DOCSLIB.ORG

MISLEADING CASES Children of the Sun. a Narrative of Decadence in England After 1918

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
MISLEADING CASES Children of the Sun. a Narrative of Decadence in England After 1918 BOOK REVIEWS 85 MISLEADING CASES Children Of The Sun. A Narrative of Decadence in England After 1918. By MARTIN GREEN. Constable, 1977; £7.50. Mr. Green purports to describe the 'imaginative history' of England between 1918 and 1957, seeing it as a 'cultural Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/eic/article/XXVIII/1/85/493747 by guest on 01 October 2021 dialectic' between the 'dandy-aesthetes' and the 'anti- dandies'. He describes the former as representing the culture's 'thesis' (dominant 'temperament') and the latter as supporting its 'antithesis'. Into the first group he puts two 'gangs', one led by Harold Acton, Brian Howard, Connolly, Quennell, Waugh and Betjeman, the other by Auden, Isherwood, Spender and John Lehmann. The anti- thesis is represented by Leavis, Orwell and, sometimes, Lawrence who, along with the Georgian and Victorian forbears of the 'gangs' and their more conventional con- temporaries, stand for 'seriousness' and 'maturity'. The argument of the book revolves around the careers of Acton and Howard as the cultural leaders of the 'thesis'. Here, however, he runs into difficulties: the 'dandyism' of Acton is different in kind from that of Auden. The first gang, then, must be termed 'dandy-aesthete'; the second, 'naif. The 'cult of the naif, he assures us, was 'at the very core of Thirties' Marxism—the image of the sun-bronzed young man with his shirt open, bringing the radiant candour of his gaze to bear on the mess the fathers have made of the world'. But even this is not comprehen- sive enough. What about Beaverbrook and Winston Churchill? What about Peter Rodd and Randolph Churchill? They must naturally form another sub-section: 'uncles' and 'rogue-rebels'. Mr. Green clearly expects us to take all this seriously. Indeed, he goes to such lengths to substantiate his theory that, but for his generous linguistic absurdities, we might be bored into concurrence. One's suspicions, however, are immediately aroused by the indecisive and immature nature of his critical vocabulary. The text is studded with phrases such as 'media-happening', 'rhythms of the earth', 'very philistine', 'a highly aesthetic education', 'a very Twenties' marriage', and so on. It soon becomes clear from the accumulation of factual error and facile generalisation that he has taken 86 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM on a subject beyond his intellectual control. The whole is pervaded by the amateurish enthusiasms and contradic- tions of the committed dabbler. 'My interest', he states, [is] ' "psychological" rather than anthropological. My method is closer to that cultural, or cultic, literary criticism that we might associate with Orwell . .'. In Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/eic/article/XXVIII/1/85/493747 by guest on 01 October 2021 Appendix B, where he explains the origin of the term 'Sonnenkinder', he admits to 'treating anthropology very cavalierly' in selecting the word to describe the gangs. But this arbitrary extrapolation is the basis of his method. Children Of The Sun is certainly not the product of research. It offers us almost no new information but rather a re-ordering of already published accounts. The author candidly admits his enormous debt to Harold Acton's two volumes of autobiography Memoirs and More Memoirs Of An Aesthete, and to Marie-Jacqueline Lancaster's biography of Brian Howard: Portrait Of \A Failure. The futility of the whole project is in fact revealed by this absurd selection of protagonists. It was Acton and Howard, he considers, who governed the aesthetic sensibility of the important Oxford generation of 1922-25 which included such easily-led men as Waugh, Powell, Graham Greene, Henry Yorke (Green), Betjeman, and Connolly. It was they who set up the 'thesis', of which the 'rogues' expressed a peripheral aspect and against which the naifs, and Orwell, Leavis and Scrutiny reacted. This theory would seem either to stand or fall on the concept of the dandy. Here again he reverts immediately to a published work, Ellen Moers's The Dandy (1960), which defines its sub- ject as 'A man dedicated solely to his own perfection through a ritual of taste . free of all human commitments that conflict with that taste: passions, moralities, ambi- tions, politics or occupations'. Earlier, however, Mr. Green has stated that the 'simplest psychological fact at the root of this cult is that worship of the male adolescent by older men . expressed in the myths of Narcissus, Adonis, and such . One manifestation of this we call dandyism. In its simplest form the young man loves his own beauty and makes it insolently manifest in his own clothes, posture, manners, judgements, imposing on everything a style that denies the "mature" values of his father and BOOK REVIEWS 87 mother'. These two definitions are partly contradictory. In one is expressed an ascetic aestheticism, in the other a passionate indulgence and this confusion, surely, springs from a mis-interpretation of the word 'aesthete'. 