EVELYN WAUGH NEWSLETTER AND STUDIES Vol
EVELYN WAUGH NEWSLETTER AND STUDIES Vol. 34, No. 2 Autumn 2003
Brideshead Remodernized by Jonathan Pitcher University College London
"I have left behind illusion," I said to myself. "Henceforth I live in a world of three dimensions--with the aid of my five senses." I have since learned that there is no such world, but then, as the car turned out of sight of the house, I thought it took no finding, but lay all about me at the end of the avenue. Charles Ryder in Brideshead Revisited (154)
In the case of the past it is harder for us to get the shock . . . . Everything that is strange can be interpreted in a familiar way, or at least ignored. C. J. F. Martin in An Introduction to Medieval Philosophy (13)
Even the briefest of glimpses at any recent bibliography's suggested list of secondary texts regarding Brideshead indicates just how belabored our postmodern née modern theoretical equipment has become. In the wake of Marx, Nietzsche, or Freud, and heeding the doctrine of their poststructuralist acolytes, we are either bound to quest after some hitherto obscured, prelapsarian origin, now stripped of epistemology and thus facilely manifested in the criticism of the present, morphing into a presumably natural, revolutionary cause, or at the very least to find some evidence of semiotic play that debunks language's inherent mendacity. Given the continuing attractions of this novel, the fact that its televised version has proved popular with even the most marginalized sections of the public (sections postmodern theory ostensibly strives to represent), and the imminent production of a feature film, commentary is doubtless deemed necessary. In a tale of the dog days of an oppressed British aristocracy and the erosion of a nonhegemonic Catholicism, surely there lies the hope of some previously latent, radical point of departure. Whilst this point would claim heterogeneity as its stomping ground, however, Brideshead itself consistently outstrips the apparent sophistication of our demystifying modus operandi, rendering modernity as univocal, a critical myopia. For the difficulties in imposing any modern approach on this novel, in discerning some non- epistemological “truth,” see, along with many others, David Leon Higdon’s “Gay Sebastian and Cheerful Charles: Homoeroticism in Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited.” Higdon argues that “there seems no doubt that the characters’ tie is homosocial, that Charles is homoerotically attracted to Sebastian, and that their relationship is homosexual, though perhaps not sexually active” (83), only to conclude, more appropriately, that the exact status of their association is of little consequence, for it ultimately belongs, along with several heterosexual relationships, within Waugh’s general riposte to paganism, and hence Brideshead is not “a novel gay liberationists will eagerly embrace” (86). In other words, even if the revision of the friendship is viable, and Higdon deemed successful in unearthing some clandestine intimacy with which to debunk a superficial, exclusionary norm, it is at best a pyrrhic victory, and at worst entirely self- annulling. By Higdon’s own admission, the novel itself has always already rendered his nuances, the bulk of his essay, futile, and his critical apparatus extraneous. Indeed, this apparatus necessarily precludes contact with its object, for hypothetically, if it were not for Higdon’s a priori, attitudinal reliance on the ur-narrative of modernity (ultimately proving to be an exclusive methodology), a different essay might begin where this one ends, with Waugh’s riposte to paganism, and thereby confront its dissent from Brideshead’s broadest, evidently
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orthodox principle of intelligibility out in the open. Instead, the different essay, Tison Pugh’s “Romantic Friendship, Homosexuality, and Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited,” begins, in the thick of Higdon’s fray, with “A central debate in recent considerations of Brideshead Revisited concerns whether Charles Ryder and Sebastian Flyte’s relationship should be interpreted as merely homosocial or as decidedly homosexual . . . ” (64), and proceeds to centralize this same debate still further. Higdon’s version is re-aired, now as “a refined and nuanced reading” (64), although Pugh’s aim is to question the adequacy of the terminology via which we categorize sexuality, suggesting that the hetero-/homo- dichotomy is false, “anachronistic” (68), “too reductive a formula to fit the subtleties and shades of meaning in the text” (64-65). In lieu of such limits, Pugh re-contextualizes the liaison against the backdrop of “the sex-segregated societies of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in such institutions as all-male and all-female colleges and boarding houses” (65), and posits an intermediate term for same-sex intimacy, “romantic friendship,” a phrase borrowed from one of Cyril Connolly’s romantic friends, Noel Blakiston, and from Cara’s description of the two boys’ relationship in Brideshead. Romantic friendship is not always consummated, but is rather a cozier, cuddlier affair, an apprenticeship, “seen as part of a young man’s maturation and development” (Pugh 66) even towards heterosexuality, to which the subsequent marriages of Connolly, Blakiston and Charles Ryder attest. As further corroboration for such a friendship, Pugh reels off the usual passages for this kind of assertion, “Foremost, Charles’ confession that they indulged in ‘naughtiness high in the catalogue of grave sins’” (69), and in fairness concludes with an attempt to rein in his field’s more visceral element:
The goal of queer readers to claim the past which has often been denied and bowdlerized from us stands as an admirable goal, but such a process of reclamation must be undertaken with full awareness of the nuances of identity in various historical eras and geographies. (71)
