Thursday, 27 February 2020
Wednesday, 26 February 2020
REMEMBERING THE 80’s YUPPIES / VIDEO:PETER YORK: YUPPIES
REMEMBERING
THE 80’s YUPPIES
SEE ALSO “SLOANE
RANGERS” in https://tweedlandthegentlemansclub.blogspot.com/2009/04/sloane-rangers.html
The first
printed appearance of the word was in a May 1980 Chicago magazine article by
Dan Rottenberg. Rottenberg reported in 2015 that he didn't invent the term, he
had heard other people using it, and at the time he understood it as a rather
neutral demographic term. Nonetheless, his article did note the issues of
socioeconomic displacement which might occur as a result of the rise of this
inner-city population cohort. Joseph Epstein was credited for coining the term
in 1982, although this is contested. The term gained currency in the United
States in 1983 when syndicated newspaper columnist Bob Greene published a story
about a business networking group founded in 1982 by the former radical leader
Jerry Rubin, formerly of the Youth International Party (whose members were
called "yippies"); Greene said he had heard people at the networking
group (which met at Studio 54 to soft classical music) joke that Rubin had
"gone from being a yippie to being a yuppie". The headline of Greene's
story was "From Yippie to Yuppie'".[7][8] East Bay Express humorist
Alice Kahn claimed to have coined the word in a 1983 column. This claim is
disputed.
The
proliferation of the word was affected by the publication of The Yuppie
Handbook in January 1983 (a tongue-in-cheek take on The Official Preppy
Handbook), followed by Senator Gary Hart's 1984 candidacy as a "yuppie
candidate" for President of the United States. The term was then used to
describe a political demographic group of socially liberal but fiscally
conservative voters favoring his candidacy. Newsweek magazine declared 1984
"The Year of the Yuppie", characterizing the salary range, occupations,
and politics of "yuppies" as "demographically hazy". The
alternative acronym yumpie, for young upwardly mobile professional, was also
current in the 1980s but failed to catch on.
In a 1985
issue of The Wall Street Journal, Theressa Kersten at SRI International
described a "yuppie backlash" by people who fit the demographic
profile yet express resentment of the label: "You're talking about a class
of people who put off having families so they can make payments on the SAABs
... To be a Yuppie is to be a loathsome undesirable creature". Leo
Shapiro, a market researcher in Chicago, responded, "Stereotyping always
winds up being derogatory. It doesn't matter whether you are trying to
advertise to farmers, Hispanics or Yuppies, no one likes to be neatly lumped
into some group."
The word
lost most of its political connotations and, particularly after the 1987 stock
market crash, gained the negative socio-economic connotations that it sports
today. On April 8, 1991, Time magazine proclaimed the death of the
"yuppie" in a mock obituary.
The term
has experienced a resurgence in usage during the 2000s and 2010s. In October
2000, David Brooks remarked in a Weekly Standard article that Benjamin Franklin
– due to his extreme wealth, cosmopolitanism, and adventurous social life – is
"Our Founding Yuppie". A recent article in Details proclaimed
"The Return of the Yuppie", stating that "the yuppie of 1986 and
the yuppie of 2006 are so similar as to be indistinguishable" and that
"the yup" is "a shape-shifter... he finds ways to reenter the
American psyche." In 2010, right-wing political commentator Victor Davis
Hanson wrote in National Review very critically of "yuppies".
Yuppie
Handbook: The State-Of-The Art Manual for Young Urban Professionals
by Marissa
Piesman, Marilee Hartley
Yuppie or
Yuppy pl. Yuppies: (hot; new name for Young Urban Professionals): A person of
either sex who meets the following criteria: 1) resides in or near one of the
major cities; 2) claims to be between the ages of 25 and 45; 3) lives on
aspirations of glory, prestige, recognition, fame, social status, power, money
or any and all combinations of the above; 4) anyone who brunches on the weekend
or works out after work. The term crosses ethnic, sexual, geographic - even
class - boundaries. Adj.: Yuppiesque, Yuppie-like, Yuppish. --- from book's
text
Monday, 24 February 2020
OLDFIELD CLOTHING.
Our
Story...
THE
INSPIRATION - My Grandfather worked for Courtaulds Textile his whole working
life. Starting at 18 years old as a tea boy, his association with the company
continued until his retirement! His
service at the company was interrupted
by the Second World War where he commanded a fleet of minesweepers. He was a well dressed "English
Gentleman" always enjoying the fashions of the day and his other passion,
Motor Cars, the two went hand in hand!
Many of our designs are inspired by what he wore both in war and peace
time.
OUR STORY
BEGINS IN BORANUP, WESTERN AUSTRALIA - Whilst on a road trip in W.A. I came up
with an idea to get a local knitting club to knit sweaters from vintage
knitting patterns. Fast forward 8 years
and now working in Brancaster, England, we had our first sweaters knitted by an
elderly lady called Dorothy. Our
attention soon moved to trousers, disappointed with the way golf fashion was
moving, we decided that a 1930s style high waist corduroy and moleskin was the
way forward....or back, depending how you look at it !
Our first
trouser order was placed with a factory in Yorkshire, we had a small space in
the pro-shop at Brancaster, later that year we launched our first website. The 1930s trouser sold well so we decided to
try and make shirts from the same period. We produced a Jersey cotton shirt,
with various collar styles, which was very practical and easy to wear. Over
time we added more products to the range.
Always true
to our core beliefs of using authentic patterns and designs to create stylish
clothing taking inspiration from we consider to be the "Golden Era of
Fashion" , manufacturing using only the finest British Fabrics made by
craftsmen & women in British tailoring houses. Our clothing is worn by Golfers, Motoring
Enthusiasts, Hipsters, The young, The old and even the odd Television
Celebrity.
"Quality
& Style Never Go Out Of Fashion"
Sunday, 23 February 2020
The Queen doesn't own the word 'Royal', say Prince Harry and Meghan Markle: Couple complain about their treatment in lengthy statement
 |
Harry and
Meghan's statement on their website in full
AS AGREED
AND SET OUT IN JANUARY 2020:
It is
agreed that the commencement of the revised role of The Duke and Duchess of
Sussex will take effect Spring 2020 and undergo a 12 month review.
The Royal
Family respect and understand the wish of The Duke and Duchess of Sussex to
live a more independent life as a family, by removing the supposed ‘public
interest’ justification for media intrusion into their lives. They remain a
valued part of Her Majesty’s family.
The Duke
and Duchess of Sussex will become privately funded members of The Royal Family
with permission to earn their own income and the ability to pursue their own
private charitable interests.
The
preference of The Duke and Duchess of Sussex was to continue to represent and
support Her Majesty The Queen albeit in a more limited capacity, while not
drawing on the Sovereign Grant.
While there
is precedent for other titled members of the Royal Family to seek employment
outside of the institution, for The Duke and Duchess of Sussex, a 12-month
review period has been put in place.
Per the
agreement The Duke and Duchess of Sussex understand that they are required to
step back from Royal duties and not undertake representative duties on behalf
of Her Majesty The Queen.
As agreed
and set out in January, The Duke and Duchess of Sussex will retain their “HRH”
prefix, thereby formally remaining known as His Royal Highness The Duke of
Sussex and Her Royal Highness The Duchess of Sussex. The Duke and Duchess of
Sussex will no longer actively use their HRH titles as they will no longer be
working members of the family as of Spring 2020.
As the
grandson of Her Majesty and second son of The Prince of Wales, Prince Harry,
The Duke of Sussex remains sixth in line to the throne of The British Monarchy
and the Order of Precedence is unchanged.
It was
agreed that The Duke and Duchess will no longer be able to formally carry out
‘official duties’ for The Queen or represent The Commonwealth, but they will,
however, be allowed to maintain their patronages (including those that are
classified as ‘royal’ patronages).
It is
agreed that The Duke and Duchess of Sussex will continue to require effective
security to protect them and their son. This is based on The Duke’s public
profile by virtue of being born into The Royal Family, his military service,
the Duchess’ own independent profile, and the shared threat and risk level
documented specifically over the last few years. No further details can be
shared as this is classified information for safety reasons.
In relation
to the military, The Duke of Sussex will retain the rank of Major, and honorary
ranks of Lieutenant Commander, and Squadron Leader. During this 12-month period
of review, The Duke’s official military appointments will not be used as they
are in the gift of the Sovereign. No new appointments will be made to fill
these roles before the 12-month review of the new arrangements is completed.
While per
the agreement, The Duke will not perform any official duties associated with
these roles, given his dedication to the military community and ten years of
service he will of course continue his unwavering support to the military
community in a non-official capacity. As founder of the Invictus Games, The
Duke will proudly continue supporting the military community around the world
through the Invictus Games Foundation and The Endeavour Fund.
Based on
the Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s desire to have a reduced role as members of
The Royal Family, it was decided in January that their Institutional Office
would have to be closed, given the primary funding mechanism for this official
office at Buckingham Palace is from HRH The Prince of Wales. The Duke and
Duchess shared this news with their team personally in January once they knew
of the decision, and have worked closely with their staff to ensure a smooth
transition for each of them.
Over the
last month and a half, The Duke and Duchess have remained actively involved in
this process, which has understandably been saddening for The Duke and Duchess
and their loyal staff, given the closeness of Their Royal Highnesses and their
dedicated team.
As The Duke
and Duchess will no longer be considered full-time working Members of The Royal
Family, it was agreed that use of the word ‘Royal’ would need to be reviewed as
it pertains to organisations associated with them in this new regard. More
details on this below.
