Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-xbtfd Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-13T00:12:25.317Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Cecil Beaton's Romantic Toryism and the Symbolic Economy of Wartime Britain

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 December 2012

Martin Francis
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content.
Image of the first page of this content. For PDF version, please use the ‘Save PDF’ preceeding this image.'
Type
Articles
Information
Journal of British Studies , Volume 45 , Issue 1 , January 2006 , pp. 90 - 117
Copyright
Copyright © North American Conference of British Studies 2006

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Quoted in Garner, Philippe and Mellor, David Alan, Cecil Beaton (London, 1994), 45Google Scholar.

2 For a suggestive appraisal of the emergence of modern “celebrity,” Laura Nym Mayhall, “The Prince of Wales Encounters Clark Gable: Anglo-American Celebrity in the 1920s and 1930s” (paper given at North American Conference on British Studies, Portland, OR, October 2003).

3 For different perspectives on 1939–45 as a “People's War,” particularly the term's implication of a leveling effect on British society, see Calder, Angus, The People's War: Britain, 1939–1945 (London, 1969)Google Scholar; Smith, Harold L., ed., War and Social Change: British Society in the Second World War (Manchester, 1986)Google Scholar; Hinton, James, Women, Social Leadership and the Second World War: Continuities of Class (Oxford, 2002)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

4 Beaton, Cecil and Quennell, Peter, Time Exposure (London, 1946), 125Google Scholar.

5 Buckland, Gail, Cecil Beaton: War Photographs, 1939–1945 (London, 1981), 7, 9Google Scholar.

6 Strong, Roy, Beaton Portraits (London, 1968)Google Scholar; Danziger, James, Beaton (New York, 1980), 39–43Google Scholar. For a more nuanced reading of Beaton's wartime “transfiguring purgation,” see David Alan Mellor, “Beaton's Beauties,” in Garner and Mellor, Cecil Beaton, 45–51.

7 Vickers, Hugo, Cecil Beaton (London, 1985), 292–93Google Scholar.

8 Quoted in ibid., 248.

9 Beaton, Cecil, Near East (London, 1943), 43Google Scholar.

10 Beaton, Cecil, Photobiography (New York, 1951), 169–70Google Scholar.

11 Eley, Geoff, “Finding the People's War: Film, British Collective Memory, and World War Two,” American Historical Review 105, no. 5 (2001): 821Google Scholar.

12 Beaton, Cecil, The Best of Beaton (London, 1968), 113Google Scholar.

13 Williams, Tony, Structures of Desire: British Cinema, 1939–1955 (Albany, NY, 2000), 1–24CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

14 Rose, Sonya O., Which People's War? National Identity and Citizenship in Wartime Britain, 1939–1945 (Oxford, 2003), 69–70Google Scholar.

15 Ibid., 31.

16 Light, Alison, Forever England: Femininity, Literature and Conservatism between the Wars (London, 1991), 16Google Scholar.

17 Kirk, Russell, The Conservative Mind from Burke to Santayana (Chicago, 1953), 99–108, 232–43Google Scholar.

18 The Diaries of A. L. Rowse, ed. Ollard, Richard (London, 2003)Google Scholar; Ziegler, Philip, Mountbatten (New York, 1985)Google Scholar.

19 Cannadine, David, In Churchill's Shadow: Confronting the Past in Modern Britain (Oxford, 2003), 45–84Google Scholar.

20 Buchan, John, Greenmantle (London, 1916)Google Scholar; Mason, A. E., The Four Feathers (London, 1902)Google Scholar. For consideration of the imperial adventure narrative, see Green, Martin, Dreams of Adventure, Deeds of Empire (London, 1980)Google Scholar, and Dawson, Graham, Soldier Heroes: British Adventure, Empire and the Imagining of Masculinities (London, 1994)Google Scholar.

21 To take just a few examples, Orczy, Baroness, Adventures of the Scarlet Pimpernel (London, 1905)Google Scholar; Blackmore, R. D., Lorna Doone: A Romance of Exmoor (London, 1869)Google Scholar; Macaulay, Rose, They Were Defeated (London, 1932)Google Scholar; Bampfylde, Walter, The Road to Arcady: A Romance (London, 1917)Google Scholar; Broster, Dorothy Kathleen, The Flight of the Heron (London, 1925)Google Scholar; Smith, Eleanor, The Man in Grey: A Regency Romance (London, 1941)Google Scholar; Heyer, Georgette, The Corinthian (London, 1940)Google Scholar. For critical surveys of this genre, see Orel, Harold, The Historical Novel from Scott to Sabatini (Basingstoke, 1995)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Wallace, Diana, The Women's Historical Novel: British Women Writers, 1900–2000 (Basingstoke, 2005)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

22 Churchill, Winston S., A History of the English-Speaking Peoples, 4 vols. (London, 1956–58)Google Scholar; Feiling, Keith, A History of England (London, 1950)Google Scholar; Rowse, A. L., The Spirit of English History (London, 1945)Google Scholar; Bryant, Arthur, The Years of Endurance, 1793–1802 (London, 1942)Google Scholar, and English Saga, 1840–1940 (London, 1946)Google Scholar.

