logo
livingroom

decorative bar

biographies


corner Last update of this page: March 17th 2004 corner
John Ellingham Brooks
(1863 - 1929) U.K.

John Ellingham Brooks

Pianist

separator

John Ellingham Brooks was an impoverished, but socially prominent, gay pianist. He had been educated at St Paul's College, Stony Stratford, Bucks., and then Peterhouse, Cambridge. He was admitted at Lincoln's Inn and passed his Roman Law examination (1889).

In 1890 Brooks met William Somerset Maugham in Heidelberg. Bryan Connon has noted: "Ten years his senior and an ostentatious homosexual, Brooks encouraged his ambitions to be a writer and introduced him to the works of Schopenhauer and Spinoza."

Brooks was admitted to the BSA in Ernest Gardner's last year as Director. Brooks was re-admitted as an Associate in 1896/97 under Cecil Harcourt-Smith.

In 1895, the year of Oscar Wilde's imprisonment, Brooks and Maugham fled to Capri. It was there Brooks met Beatrice Romaine Mary Goddard, an American citizen. Brooks and Goddard married on Capri on 3 June 1903; it was a marriage of convenience, in fact they separated after three months, but Romaine continued to support him the rest of his life.

On Capri Brooks developed a close relationship with Edward Frederic Benson, another former student at the BSA.

Brooks died in May 1929.

separator

Source: The Queer Encyclopedia of the Visual Arts by Claude Summers

Click on the letter A to go back to the list of names

corner © Matt & Andrej Koymasky, 1997 - 2008 corner