John Gambril Nicholson

[1] He was educated locally at the King Edward VI Grammar School, Chelmsford, where one of his teachers was Frederick Rolfe, a gay man who would go on to a career as a noted novelist and artist.

[4] Nicholson was a member of the Order of Chaeronea, a secret society for homosexuals founded in 1897 by fellow Uranian George Ives.

[8] In 1894, Nicholson contributed "The Shadow of the End", an "intensely poetic prose meditation" on the death of a beloved boy, to the sole issue of the Uranian magazine The Chameleon.

[9] Nicholson's second volume of poetry A Chaplet of Southernwood (1896), celebrated the beauty of another Rydal Mount pupil (1891–94), William Alexander (Alec) Melling (1878–1962).

[1] In it his alter ego protagonist Philip Luard chastely pursues the unresponsive twelve-year-old Teddy Faircloth of the title, despite his friend Gerrard urging him to a more sensual approach.

A widely reproduced [ 1 ] photograph of Nicholson (right) with Alec Melling, a student to whom he dedicated his second poetry collection, A Chaplet of Southernwood (1896).