful proportions and for its sense of illumination and light.

[18:04] While the porters were busy overhauling their new home, Kingsley was also at work on a theory about how the pilgrimage roads of France and spain served as a thoroughfare for ideas,
with sculpture developing in parallel hundreds of miles apart as the faithful carried trends and ideas along the highways.

[18:24] The hypothesis jelled first into a series of lectures than to his follow up book, romanesque, sculpture of the pilgrimage roads,
as Elmwood became known as a hub of intellectual life in Cambridge Kingsley’s lectures and courses it became ever more popular and harvard knew that they had a hit on their hands.
Within a few years after hiring him Douglas shantou. She notes that the university found an endowed chair for the up and coming medievalist.

[18:55] Porter became the first William Door Boardman Professor of Fine Arts five years later, still in his 30s, when he assumed this chair, he was already the greatest medievalist of his day.
His best known book, still important, was published in 1923, Romanesque sculpture of the pilgrimage roads.
And in 1928 came Spanish Romanesque sculpture before which no such thing had ever been heard of.
It was Porter who discovered it, who showed conclusively the independent development of that sculpture from the french school.
No one else had documented it before.

[19:33] A Yale Man. 4th in his class in 1904, Porter was from a privileged and quite wealthy background, Also happily married to Lucy Bryant Wallace in 1912.
And once ensconced at Harvard became not only a scholarly luminary, but a key figure in boston society.
He and his wife lived at Elmwood today. The residents of Harvard’s President and the porters made that splendid mansion of old Cambridge’s Tory Row, The seat in state in so many of Boston’s vice regal court in the 18th century.
A centerpiece in boston’s intellectual and social life Where family and guests rejoiced in the administrations of four superbly trained Italian servants who walter, Mueller Whitehill remembered,
cooked admirably and hardly less important, made wine that relieve the drought of prohibition.

[20:27] The fascination went both ways because one of these Italian stewards thought so fondly of his time in the Porter home that his family made it the centerpiece of his obituary.
Nearly 40 years after Porter’s own death, 1972.
Globe obituary for NGO Loma truly says in part,
in his native Italy mr man julie was a steward in some of the finest homes and when he came to this country he assumed a similar position at Elmwood The famed James Russell Lowell house.
Mr Maja really worked as a steward for the late Harvard archaeology professor and mrs Arthur Kingsley Porter when they resided at the James Russell Lowell house.
Many valuable sculpture pieces and paintings were a part of the porter home and frequently during the year Sundays would be open house day there as Harvard students and faculty would visit the professor and his wife and view the genuinely valuable works of art there,
as steward.
Mr Maja really cared for these priceless items, displaying them in a special way, infrequently displaying them for special occasions.
He knew and loved beautiful things and took an exceptional delight in caring for.

[21:39] It goes on to note he will be buried in Mount Auburn cemetery, across the street from the James Russell Lowell House, which he loved so much.

[21:49] Despite costly and extensive renovations to a historic home that quickly became one of the hottest invitations in Cambridge.
The porters spent surprisingly little time at Elmwood invitations to spend a couple of semesters as a guest lecturer at the Sorbonne in paris and a university in Spain,
turned into a years long, nearly obsessive track around europe, forcing lucy to wonder what Kingsley was running from.

[22:16] They would return to Elmwood for a year, holding lectures that captivated the undergraduates and throwing parties that dazzled professors and university administrators alike.
And then it was back to Greece for nearly a year and then spain, where Kingsley conducted a series of controversial excavations at medieval monasteries,
1927, the couple made their first trip to Ireland after Porter became fascinated with the possibility that Irish high crosses were an older form of art than Romanesque sculptures,
Then proceeded to Egypt in 1928 to try to connect medieval period.
Aren’t there to its European counterparts?

[22:56] It was around this time that lucy began to recognize a deep hidden vein of melancholy and our now famous husband at this point in his life, lucy, Castigan rights.
Kingsley porter possessed every asset that most mortals can only dream of within his chosen field of romanesque architecture is ingenious theories, his original research methods and his brilliant publications were highly respected.
Besides the mammoth book he had authored, he had also written countless articles that have been printed in leading periodicals and collective works in europe and the US.
He was a lecturer who was truly loved by his students, celebrated by his peers and championed by one of the most influential universities in the world, financially.
Kingsley Porter possessed a fortune romantically. He was adored by his intelligent, charming wife.
Together with lucy, traveled the world for months at a time, seeking out landscapes of exquisite natural beauty, visiting monuments, cathedrals and castles of rich cultural significance.
Meeting artists, writers and politicians.
All doors were fully open to satisfy his every desire.

