Jacques d’Adelswärd-Fersen - biography, career, poetry
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Jacques d’Adelswärd-Fersen |
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Baron Jacques d’Adelswärd-Fersen (February 20, 1880–November 5, 1923) was a French aristocrat, a novelist and poet. In 1903, after a scandal involving Parisian schoolboys had made him a persona non grata in the salons and dashed his marriage plans, he took up residence in Capri, where he lived with his longtime boyfriend, Nino Cesarini, until his death in 1923.
Born as Jacques d’Adelswärd, he is related on his paternal side to Axel von Fersen, a Swedish Count who had a relationship with Marie Antoinette. D’Adelswärd took on the name Fersen later in his life out of admiration for the distant relative.
D’Adelswärd-Fersen’s grandfather had founded the steel industry in Longwy-Briey, which was profitable enough that it made d’Adelswärd-Fersen exceedingly wealthy when he inherited at age 22. Consequently, he was much sought-after in the higher circles, as families hoped to marry him to one of their daughters.
Apart from joining the military, d’Adelswärd-Fersen already traveled extensively and settled down as a writer. He published several volumes of poems, for instance Chansons Légères, and novels.
As a young man in the beginning of his twenties, his homosexual leanings became apparent to him, which are also relatively clearly addressed in his poetry. Unfortunately, he was not sexually interested in adult men (which at the time in France would not have brought him into legal trouble) but in teenage boys between about 15 and 17 years old, i.e. he preferred pederastic relationships. This inclination eventually caused his undoing in French society.
In 1903, accusations surfaced that the Baron had held Black Masses in his house at 18 Avenue de Friedland. Supposedly these orgiastic feasts were among others attended by local Parisian schoolboys and involved sexual misconduct between the Baron and the boys. He was charged with indecent behavior with minors and served a six-month prison sentence, was fined 50 francs and lost his civil rights for five years.
The scandal bears some similarities with the trial of Oscar Wilde in 1895, who also experienced great social degradation after a public trial finding him guilty of "gross indecency with other male persons". Perhaps d’Adelswärd-Fersen was lucky in that his feasts were also attended by other notable figures of Parisian high society, which more or less forced the court to drop some charges to minimize the impact of the scandal.
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