Anne Pemberton's query is interesting as a manifestation of a certain 
kind of persistent historical folklore.  Among Americans, at least, who 
are (or used to be) taught to see major national figures as impossibly 
heroic, there is a compensatory counter-stream of popular stories 
attributing various types of sexual misconduct to them.  (I imagine the 
same goes for other "rulers" in other societies.)

For instance, one friend of mine, who attended high school several 
decades ago, swears her U.S. history teacher taught her some 
particularly lurid tale (whose details, alas, I've forgotten) involving 
GW and some salacious escapade.  She was amazed when I told her I 
thought the story was wildly improbable.  I found it interesting that 
her decades-long belief in the story hadn't seemed to cause her to 
question GW's place in history: instead, against all the heroic 
mythology, the tale apparently functioned for her as a balancing 
assertion that GW could misbehave like any other man.

 From the folklorist's perspective, what's interesting isn't the factual 
truth of such stories, which are generally nil, but what they reveal 
about the needs that history serves in the society that perpetuates 
them.

--Jurretta Heckscher


On May 21, 2007, at 3:54 PM, Debra Jackson/Harold Forsythe wrote:

> Don't forget the classic sexual study from the Victorian era, Havelock 
> Ellis's four volume Psychology of Sex.  It was so controversial that 
> it was not printed in Britain.  It was printed in English in 
> German--the Germans, of course, saw this as science--and then smuggled 
> into Britain.
>
> Harold S. Forsythe
> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Jon Kukla" 
> <[log in to unmask]>
> To: <[log in to unmask]>
> Sent: Monday, May 21, 2007 1:34 PM
> Subject: Re: Anne Pemberton's query
>
>
>>  As Anne Pemberton noted in her query, Thomas and Martha Jefferson 
>> didn't
>> have a son; or more accurately their only male child survived only a 
>> few
>> weeks.
>>  And if I remember the date range correctly, Jefferson himself was 
>> long
>> dead before ingenious Victorians were inventing and marketing the
>> devices mentioned.
>>  Social historians have produced a considerable scholarly literature
>> about the 19th-century hysteria over the alleged medical consequences 
>> of
>> masturbation. Several of these works describe Victorian-era 
>> contraptions
>> designed to prevent "self-abuse." For anyone interested in reading 
>> more
>> about these aspects of medical/social history, the first two books by
>> Laqueur and Horowitz are probably the best place to start:
>>
>> Thomas W. Laqueur, Solitary Sex: A Cultural History of Masturbation 
>> (New
>> York, 2003)
>>
>> Helen Lefkowitz Horowitz, Rereading Sex: Battles over Sexual 
>> Knowledge and
>> Suppression in Nineteenth-Century America (New York, 2002)
>>
>> Roy Porter, Flesh in the Age of Reason: The Modern Foundations of 
>> Body and
>> Soul (New York, 2003)
>>
>> Roy Porter and Lesley Hall, The Facts of Life: The Creation of Sexual
>> Knowledge in Britain, 1650-1950 (New Haven, 1995)
>>
>> Roy Porter, "Forbidden Pleasures: Enlightenment Literature of Sexual
>> Advice," in Paula Bennett and Vernon A. Rosario II, eds., Solitary
>> Pleasures: The Historical, Literary, and Artistic Discourses of
>> Autoeroticism (New York, 1995), 75-98.
>>
>> Alex Comfort, The Anxiety Makers: Some Curious Preoccupations of the
>> Medical Profession (London, 1967)
>>
>> =======================================
>>
>> Dr. Jon Kukla, Executive Vice-President
>> Red Hill - The Patrick Henry National Memorial
>> 1250 Red Hill Road
>> Brookneal, Virginia 24528
>> www.redhill.org
>> Phone 434-376-2044 or 800-514-7463
>