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Ever since the Castles had returned from Europe in August 94,the war had been preying on Vernon’s mind. In December 94, he and Irene had danced in aid of Belgian relief, and when they reopened Castle House for the season that month, first-day receipts went to the same cause. In the spring of 95,a dance was held for the Blue Cross at Castles in the Air,“for the comfort of horses wounded in the war.” Irene noticed the change in Vernon: he was quieter, more thoughtful, even a bit embarrassed to be dancing for a living. “There must be something about the rattling of a drum that stirs up a man’s emotions and makes him want to go to war,” she wrote. “I don’t think he cared one way or the other about the show.” Some friends felt that Vernon had to “prove himself,” having been teased for being an effeminate dancer all these years. “That may have been one of the things that drove him into the Flying Corps, which was the epitome of hazard and danger,” muses Irene’s son. “He had never been a man’s man in the public’s eye,” said Irene. “That may have been part of his motive for wanting to go to war in the first place, to silence the very critics who might blame him for not going.” Show business writer Amy Leslie recalled shortly after Vernon’s death that “he became identified with a strange abnormal kind of girlish man which later developed into the afternoon tea party horror known as the ‘tango lizard ’—altogether,”Leslie was quick to note,“exactly the thing Mr. Castle certainly was not and could not countenance. He was a manly chap, devoted to shooting big game,riding wild horses,taking daredevil chances with gun,rod, boat and forest.” This was a time when one could not come right out and suggest that even noted female impersonators Julian Eltinge or Bert Savoy actually liked to have sex with other men, so the snide shots taken at Vernon’s heterosexual bona fides were made through innuendo and inference. “OH, GIVE ME A GUN AND LET ME RUN TO FIGHT THE FOREIGN FOE” CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR 141 Additionally,Vernon was tired and bored: he’d been in Watch Your Step for only half a year, but doing the same part over and over could become tedious. He and Irene had already lost interest in Castle House, and both of them hated vaudeville. He needed something new to challenge him. And certainly the lyrics of a current song must have hit home with him: Oh, give me a gun and let me run to fight the foreign foe, A flight up in an aeroplane would charm me. For since I’m married I declare, I’ve always been up in the air, And I’d feel at home if they’d let me join the Army! Cincinnati Star writer Oscar A. Doob ran into Vernon outside a stage door around the time Vernon was talking about enlisting: “Delicately the young man picked his way through the muddy alley; even daintily he made his way.” Consenting to be interviewed by Doob, Vernon later found himself ambushed in print, called “dainty” and “light on his feet . . . which would make him a good aviator.”Vernon, Doob admitted,“seemed sorry that one did not take seriously his announced intention to enlist as an aviator.” New York newsman Herbert Duckworth stood up publicly for Vernon and against those who felt that “this side of the Atlantic would be far more wholesome without his presence.” Duckworth noted that Vernon possessed the steady nerves and alertness required of pilots: “If Vernon Castle’s brains are scattered, as his detractors say, providence must have scattered them most judiciously.” Through the summer of 95, reports leaked to the press about whether Vernon had enlisted, if he was going to flight school or would be staying in Watch Your Step through the fall. “Vernon Castle, who has a plan to join the British Aviation Corps and help fight the Germans,doesn’t seem to be making much progress war-ward,” wrote one paper. “Can it be that he is to give the allies one more chance to settle the struggle before he takes hold?”Some of the coverage was downright vicious, including a paragraph in the Toledo Blade about the “valiant hero’s...

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