[24:11] Despite all of these worldly advantages, Kingsley Porter was growing more restless and despondent at the very height of his success, Kingsley began to experience serious bouts of depression, an inner secret that it remained bottled up and hidden.
His whole life was about to erupt and shatter his private world forever.
During the trip to Egypt, Kingsley confessed a deep depression in letters to his brother louis, and that depression only grew when he returned to the conservative confines of Cambridge for his february 1929 lecture series,
That winter or maybe early spring, after 17 years of marriage, Kingsley made a shocking confession to Lucy.
He’d come to the realization that despite his enduring love for her, he was gay, no matter how hurt she might have been privately, lucy stood by her man publicly.
Was she surprised? Nobody knows.
Certainly Kingsley had been deeply closeted before he came out to her, and he would continue to be afterwards.
But there were hints in his writing, like this passage on greek sculpture in his book Beyond Architecture.

[25:27] The emotion it conveys is the emotion of sex. The beauty it interprets is the beauty of sex.
This fact has been largely misunderstood or ignored because the type of sex which appealed with a special power to the Greeks is considered perverse and repulsive by the modern age.
Not being willing to grant that an art obviously of the highest type could have been inspired by ideals which seemed to us depraved.
We have willed not to understand yet delight in the nude and especially the nude male is the keynote of greek art.
Where else is the vigor of youth? The play of muscles? The glory of manhood found a like expression.
It is the ideal of masculine sex, which the Greeks eternally glorified.
This is the beauty there never wearied of interpreting it is this which is illustrated by greek sculpture without sculpture.
The greek temple is as unm meaning as the music of a song without the words and the sculptures were the idealization of male sex.
That and that only thus, the entire greek temple was made a glorious hymn in praise of sex.

[26:41] A passage in shantou cheese Crimson Letter describes the precariousness of Kingsley Porter’s double life of Harvard’s Boardman Professor.
No one could say enough marvin chauncey ross Porter’s biographer included, tall and slender and fond of the out of doors from his youth when he had 100 great game in Canada.
He was yet shy and retiring with the look of the poet.
These traits are found equally in his researches, the boldness of the great game hunter, combined with the sense of beauty of the poet.

[27:15] Porter Whitehill, also recalled, was immensely thoughtful and considerate and he became an almost legendary figure at Harvard rewarding and supportive family life, a superb education,
a splendid professorship at a great University, physical attractiveness, highly civilized lifestyle, sustained by independent wealth.
It’s almost too much to add scholarship of genius and personal saintliness.
Yet, as Ross affirmed such reporters accomplishments that he is generally considered as probably the greatest american meat,
yet is ross affirmed such reporters accomplishments that he’s generally considered as probably the greatest american medieval archaeologist of his day,
seemingly porter had it all, but he lived on a perpetual precipice.
Risking scandal at every turn because he was homosexual.

[28:11] The 1920s were not a good time to be gay at Harvard,
Four months before Porter joined the faculty in 1920, a student suicide kicked off a relentless purge of gay students led by Harvard President A Lawrence Lowell,
using techniques that would later be familiar to joe McCarthy.
Harvard administrators spied on students suspected of being gay, pressured them into naming names and ultimately convened a secret court to determine their fates.

[28:43] In almost all cases, the sentence was expulsion from Harvard with notice to leave Cambridge immediately and never come back.
Lowell and his goons were even more vindictive than that though, placing notes in the students, Harvard files that would be shared when anyone asked for a reference in the future.
If one of the students tried to transfer to another school, that school would be told of their lewd and immoral behavior.
If they applied for a job and mentioned Harvard, the employer would be told that they were of low character and unemployable.
In the end, four students were left dead, three of suicide and one from a suspicious car accident and at least eight more lives were shattered by the secret chord.