'The aesthete', Mr. Green says, 'is crucially different from the dandy in being much more concerned with some- Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/eic/article/XXVIII/1/85/493747 by guest on 01 October 2021 thing outside himself—art, beauty, the cultural heritage; he need not be so hard and "heroically" negative. His energies go into receiving impressions and sensations rather than into making them . .'. So the 'aesthete' is by definition the critic, a Lord Henry Wotton, and not the artist. Mr. Green is aware of the problem. Was not Wilde both artist and aesthete, and were not Acton, Betjeman, Quennell and Howard poets? Surely Evelyn Waugh de- scribed himself as an aesthete? The answer is simple. 'In this study', he states, 'we shall regard the two types as twin aspects of one identity—the dandy-aesthete.' The whole of the preliminary discussion is thus devalued. He faithfully reports Acton's rejection of the cultural ethos of the Nineties at Oxford but does not realise that the 'aesthete' of his own definition is specifically a product of that period and earlier. He establishes the connexions between Acton and the Sitwells, between the Sitwells and Firbank, and between Firbank and Wilde but fails to notice that Acton and those he influenced, while admiring Firbank, loathed Wilde. In a Harper's Bazaar article (3 Nov., 1930, pp. 50-1, 98), for instance, Waugh saved his bitterest attack for 'the great, booby figure of Oscar Wilde'. This condemnation of effeminacy, languor and ego- tism was not peculiar to Waugh. It was something, along with his taste for early Gothic architecture and early- Victoria furnishings, that he inherited from Acton at Oxford. Acton himself wrote an article for The Chenoell ('Tchekov And Some Undergraduates', 17 Nov., 1923, p. 78) defending the Russian playright and fiercely attacking the world of 1892: '. when the Yellow Book, Symbolism, Oscar Wilde, Art for Art's Sake and all the pathetically self- conscious, arty little movements and litterateurs were waving weakly [sic] flags and posturing like the protag- onists in a "crime passionnel"'. Both Acton and Waugh 88 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM despised poseurs; they re-defined the term 'aesthete' to include a more cosmopolitan and aggressive attitude to art in reaction to the fatuity of the Nineties and the tea-party cosiness and patronage of London literary cliques. Mr. Green's nineteenth-century definition is wholly inappro- priate. Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/eic/article/XXVIII/1/85/493747 by guest on 01 October 2021 Waugh drew, Mr. Green says, like Beardsley. He did not. He was self-consciously avant-garde. Waugh's 1963 remark about regarding writing 'not as an investigation of character but as an exercise in the use of language' is said to be misleading: 'His interest in language was not of the kind active then in critical circles. His concern for language must be taken as another example of that old- fashioned provinciality that he perversely cultivated'. This is a complete misrepresentation. Waugh's 1929 essay on Firbank and his 1930 book reviews in the Graphic lucidly display an interest in linguistic experimentation in com- pany with Van Vechten, Osbert Sitwell, Gerhardie and Hemingway. Waugh was always a great champion of Eliot and of Henry Green, lambasting those with 'school ma'am minds' who objected to the latter's disjointed prose. It is this sort of basic inaccuracy, this failure to see each character in his jigsaw as an individual, that causes Mr. Green's overall thesis to founder, even though he does grasp fragments of the truth. There is something in Acton's and Howard's influence at Oxford, and in 'the common cause of defying their fathers' mode of seriousness'. Mr. Green, however, pretends, with insufficient research, to have the full picture. He fails even to distinguish satisfac- torily between Acton and Howard as 'influences', the latter being in fact little more than a dangerous dilettante. Michael Arlen, a genuine literary dandy, is alluded to only briefly because he was not influenced by either. Waugh, who is regarded throughout as 'the keenest observer and commentator