This train will not be stopping at…

A couple of entries ago, I got to talking about Tube stations that get used for filming. I briefly mentioned Vauxhall Cross, the abandoned station that appears in the mediocre James Bond movie Die Another Day. Which brings me to today’s topic. I call it “Tube stations that don’t actually exist that appear in films and on TV and that.”

Vauxhall Cross is one I’ve been asked about more than once, with one person being quite adamant that there genuinely was such a station. It appears, as I say, in Die Another Day as part of Q’s research facility. Bond is given the invisible Aston Martin Vanquish, seen by many fans as a bit far-fetched (actually, the technology used to make the car invisible genuinely was under serious consideration by the US military at the time). Not sure quite what they meant about it being far-fetched, it’s not as if the series was noted for its gritty realism.

The film did not make use of a real station, nor was there ever a Vauxhall Cross station. Although Aldwych was used for research purposes, the actual station was a very convincing mock-up. There is a station at Vauxhall Cross, and it’s called Vauxhall.

The station appearing in the movie is apparently on the Piccadilly Line, approximately where the abandoned Down Street is. Down Street is just off Hyde Park and, as I mentioned a couple of entries ago, was a government base during the Second World War. However, it’s nowhere near Vauxhall. The idea, according to the Underground History website, was that a fictional branch line was built from Green Park. This makes some sense – the Victoria Line hadn’t been built when the Piccadilly Line appeared, so there was no Underground interchange at Vauxhall until the 1960s. None of this explains why Bond reaches the station via Westminster Bridge, though.

Presumably in the James Bond universe the Victoria Line wasn’t built. Sorry, Brixton.

Probably the best known fictional Underground station in London is Walford East, seen left. This is the station that serves Albert Square in long-running BBC soap Eastenders. The station is a very convincing mock-up, and thanks to the wonders of CGI, can now even boast trains.

The station is on the District Line. In the Eastenders universe, Bromley-by-Bow doesn’t exist. Of course, if you’re going to be pedantic, you could point out that the distinctive red-tiled Leslie Green frontage wouldn’t be seen on a purely District Line station. This kind of architecture was only seen on the lines owned by Charles Yerkes’ Underground Electric Railways Company (roughly speaking, the Bakerloo Line, the Piccadilly Line and the Charing Cross branch of the Northern Line). Fortunately, I’m not going to be pedantic, so you’ll just have to forget that last paragraph.

On the subject of the architecture, David Leboff notes that while this station doesn’t precisely match any real Leslie Green station, the designers are to be praised for both their imagination and authenticity in designing the Arts and Crafts-style frontage.

Yr. Humble Chronicler is not a regular viewer of Eastenders, but given the unrelenting horror that seems to be in constant progress throughout Walford, the sensible thing to do would be to abandon the station and shut the whole place off from the rest of the world. For the greater good.

Alistair McGowan once suggested that Walford East was not actually on the District Line, but was on its own “Eastenders Line.” This consisted of two stations – Walford East and Up West.

The last station on our quest is well known to fans of British sci-fi. It goes by two names – Hobb’s Lane and Hobb’s End. Hobb’s Lane was mentioned in the 1959 BBC science fiction serial Quatermass and the Pit, but never actually appeared. In this serial, construction workers uncover a Martian spaceship buried beneath the streets of Knightsbridge that begins to have strange and horrifying effects on the locals…

Presumably Hobb’s Lane was on the Piccadilly Line. For the movie version of the serial, made by the now-legendary Hammer Films, the Underground was more prominent. Indeed, the works that uncover the downed spaceship are in fact an extension of the Central Line into North Kensington.

Hobb’s Lane/End is often used in other works as a nod to the classic serials. The Tube station itself appears in the comics Caballistics Inc. and Scarlet Traces: The Great Game.

If you get the chance, the Quatermass serials are well worth catching. They were among the first science fiction shows on British television and are an obvious ancestor of Doctor Who – indeed, there’s even a popular fan theory that the two are set in the same universe, seemingly confirmed by a few minor lawyer-friendly references in Who.

So, just remember – this train will not be stopping at Walford East, Vauxhall Cross or Hobb’s End. We apologise for any inconvenience this may cause to your journey.

Further Reading

http://underground-history.co.uk/vauxhallx.php - Underground History on Vauxhall Cross.

http://underground-history.co.uk/walford.php - Underground History on Walford East.

Duck and cover

Yr. Humble Chronicler must confess a morbid fascination with the nuclear paranoia of the Cold War era. I have both Threads and The War Game on DVD and, in the event of an atomic strike on London, I know exactly where to place my fallout shelter for maximum safety (Antarctica).

