And so, Oxford in the 1920s became a myth, the symbol of the triumph of homosexuality in England. Alumni -turned writers sought to describe the happiness of their youth; examples include Christopher Isherwood’s Liens and Shadows, Stephen Splender’s World within World and, especially, Evelyn Waugh with Brideshead Revisited the book that most successfully disseminated the mythical image of Oxford as a homosexual paradise. Waugh captures the very essence of Oxford, the romantic passions (between Charles Ryder and Sebastian Flyte). the unrestrained aestheticism and flamboyant homosexuality (Anthony Blanche) and the nostalgia for adolescence (embodied by Aloysius. the teddy bear that Sebastian refuses to leave). Beyond the idyllic picture of a place that a whole generation would struggle to regain, he offers us a life like description of homosexual life in those years. Love comes first and foremost, and the rivalry between the athletes and aesthetes is reported with humor. but homosexual pride in particular is displayed for all to sec with panache, irony and lubricity.
The character of Anthony Blanche, facetious and extravagant, allows Evelyn Waugh to describe with a great flourish the cult of homosexuality that suffused the Roaring Twenties:
At the age of fifteen, lo win a bet, [Anthony Blanche) allowed himself to be dressed as a girl and taken to the big gaming table at the Jockey Club in Buenos Aires; he bad occasion to dine with Proust and Gide, and knew Cocteau and Diaghilev well. Firbank sent him his novels, embellished with enthusiastic dedications; he caused three inextinguishable vendettas in Capri, practiced magic at Ceplialonie; got into thugs and underwent detoxication in California, and was cured of an OEdipal complex in Vienna
This passage touches all the literary and society landmarks of the homosexual world in the inter war period. Homosexuality, for the elite, was more than a sexual proclivity; it was a style, a way of life.
In a scene where he is confronted by the athletes, Anthony Blanche shows his total lack of inhibition, his lack of complexes, and his natural affirmation of his homosexuality — and ends up defeating his adversaries:
- He was approached by a horde of some 20 young people of the worst kind, and what do you think they were chanting? “Anthony, we want Anthony Blanche,” in a kind of litany. Have you ever seen anyone declare himself so. in public?...“My very dear fellows.” I said to them, “you resemble a band of very undisciplined lackeys “Then one of them, a rather pretty bit, honestly, accused me of sins against nature. “My dear,” I said to him, “it may lie that I am an invert, but 1 am not insatiable, even so. Come back and see me some day when you are alone.”
The character of Anthony Blanche embodies the cult of homosexuality; confronted by a hostile or disconcerted society, the “invert” no longer bides his true nature. Once more, the contrast with the neighboring countries is great. In France, for example, there was no establishment that could entertain the myth that homosexuality was intellectually superior, the way Oxford and Cambridge did. Of course, there are some personal accounts reporting on homosexual experiences in the universities, but they are individual cases which one cannot equate with a widespread social phenomenon. Daniel Guerin describes drinking with a good looking neighbor who was a fellow student at the Saint Cyr Military Academy and the rough housing, pillow fights and wrestling that verged on more, and the arousal that resulted.