ADDITIONAL
DETAILS:
As shared
in early January on this website, The Duke and Duchess of Sussex do not plan to
start a ‘foundation’, but rather intend to develop a new way to effect change
and complement the efforts made by so many excellent foundations globally.
The
creation of this non-profit entity will be in addition to their cause driven
work that they remain deeply committed to. While The Duke and Duchess are
focused on plans to establish a new non-profit organisation, given the specific
UK government rules surrounding use of the word ‘Royal’, it has been therefore agreed
that their non-profit organisation will not utilise the name ‘Sussex Royal’ or
any other iteration of ‘Royal.’
For the
above reason, the trademark applications that had been filed as protective
measures and that reflected the same standard trademarking requests as done for
The Royal Foundation of The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, have been removed.
While there
is not any jurisdiction by The Monarchy or Cabinet Office over the use of the
word ‘Royal’ overseas, The Duke and Duchess of Sussex do not intend to use
‘Sussex Royal’ or any iteration of the word ‘Royal’ in any territory (either
within the UK or otherwise) when the transition occurs Spring 2020.
As The Duke
and Duchess of Sussex continue to develop their non-profit organisation and
plan for their future, we hope that you use this site as the source for factual
information. In Spring 2020, their digital channels will be refreshed as they
introduce the next exciting phase to you.
The
statement Harry and Meghan sent to the press
'As shared
in early January on this website, The Duke and Duchess of Sussex do not plan to
start a "foundation", but rather intend to develop a new way to effect
change and complement the efforts made by so many excellent foundations
globally.
'The
creation of this non-profit entity will be in addition to their cause driven
work that they remain deeply committed to.
'While The
Duke and Duchess are focused on plans to establish a new non-profit
organisation, given the specific UK government rules surrounding use of the
word 'Royal', it has been therefore agreed that their non-profit organisation
will not utilise the name "Sussex Royal" or any other iteration of
"Royal".
'For the
above reason, the trademark applications that had been filed as protective
measures and that reflected the same standard trademarking requests as done for
The Royal Foundation of The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, have been removed.
'While
there is not any jurisdiction by The Monarchy or Cabinet Office over the use of
the word 'Royal' overseas, The Duke and Duchess of Sussex do not intend to use
"Sussex Royal" or any iteration of the word "Royal" in any
territory (either within the UK or otherwise) when the transition occurs spring
2020.
'As The
Duke and Duchess of Sussex continue to develop their non-profit organisation
and plan for their future, we hope that you use this site as the source for
factual information.
'In Spring
2020, their digital channels will be refreshed as they introduce the next
exciting phase to you.
'The Duke
and Duchess of Sussex eagerly await the opportunity to share more with you and
greatly appreciate your support!'
|
 |
Harry and
Meghan show anger at palace over loss of royal branding
Sussexes
say monarchy has no jurisdiction over use of word ‘royal’ overseas
Jamie
Doward
Sun 23 Feb
2020 09.52 GMTLast modified on Sun 23 Feb 2020 09.56 GMT
The freeze in relations between the Duke and Duchess of Sussex and Buckingham Palace has become apparent after the couple were forced to drop plans to use the brand “SussexRoyal”.
Posts on
the couple’s official website suggest they are angry at the way the decision
was reached and how they have been treated compared with other royals. A statement
on Friday night suggested that a blanket ban on the use of the word “royal” was
unenforceable abroad. “There is not,” it noted, “any jurisdiction by the
monarchy or Cabinet Office over the use of the word ‘royal’ overseas.”
The
couple’s Instagram account uses the name SussexRoyal, as does a website they
set up following their shock decision to stop carrying out official royal
duties in favour of financial freedom. Both will have to be rebranded.
A
spokeswoman for the Sussexes said: “While the duke and duchess are focused on
plans to establish a new non-profit organisation, given the specific UK
government rules surrounding use of the word ‘royal’ it has been therefore
agreed that their non-profit organisation, when it is announced this spring,
will not be named Sussex Royal Foundation.
“The Duke
and Duchess of Sussex do not intend to use ‘SussexRoyal’ in any territory
post-spring 2020.”
The
spokeswoman explained that trademark applications, which were filed as
protective measures “acting on advice from and following the same model for the
Royal Foundation”, had been removed.
The
couple’s lives as working royals will end on 31 March when they stop
representing the Queen and become financially independent.
On Friday
night their website was updated to provide further details of the new
agreement. “While there is not any jurisdiction by the monarchy or cabinet
office over the use of the word ‘royal’ overseas, the Duke and Duchess of
Sussex do not intend to use ‘Sussex Royal’ or any iteration of the word ‘royal’
in any territory (either within the UK or otherwise) when the transition occurs
spring 2020,” said a statement.
Their
failure to agree a hybrid role within the royal family – performing some royal
duties while also working on outside projects – is also a source of regret.
They wrote:
“While there is precedent for other titled members of the royal family to seek
employment outside of the institution, for the Duke and Duchess of Sussex a
12-month review period has been put in place.”
|
The Queen doesn't own the word 'Royal', say Prince Harry and Meghan Markle: Couple complain about their treatment in lengthy statement after Her Majesty forces them to drop Sussex Royal brand
Buckingham Palace told Harry and Meghan not to employ
the name when they are no longer working royals
Duke and Duchess said neither the government nor the
Queen herself have 'jurisdiction' over the word 'royal'
Even so, they would not use title from spring onwards
as they are no longer working members of the family
Significant blow for couple, who have spent hundreds
of thousands building Sussex Royal-branded website
Trademark applications, covering items from clothing
to stationery and bandanas, were filed under the brand
By JEMMA
CARR and JAKE HURFURT and JACK ELSOM FOR MAILONLINE
PUBLISHED:
19:36, 21 February 2020 | UPDATED: 11:05, 22 February 2020
The Duke
and Duchess of Sussex have posted an extraordinary statement on their website
claiming that the Queen does not own the word royal across the world after they
were forced to drop their 'Sussex Royal' brand.
Harry and
Meghan put a new statement on their own website hours after announcing they
would stop using the word 'royal' in their branding after the Spring.
In the
statement, the Duke and Duchess said that while neither the government nor the
Queen herself own the word 'royal' internationally, they would stop using the
title.
The
statement read: 'While there is not any jurisdiction by The Monarchy or Cabinet
Office over the use of the word "Royal" overseas, The Duke and
Duchess of Sussex do not intend to use "Sussex Royal" or any
iteration of the word "Royal" in any territory (either within the UK
or otherwise) when the transition occurs Spring 2020.'
The
statement continued: 'While there is precedent for other titled members of the
Royal Family to seek employment outside of the institution, for The Duke and
Duchess of Sussex, a 12-month review period has been put in place.
'Per the
agreement The Duke and Duchess of Sussex understand that they are required to
step back from Royal duties and not undertake representative duties on behalf
of Her Majesty The Queen.'
They also
confirmed that their office - based in Buckingham Palace - would be closed, a
move they said was 'saddening for The Duke and Duchess and their loyal staff'.
The
announcement follows the Daily Mail’s revelation this week that Buckingham
Palace had told Harry and Meghan not to employ the 'Sussex Royal' name when
they are no longer working royals.
It is a
significant blow for the couple, who have spent tens of thousands of pounds
building the Sussex Royal-branded website and creating a hugely popular
Instagram feed.
In an
unprecedented legal move, the queen has drafted in top lawyers in a bid to
enforce the ban.
A string of
trademark applications, covering items from clothing and books to stationery
and bandanas, were withdrawn.
It comes
after MailOnline yesterday revealed that Meghan has told friends there is
nothing 'legally stopping' her and Harry from using their Sussex Royal name.
Meghan
complained to her inner circle that using the name 'shouldn't even be an issue
in the first place and it's not like they want to be in the business of selling
T-shirts and pencils,' the insider said.
They added:
'Meghan said she's done with the drama and has no room in her life for
naysayers, and the same goes for Harry.'
The friend
added: 'Meghan said the global projects they are working on speak for
themselves and they chose that name to protect the royal name, not profit off
of it.'
But, the
insider added: 'Meghan has told her inner circle that their success is
inevitable with or without their current brand name.
'She said
regardless of the name, Harry and Archie have royal blood and no one can take
that away. And that as a family, they will always be considered royalty.'
Harry and
Meghan are in the process of setting up a new charitable organisation after
their split in August last year from the Royal Foundation Charity, which they
shared with the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge.
The pair
wanted to use Sussex Royal branding but a new name will now have to be found.
Meghan's
friend added: 'Meghan said the name of their brand pales in comparison to the
foundation they are building and the enormously positive impact it will have on
people and the environment.'
Losing the
name is the latest humiliation for the couple who announced last month they
were stepping down as senior royals and moving to North America.
The pair
have already agreed to give up their HRH titles for work purposes, and their
official patronages on behalf of the queen, including Harry’s honorary military
titles.
Complicated
negotiations concluded that it was untenable for them to use the word ‘royal’
in their branding.
A spokesman
for the Sussexes said last night: ‘While the Duke and Duchess are focused on
plans to establish a new non-profit organisation, given the specific UK
Government rules surrounding use of the word “Royal”, it has been therefore
agreed their non-profit organisation, when it is announced this spring, will
not be named Sussex Royal Foundation.
‘The Duke
and Duchess of Sussex do not intend to use Sussex Royal in any territory
post-spring 2020.
