Wife Nancy Witcher Langhorne

Queer Places:
Forest Hills Cemetery and Crematory, Jamaica Plain, Suffolk County, Massachusetts, USA

Robert Gould Shaw II (June 16, 1872 – March 29, 1930) was an American socialite, wealthy landowner, and international polo player born into the heart of elite Boston Brahmin society. A member of a tremendously wealthy family—his grandfather accumulated a fortune through mining and mercantile ventures—Shaw chose a life of leisure, sport, and high society rather than corporate business. He was an avid polo player with the Myopia Hunt Club on Boston's North Shore and a prominent fixture of Gilded Age opulence. He was also a first cousin of the famed Robert Gould Shaw, the Union colonel who commanded the 54th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment during the American Civil War.

Shaw’s personal life was marked by public scandal, severe alcoholism, and profound tragedy:

In 1897, Shaw married Nancy Witcher Langhorne. The volatile marriage lasted only four years before ending in a bitter divorce in 1903. Nancy subsequently moved to England, married Waldorf Astor, and made history as Lady Astor, the first woman to take her seat as a Member of Parliament.

Shaw later remarried to Mary Hannington, with whom he had four sons. His later years were heavily impacted by the collapse of his fortune following the Wall Street Crash of 1929. He died in New York in March 1930 at the age of 57.

The lives of Shaw's children were similarly fraught with severe personal crises:

Robert Gould Shaw III ("Bobbie"): Shaw and Nancy Astor's only child struggled deeply with his mental health and alcoholism. In 1931, he was arrested and imprisoned in England for six months for "homosexual offenses" (homosexuality being a criminal offense in Britain at the time). Plagued by lifelong depression and family tragedies, he died by suicide in 1970.

Louis Agassiz Shaw II: One of Shaw's sons from his second marriage, Louis suffered from severe paranoia and mental illness. In 1964, during a severe psychiatric episode, he fatally assaulted his maid and spent the remainder of his life institutionalized until his death in 1987.

An intriguing intersection connects Robert Gould Shaw II to the broader tapestry of Gilded Age queer history through art and social networks:

The artist R.G. Harper Pennington painted a striking nude portrait of Robert Gould Shaw II cast as "Little Billee"—one of the central bohemian artist characters from George du Maurier’s massively popular 1894 novel Trilby.

The painting famously found its way into the private quarters of Henry Symes "Harry" Lehr, a dominant arbiter of Gilded Age high society in Newport, Rhode Island. Lehr was a closeted gay man in a "lavender marriage" to wealthy socialite Elizabeth Wharton Drexel. Lehr was rumored to have had a longstanding, intimate relationship with fellow Newport cottager and friend Charles E. Greenough.

Reflecting the coded aesthetic spaces of wealthy turn-of-the-century gay elites, Lehr kept Pennington’s nude depiction of Shaw hanging prominently in his personal bedroom, serving as an artifact of both elite homosocial/homosexual homosociality and the homoerotic undertones that periodically surfaced within Gilded Age artistic circles.


Robert Gould Shaw II as Little Billie from George du Maurier's Trilby

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