*On the Prototypes of Evelyn Waugh’s Anthony Blanche*
The Gay Encyclopedia about Harold Acton:
Among the "Bright Young Things" of British society during the 1920s, few shone quite as brightly as Harold Acton. Known for his flamboyant dandyism and his extraordinary demeanor, he was the object of frequent mention in gossip columns and the inspiration for the notorious Anthony Blanche, the outré homosexual undergraduate character in Evelyn Waugh's novel Brideshead Revisited (1945).
Although he was at various points in his long life a poet, novelist, historian, university lecturer, Royal Air Force officer, and philanthropist, Acton's true vocation was that of an aesthete with a mission, in his own words, to "excite rage in the hearts of the Philistines."
Sir Harold Mario Mitchell Acton was born at Villa la Pietra, his family's estate near Florence, Italy, on July 5, 1904. His father was the descendant of an aristocratic English Catholic family who had resided in Italy since the eighteenth century, and his mother was the daughter of a wealthy American family.
Given his background, Acton was inevitably an exotic outsider as a student at Eton and subsequently Christ Church, Oxford. With his penchant for shocking narrow minds, he strove to emphasize rather than repress his eccentricities and seeming decadence and based his values on fashion, art, fantasy, and extravagant decorum, all of which flew in the face of traditional Victorian mores and masculine ideals.
While still an undergraduate, Acton published two volumes of poetry, Aquarium (1923) and An Indian Ass (1925). He was editor of the journal Oxford Poetry for one year (1924), in which he declared himself an advocate of "post-Eliot" verse.
One of the best-known anecdotes of Acton's undergraduate years involved his reciting Eliot's poem The Waste Land through a megaphone at a garden party at Worcester College, an action replicated by Waugh's fictional character. Acton became acquainted with Waugh, who engaged in homosexual affairs at Oxford, while both were undergraduates. Waugh was obviously fascinated with Acton, as the latter served as a model not only for Blanche but also, in part, for the outrageously queeny Ambrose Silk in Put Out More Flags (1942).
Acton returned to Italy after receiving a baccalaureate degree in 1926, and published a historical work, The Last Medici (1932). Distressed with the expansion of fascism in his native country, he departed for China, and resided there from 1932 until the beginning of World War II. While there, he taught English literature at Peking National University, translated and published an edition of Chinese poetry, and cultivated a predilection for Chinese art and drama. With the outbreak of war, he returned to England and joined the Royal Air Force. He saw duty in India and Ceylon, and, by his own account, was "humbled yet exhilarated" in the company of heroic men.
In 1945, Acton resumed his residence in Italy and set about writing his autobiographical Memoirs of an Aesthete (1948), the work for which he is primarily remembered. In this volume and its sequel, More Memoirs of an Aesthete (1970), Acton is, for the period in which he wrote, uncommonly open about his sexuality.
His most exacting effort, however, is a two-part study and vindication of the monarchy his paternal ancestors had long served, The Bourbons of Naples (1957) and The Last Bourbons of Naples (1961).
Acton was awarded the distinction of Knight Commander of the British Empire in 1974. Having no immediate heirs, he bequeathed his $500,000,000 estate, including his Italian Renaissance villa and extensive art collections, to New York University. He died at Villa la Pietra on February 27, 1994.
Waugh himself wrote, "The characters in my novels often wrongly identified with Harold Acton were to a great extent drawn from Brian Howard”.
Brian Christian de Claiborne Howard (13 March 1905 - 15 January 1958) was an English poet, whose work belied a spectacularly precocious start in life; in the end he became more of a journalist, writing for the New Statesman.
He was born to American parents in Hascombe, Surrey, and brought up in London; his father Francis Gassaway Howard was an associate of James Whistler. He was educated at Eton College, where he was one of the Eton Arts Society group including Harold Acton, Oliver Messel, Anthony Powell and Henry Yorke. He entered Christ Church, Oxford in 1923, not without difficulty. He was prominent in the group later known as the Oxford Wits. He was one of the Hypocrites group that included Harold Acton, Lord David Cecil, L. P. Hartley and Evelyn Waugh.
At this time he had already been published as a poet, in A. R. Orage's The New Age, and the final Sitwell Wheels anthology. He used the pseudonyms Jasper Proude and Charles Orange. His verse also was in Oxford Poetry 1924.
Subsequently he led a very active social life, tried to come to terms with his homosexuality, and published only one substantial poetry collection God Save the King (1930, Hours Press). He was active as a poet during the Spanish Civil War, but did not ultimately invest in his work with seriousness. He drank heavily and used drugs.
During World War II he worked for MI5 and then had a low-level post in the Royal Air Force. He suffered from bad health in the 1950s, and committed suicide after the accidental death of a lover.

Quotations:
“Conversation, as I know it, is like juggling; up go the balls and the balloons and the plates, up and over, in and out, spinning and leaping, good solid objects that glitter in the footlights and fall with a bang if you miss them”. (Anthony Blanche)
“Why drink? If you want to be intoxicated there are so many much more delicious things”. (Anthony Blanche)
“Oh, la fatigue du Nord!” (Anthony Blanche)
I don’t believe anyone could play Anthony Blanche better than Nickolas Grace (1981).
Nickolas Grace’s other brilliant work is the performance as the Sheriff of Nottingham in the British T.V. series about Robin Hood:
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I love the Sheriff!
In spring of 2003 I saw the T.V. series BRIDESHEAD REVISITED (“An engaging, brilliantly written and superbly directed film that's evocative, funny, suspenseful and ultimately moving”). I liked the movie just partly, but it had become a discovery for me. In the movie there were the kingly Jeremy Irons as Charles Ryder, the princely Anthony Andrews as Sebastian Flyte, but Nickolas Grace as Anthony Blanche eclipsed both of them, in my view. He was divine! I bought the book BRIDESHEAD REVISITED by Evelyn Waugh to read the story, and I fell in love with Anthony Blanche yet more. Now, lately on the Net I learnt that Nickolas Grace appeared as the Sheriff of Nottingham in the movie about Robin Hood. Looking at his photos I recalled that in the past, when I was so young, so young, and watched TV much oftener, I saw the English T.V. series about Robin Hood, and that I was in love with the Sheriff in those days. Thus, the man who was my love at my young age proved to be the man who is my love at my mature age. May be it sounds oddly enough but formerly I didn’t know the name of the amazing actor of the name of Nickolas Grace. The exquisite, fatally gorgeous, amazing, nice actor! Dear Nickolas, thank you for your magic eye; your art is awesome; it is la magie blanche!

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