‘Therefore
trademark applications that were filed as protective measures, acting on advice
from and following the same model for The Royal Foundation, have been removed.’
Harry and
Meghan first began using Sussex Royal this time last year after they split
their household from that of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, known as
Kensington Royal.
The
Sussexes’ Instagram page, @sussexroyal, has amassed 11.2million followers – the
same number of fans as William and Kate’s account.
But the
Mail revealed this week that the Queen and senior officials had decided the
couple would have to drop their name.
A source
told the Mail at the time: ‘In many ways this is inevitable given their
decision to step down.
‘But it
must surely come as a blow to the couple as they have invested everything into
the Sussex Royal brand. The Queen would have had little choice, however.
‘The
Sussexes’ original plan – of being half-in, half-out working royals – was never
going to work.
‘Obviously,
as the Queen has made clear, they are still much-loved members of her family.
‘But if
they aren’t carrying out official duties and are now seeking other commercial
opportunities, they simply cannot be allowed to market themselves as royals.’
Harry and
Meghan announced on Wednesday that they will step down as working royals in
less than six weeks and close their Buckingham Palace office.
The
statement Harry and Meghan sent to the press
'As shared
in early January on this website, The Duke and Duchess of Sussex do not plan to
start a "foundation", but rather intend to develop a new way to
effect change and complement the efforts made by so many excellent foundations
globally.
'The
creation of this non-profit entity will be in addition to their cause driven
work that they remain deeply committed to.
'While The
Duke and Duchess are focused on plans to establish a new non-profit
organisation, given the specific UK government rules surrounding use of the
word 'Royal', it has been therefore agreed that their non-profit organisation
will not utilise the name "Sussex Royal" or any other iteration of
"Royal".
'For the
above reason, the trademark applications that had been filed as protective
measures and that reflected the same standard trademarking requests as done for
The Royal Foundation of The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, have been removed.
'While
there is not any jurisdiction by The Monarchy or Cabinet Office over the use of
the word 'Royal' overseas, The Duke and Duchess of Sussex do not intend to use
"Sussex Royal" or any iteration of the word "Royal" in any
territory (either within the UK or otherwise) when the transition occurs spring
2020.
'As The
Duke and Duchess of Sussex continue to develop their non-profit organisation
and plan for their future, we hope that you use this site as the source for
factual information.
'In Spring
2020, their digital channels will be refreshed as they introduce the next
exciting phase to you.
'The Duke
and Duchess of Sussex eagerly await the opportunity to share more with you and
greatly appreciate your support!'
The
statement went on: 'Based on the Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s desire to have a
reduced role as members of The Royal Family, it was decided in January that
their Institutional Office would have to be closed, given the primary funding
mechanism for this official office at Buckingham Palace is from HRH The Prince
of Wales.
'The Duke
and Duchess shared this news with their team personally in January once they
knew of the decision, and have worked closely with their staff to ensure a
smooth transition for each of them.
'Over the
last month and a half, The Duke and Duchess have remained actively involved in
this process, which has understandably been saddening for The Duke and Duchess
and their loyal staff, given the closeness of Their Royal Highnesses and their
dedicated team.'
They will
take part in six more engagements before formally withdrawing from frontline
roles on March 31.
Their final
official engagement is expected to be on March 9, when they will join the Queen
at Westminster Abbey to mark Commonwealth Day.
The
statement also addressed the controversy surrounding the cost of the Duke and
Duchess's security.
Protection
for Meghan and Harry is estimated to cost taxpayers in Canada and the UK
between £3million and £6million a year, as staff work round the clock two weeks
at a time.
The statement
read: 'It is agreed that The Duke and Duchess of Sussex will continue to
require effective security to protect them and their son.
'This is
based on The Duke’s public profile by virtue of being born into The Royal
Family, his military service, the Duchess’ own independent profile, and the
shared threat and risk level documented specifically over the last few years.
Friday, 21 February 2020
FIVE TIMES Evelyn Waugh / Watch Five Videos below in the blog.
 |
FIVE TIMES Evelyn
Waugh
Was Evelyn Waugh
a "snobbish misanthrope" ?
FIVE VIDEOS below
SEE ALSO:
In the
course of his lifetime, Waugh made enemies and offended many people; writer
James Lees-Milne said that Waugh "was the nastiest-tempered man in
England". Waugh's son, Auberon, said that the force of his father's
personality was such that, despite his lack of height, "generals and
chancellors of the exchequer, six-foot-six and exuding self-importance from
every pore, quail in front of him".
In the
biographic Mad World (2009), Paula Byrne said that the common view of Evelyn
Waugh as a "snobbish misanthrope" is a caricature; he asks: "Why
would a man, who was so unpleasant, be so beloved by such a wide circle of
friends?" His generosity to individual persons and causes, especially
Catholic causes, extended to small gestures; after his libel-court victory over
Nancy Spain, he sent her a bottle of champagne. Hastings said that Waugh's
outward personal belligerence to strangers was not entirely serious but an
attempt at "finding a sparring partner worthy of his own wit and
ingenuity". Besides mocking others, Waugh mocked himself—the elderly
buffer, "crusty colonel" image, which he presented in later life, was
a comic impersonation, and not his true self.
As an
instinctive conservative, Waugh believed that class divisions, with
inequalities of wealth and position, were natural and that "no form of
government [was] ordained by God as being better than any other". In the
post-war "Age of the Common Man", he attacked socialism (the
"Cripps–Attlee terror") and complained, after Churchill's election in
1951, that "the Conservative Party have never put the clock back a single
second". Waugh never voted in elections; in 1959, he expressed a hope that
the Conservatives would win the election, which they did, but would not vote
for them, saying "I should feel I was morally inculpated in their
follies" and added: "I do not aspire to advise my sovereign in her
choice of servants".
Waugh's
Catholicism was fundamental: "The Church ... is the normal state of man
from which men have disastrously exiled themselves." He believed that the
Catholic Church was the last, great defence against the encroachment of the Dark
Age being ushered in by the welfare state and the spreading of working class
culture. Strictly observant, Waugh admitted to Diana Cooper that his most
difficult task was how to square the obligations of his faith with his
indifference to his fellow men. When Nancy Mitford asked him how he reconciled
his often objectionable conduct with being a Christian, Waugh replied that
"were he not a Christian he would be even more horrible".
Waugh's
conservatism was aesthetic as well as political and religious. Although he
praised younger writers, such as Angus Wilson, Muriel Spark and V.S. Naipaul,
he was scornful of the 1950s writers' group known as "The Movement".
He said that the literary world was "sinking into black disaster" and
that literature might die within thirty years. As a schoolboy, Waugh had
praised the art of Cubism but soon abandoned his interest in artistic
Modernism. In 1945, Waugh said that Pablo Picasso's artistic standing was the
result of a "mesmeric trick" and that his paintings "could not
be intelligently discussed in the terms used of the civilised masters". In
1953, in a radio interview, he named Augustus Egg (1816–1863) as a painter for
whom he had particular esteem.[n 7] Despite their political differences, Waugh
came to admire George Orwell, because of their shared patriotism and sense of
morality.
Throughout
his literary works, Evelyn Waugh freely expressed racial and anti-semitic
prejudices, especially in the books he wrote before the Second World War. The
writer V.S. Pritchett said that Waugh's anti-semitism, "like Mount
Everest, is there, nonviolent, but undeniable". Wykes said that
anti-semitism is Waugh's "most persistent nastiness", adding that
Waugh's racism was "an illogical extension of his views on the naturalness
and rightness of hierarchy as the [main] principle of social
organisation". As an admirer of Waugh's writing, Orwell said that Evelyn
Waugh was "almost as good a novelist as it is possible to be ... while
holding untenable opinions".
|
(…) Evelyn
Arthur St. John Waugh was born in a suburb of London in 1903, the son of a busy
man-of-letters. Waugh's origins were gentlemanly but in no way aristocratic, a
point he seems to have been inordinately touchy about even as a boy. He was
sent to Lancing, one of England's less fashionable public schools; and from
there he won a scholarship to one of Oxford's decidedly less fashionable
colleges. At Oxford, however, his wit, good looks, and resolute preference for
the elite carried him into the company to which he aspired. There is a striking
portrait of him at this time in Harold Acton's Memoirs of an Aesthete: "I
still see him as a prancing faun, thinly disguised by conventional apparel. His
wide apart eyes, always ready to be startled under raised eyebrows, the curved
sensual lips, the hyacinthine locks of hair, I had seen in marble and bronze at
Naples ..." Other Oxford contemporaries have spoken of him in a harsher
vein: "A bitter little man" -- "A social climber."
After two
years, Waugh voluntarily left Oxford without a degree, and, like Paul
Pennyfeather of Decline and Fall, took a job in a school for backward boys.
Later, he worked for sixteen days on Lord Beaverbrook's Daily Express. His
ambition was to be a painter, but a stint at art school left him dissatisfied
with his talent. At this time, he has said, he was a pagan and "wanted to
be a man of the world" -- a well-rounded English gentleman in the
eighteenth-century tradition. He joined in the whirl of Michael Arlen's
Mayfair. He "gadded among savages and people of fashion and politicians
and crazy generals ... because I enjoyed them." But he was a worldling who
could relish all this and still find it wanting. In 1930, after instruction
from the celebrated Father D'Arcy, Waugh entered the Catholic Church.
