As some sort of a sequel to Beau Iverson's list (http://www.ranker.com/list/the-13-most-historically-important-perverts-of-all-time/beau-iverson), I've decided to compile this list of 14 other allegedly awesome people who were really perverts in their private life.Your opinion on Lewis Carroll, Charlie Chaplin, HG Wells and Lord Byron will never be the same. A lot of googling involved here, and some of the sites used may not be accurate. If I made a mistake, please make a Disquz comment so I can correct it! Sorry about the line breaks - Ranker appears to have a strange bug where blank lines mysteriously disappear, so I put in extra ones for good measure.
http://www.ranker.com/list/14-great-people-who-were-also-perverts/mwahahahaha,
Charlie Chaplin
Guilty of: Being a playboy, stripping women in 'auditions'
Who's this guy?
THE single most famous actor of the silent film era. Even small children who have never heard of his name inevitably remember his hat-and-cane image.
What's his story?
According to film historian Kevin Brownwing, 'Charles would only communicate with the actress he was auditioning via caption cards and mime, supposedly to test their ability to 'perform' in silent movies. The cards would become ever more lewd and suggestive as he got them to undress, and he would fondle their breasts in an exaggerated silent movie acting manner...' What's more, at the end, Chaplin would make them stand naked and throw pies at them. If they cried out, they failed the audition because, apparently, that made them unfit to mime.
Not a very healthy image if you ask me.
Charlie Chaplin allegedly had affairs with numerous women during the late 20s and early 30s. He also held orgies at an Argyle Hotel with notorious actor Fatty Arbuckle, who is not to be confused with Garfield's owner Jon Arbuckle, who is extremely lucky to have a girlfriend. Fatty allegedly raped and killed a woman after getting drunk.
Ugh.
Eric Gill
Guilty of: Incest, bestiality, paedophillia, being Eric Gill, etc.
Who's this guy?
A successful sculptor and typeface designer. Many of his fonts are still used today.
What's his story?
Although he claims to be a devout Catholic, he was also a complete pervert who went much farther than extra-marital affairs. This guy should be extremely thankful that he never got caught.
Let's start with his sculptures. A 1907 sculpture of his depicted a naked girl next to Christ using his sister Angela as a model. At the time of the sculpting, his wife was pregnant. Inspired by Hindu art, he decided to make a sculpture of two gods making love, which he referred to as 'they (big) group [censored]'. He used another sister, Gladys, and her husband as models while his apprentice stood guard outside.
Gill is said to have incestuous relationships with both Angela and Gladys. He also had a pal, Jacob Ebstein, whose 'art style' was very similar. They would take nude photos of each other and, at one point, even made plans to make a modern stonehenge of naked people.
After becoming a Catholic, he decided to sculpt exclusively (and explicitly) for Catholic clients only. He saw sex as 'an aspect of God's glory'. Some of his very explicit works even depicted Christ. Well, I'm sure that incest with his sisters and two oldest daughters, was not a very Catholic thing to do. He even raped the family dog. As the family lived in isolation, his daughters actually got used to this type of abuse and thought that was a normal thing that fathers did.
His son Gordian, on the contrary, was much angrier at their father. Although there are no records of him being abused and Gill sometimes denounced homosexuality, he did admit to 'male sexual high-jinks'.
F. Scott Fitzgerald
Guilty of: Foot fetish (feetish?), lots of affairs
Who's this guy?
One of the most famous American authors. Wrote The Great Gatsby.
What's his story?
Scott had a foot fetish, which means he found feet to be sexually appealing. However, that was nothing compared to his notorious womanising.
Scott is said to have attributed his success to his wife Zelda's private parts. He also drinked a lot - and I mean a LOT - and slept with many other women, including the wealthy lady Beatrice Dance. Eventually, Zelda got tired of it and had an affair with a French aviator. Scott didn't care at first, but soon enough, Zelda wanted to leave him. What did Scott do? He locked her in their house for a month to make her break up with the lieutenant. Scott later boasted to a mistress that he won a duel in the process. He later claimed he had orchestrated the affair to base a fictional character on her wife's suffering.
Afterwards, the two engaged in more affairs and the marriage was pretty much broken. Then Zelda went barking mad, had various suicide attempts and went to an insane asylum. Their disastrous marriage was reflected in Zelda's novel Save Me the Waltz. Scott was furious, not for exposing his womanising, but for stealing material that he wanted to use in his novel Tender Is the Night.
George Gordon Noel Byron, 6th Baron Byron
Guilty of: Lots of affairs, collection of... hair
Who's this guy?
One of the prominent Anglophone literary figures of the early 19th century. A national hero of the Greeks for fighting against the Ottoman Empire.
What's his story?
Another bisexual poet who fell constantly in love.