on our subject in our period', began aesthetically to move away from Acton after the publication of Decline and Fall (1928). Mr. Green sees things on the grand scale of social history and foolishly attempts to interpret individual action within this framework. His vast canvas includes not only local literary figures but the political and scientific communities BOOK REVIEWS 89 of the world. The Manhattan Project is directly compared to the decadence and inefficiency of MI5 at Wormwood Scrubs during the last war—Oppenheimer was a 'dandy' as were Burgess, Maclean and Philby. It is at this point that the shaky critical structure of the book finally col- lapses. Earlier passages might have warned us: 'And Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/eic/article/XXVIII/1/85/493747 by guest on 01 October 2021 roughly at the same time as Edward the Eighth abdicated, T.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Baixa Descarrega El
    Jacqueline Hurtley and Elizabeth Russell Universitat de Barcelona and Universitat Rovira i Virgili, Tarragona Following the fruits of the second wave of feminism fiom the 60s into the 80s, the backlash has set in (cf. Susan Faludi), with texts such as Camille Pagha's Sexual Personae intensqing the reaction. Beyond the women's movemenf we are witnesses to a growing sense of intolerante, made manifest in xenophobic attitudes and racist attacks. In The Nature of Fascism, published in 1991, Roger Grifñn spends his fúst chapter dwelling on the "conundrum" of fascism, so temed because of the lack of consensus as to how fascism might be defined. We do not propose to consider the complexities involved here but will rnake use of Griíñn's working definition: "Fascism is a genus of political ideology whose mythc core in its various permutations is a pahgenetic fom of populist ultranationalism." (Grif6n 1991,26). For our particular purpose, we wish to focus on the concept of palingenesis (fkom palin - again, anew; and genesis - creation, biríh). Fascism promulgated the idea of rebiríh: the movement would bring about "a new national community", one which would draw on, " - where posible, traditions which had supposedly remained uncontaminated by degenerative forces and whose cohesion was assured by new institutions, organisations and practices based on a new political hierarchy and a new heroic ethos" (Griíñn 1991, 45). Women became conspicuous by their absence within the new phallocentnc hierarchy. The new fascist man (hornofmcistus) wodd be intent on saaiñcing himseíf to the higher needs of the nation. In Male Fantasies Klaus Theweleit drew on case-studies produced on a number of individuals who played an active part in German proto-fascism.
    [Show full text]
  • News Release
    News Release CECIL BEATON’S DAZZLING BRIGHT YOUNG THINGS BROUGHT TOGETHER FOR THE FIRST TIME IN MAJOR NEW EXHIBITION Rarely exhibited prints by renowned photographer Cecil Beaton go on display at National Portrait Gallery London L-R: Mrs Freeman-Thomas by Cecil Beaton, 1928. © The Cecil Beaton Studio Archive; Cecil Beaton by Paul Tanqueray, 1937. National Portrait Gallery, London © Estate of Paul Tanqueray; The Bright Young Things at Wilsford by Cecil Beaton, 1927. © The Cecil Beaton Studio Archive. Cecil Beaton’s Bright Young Things National Portrait Gallery, London 12 March – 7 June 2020 Cecil Beaton’s portraits from a golden age are brought together for the first time in a major new exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery, London. Featuring 170 works, many of which are rarely exhibited, Cecil Beaton’s Bright Young Things explores the extravagant world of the glamorous and stylish ‘Bright Young Things’ of the twenties and thirties, seen through the eye of renowned British photographer Cecil Beaton. Through the prism of Beaton’s portraits the exhibition presents the leading cast, to many of whom he would become close, and who in these early years helped refine his remarkable photographic style - artists and friends Rex Whistler and Stephen Tennant, set and costume designer Oliver Messel, composer William Walton, modernist poets Iris Tree and Nancy Cunard, glamorous socialites Edwina Mountbatten and Diana Guinness (née Mitford), actresses and anglophiles Tallulah Bankhead and Anna May Wong, among many others. Brought to vivid life each of them has a story to tell. There are the slightly less well known too – style icons Paula Gellibrand, the Marquesa de Casa Maury and Baba, Princesse de Faucigny-Lucinge, the eccentric composer and aesthete Lord Berners, modernist poet Brian Howard, part model for Brideshead Revisited’s mannered ‘Anthony Blanche’, ballet dancer Tilly Losch and Dolly Wilde Oscar’s equally flamboyant niece.
