‘Eccentric’, ‘Strange’, ‘Effeminate’ Bachelors
Clarkson was frequently described as ‘eccentric’, ‘strange’, ‘peculiar’ and ‘queer’—words that were used pejoratively to define people who didn’t conform to societal norms, including homosexuals. It is perhaps significant that in an interview in The Sketch magazine in 1893, when asked to recount some anecdotes of his work, Clarkson uses ‘queer’ and ‘eccentric’ to describe himself.
His effeminacy and his bachelor status were also regularly emphasised—other common ways to allude to homosexual men. Harry Greenwall, who published a biography of him in 1936 (The Strange Life of Willy Clarkson), wrote how a young romance with a woman did not result in marriage, asking, "was Willy Clarkson as effeminate in those days as he was in later life? Possibly". Greenwall goes on to state that "Willy Clarkson lived and died a bachelor. His morals were not my business".
This reference to Clarkson’s immorality is one of many statements made by those who were close to him to suggest that his sexuality was widely known but never discussed. The actor John Gielgud, who himself was gay and was arrested for cottaging in 1953, wrote about Clarkson in 1983 in Plays and Players. He recounted how Clarkson would offer encouragement and free theatre tickets to young male customers who had to take "care to avoid too close physical contact with him, in case his hands should become unduly familiar or a visit to his private sanctum be proposed".
Gielgud added that he was "reputed to be extremely disreputable and extremely rich" and describes him as "mysterious, highly coloured, eccentric of the deepest dye".