“Reggie Vandeleur was unique. He was perhaps the most amazing combination of shrewdness and stupidity it is possible to conceive, the apotheosis of the superficial. The word "smart" hovered perpetually on his lips. Woman, as God made her, he did not understand ; woman recreated by the modiste and the hairdresser fascinated him. He lived on a small allowance from his mother, which was a chronic cause of dispute between them”
- Roy Horniman - The Magnificent Bellamy (1904)
The night of Sunday the 31st of March 1901 in set in amber. Those who were truthful and obedient of authority recorded their overnight companions and other intimate details for the vague purposes of good civic governance in the national census.
That is how we know that Reggie De Vaulle spent the night of the census as a guest of Roy and Benjamin Horniman.
Whatever happened between them and however they were subsequently connected them may never be known. However the author Roy Horniman left us with what appears to be an excoriating portrait of Reggie Devaulle as the character ‘Reggie Vandeleur’ in his rumbustious comic novel “The Magnificent Bellamy - An Extravaganza”.
Published just 3 years after that night in Westminster, The magnificent Bellamy concerns Lord Bellamy, a man of 45 years and a 'perpetually young' married womaniser. He meets his match when he tries to woo Mrs Henriette, who is (Unbeknown to him) the wife of his manservant of 20 years, Mr Stevens. This proves to be a fatal mistake and the novel ends with his social undoing and the sound of a single gunshot!
This is a novel of it’s time but has lasted remarkably well. Horniman appears to have his tongue firmly in his cheek as he describes the affairs and obsessions of the early Edwardian upper classes.
There is hardly a redeemable character amongst them. However their real peccadilloes have to be described in the most discreet terms. These erring couples have 'dinner together' when they go away for the weekend without their respective spouses.
One of the principal characters is ‘Reggie Vandelour’ an acquaintance of Bellamy and perpetually broke hanger-on. Even if the name that Horniman had given to the character had not been so similar there are so many other indicators of interests and character that I am convinced that this is an extremely unflattering portrait of Reggie DeVeulle as he was in his 20‘s when he was known by Roy Horniman.
Reggie is portrayed as a Mamma’s boy whose only source of income is an allowance from his mother who, having sold her tiara to send him to college is now in perpetual dispute with him over the amount and timing of his allowance.
Reggie needs money and the prospect of paid employment being beyond the pale he decides to ‘sell himself for money’ by finding a suitably moneyed wife. He settles on the sum of £500 as the required amount by ‘ a brilliant mathematical feat’. Reggie is portrayed as a scheming idiot who has no skills, no intellect and no integrity. In fact Reggie’s social standing is as insubstantial as his character “in fact, Reggie's claim to social recognition lay in any number of distant relationships to great folk.”
Reggie has settled on a young woman called Pamela Gray and has ‘maneuvered himself into an invitation to the next weekend do at Bellamy’s stately home, Lanham Towers. He has written to his own mother that "She says that she feels like a mother to me," he had written. " Do you think this is a good sign ?"
However Bellamy himself doesn’t give Reggie much of a chance in the marriage stakes.
“I don't think she'll marry you, Reggie. You wouldn't be very useful to her. She would want a man whose career she could influence? she's just that sort of girl?and as you're not going to have any career "
" I don't know, I'm sure," said Reggie. " I could advise her about her dresses. Mamma always says that she is never so well dressed as when she takes my advice."
"I don't think that would appeal to Pamela Gray, Reggie. If you were only a great sinner, she might think it worth while to take you in hand ; but you're not even wicked."
Reggie giggled. " Well, nobody's ever called me good before."
" I didn't say you were good, Reggie. You're vicious enough, but you're not wicked."
It is surely a coincidence that when Reggie DeVeulle finally did marry in 1915 it was to a woman with the same initials ‘Pauline Gay’ who was 5 years his senior.
Physically Reggie is portrayed as an unappealing specimen. He notes that: “I suppose I am delicate," he reflected, rolling up the sleeve of his pyjama and gazing at a skinny and wholly undeveloped arm. " I wonder if they'd change their minds if I went through a course of physical culture." He manipulated his arm, vainly searching for a non-existent muscle. Then it struck him that he might develop so rapidly that the plea of inability to work would be considered futile.”
Reggie is a vain creature obsessed with his clothing and appearance who can spend the entire morning preparing to leave his one room flat “The tying of his tie was an anxious and almost terrible moment, for a tie is a question of inspiration, and depends for its success on a mood which will not be forced. It either comes right the first time, or, in most cases, not at all. But the occult forces were propitious, and it knotted itself with absolute precision at once”
In the end Reggie is one of the survivors of the tale. He gets his £500 for getting the social climber Dawlish invited to Lanham Towers but not marriage to Pamela. We are left with the impression that, despite the loss of his benefactor, he will land on his feet and live well until his next financial crisis and opportunity to live on his wits.
The figure of £500 appears in the life of the real Reggie. It was the sum received by him in the 1917 blackmail case which he used to travel to America. In the absence of the biography promised by the Obelisk press, Roy Horniman has left us with a picture of the young Reggie what may have more than a grain of truth to it.
You Can download ‘The Magnificent Bellamy - An Extravaganza’ complete and for free here: http://archive.org/details/bellamymagnifice00horniala
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