Lord Carnarvon and Howard Carter Gay Lovers?

‘Made  at Bretby  England for Howard Carter A.D. Thebes 1910.’

Claim  From  Inside  the

Herbert  Family

Carnarvon  and  Carter

'An Item'

Society biographer   William Cross, FSA Scot was informed in an email on 21 October 2011 that Lord Carnarvon and Howard Carter were gay lovers. The assertion  is crystal clear:

" I suspect you know that the 5th Earl of Carnarvon and Howard Carter were “an item”. I was reliably informed of this by a friend of mine whose Godfather was intimately involved with that couple. Do let me know if you would like me to forward a letter on to him."

The source came  from  INSIDE the Herbert family via a reliable, verified third party.

Was there a carnal affair between Howard Carter and Lord Carnarvon?   The Earl’s wife Almina certainly hinted as much to her godson, Tony Leadbetter.  

Tony says he  felt there was a strong inference of ‘something’  between Carnarvon and Carter from what Almina told him, but she was coy about spelling it out.   Tony adds   "Almina  would not stoop to  saying  such things out loud, even although she understood perfectly "  Oscar Wilde 's kind"."

Almina’s usual phrase was to refer to such couplings between males as “ special or romantic friendships."  Her mother   Marie Boyer, informed her  once that she could  not  visit Halton, the   Buckinghamshire  home of her godfather Alfred de Rothschild as he was  entertaining ‘his special gentlemen friends’.  There were a variety of euphemisms for gay relationships  in the age before the sexual reforms from Leo Abse’s 1967 landmark  legislation that began to put things on the level between homosexuals and heterosexuals.

Carter and Carnarvon,  archaeologist and patron worked, relaxed and occasionally   lived together in Egypt  under the same roof.  Carnarvon had his own house  but  more often was boarded  at an hotel in Luxor or Cairo. He also stayed at the American House, built for staff of the Metropolitan Museum of New York.

Carter stayed frequently in Britain at  the Carnarvon homes at  Highclere Castle, Bretby Park and 1, Seamore Place,  Mayfair.  In the desert  Carter’s  Egyptian  house, “ Castle Carter”  ( built from his design) in the Valley of the Kings was made in part from precious Bretby stone, which was the Earl’s  idea to have it sent over  from  his  Derbyshire estate. 

Tony Leadbetter adds “ Almina dubbed it a ‘castle’, Carter was arrogant enough to admit  that this put him on  par  with Lord Carnarvon of Highclere Castle”.

At Castle Carter, Howard Carter lived like a Pharaoh with a band of faithful ( all )  male servants.

The most authoritative narrative about the building of  Castle Carter, situated  at the entrance to the rocky wadi leading to the Valley of the Kings which was lived in from 1911 onwards  by T G H James in his book Howard Carter :The Path to Tutankhamun.  James commissioned research on the detail relating to the use of Bretby stones/ bricks made specially for Carter, each brick is marked this way. * ( but see below).

Howard Carter left the house and its contents to the Metropolitan Museum, New York. It is now a museum.

Within the Herbert family there is a  known “romantic  friendship” between  old colonials  Sir Robert Herbert ( a  close cousin of Lord Carnarvon's father) and Sir John Bramson.

Sir Robert George Wyndham Herbert (1831–1905)) was  Premier of Queensland, Australia  from 1860-1865, later  from 1871 Herbert was  a permanent under-secretary of state at the Colonial Office in London, a position he held for over 30 years.                             

Herbert was  a homosexual.  He shared a house, his own private love nest in the Australian outback with  Sir John Bramston (1832–1921) an administrator and civil servant at the Colonial Office for over 20 years.

Herbert and Bramston met at Balliol College, Oxford. They shared rooms at university and in London. In 1859 they both went out to Australia together. When Robert  Herbert was premier of Queensland, John Bramston was his attorney-general.

The house  the men shared, a farm-steading was called   “Herston”,  a fusion of the two men’s names. 

History only largely records their coupling as a “romantic friendship”  but   the  two men  have been the subject of much curiosity.  Bramston’s obituary, from The Times of  16 September 1921 declares “his life was greatly influenced by his close personal friendship with… Robert Herbert”.   That was as far as the press could go, close on 100 years ago.

Did  Lord  Carnarvon  have these bricks to build Carter's house   brought out from England  as  a love nest?   Had the similar curious coupling between his cousin Robert Herbert and John Bramston been a model?  

The  subject of the relationship  between Carnarvon and Carter - including their major dispute  after the opening of the Burial Chamber -  has not been properly  considered before.  Was their  last furious row a lovers' tiff - or a fall out over Carnarvon's handling of  relations with the press and Egyptian officials?

This  - and more - is reappraised in a new book "Carnarvon, Carter and Tutankhamun Revisited: The hidden truths and doomed relationships" by William Cross, FSA Scot.

http://tutankhamun-revisited.yolasite.com/Strange-Co-incidences.php

*  But see also “RIBA Research Trust Award Nicholas Warner: Building with Mud ….Building with mud: the evolution of the archaeological expedition house in Egypt.”

NB : An extract from "Lordy! Tutankhamun's Patron As A Young Man"   2012) can be found  on this website.

http://carter-carnarvon-homosexuals.yolasite.com/EXTRACT-FROM-LORDY-BY-WILLIAM-CROSS.php

 *

MORE INFORMATION/ COMMENTS : PLEASE E-MAIL THE AUTHOR WILLIAM CROSS

williecross@aol.com

http://will-cross-author.yolasite.com/