So I was intrigued to learn that there’s a nuclear bunker directly under the streets of London. Of course, Kelvedon Hatch out in Essex is more well-known (and, if certain conspiracy theorists are to be believed, it was the main reason for the Ongar branch of the Central Line being kept open for as long as it was). But there was, and still is, one rather closer to the action – right beneath High Holborn.

I have spoken previously about the deep-level shelters constructed during World War II as a joint venture between the Home Office and London Transport. To briefly sum up, this was a series of air raid shelters built next to existing Underground stations with the intention, post-war, of turning them into the basis of an express line. These were mostly on the Northern Line, but one was built at Chancery Lane and turned into a bomb-proof communications centre. It briefly served as a billet for troops awaiting D-Day, but in 1949 was handed over to the Post Office and became known as the Kingsway Telephone Exchange.

Goods entrance, Furnival Street

Work was carried out to expand and improve the site with the intention of making it atomic blast-proof. The idea was that, in the event of nuclear war, it would be possible to maintain communications between London, Birmingham and Manchester even after a strike. I’m not sure what conversations would consist of. “How’s things over there?” “Oh, you know, same old, same old. My teeth fell out today.” “Oh, what a drag. It’s the vomiting I can’t stand.”

To this end, the tunnels were turned into, effectively, an underground village. They featured accommodation for staff, an artesian well, rations for up to five weeks, a cinema screen, a billiard room and even a bar. This latter was reputed to be the deepest bar in Britain, bringing a whole new meaning to the term “dive bar.” It’s fair to say that if I was a telephone engineer stuck down there while my family and friends burned up above, the first thing I’d want to do is get blind drunk, so that was most prescient of the builders.

The nearly-200 staff down there didn’t just sit around waiting patiently for the world to end, of course. The site saw plenty of other use, most of it to do with telecommunications and probably not of interest to you. Apologies to the three people reading this who actually are interested in telecommunications. However, one very notable cable that passed through was that of the famous “Red Phone,” the hotline between the Premier of the USSR and the President of the USA following the colossal foul-up that was the Cuban Missile Crisis. Is it ironic that a bomb shelter should help to prevent war?

Vents for the shelter. These were demolished in 2001.

During the Cold War, it goes without saying that the whole thing was top secret – legend has it that foreign labour was used to prevent anyone communicating its whereabouts, and even now its exact location is supposed to be top secret. Having said that, the Daily Express went and revealed the whole thing in 1951, and in 1979 a detailed plan was published and may be viewed online.

Shelter entrance at 32 High Holborn. Sadly blocked by scaffolding when I took this.

As you might imagine, the shelter lost its function with the end of the Cold War. Quite apart from anything else, the equipment therein was by now largely obsolete. Therefore, in 2008, the whole lot was put up for sale. There’s not a whole lot you can do with an old air raid shelter, described by its workers as being like “living in a submarine.” It’s unsuitable as living, working or leisure space, and its best bet would probably be as storage space.

These days, there’s even less to show that the Kingsway Telephone Exchange was ever there. If you know what you’re looking for, you can find entrances on High Holborn and Furnival Street. There are those who proclaim that this was part of an even vaster network of underground tunnels stretching as far as Whitehall, Waterloo and Bethnal Green, though I remain sceptical. What is true is that there was an entrance from the main Chancery Lane Underground Station.

So, you knew about the Tube shelters in the Second World War. Now you know about one for the Third. Sleep well.

Further Reading

http://londonparticulars.wordpress.com/2010/04/21/underground-cinema/ - A bit about the Aldwych branch of the Piccadilly Line, yet another weird abandoned thing under Holborn.

Underground cinema

The Underground is a great place to use in a film. It’s an icon of the city, much like the Houses of Parliament or Tower Bridge. It’s something that thousands use daily. It has that slightly spooky air about it. And it’s instantly recognisable. All you need is an Underground sign and people know where you are.

Filming on the Tube, though, is not so easy. It runs from early in the morning to late at night, and the rest of the time is needed for maintenance work. Although there are plenty of abandoned Underground stations, most of them are wholly unsuitable for filming – they’ve been allowed to grow derelict and they’re on lines that are still in use (i.e. even if you find one in good condition, filming will be interrupted every couple of minutes by a train).

If you want to film on a regular station, you just need to find a preserved railway. Alas, the only preserved sections of Underground are the Epping-Ongar branch (formerly the outermost extremity of the Central Line) and Quainton Road (one time part of the Metropolitan Railway). Neither of these are exactly what you think of when you think “London Underground.” What you really need is an abandoned station, in good condition, not on a running like. Oh, hey, Aldwych, didn’t see you there.