23 Light, Forever England, 8, 210–11.

24 Colls, Robert, Identity of England (Oxford, 2002), 315–16CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For further endorsements of an interwar revolt against “the romantic languages of national pride,” see Samuel, Raphael, “Exciting to be English,” in Patriotism: The Making and Unmaking of British National Identity, vol. 1, History and Politics, ed. Samuel, Raphael (London, 1989), xxii–xxvGoogle Scholar, and Grainger, J. H., Patriotisms: Britain, 1900–1939 (London, 1986), 318–61Google Scholar.

25 Colls, Identity of England, 126–27.

26 In this form, of course, romantic Toryism had potential affinities with fascism, intimations that also help to account for Beaton's eagerness to contribute to the war effort. For the complex contiguities between “progressive” aesthetic practice and “conservative” political ideology, see Hewitt, Andrew, Fascist Modernism: Aesthetics, Politics and the Avant-Garde (Stanford, CA, 1993), and Goslan, Richard J., ed., Fascism, Aesthetics and Culture (Hanover, NH, 1992)Google Scholar.

27 Richards, Jeffrey, The Age of the Dream Palace: Cinema and Society in Britain, 1930–1939 (London, 1984), 225–41Google Scholar.

28 The Unexpurgated Beaton Diaries, ed. Vickers, Hugo (London, 2003), 1–8Google Scholar.

29 Beaton, Cecil, The Years Between: Diaries, 1939–44 (London, 1965), 11Google Scholar.

30 Rose, Which People's War? 151–96.

31 Vickers, Beaton, 207–13.

32 Imperial War Museum London, Department of Photographs (IWM), CBM 1725. Images of several Beaton photographs, held by the IWM and discussed in this article, can be viewed online at http://www.iwm.org.uk.

33 Mellor, “Beaton's Beauties,” 9–45.

34 Mellor, “Beaton's Beauties”; Conrad, Peter, “Beaton in Brilliantia,” in Beaton Portraits, ed. Pepper, Terence (London, 2004), 170–97Google Scholar.

35 Beaton, Cecil, British Photographers (London, 1944)Google Scholar.

36 Vickers, Beaton, 237–39.

37 Beaton and Quennell, Time Exposure, 4.

38 Beaton, Years Between, 221–32.

39 IWM, CBM 2475.

40 Mellor, “Beaton's Beauties,” 47.

41 “The Uniform for the Job,” Vogue, January 1944, 44–45.

42 Vogue, August 1942, 23–30. See also Kirkham, Pat, “Fashioning the Feminine: Dress, Appearance and Femininity in Wartime Britain,” in Nationalising Femininity: Culture, Sexuality and British Cinema in the Second World War, ed. Gledhill, Christine and Swanson, Gillian (Manchester, 1996)Google Scholar.

43 Gallagher, Jean, “Vision, Violence and Vogue: War and Correspondence in Lee Miller's Photography,” in her The World Wars through the Female Gaze (Carbondale, IL, 1998), 68–93Google Scholar; Conekin, Becky E., “Lee Miller and the Limits of Post-war British Modernity: Femininity, Fashion and the Problem of Photography,” in Fashion and Modernity, ed. Breward, Christopher and Evans, Caroline (Oxford, 2005), 39–61Google Scholar.

44 Richard Busvine, “Out East,” Vogue, November 1942, 81.

45 “A Paris Chapter,” Vogue, February 1945, 42–43, 80, 85; Beaton, Cecil, The Happy Years: Diaries, 1944–48 (London, 1972), 3–37Google Scholar.

46 Moreover, recent work on another World War Two photographer has suggested that “documentary realist” is itself a problematic term. See Stephen Brooke, “War and the Nude: The Photography of Bill Brandt in the 1940s,” in this issue.

47 IWM, IB 2439C.

48 IWM, CBM 2480 and CBM 2484; Beaton, Near East, 57.

49 Douglas, Keith, Alamein to Zem Zem (London, 1946), 7–8Google Scholar.

50 Beaton, Photobiography, 154–56.

51 For example, “Official Photographer,” Vogue, October 1942, 50–53.

52 IWM, D 65, DB 179, DB 191.

53 Beaton, Cecil, Air of Glory (London, 1941), 8Google Scholar; author's emphasis.

54 Buckland, War Photographs, 16.

55 Beaton, Years Between, 60–61, 234–35.

56 “Time of War,” Vogue, November 1940, 62.

