06/25/2025
"My life has been delightful and given a chance, at the end of this, I'd say without hesitation, 'Same Again, Please!'."
Harry Daley
– June 24, 1901
A policeman and the lover of gay Edwardian writers E. M. Forster and J.R. Ackerley, Harry Daley was on the periphery of the Bloomsbury Group, indulging in assignations with several of its members, including Duncan Grant, who painted his portrait. The Bloomsbury Group spent a lot of time drinking, taking drugs, and having conversations about aesthetics, criticism, feminism, pacifism, s*xuality, and apparently, economics.
In his posthumously published, delicious memoir, THIS SMALL CLOUD, Daley writes that his first real job was as a delivery boy for a grocery store. He kept a lot of customers happy.
He joined the police force in 1925. His fellow officers took to joking about his gayness, but he chose to be open and not let them hold power over him. He was a good policeman, with a winning personality, popular with his constituents. He upheld the law even though he could be arrested for his private life.
In his memoir, he writes about meeting Ackerley casually on the street. They began a lifelong romance, and through Ackerley, Daley also became friendly with Ackerley's artistic acquaintances, including Grant and Forster.
In 1926, Daley started his affair with Forster. The closeted Forster became convinced that Daley's indiscretion was going to get them both arrested.
Daley had flings with several members of the Bloomsbury group, including with Grant, who painted a portrait of him in uniform, and with Edward Sackville-West, plus affairs with other figures in the Bloomsbury circle. There were all sorts of soirees where men fell in love with him, but Daley had a thing for what he described as "normal" guys: older, rougher, and stronger than himself.
Living at a time when s*x between males was a criminal offence that could lead to a prison sentence and a life ruined, Daley was both ahead of his time and a reminder that the past isn't always what we think it was.
Photo: Daley with friend, photographer unknown
