George Cecil Ives and the Order of Chaeronea

George  Cecil Ives one of Britain’s first gay activists, was born on October 1, 1867 in Germany, the illegitimate son of an English army officer and a Spanish-Jewish baroness.. He was raised by his father’s mother, Emma Ives, and referred to her as his mother. Ives and his grandmother primarily resided in England at Bentworth Hall, or in the South of France. Ives was educated at home and at Magdalene College, Cambridge.

A self-described “evolutionary anarchist,” in around 1893, he founded a secret homosexual society, the Order of Chaeronea, the name taken from the town in ancient Greece where, in the late 19th century, the remains were found of an elite corps of 150 pairs of male lovers who died in 338 BC in a battle against Philip II of Macedon. The army of Alexander the Great and Philip II of Macedon  vanquished the one-hundred-fifty members of the Sacred Band of Thebes in this last battle before Greece was under the hegemony of the Macedonians.

Ives believed that since homosexuals were not accepted openly in society, they needed to have a means of underground communication. The Order’s rituals were based on the writings of Walt Whitman,https://teifidancer-teifidancer.blogspot.com/2017/05/happy-birthday-walt-whitman-legendary.html who Ives had met Whitman when he toured America in 1882. “I have the kiss of Walt Whitman still on my lips,” he later admitted. and the society took on issues beyond the realm of homosexuality, making efforts to reform laws affecting STDs, birth control, abortion and other repressive sex related statutes. The Order, which promoted what Ives referred to as "The Cause," soon attracted members worldwide.

According to Ives, the Order was to be "A Religion, A Theory of Life and Ideal of Duty", although its purpose was primarily political. Ives stressed that The Order was not to be a means for men to meet other men for sex, although he accepted a degree of ‘passionate sensuality’ could take place. He also believed that love and sex between men was a way to undermine the rigid class system, as a true form of democracy. The Secret Society became a worldwide organization, and Ives took advantage of every opportunity to spread the word about the “Cause.”

In Ives’ words:

We believe in the glory of passion. We believe in the inspiration of emotion. We believe in the holiness of love. Now some in the world without have been asking as to our faith, and mostly we find that we have no answer for them. Scoffers there be, to whom we need not reply, and foolish ones to whom our words would convey no meaning. For what are words? Symbols of kindred comprehended conceptions, and like makes appeal to like.

It was brotherhood and the horizontal that he embedded in the Order of the Chaeronea in his relations with his fellow middle and upper middle class champions of the cause.In this he followed an established radical tradition of fraternity identifiable in French revolutionary rhetoric and the British Labour movement. Here though it was a more immediate and intimate idea of political fraternity, associated with the romantic socialism of Walt Whitman and his friend Edward  Carpenter https://teifidancer-teifidancer.blogspot.com/2019/08/edward-carpenter-2981844-2861929-loves.html. Though Ives was at the centre of the Order in terms of its foundation he also specifically structured it non-hierarchically, without Presidents. Vice presidents, committees and sub committees.

The ritual for joining the Order emphasised mutual responsibility, duty, loyalty and endurance. Such rhetoric is familiar in other modes of political organising but by being ritualised along almost Masonic lines Ives inculcated a sense of un-conditionality and permanence, which also brushed closely against notions of family. It helped to suggest less a voluntary allegiance but rather a pre existing bond of sexuality, a homosexual elite which Ives saw the ritual acknowledging rather than creating.

It is estimated that, under Ives, the society numbered about 300 participants,(including a few Lesbians) the same as the number of soldiers of the Sacred Band of Thebes.but no actual membership lists survive.

By 1897, Ives understood that the “Cause” would not be accepted openly in society,a time where  he was in danger of imprisonment for up to two years hard labour just for his sexuality.  and must therefore have a means of underground communication. Ives and other members dated letters and other materials based on this date, so that 1899 would be written as C2237. An elaborate system of rituals, ceremonies, a service of initiation, seals, codes, and passwords were used by the members.

The Order of Chaeronea was resurrected in the United States in the late 1990s and today has chapters in South Africa, France and the United Kingdom, as well.
In 1892 Ives met Oscar Wilde, at the Authors’ Club in London, who was attracted by his youthful good looks. Through Wilde, Ives met Lord Alfred (Bosie) Douglas, with whom he had a brief affair. Although Ives recruited both men to join his "Cause," neither chose to join him. Their acquaintance, however, did provide Ives with an important entry into the Victorian literary scene. Ives figured prominently in the published diaries of Oscar Wilde. Ives was also a friend  to Arthur Conan Doyle and was the basis of the fictional character, A. J. Raffles.

In 1914 Ives became a co-founder alongside Edward Carpenter, Lawrence Houseman and others of the British Society for the Study of Sex Psychology, which in 1931 became the British Sexological Society. Ives was the archivist for this society. whose papers are now housed at the Harry Ransom Center of the University of Texas at Austin. 

Ives was also a member of the Humanitarian League, a radical advocacy group, which operated between 1891 and 1919.

His diary which is about three million words long, most of them illegible, and it runs from 1886 to 1950 is at the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Centre in Austin, Texas.It’s a more or less daily record of his campaigning life, his home life, his friendships with Oscar Wilde, Laurence Housman and various other luminaries including his meeting with Radclyffe Hall, who he disliked.

Ives did not only fight for gay rights but also for prison reform and visited prisons across Europe and specialised in the study of the penal methods, particularly that of England. He lectured and published books on the topic.

In later life he developed eccentricities and developed a passion for melons, filling his house with them. And when the Second World War ended he allegedly refused to believe it and carried a gas mask with him everywhere until his death.

Throughout his life, Ives had many lovers whom he called his children, He took care of them, gve them money and bought them houses. He often lived with more than one lover at a time and some stayed with him for several years.

He died in London on the 4th of June, 1950  but was buried in the village of Bentworth, Hampshire.;His grave was tidied up by the  Voices for Heritage LGBT History Project in 2018 and a melon and flowers placed upon it, 

A true polymath, Ives thus had multiple careers as a poet, penal reformer, writer, gay rights activist and First-Class cricketer. He left  behind extensive diaries detailing his life which have become important sources of research for what life was like for LGBT individuals  during the nineteenth and early 20th centuries. 

Separate from his books, Ives made 45 volumes of scrapbooks. These scrapbooks included clippings on topics such as murders, theories of crime and punishment, psychology of gender, homosexuality, and cricket scores.

All in all Ive's lived a fascinating and interesting life who throughout his life Ives battled  to get pro-homosexuality laws passed. Although he did not live till 1967, when same-sex sexual activities became legal in England, but he was one of the earliest battlers. Considering the times that Ives lived in he was a true pioneer in what would pave the pathway to what we celebrate and take for granted today. .