57 Beaton, Near East, 27–29.

58 See, e.g., his discussion of “Photographing Royalty,” in Photobiography, 187–218.

59 Mellor, “Beaton's Beauties,” 54.

60 Cannadine, David, “The Context, Performance and Meaning of Ritual: The British Monarchy and the ‘Invention of Tradition,’ c. 1820–1977,” in The Invention of Tradition, ed. Hobsbawm, Eric and Ranger, Terence (Cambridge, 1983), 134–50Google Scholar.

61 Chips: The Diaries of Sir Henry Channon, ed. James, Robert Rhodes (Harmondsworth, 1970), 330Google Scholar.

62 Quoted in Vickers, Beaton, 268.

63 Dyer, Richard, “It's Being So Camp as Keeps Us Going,” in his The Culture of Queers (London, 2002), 51–52Google Scholar.

64 Beaton, Cecil, Winged Squadrons (London, 1942), 6, 18Google Scholar; “Winged Squadrons,” Vogue, July 1941, 61.

65 Beaton, Near East, 43, 74–75.

66 Bowen, Elizabeth, The Demon Lover and Other Stories (London, 1952), 220Google Scholar. For a useful discussion of the artistic implications of individual versus collective during wartime, see Rawlinson, Mark, British Writing of the Second World War (Oxford, 2000), 30–38CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

67 Camus, Albert, The Rebel: An Essay on Man in Revolt, trans. Bower, Anthony (New York, 1978), 51–54Google Scholar. See also Breward, Christopher, “The Dandy Laid Bare: Embodying Practices and Fashion for Men,” in Fashion Cultures: Theories, Explorations and Analysis, ed. Bruzzi, Stella and Gibson, Pamela Church (London, 2000), 235–36Google Scholar.

68 For example, IWM, IB 2357.

69 Beaton, Years Between, 84.

70 Souhami, Diana, Greta and Cecil (London, 1999)Google Scholar.

71 David, Hugh, On Queer Street: A Social History of British Homosexuality, 1895–1995 (London, 1997), 74–98Google Scholar.

72 Vickers, Beaton, 147–56.

73 For the erotic preferences of middle-class gay men in this period, see Houlbrook, Matt, Queer London: Perils and Pleasures in the Sexual Metropolis, 1918–1957 (Chicago, 2005)Google Scholar.

74 Castle, Terry, Noel Coward and Radclyffe Hall: Kindred Spirits (New York, 1996), 1–2Google Scholar.

75 George Platt Lynes: Photographs from the Kinsey Institute, ed. Weber, Bruce (Boston, 1993)Google Scholar; Leddick, David, George Platt Lynes, 1907–1955 (Cologne, 2000)Google Scholar.

76 For a history of northern European gay men's attraction to the Mediterranean, see Aldrich, Robert, The Seduction of the Mediterranean: Writing, Art and Homosexual Fantasy (London, 1993)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

77 On Lawrence and Dahoum, see Aldrich, Robert, Colonialism and Homosexuality (London, 2003), 71–79Google Scholar.

78 Beaton, Years Between, 177.

79 IWM, CBM 1416.

80 Beaton, Years Between, 159.

81 Houlbrook, Matt, “Soldier Heroes and Rent Boys: Homosex, Masculinities, and Britishness in the Brigade of Guards, circa 1900–1960,” Journal of British Studies 42, no. 3 (2003): 364–71CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

82 See illustrations 18–20, 24–28, 58–59, 65, 73 in Buckland, War Photographs.

83 Beaton, Near East, 39, 40–41, 58.

84 IWM, IB 93, IB 619, CBM 1430.

85 Beaton, Near East, 87.

86 IWM, CBM 1499.

87 Beaton, Winged Squadrons, 30; Beaton, Years Between, 100.

88 That such preferences were shared by other gay men in this period is suggested by studies of gay male cinema icons. For example, Medhurst, Andy, “Dirk Bogarde,” in All Our Yesterdays: Ninety Years of British Cinema (London, 1986), 346–54Google Scholar. Also see his “Can Chaps Be Pin-Ups? The British Male Film Star in the 1950s,” Ten-Eight 17 (1985).

89 IWM, IB 291.

90 IWM, CBM 1174.

91 Buckland, War Photographs, illustration 82.

92 IWM, IB 3449C. My analysis here of the relationship between wounding and masculinity is derived from Scarry, Elaine, The Body in Pain: The Making and Unmaking of the World (New York, 1985)Google Scholar, and Jarvis, Christina S., The Male Body at War: American Masculinity during World War Two (DeKalb, IL, 2004)Google Scholar.