[29:29] President lula’s campaign against homosexuality was not limited to students as to close shantou.
She describes In Crimson letter, Historian of Harvard, Richard Norton smith tells the story in is the Harvard century of what happened when an elderly professor was revealed to the President as homosexual.
Lowell smith reports, some in the Manta University hall where the president’s habitual pacing. Often count visitors into the far corners of the room and demanded his resignation on the spot.
He had devoted his life to Harvard, replied the professor, What was he expected to do now?

[30:09] What would President Lowell himself do if he were in his shoes?
I would get a gun and destroy myself. Said low.

[30:20] In a way I feel as if I failed our listeners by not writing an episode about the Harvard Secret Court when the centennial came around last year.
At the time, I wanted to set up an interview so someone more knowledgeable than me could tell you about this tragic chapter in local history and nobody knows more about it than a meat paley,
Paley is now doing admirable work as the head of the Trevor Project and he wasn’t available for an interview.
But back in the early 2000s he was a student reporter at the Harvard Crimson and he wrote the definitive article that rediscovered the secret court after decades of cover up in it.
He describes what happened when President Lowell learned that another instructor at Harvard might be gay.

[31:05] In the course of his testimony though the student told the court that he had twice been approached by assistant and philosophy Douglas B.
Clark, his section leader in psychology, a general introduction to psychology Clark was an arid aight man.
The 24 year old was born in Rome and spoke Italian German and French fluently at Wesleyan College. He was phi beta kappa and during World War he served as a special agent in the U. S. Department of Justice.
He received a master’s degree in philosophy at Harvard in 1918 and was in the third year of his PhD program when he was summoned before the court altogether. Clarke taught about 100 students in his sections.

[31:50] The news that a Harvard teacher might be a homosexual, led President Lowell to join a special secret session of the court on June 10 that the two assistant deans did not attend.

[32:02] At first, Clark denied any connection with homosexual is um, and he denied talking about it except to help some students to cure themselves.
Court records note that his memory was poor and he seemed nervous.
He eventually broke down and confessed to approaching S 14 hoping for homosexual relations.
Clark told the court that he had been lying to cure himself and thought he was succeeding.
President Lowell told Clark he could not be reappointed or given a PhD and Clark agreed to withdraw his candidacy for the degree.
Later, President Lowell himself crossed Clark’s name off all corporation records after he was forced to withdraw from Harvard Donald, Clark continued to lead the life of an academic.
He next headed to the university of California’s Mills College campus where he taught for several years in the fall of 1920 70 helped the David Mann school create a new department of Cultural Studies,
1933 published a book of poetry, the single glow under the name of Axton Clark.

[33:10] He also composed music and published a translation of the letters of Christopher columbus from italian and a translation of Heinrich Mann’s in the land of cocaine from the german.
He later moved to Denver colorado, where he was librarian at National jewish Hospital.
His obituary in the Rocky Mountain Harold said that he died of tuberculosis, so it was dangerous to be a gay professor at this time.
But it doesn’t seem like anyone connected with, but it doesn’t seem like anyone connected with Harvard had suspicions about Kingsley’s sexual orientation.
After all, he didn’t fit the stereotype of a gay man.
He was married by all appearances happily and he was an athletic outdoorsy type, with a widely known reputation for hunting, fishing another manly pursuits.

[34:00] Meanwhile, rights past podcast guest Russ Lopez in his book the hub of the gay universe.
Harvard students had their own ideas of what were signs of homosexuality.
These included non athletic bodies, a lack of muscles and very youthful appearance.
Some shave, their bodies, shape, their eyebrows, bleached, their hair blond, attended class and makeup and wore bright red ties.
One student Edwards say, were rouge to class while others wore loud suits.
The decor of the gay students room was also suspect robert’s room had parrots, goldfish and flowers.
Others had suspect books such as those written by Freud and Havelock. Ellis.

[34:48] A Kingsley Porter was now almost 50 years old, physically fit in a conservative dresser.
He was becoming acquainted with the works of Havelock Ellis.
You may remember that back in episode 2 23 Alice’s books were considered one of the corrupting influences that boston Mayor Andrew Peters supposedly used to corrupt star faithful as he groomed her for the years of sexual abuse.
She eventually suffered at his hands.
Ellis was an english physician Who became one of the first to seriously study human sexuality in the 19th century,
Eventually publishing the first English language textbook on the subject of homosexuality in 1897,
and it was to Havelock Ellis, that lucy and Kingsley Porter turned in desperation as their concern over his sexuality grew.

