Gore Vidal and Howard Austen
For more than 70 years, Gore Vidal wrote extensively on religion, politics and sex. Being from a traditional and political family, he knew a lot about the first two, while his colorful personal life helped inform his often-controversial observations on human sexuality. Speculation about his romantic affairs continues to this day: was he involved with Anais Nin or even father a child with the actress Diana Lynn? But what’s not in doubt is the veracity of his love for Howard Austen, the man to whom he was committed for more than half a century.
Vidal was already an established wordsmith when he met advertising executive Austen in 1950 in an infamous gay bathhouse in New York City. It was love – or at least lust – at first sight. The pair were to stay together for 53 years, with only Austen’s death tearing their love asunder. And the secret to their happiness? Keeping some distance. As Vidal famously argued: ‘It’s easy to sustain a relationship when sex plays no part, and impossible, I have observed, when it does.’
But that doesn’t mean that the pair were celibate. Indeed, Vidal once claimed to have he had enjoyed sexual relations with more than 1,000 men. Nevertheless, he remained devoted to Austen, with the pair traveling the world together and frequently spotted out and about in Washington enjoying each other’s company. To their contemporaries in the art world, Austen and Vidal were like an ‘old married couple’, albeit a couple who enjoyed numerous extra-marital affairs between them. And, though Vidal rose to prominence as a celebrated intellectual, by all accounts, theirs was a partnership of equals.
Austen died in 2003, leaving his partner alone and bereft for almost a decade. Vidal and Austen now rest side-by-side in Rock Creek Cemetery in Washington DC, in a joint plot Vidal purchased for them.
Where did we find this stuff? Here are our sources:
“Hadrian the Gay Emperor”. Arifa Akbar. The Independent, January 2008
“Who the F is…Fabled lover Mercedes de Acosta”. Trudy Ring, Pride.com, June 2014.
“Peter the Great: A Biography of Peter Doyle”. Martin G. Murray, The Walt Whitman Archive.
“The Secret Lives of Somerset Maugham”. David Leavitt, July 2010.
“Ancient Greek grave for ‘Alexander the Great’s friend Hephaestion'”. The Telegraph, October 2015.
“Who Was Our First Gay President?” Katherine Cooney, Time, May 2012.
“The lesbian couple who fooled Spain’s Catholic church into performing its first same-sex marriage”. Amanda Cashmore, Daily Mail, February 2018.
“Howard Austen: Gore Vidal’s Partner in All But Name”. Tim Teeman, Huffington Post, February 2016.