Aldwych, pictured left, was a perfect filming location even when it was still in use. It was built at the end of a stubby little branch off the Piccadilly Line, served by a shuttle service from Holborn. It was never hugely patronised, and one of the two platforms was disused by the First World War. During the Second, the whole branch was closed and used as a safe house for part of the British Museum’s collection. In 1994, the whole branch was shut down for good. The building, carrying the original “Strand” name, is still visible on the Strand.

However, it’s kept maintained and makes an excellent filming location - the fact that London Underground tend not to modernise stations unless it’s necessary (a policy Yr. Humble Chronicler applauds) means that it can be dressed up to represent more-or-less any time period from 1907 to the present day. As I say, even before it closed, the branch was little used enough that the station could be used by film crews. These days, London Underground can even provide you with a 1972 Northern Line train kept on the line especially.

It’s appeared in The Krays (as Bethnal Green), Death Line (as Russell Square), Superman IV (as the Metropolis Subway), Patriot Games, V for Vendetta, Atonement, Creep and The Bank Job, among others.

If that’s not quite to your tastes, say you need something more modern, you could always take a short stroll down to Charing Cross. While (obviously) the Bakerloo and Northern platforms are still very much in use, the Jubilee Line used to terminate here. When the Jubilee Line extension was completed in 1999, it took a jag south to Waterloo from Westminster. Charing Cross was left as the only abandoned station on the whole Jubilee Line and, of course, it had its own stretch of line. It’s not quite as popular as a filming location (perhaps because the rest of the station is very busy), but it was used in Creep (again) and 28 Weeks Later.

Failing that, of course, supposing you want something bang up to date, you might try the Waterloo and City Line. This line is closed on Sundays, giving you a whole day to play with. The trouble is that the Waterloo and City Line looks rather different from the rest of the Tube, due to the fact that it was built as an extension of the London and South Western Railway and only became part of London Underground in 1994. Nevertheless, this didn’t stop the crew of Sliding Doors from filming there or, in 1940, the crew of On the Beat.

This sort of thing is not for everyone. Some aren’t so fussy about where they film. Some don’t mind dereliction and passing trains. So it was for the crew of Neverwhere, the cult fantasy series set below London. They managed to get the use of the long-closed Down Street station for a banqueting scene. During the Second World War this station, abandoned even then, was used by Winston Churchill before the Cabinet War Rooms were completed. Apparently, due to the lifts being out of use, government officials were dropped off by passing trains from Green Park or Hyde Park Corner. Thus was it for Neverwhere – Neil Gaiman (the writer) talks about flagging down trains when filming was over. Unfortunately, Down Street is no longer allowed to be used for filming, and is strictly for emergency access only.

Kudos to An American Werewolf in London for actually filming at Tottenham Court Road, by the way.

So, what about Die Another Day? That was a pretty prominent appearance by an abandoned Tube station, right? Wrong. But that will have to wait for another time…

Further Reading

http://underground-history.co.uk/creep/ - An analysis of the locations used in Creep. The home page has a lot of interesting info about closed stations and bits of stations, as well as a photo of the train kept on the Aldwych branch.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eYD44UMtNh8 - Footage of Aldwych shortly before closure.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Q4uMNTEgDs - Footage of a preserved Tube train on the Jubilee Line, including a shot of the Jubilee Line platforms.

London Lit: Night and the City

Forgive me, chums, if I’m lacking in energy. It has been a busy weekend with quite a lot of alcohol consumption. How much alcohol consumption? Enough for me to sing ‘Barbie Girl’ in karaoke form, that’s how much alcohol consumption. Unfortunately, this happened in St Albans and is therefore outside the scope of this blog.

Saturday brought a party in Slough and then an evening trip to Soho with a friend. I know a bar there that always has a free table, even on a Saturday night. It makes me feel special to know this.

Soho brings me to the subject of today’s blog entry. I’ve been reading quite a bit of the London noir subgenre that flourished between the wars, and one book I came across that I would thoroughly recommend to all is Night and the City by Gerald Kersh.

You may be familiar with the title. It’s been filmed twice. Yet the original book is so obscure these days that (at the time of writing) Wikipedia doesn’t even have an entry for it. It’s been, in my opinion, unjustifiably forgotten.

The central character is Harry Fabian, a man who has dreams of the big time but is in reality a small-time pimp with no self-control and a fund of get-rich-quick schemes. He is a man who stops at nothing to get what he wants, but when he does he throws it all away in an instant. Lying, blackmail, trafficking and worse are all in his repertoire as he works towards his current goal of being a great wrestling promoter.

Meanwhile, Helen gets a job, just as a temporary thing to pay the rent, at Phil Nosseross’ nightclub. She finds she has an unexpected knack for bringing in tips, and soon her temporary job becomes a little more to her.

