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Cranscan87 t1_it5pyib wrote

I didn't having time to watch the entirety of the clips, but for what I saw and based solely on reading novels from the eras (not about, but from) yes, that more or less accurate.

Upper middle class men had clubs like the second clip and they had their own jargon (Brits always have and still do lol). And yes, bored second sons with wealth and time would get into great mischief... Not always so innocently either.

In the first clip, the first outlandish character would have been refered to as a Dandy. In some instances, a dandy is just a man who focused a lot on their appearance, but in most instances it was insinuating the man was a feminine gay- not something widely accepted in most cultures in history, no matter your status. Some circles of historical England (can't attest to America at the time) would tolerate a gay man if he kept it hidden and/or (probably more importantly) had connection to power families.

If any more versed historians (and most of you are lol) disagree, please be kind and share sources/suggestions as I'm always trying to read more!

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TimeEfficiency6323 t1_it6l6s3 wrote

Wait, wait, wait. The Drones are a very specific class of aristocratic younger sons. The older sons were being prepped for positions in running the estate, government, trade, the army etc. After those sons you had a bunch of sons who had no role, and lived idle lives on middling stipends.

At the time, open homosexuality was absolutely not tolerated. Campy is not the same as openly gay, but those who walked the line too closely would sometimes find themselves packed off to remote places and sometimes even married off under threat of being "cut off" - that is having their stipend withdrawn.

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LanewayRat t1_it6tr7w wrote

Yes this. I get the impression that an upper class male demeanour of those times was often tending towards a flamboyant, carefree, foppish, quirky and theatrical demeanour. Perhaps it fell out of favour in the more practical times of the Second World War and beyond. This doesn’t mean they were necessarily more gay but maybe a gay man might have been at home in this environment, if he kept his sexuality very private.

The negative side of this culture was that it was a privileged and rarefied existence, only sustainable amongst an elite who could afford to ignore the real world and be child-like and peculiar if they wanted to be.

This culture seems to live on, to some limited extent, in the British public school educated elite. To an Australian looking on from a distance, people like Boris Johnson and that Reece-Mogs (?) person seem ludicrously foppish and embarrassingly campy and extreme in many ways.

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TimeEfficiency6323 t1_itaxdxr wrote

A lot of it came to an end after World War I. Terrified by the idea of Bolshevism spreading westwards the UK government brought in the start of the social welfare system and paid for it with Income and Inheritance taxes.

Land became less of a guarantee of wealth and by World War II a number of the old estates had fallen into ruin. Meantime, family heads were having to cut off their wastrel sons.

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LaoBa t1_itmd3a9 wrote

Since 1900, 1,200 country houses have been demolished in England. In Scotland, 378 architecturally important country houses have been demolished,

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jezreelite t1_it6t46c wrote

Worth mentioning that Anthony in Brideshead Revisited is based on two real people: the writers Brian Christian de Claiborne Howard and Howard Acton.

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Upperphonny OP t1_it8bj2e wrote

I think everyone should encounter an Anthony once in their life. A colorful character for sure.

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Onetap1 t1_it8esl2 wrote

>Anthony Eden in Brideshead Revisited is based...

Anthony Blanche

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