    [Show full text]
  • Cecil Beaton, a New Exhibition in London
    Leggi l'articolo su beautynews Cecil Beaton, a new exhibition in London Flamboyant, rebellious, irresponsible, glamorous, the “Bright Young Things”, effectively a youth cult of aristocratic socialites, haute bohemian party-givers and lower-born self-publicists, cut a dramatic swathe through the 1920s and 1930s. Their exploits, a headlong pursuit of hedonism – practical jokes, parties, costume balls – were written up almost daily in newspaper columns to the amazement of the young and the horror of the establishment. Their clever and inventive dealings with the media in the aftermath of the Great War foreshadowed our contemporary notion of modern celebrity culture. Many of the leading cast would become well known: writers Nancy Mitford and Evelyn Waugh, composers William Walton and Constant Lambert, stage designers Oliver Messel and Rex Whistler. Others would remain in the shadows, having accomplished almost nothing other than their own self-creations, such as aesthete Brian Howard and Stephen Tennant, the famously orchidaceous scion of a fractured dynasty. Drink, drugs and burn-out on the eve of another world war would claim more, famously and tragically, the dazzling “it girls” Brenda Dean Paul and troubled “wild child” Lois Sturt, debutante of the year and “the brightest of the Bright Young Things”. Their recording angel was Cecil Beaton, whose journey from middle-class suburban schoolboy to shining society ornament and star of Vogue revealed a social mobility unthinkable before the war, prefiguring the meritocracy of the 1960s. His dazzling photographs and incisive caricatures chronicled the original “Lost Generation”, lost in time. The Bright Young Things, 1927 Beaton organised and directed a series of late summer tableaux en fe?te champe?tre emulating the stylised, pastoral paintings of Lancret and Watteau and Fragonard.
    [Show full text]
  • International Dateline -- Adventurers All Rita Ricketts Blackwell's, [email protected]
    Against the Grain Volume 21 | Issue 4 Article 44 September 2009 International Dateline -- Adventurers All Rita Ricketts Blackwell's, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://docs.lib.purdue.edu/atg Part of the Library and Information Science Commons Recommended Citation Ricketts, Rita (2009) "International Dateline -- Adventurers All," Against the Grain: Vol. 21: Iss. 4, Article 44. DOI: https://doi.org/10.7771/2380-176X.2475 This document has been made available through Purdue e-Pubs, a service of the Purdue University Libraries. Please contact [email protected] for additional information. International Dateline — Adventurers All1 by Rita Ricketts (Blackwell’s Historian and Bodleian Visiting Scholar, Author Adventurers All, Tales of Blackwellians, of Books, Bookmen and Reading and Writing Folk’) <[email protected]> The Blackwells played Ulysses: they were brave enough to take the risk ful Basil when, greeting him with apologies for being late she attributed this of launching poets, at their own expense: “Come my friends, tis not too late, to a visit to ‘Ellison’s’ to buy underwear, which, she informed him, had been to seek a newer world. It may be that the gulfs will wash us down. It may charged to his account!” 9 Although footing the bill was as much a feature of be we shall touch the happy isles. Yet our purpose holds: To sail beyond Basil Blackwell’s early endeavours, as it was when his father started out, the the sunset.” 2 infant publishing house went from strength to strength. With his father still at the helm, Basil added names that would become famous.
    [Show full text]
  • Christmas Special
    The Anthony Powell Society Newsletter Issue 17, Winter 2004 ISSN 1743-0976 Contents From the Secretary’s Desk … 2 Afternoon Men – Revisited … 3 Robert Byron: A Biography … 4 John Aubrey and his Christmas … 8 Christmas Quiz … 11 A Peaceful Christmas Local Group News … 12 Centenary Corner … 13 and a Centenary Events Calendar … 14 Prosperous New Year Conference Call for Papers … 16 Society News & Notices … 17 to all members & friends Christmas Prize Competition … 18 From the APLIST … 19 of the Society Letters to the Editor … 24 The Quotable Powell … 26 Society Merchandise … 27 Membership Form … 28 Quiz : page 11 CHRISTMAS SPECIAL Competition : page 18 Anthony Powell Society Newsletter #17 From the Secretary’s Desk The Anthony Powell Society Registered Charity No. 1096873 I’m always surprised how little mention there is of Christmas in Dance, and for The Anthony Powell Society is a that matter in Powell’s Journals and charitable literary society devoted to the memoirs. Although the Journals do life and works of the English author record Christmas every year it is always Anthony Dymoke Powell, 1905-2000. in the seemingly low-key terms of “Drinks in the morning. V gave me a Officers & Executive Committee blue-striped shirt. Lunched at The Stables; enjoyable party; very tiring.” Patron: John MA Powell President: Hugh Massingberd Should we really be surprised? No, Vice-President: John S Monagan (USA) probably not. In the days of Powell’s *Chairman: Patric Dickinson youth, and the period of Dance, *Hon. Secretary: Dr Keith C Marshall Christmas was not the commercial *Hon. Treasurer: Kevin Jewell circus it is today – that didn’t really start to take off until the early ’70s, when *Committee Members: Powell was completing Dance.
