THE RELEVANT QUEER: Glenway Wescott, Novelist, Poet, Provocative Gay Marriage Pioneer

“People as a rule do mean much more than they understand.”

TRQ: Glenway Wescott, Born April 11, 1901

Glenway Wescott was a bestselling writer, novelist and poet but he is most remembered for his marriage to book designer and museum director Monroe Wheeler. With almost 70 years together, theirs was one of history’s longest gay marriages. Wescott’s novels The Pilgrim Hawk: A Love Story (1940) and Apartment in Athens (1945) were popular with critics and general readers alike. An American expatriate living in Germany and France, Wescott was friends with Gertrude Stein, Alice B. Toklas, and one of George Platt Lynes’s lovers. 

Wescott was born on April 11, 1901 on a pig farm in in Kewaskum, Wisconsin. He was the oldest of six and attended a one-room schoolhouse until the age of 12 when he moved in with family living in West Bend. 

At West Bend High School, Wescott lost his virginity to classmate Earl Rix Kuelthau. The two continued their secret relationship for over a year. Wescott earned a scholarship to the University of Chicago. Wescott met Monroe Wheeler in spring of 1919 at a Poetry Club meeting. Wheeler was the handsome twenty-year-old founder of the Poetry journal, and he encouraged Wescott to embrace a writing career and live an unapologetically gay life. 

Wescott contracted Spanish flu later that year and withdrew from university. For health reasons, he travelled to Santa Fe, New Mexico. There he wrote poetry, which lead to The Bitterns: A Book of Twelve Poems (1920) Wescott’s first published work. 

Wescott and Wheeler travelled to Europe in fall of 1921, first stopping in Sussex, England to stay with writer Ford Madox Ford. Once in France, the couple socialized with Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald and Gertrude Stein. Hemingway was privately homophobic, and Stein was less than impressed with Wescott, as described in Toklas’ autobiography. 

Wescott published The Apple of the Eye, his first novel, in 1924. A year later, he and Monroe moved from Paris to Villefranche-sur-Mer in the south of France. There the couple befriended Jean Cocteau. In 1925, Wescott published Natives of Rock: XX Poems, another poetry collection. 

In 1926, the couple met George Platt Lynes, an eighteen-year-old minister’s son from New Jersey, living in France to prepare for college. Mutually infatuated, the couple and Lynes shared a home for 17 years. “There isn’t anybody or any sort of thing to take your place for me,” Wescott once wrote to Lynes in a letter. 

In 1929, Wescott wrote in another letter to Lynes, “It is more than affection that makes me want for you, and more particularly for myself, all the quality, the sureness and inquietude, the farewell kiss and the future blessing, of our brotherhood. You are the nourishment and no one of us has failed.” 

By the time Wescott published The Grandmothers: A Family Portrait (1927), he was considered a major American novelist. Critics praised the best-selling novel, and it received the Harper Prize for distinguished fiction in 1927. 

Wescott’s Goodbye, Wisconsin (1928), a collection of stories, presents the oppressiveness of the Midwest. After publishing the novella, The Babe’s Bed (1930), Wescott waited for over ten years to publish more fiction. Instead, he published Fear and Trembling (1932) and Calendar of Saints for Unbelievers (1933), two disappointing works of nonfiction. 

In 1935, Wescott moved back to the United States. Wescott and Wheeler spent their time between a farm in New Jersey, and the Manhattan apartments they shared with Lynes. Together, Wescott and Wheeler built a significant reputation in New York’s arts community. 

Wescott published his most critically acclaimed work, the novel The Pilgrim Hawk: A Love Story (1940). Wheeler had joined the Museum of Modern Art as a guest curator and later as director of the department of exhibitions and publications. In 1967, he became an adviser to the board of trustees. 

Wescott, Wheeler and Lynes socialized with W. H. Auden, Christopher Isherwood, Paul Cadmus and Jared French. Lynes ended his relationship with Wescott and Wheeler in 1943, after falling in love with studio assistant George Tichenor. Writing to his brother and sister-in-law, Wescott shared the news. “This is a milestone date in our lives: this afternoon Monroe received a letter from George to say he is leaving us.” 

“Life goes on and on after one’s luck has run out. Youthfulness persists, alas, long after one has ceased to be young.” — Glenway Wescott 

In 1945, Wescott published Apartment in Athens, his last novel. For the next forty years, he would work on a journal, Continual Lessons, write letters and publish the occasional article. Wescott also befriended Dr. Alfred C. Kinsey, who founded the Institute for Research in Sex, Gender and Reproduction at Indiana University. He invited Kinsey to a sex party in Manhattan to observe sex between men and participated in creating explicit research films. 

In 1955, Lynes returned to Manhattan facing financial ruin and a lung cancer diagnosis. Wescott was at his bedside when Lynes passed away on December 6, 1955. 

Wescott served as president of the National Institute of Arts and Letters from 1959 to 1962. In 1975, Wescott published The Best of All Possible Worlds: Journals, Letters and Remembrances 1914-1937. 

Wescott died of a stroke on February 20, 1987 at his home in New Jersey. Only two days later, a stroke left Wheeler blind and partially paralysed. Eighteen months after Wescott’s death, Wheeler died on August 14, 1988. 

Wescott’s journals were published in 1990 and told of his private life with Wheeler and Lynes. “A Visit to Priapus,” a short piece of gay fiction, was published in 2003 in The New Penguin Books of Gay Short Stories. 

About the Authors

Troy Wise is currently a PhD student at UAL Central St Martins and teaches fashion and graphic design at London College of Contemporary Arts. His background is in marketing and is founder and co-editor of Image Amplified. He lives in, and is continually fascinated by, the city of London.

Rick Guzman earned his most recent MA at UAL Central St Martins in Applied Imagination in the Creative Industries. He currently holds two MA’s and an MBA in the New Media, Journalism and International Business fields. Co-editor at Image Amplified since its start, he lives in London, is fascinated by history and is motivated by continuing to learn and explore. 

*

Sources:

GLBTQ Archive

The New York Times

Chicago Tribune

Yale Archives