[35:41] In October 1931, Lucien Kingsley visited Ellis’s office in London.
The lucy Castigan is biography notes that they were careful not to leave any record of it.
There were no letters between them and nothing in lucy’s diary. Beyond the fact that they were going to London,
Castigan only learned about the treatment because Ellis biographer Phyllis Gross Kurth discovered letters from the porters to Ellis and Ellis’s papers in 1980,
incredibly the cure that Havelock Ellis recommended to treat Kingsley Porter’s depression after his midlife realization that he was gay was to take a young man into his bed.

[36:20] Specifically 21 year old American novelist, Alan Campbell, who was also being treated by Alice Gross Kurth wrote what advice had ellis to proffer.
There’s no way of knowing exactly what Ellis actually said. But in a letter of July 31, 1932, Porter told Ellis,
I feel a deep sense of gratitude to you, deeper than I know how to express for having put me in touch with Alan,
Alan Campbell was a young aspiring american novelist, a homosexual also, who moved into the porters beautiful home in Cambridge massachusetts a few months later,
and they’re apparently a menage.
A twat was established with Ellis’s views on the impossibility of curing homosexuality and with his own experience of accepting his wife Edith’s lovers.
The porters were among the few people in whom he ever confided The truth about his own marriage.
One can only assume that this was the solution Ellis proposed for their difficulties.

[37:23] Luckily having decided to invite another man into their relationship in 1932, the porters had a second home that provided ultimate privacy for exploring this new chapter,
As Kingsley’s interest in Irish high crosses grew in the 1920s, the couple made several research trips to Ireland 1929.
They were in Donegal they had spent part of their 1912 Honeymoon and which Kingsley always said, reminded him of his beloved Adirondacks.
On this trip, they stumbled across what appeared to be the ruin of a medieval castle.
There was actually a victorian era mansion built to look like a castle of Ole.
It had crenelated walls, tall narrow windows, reminisce Navarro loops around tower and a tall central keep.
Built in the 1860s, the man should have been mostly abandoned for 13 years by the time the Porter stumbled across it.

[38:21] Here’s how the castle’s described on the news site, irish Central Glenn V Castle is a 19th century cast elated mansion built between 1867 and 1873.
Its construction in a remote mountain setting was inspired by the victorian idol of a romantic island retreat.
It’s now part of the Glenville, a national park in County Donegal and irons majestic northwest.
It has a turbulent history tinged with fame and tragedy.
During the irish civil war, the castle was garrisoned by both pro and anti treaty forces when they was of no real strategic value, but each side craved, the symbolism of holding the castle rather than utilizing it during the Civil War.
Once the free state was founded, the castle lay empty until 1929, when, just before the world economy collapsed, a Yale educated professor of art purchased the property,
the estate reporters purchased included a large flat rock on which tradition held that catholic saint columba or collum cille was born Better yet.
The estate included 30,000 acres or over 45 square miles of property,
plenty of room for a woman and her husband and her husband’s young lover to have privacy while they explored a new and unconventional family dynamic.

[39:47] Kingsley Porter’s obituary in the proceedings of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences describes his fascination with Ireland and his new irish estate.

[39:58] His enquiring mind was never content to settle into a groove of any sore, and he became fascinated with the idea of studying the part that Ireland played in the development of medieval art, its relation to Egypt to spain to the other countries of europe.
The porters went to Ireland and he bought a defense among the wild and romantic moors of Donegal,
He was attracted in many ways to this austere in beautiful place and not the least of its charm was that the traditional birthplace of collum cille was on his land,
here in Glenview castle, a victorian mansion.
They entertain their friends, including irish scholars, artists and poets.
The porters also built a cottage on the island of Inish boffin off the north coast of Donegal,
miles away, the lonely extent of the atlantic was only broken by the dim outline of the island of Tory, which looked like a dream castle emerging from the northern Sea.

[40:57] For the first year of their new relationship, Alan Kingsley and lucy spent every moment when Kingsley wasn’t teaching at Glen Veii.
Eventually though, Kingsley’s career intruded In February 1933, Alan Campbell moved into Elmwood with the porters, but their unconventional arrangement quickly started attracting unwanted attention.
About three weeks after they got settled, Lucy’s diaries record that Kingsley was summoned to an evening meeting with Harvard President Lowell.
He was called in again on April 10, then again two weeks later And yet again on May eight.

