That library of garage sale books in my parents' house has turned out to be a treasure trove of out-of-print books, providing me with hours of interesting reading. The latest one I dug out of the "stacks" is a book by Elinor Glyn called The Seventh Commandment. (You can look that up. Its in the Bible.) I had often stumbled across Glyn's name in my readings about the early days of Hollywood, but other than knowing that she coined the term "it" as a euphemism for sex appeal (and told the world that silent star Clara Bow had "it") I didn't know much about her.The Seventh Commandment is a funny, quirky romance about an impoverished but aristocratic young lady who is taught by her grandmother to comport herself with taste and dignity, in order to acquire for herself a wealthy husband. She must be, as Glyn's heroine states; "... straight as a dart, supple as a snake, and proud as a tiger lily." But with her tongue firmly in her cheek, Glyn makes it clear that, though nouveau riche is always better than not being riche at all, cultural superiority cannot be purchased.
It wasn't until I read up on Elinor Glyn that I realized The Seventh Commandment, published in 1902 (long before Glyn departed England for Hollywood) parallels her own life story. Glyn was born Elinor Sutherland in 1864 to an impoverished, aristocratic family and was trained by her grandmother in taste and culture in order to marry well. And that's what she did. But as in The Seventh Commandment, her life with her rich, apparently boorish husband was not a success and for years she carried on an affair with someone more to her liking--a British peer, who like herself, could not or would not untangle himself from his conventional marriage. The tale in her book, by the way, has a much happier ending.
After she tied herself to a wealthy man she didn't love, Glyn learned that her husband was quickly spending through his fortune. She began publishing her novels in 1901 in order to supplement her income, and she became a huge success. Her stories were considered racy for their time but are fairly tame today. And when Glyn's husband died in 1920, she accepted an offer from producer Jesse Lasky to go to Hollywood. Nobody in Hollywood had any class at all so she immediately became a taste maker, among the shop girls-turned-movie stars and glove-salesmen-turned-studio executives.
The true story of her life is better than anything anyone could make up. Hollywood enriched her by turning her books into silent movies. She reportedly taught Rudolph Valentino how to kiss Gloria Swanson's hand and helped make flapper Clara Bow a star. And all this took place after Glyn had passed the age of fifty. An English accent has always gone a long way in Hollywood.
Just the word "it" was considered shocking back then, though then, as now, everybody was doing "it."Glyn's sister Lucy led an equally astonishing life. She married for love at the age of 21, but it didn't last. In order to survive, she reinvented herself as a fashion designer, calling herself "Lucile" and became the chic-est of the chic in the world of turn-of-the-twentieth-century couture, dressing only London's finest. At the age of 37 she hit the jackpot, marrying Sir Cosmo Duff-Gordon. But wait! There's more!She and her husband were on the maiden voyage of the RMS Titanic when it hit an iceberg, April 14, 1912, and sank to the bottom of the sea. Many wealthy and titled men were lost with the Titanic when they gave up their seats in the limited number of lifeboats to the women and children on board, but not Sir Cosmo. He and Lucy got into a lifeboat together and much was made of the fact that he later offered the crew of his lifeboat money as a way of saying thanks (the implication being that he bribed them, though he was cleared of this at the inquiry into the sinking of the ship.) Lucy, Lady Duff-Gordon is also famous for saying to her maid as they watched the Titanic go down: "There's your beautiful new nightdress gone." The words of a true clotheshorse.
Lady Duff-Gordon was what you might call formidable. But wait! There's more! This designing woman's designs have survived her. Clothing she made has been featured at exhibitions at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London among many others.
Elinor Glyn and her sister Lucy were clearly two dynamic dames. They were women of the 21st century who happened to be born in the 19th. And while "Lucile's" designs live on in museums, Elinor Glyn's books still haunt the libraries of garage sale collectors like my mother. And Glyn's books are unearthed, enjoyed, researched, and saluted by editors like my friend Michele Slung who wrote me, when I told her of my recent finds of enjoyable old books by romantic women authors of the last century: "Certain kinds of vintage books, once purely commercial and disposable reads, have a way of enduring (if only physically, dusty and foxed) and transcending themselves, giving us such a pure glimpse of past worlds."
Elinor Glyn, always with a few tricks under her hat.
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