Neither Helen nor Harry are alone in their corruption. Indeed, there are few characters in the book who aren’t flawed in some way. Not just in terms of morality. We see characters brought down low by greed, pride, naivety, lust, overconfidence – all human life is here. About the only character who doesn’t become either an exploiter or a victim is Bert, the somewhat mysterious barrow-boy seen at intervals throughout the novel and who takes a particular interest in Harry’s moral wellbeing.

Aside from the failing and yet strangely compelling characters, we’re presented with a vivid depiction of the West End in all its sordid between-the-wars glory. For instance, check this out:

Ping! went the clock, on the first stroke of eight. Up and down the streets the shops began to close. West Central started to flare and squirm in a blazing vein-work of neon-tubes. Bursting like inexhaustible fireworks, the million coloured bulbs of the electric signs blazed in a perpetual recurrence over the face of the West End. Underground trains from the suburbs squirting out of their tunnels like red toothpaste out of tubes disgorged theatre crowds. Loaded buses rumbled towards the dog-tracks. Cinema vestibules became black with people. Vaudeville theatres, like gigantic vaccuum-cleaners, suddenly sucked in waiting queues. Behind upper windows, lights clicked on and blinds snapped down. Gas, wire, wax, oil – everything burned that would give out light. The darkness of the April night got thicker. It seeped down between the street lamps, poured into basements and lay deep and stagnant under the porches and the arches of the back streets. The last of the shop doors slammed. The places where one could eat, drink and amuse oneself remained open, and burned with a lurid and smoky brightness. Night closed down upon the city.

We’re reminded that there are two West Ends in coexistence – the joyous leisure district and the sleazy haunt of razor gangs and mobsters. Indeed, the two are mutually co-existent. The fun night out is provided through exploitation. We’re all participants and we’re all victims.

Such is the strength of the book, in fact, that I can say “we.” While there is a definite sense of the late 1930s in the novel (it couldn’t be otherwise), the portrayal of humanity is uncomfortably relevant to today. Take a stroll around modern Soho by night and you’ll see for yourself. In the present day, as in the 1930s, money is all that matters.

Little Match Girls

Now, as Yr. Humble Chronicler, I don’t like to make this blog all about me. This isn’t LiveJournal. Plus I don’t want to give too much personal info away. Groupies and that. You know how it is. But today I have had an appalling day. For a start, I’m not even supposed to be writing this, but the thing I was going to be doing fell through. More importantly, my day at work absolutely wrecked me. Also, my tooth hurts.

Wait a second… bad teeth? Terrible days at work? That gives me an idea for an entry!

Yes, there have been some jobs in history that make even the dreaded McDonalds look like an attractive option. The one I’m about to talk about was not the worst in London, but I’d probably put it in the top 10. Below “mudlark” but above “being Gordon Brown.”

In the 19th century, labour was cheap and expendable. The Industrial Revolution brought millions from the country to the cities. Those made redundant by the mechanisation of agriculture sought their fortune in the mills and factories. As a consequence, the industrialists could do more-or-less as they pleased. Sackings for minor offences? Sure, why not? Crap pay? Yes please!

This was painfully obvious in the case of the largely female-staffed Bryant & May match factory in Bow in the 1880s. Conditions were appalling. Your working day was fourteen hours. There were no facilities for workers. Workers had to pay for materials and were docked pay for the most trivial reasons (for instance, leaving a single match on their workbench). Even then, the pay was dreadful. There was no complaints procedure, the foremen providing a barrier between the workforce and the bosses and dealing out the occasional smack. They were on their feet literally all day, with only two short breaks. And then there was the occupational health question. And I’m not just talking about the danger of mangling a hand in the machinery, although that could happen too.

You see, the cheapest (and therefore most popular) matches were made using white phosphorus. This was a highly toxic material. If inadvertently swallowed (as happened to several children whose mothers brought their work home with them) it could be deadly. It could also result in a condition known as “phossy jaw,” as demonstrated by the fellow on the right. This occurred when phosphorus vapours entered the jawbone via tooth cavities – and how good do you think the dental plan was for 19th century factory workers? Once inside the jaw, it set to work killing the bone and causing it to decompose, giving off a pretty green glow as it did so. Untreated, it would poison the organs and kill. The only treatment was to remove the bone. Suddenly I don’t feel so bad about cutting my finger on a staple.

In 1888, writer and activist Annie Besant (pictured left) published an article entitled ‘White Slavery in London’ denouncing the dreadful conditions and tyrannical management. The tyrannical management’s response was to demand that all the workers sign a declaration that no, it was really like Willy Wonka’s factory or something round here. The workers decided to say “Screw that.” Management said, “Hmm, perhaps we have been a little harsh…” No, I’m joking, management responded by sacking a worker more-or-less just because they could.