[41:37] There’s no record of what was said in these audiences with the President, but it seems likely that Allen’s presence in Cambridge was ruffling feathers.
On May 15, Lucy’s diary says that Kingsley was invited to the president’s home again but declined to go.
Days later, the porters and Campbell were packing for a sudden departure back to glen Veii, lucy Castigan rights.
There’s no doubt that Kingsley realized he was on the brink of a scandal. In Harvard, those evening meetings with President Lowell led to a Corporation meeting to discuss Kingsley’s future.
The Corporation appears to have been divided with some professors demanding that Kingsley be expelled. Well, others spoke in his favor.
Kingsley was told that the final decision will be reached during the summer.

[42:29] Arriving at glen Vacay. The porters mostly kept to themselves to the rest of May in june while Alan Campbell lingered behind in Stratford on avon,
On July four they visited Allen and he ended their unconventional relationship,
on the seventh, they returned to their castle at glen Veii and traveled on to the cottage at Inish boffin the next day, Kingsley walked into a storm that was never heard from again.

[42:59] After lucy met George Russell on the mainland that night. The two of them reported Kingsley’s disappearance to the authorities and a formal search ensued.
Russell stayed with her for days afterwards as the police and coastguards searched in vain.
And then a few days later, Alan Campbell came to stay with her as well.
It would have been weird for an outside observer, the young lover of the missing middle aged husband comforting the grieving wife.
But Lucien Allen took comfort from one another.

[43:29] Three days after Kingsley went missing, Alan Campbell wrote to Havelock. Ellis, Probably. You’ve read the newspapers of what has happened, Kingsley and Lucy went over to their island friday and saturday morning.
Kingsley was drowned.
There was a strong outgoing tide. No one saw the body disappear.
It’s thought that he slipped from a high cliff in the wind.
I’m remaining with lucy. As long as she has a need of me. Of course, just now she can make no plans but is intending to sail for Elmwood in about 10 days.
I will cross with her.
Last evening while walking we were both able to feel Kingsley is found release and liberation except for certainly about his death when she met towards Russell on the evening of the first day saying, Kingsley will not return tonight.
Kingsley will never return lucy’s thoughts and Kingsley’s fate remained mostly unspoken.
However, most observers are convinced that he died of suicide. He’d been crushed by a 12 punch of personal tragedies.
First, the damage done to his position at Harvard by Allen’s presence.
Then the grief he felt at Allen’s departure, reflecting on the possibility that Kingsley might have killed himself, Douglas shantou, she wrote in a sense, Porter had only done what many at Harvard then would have expected of him.

[44:58] Back in Cambridge. Harvard decided to ignore the dark implications of Professor Porter’s disappearance.
Running an obituary in the Crimson, celebrating the highlights of his university career,
with the death of Arthur Kingsley Porter, Harvard loses one of its most able scholars and teachers and it’s not only Harvard in Cambridge, which mourns his passing, but the whole world of fine arts.
For Professor Porter was one of the three or four men in the field with a truly international reputation.
Although his loss would be a great one, where it only for his works in the fine arts. He was also known for his brilliant contributions to literature.
He was particularly interested in medieval and 20th century writings.
In recent years, Professor Porter developed a special interest in Ireland. It’s art in its literature.
He was a poet, as well as a scholar. No students ever had a more devoted friend and counselor than those who had the good fortune to work under Professor Porter at the Fogg Museum and elsewhere.
Although an exceedingly hard worker with great singleness of purpose, he always found time to make friends and help those with whom he worked.
No one will ever know how many students received from invaluable advice and often monetary assistance.
The latter frequently given anonymously.