Byron was sent to Harrow in 1801. During his time there, Lord Byron fell in love with Mary Chaworth, the ' the first object of his adult sexual feelings'. Because of Mary, he refused to return to Harrow in 1803. When he eventually returned in 1804, he developed several close friendships with his fellow students. In one poem, he wrote, ' Ah! Sure some stronger impulse vibrates here,/ Which whispers friendship will be doubly dear/ To one, who thus for kindred hearts must roam,/ And seek abroad, the love denied at home.' One of his best friends was John FitzGibbon, 2nd Earl of Clare. According to Byron himself, he 'could never hear the word "Clare" without "a murmur of the heart"'. Then, at Trinity College, he had another friend called John Edleston, who, in Byron's own words, 'has been my almost constant associate since October, 1805, when I entered Trinity College. His voice first attracted my attention, his countenance fixed it, and his manners attached me to him for ever.' Later in his life, he described the episode as 'a violent, though pure love and passion'. Yuck!
He was a man of many women. In 1812, he went on to love Lady Caroline Lamb, a woman who happened to be married. Lamb described Byron as 'mad, bad and dangerous to know'. After their breakup, Lamb continued to pursue (stalk) Byron, and even dressed up as a page boy to get to his house. By then, Byron was already interested in other women, including Jane Elizabeth Scott, Anne Isabella Milbanke (whom he married)... and his half-sister Augusta.
Augusta's marriage with her cousin George Leigh was an unhappy one. From 1804 onwards, Augusta wrote to her half-brother regularly and became his confidante. The two were said to be in love and, according to some (including jealous Lamb), had an affair. It is said that this is the reason why Byron went abroad (and then had an affair with Claire Clairmont, Mary Shelley's stepsister.
In Venice, Byron fell in love with Marianna Segati and Margarita Cogni. Both were married. The latter separated with her husband to live with Byron. However, their relationship broke up and Byron often spent the night in his gondola (the boats Venetians ride to get from A to B). Cogni jumped into the Venetian canal after Byron told her to get lost. He eventually married a young woman called Teresa Guiccioli.
Warning: Prepare a platic bag now as you may be feel the need to throw up. If you don't have any handy, don't read this paragraph. Apart from having a good many affairs, Byron even collected the hair of the women with whom he had an affair. He stuffed the hair in envelopes and kept them at his publishing house. When I said 'hair', I didn't mean the hair on their heads... you can figure out what type of hair I mean.
Hans Christian Andersen
Guilty of: Masturbation addiction, talking to prostitutes
Who's this guy?
The guy who wrote all many of your favourite fairy tales as a child, including The Ugly Duckling and The Little Mermaid.
What's his story?
Although a celibate, he also enjoyed masturbating like there's no tomorrow. Every day, he would do his daily act of self-pollution, then mark it in his diary with two crosses (++), e.g. 'When they left, I had a double-sensuous ++'.In Paris, he would often visit prostitutes to talk to them (but not to touch them). Then he would return to his hotel room to do his dirty work.
He also had crushes on both men and women. He would often write open love letters to young men he liked. More occasionally, he would write love letters to women that he knew would for sure turn him down. The Little Mermaid was based on his experience with one man who eventually married.
Mind you, this guy's life was far from a happy one. Being an ugly child, The Ugly Duckling was actually based on his own gloomy childhood. His family was poor, even poorer than his friend Charles Dickens'. When his mother made him work at the local mill, the other workers stripped him to ''if I were a boy or a girl’. Ouch.
H. G. Wells
Guilty of: Lots of affairs, sudden mentions of explicit content in sci-fi
Who's this guy?
One of the two pioneers of the science fiction genre, along with Jules Verne.
What's his story?
HG Well's first marriage with his cousin did not turn out well. He remarried in 1895 to his student Amy Catherine Robbins. That wasn't quite enough for Wells, though. He had affairs with - Margaret Sanger, Amber Reeves, Rebecca West and Elizabeth von Arnim. Although Amy (known as Jane) was faithful, she agreed to let her husband love other women until her death in 1927. Wells also had illegitimate children with Reeves and West, whom he supported despite encourage their mothers to marry other men.
'The desire for sex ... needs to be constantly satisfied,' wrote Wells. Excellent excuse, Herbert. The desire for shoplifting needs to be constantly satisfied, too. Now go and steal! A guy called David Lodge even wrote an entire novel about Wells' affairs. According to the book, Wells managed to have nearly 200 affairs. Another author named Andrea Lynn wrote a book entitled Shadow Lovers: The Last Affairs of H.G. Wells after six years of research.
Still, he was brave to admit his wrongdoings. He wrote H.G. Wells in Love: Postscript to an Experiment in Autobiography, which went into detail about his secrets. In complaince with his wishes, it was not revealed until 1984, when the last woman, West, was dead. 'I have done what I pleased, so that every bit of sexual impulse in me has expressed itself. This is my intimate diary and the story of my amatory life.'
Apart from having a reputation for extra-marital affairs, some content in his books were quite questionable. In War of the Worlds, for example, he wrote: ' He heard footsteps running to and fro in the rooms, and up and down stairs behind him. His landlady came to the door, loosely wrapped in dressing gown and shawl; her husband followed ejaculating.' Then there was this: 'In the next place, wonderful as it seems in a sexual world, the Martians were absolutely without sex, and therefore without any of the tumultuous emotions that arise from that difference among men.'
