June 29, 2000 I am reading George Crabbe's long poem The Borough, and the poem on "Peter Grimes" with particular interest. The opera by gay composer Benjamin Britten was losely based on Crabbe's poem.
I don't know anything about Crabbe's life, but he certainly seems to have known about gay sadism. Peter Grimes lives alone (no wifie in the picture. Britten's breeder librettist Montagu Slater irritatingly provides him with a girlfriend in the opera, Ellen).
We are told: He wished for one to trouble and control He wanted some obedient boy to stand And bear the blow of his outrageous hand And hoped to find in some propitious hour A feeling creature subject to his power
Grimes goes to a workhouse and buys an apprentice:
The sum was dealt him and the slave was bound. Some few in town observed in Peter's trap A boy, with jacket blue and woollen cap; But none inquired how Peter used the rope, Or what the bruise, that made the stripling stoop; None could the ridges on his back behold, . . . . . . None reason'd thus - - and, some on hearing cries, Said calmly, "Grimes is at his exercise." Pinn'd, beaten, cold, pinch'd, threatn'd and abused His efforts punished and his food refused Awake, tormented, - - soon roused from sleep Struck if he wept, and yet compell'd to weep The trembling boy dropp'd down and strove to pray, Received a blow and trembling turn'd away Or sobbed and hid his piteous face; -- while he, The savage master, grinn'd in hideous glee: He'd now the power he ever loved to show A feeling being subject to his blow.
I love the line, "Grimes is at his exercise." If any of my neighbors should inquire about the noises through my paper thin walls as I have fun with my cute black bottoms, Jack (who visits every Monday) and Ray (who is going to start coming in every Tuesday), I will snootily respond, "Grimes is at his exercise."
The librettist Slater dehomo_s_e_x_ualized the story a lot: in his leftist version, Grimes is a nonconformist who is hounded by an intolerant community. His kinky tastes vanish altogether. But the opera remains a significant work in Anglo-American gay history: Britten and his lover Peter Pears had been thinking of emigrating to the U. S. Then, Britten read an essay about Crabbe and Suffolk written by E. M. Forster, the important British gay novelist. Britten was filled with homesickness and returned to England. But he also picked up a copy of Crabbe's The Borough and soon after would begin work on Peter Grimes. Later in his career, Britten would collaborate with Forster on a much more openly homoerotic opera, Billy Budd.