And this brought down a world of hurt. The women decided that enough was enough and went on strike, approaching Annie Besant for support. In desperation, management tried to appease them by reinstating the sacked worker, but the match girls’ blood was up. They demanded improvements to the working conditions.

And unfortunately for Messrs. Bryant and May, the media took the girls’ side, with some even raising money for the strikers. Parliament got involved, the women airing their grievances directly to MPs. Besant’s experience as an activist came in handy for organising the resistance.

Eventually, management came to terms. Fines would not be so easily imposed, workers would be allowed to complain direct to management and the workers were to be given a separate, non-phosphorus-filled break room. Later, and very importantly, a dentist would be introduced on site.

There’s some evidence to suggest that hypocrisy played a part in the settlement. William Bryant was a Quaker and a liberal. The newspapers showing him up as co-owner of a sweatshop was not exactly good publicity, and the more attention he got, the less he liked it.

The strike remains as a major event in the history of trade unionism and women’s rights. Indeed, the strike resulted in the first women’s trade union in Britain. In 1910, white phosphorus would be banned from the industry altogether in Britain.

The factory, seen right, would go on for another ninety years before closing in 1979. It’s now, perhaps somewhat ironically, an upmarket housing estate called the “Bow Quarter.” John Barrowman used to live there, you know. Barrowman…

Soho boho hobo

When you think of the Bohemian scene in London, a few obvious names spring to mind. Oscar Wilde. Augustus John. Dylan Thomas. But to my mind, no figure sums up the era of Bohemianism in London than Nina Hamnett.

Nina was many things – artist, writer, model and raconteur. But these days, she is probably best remembered not for work but for play. Christ but that was a clumsy sentence, better come up with something better before I click “publish”.

Nina is, these days, best remembered for her unconventional lifestyle and general ability to party hard. She first became known on the artistic circuit in Paris before becoming a regular in London at the Cafe Royal in Soho, a centre of Bohemianism from the 1890s onwards which closed down only in 2008. When that became too touristy, Nina and friends made the Fitzroy Tavern their new base from 1926 onwards.

Nina was known as the Queen of Bohemia, embodying fully the hard-drinking, hard-partying, bed-hopping lifestyle that scandalised the Daily Mail-reading public. The money she made from her art would disappear as quickly as it would arrive, and she would alternate between living the high life and living in conditions of abject poverty. She had a flat on Charlotte Street where she would often find herself dining on porridge or boiled bones.

In her time, she associated with some of the great names of the twentieth century – Pablo Picasso, Jean Cocteau, Augustus John, Dylan Thomas and George Orwell were all acquaintances at one time or another. She even fell afoul of the notorious Aleister Crowley, when in her book The Laughing Torso (named after a sculpture of her that is now in the Victoria and Albert Museum) accused him of being a black magician. Crowley sued for libel and lost catastrophically. Legend has it that he placed a curse on Hamnett thereafter.

The sad reality is that what became of Nina mirrors many other Bohemians through the decades. While she had been regarded as a great artistic and literary talent in the 1920s, by the mid-1930s the artistic world had caught up with her. She was no longer cutting-edge, but distinctly average. Sales of her work fell.

In part, this was down to alcohol. She found booze dominating her life more and more, and consequently she found it harder and harder to commit to her work. Her life became fragmentary, a series of short-term relationships and dashed-off works of art.

The poet and publisher Tambi (J. Meary Tambimuttu) had warned writer Julian Maclaren-Ross, “Only beware Fitzrovia. It’s a dangerous place, you must be careful… You might get Sohoitis, you know… if you get Sohoitis, you will stay there always day and night and get no work done ever. You have been warned.” He might have had Nina in mind when he said those words.

By the mid-1930s, Nina had begun to trade off her reputation more than her art, accepting money to give guided tours of the Boho haunts of Fitzrovia. Ironically, her presence became a tourist attraction in itself, the very pubs she and her circle had come to in order to avoid the crowds becoming intolerably crowded. The Wheatsheaf and the Bricklayers’ Arms, a short distance away, were the new favourites.

It’s sometimes suggested that the Second World War was what brought an end to the West End Bohemian scene, and others have suggested that it was the welfare state. Whichever one you blame, or even if you don’t blame either, it’s fair to say that things were different in the 1940s.

Nina was by this stage a figure in terminal decline. Her artistic career was dead and her behaviour was becoming even more erratic and occasionally violent. She would spend her time going from pub to pub, collecting donations in a tin towards the cost of another drink. In exchange, she would either tell anecdotes of the good old days or, when more befuddled, threaten to expose her breasts to those who didn’t pay up. When particularly smashed, she was in the habit of vomiting into her handbag and wetting the barstool (which I suppose is one way to make sure no one steals your seat).

