Hey there! Thanks for dropping by Cocktails With Elvira! Take a look around and grab the RSS feed to stay updated. See you around! I used to swim out to the rocks of the Villa Eilen, across the water and then recuperate on my mattress, hired for the season with its coffin sized slab of limestone. This is a feature of all sub-cultures, high and low. They are familiar to us today primarily through the early novels of Evelyn Waugh, the writings of Nancy Mitford and the plays and persona of Noel Coward.
The high-pitched loudness of the men, the camp theatricality, the baby-talk, the italicised stress on certain words, the fondness for invention and over-emphasis can be found in every representation of the group, from serious novels to the captions below Punch cartoons.
Even Cecil Beaton, hardly possessed of the most understated of tones, complained about the exaggerated squeals and shrieks of the men and women who arrived at his home one afternoon β at their centre was, inevitably, Brian Howard. Fenella Fielding carved a whole career in the s and s out of it, enlivening innumerable British comedy films with her innuendo-laden pastiche. Sophistication and sexiness were the aspects that Fielding emphasised, a direct legacy from Tallulah and her epigones.
The metallic harshness has other origins. Upper class authority plays a part, think barking at native servants or the hapless policemen abused by Elvira and others. Mostly, it, and the throatiness, were products of endless cigarettes, gallons of gin and, in some cases, drug use hence Brenda Dean Paul.
Brief as it is, this strikes me as just about as perfect a summation of character through dialogue as you could wish for. I have mentioned Brooke before and will do so again as his absence from the canon of BYP chroniclers puzzles me. I think a post on Eden Roc is also in order. It does not provide names Brenda Dean Paul, Arthur Jeffress and Sunday Wilshin were all still alive when the book appeared but it does give a good sense of the extravagance and excess of the occasion.
