Beguiling for over a century
1923: The Lighter Side
From her direct and penetrating gaze, perhaps you’d expect Teresa Jungman to be trouble, and she certainly wasn’t afraid of playing a good practical joke. In 1923, Teresa dressed up, resplendent in a dark wig, Woolworth pearls and her mother’s mink coat, posing as a Russian émigré, ‘Madame Vorolksy’. In character, she brazenly walking up to a general, talking loudly about a night they’d spent together in Paris. The general and his wife (who stood by his side) looked horrified and the General proclaimed he’d only been in Paris for a single night during the War. Teresa proclaimed, ‘zat was zee night‘.
Along with her sister Zita, the girls were famed for instituting nigh-on impossible treasure hunts across London. Played originally by eight girls working in pairs, they raced across the city in search of specified ‘trophies’. On one occasion, the targeted trophy was the Archbishop of Canterbury’s spectacles! For one hunt, they even managed to persuade newspaper magnate Lord Beaverbrook to print a pretend version of the Evening Standard containing fake headlines concealed clues. I don’t know about you, but I wish this kind of thing existed for adults today. There is such a thing as ‘Geocaching‘ nowadays, where you can go in search of boxes full of items using a GPS system, but it really isn’t the same!
1926: Capturing Momentary Paradise
Teresa was a ‘member’ of the Bright Young People (about whom I will write a lot more in a future post), as the press designated them, and photographer Cecil Beaton was effectively their chief chronicler. He also paints a particularly captivating portrait in his description of Teresa, depicting her in his Book of Beauty as a seemingly other-worldly creature:
The Jungman sisters are a pair of decadent 18th-century angels made of wax, exhibited at Madame Tussaud’s before the fire. Baby is particularly waxy, and like a white gloxinia, with her Devonshire cream pallor and limpid mauve eyes. She has a waxen buttony nose and buttony lips, and her hair, spun of the flimsiest canary-bird silkiness, has a habit of falling lankly over her eyes, whence it is thrown back with a beguiling shrug of the head.
Somewhat more complimentary than the ‘golden-haired flapper‘ description offered by the Express in its obituary, I’m sure you’ll agree…
After all…What does being in love mean?
It was actually delving into the life of Evelyn Waugh that brought me initially to investigate the life of Teresa Jungman. In fact, many have suggested Teresa to have been the inspiration behind characters in Brideshead Revisited, Vile Bodies and (after having his proposal to Teresa rejected) A Handful of Dust.
Another ‘member’ of the Bright Young People, or Bright Young Things as they are now more commonly known, Evelyn was close to Teresa for a long time. However, only very recently has it become clear how deeply Evelyn was in love with Teresa, when after decades Teresa decided to entrust countless letters from Evelyn to Teresa to Alexander Waugh, Waugh’s grandson.
Sadly, nothing ever came of Waugh’s love for her – despite their playful and apparently care-free attitude to life, the Jungman girls were brought up strict Catholics, and Evelyn was a divorcé. From Teresa’s own words however, it seems that the obstacle was bigger than that:
“Although I loved him very much, I was not in love with him and that made everything difficult.”
Decline and fall?
The strange thing is, the Jungman sisters basically dropped almost entirely out of the public eye from 1930 onwards. It was as if the 1920s was their time in the sunshine, examined under the magnifying glass of society, and then suddenly set free.
Being free of the public gaze did not, however, necessarily make for an easier life. After the break down of her short marriage to Graham Cuthbertson, Teresa and Zita found themselves in a precarious financial position. And yet, in all that time, Teresa chose not to sell those letters, even though they would no doubt have fetched a high price.
Excitingly for us though, sometime time next year (2016), a whole cache of letters and unpublished fragments of stories belonging to Evelyn Waugh, including those to Teresa, are set to be published to mark the 50th anniversary of Waugh’s death.
Random final fact
In 1989, Teresa went to a dinner (hosted by friend Maureen Dufferin) with the Queen Mother. Teresa sat next to Sir Alec Guinness – here’s a picture.
On that note, I highly recommend diving into Hugo Vickers ‘New York Social Diary’ – he was fortunate enough to know Zita and Teresa in their later years and has written a fascinating diary of his encounters, complete with amazing pictures. He even went to Teresa’s 100th Birthday party:
http://www.newyorksocialdiary.com/social-history/2010/the-jungman-sisters-part-ii
Sources
Thank you to all of these sources for my materials:
Telegraph obituary: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/culture-obituaries/7822476/Teresa-Cuthbertson.html
Guardian: http://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/jul/21/evelyn-waugh-love-letters
New York Social Diary (Part 1 – early years, Part 2, later years):
http://www.newyorksocialdiary.com/social-history/2010/the-jungman-sisters-part-i
http://www.newyorksocialdiary.com/social-history/2010/the-jungman-sisters-part-ii
Daily Express:
http://www.express.co.uk/expressyourself/181475/The-last-of-the-bright-young-things
Wall Street Journal (originally from The Times) http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052748704289504575313113061523330
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