A few
months earlier, his marriage to the Honorable Evelyn Gardner had ended in
divorce. In 1937, he married again. His second wife was a Catholic: Laura,
daughter of Lieutenant-Colonel The Honorable Aubrey Nigel Henry Molyneux
Herbert, second son of the Earl of Carnarvon.
For nine
years, Waugh had traveled often and widely, by preference to wild places. The
best parts of the four travel books written during this period were later
reprinted in When the Going Was Good, and they are still lively reading. One is
periodically reminded, however, that Waugh's touch is surer and more sparkling
when he is using these same materials in his comic novels.
At the
outbreak of the war, Waugh joined the Royal Marines, and later, as a Commando,
took part in a succession of desperate actions in which he became famous for
his phenomenal courage. Years earlier, when Waugh had taken up foxhunting, his
recklessness had awed even veterans.
Waugh is
now settled at Piers Court in a secluded part of Gloucestershire, from which he
occasionally makes sorties to his London clubs. "I live in a shabby stone
house," he wrote in Life, "in which nothing is under a hundred years
old except the plumbing, and that does not work. I collect old books in an
inexpensive, desultory way. [His major avocation is the study of theology.] I
have a fast emptying cellar of wine and gardens fast reverting to jungle. I
have numerous children [three girls and two boys] whom I see once a day for
ten, I hope, awe-inspiring minutes."
A few years
back Randolph Churchill said of Waugh: "He grows more old-fashioned every
day. He seeks to live in an oasis." Waugh himself has affirmed with pride
that he is "two hundred years" behind the times, and that there is no
political party in existence which he finds sufficiently (in the strictly
literal sense of the word) reactionary. He has refused to learn to drive a car.
He writes with a pen which has to be continually dipped in the inkwell. And he
prefers to communicate even with his neighbors by written message rather than
resort to the telephone. A literary friend of Waugh's once delivered a
summation which neatly reflects the tenor of the anecdotes about him. As nearly
as I recall, it went: " Oh, I adore Evelyn. He's so frightfully witty and
so fearfully rude. Terribly conceited, of course -- and, poor sweet, rather
ridiculous. But such a good writer!"
COMPLETE
rejection of the modern world is the source from which springs the best and the
worst in Evelyn Waugh's writings. The artist who repudiates the realities of
his time must of necessity either work in the ironic key, as Waugh did in his
earlier novels which transmute repudiation into blandly destructive laughter;
or, if dissatisfied with a negative criticism, he must offer alternatives to
the status quo which can be taken seriously. But when Waugh abandons the
detached stance, when he seriously articulates his opinions and attitudes, the
results are often distressing, and sometimes disastrous.
His fierce
nostalgia for medievalism represents (as he himself recognizes) a yearning for
an irretrievably lost cause; and as social criticism, it is therefore merely
frivolous or petulant. Moreover in the Catholic content of his novels to date,
there has been little accent on religious experience such and a really shocking
absence of that human compassion which is so much a part of the Catholic
spirit. (What ounce of compassion Waugh can muster is reserved for the few who
meet with his approval.) In fact, the Catholicism of Waugh's fiction -- it is
not, of course, his faith which is under discussion, but his expression of it
-- is inextricably bound up with worship of the ancient. British nobility, so
laden with contempt for "lesser breeds without the law," that the Church
is made to appear a particularly exclusive club rather than a broad spiritual
force.
At his best
-- that is, when he remains detached -- Waugh is the finest comic artist to
emerge since the late 1920s. His style is swift, exact, almost unfailingly
felicitous. His inventions are entrancing; his timing inspired; his
matter-of-fact approach to the incongruous produces a perverse humor that is
immensely effective. Even that ancient comic device -- the use of suggestive
names -- is boldly put to work by Waugh with the happiest results. Mr. Outrage,
the leader of His Majesty's Opposition; Mrs. Melrose Ape, the phony evangelist;
Lord Copper, the press tycoon; Lady Circumference, Captain Grimes, Viola Chasm,
Ambrose Silk -- their names bespeak their nature.
Behind the
extravagant facade of Waugh's burlesques, manners and social types are observed
with a dazzling accuracy. The Bright Young People are illuminated with a glow
which spotlights the fantastic -- but they are profoundly "dans le
vrai." The Ministry of Information passages in Put Out More Flags are, of
course, a parody; but I can vouch from firsthand experience that the parody is
solidly founded in truth. In countless scenes throughout Waugh's farces, a
lapidary phrase or incident brings home with terrible directness the tragic
quality in the lives of his frivolous, gaily cockeyed, or unscrupulous
characters. Waugh's cosmos is, in the literal sense, funny as hell.
Like Eliot,
Waugh looked out on the world around him and saw it as a wasteland. His
temperament and special gifts led him to transfigure the wasteland into a
circus, within whose tent we are treated to a riotous harlequinade. But every
so often the flap of the tent is blown open; a vista of the wilderness
intrudes; and the antics of the clowns suddenly appear, as poor Agatha Runcible
would say, "too spirit-crushing."
This core
of tragic awareness gives to Waugh's comic vision the dimension of serious art.
The paradox, in fact, is that when Waugh is being comic, he makes luminous the
failures of his age, confronts us vividly with the desolating realities; and
when he is being serious, he is liable to become trashy. For without the
restraints of the ironic stance, his critical viewpoint reveals itself as
bigoted and rancorous; his snobbery emerges as obsessive and disgusting; and
his archaism involves him in all kinds of silliness.
WAUGH'S
first novel, Decline and Fall (1928), depicts a world in which villainy has the
innocence of man's primeval state before The Fall. The story opens on the night
of the annual orgy of Oxford's most aristocratic dining club: "A shriller
note could now be heard from Sir Alastair's rooms; any who have heard that
sound will shrink from the recollection of it; it is the sound of the English
country families baying for broken glass."
Paul
Pennyfeather, a colorless young man reading for Holy Orders, is debagged by the
rowdies and then expelled by the authorities for indecent exposure. Presently
he is taken up by an immensely wealth young widow, whose fortune comes from a
far-flung chain of bordellos; and when the police get on her track. Paul goes
to prison for white slavery, and the lady marries a Cabinet Minister. The fun
is incessant and the comic portraiture is pure delight, especially the hugely
disreputable schoolmaster, Captain Grimes, and the inventive butler-crook
Philbrick -- in his plushier moments Sir Solomon Philbrick, tycoon. Decline and
Fall is an unqualified success.
Vile Bodies
(1930) is almost as good. The combination of calamitous happenings and gay
insouciance is marvelously sustained as the story follows the Bright Young
People in their giddy dance through the condemned playground. But the farce,
now, has grimmer overtones; and the climax finds Adam on history's greatest
battlefield, clutching a bomb for the dissemination of leprosy.
Waugh's
next novel had its origin in the "crazy enchantment" of a visit to
Addis Ababa for the coronation of Haile Selassie. The Abyssinia of the early
thirties -- with its ancient Christianity and its enduring barbarism; its
strivings to be modern, frustrated by picturesque ignorance and limitless
inefficiency; its motley foreign colony, authentic savages, and wily promoters,
big and small -- provided Waugh with materials ideally suited to his talents,
and he worked them into what some critics consider the most amusing of his
novels, Black Mischief (1932).
A Handful
of Dust (1934), the most somber of the comic novels, is memorable for its
horrifying ending: the hero finds himself trapped in the recesses of the
Amazonian jungle, condemned to spend the rest of his life reading Dickens to a
cunning madman. In the next two books, Waugh's violent prejudices show their
hand. His biography of the Catholic martyr, Edmund Campion -- in many respects
a distinguished performance -- is marred by a partisanship which flagrantly
distorts Elizabethan history. Waugh in Abyssinia (1936) -- the product of an
assignment as a war correspondent -- is simply a piece of Fascist propaganda.
Strangely enough, the Ethiopian setting is again fictionally handled in Scoop
(1937) with the same detached zest as in Black Mischief. There is perhaps no
more uproarious burlesque of the workings of the press.
Put Out
More Flags (1942), a novel about phony war period, reintroduces Waugh's finest
pirate-hero, Basil Seal, more ingeniously iniquitous than ever. His use of
three loathsome evacuee children as a source of blackmail is just one of
several episodes in the book which are Waugh at his best. The story ends with
Basil's volunteering for the Commandos -- there was "a new spirit
abroad." The war apparently aroused in Waugh high hopes that victory would
open the way to return to Britain's former greatness. His deep and bitter
disillusionment at its actual outcome probably explains, at least in part, the
marked difference in temper between his pre-war and his post-war fiction.
Brideshead
Revisited (1945) is a romantic evocation of vanished splendors, which brings
into dismal relief the aridity of the present. In the first part, in which the
narrator reverts to his youth at Oxford, Waugh's artistic sense seldom falters.
Ryder's discovery of a magic world of freedom and intoxicating pleasures
through his friendship with Sebastian, the younger son of a noble and wealthy
Catholic family, and the accompanying contrast between the dryness of Ryder's
home life and the charm of the Marchmains -- these passages are among the most
memorable that Waugh has written. But, in the second part -- Ryder's unhappy
marriage and love affair with Sebastian's sister; Sebastian's descent into
alcoholism; Lord Marchmain's irregular and resplendent life in Venice, and his
death in his ancestral home -- those failings of Waugh's which were discussed
earlier run riot. And, as they take command, the characterization grows unreal,
the atmosphere becomes sententious, the style turns overripe.
