#theo aronson

[spiritundaunted]

‘There was something unique about the King’s home life,’ claimed Princess Alice, who had experienced the home lives of many generations of the royal family. ‘The four of them made a small, absolutely united circle. They shared the same jokes and they shared each other’s troubles.’

Princess Alice, Countess of Athlone, as quoted in The Royal Family at War, by Theo Aronson

[msclaritea]

The Gay Underworld of Late-Victorian London: Theo Aronson’s Book is a Landmark Study of Private Spaces at the Time of Oscar Wilde

In 1885, England criminalized all sexual relations between consenting adult males, no matter how private or quiet. So if you want a picture of London’s gay life around the 1895 trial of Oscar Wilde, you must descend into a shadowy underworld of protected spaces and passwords. This is where Theo Aronson guides us in his landmark study Prince Eddy and the Homosexual Underworld (Barnes and Noble, 1994).

The Prince Eddy of the title is one of history’s great might-have-beens. Prince Albert Victor, Duke of Clarence, was the handsome, dashing eldest son of Edward VII–the gay eldest son. Prince Eddy had all the skirt-chasing habits of his father, only for guys. When he died suddenly of typhus at age 29, the entire Royal establishment heaved a sigh of relief–and then destroyed all his papers. Prince Eddy was no more controllable than his father had been at that age, and had he lived he would have been, literally, the first openly gay Prince of Wales in English history.

So where did Prince Eddy go for fun? That’s the subject of this book. We start with telegraph boys. Victorians sent and received telegrams with the ease of emails, except that pickup and delivery came by means of comely young men who often didn’t mind a little extra income having sex with their male customers. Memoirs and letters of the period are full of affairs with such boys; Wilde’s boyfriend Lord Alfred Douglas practically specialized in collecting telegraph boys, and many of his friends followed suit.

The practice finally hit the fan in 1889 when one such, Charlie Swinscow, was seen carrying far more money than he was making at work. Officials were astonished at his frank answer: he and his buddies Henry Newlove and Charles Thickbroom doubled their income most nights at a male brothel at 19 Cleveland Street, one that specialized in bringing men together with delectable telegraph boys. Clients named went right to the top of society, most notably Lord Arthur Somerset, a friend of Prince Eddy. These toffs were discreetly allowed to escape to the Continent during the resulting furor; less prominent customers were less lucky.

Besides telegraph boys, there were The Guards, often mentioned in popular literature, plays, and films made later about this period. Between low pay and the relaxed attitudes of working class boys toward homosexuality, soldiers made very good prostitutes, and the fact that both parties in the transaction had something to lose helped keep a lid on blackmail. “Of course we all do it for money,” Aronson quotes one such. “We also do it because we really like it, and if gentlemen gave us no money, we should do it all the same.” Big, muscular, uniformed, clean, virile, and friendly–no wonder they were popular! The Horse Guards, barracked near Hyde Park, were the most famous unit participating in this trade. “One could hardly move among certain densely wooded areas of Hyde Park for soliciting Guardsmen…their weapons…in their hands,” Aronson quotes one contemporary.

Another place of resort was the Hundred Guineas Club off Portland Place, managed by a certain Mr. Inslip. For an annual membership of nearly $10,000 in today’s money, the well-to-do gay man was given a dreamlike play space for his double life. Members, guests, and staff rent-boys all dressed in drag and adopted women’s names. For much of the evening, gentlemen sipped champagne, eyed the staff choices, and engaged in decorous hand-holding, dancing, and small talk. At 2am, the lights were doused. “On no account, staff were warned, were they to reject any advance.” Until time was called at 6am, everyone paired off upstairs in gay oblivion. One rent boy who worked there “was careful…to appear at the club only two evenings a week for fear of being used up too soon.”

Although Aronson gets bogged down elsewhere in the book with theories that Prince Eddy was actually Jack the Ripper (still an unproved but popular hobbyhorse), where he sticks to the substance of the title, his book becomes an essential addition to the social history of the late Victorian period, and a great read as well.