Despite the measured tone and content, although Pugh is no doubt versed in queer theory and the intricacies of re-categorization, does Brideshead offer any form of reclamation, whether nuanced or not? Assuming Charles and Sebastian’s intrigue is defined as a romantic friendship rather than as simply homosexual, there remains the question of whether this act of nomenclature, indeed this relatively accessible intrigue itself, is one of the novel’s central debates. If, instead of same-sex sexuality, Charles’ earlier acts of transgression were those of pedophilia, or bestiality, would they be any more or less central? Pugh’s own critical context dictates our point of entry, and whilst this may be the path of least resistance, a point with which both Pugh and any modern audience are entirely familiar, in the context of Brideshead it would seem to warrant a footnote at most. There is always the sense that such meaning-shading, however industrious, may be misplaced, that its schema may ultimately prove no less formulaic or reductive than those it purports to supersede, and towards the end of the article, as if out of nowhere in the latter’s context but only too predictably here, Pugh evacuates his own building:
The sexual component of the relationships does not determine his [Charles’] identity as heterosexual or homosexual; it only stresses the failings of the sexual in the face of the divine. Both the same-sex and the heterosexual relationships prove meaningless to Charles as he finds himself without a sexual partner but with God. (70)
This afterthought, of course, is a repetition of Higdon’s conclusion, a secondary status which means that even if we were once prepared to countenance Pugh’s romantic friendship over homosexuality, such differentiation is elided in the same end. Indeed, even a hetero-/homo- distinction is voided in these lines, both now “meaningless” (70), lost in the frivolity of Waugh’s Arcadian prelude to the novel’s eventual claim to meaning. Pugh, like Higdon, has now admittedly been pre-thwarted by methodology, yet continues to insist that “The romantic friendship . . . offers great explanatory force in understanding how Waugh and other authors,
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including Walt Whitman, Virginia Woolf (Mrs. Dalloway), and E. M. Forster (Maurice), saw their protagonists’ (and perhaps their own) relationships with members of the same sex” (71). Without digressing at length into the work of others here, any of the three would feasibly provide safer, less arcane ground on which the debate might be centralized, whereas in the case of Brideshead it is not greatly explanatory of anything other than its own inadequacies and by implication those of the modernity from whence it sprang. As may be obvious, my meta-reading is of a non multa sed multum nature, not limited to definitions of Charles and Sebastian’s mutual affection, but only by the number of discourses modernity is capable of concocting around the novel. For example, on a similarly auto- invalidating note, though in relation to semiotic play, see Frederick Beaty’s The Ironic World of Evelyn Waugh: A Study of Eight Novels, which, in the conclusion to the chapter on Brideshead, has to concede the relative insignificance of its own primary thesis:
Although his [Waugh’s] later serious novels may contribute to his stature as a literary artist, critic of society, and Catholic apologist, they do little to advance his reputation as an ironist. Since their more direct approach, increasingly solemn tone, and preoccupation with religious themes diminish the possibilities even for technical irony, these works are not within the scope of this study. (165)
Whether the irony in even the earlier work confirms a proto-Derridean Waugh, an exposer of superstructural meaning, is similarly suspect, but any interaction between the two worlds (the admission that Waugh’s world was ultimately not quite so ironic after all might perhaps prompt revision of Beaty’s preceding pages), is pre-prohibited. The title’s initial grandiosity, The Ironic World of Evelyn Waugh, now seems hyperbolic, for it only functions if stress is unnaturally placed on Ironic instead of World, thus indicating a less significant, more partial study, which would span only seven novels at most and thereby evade its present incongruity. The same incongruity may be viewed more succinctly at the website totalwaugh, which opens with an apparently benign characterization of itself, in bold type, as “A group to devoted to the British writer Evelyn Waugh” (1). Just a little below, however, the characterization is less boldly repeated, almost identically, as “A group devoted to the satirical British writer Evelyn Waugh (1903-66)” (1) [my emphasis], and the addition of the adjective already implies a certain critical proclivity, narrowing the opening definition’s embrace. Furthermore, immediately after the second, adjectivally enhanced version, in case we have missed the implication, the site confirms its inclusive/exclusive schizophrenia with “All points of view are welcome, but please note that TotalWaugh is intended to promote Waugh’s writing, not his faith” (1). This censures all but suspicious commentary on the second half of Brideshead, if indeed any exposition of Catholicism (even the mild disclaimers of the likes of Higdon, Pugh and Beaty) is still possible, and yet to the right of “All points of view . . .,” close enough to be read simultaneously, amidst a more general description of the site listing the date of its inception and other pragmata, appears the word “Unmoderated” (1) which, while knowing otherwise, I can only hope is itself satirical. In his authorized biography of Waugh, Christopher Sykes suggests that one potential flaw in the novel is “the Roman Catholic religion and its power over unlikely subjects of its discipline,” that although he has “no difficulty in following Evelyn’s religious theme,” the less indoctrinated “general reader” may view it as “institutionalized fantasy” and “is rather left in the cold” (256). More recently, in Evelyn Waugh: A Literary Life, David Wykes echoes this thought more bluntly, reading Brideshead’s romanticized, secular side as so inevitably alluring that it obscures any other purpose:
In a comic letter to Dorothy Lygon while he [Waugh] was writing the book, he set down the nightmare version of it.