Charles
Ryder is shaken out of his ill-mannered anti-Catholicism when the dying Lord
Marchmain, who has lived outside the Church, makes a sign indicating his
consent to receiving the final sacrament. But Ryder has been portrayed as so
insensitive to religion and so sensitive to the prestige of great families that
one is left, as Edmund Wilson has observed, with an uneasy feeling that it was
not "the sign" that made Ryder kneel beside the deathbed, but the
vision of this Catholic family's greatness conjured up in Lord Marchmain's
earlier monologue: "We were ... barons since Agincourt; the larger honors
came with the Georges ..." (and so on).
The Loved
One (1948) is one of Waugh's most savagely amusing books. As a lampoon on the
mortuary practices of Southern California, it is a coruscating tour de force.
When, however, the satire reaches out to other aspects of American folkways, it
is sometimes either hackneyed or crudely exaggerated. The trouble is that Waugh
can no longer maintain the same innocence of observation as in the pre-war
farces. The éclat of his performance in The Loved One is slightly marred by
traces of spite, and smudges of acid snob-distaste for all things American.
"There is no such thing as an American," he wrote in an explanatory
note about the book. "They are all exiles, uprooted, transplanted and
doomed to sterility."
Men at Arms
(1952), the first volume of an unfinished trilogy about military life during
World War II, describes Guy Crouchback's period of training for a commission in
the Halberdiers. Crouchback is a lonely, frustrated man, revolted by the modern
age, and the regiment -- with its proud traditions, its esprit de corps, its
rituals, its severe discipline and taxing duties -- restores to him a
vitalizing sense of dignity and purpose. The novel is written throughout in a
much lower key than Brideshead Revisited. Its major characterizations are
impressive; and though neither dramatic nor particularly moving, it is a very
polished and readable work. Its great weakness is that Waugh treats with
respectful admiration materials tinged with the ludicrous, which call for the
saving grace of irony.
Waugh's
latest book, Tactical Exercise (Little, Brown, $3.75), is a collection of short
fiction which more or less spans his writing career and is very varied in
range. It is probably better entertainment than any of the other books of its
kind that have just come off the presses; but there is not much in it that is
near to the top of Waugh's form.
One item is
unquestionably unique: an edifying melodrama, entitled "The Curse of the
Race Horse," which Waugh composed when he was seven; the spelling, which
foreshadows Waugh's genius for bold improvision, is utterly delectable.
"Excursion Into Reality" gives the movies the treatment Waugh gave
the press in Scoop. "'Love Among the Ruins" is Waugh's nightmarish
vision of the brave new world; but his total incompetence as a sociologist
makes this fantasy a nursery effort compared with those of Huxley and Orwell.
The most interesting item in this volume, "Work Suspended," consists
of the two chapters of a novel which Waugh abandoned in 1941, and which has
certain intriguing affinities with the book that took its place: Brideshead
Revisited.
Now
fifty-one, Evelyn Waugh has published twenty-two books. Considering the high
quality of his artistry, it is a remarkable output. He has himself defined,
with a characteristic touch of belligerence, the direction in which he plans to
move: "In my future books there will be two things to make them unpopular:
a preoccupation with style and the attempt to represent man more fully, which,
to me, means only one thing, man in his relation to God." It sounds as
though, from, now on, the "serious" side of Waugh will fully take
command.
However
laudable Waugh's objectives, I find it impossible to discount the evidence that
he has chosen a course which runs counter to his special gifts as an artist.
From the comic standpoint, Waugh's less amiable traits are actually an asset.
Arrogance, snobbery, and contentiousness -- when they work hand in hand with
irony -- are a corrosive solvent to satire. The religious writer requires at
least four qualities of which Waugh has so far displayed only one. Faith he
has; but little compassion and no humility -- and in his entire work there is
not a single truly convincing trace of love.
“Evelyn
Waugh: The Best and the Worst”
Thursday, 20 February 2020
The Pea Coat
A pea coat
(or peacoat, pea jacket, pilot jacket, reefer jacket) is an outer coat,
generally of a navy-coloured heavy wool, originally worn by sailors of European
and later American navies. Pea coats are characterized by short length, broad
lapels, double-breasted fronts, often large wooden, metal or plastic buttons,
and vertical or slash pockets. References to the pea jacket appear in American
newspapers at least as early as the 1720s, and modern renditions still maintain
the original design and composition.
A bridge
coat is a pea coat that extends to the thighs, and is a uniform exclusively for
officers and chief petty officers. The reefer jacket is for officers and chief
petty officers only, and is identical to the basic design but usually has gold
buttons and epaulettes. Only officers wear the epaulettes.
Today the
style is considered a classic, and pea coats are worn by all manner of
individuals. The style has evolved to the addition of hoods.
A few of
the jackets seen on the street are genuine navy surplus; being a classic
garment, it is frequently available from retailers, though often with small
design changes that reflect the current fashion trends. The standard for
historical pea coats was 30 ounces (approx. 850 g) wool, most often made of
heavy Melton cloth through the 1970s in the U.S. Navy. Presently coats are made
from 22–32 oz (620–910 g) wool. While pea coats are offered in many colors by
retailers, the US Navy-issue pea coat is dark blue.
A black
leather version of the reefer jacket was worn by Kriegsmarine U-Boat officers
during World War II, including Admiral Dönitz. It was also worn with a peaked
cap by Red Army commissars,tank commanders and pilots.
According
to a 1975 edition of the Mariner's Mirror, the term pea coat originated from
the Dutch or West Frisian word pijjekker or pijjakker, in which pij referred to
the type of cloth used, a coarse kind of twilled blue cloth with a nap on one
side. ’’Jakker’’ designates a man’s short, heavy, coat.
Another
theory, favoured by the US Navy, is that the heavy topcoat worn in cold,
miserable weather by seafaring men was once tailored from "pilot
cloth" – a heavy, coarse, stout kind of twilled blue cloth with the nap on
one side. This was sometimes called P-cloth from the initial letter of pilot,
and the garment made from it was called a P-jacket – later a pea coat. The term
has been used since 1723 to denote coats made from that cloth.
Tuesday, 18 February 2020
Chillingham Castle
Its current owners market the castle as being the most haunted castle in Britain. It has been investigated on television, Most Haunted, I'm Famous and Frightened!, Scariest Places On Earth, Holiday Showdown, Alan Robson's Nightowls), The ParaPod, Ghost Hunters International, and A Blood Red Sky (2013). Some of these ghosts are referred to in a 1925 pamphlet by Leonora, Countess of Tankerville. Others, such as John Sage, are of more recent invention.
The most famous ghost of the castle is the "blue (or radiant) boy", who according to the owners used to haunt the Pink Room in the castle. Guests supposedly reported seeing blue flashes and a blue "halo" of light above their beds after a loud wail. It is claimed that the hauntings ceased after renovation work revealed a man and a young boy inside a 10-foot-thick (3.0-metre) wall. Documents dating back to the Spanish Armada were reportedly also found within the wall.
A large
enclosed park in the castle grounds is home to the Chillingham cattle, a rare
breed, consisting of about 90 head of white cattle. The castle is a Grade I
listed building.
The castle
was originally a monastery in the late 12th century. In 1298, King Edward I
stayed at the castle on his way to Scotland to battle a Scottish army led by
William Wallace. A glazed window in a frame was specially installed for the
king, a rarity in such buildings at the time.
The castle
occupied a strategically important location in medieval times: it was located
on the border between two feuding nations. It was used as a staging post for
English armies entering Scotland, but was also repeatedly attacked and besieged
by Scottish armies and raiding parties heading south. The site contained a
moat, and in some locations the fortifications were 12 feet (3.7 metres) thick.
The
building underwent a harsh series of enhancements, and in 1344 a Licence to
crenellate was issued by King Edward III to allow battlements to be built,
effectively upgrading the stronghold to a fully fortified castle, of
quadrangular form.
Anne of
Denmark and her children stayed in the castle on their way to London on 6 June
1603. In 1617, James I, whose reign unified the crowns of England and Scotland
(James I of England was also James VI of Scotland), stayed at the castle on a
journey between his two kingdoms. As relations between the two countries became
peaceful following the union of the crowns, the need for a military stronghold
in the area declined. The castle was gradually transformed; the moat was
filled, and battlements were converted into residential wings. A banquet hall
and a library were built.
In the 18th
and 19th centuries, the grounds underwent landscaping, including work carried
out by Sir Jeffry Wyattville. The once extensive park is now under a separate
ownership from the castle.
The Prince
and Princess of Wales stayed at Chillingham Castle en route to Scotland, in
1872.
Great hall,
used as a filming location for Elizabeth. The fireplaces are film props.
During the
Second World War, the castle was used as an army barracks. During this time,
much of the decorative wood is said to have been stripped out and burned by the
soldiers billeted there. After the war, the castle began to fall into
disrepair. Lead had been removed from the roof, resulting in extensive weather
damage to large parts of the building.
In 1982,
the castle was purchased by Sir Humphry Wakefield, 2nd Baronet, whose wife
Catherine is descended from the Greys of Chillingham, and Wakefield set about a
painstaking restoration of the castle.
In 1997,
the castle was used as a filming location for Elizabeth, featuring as Leith
Castle and as the hunting lodge.[6] The fibreglass fireplaces from the film
remain in the great hall, covering 18th century white marble fireplaces from
Wanstead House.
As of 2020,
sections of the castle are open to the public including for late night ghost
tours, and eight apartments within the castle and its outbuildings are
available for holiday rentals.
