![\"\"](\"https:\/\/libblogs.luc.edu\/noteworthy\/files\/2020\/06\/samsteward.png\")
<\/figure><\/li>![\"\"](\"https:\/\/libblogs.luc.edu\/noteworthy\/files\/2020\/06\/samsteward2.png\")
<\/figure><\/li>![\"\"](\"https:\/\/libblogs.luc.edu\/noteworthy\/files\/2020\/06\/samsteward3.png\")
<\/figure><\/li><\/ul><\/figure>\n\n\n\nOne of the most impressive elements of Samuel Steward\u2019s life was the network of contacts he developed as a young man. Samuel Morris Steward hobnobbed with some of the most important literary, artistic, and social personages of the early twentieth century. He was a favored guest and mentee of Gertrude Stein and Alice Toklas in Paris, collaborated on gay and BDSM studies with the founding pioneer of modern sex and sexuality research, Alfred Kinsey, shared acquaintances with two<\/em> Nobel Laureates, Andre Gide and Thomas Mann, and even boasts of being bed partner to Oscar Wilde\u2019s former lover, Lord Alfred Douglas. Steward\u2019s account of how he maneuvered his way into Lord Alfred\u2019s bed is amusing, and telling of how Steward\u2019s mind operated. He was not attracted to Lord Alfred, and was even somewhat repulsed by him physically \u2014 Lord Alfred being by then in his 60s. Steward simply wanted to sleep with the man who slept with Oscar Wilde. He was looking for a tangible connection between himself and one of his literary heroes. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Born and raised in Woodsfield, Ohio, Steward came to Chicago in 1936, accepting a professorship at Loyola University Chicago and, after a little time and effort, fell in love with the City.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Learning to love Chicago was a task, like learning to like martinis or getting used to pineapple and cottage cheese as a \u201csalad.\u201d There were many things about it that had to be forgotten or overlooked before love could develop.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
Steward would eventually come to consider Chicago his home, more so than any other place he had lived. And when did the moment come when Steward would officially become a Chicagoan? <\/p>\n\n\n\n
With my first holdup, of course\u2026 From an alley across La Salle Street, a guy emerged with a gun. He took my watch and wallet and told me not to move for five minutes\u2026 After that, I considered myself a True Native Chicagoan.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
Samuel Steward would leave Loyola\nin 1946, to write entries for World Book Encyclopedia<\/em> and later, rival Compton\u2019s\nEncyclopedia<\/em> over the next two years. That work eventually dried up\nhowever, and in need of employment he talked his way into a teaching gig at\nDePaul University. Steward does not go into an excessive amount of detail\nregarding his time at either DePaul or Loyola, but the space that he does\ndevote to the two Chicago north side universities is, like everything else in\nthe autobiography, amusing and well worth reading \u2014 particularly to those of us\nwho are connected to one or the other of these institutions. After 20 years\nteaching between Loyola University Chicago and DePaul University, Steward had\nhad enough of the higher education grind: \u201cMight it not be time to be\nconsidering a move to some other place? Or another occupation?\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n
During the last 2 years of his\ntenure at DePaul, Steward, with no prior background, decided to learn to become\na tattoo artist. After trying to learn via a correspondence course \u2014 and\nfinding it completely useless \u2014 he decided to go to Milwaukee to visit a master\ntattooist and simply paid him a nominal amount to learn the trade. After\nlearning the ropes and after a bit of practice \u2014 on himself, of course \u2014 he\nbegan operating as a professional tattoo artist in the South Loop. Steward\nfirst plied his trade while still teaching at DePaul: \u201cThis curious double life\nwent on for two years, cautiously. I wanted to be sure that I would be able to\nearn a living with tattooing. For two years, then, I got two salaries\u2014and\nprofited.\u201d Eventually, he would leave DePaul altogether working solely as a\ntattoo artist. He opened his own shop on State Street where he serviced many of\nChicago\u2019s \u201ctough boys\u201d and the many Navy sailors who embarked on the city\nduring leave. Eventually, many years later, he would move to San Francisco\nbecoming the official tattooist for the Hell\u2019s Angels bikers gang. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
There are tons of interesting facts\nregarding Samuel Steward I could provide in this brief blog entry. However, to\ngive an overview of Steward\u2019s life is to miss the point of it. With Samuel Steward,\nthe devil was always in the details. It is not enough to say that Samuel\nSteward was a college professor, or an author, or a tattoo artist, or even that\nhe was friends with the likes of literary and cultural legends. And it is not\nenough to point out that he was an important figure in the evolution of gay and\nLGBTQ rights (did I mention that he was posthumously inducted into the Leather\nHall of Fame<\/strong> in 2012 or honored as part of San Francisco South of\nMarket Leather History Alley<\/strong><\/a>?). What makes Samuel\nMorris Steward worth reading about is not the broad strokes of his life, but\nthe honesty and freedom with which he lived that life. It\u2019s refreshing to know\nthat someone like Steward was part of the life of our campus at one time. And\nit\u2019s sad that his existence as part of our history has been shuttered to us\nover these many years. So, during this PRIDE Month let\u2019s take a moment to\nrediscover Samuel Steward, and take pride in one of our own.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By Charles Greene As the library celebrates PRIDE Month we thought we would turn our focus to one of our own. From 1936 to 1946 Samuel Morris Steward served as a professor of English here at Loyola University Chicago. And although his is a name lost to our current campus community, Samuel Steward is definitely […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":349,"featured_media":15182,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_s2mail":"yes"},"categories":[5010,1],"tags":[206,11354,10,11355],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/libblogs.luc.edu\/noteworthy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15178"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/libblogs.luc.edu\/noteworthy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/libblogs.luc.edu\/noteworthy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/libblogs.luc.edu\/noteworthy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/349"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/libblogs.luc.edu\/noteworthy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15178"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/libblogs.luc.edu\/noteworthy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15178\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15184,"href":"https:\/\/libblogs.luc.edu\/noteworthy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15178\/revisions\/15184"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/libblogs.luc.edu\/noteworthy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15182"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/libblogs.luc.edu\/noteworthy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15178"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/libblogs.luc.edu\/noteworthy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15178"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/libblogs.luc.edu\/noteworthy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15178"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}