The Divided Subject

Visiting America in 1929 for the first time, the young society photographer Cecil Beaton met Noel Coward who advised him how to behave and what clothes to wear if ‘doors’ were not to be closed to him. ‘Your sleeves are too tight, your voice is too high and precise,’ Coward said, adding that though ‘one would like to indulge one’s own taste, it is overdoing it to wear tie, socks and handkerchief of the same colour. I take ruthless stock of myself in the mirror before going out. A polo jumper or unfortunate tie exposed one to danger.’ ¹ The danger implied rather than stated was a tacit acknowledgment between the two fashionable artists that their homosexuality would not hinder them in their desire for social acceptability or success in their careers if they were ‘discreet’. While the contemporary popular song declared that Anything Goes, it did not apply to public declarations of homosexuality. Recalling the 1920s and 1930s in New York, Charles Henri Ford thought that homosexuality ‘was a matter for private conversation—it wasn’t talked about’. Protected by wealth and social position, he argued that there was no need to make an issue of his sexuality, or as he put it, he had no ‘axes to grind’. ² This was despite the fact that the novel he wrote with Parker Tyler in 1931, The Young and the Evil, about homosexual life in the depression era of New York village, was banned and was not published until the 1960s.