Queer Places:
Radley College, Kennington Rd, Abingdon, Radley, Abingdon OX14 2HR, UK
Edward Ashley Walrond Clarke aka A.W. Clarke (1860 - February 14, 1913) was the son of a career army officer, and descended on both sides from established county families. Jaspar Tristram (1899) is cited as example in Sexual Heretics: Male Homosexuality in English Literature from 1850-1900, by Brian Reade.
Educated at Radley College, a public school in Oxfordshire. He entered Radley in 1876. Left in 1879, and followed a career in the Foreign Office, ending as Consul-General to Zanzibar, 1909-1913. The autobiographical novel Jaspar Tristram, a sad evocation of the torments of adolescent homosexual love, was his only publication. From Radley, Clarke went straight into the Foreign Office and a diplomatic career, most of it spent in Africa, Acting First Secretary in His Majesty's Diplomatic Service. He married Angelena "Lena" Milman in 1908. Died at Zanzibar, 14th February, 1913.
Jaspar Tristram: A Story, was published by William Heinemann in 1899. Jaspar is an orphan, living like Jane Eyre with an unsympathetic family of relatives. In the early 1870s they send him to Rose Hill, a preparatory school run by Dr. Tower. A big boy named Orr rules over the dormitory, or Long Room. Every night he beats two or three boys, choosing them at random and pulling their nightshirts over their heads. Orr consistently spares the small, aristocratic, good-looking Els. Jaspar worships Orr and envies Els. When Orr leaves, Jaspar is free to develop a romantic friendship with Els, whom he calls Elsie. Eventually the two younger boys join Orr at a fictional public school called Bridwell, based on the actual Radley College. There Orr draws Els into a fashionable circle of "bloods", leaving Jaspar to pine alone. The story follows the boys for a few years after school, when Jaspar and Orr compete for the love of Els's sister. Orr's agressive virility once again gains him an easy victory.
There is a scrapbook at the Winterton Collection of East African photographs, containing ephemera relating to Zanzibar, 1908-1910. Also included are postcards and other memorabilia from the marriage of Lena Milman and Edward Clarke, which took place several months before their departure to Zanzibar, and several loose photographs. The album refers to Edward Ashley Walrond Clarke as "E.A. (Eddie) Walrond Clarke."
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