Up West (24 page)

Polari had its roots as a lingua franca for the travelling peoples of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Europe. Beggars, buskers, pedlars, tinkers (not to be confused with the Romany people, who had their own language), sailors, travelling theatrical troupes, dance troupes, rogues and prostitutes all used Parlyaree, the language that would metamorphose into Polari and become beloved of gay communities. Sailors brought the language to the East End, where it mixed with thieves' cant, back slang (‘riah' is back slang for hair, while ‘eke' is short for ‘ecaf', back slang for face) and rhyming slang (‘scarper' is rhyming slang, Scapa Flo – go). Travelling entertainers brought a slightly simpler version to the theatreland of the West End, although as gay sailors and entertainers often mixed when they hit the West End pubs, clubs and gambling joints, the two became virtually interchangeable.

In the twenties, it became the fashion among homosexuals to refer to men as ‘she' and they often gave one another women's names. Quentin Crisp describes days spent with the ‘girls' in the Black Cat Café in Old Compton Street, ‘buying each other cups of tea, combing one another's hair and trying on each other's lipsticks while waiting for something to happen. The fashion continued well into the forties and fifties, especially, but not exclusively, among Polari speakers. Muriel Belcher, the bisexual owner of the famous drinking club, the Colony Room, in Dean Street, always referred to her favourite male customers as her ‘daughters'.

It is hard to believe in these more enlightened times that a
private language was necessary, but in those post-war years homosexual acts were illegal in this country – at least for men. Lesbians were never prosecuted because when the Offences against the Person Act (1861) was followed by section 11 of the Criminal Law Amendment Act of 1885, which outlawed any kind of sexual contact between men in ‘public or private', legend has it that the enthusiastically heterosexual Queen Victoria point-blank refused to believe that women were capable of such behaviour. The law had, in fact, condemned some gay sexual behaviour for centuries. At one time, the death sentence was imposed for sodomy, while in the period of this book, prosecutions for ‘gross indecency' could, and did, result in terms of imprisonment for those unlucky enough to be caught and found guilty.

Even by British standards, post-war attitudes were particularly narrow and judgmental. Why this should be the case is open to interpretation – but it certainly led to increased vigilance by the police and an upsurge in the arrest and prosecution of gay men. According to court records researched by Matt Houlbrook for his book
Queer London
, the total number of recorded convictions for homosexual acts in the London area in 1937 was 251, and by 1957 that number had almost doubled to 491. Had the record of convictions at Westminster magistrates' court been available, the 1957 total would have been a good deal larger.

In his book about his involvement in the famous Lord Montagu court case,
Against the Law
, Peter Wildeblood contended that class prejudice played a part in his prosecution
and that the stiff prison sentences imposed were due to the fact that the men he and Montagu were consorting with were of a lower class, and were thus perceived to present a real threat to society that had to be contained. As he pointed out, ‘The very words of the law are impregnated with emotion on the subject; murder is merely murder, but homosexual acts are “the abominable crime” and “gross indecency”.' And homosexuality was a crime twice over. As one of my contacts said, not only were there ‘swingeing penalties' for those found out, but ‘your neighbours and family would castigate you'.

Class boundaries had been broken down, or at least badly knocked about, in barracks, below decks and in mess halls during wartime, and they threatened to be further undermined during the uneasy peace of the atom bomb years immediately following the bombings of Nagasaki and Hiroshima. It became imperative to get our society back on an even, familiar keel in the doomed hope that new fears would dwindle once old certainties had been put in place once again.

As gay people were consigned to a secretive subculture, it was inevitable that the ‘top drawer' elite would come in to contact with subjects from the two other, lower, drawers and their many, heavily nuanced subsections that only a born and bred Brit would understand – and the one place where the classes could meet, mingle and mate with enthusiasm was the West End. Leo Zanelli witnessed an incident that illustrated this: ‘I can remember once in Shaftesbury
Avenue, there was a crash, a black cab side-swiped a car. I looked up and three sailors got out one side to talk to the cabby, and three gentlemen in evening dress got out the other side and walked straight away. I remember thinking, that's a bit strange . . .'