John F. Kennedy
Guilty of: Nude swim parties, lots of affairs (including with questionable girlfriends)
Who's this guy?
The guy you met in history class when you were learning about the Cuban Missile Crisis. However, what you've read about JFK in history books may not be the whole story.
What's his story?
JFK reportedly loved swimming to soothe his aching back. Investigative journalist Seymour Hersh thinks otherwise. According to Hersh, JFK enjoyed having nude swim parties with women in the White House swimming pool, including with two of his assistants, Fiddle and Faddle. Secret Service officers closely guarded the pool and the secret within. Once, Jackie decided to go for a dive in the pool, and the three had to duck for cover.
Other claims by Hersh include mob ties through a common girlfriend, extra-marital affairs, narcotics use and a previous, non-terminated marriage (pretty much everything you don't want from a politician).
Were the stories true? Historian Arthur Schlesinger, Jr says Hersh is ' the most gullible investigative reporter I've ever encountered'. Perhaps Hersh did rely on a fair bit of hearsay, but he did base his views on interviews with Secret Service officers and related persons.
If you think those claims are far-fetched, however, just wait till you read the websites that say he was the boyfriend of Marilyn Monroe, Jane Mansfield and Zsa Zsa Gabor, who were also alleged girlfriends of Anton LaVey.
Lewis Carroll
Guilty of: Child pornography
Who's this guy?
Author of Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass. Horrible mathematician in real life (he wrote Alice in Wonderland to ridicule the study of complex numbers).
What's his story?
Carroll was perhaps one of the first people to take up photography as a habit. He took about 3000 photographs in his life, of which only 1000 have survived. About 500 of those were of little girls.
You see, unlike Charlie Chaplin and HG Wells (both of whom are on this list), Carroll did not have any affairs with women. He remained a bachelor throughout his life. Unfortunately, that meant he always had an entourage of little girls around him. He would write poems, riddles and other fun stuff for the girls, as well as... love letters. Alice Liddell, the inspiration for Alice in Wonderland, was one of them. The moment the girls reached puberty, they would kick them out.
Carroll enjoyed taking pictures of his little friends. They were harmless at first, but in the 1870s, he started taking pictures of them with no clothes on. What's more, their families were fine with it. All but four of the nude photos have survived to this day.
Carroll only liked English girls. American girls were too rude for him. As for boys, he wrote, 'I confess I do not admire naked boys in pictures. They always seem... to need clothes, whereas one hardly sees why the lovely forms of girls should ever be covered up.'
According to Carroll, he was tormented by the 'inclinations of my sinful heart' and often lay down in bed thinking about maths to ward off his 'unholy thoughts'. Let's just be glad that he dropped photography in 1880.
Oscar Wilde
Guilty of: Paederasty , dressing up in all sorts of weird ways
Who's this guy?
A playwright and novelist known for his homosexuality, for which he was caged. Thought to be a 'matyr' to some homosexuals.
What's his story?
Wilde is notorious for his weird dress. He dressed 'i n a velvet coat edged with braid, knee-breeches, black silk stockings, a soft loose shirt with a wide turn-down collar, and a large flowing tie'.
Wilde really liked having relationships with young boys. The Picture of Dorian Gray, in which a Basil Hallward painted a picture of a young man called Dorian Gray. The portrait would age each to Gray committed a sin. The story was based on his own experience with an artist called Basil Ward (wow, that's a whole world of difference, Oscar) painted a naked young man, but whose youth was lost before the portrait's completion.
Wilde was a big fan of the Uranian poets, who embraced paederasty. He had paederastic relationships with several people, including Robbie Ross, John Gray and Lord Alfred Douglas. He also liked sneaking off to sleep with male prostitutes, and also targetted servant boys and newsboys. He described these actions as 'feasting with panthers', and wrote that 'the danger was half the excitement'.
His relationship with Douglas backfired. It was never a good idea from the start - the boxing rules are named after Douglas' father, the Marquess of Queensberry. After Queensberry said Wilde was gay, Wilde sued him for libel and lost, only to be prosecuted for sodomy. He went to jail and thus became a matyr for the gay movement.
Percy Grainger
Guilty of: Sadism, masochism
Who's this guy?
An Australian. One of the all-time greatest composers of the 20th century.
What's his story?
Grainger believed in sado-masochism. He thought that his creativity was tied to his sexual drive (?!), and that flagellation activated both(?!?!?). It is believed that this was due to his father's frequent beatings of his mother. He would often have his wife whip him, and recorded his activity with detailed notes and photos, sometimes aided by nearby mirrors. If you're the kind of person who likes this kind of photos, feel free to Google it, but I won't put up any on Ranker.
He tried out lots of different types of whips, 83 of which he donated to a museum. They included whips made from conductors' batons along with a pair of blood-soaked shorts.
It's quite fortunate that he didn't have children, or he would have had a great time punishing them. 'I long to flog children,' wrote Grainger. 'It must be wonderful to hurt their soft, unspoiled skin.' Just the opposite of Zheng Banqiao.