Month: May 2021

Hookland 5/1/21 6:39:16

@PhilH86835657 ‰ÛÏRed and white striped shirts, peacock flash meets shooting party. The younger St. James and Piccadilly clubland.‰Û I put the phone down very confused as to whether I had actually learnt anything.

Hookland 5/1/21 6:57:16

@PhilH86835657 That is the one. I think I concluded back in 1997 that it might be a reference to the heart of late a Victorian/Edwardian clubland (at one point at least a dozen Masonic lodge space were within five minutes walk of Jermyn Street due to the density of clubs – the lodge spaces …

Hookland 5/1/21 7:06:39

@PhilH86835657 Yep. The Freemasonry a reflection of that too. A male sphere outside of the conventional. The area was also notorious for an element of male prostitution – poses plastique – though the highest density of that was always east of Piccadilly.

Hookland 5/1/21 7:10:24

@PhilH86835657 This is why I pursued it in 1997. Saki is writing with such nuance, such a careful coding, you have to interrogate those phrases to get to the meaning.

Hookland 5/1/21 7:17:29

@PhilH86835657 I think I started out with Kellow Chesney and the Sin Rose book about Victorian prostitution/pornography before gravitating to some articles via a Warwick University conference on the subject, but trying to remember exactly what I read in 1997 is going to require a diary trawl.

Hookland 5/1/21 7:18:54

@PhilH86835657 The gentlemen being propositioned in Piccadilly to come to watch poses plastique is certainly in the transcripts of the Cleveland Street trial which I definitely read in 1997 as part of that rabbit hole.

Hookland 5/1/21 7:21:57

@PhilH86835657 I also know it was the first and last time I tried to access the restricted erotica of the BL, reading a male prostitution equivalent of the Harris-style lists.