Monday, 17 February 2020
Fizz and Sparkle: The Effervescent Life of Deborah, The Dowager Duchess ...
The
youngest of the legendary Mitford sisters reminisces about her life and her
correspondence with the charismatic Sir Patrick Leigh Fermor, considered to be
the finest English travel writer of his generation. An evening filled with wit,
eccentric characters, and a celebration of courage and friendship. Charlotte
Mosley, her niece and editor, joins the Dowager Duchess in conversation.
SEE ALSO;
https://tweedlandthegentlemansclub.blogspot.com/2014/09/last-mitford-sister-deborah-dowager.html
AND ALSO:
https://tweedlandthegentlemansclub.blogspot.com/2014/09/the-mitford-sisters-video-bellowthe.html
SEE ALSO;
https://tweedlandthegentlemansclub.blogspot.com/2014/09/last-mitford-sister-deborah-dowager.html
AND ALSO:
https://tweedlandthegentlemansclub.blogspot.com/2014/09/the-mitford-sisters-video-bellowthe.html
Interview
The Duchess of Devonshire: 'When you are very
old, you cry over some things, but not a lot'
Stephen
Moss
The
Duchess of Devonshire, youngest of the Mitford sisters, talks about meeting
Hitler and why she doesn't like change
Stephen
Moss @StephenMossGdn
Fri 12 Sep
2014 14.24 BSTFirst published on Fri 12 Sep 2014 14.24 BST
'Oh, you're
punctual – how very unusual," says Deborah Cavendish (AKA the Dowager
Duchess of Devonshire) as she enters the drawing room. I'm not sure whether I'm
being congratulated or castigated; either way, I feel she has the advantage,
one she never loses. I was already nervous about this encounter. The duchess
has just published her memoirs, and journalists are not spared. She describes
how, after she had talked about the deaths of four close friends in the second
world war, a particularly dumb interviewer asked her, "So, did the war
change you?" She also says in the book that you should never believe anything
you read in newspapers. As well as representing the dodgy fourth estate, I'm
also wondering whether I'm supposed to call her Your Grace.
The duchess
says she embarked on her memoirs because she felt her family, and her parents
in particular, had been portrayed unfairly in the media, with journalists
working from ancient press cuttings. At 90, she wanted to put her version of
her upbringing on record. And what an upbringing it was. Debo, as she is called
by people who eschew titled formalities, is the last surviving member of the
six Mitford sisters, an afterthought (or so she implies in the book), dismissed
because her parents had wanted a second son, patronised by her glittering
sister Nancy, overshadowed by the fame (or notoriety) of Jessica, Diana and
Unity. Her memoir – called Wait For Me! because she says she was always running
to catch up with her older, longer-legged siblings – is a touching, funny
memorial to a vanished age of debutantes, balls and young men with fancy titles
making the ultimate sacrifice on the battlefield. She only started to write in
her 60s – first about the ancestral seat of Chatsworth, then more generally –
but belatedly she is catching her writerly sisters up.
Her life
has been remarkable, and only her languid, laconic, matter-of-fact style allows
her to shoehorn it into 370 pages. There is enough here for a dozen books. She
must be one of the few people to have met both Adolf Hitler and John Kennedy,
has been a familiar of the Queen for her entire reign, and was related by
marriage to Harold Macmillan and used to go shooting with him. "When he
became prime minister [in 1957, having previously been chancellor]," she
tells me apropos of nothing in particular, "he told me it was wonderful
because at last he had time to read." She laughs. Her sense of humour and
recognition of the absurdities of life are apparent throughout both her book
and our conversation, bearing out her friend Alan Bennett's remark:
"Deborah Devonshire is not someone to whom one can say, 'Joking apart . .
.' Joking never is apart: with her it's of the essence, even at the most
serious and indeed saddest moments."
She may
have deemed my punctuality worthy of remark because she lives in the middle of
nowhere, in a hamlet called Edensor on the Chatsworth estate in Derbyshire. The
duchess occupied Chatsworth itself, perhaps England's finest country house,
until the death of the 11th duke in 2004. Soon afterwards she moved about a mile
away, to a vicarage on the edge of the estate, far enough from the house to
give her son Stoker (nicknames are important in these circles – his real name
is Peregrine), the 12th duke, and his wife Amanda, the new duchess, room to
breathe. Dowagers have to know their place, and recognise their moment in the
sun has passed. Nothing, she emphasises, belongs to the person; it all goes
with the title. "I've lived in furnished rooms all my life since I was
married."
Her final
set of rooms are in the Old Vicarage at Edensor, which she occupies with her
butler Henry, who has been with the Devonshires for almost 50 years, an
ultra-efficient secretary called Helen, who has been with her for almost 25,
and large numbers of chickens, pictured on the cover of her book. She
enumerates the several breeds she keeps, and seems a little disappointed that I
am unaware of the differences. Another dumb journalist who will probably
confuse a Derbyshire redcap with a Scots dumpy.
We talk in
the drawing room, silent save for the ticking of the clock on the mantelpiece.
Her piercing blue eyes unnerve me, though she tells me towards the end that,
because of macular degeneration, she can barely make out my face. That also
makes reading virtually impossible, and it is remarkable that she has managed
to write this book, scribbled in bed early in the mornings ("I wake up
very early – I love the shipping forecast at 5.20"), with Helen typing it
up. Her hair is steely grey and voluminous; she is elegantly dressed in high-necked
blouse, lemon cardigan and sensible skirt; on her left wrist, beside her watch,
she has a band with a small red disc that I mistake for a bracelet; she tells
me it is an alarm in case she has a fall, but that she likes to pretend the red
button she has to activate is a ruby.
I begin by
asking her to recount her meeting with Hitler in 1937, when she, her mother and
her sister Unity (who was besotted with the Führer) took tea with him in
Munich. In the book she recalls him noticing they were "grubby" after
a journey from Vienna, and showing them to the bathroom, where he had brushes
inscribed "AH". She has a passion – and a talent – for details.
"I didn't know Hitler," she tells me. "I only went to tea with
him once. He was very fond of my sister Unity." She starts recounting the
meeting, but soon gets bored. "The story's been told so often I think it's
pretty old hat." She would almost certainly rather talk about chickens.
Her sister
Unity was an enthusiastic Nazi; her other sister Diana married Sir Oswald
Mosley, had extreme views on race, and spent part of the second world war in
Holloway prison because she was deemed a threat. I suggest that in her memoir,
she is a little kind to both, given their views. "Quite kind?" she
says incredulously. "I adored them. I really loved them both. When we got
old, I liked Diana better than any other person in the world." So she
accepted their politics? "Their politics were nothing to do with me. The
same with my sister Jessica." Jessica, who spent most of her adult life in
the US and is best known for her book The American Way of Death, was a
communist and civil rights campaigner. "She was as outlandish as any of
them," says the duchess.
I ask her
why the Mitfords have exercised such perennial fascination. "I can't imagine,"
she says in her very deliberate, almost regal drawl. "I know it sounds
stupid to say that, because I realise they were good writers. All Nancy's books
are in print again. She would have been amazed at me writing this book because
she thought I was completely half-witted. She called me 'Nine' [Debo's supposed
mental age], and used to introduce me to her smart French friends long after I
was married by saying, 'This is my little sister aged nine.'"
The sisters
were educated at home, because their mother didn't believe in exams, and Debo
spent most of her time hunting, skating – she was good enough to encourage
interest from professional coaches – and going fishing with her father Lord
Redesdale, an eccentric who only read one book in his life, Jack London's novel
White Fang, and enjoyed it so much he didn't believe it could be bettered. Her
father – handsome, fearless, irascible – is the central presence in the book,
and no doubt the figure who shaped his dangerous, disputatious daughters.
"Farve either liked you or he did not," she writes. "There was
no middle way. My mother sometimes tried to reason with him, but reason was not
part of his makeup."
The deaths
of her friends in war are not the only bereavements in the book. She had three
children who died within hours of her giving birth. Her first child, who was
born 10 weeks premature, died in 1941, the year in which she had married Andrew
Cavendish, second son of the 10th Duke of Devonshire. "It was in the war
and people were thinking of other things, so it was skated over by everyone as
a fact of life. But it was an awful blow for Andrew and myself. Then there were
two more, but for different reasons. They were just a few hours old." How
did she cope? "How can you not? You've got to if you're faced with these
things. Life had to go on in an ordinary way."
Reawakening
the ghosts of her past for the book gave her no pain. "When you are very
old, you accept what has happened. You cry over some things, but not a lot.
It's too distant. It's as if part of you gets nearer to it yourself, and then
you think the churchyard here [in Edensor] is very handy, whereas Andrew [her
husband] had to come all the way from Chatsworth. Paddy Leigh Fermor [the
writer and one of her greatest friends, now 95] insisted on walking behind his
coffin. Well, he won't have very far to walk for me." Lucian Freud, who
has painted her on several occasions, is another close friend. "I see him
when I go to London and I leave him eggs on the doorstep. He seems to like
that. I really love him and I always have."
She
realises she is a survivor, but she doesn't want to be seen as an anachronism,
and another journalist gets it in the neck for calling her a "lilac relic
of bygone days". But as befits a duchess (and someone who has little
interest in politics), she proudly proclaims that she has voted Conservative
all her life and inveighs against change. She dislikes the modern obsession
with health and safety, and mourns the decline of the English language, the
destruction of the postal service and the disappearance of Punch. But she
accepts modernity is not all bad, welcoming the advances in dentistry.