[46:18] A few months later, the Globe reported on a windfall for the university and Kingsley Porters will, With a brief article in September 27, 1933, noting,
Elmwood the beautiful Cambridge estate where James Russell Lowell lived and penned many of his immortal works and a trust fund of $100,000 will ultimately become the property of Harvard University.
Under the will of Professor Arthur Kingsley Porter, the will filed for probate yesterday in the Middlesex court leaves the Cambridge estate to the test centres, Widow mrs lucy Wallace Porter for life,
with a provision that upon her death it is to go to Harvard.
The Will expresses the hope that the university will preserve and maintain the estate as a historical monument.
The Trust Fund of $100,000 is created with the provision that the net income be paid to mrs Porter for life and that upon her death the fund is to go to Harvard to be held by the president and fellows.
So far as they deem it necessary for the preservation and maintenance of Elmwood If the fund is not so used.
The will provides, it is to be applied to the purchase of works of art for the Fog Museum.

[47:31] In the meantime, Lucy sold Glenview Castle to Henry McElhinney, one of Kingsley’s former students.
In 1937, He continued using it as a summer home until 1981, when he donated the house and grounds to the irish government, which opened them to the public as Glen Bay National Park.

[47:52] Not everyone believed the tale of Kingsley’s disappearance when no body was ever found. Some people re examine Lucy’s quick conclusion that Kingsley would never return and found not grief.
But for knowledge, these people believe that lucy’s desperate search of the cliffs and crags of Inish boffin had been a misdirection keeping the Islanders busy while porter was smuggled away in a small boat.
And this version of events, lucy kept the couple’s combined fortune. Well, Kingsley got a new anonymous life on another continent.
Or you can live life free of harvard strictures and glenn mystery lucy Castigan wrote,
the legend that Arthur Kingsley Porter was still alive and it relocated to some exotic city in europe or Asia continued for many years later, there were reports that Kingsley have been seen in paris.
While others said they saw him in brussels, a group of american archaeologists were that they saw Kingsley porter at silos.
Kingsley had written about the Abbey of Santo Domingo de silos in Northern Spain and romanesque sculpture of the pilgrimage roads.
It would have been fitting indeed if Kingsley had relocated to Northern Spain after his devotion to the study of spanish sculpture for over a decade.

[49:12] Professor Harbison reported hearing her reading somewhere that Kingsley Porter have been seen at the piers in Marseille and also in a buddhist monastery in India.

[49:23] Professor Harbison probably also heard somewhere that Hillary clinton was trafficking child sex slaves through the basement of Comet Pizza.
The 5G is used to brainwash people into voting Democrat and that the corona virus is a hoax to allow shadowy forces to inject us all with microchips.
Can we all agree that the last thing America needs in 2021 is yet another conspiracy theory?

[49:49] To learn more about lucy and Kingsley Porter Check out this week’s show notes at hub history dot com slash 232,
I’ll have links to support the show by purchasing lucy Castigan is glen bay mystery Douglas shantou cheese crimson letter and the hub of the gate universe by Russ Lopez.
I’ll also link to a meat paley’s piece in the Crimson uncovering the Harvard secret court Stuart Ngoma julie’s obituary in the Globe and period photos of Elmwood glenn V and Inish boffin,
plus, there will be links to Kingsley Porter’s obituaries in the Globe, the Harvard Crimson, The Proceedings of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Medievalist journal Speculum.

[50:36] Before I wrap up, I want to share an interesting sounding event coming up this week from our friends at the paul Revere House,
as part of their series of Lowell lectures which were coincidentally started by Harvard President, Abbott Lawrence Lowell’s grandfather and briefly administered by that rabidly homophobic harvard president,
the Chair of African Lodge number 4 59.
Most worshipful Prince Hall Grand lodge of masons will be presenting at Old North Church on Tuesday september 28.
He’ll be talking about the founder of Prince Hall masonry and a tireless activist for the rights of Black Bostonians in the late 18th and early 19th century.
Their description of the event says, this lecture introduces Prince Hall is a historical figure with an emphasis on his achievements and contributions. In supporting the argument that Prince Hall should be considered one of the founding fathers of the United States.
Mr Perez will argue that Prince Hall an unsung patriot and forgotten. Founding father should receive his long overdue recognition.

[51:43] The cool thing about this talk as well as the entire Lowell lecture series through the paul revere house is that it will be held both in person at Old north and virtually.
And both versions are free to attend.
Not only that, but all the lectures are being recorded and will be available to stream for free at a later time.
You can get more information about registering for the talk or viewing the video in this week’s show notes.
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Jake:
[53:08] Apple podcasts is still the most popular podcast app.
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Jake:
[53:24] That’s all for now. Stay safe out there listeners.