    [Show full text]
  • E.W. Pinxit: the Graphic Art of Evelyn Waugh
    E.W. PINXIT THE G RAPHIC ART OF E VELYN WAUGH E.W. PINXIT AN EXHIBITI ON OF THE G RAPHIC ART OF EV ELYN WAUGH 18th to 28th July 2 017 Maggs Bros Ltd 48 Bedford Square London WC1B 3DR Exhibition organised principally by Alice Rowell and Ed Maggs with assistance from Mark Everett: Catalogue written principally by Mark Everett, with assistance from Ed Maggs and Alice Rowell Photography by Ivo Karaivanov. Design by Kate Tattersall, Tattersall Hammarling & Silk. Front cover from item 3.1, inside front cover item 1.11, inside rear cover item 1.17, outside rear cover item 11.4 www.maggs.com 020 7493 7160 introduction The Graphic Work of evelyn WauGh Holding an exhibition devoted to the graphic work of Evelyn Waugh might seem an eccentric act. To make claims for Evelyn Waugh as a graphic artist is surely, at best, irrelevant, given that the whole point of Waugh is his matchless prose? Up to a point, Lord Copper, as the author himself might have put it. “An Illustrated Novelette” is how Evelyn Waugh chose to describe his first novel on its title page. Today’s readers of Decline and Fall (1928) might well be surprised by the description. It only makes sense if one is lucky enough to come across a copy of the first edition in its original dustwrapper (Catalogue No. 3.1). The wrapper illustration was designed by the author, who also contributed six full page black and white line drawings to the text. The front panel of the dustwrapper features four simple head and shoulder drawings of the novel’s hero, Paul Pennyfeather, dressed respectively in the appropriate garb for the stages in his rackety career: Oxford undergraduate, Bright Young Person, prison inmate and clergyman.
    [Show full text]
  • We Wish All Members & Friends of the Society a Peaceful Christmas and A
    The Anthony Powell Society Newsletter Issue 29, Winter 2007 ISSN 1743-0976 We wish all members & friends of the Society a Peaceful Christmas and a Prosperous New Year Contents From the Secretary’s Desk … 2 The End of the Dance … 3 Widmerpool Goes to Ground … 8 Conference 2007 Report … 12 Dates for Your Diary … 16 Society News … 17 Subscriptions … 20 A Chantry Docent … 21 Umfraville & Bagshaw Exposed … 22 Book Review: Bright Young People … 23 Cuttings … 25 Letters to the Editor … 28 Merchandise & Membership … 30 Anthony Powell Society Newsletter #29 From the Secretary’s Desk The Anthony Powell Society Saturday 17 November 2007 saw yet Registered Charity No. 1096873 another important, even momentous, day The Anthony Powell Society is a for the Society. It was the occasion of charitable literary society devoted to the the inaugural Anthony Powell Lecture, life and works of the English author given at the Wallace Collection in Anthony Dymoke Powell, 1905-2000. collaboration with the Society. The inaugural lecturer was the novelist, Officers & Executive Committee historian, film-maker and left-wing Patron: John MA Powell activist Tariq Ali. President: Simon Russell Beale While his talk concentrated mostly on a Hon. Vice-Presidents: discussion of Dance, it was wide- Julian Allason ranging, thought-provoking and touched Hugh Massingberd on almost the whole of Powell’s œvre – *Chairman: Dr Christine Berberich only the two post-Dance novels got no *Hon. Secretary: Dr Keith C Marshall major mention. Tariq touched too on his *Hon. Treasurer: Dr Derek WJ Miles personal likes and dislikes within Dance *Committee Members: and tried to make some sense of the Dr Nicholas Birns (USA) recent rather anti-Powell remarks by Sir Stephen Holden Vidia Naipaul.