In December 1956, in constant pain from a botched leg operation three years earlier, Nina was at a low ebb. She was deeply upset by a radio play, It’s Long Past Time, featuring a character named Cynthia who was clearly based on her. The play, in Nina’s opinion, depicted her as a pathetic, broken-down and washed-up figure. Worse, it had been written by a friend, Bob Pocock. A few days later, she from falling out of her window on to the railings below. There is some dispute as to whether this was suicide or an unfortunate accident – either seems possible.

A party was held in her honour some days later, appropriately enough, at the Fitzrovia.

Nina Hamnett was one of those larger-than-life figures who these days would probably find herself on the cover of the celebrity gossip magazines. Despite her sad decline – a fate all too common among the Bohemians – there’s no doubting that nobody reflected and contributed to the spirit of the West End between the wars quite like Nina.

Beau Selecta

One of the most disagreeable phenomena of modern times must surely be the gossip magazine celebrity. The person whose fame (and thus wealth) is out of all proportion to their talent. Take, for instance, Peaches Geldof, who is classed as a writer and model due to an administrative error. Or Paris Hilton, the only person who could make me yearn for a Communist revolution.

The sad thing is, though, that this vile situation was in place long before the age of mass media. I’d like to take you back in my magical time machine, the RETARDIS, to  the Regency. This is perhaps my favourite historical period, because you just couldn’t make up the stuff that happened then. Well, you could, but you’d be criticised for being unimaginitive.

The gentleman we’re going to look at today is George “Beau” Brummell, possibly the world’s first fashion guru. He was firmly of the opinion that, when it came to fashion, less is more. Notice in his picture on the left that he favoured a basic cut in understated fabric.

However, to achieve such understated elegance took a hell of a lot of effort. He claimed to have three hairdressers, each one taking a different part of his head. He was said to take five hours to dress, and at the end his room would be covered in rejected clothes. He was unable to find a stock that looked right, so he invented his own in starched muslin, a foot wide. He believed that the best shine on boots was achieved with champagne – and his taste in champagne was not exactly restrained (at one dinner party where the champagne was second-rate, he was heard to call, “Bring me some more of that cider!”) His taste in clothing was so influential that, legend has it, he was once able to make the Prince of Wales (later King George IV) burst into tears when he insulted Prinny’s coat. This tale doesn’t sound all that implausible, but it can’t be denied that the Prince was an enthusiast for Beau’s fashion tips – before he met Brummell, he was in the habit of wearing brightly-patterned, flamboyant clothing. After, he became more restrained in his tastes.

The Prince of Wales prepares for a night on the town.

Yes, Brummell was part of the Prince’s social circle, men who favoured heinous amounts of drinking, gambling and whoring even on a school night. How did he rise to such a prestigious position? Well, now, that’s the odd part.

Brummell was not born an aristocrat. He did not come from old money. In fact, he only acquired wealth by chance. His grandfather ran a lodging house, one of whose guests was father of a future Prime Minister, Lord North. North Senior was able to get Old Man Brummell’s son a post in the Treasury, and the son rose to be the Prime Minister’s private secretary, amassing a fortune of over £200,000 (which, accounting for inflation, comes to… ooh, lots). Thus, through hard work and opportunity the Brummells rose from the servant class to the cream of society.

Young George Brummell didn’t particularly intend to follow in his father’s footsteps. He was briefly in the Army, but sold his commission when his regiment transferred to Manchester (because, so the story goes, that would have taken him away from the London social scene). He quickly became a fixture of West End society thanks to having met the Prince at Eton. And, as mentioned before, his fashion sense took London by storm – this perhaps owed something to the fact that his grandfather had been a valet before he had been a landlord, and thus would have been expected to know what was what clothing-wise.

Brummell was famous for his bitchiness as much as for his sartorial mastery, though. For instance, an up-and-coming industrialist once invited him to a dinner party. Brummell asked him how many would be attending. The host said, “Well, there are to be ten other guests, plus you and me, so twelve in all.” “Good Lord,” Brummell reputedly replied, “you don’t mean to say you are to be one of the party?”

Of course, his most famous bitchy remark was to be his downfall. Like most socialites, Brummell thrived off attention. So when the Prince showed up at a party with Lord Alvanley in 1812 and totally ignored him, Brummell’s nose was rather put out of joint (well, actually, that had been the result of a kick in the face by a horse during his army days, but metaphorically). Eventually, he went up to Lord Alvanley and said, as loudly as possible, “I say, Alvanley, who’s your fat friend?”

Now, the Prince was rather sensitive about his weight, and he had a lot of weight to be sensitive about (20 years later, Charles Lamb would dub him “The Prince of Whales”) and, as we have seen, something of a vain man. And so he proved that he was just as adept as Brummell at being a total prick and cut the fop off entirely.

