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Robert Allerton: Living well is the best revenge
by Lucinda Fleeson
2009-10-07
http://www.windycitymediagroup.com/gay/lesbian/news/ARTICLE.php?AID=23093
A new book about a Hawaiian garden chronicles the
little-known story of the Allertons of Chicago and the first
"civil union" of two men in Illinois.
The Sunday Chicago Tribune crowned him "The Richest Bachelor
in Chicago," in 1906. Tribune society pages breathlessly
chronicled the lavish life of Robert Allerton, from his opera
attendances to his weekend parties at The Farms, his baronial
estate in central Illinois' Piatt County. "There are no more
cherished weekend invitations in these parts than those
issued by Robert Allerton," gushed the Trib's society
columnist.
The Marshall Fields, artist Fredric Bartlett, Colonel and
Mrs. McCormick, all eagerly arrived. One young woman visited
so often that she and Robert became engaged to be married—an
arrangement soon broken off. Gentlemen suitors also came
calling, attracted to the young millionaire with movie-star
looks and Saville Row suits. British artist Glyn W. Philpot,
infatuated, wangled an invitation to spend the summer of 1913
at The Farms. There he painted one of the few portraits of
Robert, now hanging in the Tate Gallery in London. Entitled
The Man in Black, it shows Robert in artist's black cape and
turban, looking sideways, flirtatiously.
Robert Allerton officially remained in the closet. But
protected by great wealth, style and social standing, he
lived as openly as social convention allowed. His father,
Samuel W. Allerton, was the force behind the founding of the
Union Stockyards and the First National Bank of Chicago. A
former cattle driver and livestock speculator, Sam built a
vast network of farms connected by rail lines that stretched
from Wyoming to New York. Ruthless and crude, he never lost
the pirate's gleam in his eye.
His son, Robert, was different. People said the father
excelled at making money; the son at spending it. Artistic,
Robert spent five years in Europe studying painting before
declaring he lacked talent, and returned to create his Piatt
County estate, now called Allerton Park and operated as a
conference center by nearby University of Illinois at
Urbana-Champaign. To research Georgian halls, Robert spent a
year traveling in England with a young male architect; to
fill up his new estate, he took another young artist for a
grand European shopping spree. And when he met John Gregg,
the man who would become his life partner, they lived as
father and "foster son." Years later, Robert and John
Allerton became the first adults in Illinois to have their
union legally sanctioned as father and adopted son, utilizing
a quirky change in adoption law—a loophole that was later
repealed to prevent more such civil unions.
Allerton and Gregg liked to tell the story of how Allerton
had been invited to attend a "Dad's Day" football game and
dinner held in the Zeta Psi fraternity house at the
University of Illinois, in the fall of 1922. It seemed
entirely natural to pair Allerton—the childless
49-year-old—with an orphaned student, handsome Gregg, then
22. Years later, Gregg recalled how a friend, "realized how
lonesome Robert was. So he threw us together as much as he
could so that Robert would have companionship ... He needed
me and I needed him."
Allerton introduced his young protege as his foster son at
parties and operas, and on their travels around the globe.
Something reminded them of a favorite restaurant in Paris?
They flew over for a meal. They wanted inspiration for
building a new garden? They wandered the gardens of Italy.
Allerton bought hundreds of gifts for the Art Institute of
Chicago, bestowing on the museum its first Rodin sculptures (
six ) and its first Picasso ( a drawing ) , and paid for a
new wing, becoming the facility's largest donor. Today those
extraordinary gifts are only minimally remembered. A plaque
hangs on the sidewall near the main entrance, unnoticed by
museumgoers streaming past it.
While researching a new book about the Allerton's final
garden masterpiece, built on the remote Hawaiian Island of
Kauai, I tried to understand why the refined and elegant
Allertons would leave Chicago in 1938 to move to a rural
sugar plantation isle. I had a hunch that something must have
been going on in Chicago that would precipitate such a break.
