Untitled

Christopher Breward
however caricatured or sentimentalized its tone, and further undermines any literal
notion of sartorial “renunciation.” The opportunity to promenade provided a
source of shared pleasure for its participants, affording space and time for the
imaginative performance of the range of “modern” masculine identities, or at least
their closest possible approximation. The social historian Michael Childs equates
the freedom to explore such identities with the economic circumstances of
Edwardian affluence and of “rapidly expanding cultural horizons” when “youths
in general were . . . able to symbolise their outlook and their hopes by a selective
and conscious use of distinctive clothes and practices.” 61 Whether this positions
’Arry and his kind as “the original teddy boy” 62 is perhaps incidental to the fact
that young men at the turn of the century from all social complexions were blessed
with an unprecedented repertoire of fashionable models and choices, whose variety
echoed the complex range of masculine subject positions opened up by the effects
of a growing consumer culture. As Paterson suggested:
The pleasure to be derived from this haunting of the streets is the joy of wearing
something a little brighter than working clothes. The variation may merely be a new tie
of green and red and gold, or a straw hat with a brown ribbon, or a scarf pin, or a white
silk scarf peeping from underneath the waistcoat like a nineteenth century slip. On
Saturday evening and all through Sunday the change will probably be very thorough,
and may include gloves, stick, bright waistcoat. These varieties add lustre to ten shillings
a week, and make the Sunday promenade an active pleasure and no mere formality. Bill
the conqueror has an athletic reputation and feels it incumbent on him to appear in
something rather striking at these times, while Percy, with his good looks and wavy hair,
never presents the same complete picture on two successive Sundays. Bert and Alf are
mere hangers on, and feebly echo the taste of their leaders. Buster is rather reckless with
his money and can only rise to a butterfly bow, and Fatty does his best by wearing clothes
that are far too tight for him. 63
The Mirror of Masculinity: Music Hall as Fashionable Space
My Life is like a music hall,
Where in the impotence of rage,
Chained by enchantment to my stall,
I see myself upon the stage
Dance to amuse a music hall.
’Tis I that smoke this cigarette
Lounge here and laugh for vacancy,
And watch the dancers turn; and yet
It is my very self I see
Across the cloudy cigarette. 64
276