Beau might have recovered from this, were it not for his weakness for gambling. Gambling was taken very seriously in the 18th century, with almost unimaginable amounts being made and lost in a single night at the card table. Yr. Humble Chronicler is no puritan, but there’s something mildly revolting about a man thinking nothing of losing the price of a townhouse in a hand of poker. If you were lucky, you could be set for life. Unfortunately, no one’s luck lasts forever, and by 1816 Brummell found himself hopelessly in debt. Few were willing to lend him money, and those that were were disappointed to see him back at the tables soon afterwards.

He fled to France in order to escape his many, many creditors and eked out a bare bones existence working for the British Consulate in Caen, thanks to Lord Alvanley’s influential word (obviously Alvanley found the “fat friend” joke funny). He would eventually die in hospital, apparently quite insane and, so the story goes, in a vile state of undress and filth.

We can only hope.

Still, on the bright side, that might yet happen to Peaches Geldof as well.

Last with the news

I cannot believe I missed this story. Now, as regular readers of this web-log will be aware, I’m a fairly decadent sort. I was seated in my armchair at home in a mood of ennui just a short while ago, attended by my butler, Stives.

“Stives,” I said, “it is Saturday night, I am at home alone but for your faithful company, and I have nothing to do.”

“If you’ll pardon my saying so, sir, it is my experience from working with you that such boredom is generally the precursor of a deep and dark melancholy.”

“Ah, Stives, you have worked for me too long. The usual, then?”

“Indeed, sir. I shall fetch a revolver and discreetly leave the room, while you hold the barrel to your head with your finger on the trigger for up to two hours. Then, in a mood of some embarassment, you will also leave the room, I shall collect the revolver and we will both pretend that nothing has happened.”

“Capital. Wait a second, Stives, what’s this?”

“It is a newspaper, I believe, sir. The Daily Telegraph.”

“A what paper? A news-paper? Does one use it to wipe up news?”

“No, sir. News is printed upon it, and you may read the news.”

“Hmm, isn’t that awfully wasteful?”

“Indeed, sir. The technology was superseded some years ago by the Internet. However, this particular newspaper has an article that may be of some interest.”

“Oh, really? Sum it up for me, do.”

“Well, Ms Jane Goldman, wife of popular entertainer Mr Jonathan Ross, purchased a two-headed skeleton last week from an antique shop in Hackney.”

“Antique shop? Hackney? Two-headed skeleton? Why do I sense the sinister hand of the Last Tuesday Society in all this?”

“Most likely because it was bought from their establishment, sir. Perhaps you would care to read the article?”

“Hmm, sounds like an awful lot of effort. How about if you tell me where I might find that article online?”

“http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/7519249/Jonathan-Ross-wife-buys-two-headed-skeleton.html“

“Thank you, Stives. I shall blog this for certain.”

“You do seem to blog about the Last Tuesday Society quite a lot, sir.”

“Perhaps so. Still, it’s all publicity, is it not?”

“Indeed.”

“I ask nothing in return for this.”

“Most magnanimous, sir.”

“Nothing, that is, except for first crack at the buffet.”

The buffet

“I resign, sir.”

Fagin is a problem, isn’t he?

You know, there are times when committing to a blog timetable can be a real bummer. Yr. Humble Chronicler is spending Easter with the folks, meaning that Sunday’s entry has to be written today, Friday. Unfortunately, my Most Diminutive Friend had a party last night in Edgware. And I won’t lie to you (this time), things have been a bit crap lately, the practical result of which is that I had to knock back a ridiculous amount of red just to enjoy myself and not bring everyone else down. I know, alcohol won’t solve your problems, but it’s pretty good in the short term. Red wine is high in congeners, the impurities that contribute to a hangover (hence “red wine headache”). I remember almost nothing of my journey home and this morning I find myself on the receiving end of a hefty dose of alcoholic instant karma.

So, that longwinded and irrelevant introduction over, I thought I’d talk about one of the most well-known characters of London literature – Fagin, the leader of the pickpockets in Charles Dickens‘ Oliver Twist. He’s a bit of a problematic one, I find. If you’ve not read the book, the version of the character you’re probably most familiar with is Ron Moody’s portrayal in the film Oliver!, which depicts him as a gruff figure with a heart of gold, a lovable, avuncular rogue. Which he isn’t.

In the book, Fagin is a deeply unpleasant character. Although he is described as a “merry old gentleman,” in his first appearance he is also described as “villainous-looking and repulsive.” He is indeed nice to Oliver on their first meeting, but only to love-bomb the boy into joining his gang. He manipulates people (even trying to get Oliver to testify in his favour after his arrest) and doesn’t give a damn about anyone else (he’s responsible, basically, for getting the sympathetic Nancy killed by implying to the vicious Sikes that she’s dobbed him in) and is a coward. Moody himself described Fagin as a “monstrous creation.” More like Alec Guinness’ version in David Lean’s Oliver Twist, above right.

