"Spirits United by Love": Thomas Davidson, Percival Chubb, and the Fellowship of the New Life, 1882–91

This paper explores connections between same-sex intimacy and socialist thought and praxis at the turn of the twentieth century through an examination of the relationship of philosopher Thomas Davidson (1840 – 1900) and Percival Chubb (1860 – 1960), founders of the influential Fellowship of the New Life [FNL], a progenitor of the socialist Fabian Society. Davidson and Chubb established the FNL, a utopian organization dedicated to “the cultivation of perfect character in each and all” after forming a close relationship in 1882. Because the FNL eschewed direct engagement in politics, Chubb, along with prominent Fellowship members including Edward Carpenter and Havelock Ellis, formed the Fabian Society in 1884 to directly advocate transformation of industrial society. Whereas the FNL disbanded in 1898, the Fabian Society remained influential throughout the twentieth century. This paper explores tensions between the individualist and perfectionist principles embodied in the FNL and the socialist tenets of the Fabian Society through a close reading of the relationship between Davidson and Chubb, documented in extensive correspondence. This correspondence reveals that these men linked the development of their love for one another to broader principles of social love, fellowship, and reform. Yet, their intimate relationship foundered as they engaged in political debates about the balance between values of idealism and pragmatism and individualism and socialism. Davidson viewed Chubb's attachment to “economic socialism” as violation of their personal bond and shared political values; he ascribed their growing estrangement to the “sickness” of socialism. Chubb, for his part, saw their personal intimacy as a pathological symptom of capitalism and as undermining social love writ large. The imbrication of “personal” intimacy and social bonds revealed in their correspondence offers important insights into the influence of shifting understandings of homosocial relations on transatlantic social and political thought at the turn of the twentieth century.