Did you know that in the 1920s, long before Paris Hilton (can you believe there was a time B.S.T.-- Before Sex Tapes--?), London was a hotbed of sexual mania? And you thought Hemingway was having all the fun in Paris and the speakeasies had the best parties in New York.
According to a new book and the following awesome vintage photographs, Austin Powers was too late by about forty years...
According to the WSJ, the above photo is from a "Second Childhood" themed party-- which wouldn't be so creepy if it didn't wind up being a massive orgy:
And for those who think that freewheeling sex and drugs didn't come
into vogue until the advent of rock 'n' roll, these bright young people
might have said, "Well, my dear, the orgies," before tucking into the
heroin and cocaine that were as much in evidence in these circles as
face powder. But although this seamy side of the era occasionally
protruded into the public view in law courts and coroner's inquests,
for the most part what the public heard about was pranks, larks and
elaborate scavenger hunts -- outrageous fun, just enough to shock but
not to appall the great British public.
The Boston Globe adds in their review of the book, entitled "Bright Young Things: The Lost Generation of London's Jazz Age":
He discusses the group's connections, style, self-image, wherewithal,
employment, appetites, proclivities, and most notorious capers and
parties. But, in the end, he shows that the element that really made
them an entity, that defined and even created them, was the press.
Various newspapers took them up in gossip columns (some written by
Bright Young Persons themselves) and made of their exploits a
continuing saga with familiar, recurring figures chiefly for the
consumption of middle- and lower-middle-class readers. A life of a
Bright Young Person became, in print, a "faintly sinister frieze, in
which quiddity [was] reduced to idiosyncrasy."
Sound familiar? Wonder if your average gossip writer read the above story in yesterday's paper and had a change of heart.
The same Globe article mentions there's also a book out called "The Hell-Fire Clubs: Sex, Satanism and Secret Societies." Sadly, according to the review, it doesn't live up to its title.
The Bright Young People were also -- many of them -- part of a gay
subculture that had started at Eton and continued at Oxford. So these pages are filled with charming cross-dressers and
men who make up their faces and dither about it: One of them, who
became Lord Faringdon in his later years, was described by an irate
heterosexual as "a pansy pacifist of whose private tendencies it might
be slander to speak." Faringdon once addressed the House of Lords
as "my dears," instead of "my lords." This founding of a gay lifestyle
seems as political in its way as the controversy over California's
Proposition 8 is now. We don't want to do it your way, the Bright Young
People seemed to be saying. Look what your way got us into. We want to
do things our way and slip into our chiffon. [Washington Post]
Top image via the Boston Globe. Second image via the Wall Street Journal.
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