Gavin Arthur

Chester Alan "Gavin" Arthur III (March 21, 1901 – April 28, 1972) was an American astrologer and sexologist. He was a descendant of Chester A. Arthur, the twenty-first president of the United States, being his grandson. Arthur was born in Colorado Springs, Colorado, to Chester Alan Arthur II and Myra Fithian Andrews. His family had financial interests in the Trinchera Estate, a large ranch in Colorado.

He attended Columbia College in New York, where he was part of the Class of 1924 and a member of the Philolexian Society. During his college years, he expressed admiration for the British poet and activist Edward Carpenter. After leaving college, he became involved in the Irish Republican Movement, living in various countries including Ireland and France.

In the 1930s, Arthur and his wife Charlotte appeared in the avant-garde film "Borderline," which also featured H.D. and Paul Robeson. Moving to Pismo Beach, California, he adopted the name "Gavin" and established an art and literature commune. He founded "Dune Forum," a magazine published in seven issues between 1933 and 1934, aimed at promoting creative thought and alternating religious and political ideologies. The magazine attracted a community of artists and mystics known as "Dunites," who lived in the Guadalupe-Nipomo Dunes.

Arthur joined the Utopian Society of America in 1934 and contributed articles to "Labor Defender" in the years 1936 and 1937, working as an editor alongside Langston Hughes. Upon his father's death in 1937, Arthur inherited a collection of documents, including newspapers from President Chester A. Arthur's era, presidential memorabilia, correspondence from historical figures such as Ulysses S. Grant and James A. Garfield, and various official papers.

He served as secretary of the California Democratic Party during Franklin D. Roosevelt's administration in 1940 but resigned the following year due to disagreements over party policies. During World War II, he served in both the United States Army and the Merchant Marine. After the war, he moved to New York and initiated work on a family history project, which was never completed. Returning to California in 1949, he taught at San Quentin State Prison and earned a bachelor’s degree from San Francisco State College in 1952.

Financial instability led Arthur to sell newspapers on the streets of San Francisco during the 1950s and 1960s. During this period, he gained recognition as an astrologer. In 1962, he published "The Circle of Sex," analyzing human sexuality through a yin-yang framework. He proposed a model of twelve sexual orientations arranged on a wheel, each associated with historical archetypes such as Don Juan or Sappho. An expanded edition was published in 1966, in which he claimed to have developed sexual intimacy with Edward Carpenter, who, according to Carpenter, also had relations with Walt Whitman. Arthur, who identified as bisexual, was also reported to have been intimate with Neal Cassady.

Arthur maintained connections with figures of the Beat Generation, including Allen Ginsberg and Alan Watts. He participated in the early gay rights movement and was associated with the Haight-Ashbury counterculture. He used astrology to select the date for the 1967 "Human Be-In," which drew over 30,000 attendees.

He was married three times: first to Charlotte Joy Johnson (divorced 1932), then to Esther Murphy Strachey (divorced 1961), and finally to Ellen Jansen in 1965. Arthur died in 1972 at the Fort Miley Veterans Hospital in San Francisco following a fall. He was interred at the Albany Rural Cemetery. As the last living descendant of Chester A. Arthur, his collection of personal and family papers was donated to the Library of Congress.