93 David, On Queer Street, 140–76; Waters, Chris, “Disorders of the Mind, Disorders of the Body Social: Peter Wildeblood and the Making of the Modern Homosexual,” in Moments of Modernity: Reconstructing Britain, 1945–64, ed. Conekin, Becky, Mort, Frank, and Waters, Chris (London, 1994), 137–40Google Scholar.

94 Rose, Which People's War? 239–84.

95 IWM, IB 726. For orientalism in photography and travel writing, respectively, see Ryan, James R., Picturing Empire: Photography and the Visualization of the British Empire (Chicago, 1998)Google Scholar and Pratt, Mary Louise, Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation (New York, 1992)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

96 Beaton, Cecil, India (London, 1945)Google Scholar, and Cecil Beaton's Indian Album (London, 1946)Google Scholar; Mellor, “Beaton's Beauties,” 48.

97 IWM, IB 349 and IB 1243.

98 For an unfortunate overstatement of the “analogues of hierarchy” between British and Indian elites, Cannadine, David, Ornamentalism: How the British Saw Their Empire (London, 2002), 41–57Google Scholar.

99 Dyer, Richard, “The Matter of Whiteness,” in Privilege: A Reader, ed. Kimmel, Michael S. and Ferber, Abby L. (Boulder, CO, 2003), 21Google Scholar.

100 Beaton Portraits, plate 67.

101 McClintock, Anne, Imperial Leather: Race, Gender and Sexuality in the Colonial Context (London, 1995)Google Scholar.

102 IWM, CBM 1334 and CBM 1005.

103 Beaton, Near East, 58.

104 Wexler, Laura, Tender Violence: Domestic Visions in an Age of US Imperialism (Chapel Hill, NC, 2000), 15–51Google Scholar.

105 Vickers, Beaton, 278–80.

106 Barthes, Roland, Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography, trans. Howard, Richard (London, 1982), 6Google Scholar.

107 Beaton, Cecil, Far East (London, 1945), 9Google Scholar.

108 This phrase is taken from Light, Forever England, 10.

109 Buckland, War Photographs, 28, and illustration 124.

110 IWM, IB 698. The contemporary ambience of Beaton's portrait concurred with the royal couple's attempts to reconcile the feudal traditions of Rajastahn with the democratizing impulses of Indian nationalism. See Devi, Gayatri, A Princess Remembers: The Memoirs of the Maharani of Jaipur (Delhi, 1976), 181–203Google Scholar.

111 Beaton, Near East, 100–101.

112 Cook, Pam, Fashioning the Nation: Costume and Identity in British Cinema (London, 1996), 29–31Google Scholar.

113 Whelehan, Imelda and Cartmel, Deborah, “Through a Painted Curtain: Laurence Olivier's Henry V,” in War Culture: Social Change and Changing Experience in World War Two, ed. Kirkham, Pat and Thoms, David (London, 1995), 49–60Google Scholar.

114 Christie, Ian, Arrows of Desire: The Films of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger (London, 1994), 52–55Google Scholar.

115 Aldgate, Anthony and Richards, Jeffrey, “The Englishman's Englishman,” in their Britain Can Take It: The British Cinema in the Second World War (Oxford, 1986)Google Scholar; Leventhal, Fred M., “Leslie Howard: Film Star as Propagandist, 1939–1943” (paper given at North American Conference on British Studies, Portland, OR, October 2003)Google Scholar.

116 Aldous, Richard, Tunes of Glory: The Life of Malcolm Sargent (London, 2002), 97–112Google Scholar.

117 Hoare, Philip, Noel Coward: A Life (New York, 1995), 306–55Google Scholar.

118 Beaton, Years Between, 118.

119 See Francis, Martin, “In Love and War: Military Leaders and the Male World of Feeling” (paper given at North American Conference on British Studies, Baltimore, October 2002)Google Scholar.

120 Morris, Richard, Guy Gibson (London, 1994)Google Scholar.

121 For an appraisal of how far the rhetoric of “meritocracy” in the armed services was matched by reality, Crang, Jeremy, The British Army and the People's War (Manchester, 2000)Google Scholar.

122 Lovat, Lord, March Past: A Memoir (London, 1978)Google Scholar.

123 Beaton, Photobiography, 139.

124 Beaton, Happy Years, 41–43.

125 Danziger, Beaton, 46–48.

126 Among a number of works that highlight growing public frustration with the extension of wartime collectivism and self-sacrifice into the postwar years, see Zweiniger-Bargielowska, Ina, Austerity in Britain: Rationing, Controls and Consumption, 1939–1955 (Oxford, 2000)Google Scholar, and Fielding, Steven, Thompson, Peter, and Tiratsoo, Nick, England Arise! The Labour Party and Popular Politics in 1940s Britain (Manchester, 1995)Google Scholar.

127 For the Coronation as “Janus-faced event,” see the editors' introduction to Conekin, Mort, and Waters, eds., Moments of Modernity, 1–2.