THE late Gerry McNamara once remarked that whenever Irish people considered homosexuality presumably only as often as was absolutely necessary - the sum of their thoughts ran to David Norris. A slim pamphlet rather than a book would probably suffice were anyone in this country to undertake a similar survey to that of Hugh David's. After all, until recently, an Irish homosexual was jokingly considered to be any man who preferred women to alcohol.
Yet, curiously, the opening chapter of this work is largely devoted to an Irishman, Oscar Wilde, who in 1895 stood trial for acts of gross indecency with another male. Wilde's downfall, and the attention it attracted, was a defining moment in the history of public attitudes towards homosexuality. In the immediate aftermath of his trial and imprisonment, he was anathemised; the writer Beverley Nichols while a teenager was discovered reading The Picture of Dorian Gray by his father who spat on the book and then tore it to shreds. Later this century, for the liberalminded, Wilde came to represent martyrdom at the hands of Victorian morality.
Hugh David takes another view altogether. In his opinion, Oscar Wilde was the author of his own unhappy fate, having deliberately chosen not to leave England while there was still time, even though he was given ample opportunity to do so.
By staying, he not only destroyed himself but also bequeathed a wretched legacy to succeeding generations of homosexuals who, for fear of suffering similar humiliation, were obliged to engage in elaborate dissimulation. Only in the 1920s did any sense of public toleration for the sexual nonconformist begin to emerge. Indeed, in this account, the interwar years appear as something of a charmed era, aided by the high public profile of figures such as Noel Coward, Ivor Novello and Cecil Beaton, along with many other now forgotten characters. The overtly homosexual character of these men was perhaps allowed because of the specific spheres in which they worked and moved, but David has also included the account of two soldiers who met on a boat returning from France and set up home together.
While the special circumstances of the second World War, in particular the advantages of the blackout, delighted the likes of Quentin Crisp, there was a powerful backlash against homosexuality during the 1950s which remains inexplicable except as another example of that decade's reactionary nature. As Crisp commented in a newspaper interview two years ago, "the horrors of peace were many". The annual number of reported indictable homosexual offences rose from 178 in 1921 to 2,513 forty years later, as the British police engaged in a sustained campaign against homosexuals. David records the cases of piteous individuals such as "Nicholas", so disgusted with his nature and terrified of legal prosecution that he submitted to aversion therapy and, when this failed, married a much younger woman in a final desperate attempt to change his sexuality.
He did not, of course; but what had started to alter, slowly but irrevocably, was public opinion. Eventually the legislation of liberalism was unable to overlook the necessity for reform and in 1967 homosexual acts ceased to be classified as criminal. This country preferred to wait until the present decade before following the same course. Sadly, as the arrival of AIDS in the 1980s demonstrated, prejudice takes even longer to change than irrational laws.
If any complaint were to be made against this book, it would be on the grounds of overdependence on literary sources; the voices are often more Auden than ordinary. That may be because for most of the century only the most articulate and brave would risk allowing themselves to be heard on the subject. The majority of homosexuals were obliged to suppress their voices, but as Hugh David splendidly demonstrates, regardless of circumstances, even the timid could not subdue their natures.
