From: word_chemist@hotmail.com   
      
   These two had it so good I'm surprised they didn't become Skinny-Latte   
   Marxists...   
      
      
   Zita James   
   (Filed: 23/02/2006)   
   Zita James, who died in Ireland on February 18 aged 102, was the elder of   
   the two Jungman sisters, famous in society as "Bright Young People" in the   
   1920s.   
      
   Gamine and mischievous, Zita and Teresa Jungman were determined to enjoy   
   life. The Bright Young People were known for their treasure hunts, devised   
   by Zita and her sister. Originally, there were eight girls, four couples   
   competing. Zita contrived many of the clues, once persuading a Hovis factory   
   to bake clues in special loaves, and on another occasion prevailing upon   
   Lord Beaverbrook to print a mock version of the Evening Standard with fake   
   headlines and a concealed clue.   
   Eventually, the treasure hunts became too popular, with Rolls-Royces   
   jostling each other in small mews and competitors fighting for the clues.   
   One night, for a bet, Zita and Lady Eleanor Smith tried to spend the night   
   in the Chamber of Horrors at Madame Tussaud's. In order to ensure a modicum   
   of comfort, they moved the wax effigies of the "Princes in the Tower" from   
   their bed. They were relieved when a night-watchman brought their vigil to   
   an end.   
   Innocent as all this was, the older generation was shocked. In later life   
   Zita wrote to Loelia, Duchess of Westminster, one of the original team: "The   
   terrible things we did are boomeranging back on us now. I can't help feeling   
   that your mother must have regretted the circumstances that brought us   
   together, she must have thought us horrid, and our goings-on intensely   
   vulgar. We enjoyed it, of course."   
   Cecil Beaton often photographed the Jungman sisters. He described them as "a   
   pair of decadent 18th-century angels made of wax, exhibited at Madame   
   Tussaud's before the fire". Zita, in turn, noted the "feminine cadences" in   
   his character.   
   Beaton admired Zita's complexion and unearthly hollow voice, her   
   serpent-like nose and the firmness of her jaw and mouth. He elaborated:   
   "With her smooth fringes, and rather flat head, like a silky coconut, like a   
   medieval page, and with her swinging gait, she looks very gallant, very   
   princely. But she can, if she wishes, easily become a snake-like beauty,   
   with a mysterious smile and a cold glint in her upward slanting eyes, though   
   it is more likely that she will impersonate to perfection a charming village   
   maiden laughing deliciously up an apple tree."   
   Zita's page-boy looks attracted the love of Sacheverell Sitwell and Mario   
   Panza, an Italian diplomat at the embassy in Budapest, among others. She was   
   the best friend of Lady Cynthia Mosley, and godmother to her son, Micky. In   
   her brief heyday in a wayward section of society her star blazed bright,   
   before she retreated into decades of quiet, though not unwelcome, obscurity.   
   Zita Mary Jungman was born on September 13 1903. Her father, Nico Jungman,   
   was an Anglo-Dutch artist who married Beatrice Mackay in 1900. They divorced   
   in 1918, Nico dying in 1935. Zita's mother then became the second of three   
   wives of Richard Guinness. "Gloomy Beatrice", as she was called in certain   
   sections of society, became part of that extended clan of Guinnesses which   
   produced so many well known characters in the early years of the 20th   
   century.   
   These Guinnesses were but distantly related to the brewing family of Iveaghs   
   and Moynes, and descended from Richard Guinness, a barrister in Dublin, born   
   in 1755. Zita and and her younger sister Teresa were not Guinnesses by   
   blood, but claimed as cousins Loel, Meraud (Mrs Alvaro Guevaro) and Tanis.   
   They were also close friends, and close in age, to the three nieces of Lord   
   Iveagh, Aileen (Plunket), Oonagh (Lady Oranmore and Browne), and Maureen   
   (Marchioness of Dufferin and Ava).   
   After Zita's mother became Mrs Richard Guinness, the family lived in some   
   style in Great Cumberland Place. As a child, Zita took ballet lessons in   
   company with Lady Eleanor Smith, whose mother, the Countess of Birkenhead,   
   had ambitions to turn her daughter into a new Pavlova. Both sisters were   
   educated at a day school in Queen's Gate and raised as strict Catholics.   
   Zita's mother liked to entertain, and she mixed actresses with society,   
   which was unusual at the time. Cecil Beaton recalled tables groaning with   
   caviar, oysters, pâté, turkeys, kidney and bacon, hot lobsters and delicious   
   meringues; guests would include Ivor Novello, Gladys Cooper, Tallulah   
   Bankhead and Oliver Messel. Zita and her sister were invited to the great   
   houses of the day, to the Desboroughs at Taplow Court and the Salisburys at   
   Hatfield.   
   The two girls wanted for nothing, and Beaton was surprised that at a party   
   given for them by their mother they rushed about having a good time, "not   
   looking at all excited at having such a glorious party". In the early 1920s   
   they teamed up with Lady Eleanor Smith, Loelia Ponsonby, Enid Raphael and   
   others to become the Bright Young People, with their bottle parties,   
   charades and treasure hunts.   
   One of the pranks was to pretend to be a newspaper reporter from a   
   non-existent paper. On one memorable occasion, Teresa Jungman interviewed   
   Beverley Nichols at Claridge's while Zita and Eleanor Smith hid under a   
   table. Zita's diaries were filled with descriptions of their antics,   
   everyone "screaming" with the fun of it. In later life she commented: "We   
   were all so over-excited. We were all talking about ourselves always."   
   When Cecil Beaton broke into this rarefied world in late 1926, the group   
   discovered a photographer who could encapsulate them in romantic poses and   
   publish the results in Vogue. When he presented Zita with the results of his   
   first sitting with her, she lay back in a chair and gazed at the prints in   
   silence, occasionally emitting a grunt of intense satisfaction.   
   While in the midst of all this fun, she found time to type up the manuscript   
   of Sir Denison Ross's History of India, although it took her five years. Her   
   life also became complicated by romance. Sacheverell Sitwell, then an   
   aspiring poet, fell for Zita, despite having been married for a year to   
   Georgia Doble. He pursued her in vain for some years, inhibited not only by   
   his own marriage but also by Zita's ardent Catholicism.   
   Sitwell first spotted her at a party, and was struck by her resemblance to a   
   page in Tiepolo's Antony and Cleopatra. They met in the autumn of 1926, and   
   then again while staying with Stephen Tennant, another well known figure of   
   the jeunesse dorée. While Sachie fell for Zita, she was attracted to his   
   brother, Osbert.   
   Despite her antics, Zita enjoyed deep, spiritual conversations and hoped to   
   find a sympathetic confidant in Sachie. She was disappointed by his   
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)