Bright Young Things discussion

For Services Rendered is a play in three act - set in a house in a small country town near Kent.

This is one of Maugham's most famous plays.

There are twelve characters, six women and six men.

Characters

Leonard Ardsley
Charlotte Ardsley, his wife
Sydney, his son
Eva, his unmarried daughter
Lois, his unmarried daughter
Ethel Bartlett, his married daughter
Howard Bartlett, her husband
Collie Stratton, Commander, RN
Wilfred Cedar
Gwen, his wife
Dr Prentice, Mrs Ardsley's brother
Gertrude, the Ardsley's parlourmaid

The action takes place in the Ardsley's house at Rambleston, a small country town in Kent, near the cathedral city of Stanbury.

Rambleston must be a fictional town, but what charming name. Stanbury is real enough, I checked.

I've started reading, into the first act…….

For Services Rendered. Published 1932.
Act one. I'm enjoying this play, set after the first world war. A British drawing room play. The characters and circumstances give a very good idea of how the war has effected so many lives and the economy.

In the second act Mrs Ardsley mentions [….."often rather taken by bright young things."]
This play was first published in 1932, two years after publication of Waugh's Vile Bodies. I thought the expression 'bright young things' was created by Evelyn Waugh in the novel Vile Bodies. Did 'bright young things' enter the vernacular after Vile Bodies and now appears in this play in 1932, or was the expression already widely used in England?

Check out Wikipedia - it indicates that it was a name given to the young society./social bohemians of the 1920s, especially by Tom Dreiberg (a/k/a William Hickey after 1932) in the Daily Express.