    [Show full text]
  • Mad World: Evelyn Waugh and the Secrets of Brideshead
    Paula Byrne Mad World: Evelyn Waugh and the Secrets of Brideshead Аннотация A terrifically engaging and original biography about one of England’s greatest novelists, and the glamorous, eccentric, debauched and ultimately tragic family that provided him with the most significant friendships of his life and inspired his masterpiece, ‘Brideshead Revisited’.Evelyn Waugh was already famous when ‘Brideshead Revisited’ was published in 1945. Written at the height of the war, the novel was, he admitted, of no ‘immediate propaganda value’. Instead, it was the story of a household, a family and a journey of religious faith – an elegy, in many ways, for a vanishing world and a testimony to a family he had fallen in love with a decade earlier.The Lygons of Madresfield were every bit as glamorous, eccentric and compelling as their counterparts in ‘Brideshead Revisited’. In this engrossing biography, Paula Byrne takes an innovative approach to her subject, setting out to capture Waugh through those friendships that mattered most to him. Far from the snobbish misanthropist of popular caricature, she uncovers a man as loving and complex as the family that inspired him – a family deeply traumatised when their father was revealed as a homosexual and forced to flee the country.This brilliantly original biography unlocks for the first time the extent to which Waugh’s great novel encoded and transformed his own experiences. In so doing, it illuminates the loves and obsessions that shaped his life, and brings us inevitably to a secret that dared not speak its name. Содержание PAULA BYRNE 6 COPYRIGHT 7 Contents 9 PROLOGUE 11 CHAPTER 1 A Tale of Two Childhoods 16 CHAPTER 2 Lancing versus Eton 42 CHAPTER 3 Oxford: â⦠her secret none can 78 utterâ CHAPTER 4 The Scarlet Woman 113 CHAPTER 5 In the Balance 130 CHAPTER 6 The Lygon Heritage 147 Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.
    [Show full text]
  • Open Waugh VB Template__4-11FINAL
    THE PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIVERSITY SCHREYER HONORS COLLEGE DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH TERRIBLY BRIGHT: CHARACTERIZING THE BODY IN WAUGH’S VILE BODIES ALLISON M. LOOSE SPRING 2016 A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for baccalaureate degrees in English and Economics with honors in English Reviewed and approved* by the following: Lisa Sternlieb Associate Professor of English Thesis Supervisor Xiaoye You Associate Professor of English Honors Adviser * Signatures are on file in the Schreyer Honors College. i ABSTRACT A far cry from the “war to end all wars,” the shocks and tremors of the Great War shook the foundations of the English heritage. Generational divides––exacerbated by the divisional powers of total war––widened into gulfs, as Waugh acknowledged the emergence of three separate classes: “There is (a) the wistful generation who grew up and formed their opinions before the War and were too old for military service; (b) the stunted and mutilated generation who fought; and (c) the younger generation” (Waugh, “The War and the Young Generation” 61- 62). This younger generation––the rabble-rousers and party-goers and gate-crashers––paraded noisily into the 1920s in a veritable triumph of modernity. From his unique “insider” position as an early Bright Young Thing, Evelyn Waugh condemned his fellow party-goers for their wanton lusts and misdirection. This lost generation became the target of his satire, lampooned as outlandish characters in the heat of moral decay. ii TABLE OF CONTENTS LIST OF FIGURES ..................................................................................................... iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ......................................................................................... iv Chapter 1 BODIES AT WAR: An Introduction .......................................................... 1 Chapter 2 A CONCURRENCE OF CHURCH AND STATE: The Religious and Governmental Body .............................................................................................
