The Exquisite origins of ‘Anthony Blanche’ – my dears!

(The mobile version of this feature got rather tipsy -  there's a more moderate helping here:https://medium.com/@nuromanca ) 

“Do you realise, Harold – please pay attention to this – that you and I are going to

 have a rather famous career at Oxford?”

It could so easily have been a line from Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh.

And so distinctly attributable to Blanche – should a prequel scene at Eton have arisen.

However the pledge was conveyed from one impending member of Waugh’s social set

(and fodder for future novels) to another. An elegant pair who would converge to form

“an aesthetic bugger who sometimes turns up in my novels under various names.” (1)

They were Harold Acton and Brian Howard: both of whom led a relatively rebellious

sixth-form existence. At a particular theatre performance:

“Brian and Harold walked into the stalls, in full evening dress, with long white gloves

 draped over one arm, and carrying silver-topped canes and top-hats, looking perhaps

 like a pair of Oscar Wildes.” (2)

Harold Acton in 1922

Brian Howard aged 12

Even earlier, “at the age of thirteen, he (Howard) seemed like a throwback to another era.

He was camp personified, a fop out of a Restoration comedy.” (3)

Howard descended on Oxford in 1923, a year later than Acton. Which left him unable to 

keep pace with Acton’s role, as leading aesthete. Instead, he became a slightly despotic 

arbiter of taste. As an incident spent adjusting the fringe of a fellow student would 

depict:

“My dear, you can’t think how démodé you look with that tumbling jonquil. So

 greenery-yallery. It just isn’t done these days. Where is your comb? … Inspect yourself

 now, my dear. It’s a vast improvement.” (4)

A compilation of writings published in 1968

Brian Howard’s own appearance happened to resemble that of fin de siecle dandy, Max

Beerbohm. A spectacle which would certainly have impressed Waugh but for

Howard’s flamboyant homosexuality in the 1920s:

“At the age of nineteen he had dash and insolence… a kind of ferocity of elegance that

 belonged to the romantic era of a century before our own. Mad, bad and dangerous to

 know.” (5)

As for Harold Acton, his cosmopolitan background invoked an impression of maturity –

despite being slightly younger than Waugh. (6) Indeed the latter was captivated:

“Evelyn hero-worshipped Acton. He would eventually dedicate his first novel to him ‘in

 homage and affection’. They were an unlikely pair… Acton was the leader and Evelyn

 the follower”. (7)

Harold Acton (left) with Evelyn Waugh on their rounds at Oxford 

Whereas Waugh (‘Charles Ryder’) was himself remembered by Acton as:

“a prancing fawn, thinly disguised by conventional apparel. His wide-apart eyes, always

 ready to be startled under raised eyebrows…” (8)

Blanche in dressed rehearsal

The first appearance of Waugh’s “aesthetic bugger” in a novel was as impresario

‘Johnnie Hoop’ in Vile Bodies. (9) As a period satire, the eccentricity of the characters

was absorbed into the absurdity of their devout decadence.

In Waugh’s later novel, Put Out More Flags, we meet 'Ambrose Silk', depicted as: 

“A pansy. An old queen. A habit of dress, a tone of voice, an elegant humourous

deportment… these had been his, and now they were the current exchange of

comedians”.

On this occasion Brian Howard was livid: “Evelyn Waugh has made an absolutely

vicious attack on me in his new novel Put Out More Flags.” (10)

And by 1945, it was Harold Acton’s turn to express “… pain, at the acrid memories of so

many old friends you have conjured”. (11)

Acton was privately referring to the publication of Brideshead Revisited – while

welcoming the novel on a literary level.

At a character level, 'Anthony Blanche' was presented as a vaguely sinister piece of

work. Although the affable Acton’s traits were abundantly present behind Blanche's 

outward style.

'Anthony Blanche' among the Bright Young People of the 1920s

It was Acton who recited poetry through a megaphone. (12) Acton who had been ducked

in a fountain by the infamous Bullingdon Club. And it was Acton’s visual signature that

animated Blanche:

“… he moved with his own peculiar stateliness, as though he had not fully accustomed

 himself to coat and trousers and was more at his ease in heavy, embroidered robes… ”

 (13)

‘A byword of iniquity’

When Blanche eventually appeared on television, Acton’s gait was captured explicitly.

Whereas the louche languor and exuberant speech were almost entirely on Howard (14)

The above scene may appear to invoke Acton and Howards’ dominance of The

Hippocrite’s Club (l5)

However ‘Lord Sebastian’ was distilled from club president Hugh Lygon and

Waugh’s lover Alistair Graham.

The 2008 film embarked on substantial reinvention of Waugh's novel. In Blanche, we 

hear neither Howard’s drawl, nor Acton’s lilt amidst the camp mannerisms. Perhaps 

rightfully so; for apocryphal entertainment to unfold with its own sense of originality.

In a 2017 interview for Chap magazine, actor Nickolas Grace recalls substantial script 

editing during production of the TV series. Eventually, he was advised, “Just go back to 

the book and any little chunks you like, just put them back in”. (16)

Nickolas Grace reprising his role as Anthony Blanche for Chap magazine (Autumn 2017 edition).
All rights reserved

A century later, Brian Howard may rest blissfully with the prophecy of his “rather 

famous career”... having brought infamous delight to generations.

