Her enemy, some friends–and other personages: stories and studies mostly of human hearts (self-published: Florence, 1913) was on its face a collection of Prime-Stevenson’s previously published “sentimental fiction,” short stories revolving around character studies and examinations of individual emotions. Many of these stories originally date from his newspaper career in the 1880s and 1890s.
Taken together and in conversation with “Xavier Mayne’s” sexological works, however, many of the stories in Her Enemy seem to represent an attempt to unite Prime-Stevenson’s various authorial personae and different elements of his career. This is accomplished through a variety of means, which Prime-Stevenson also uses in revising and updating his music criticism for Long-Haired Iopas (ca. 1927).
1. Direct Citations of “Mayne”‘s Work
In “Out of the Sun” and “Aquae multae non–,” Prime-Stevenson mentions or quotes “Mayne” as a kind of sexological authority. Dayneford in “Out of the Sun,” an Anglophone expatriate in Italy, has an extensive library of books and musical and artistic works clearly reflective of “Mayne’s” interests and culminating in a description of books attributed to “Mayne” himself:
On a lower shelf, rested David Christie Murray’s “Val Strange” and one or two other old novels; along with Dickens’s “David Copperfield,” the anonymous “Time,” and Vachell’s “The Hill,” companioned by Mayne’s “Intersexes,” “Imre” and “Sebastian au Plus Bel Age.” The latter little book was lying flat on its face, just where Dayneford had laid it down three nights ago, when he had sprung up from the sofa–to tear open feverishly, fearfully, hopefully–yes, even then a very little hopefully!–Gino’s long-expected telegram. Was it only three nights ago…? Dayneford had lived much since then! Absently Dayneford took uo “Sebastian” and re-read a page which his own pencil had marked something or other.”
Prime-Stevenson, “Out of the Sun” in Her Enemy (1913), 357
Despite the lengthy quote from “Sebastian” that follows, which purports to be an English translation of a tragic French story where an encounter on the street with a youth seems to remind the protagonist Bernard of his lost love Sebastian, this book is not known to exist under either “Mayne’s” or Prime-Stevenson’s names. Nevertheless the mention of “Mayne” and both Imre and the Intersexes would be a clear reference to any readers familiar with Prime-Stevenson’s varied interests and use of pseudonyms.
In “Aquae multi non–,” a quote from “Mayne” (actually, the epigraph to Imre: A Memorandum) serves as an epigraph, linking “Mayne’s” and Prime-Stevenson’s works of fiction, hinting at the queer nature of the characters Ilario’s and Felice’s friendship, and distinguishing the story from its earlier, presumably platonic version:
“The Friendship which is love, the Love which is Friendship” ….
(Xavier Mayne, “Imre: A Memorandum”)
Prime-Stevenson. “Aquae multi non–,” in Her Enemy (1913), 19
2. Indirect References to “Mayne”
Lieutenant Imre von N–, the title character and one of the two protagonists of “Mayne’s” novel Imre appears as a minor character in “Madonnesca,” part of the audience for a tale of rumor and amorality about a fellow foreign guest at a musical party in Rome. (Somewhat unusually, Prime-Stevenson would reuse this technique in “Prince Bedr’s Quest,” one of the supposedly nonfiction essays in Long-Haired Iopas, which seems to be narrated by Imre himself recounting his and his partner Oswald’s Beethoven tourism in Vienna.)
3. Queer Reworkings of Previous Fiction
One of the more curious details about Prime-Stevenson’s two most overtly queer short stories, “Aquae multae non–” and “Once: But Not Twice,” is that both were previously published in Christian newspapers as tales of idealized male friendship.
“Aquae multae non–“, originally titled “When Art Was Young: A Romance,” appeared in The Christian Union in 1883. For the version published in Her Enemy, Prime-Stevenson added the quotation from “Mayne” previously mentioned and added a few more pointed hints at the romantic relationship between the story’s protagonists, Ilario and Felice. Prime-Stevenson also dedicated this story to Gerard-Henri Vuerchoz, a sculptor with whom Prime-Stevenson may have had a romantic relationship.
“Once: But Not Twice” originally appeared in The Independent in 1891. The version of the story that appears in Her Enemy is dedicated to Harry Harkness Flagler, whose relationship with Prime-Stevenson seems to have inspired the discussion of the protagonists’ shared musical interests and tragic separation.
I am grateful to independent scholar Tom Sargant and librarian and curator of the website More Than Silence Bri for graciously sharing their respective collections of Prime-Stevenson’s newspaper columns and short fiction, which have allowed me to gain a more complete picture of the relationship between Prime-Stevenson’s earlier writings and his self-published works.
Her Enemy has been digitized in its entirety by the New York Public Library, and is available in both their Digital Collections and in a searchable format via the Internet Archive. The original versions of “When Art Was Young” (Part I and Part II on Google Books) and “Once: But Not Twice” (on the Internet Archive) are also digitized, and make for interesting comparisons across Prime-Stevenson’s literary career.
I also recommend James Gifford’s book Dayneford’s Library: American Homosexual Writing, 1900-1913 (University of Massachusetts Press, 1995) for exploring Prime-Stevenson’s playing with pseudonyms and authorial personae, alongside various strategies used by other gay authors at the start of the twentieth century. (Gifford’s work has been indispensable in tracing Prime-Stevenson’s literary connections and posthumous reception across the history of LGBTQ+ studies.)