    [Show full text]
  • The Last Aesthete Harold Acton’S Uncategorical Imperatives
    Art & Antiques March 1984 The Last Aesthete Harold Acton’s uncategorical imperatives by Milton Gendel In our categorical times, when no one is allowed more than a single label, Sir Harold Acton masterfully evades the pigeonhole. He is an Anglo-Florentine-Neapolitan-American connoisseur of the arts — a poet, satirist, novelist, historian, biographer, lecturer, and host. To classify this formidable array of talents, Sir Harold casts back to the turn of the century for a suitable term, calling himself an aesthete. What he said about the poetry he was writing in the Twenties and Thirties could apply to the whole of his many-faceted career: “I have not attempted to force fresh flowers from the modish manure.” He has not ever had to. Tradition has been a prevailing element of his life since his birth in 1904 at the centuries-old Villa La Pietra in Florence. The villa and Sir Harold have had a common destiny: both can claim a historic lineage, and both, in their present incarnations, are highly polished productions of the last three generations. Florence, an Anglo-American dreamworld in the nineteenth century, remained even after the First World War a cosmopolis of the arts and letters in a still cultivated Europe that offered a favorable rate of exchange against the dollar and the pound. His father was Arthur Acton, a member of the well-known Anglo-Neapolitan clan and a painter with antiquarian tastes. Encouraged by his American wife (née Hortense Mitchell, the daughter of wealthy Chicagoans), Acton bought the villa and twelve acres on which it stands a year before Harold’s birth.
    [Show full text]
  • Evelyn Waugh Newsletter and Stud
    EVELYN WAUGH NEWSLETTER AND STUD EVELYN WAUGH NEWSLETTER AND STUDIES Vol. 39, No. 1 Spring 2008 “Beefsteak Mind” and “Greatest Sonneteer since Shakespeare”: Evelyn Waugh, Marie Stopes and Lord Alfred Douglas by Donat Gallagher James Cook University On 25 May 1939, Evelyn Waugh wrote to Marie Stopes.[1] Coming across a reference to his letter in a catalogue, I imagined a sharp missive about birth control or Black Mischief, for Waugh lampoons Stopes (the then leading advocate of birth control) in Black Mischief, and Stopes eagerly joined in The Tablet’s condemnation of the novel. Some years later, in 1943, Stopes would attack, and Waugh defend, Catholic schools. Imagine my surprise (as they say) when Waugh’s 1939 letter turned out to be a polite note agreeing to put his name to a petition organized by Stopes seeking a civil list pension for Lord Alfred Douglas, “Bosie” of Oscar Wilde fame. Stopes’s papers reveal that Lord Alfred had been living on a small allowance from a kinsman, which the kinsman could no longer afford. Lord Alfred faced destitution. Stopes, a woman of advanced views, was nevertheless a close friend and voluminous correspondent of Lord Alfred, a Catholic and conservative far to the Right of Evelyn Waugh. Stopes believed that Lord Alfred’s contribution to English literature was such as to warrant a civil list pension, and she set about trying to persuade the Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain, to provide one. Part of the campaign involved enlisting eminent literary figures to testify to Lord Alfred’s outstanding contribution to English poetry.
    [Show full text]
  • Patrick Balfour, Baron Kinross, Papers: Finding Aid
    http://oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/c8c252jh No online items Patrick Balfour, Baron Kinross, Papers: Finding Aid Finding aid prepared by Sara S. Hodson and Gayle M. Richardson, August 8, 2005. The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens Manuscripts Department 1151 Oxford Road San Marino, California 91108 Phone: (626) 405-2129 Email: [email protected] URL: http://www.huntington.org © 2005 The Huntington Library. All rights reserved. Patrick Balfour, Baron Kinross, mssKIN 1-6443 1 Papers: Finding Aid Overview of the Collection Title: Patrick Balfour, Baron Kinross, Papers Dates (inclusive): 1922-1976 Collection Number: mssKIN 1-6443 Creator: Kinross, Patrick Balfour, Baron, 1904-1976. Extent: 6,550 items in 178 boxes Repository: The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens. Manuscripts Department 1151 Oxford Road San Marino, California 91108 Phone: (626) 405-2129 Email: [email protected] URL: http://www.huntington.org Abstract: This collection contains manuscripts, correspondence, photographs, and ephemera of Scottish historian and writer Patrick Balfour (1904-1976), Lord Kinross, from his earliest columns as a journalist to his final major work, The Ottoman Centuries. Language: English. Access Open to qualified researchers by prior application through the Reader Services Department. For more information, contact Reader Services. Publication Rights The Huntington Library does not require that researchers request permission to quote from or publish images of this material, nor does it charge fees for such activities. The responsibility for identifying the copyright holder, if there is one, and obtaining necessary permissions rests with the researcher. Preferred Citation [Identification of item]. Patrick Balfour, Baron Kinross, Papers, The Huntington Library, San Marino, California.
    [Show full text]