1) The Letters of Evelyn Waugh Edited by Mark Amory (Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 

1980) – ‘To The Earl Baldwin', 14 March 1958

2) Portrait of a Failure: a biography of Brian Howard Edited by Marie-Jaqueline

 Lancaster (Anthony Blond Ltd, 1968) p122

The lives of Acton and Howard provided the basis of a scholarly exploration of the 

relationship between dandyism and aestheticism:  Children of the Sun: A narrative of 

'Decadence' in England after 1918, Martin Green (Constable, 1977)   

(3) Ibid

AnthonyPowell took a similar view in his memoirs: “Howard had the

 air of a pierrot out of costume.” To Keep the Ball Rolling (University of Chicago

 Press, revised edition 1983) p48

(4) Memoirs of an Aesthete, Harold Acton (Methuen & Co Ltd., 1948)

“At Oxford what ascendancy I have is because of the cut of my clothes – not my

 tongue.” Portrait of a Failure p139

5) A Little Learning (Chapman & Hall 1964) – Evelyn Waugh’s autobiography

" 'I think he became mad and bad', Sir Harold remarked to the present author, 'in the 

sense that he would let anyone down . . . and if he could get away man or woman from 

the person they were fond of, he would do so. He was completely amoral.' "

Evelyn Waugh: The Early Years (1903 - 1939), Martin Stannard (J.M Dent and Sons 

Ltd 1986)

6) “He had a vivid personality which would doubtless in any event have won him public

notice, but his special distinction was his foreign experience. A consequence of the war

was that the ordinary undergraduate of those years immediately after the armistice had of

course no experience of foreign travel.” Oxford in the Twenties, Christopher Hollis

(Heinemann 1976) p95

There were exceptions to the travel rule among Waugh’s “company that we knew as

Offal to distinguish ourselves from the upper class members of the College.” – The

Seven Ages, Christopher Hollis (Heinemann 1974) p46 

See: Cyril Connolly Journal and Memoir by David Pryce-Jones (Collins 1983)

7) Mad World: Evelyn Waugh and the Secrets of Brideshead, Paula Byrne (Harper

Press 2009)

8) Memoirs of an Aesthete Op Cit

“Although he was never able to afford the sartorial extravagances of the great dandies…

 Evelyn regularly overspent at Hall’s, the university tailors in the High.” Evelyn Waugh:

 A Biography, Selina Hastings (Minerva edition 1995)

9) The leading pansy (Waugh parlance) ‘Miles Malpractice’ was mostly derived from

 Stephen Tennant. Vile Bodies was eventually adapted by Stephen Fry, as the film

 Bright Young Things (2003).

10) Letter to his estranged German lover in May 1941 (Portrait of a Failure, p428)

It has been argued: “Although Howard’s irritation is understandable, the character

Waugh depicted in Put Out More Flags was, by all accounts, much more likeable and

sympathetic than his counterpart in real life”.

Evelyn Waugh’s Officers, Gentlemen, and Rogues: The Fact behind His Fiction, 

Gene D. Phillips (Nelson-Hall, Chicago 1975)

An undergraduate at Oxford who encountered Howard in the late 1930s provides some

lively recollections in the Evelyn Waugh Newsletter (Winter 1992)

11) Byrne Op Cit

Waugh defined his “aesthetic bugger” as essentially derived from “⅔ Brian ⅓ Harold

Acton” Waugh Letters Op Cit

12) “The most colourful member of our set was Harold Acton who, as a flamboyant

extrovert, astonished the world when, dressed without embarrassment in flaming colours,

he read his poems from his sitting-room window to the surrounding multitude through a

megaphone.” Hollis (1974) Op cit

13) Brideshead Revisited: The Sacred and Profane Memories of Captain Charles

 Ryder, Evelyn Waugh (Chapman and Hall 1945)

The description was excised from revised editions along with “you had only to mention

the name of your bootmaker for him to recommend an Armenian at Biarritz who catered

especially for fetishists, or to name a house where you had stayed, for him to describe a

palace he frequented in Madrid.”

Acton’s “swarthy” appearance is a further feature given to Blanche – in contrast to

Howard’s “chalk-white skin” Byrne Op Cit

14) In his autobiography, Waugh attempts to dispel the prevalence of Acton’s persona

in his works:

“There are characters in my novels – ‘Ambrose Silk’, ‘Anthony Blanch’ – whom people

to his annoyance and to mine, have attempted to identify with him. There are a few

incidental similarities. The novelist does not come to his desk devoid of experience and

memory. His raw material is compounded of all he has seen and done. But in neither of

the characters mentioned did I attempt a portrait of Harold.”

A Little Learning Op Cit

DuncanMaclaren reveals Waugh’s position was firmly disputed by contemporary

writer Nancy Mitford: 

“Having made something of a study of this, I have to correct Evelyn. Ambrose Silk may

indeed be 2/3 Brian and 1/3 Harold, but for Anthony Blanche the fractions are surely

reversed… Basically, Brian was only interested in himself, which is true of Ambrose

Silk. While Harold Acton was an intellectual, curious about the culture and society.

Which are main attributes of Anthony Blanche.”

See: Evelyn Waugh and Nancy Mitford and Evelyn Waugh and Harold Acton

Mitford’s scepticism is supported by Christopher Sykes in some depth. Of

Blanche, Sykes suggests: “His best moment in the book is when he gives the narrator a

talking-to about the danger to an artist of the English cult of charm. Harold Acton can be

imagined as saying the same things.”

Evelyn Waugh: A Biography, Christopher Sykes (Collins 1975)

15) “… they proceed to dazzle their friends and frighten their acquaintances; and they

are the only people I have ever met who have reduced rudeness to a fine art.”

An extract from the university magazine The Isis during 1924, reproduced in The 

Brideshead Generation: Evelyn Waugh and his Friends, Humphrey Carpenter (Faber 

and Faber, paperback edition 1989)

16) See also: The Oldie (Spring 2020)

The Evelyn Waugh Society 

John M. Gilheany

Freelance Copywriter based in South Wales, UK  

Try A dash of Tonic! sometime ✨