The three gents were far from alone in fancying sailors. Josh Avery, a sailor himself and the subject of Nigel Richardson's book,
Dog Days in Soho
, knew that certain ‘posh blokes' liked consorting with ‘other ranks', especially one in a sailor's uniform. Although he was straight himself, Avery thought nothing of exploiting this taste in exchange for a place to stay, endless drinks and some other necessities of life. It was after picking up Dan Farson that he was introduced to the fifties Soho bohemian society that Farson made the subject of his famous book,
Soho in the Fifties
.

It's difficult to convey the depth of the longing that the general population had ‘to get back to normal' after six years of chaos. In the post-war years, having any kind of ‘airs and graces', ‘showing yourself up' or ‘putting yourself forward' was very definitely frowned upon. Adding flamboyant homosexuality to the mix was several leaps too far. Anyone who has read
The Naked Civil Servant
, or has seen the erstwhile habitué of the West End, Quentin Crisp, interviewed, will know that then, as now, some gay men were colourfully eccentric. ‘The rumours about homosexuality that were now spread . . . suggested it was a much larger monster than had originally been suspected,' Crisp wrote, ‘devouring not only all ballet dancers and a few actors but thrusting one claw in
at the door of the homes of apparently quite ordinary citizens. The cry went up that England was going to the bitches. The police, to show that they took this prognostication seriously, began to clean up the West End.'

Nigel Richardson suggests in his book that the defection to the USSR of the Communist campers, Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean, in 1951 added fuel to the systemic homophobia of the day, another reason for the continuing crackdown on ‘male vice' and West End ‘filth spots'. Before they defected, Burgess and Maclean had been enthusiastic members of the Gargoyle Club in Meard Street, and made no secret of being Communist spies when they were in their cups, which was often. However, the devil-may-care, anti-establishment punters at the Gargoyle were unimpressed, and either thought it was some kind of joke, or were too busy drinking, flirting and sleeping with one another to do anything about it. It certainly never occurred to anybody to report the pair to the authorities.

It was generally believed that homosexuals chose their sexual orientation simply to be different and awkward, and therefore it was possible that they could ‘turn' straight young men to their wicked, deviant ways. This irrational fear underpinned both the law's and society's attitudes to gays. If they could turn our youths ‘queer', the reasoning went, then conversion to Communism wasn't out of the question either. It is hard to believe just how frightened the authorities were of Communism in the fifties. In Burgess and Maclean – who were ‘top drawer' defectors, homosexual and Communist
sympathizers – three great bogeys of the day met. The appalled establishment thought that their chaps simply did not behave like that. It must have been because they were ‘queer'; that was the obvious explanation.

Despite the various amendments to the original Act, it was never actually illegal to be gay: it was simply illegal to do anything about it. Thus gay men were theoretically condemned to a life of loveless, sexless isolation. Those who could face neither chastity nor marriage were forced to go ‘underground' to seek lovers, companions and friends who, like themselves, understood the relatively few legal highs and the many dreadful lows of being gay in the mid-twentieth century.

The liveliest underground gay scene was, naturally, to be found in the tolerant, all-embracing Soho, where the unwanted, despised and marginalized from all over Europe had been welcomed for centuries. From the eighteenth century onwards, homosexual men and women had flocked to the West End, and along with them came cross-dressers, transsexuals and those who enjoyed all kinds of sexual pleasures above, below and far beyond the plain old procreative sort. As ever, Soho was way ahead of the times in its acceptance of homosexuality as simply a part of humanity's richly textured life. Quentin Crisp, for example, recalled fifties Soho with affection: ‘In the Coach and Horses a man was asked to leave because he persistently made fun of me. When this happened I knew for sure that Soho had become a reservation for hooligans. We could at last walk
majestically in our natural setting observed but no longer shot at by the safaris that still loved to penetrate this exotic land.'

Derek Hunt, an actor who came to London in August 1960, remembered that Sohoites in general, and theatricals in particular, had a much more relaxed view of homosexuality than their contemporaries. In an article in the
Soho Clarion
, he wrote: ‘I headed straight for the Interval Club at 22 Dean Street. [It's owner] Molly Balvaird Hewitt, a strong character in her early eighties, never minded two actors sharing a room – “Why, dear, that's all right. They can't have babies.”'

