As the Russian-speaking world needs more accessible LGBTQ histories, I have also provided a Russian translation of this post: Читать на русском языке.
Content warning: this post contains mentions of suicide from the outset.
Late in his life, the British socialist and sexologist Edward Carpenter typed up a short memoir of a friend from the Russian Empire who had, in May 1923, died by suicide.
I came across this memoir recently while working in Carpenter’s archive in Sheffield.
It struck me as notable for a couple of reasons; one, it outlined the life of an obscure migrant from the Russian Empire who came to England in the early 20th century, and two, in addition to telling the story of that migrant’s tragic death, it also outlined how he came to fall in love with another man.
The opening line of Carpenter’s memoir of his Russian friend conveyed a sense of intimacy: ‘There was something very touching, very clinging, about the nature and disposition of Constantine’.
Constantine Saratchov, more faithfully transliterated from Russian as Konstantin Sarachov, was born around 1868 in the Russian Empire. Exactly where in the then-vast empire Constantine was born I have been unable to figure out.
According to his friend Carpenter, he travelled from Russia to England around the turn-of-the century, ‘probably’ because of the ‘then disturbed state of Russia.’
Constantine’s reasons for arrival in England, Carpenter believed, were economic, but from what can be gathered of his political affiliations, there was also something of the political refugee about Saratchov.
In the late nineteenth century, Britain became a major destination for political radicals fleeing persecution, bringing together a variety of political movements and generations. For a time, young Bundists could brush by veteran Communards in London meeting halls.
Several communities of exiles from the Russian Empire emerged, referring to themselves as the ‘colonies’. Today, the best known among them are the colonies of London, where the likes of Vladimir Lenin and Maxim Litvinov experienced decisive years in their pre-1917 lives.
Saratchov joined one of the lesser-known communities, the Tolstoyan anarchists who settled in the Bournemouth village of Tuckton.
Led by Vladimir Chertkov, the group printed Lev Tolstoy’s political pamphlets in English. Within their community, they modelled the kind of spiritually-infused lifestyle-socialism that Carpenter also espoused. Indeed, it was through his connection to the Tolstoyans that Carpenter first met Constantine.
(An aside: you can find mentions of Carpenter in the diaries of Lev Tolstoy, who was interested in the British socialist’s writings.)
Carpenter described Constantine as ‘a rather dreamy young man’ who was sincerely devoted to his cause and who could be seen walking with an olive-green shawl thrown over his shoulder, sometimes with ‘a few watercolour drawings under his arm.’
Carpenter, who published several studies of sexuality and lived together with his partner George Merrill in Sheffield, identified something else in Saratchov: a ‘reserve with regard to his own feelings’, a particular kind of reserve that Carpenter knew how to break through.
A young friend of Carpenter, an art student from London who was visiting Bournemouth, asked for an introduction to someone based locally. ‘I immediately thought of Constantine’, Carpenter recalled.
The artist in question, Edward Dennis Earle, did indeed meet with Saratchov, and they soon became a couple. Earle had previously served in the British Army during the First World War. The two men moved into an apartment together in Chelsea funded, according to Carpenter, by a role Saratchov picked up as a translator for a Soviet trade delegation in London.
Although they were for a period, in Carpenter’s words, ‘inseparable’, the relationship ultimately broke down. The end of the relationship seems to have taken place not long before Saratchov’s own tragic end.
On 31 May 1923, the driver of a train travelling from London to Portsmouth witnessed a stooped figure further along the tracks. Saratchov stepped into the train’s path. He died shortly afterwards at a nearby hospital. The press reported on a letter he addressed to the police: ‘My mind is going. I cannot endure life any longer.’
Although Carpenter referred to Saratchov’s partner as ‘Ted’ Earle, I was able, through a genealogical website, to see that Saratchov’s estate was inherited by Edward Dennis Earle.
With this full name, I found information on Earle’s later life. He continued his artistic work, eventually marrying Vera Pragnell in 1927.
Pragnell was the founder of a Sussex commune called the Sanctuary. This utopian society was indebted to Carpenter’s political vision and resembled in many ways the Tolstoyan project in Bournemouth. Edward Dennis Earle died in 1969, a year after the death of his wife Vera.
I contacted one of Vera and Edward’s grandchildren Jonathan Addis, himself an artist, who kindly shared with me one of his grandfather’s artworks, a drawing of Constantine Saratchov:
30 years age gap without any power discrepancy is rather interesting as well