People seldom travel to such extremes, unless they are
escaping something.
University of Illinois at Chicago Professor John D'Emilio,
one of the foremost historians of gay history, pointed me to
the archives of University of Chicago sociologist Ernest W.
Burgess, who predated Albert Kinsey's work at Indiana
University by a decade, leading the earliest extensive
studies of American homosexual life. Burgess and his students
recorded a growing gay underworld culture, which peaked in
the late 1920s and early 1930s in what came to be known as
Chicago's Pansy Craze. By 1930, Variety reported that there
were 35 "Pansy Parlors" in the Bohemian district now known as
Near North.
The nighttime entertainments enjoyed a cache among high
society and the middle class who visited gay nightclubs, drag
shows and lesbian cafes.
The Pansy Craze and the accompanying tolerance by the
straight world didn't last long. As the crush of the
Depression descended, reformers demanded that Mayor Edward J.
Kelly clean up nightlife, and campaigned against strippers
and female impersonators. In early 1935, police padlocked gay
night spots. In October 1935, police raided two State Street
drag shows, ordering drag queens to "Put on pants or go to
jail."
Beginning in 1936, Chicago and the rest of the nation hurtled
into a full-scale sex panic, over what was named "the Moron
Menace." A series of crimes, petty and heinous, by peeping
toms, rapists, child molesters and murderers surged onto
tabloid front pages. Homosexuality was viewed as a mental
aberration and its practitioners equated with psychopaths and
child molesters, all grouped together as "sex morons" and
"sex fiends." Police stepped up surveillance of theaters and
cruising spots, and routinely arrested men seeking consensual
same-sex sex.
A bill to castrate sex criminals gained momentum in the
legislature; others called for at least prolonged
incarceration. In early 1937, Michigan passed the nation's
first Sexual Psychopath Law, allowing anyone even suspected
of deviance to be sent for an indeterminate length of time to
a psychiatric hospital or penitentiary. A year later, just as
the Illinois Legislature prepared to enact a bill to lock up
homosexuals, Robert Allerton and John Gregg sailed for a long
trip to Australia.
On a stopover in Honolulu, they flew a small plane to Kauai
to look at a vacant beachfront estate. Driving through sugar
cane fields, they gasped as they approached a pristine
crescent beach of white sand, enclosed by high cliffs. The
bay was startling sapphire blue, turquoise and celadon,
silvered by the sun.
Appraising the sun-struck bay, and the pools of leafy shade
under the palms, Allerton said to Gregg, You could build us a
house. Whatever you want. And a garden. We can fill the
valley.
"This is going to be my paradise," Robert Allerton said. He
wrote a check for $50,000, and bought 86 acres and one of the
most private coves in all Hawaii.
Was the alarming intolerance of gays in Chicago their primary
motivation? We'll never know for certain, but Hawaii, with
its relaxed sexual attitudes toward straights and gays alike,
presented an attractive contrast to the straight-laced
Midwest.
The Allertons originally envisioned Kauai as a winter
retreat, but moved to Hawaii year around after World War II.
And when their Chicago attorney spotted that a new adoption
law had been passed in the Illinois legislature to allow
adoption by adults, he drew it to Robert's attention.
On March 4, 1960, The First National Bank of Chicago issued a
press release:
"Robert Allerton, a distinguished Illinois citizen who was
born in Chicago in 1873 and who has been a long time resident
of Monticello, has at last realized one of his greatest
dreams. Under a recent change in the Illinois law, effective
the first of the year, he has finally been able to legally
adopt John Wyatt Gregg who has stood in the relationship of a
son for thirty years."
Lucinda Fleeson's book, Waking Up In Eden: In Pursuit Of An
Impassioned Life On An Imperiled Island, was published this
year by Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill. She directs a program
for international journalists at the Merrill College of
Journalism at the University of Maryland, and lives in
Washington, D.C.
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