"You've no idea what it was like when we were children," she says.
"It was like going to a torture chamber."
Why are you
a Conservative, I ask her, which later I think may be a stupid question, given
that the Devonshires own Chatsworth, thousands of acres of the Derbyshire
countryside, a castle in Ireland, and half a dozen other residences. "I
like conserving things," she says circularly. "I like people to stay
as they are, though I know they can't." Stumblingly, I point out that at
the Guardian we do not wholly approve of dukes, duchesses and other feudal throwbacks.
How does she justify them? Her answer is characteristically lateral.
"There are two retired head gardeners here," she says, "both of
whom have done 50 years at Chatsworth, and they are just such extraordinary
people that if you could sit and talk to them you would learn some things that
you would never have known. They are just wonderful, and it's really the
company of them and the people who work on the farms that I like best of
all."
She says
time-honoured hierarchies are better than faceless modern conglomerates; the
600 or so people employed at Chatsworth know who they should moan at if things
go wrong. "There's always been access to the top here. There's a human.
You can laugh at them, you can dislike them, but they're there."
When she
married Andrew Cavendish, as the second son he did not expect to become duke,
but his older brother was killed in the second world war and he inherited. I am
intrigued to know whether at some point the duchess, this regal persona, took
over from the real person. "I was very unconscious of it, because I've
been a duchess for so long, more than half my life. And now it's become rather
unfashionable to have a title of any sort. If you are one, how can you tell how
other people feel when they meet one?" What did her sister Jessica, the
communist, think of her becoming a duchess? "She thought it was very
comical. She takes people as she finds them." I like the way she slips
into the present tense when describing a sister who has been dead for 14 years.
We have
been talking for more than an hour and I fear she may be tiring. Are you OK to
carry on, I ask her? "Yes, very happy," she says, "but haven't
you had enough?" I laugh at the way she says this, as if the interview is
a boxing match. I learn later from the photographer that she was disappointed I
failed to floor her with a killer question, which irks me because I thought I
had plucked up the courage to ask one.
In the
book, she describes her husband's alcoholism and how that almost ended their
marriage in the 80s. But she doesn't mention his infidelities, widely hinted at
elsewhere. Was he unfaithful, I ask her? "Oh yes, of course," she
says. So why didn't you write about his affairs in the book? "It wasn't my
aim to write about them," she says. "People are so odd in England
about marriage and what it means. It's not something I would dream of writing
about, because it seems to happen to everybody, so what of it? Sex and money
are all that interest the press." She describes her memoir as "an
antidote to Lord Mandelson's" – a book born of loyalty and love.
I don't get
a strong sense of her husband in the book, and ask her to describe him.
"He was quick and funny and sharp as a razor, and had great love for his
friends. He may have been difficult at times, but he was never boring."
Not being boring is important to her. A dull marriage would be unthinkable. "You
know how you can't listen to someone who is very dull?" she says. "At
least I can't." Now my terror is complete. I know I am boring her. "I
love you being terrified," she says. "That's so funny."
She would
probably go on all afternoon, but we get into a dispute about the date of the
Countryside Alliance march in London and consult her secretary, so the
drawing-room door is opened and the world intrudes. The contest is over, and I
have been soundly defeated by this 90-year-old who retains the grace on the ice
she had as a child. She asks Henry to offer me drinks. I hear her telling him
he needn't put his jacket on to serve them, but he insists on doing so, not
wishing to change the habits of a lifetime. He is about to retire, but will
stay on for two days a week at the dowager's request. Not, I suspect, because
she needs a butler, but because she is so attached to him as a person. People.
Those tricky things that get in the way of political theories. Yes, we must
sweep away centuries of privilege, but I do hope Henry, Debo and her chickens
survive.
Why the
Enduring Fascination with the Mitford Sisters Won’t Die
What
explains the endless obsession with six British socialites of a bygone era?
Probably their beauty, wit, eccentricity . . . and epic split over Hitler’s
rise.
BY JAMES
WOLCOTT
APRIL 29,
2016
In those
footloose days when I thought little of popping off to London once or twice a
year to pad around Piccadilly and catch the latest shows, I found myself at a
new musical called The Mitford Girls. Why I chose that concoction over so many
other marquee-blazers remains a muddle and a mystery, my awareness of the
Mitford clan and their fabled rap sheet being somewhat sketchy. Perhaps it was
the Brideshead Effect that prompted me. The lavish mini-series adaptation of
Evelyn Waugh’s elegiac postwar romance, Brideshead Revisited—starring Jeremy
Irons, Anthony Andrews, Diana Quick, Claire Bloom, and Laurence
Olivier—premiered within a week of The Mitford Girls’ opening in 1981, and the
sumptuous trappings and muffled intrigues of the landed nobility made for a
cultural moment that had everyone abuzz then and has endured, all the way up to
Downton Abbey. Anyway, there I was. It was not an evening in the theater to
bring Kenneth Tynan springing out of retirement. What I recall through the
fogbank of jet lag is that the musical started off on a fishy note with the six
sisters (like the Andrews Sisters, times two) greeting the audience onstage
with a harmonizing “Thanks for the Memory,” a song so familiar as Bob Hope’s
sign-off that planting it here seemed like borderline larceny. Other numbers
included piano-bar perennials (such as Cole Porter’s cheeky “Let’s Do It”), the
entire score a pastiche of paste diamonds dressing up a script heavy on hubbub
and girlish antics until things went darker in Act II, when Adolf Hitler made
an appearance. The Mitford Girls ran only a few months, not simply because it
was creaky but because not even the Brideshead Effect in lilac bloom could
salvage the Mitford mystique from looking spindly, dated, played-out—or so I
halfway figured.
Wrong. The
Mitford cult not only survived the 20th century but has made a spirited go of
it in the 21st with no sign of becoming winded. What was known as the Mitford
Industry in its heyday has not slowed production, even after the deaths of the
six sisters, as individual and group biographies (coming this September, The
Six: The Lives of the Mitford Sisters, by Laura Thompson), docudramas,
documentaries, reminiscences, volumes of letters, and even a self-help title
(The Mitford Girls’ Guide to Life, by Lyndsy Spence) quench an apparently
unslakable thirst for Mitford lore. The Mitford sisters have become the stuff
of myth, a glittering constellation no matter how much tarnish remains. Why? It
can’t be just because the Bloomsbury cult ran out of gas.
For the
sake of clarity, not to mention sanity, let’s fill out the lineup card first.
Scion of an aristocratic family that traced its heritage back to the Norman
Conquest, David Freeman-Mitford, who would become Baron Redesdale, and his
wife, Sydney, bestowed upon the world six daughters—in order of birth, Nancy,
Pam, Diana, Unity, Jessica, and Deborah—and a son, Tom. They grew up in a
series of country houses and cottages where their eccentricities and
enthusiasms flowered like orchids. Only the son was formally schooled (owing to
finances as much as to male entitlement—the Mitfords were socially privileged
but not economically flush); the girls’ education was a more spotty, haphazard
affair, with their mother and an array of governesses teaching lessons in
reading, arithmetic, and French, leaving big blanks in the curriculum. Left to
their own madcap devices, the girls formed a tribal bond, speaking their own
slanguage and minting a clattering thicket of nicknames for their parents (Dad
was Farve, Mum was Muv), one another (Unity was Bobo, Diana was Honks, Jessica
was Decca, Deborah was Debo, and so on), their nannies, governesses, menagerie
of pets, and anyone else who strayed across their radar. Although taken to
extremes by the Mitfords, with their “shrieks of laughter and floods of tears,”
as Nancy would later put it, this sort of upper-class twittering was very
common in the pre- and postwar eras among the smart set, as anyone who has
waded knee-deep through the footnotes explaining nicknames, barnacled in-jokes,
veiled allusions, and genealogical connections (who was whose idiot cousin) in
the biographies and journals of the period can wearily attest.
What
elevated the Mitfords above the prattle and privileges of their upbringing and
put their reputation on a collision course with history was the fissure in the
household between the two raging ideologies that would rip apart the 20th
century: Fascism and Communism. “When they talked about what they wanted to be
when they were grown-ups,” writes Mary S. Lovell in The Sisters: The Saga of
the Mitford Family, “Unity would say, ‘I’m going to Germany to meet Hitler,’
and Decca would say, ‘I’m going to run away and be a Communist.’ ” And so they
did. Flighty as they might have appeared, the Mitford girls did not lack for
follow-through.
In 1933,
Unity and Diana traveled to Germany as delegation members of the British Union
of Fascists, whose chrome-domed leader was Oswald Mosley, with whom Diana was
having an affair—both were married to others at the time—and whom she would
later secretly marry in the home of Nazi propaganda maestro Joseph Goebbels
with Adolf Hitler among the guests. To many, Mosley resembled a knockoff
version of Hitler, the black moon to Hitler’s black sun, but he possessed his
own magnetic exertion. Decades later, Clive James, writing about a television
interview with Mosley, observed, “As always, the streamlined head of Sir Oswald
looked simultaneously ageless and out of date, like some Art Deco metal
sculpture recently discovered in its original wrappings. Nor have his vocal
cords lost anything of their tensile strength.” Where Hitler had his
Brownshirts busting chops and smashing glass, Mosley recruited his own
paramilitary band of bullyboys, the Blackshirts, which the sainted P. G.
