Secret life of the Harvard scholar who disappeared in Donegal
Almost 90 years on, mystery still surrounds gay professor
WHEN millionaire Harvard Professor Arthur Kingsley Porter vanished without trace on a remote Donegal island almost 90 years ago the rumour mill kicked into overdrive.
Had he accidentally fallen from a cliff or died by suicide, or had the 50-year-old been murdered? Had he faked his own death and reemerged with a new identity on mainland Europe?
At the inquest into his death, Porter’s widow Lucy described their life as ‘happy’ …but this wasn’t the whole story.
It subsequently emerged the academic was secretly gay and suffering from depression, and that his wife had agreed to him taking a male lover. The fascinating story has spawned a book and countless articles, and is now the subject of an RTÉ Radio 1 documentary.
The son of a banking tycoon, Porter was born in Connecticut in 1883 and became an overnight millionaire when he turned 18. He was 28 and a scholar of architecture when
‘Did he fall, fake his own death, die by suicide?
he met Lucy Byrant Wallace, seven years his senior, at a social gathering in New York.
He was shy and handsome, with a slender physique and a passion for the outdoors. She was a bright, dark-haired woman, exuding confidence and social grace.
The couple married in 1908 and spent the next few years travelling throughout Europe, only returning as the continent fell into the horrors of World War I.
As war ravaged Europe, destroying much of the architecture he loved, Porter returned to Yale in 1915 to take up a lecturing role, while he worked towards a Bachelor of Fine Arts.
After the war, Porter and his wife returned to Europe where he became a guest lecturer at universities in France and Spain.
In 1925 they returned to America where Arthur became the chair of art history at Harvard University. He was now at the top of his field and became one of the founders of the College Art Association of America, and a prize in his honour is still given out each year.
Despite his success, Porter was concealing a secret from his wife. After 17 years of married life, Porter confessed to Lucy that, despite loving her, he was a homosexual.
She decided to stand by her husband, but this confession perhaps explains the scandal that clouded his departure from Harvard in 1929, where rumours persisted of Porter sexually harassing his students. He suffered from bouts of depression and Lucy decided that a move to Ireland would help her husband recover.
As 1929 drew to a close the couple purchased Glenveagh Castle – a 19th-Century castellated mansion built between 1867 and 1873 in a remote mountain setting that is now part of the Glenveagh National Park in Co. Donegal – for £5,000.
Porter turned his eye to Celtic art and Irish archaeology and became friends with the Irish writer and artist George William Russell, whose paintings still hang on Glenveagh’s walls. He also restored a fisherman’s cottage on Inis Bó Finne (Inishbofin) and learned how to speak Irish.
Summers in Donegal allowed the couple to immerse themselves in the Irish landscape and culture but it also gave them time away from the stresses of life back in the US.
One of these stresses was an antigay campaign being run by Harvard. The college held a ‘secret court’ to expose and expel gay students from the faculty. Two students, accused of being gay, had already died by suicide. Arthur and Lucy were fearful his homosexuality would be revealed and there would be a scandal.
Prof. Porter’s depression again took hold and Lucy arranged for him to see Dr Havelock, an unorthodox psychotherapist and sexologist in
London. Dr Havelock believed Prof. Porter’s repressed sexuality was the cause of his depression so he recommended that he give in to his desires with a young homosexual patient of his, Alan Campbell.
The bizarre situation took an even stranger twist when Prof. Porter’s wife agreed with the doctor and Campbell became a regular visitor to Glenveagh Castle and to their US home. However, when all three set sail for Ireland on May 27, 1933, Campbell ended the relationship
and travelled on to London instead. Prof. Porter relapsed into a deep depression. Then, on July 8, while visiting their cottage, he disappeared. Lucy and the islanders searched for hours, but Prof. Porter was never found.
The subsequent inquest – probably the first in Ireland without a body – decided that Arthur Kingsley Porter had fallen from cliffs into the sea. But rumours grew that a boat had been seen near the island at the time of his disappearance.
The Lost Millionaire airs on RTÉ Radio 1, July 25, at 6pm
nicola.byrne@mailonsunday.ie
‘Agreed that her husband should have a male lover’