Bright Young People: a biased and superficial review

[mme_hardy]

Many good social histories are centered around a single person and use that person to throw light on their times and customs. These generally fall into one of the following categories:

• Person A, though little-remembered today, was an important influence on their community and friends.
• Person A, though forgotten today, left private papers that vividly illustrated aspects of everyday life.
• Person A, though well-remembered today, was at the center of events and (ideally) I have new research to bring on the subject.

I've read books I've enjoyed in all three categories. Then there's D.J. Taylor's Bright Young People: The Rise and Fall of a Generation. His central character is Elizabeth Ponsonby. She was not a writer, or an artist, or a wit, or somebody whose early promise was never filled. She was at the center of the Bright Young Things because her party concepts were ingenious and infamous. Elizabeth he was one of the co-devisors of the Bath and Bottle Party, held at St George's Swimming Baths, whose invitation instructed "Please wear a Bathing Suit and bring a Bath towel and a Bottle." Even if she didn't organize it, Elizabeth was always the life of any party. None of the other survivors of the period quote anything memorable she had to say, which, given the prolific memoirs available, suggests she didn't.

So. Why is this book centered on the life of Elizabeth Ponsonby? Her father was a comfortable but not wealthy Labour minister, and his and his wife's diaries and papers were made available to the author. That's it. Not only are we focused on a minor person in the period, but we're seeing her through the eyes of her parents, who were certainly not in the Bright Young Thing circle and in fact despised it. They thought Elizabeth was selfish, expensive, and dissolute, and despaired of her as she proceeded through wild parties, some sort of flamboyant sexual misbehavior (probably adultery), alcoholism, and a bad marriage to an embezzler. Few of Elizabeth's letters survive and she didn't keep a diary. Why are we looking at the period through her eyes? Because that's where the lamp-post is.

There is a secondary viewpoint character, the failed writer and successful alcoholic Brian Howard, who envisioned wonderful books but never actually got around to writing them. He did write diaries of his own, which are quoted, but I didn't find them engaging or enlightening. His own biography, which is supposed to be good, is called Portrait of a Failure, which pretty much sums it up.

When discussing other prominent characters in the period, the author draws on newspaper clippings from the social columns, or on the more famous participants' memoirs, letters, and novels. If you want to know what Beverley Nichols or Evelyn Waugh or Cecil Beaton, or the Mitfords, all of whom were everywhere and knew everybody, were up to, you might as well read their own witty writings, because everything in this book is quoted directly from them.

Note to self:  Why haven't you ever read Vile Bodies?

Comments

[ironed_orchid]

Read Vile Bodies. IT sounds like you will enjoy that so much more.

[nineveh_uk]

That sounds like a book I could comfortably avoid, I think.

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

The bright Young Things still sell books, I guess. (Maybe it's on its own, or because of tangential relation to the Mitfords, who are still bankable.)

[mme-hardy.livejournal.com]

It's a fascinating period, and you get all the vicarious pleasure of watching the young, rich, and beautiful spending money wildly. I just wish the author hadn't written such a surprisingly drab book.

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

Some of them didn't spend because they had nothing to spend, so they provided entertainment in other ways. Evelyn Waugh's diaries are fascinating--he was always broke, always desperate to be perceived as upper class, which he wasn't, and his tales of hard living during that period make it seem a lot less glamorous, and more frenzied, than many another account. The key thing to realize is that being drunk gave one permission to say and do whatever one wanted. Before one was safely drunk, style meant being buttoned up emotionally. You couldn't even admit to anger--instead you were bored.

[shaggydogstail.livejournal.com]

Totally tangental anecdote:

A friend at university was chair of the Human Rights Society and responsible for organising their big debate of the year, on the subject of gay rights. Being a provincial college it was hard to attract big-name speakers (though she did score Peter Tatchell, who was excellent) so she sent out a ton of invites. One of the few to accept was a relative of Elizabeth's, the current Lord Ponsonby. Cue panicked phone call from friend:

"Have you heard of Lord Ponsonby? He's coming to the gay rights debate and I can't remember if he's for or against!"

Hard to imagine now, but it was the early nineties and neither of us had more than the vaguest idea of what the internet even was. I suggested looking in Who's Who or asking his secretary for a statement to put on the adverts. Turned out he was pro, and was had been involved in a successful campaign to introduce a law against male rape, which had hitherto be prosecutable as buggery.

Even more of a tangent but funny:

During the debate a homophobic ex-Labour councillor angrily declared that he had "never practiced sodomy". At which point the burly Trotskyite sitting next to me stood up and demanded, "well, if you don't practice, how to you expect to be any good at it?"