Queer Places:
University of Oxford, Oxford, Oxfordshire OX1 3PA
St George, 7 Rue Auguste Vacquerie, 75016 Paris, France
St Peter, 21 Wootton Village, Boars Hill, Oxford OX1 5HP, UK
St Paul's Churchyard, Moor Ln, Salford M7 3WX, United Kingdom
Samuel Elsworth Cottam (August 7, 1863 - March 30, 1943) was born on August 7, 1863, in Upper Broughton, Salford, into a life that would quietly bridge the
worlds of the Victorian clergy, English poetry, and early covert homosexual emancipation. He pursued his higher education at Exeter College, Oxford,
graduating in 1885. During his university years, he formed a deep and lifelong friendship with fellow poet and clergyman
Edwin Emmanuel Bradford. Unlike Bradford, who later drifted toward Modernism, Cottam remained a
steadfast, lifelong Anglo-Catholic.
Following his time at Oxford, Cottam entered the priesthood, where his ecclesiastical career included serving as co-Chaplain of St George's Anglican
Church in Paris alongside Bradford. He later served as incumbent at Wootton in the Vale of White Horse, a post where literary figures such as
John Betjeman and
W.H. Auden would famously travel to watch him celebrate Sung Mass. Throughout his life,
Cottam was an enthusiastic collector of Uranian poetry and literary works, aligning himself with a distinct subculture of late-19th-century writers who
explored male-centric love and aesthetics.
Cottam's most notable contribution to literary and cultural history occurred in December 1894, when he published the first and only edition of The
Chameleon. Issued in an extremely limited run of just one hundred copies by the London publisher Gay and Bird, the undergraduate magazine was edited by
John Francis Bloxam. Intended to follow in the footsteps of The Spirit Lamp—the Oxonian magazine previously
edited by Lord Alfred Douglas—The Chameleon openly celebrated homosexual love. Its pages featured Douglas's
famous poem "Two Loves," which concluded with the legendary line, "I am the love that dare not speak its name." The magazine sparked an immediate and
furious backlash in the London press, being denounced as "garbage and offal" and an "insult to the animal creation." When
Oscar Wilde stood trial in 1895, copies of The Chameleon were famously produced in court as evidence against him
due to Wilde's association with its content.
Beyond his publishing venture, Cottam operated discreetly within the hidden networks of early queer history. He was a member of the Order of Chaeronea,
a secret society founded by George Cecil Ives in the late 1890s. Named after the location of the battle where
the Sacred Band of Thebes was established, the society was created to cultivate a covert homosexual moral, ethical, cultural, and spiritual ethos, as Ives
believed society would not openly accept homosexuals. Members utilized a unique dating code adding 1,348 years to the current calendar, and the
fraternity's network included prominent literary and intellectual figures such as Charles Kains Jackson,
Montague Summers, John Gambril Nicholson, and
Edward Carpenter.
Cottam spent his later years dedicated to his ministry and his appreciation for art and architecture. He passed away on March 30, 1943, at the age of
79, and was buried in St Paul's Churchyard in Salford, Greater Manchester. In his final provisions, Cottam left enduring testaments to his faith and
aesthetic sensibilities. His will established trust funds designated for "the purchase of objects of beauty for the furtherance of religion in ancient
gothic churches." Today, this trust continues to operate, administered by the Friends of Friendless Churches to supply furnishings, stained glass, and
bells to dozens of historic churches across England and Wales.
- https://www.guyburch.co.uk/?p=4755
- The Chameleon: A Journal of Poetry (Vol. 1, No. 1). London: Gay and Bird, December 1894. (Published by Samuel Elsworth Cottam, edited by John Francis Bloxam).
- Cottam, Samuel Elsworth. Cameos of Boyhood and Other Poems. 1930 (containing works such as "Circumcised!").
- Norton, Rictor. A History of Homoerotica: E. E. Bradford. Available online via Greek Love Through the Ages (discussing the relationship between Cottam and Edwin Emmanuel Bradford, their time at Exeter College, Oxford, and St George's Anglican Church in Paris).
- Rictor Norton, My Dear Boy: Gay Love in the Early Twentieth Century / related archival research on the Order of Chaeronea and Uranian poetry networks (documenting Cottam's membership in George Cecil Ives's secret society alongside figures like John Gambrill Nicholson and Charles Kains Jackson).
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