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WRITING FROM HIS NATIVE BOSTON in March 1892, twenty-nineyear-old Ogden Codman confided to his closest friend, Arthur, of his latest attraction: "I am rather interested in Walter Abbott, Gordon Abbott's younger brother who has been in New York for a year and is quite unhappy in Boston where he has to live and is wild to get back to New York. He is much improved in looks, has rather nice skin and curly hair. He has grown thinner and is better dressed but looks cross and says foolish things about Boston which make him unpopular."1 Arthur Little, age thirty-eight and himself constantly in search of young men, responded by return mail: "How does your smash on Walter Abbott get on? Also, die young Gray? You ought to push some of these things and get some wild adventures."2 Less than a month later he could endure the silence no longer: "How is your smash on Walter Abbott getting on? You don't mention him so I suppose all sorts of things. Silence is golden. What is screwing for God's sake then?"3 In time Ogden did answer these urgent inquiries, and his cursory response indicates that, this time at least, there would be no amorous adventures with young Abbott: "I have not seen much of Walter Abbott but he is stupid and drinks a lot."4 Typical of his relations with young men, within the short span of three months Codman had met, avidly pursued, and then tired of one who had caught his fancy.
This exchange of letters between Codman and Little, with its intimacy and frank discussion of their respective sexual desires, is representative of their friendship. It also illuminates a world in which guilt for male same-sex attraction, including its physical consummation, was largely absent. Notwithstanding the public culture's judgment that same-sex sexuality was a subject to be denied or, even worse, bitterly denounced, these two friends always managed to view their attractions in only the most positive light.
Ogden Codman (1863-1951) was born at 34 Beacon Street into a family that had been prominent in Boston since late in the eighteenth century. The eldest of five children, he was raised in Boston and the family seat in Lincoln, Massachusetts, but after extended stays in France...