Wodehouse would parody as the Black Shorts in The Code of the Woosters. Mosley
wasn’t the demonic orator Hitler was. He lacked the infernal throb. Attending
the Nuremberg rally on their 1933 visit, Unity and Diana saw Hitler in
oratorical action for the first time, and he more than lived up to advance
billing. The spectacle was spellbinding, the message drum-pounding. Compared
with the maundering walruses running England and Europe downhill, here was a
man who had dynamized, industrialized, and mobilized a nation—destiny
incarnate.
A year later,
Unity, reborn in the spirit of fanaticism, alighted in Munich, took a
German-language course near the Nazi Party headquarters, and put out her
feelers for an opportunity to meet her hero. Didn’t take long. In 1934,
Hitler’s movements and routines were well known, and one of the frequent stops
was a restaurant, the Osteria Bavaria, which Unity staked out. They soon met—he
couldn’t help but notice her—and into his orbit she was drawn. It wasn’t just
that she was young, attractive, English, self-possessed, and shared his vision.
Hitler was steeped in superstition, susceptible to portents, and here was
Unity, who was conceived in a Canadian town called Swastika and whose middle
name was Valkyrie, in honor of Richard Wagner. (There was a family connection to
Wagner and Bayreuth through her grandfather Bertie.) According to Unity’s
careful tabulations, she met Hitler on 140 occasions, their flirty friendliness
causing great distress to Hitler’s mistress, Eva Braun, who attempted suicide
to swerve Hitler’s attention back her way, which it did. Braun was probably
never in serious danger from Unity as a romantic rival. Unity was too
uninhibited and tongue-flapping. Secrets weren’t safe with her, which would
never do in the tense, pin-drop deliberations of the Nazi high command.
It’s become
somewhat customary to contemporize Unity’s behavior as that of a groupie
supplicating herself before a rock deity, a crush gone supernova, but Unity
wasn’t content to pay homage offstage. She craved her own stardom. She snapped
a Nazi salute before thousands at a Hitler Youth rally (for which Hitler
awarded her a gold swastika badge that she swanked around in) and wrote an open
letter to Der Stürmer, the scurrilous anti-Semitic propaganda rag edited by the
surpassingly odious Julius Streicher, which ended, “We think with joy of the
day when we shall be able to say with might and authority: England for the
English! Out with the Jews!,” then added a PS in which she asked that her whole
name, not her initials, be used. “I want everyone to know I’m a Jew hater.” And
as a Jew hater, what befell the Jews didn’t disturb a hair on her head. “We
know she thought Streicher’s act in making Jews crop grass with their teeth
amusing, and that she approved when a group of Jews were taken to an island in
the Danube and left there to starve,” writes Lovell in The Sisters.
Despite
Unity’s mad devotion to Hitler, she insisted that if Germany and Britain went
to war she would commit suicide. She couldn’t bear the prospect of the two
countries she loved shedding each other’s blood. This wasn’t a verbal pose. As
I say, the Mitford girls had follow-through. When Britain declared war on
Germany in 1939 after Hitler’s invasion of Poland, Unity went to the English
Garden in Munich, took the small pistol Hitler had given her for her
protection, pressed it to her temple, and fired. The bullet lodged in her
brain, but she survived—she had somehow bungled the self-hit. She was spirited
off to neutral Switzerland, where her mother and Debo retrieved her and returned
to England to an understandable firestorm of flashbulbs and tabloid snoops. Why
was this little Fascista given such special, protective treatment? Despite her
intimate proximity to Hitler and his trusted lackeys, Unity, brain-stricken,
was not searched or questioned, even after her faculties somewhat recovered,
thanks to the intervention of her father with the home secretary. She would
lead a placid, child-like half-life until the bullet residing in her brain led
to meningitis and she died, eight years later.
Sister
Diana wasn’t as lucky staying out of the clink. The outbreak of war led to a
sweep-up of the Fascists in England, and Oswald Mosley and Diana Mitford (who
had given birth to her fourth child weeks before) were arrested without charge
and interned for security purposes. Interviewed by authorities in prison, Diana
was asked if she agreed with the Nazi policy on Jews. “Up to a point,” she
replied. “I am not fond of Jews.” There were those who would later try to
extenuate this remark. In The House of Mitford, written by Jonathan Guinness
with Catherine Guinness, the authors deplore Diana’s statement. “One should
never condemn a whole group in this way. Yet we have never seen anyone taken to
task for saying they were not fond of, for example, Germans.” Given the
context, this is remarkably obtuse, not to mention tasteless.
The Nazi
divide made it impossible for the sisters to maintain a united front. As a
teenager, Decca had etched a hammer and sickle into her bedroom window with her
diamond ring, and her first husband, Esmond Romilly, was the antithesis of
Oswald Mosley: “Mosley with a red flag,” as Laura Thompson puts it in The Six.
So when Diana was finally released from prison, Decca petitioned Prime Minister
Winston Churchill, whose wife Clementine was a cousin to the Mitfords, to have
her put back in. “The fact that Diana is my sister doesn’t alter my opinion in
the least.” (It was Decca who, when confronted with Nancy’s affirmation that
“sisters are a shield against life’s cruel adversity,” riposted, “But sisters
ARE life’s cruel adversity!”) Unlike many who start out on the Communist left
only to sag sideways into religion or, worse, neoconservatism, she stayed put
as an upright underdog defender. Immigrating to the United States in 1939 and
making it her home base, Decca became an opponent of the Red Scare and a
crusading reporter on civil rights, but her American reputation rested less on
her political writings than on her best-selling muckraking book about the
funeral industry, The American Way of Death, and her memoir Hons and Rebels.
She became a doyenne of the Old New Left (the 60s radicals who had entered
middle age), defying the stereotype of the aging dour lefty by fronting a band
called Decca and the Dectones, who I’m sure whipped up quite an earful.
Of all the
Mitfords, Nancy is the one who means the most to me. (Pam is the most
inconspicuous and hence most uncharacteristic Mitford sister, though The House
of Mitford informs us that she would “become well known in the poultry world”
for importing “a picturesque breed of chicken” into Britain, and the poultry
world doesn’t accept just anybody.) Nancy is the one with the lasting literary
eminence—her comic novels (Christmas Pudding, The Blessing, Don’t Tell Alfred,
among others) a staircase rising to the twin pillars of The Pursuit of Love and
Love in a Cold Climate, a conjoined classic of beauty, wisdom, acuity, humor,
affection, and bruised worldliness, as close as one could get to Colette
without cats underfoot—and her life is in many ways the most poignant in its
final punctuation. Unity toyed with evil, but after she put the barrel to her
head, her life was a drawn-out anticlimax, her consciousness packed with
clouds. Nancy’s romantic disappointment was an extended letdown leading to
physical anguish. Falling in love with a French politician of Polish origin
named Gaston Palewski, she moved to Paris so that the two of them could be
together, and so they were, but they never married, and he was prolifically
unfaithful, eventually marrying an aristocrat whose name was an impressive
mouthful: Hélène Violette de Talleyrand-Périgord. The Horror of Love, the title
of a biographical study of the Mitford-Palewski liaison by Lisa Hilton, smacks
of melodrama, but it was a love unfulfilled. Suffering for years from headaches
and other ailments, Nancy was diagnosed in 1972 with Hodgkin’s lymphoma, and
the final six months of her life were a rack of pain. Diana, unrepentant to the
last for her adulation of Hitler, would outlive Nancy by 30 years, proof that
health and mortality are the most fickle monsters of all.
Debo, the
youngest, would outlive them all and give the real-life roman-fleuve of the
Mitfords the closest thing to a happy ending that it deserved. Treated as the
runt of the litter by her older, splashier sisters, who nicknamed her “Stubby”
because of her legs and “Nine” because that was the mental age Nancy said she
was stunted at, Debo would grandly come into her own after years of feeling
left behind. (Wait for Me! was the title of her memoir about Growing Up
Mitford.) At the age of 21, she married Andrew Cavendish, the second son of the
10th Duke of Devonshire. “An heir and a spare,” as the saying goes, and when
Andrew’s brother, Billy, who was married to John F. Kennedy’s sister Kick, died
in action during the Second World War, Andrew would become the 11th Duke of
Devonshire, and Debo thereby the mistress of Chatsworth, a stately pile of 126
rooms with gardens covering more than a hundred acres, stables—the works. Quite
the emerald spread. (It was used as a location for Stanley Kubrick’s Barry
Lyndon.) Debo, who would die at the age of 94, nipping Diana’s longevity
record by a year, devoted herself to the preservation and promotion of
Chatsworth, writing book after book on the estate, an entrepreneurial Earth
Mother who named one of her memoirs Counting My Chickens, its cover showing her
holding a big clucker. The buoyant aplomb of her reign at Chatsworth in her
last decade as Dowager Duchess (her husband died in 2004) had a healing,
redemptive grace, as if the spirit of Demeter moved through her to repair some
of the damage done by her sisters’ association with destroyers and restore a
portion of paradise. Reichs rise and fall, sisters shriek and sob, beauty
fades, famous names come and go, and in the end ain’t nobody here but us
chickens.
 |
Love in a
Cold Climate is a 1980 British television series produced by Thames Television.
It is an adaptation of the Nancy Mitford novels The Pursuit of Love and Love in
a Cold Climate, set between 1924 and 1940, with a screenplay adaptation by
Simon Raven. It was originally broadcast on the ITV network in eight episodes.
The series starred Lucy Gutteridge, Rosalyn Landor, Michael Aldridge, Judi
Dench, Vivian Pickles, and Jean-Pierre Cassel.
|
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