X

[spiritundaunted]

King George VI, in a postscript to a letter to Lord Halifax, who was Ambassador to Washington:

‘We are getting short of a certain type of paper which is made in America and is unprocurable here. A packet or two of 500 sheets at intervals would be most acceptable. You will understand this, and its name begins with B!!!’

- from The Royal Family at War, by Theo Aronson

(Later edit: by "B", the King may have been referring to "Bronco", a toilet tissue that was popular at that time.)

[wingandapage]

I have recently been on a Queen Victoria kick. Over Christmas I finished "The Grandmama of Europe" by Aronson and Queen Victoria by Strachey. Lots is available on her free or cheap on Kindle or otherwise on the internet. She was really a rather fascinating and politically important person and so was Prince Albert, which I never quite realized before. If you are having trouble sleeping, I highly recommend Victoria's own (very popular) Leaves from a Journal of Our Life in the Highlands, in which she published excerpted (apparently unedited) her journals from trips to Scotland. It is mainly just description of what the royal family did (Vol 1 during her marriage) on its travels and is a great soporific, unless you get tickled at the hidden irony of Victoria commenting that this or that Lord seemed so loath for the royals to depart--even though he had entirely given over his castle to the queen during her stay.

[tiny-librarian]

Of all Queen Victoria’s granddaughters living on the Continent, none remained more persistently English than Princess Maud. Her talk, interests and pursuits were those of English country society; she was never happier than when gardening, riding, bicycling or driving a wagonette. Although ill at ease in public, in her intimate circle she was said to be ‘full of chaff’. Her tone was bantering and her conversation peppered with words like ‘rotter’ and ‘bounder’. “That’s rot. It’s because you funk.” she once shouted to a companion who had protested that his horse was incapable of jumping a hedge.

Grandmama of Europe: The Crowned Descendants of Queen Victoria - Theo Aronson

[bookreviewsrus]

A Family Of Kings: The Descendants Of Christian Ix Of Denmark by Theo Aronson - A review

Dates - 3rd May

Book Number of 2015 - 33 of 60

Synposis -

In 1863, Queen Victoria decreed that Edward, Prince of Wales, should marry Princess Alexandra, daughter of the obscure and unsophisticated heir to the Danish throne. The beauty, grace and charm of Prince Christian's daughter had prevailed over the Queen's intense dislike of the Danish royal house, and had even persuaded the embarrassingly difficult Bertie to agree to the match.

Thus began the fairy-tale saga of a family that handed on its good looks, unaffectedness, and democratic manners to almost every royal house of modern Europe. For, in the year that Alexandra became Princess of Wales, her brother Willie was elected King of the Hellenes ; her father at last succeeded to the Danish throne; her sister Dagmar was soon to become wife of the future Tsar Alexander III of Russia; and her youngest sister Thyra later married the de jure King of Hanover.

A Family of Kings is the story of the crowned children and grandchildren of Christian IX and Queen Louise of Denmark, focusing on the half-century before the First World War. It is an intimate, domestic study of a close-knit family, the individual personalities, and the courts to which they came. Without doubt, the chic and beautiful Alexandra epitomized the spectacular flowering of the Danish dynasty; and just as she brought an unprecedented popularity to the sobriety of the English court, so her brothers and sisters helped enliven the staid European scene.

The outstanding success of Theo Aronson's last book, Grandmama of Europe, published in 1973, has confirmed his reputation as a chronicler of the fortunes of Europe's ruling houses. A Family of Kings bears the hallmark of the author's remarkable talent, and provides a fascinating evocation of the splendour and extravagance, and not infrequent tragedy, of nineteenth and twentieth century royalty.

My thoughts -

Aronson gives an excellent overview of the Danish royal family whose accent from a minor section of the Danish royal dynasty to the pinnacles of power in several major european countries was one of the great moves in royal social mobility of the 19th century. The book was an interesting read but nothing particularly special.

Would I recommend it  -Yes, only if you have an interested in 19th century royal history.