The Adventures of Reggie and...Maurice

Reggie de Veulle is notable as the tragi-comic 'muse' for at least 2 authors of the Edwardian era.
His first known appearance is as the young, idle and facile comic character in The Magnificent Bellamy published by Roy Horniman in 1904.

However a couple of months ago I discovered Reggie in another far more scurrilous work. Les Fréquentations de Maurice by Xavier Marcel Boulestin (1869 - 1943). Writing under the pseudonym 'Sidney Place' Boulestin puts Reggie centre stage in a sometimes darkly comic and sometimes tragic tale of the homosexual demi-monde of London in 1909. This is the same book referred to rhetorically by the prosecutor in the Billie Carleton case as 'a rather dirty book to be in the hands of clean people" and contained the infamous anecdote about a party in Maidenhead, allegedly involving cross-dressing, which the police were forced to attend to disperse the awe struck crowds of locals.

Marcel Boulestin is an interesting character. A lifelong anglophile who had been part of the Parisian literary world. Boulestin  had left his homeland in a hurry after what he glossed over in his autobiography as 'some unpleasantness'. It is rumoured that this unpleasantness had to do with his preference for 'stocky butcher's boys'. After a couple of dalliances with the literary world Boulestin moved on to greater success, first as a designer and then after serving as an interpreter in the French forces he started one of the most famous restaurants of the inter-war years, Boulestins, which lasted under various ownerships until the 1980's.

Boulestin was a friend of Jacques d'Adelswärd-Fersen who from January to December 1909 published 12 issues of a lavishly produced journal called 'Akademos'. This short-lived journal featured contributions from many of the most stellar members of the Parisian salons. Fersen was openly gay and a percentage of the articles had a gay content including, of course, 'Les Fréquentations' which was serialised across all 12 issues. When he ceased publication Fersen decamped to Capri and further localised scandal where he died of an overdose of Champagne and Cocaine aged 43 in 1923.

Akademos July 1909 (out of copyright)

The picture of Reggie that appears in Les Fréquentations, is slightly more rounded than that presented by Horiman some 5 years earlier. Reggie has a bitter sweet quality about him. A troubled, possibly abused young man sent away from home and caught in relations with at much older man and and much older woman!

The character which emerges is more vulnerable (although no less roguish) and even....dare I say likeable than any previous accounts would suggest. Reggie is laid bare in all his vanity worrying about his lost youth and receding hairline but still planning his next grand entrance.

Reggie the renaissance man

In the last 12 months of scouring archives to find traces left by Raoul Reginald de Veulle I have been frequently surprised and occasionally shocked by his activities and the connections that he made.

It was obvious from those few images that remain of his dress designs that he had a talent in designing for the stage and the diaphanous creation the Billie Carleton was pictured in and subsequently wore to the Victory ball on the final night of her life showed that he had an understanding of the female form.

Yet my recent discovery that Reggie was also a songwriter was especially gratifying. In 1923 after the furore and character assassination of the Billie Carleton trial was yesterdays news. Reggie wrote the music and a lyric in French for his 'Mysterious Waltz'. It is a surprisingly sweet tune in 3/4 time which laments a lost youth and loves past. Reggie would have been about 42 years old at the time and it is easy to imagine his melancholy at what he might have seen as a lost youth.

The song had an English lyric by one Harry Bullock which struggled to rise above the heights of 'Moon and June' "Do you remember the dancing..." The song was dedicated to Irene Vernon Castle. One of the most famous dancers of the day when she and her late husband - Vernon Castle and been transatlantic superstars. She was American and her English husband had been a pilot in the first world war and was killed in peacetime whilst training American pilots.

The song, as far as I know, is the only one published by Reggie but I actually wish there had been more..