‘The chorus boys were always very gay in those days,' he told me in an interview. ‘They were using Polari. I'd never heard of it before. I was in rep in Swansea once, and someone asked me, “Are you gay?” and I said, “Of course I'm happy.” I didn't know it meant that, so he explained it to me. “The theatre is the only business in the world where gay and straight people mix and there's no problems.” People were much more open-minded about that in the business than anywhere else. It was part of life.'

Derek also found acceptance on the streets. ‘The prostitutes would say, “Would you like a nice time, dear?” and I'd say, “Oh no, I'm from the village.” “Well bugger off, you little sod.'' [laughs] Something like that.'

One of the best known groups of gay and bisexual characters to gravitate to Soho were significant members of an infamous, boozy, bohemian set who frequented the Colony Room, and were memorialized in Dan Farson's
Soho in the
Fifties
. ‘Muriel's place', as the Colony Room was also known, was a single, rather shabby, first-floor front room reached by climbing a dingy, narrow staircase from a nondescript entrance in Dean Street. Over the years, its reputation – and that of its owner – have reached mythic proportions, thanks to Farson and a group that included several artists, a poet or two, a filmmaker, a photographer and several career boozers who appeared to do little else with their time.

Muriel herself was described as a handsome Jewish dyke, although she was, in fact, bisexual, with a long list of lovers to her name. Her best-remembered partner was a Jamaican woman. One story tells how the couple fell out and the lover returned to Jamaica, but missed Muriel and her London life so badly that she rang the club one night to tell her ex-lover that she was homesick. With an ear-shattering bellow that stopped her customers' glasses
en route
to their lips – which was no mean feat – Muriel roared, ‘But you ARE home, cunty.' Apparently, it was the final ‘y' that was so telling: without it, you were one of the despised; with it, you were one of the chosen. As George Melly said, ‘She was camp, and the very delivery of camp makes your sentences sound witty.'

Francis Bacon, the hugely talented, masochistic, visceral artist, was one of Muriel's very favourite ‘daughters'. He joined the Colony's devoted clientele when he was still on his way up and struggling. Muriel took to him straight away. To people she liked, she could be warm, funny, kind, loyal, incredibly generous and very thoughtful. However, the
opposite was also true; if she didn't like you she could be monumentally rude and dismissive.

Muriel struck a deal with Bacon that she would pay him a modest retainer to bring customers to her club. She made it quite clear that the abstemious were not welcome, and neither were ‘frugal fuckers' nor ‘boring bastards'. Many of the people Bacon brought to the Colony were, if their reputations are anything to go by, neither tight nor boring. One exception was John Deakin, another, rather disgruntled, gay punter. He was notoriously mean in spirit, which was readily accepted, but was also tight with money, booze and cigarettes, which often led to unpleasantness and ostracism. Muriel Belcher couldn't stand those with long pockets and short arms, and would bellow, ‘Get your bean bag out, Lottie!' at Deakin and his fellow skinflints when it was their turn to buy a round. Deakin was regularly barred from her club when he failed to comply, and simply transferred his allegiance to the Caves de France, a nearby French-run establishment that was enormously tolerant of diverse sexuality and bohemian impoverishment. Actors, painters, poets, writers, dancers, prostitutes of both sexes and all were welcome to open a tab at the Caves, where Secundo Carnera, John's father, was a barman in the evenings.

Bacon's artistic pals were a self-absorbed, hard-drinking lot who were so tight-knit that they excluded anyone who didn't amuse them, or whose faces simply did not fit. This attitude applied to more conventional gay men, who were dubbed ‘suburban dentists'. Witnesses from the time say
that both Bacon and Farson had a penchant for violent men. Temporary membership of the gang would be offered to anyone who would oblige with the occasional beating, but when they ceased to amuse, they were summarily ousted. Josh Avery, the subject of
Dog Days in Soho
, seems to have been one such temporary member, whose rejection, when it came, was complete.