And then there’s the Jewish thing. This makes for particularly uncomfortable reading these days, but Fagin is depicted very much as the clutching, avaricious, filthy, lying, red-haired Jewish stereotype that would find itself plastered across Nazi propaganda a century later. Some portrayals, such as those by Ron Moody and Robert Lindsay, have either toned the Jewish aspect down or attempted to rework it into something more sympathetic.

Dickens’ defence of the character was that such criminals are deeply unpleasant and, like it or not, many such criminals were Jewish. In this, again, uncomfortable though it is in the post-Holocaust world, he was correct. There were a lot of poor Jewish immigrants in the East End in the 19th century, and poverty and desperation breed crime. It wasn’t some sort of Protocols of the Elders of Zion-style cultural or racial motivation, but the result of social circumstances. Dickens appears to have taken a lot of his inspiration for Fagin from a real-life Jewish criminal named Ikey Solomon, a fence, thief and possible recruiter of children, whose life would make for a fine entry in itself. [NOTE TO SELF: You should totally do that.]

Dickens also argued that Fagin is far from the only unlikeable figure in the novel – Monks, Sikes, the Artful Dodger and Bumble are all “baddies,” as it were, but they aren’t Jewish. How do we know they aren’t Jewish? Well, because Dickens doesn’t call them “the Jew.” And there’s another problem. Sikes is Sikes, Dodger is Dodger, but Fagin is largely referred to throughout as “the Jew.” The religion of other characters is almost never raised (although it is fair to say that Dickens isn’t too impressed with the pious hypocrisy of the supposedly Christian gentlemen who run the workhouse in the early chapters).

Even today, Judaism is one of the first things that springs to mind when the character is raised. Will Eisner, legendary comic creator and author of the graphic fictional biography Fagin the Jew, refers to Dickens’ decision to constantly use the term “the Jew” as “an evil thing.” In 2004, Labour MP Ian McCartney caused outrage when he compared Oliver Letwin, who is Jewish himself, to a modern-day Fagin who “will pick the pockets of Scotland’s pensioners.” While perhaps antisemitism is an overreaction (McCartney would appear to have been playing on Letwin’s first name rather than his ethnicity), there’s no denying that it was a bloody stupid thing to say about a Jewish MP.

So, was Dickens an anti-Semite? Well, first and foremost, we should bear in mind that until just a few decades ago, racial stereotyping was fair game. Eisner himself, in the interview cited above, expresses regret at having created a big-lipped, wide-eyed black character named Ebony White in the 1930s. In the pioneering 19th century British comic Ally Sloper’s Half-Holiday, the titular character’s best friend is Ikey Mo, a positive character but undeniably a stereotype. And then there’s the notorious Tintin books, Tintin in the Congo and The Shooting Star, guilty in their first editions of horrendous racism and anti-semitism. Even these, though were a great improvement on Jewish characters of early ages – I refer you to Christopher Marlowe’s The Jew of Malta to see the Elizabethan take.

Panel from an early edition of Herge's The Shooting Star. "Have you heard, Isaac? The end of the world! If it's true..." "He! He! There'll be one good thing, Solomon. I owe my creditors 50,000 francs - this way I won't have to pay..."

Dickens, in this context, would appear to be simply going with the current of the times. He later befriended a Jewish woman named Eliza Davis (who had purchased Tavistock House in Bloomsbury from Dickens), who forced him to re-evaluate his opinions. Indeed, on this basis of this friendship, Dickens himself toned down a lot of the references to Fagin’s Judaism in later editions of the book (which rather leads one to wonder how awful it was before he made his changes). In later books he would rigorously criticise anti-Semitism.

If I might finish with my own opinions (not that I haven’t been putting those in, but you know), I think the anti-Semitism in the Fagin character is a great pity. Were he not so portrayed, he would no doubt be regarded as another of Dickens’ great monsters. As it is, a fine villain is ruined by Dickens’ personal ignorance.

Further Reading

http://londonparticulars.wordpress.com/2009/09/01/piracy-with-a-twist/ - Previous entry on Oliver Twist.

http://www.time.com/time/columnist/arnold/article/0,9565,488263,00.html - Will Eisner talks about Fagin the Jew.

http://www.fpp.co.uk/online/04/02/Letwin1_2920204.html - Ian McCartney is a fool.

http://londonparticulars.wordpress.com/2009/10/15/well-at-least-he-didnt-die-poor/ - More of Dickens’ inspiration.