I am writing a very beautiful book, to bring tears, about very rich, beautiful, high born people who live in palaces and have no troubles
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except what they make themselves and those are mainly the demons sex and drink which after all are easy to bear as troubles go nowadays.
No eschatology at all; Lady Dorothy was not a Catholic and neither were the masses of readers who bought Brideshead Revisited and read it wrong. The nightmare came true. (141)
The masses of general readers are now apparently the critics, and the novel modernity's Rorschach test, an experiment in analysis that uses haphazard splashes of ink in order to manifest the patient's more latent desires. For C. J. F. Martin, cited here as one of my epigraphs, the past has become another country, only seemingly accessible, and this is the discovery of the Higdons and Pughs in their eventual disclaimers, in their moments, however flippant, of defamiliarization. Instead of perceiving Waugh's nightmare, they unwittingly form part of it. Perhaps becoming the whipping boy for modernity's flailings, its prejudices, and thereby revealing their solipsism, is in itself enough. The danger is that the flailings themselves, as opposed to their revelation as solipsistic, may be assumed to possess "explanatory force" (Pugh 71). As a comparison to the above, in "The Permanent Adolescent," Christopher Hitchens reads Waugh through George Orwell's unfinished notes on Brideshead. Orwell's context for the study is that of the "orthodoxy" (107) of the contemporary literati and Waugh's paradoxical rogue status as a traditionalist. The notes continue, however, to stress "That one cannot judge the value of an opinion simply by the amount of courage that is required in holding it," and that "One cannot really be Catholic and grown-up" (107). Hitchens revels in this detachment, in the sardonic wit of Waugh's earlier, pre-Brideshead "entertainments" (111), venturing that he "wrote as brilliantly as he did precisely because he loathed the modern world" (107) while simultaneously questioning the sources of such detachment. At times this questioning is glibly tendentious, even hostile, arguing that Waugh "felt and transmitted some of the mobilizing energy of fascism" (108) and that in Brideshead "the narrative is made ridiculous by a sentimental and credulous approach to miracles and the supernatural" (109). The difference here, however, is that neither Orwell nor Hitchens, despite their agenda, is attempting to convert the texts, to modernize them, preferring instead to counter the perceived superstition or ignorance of their ideology and to recognize certain elements as rightfully lost in the ruins of history. The debate between Waugh's brand of conservatism and Hitchens' neo-socialism is indeed central, one which Waugh himself envisioned, relevant to now, then, and the novel. In contrast, and as an example of the danger to which I referred earlier, see Sylvia Koleva's "The Audience is Part of the Story Backstage: An Appreciation of Brideshead Revisited" in a previous volume of the Newsletter. Here, the novel supposedly offers nothing but "a negative image of religion, mocking every kind" (10), with the one exception of Rex Mottram, surely a contender for the most modern character in all of English literature and a man who believes that "if you put in a pound note with someone's name on it, they get sent to hell" (Waugh 176):
‘There are some Catholics with much chic in Europe,’ says Rex during his celebrated dinner in Paris with Charles, so abundant with eating and talking (plenty of comments on the past and plans for the future). That’s the only thing positive [sic] Waugh writes on the subject, except for Cordelia’s acts of heroism in Spain. (10)
I shall not dwell on either Mottram or fashion. Suffice it to say that neither is a reliable criterion for approving of Brideshead’s Catholicism, and that “Waugh never pretended that religious belief should make one happy” (Kermode, xxiii). Rather than dogmatically assuming the position of one current theory or another, only to discover that the primary text disowns such positions, thus forcing the criticism into perpetual self-annulment, re- and then de-modernizing (or in Koleva’s case never de-modernizing) itself ad infinitum, perhaps the novel should be permitted to dictate its own critical context from the off.
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Works Cited Beaty, Frederick. The Ironic World of Evelyn Waugh: A Study of Eight Novels. Dekalb: Northern Illinois UP, 1992. Higdon, David Leon. “Gay Sebastian and Cheerful Charles: Homoeroticism in Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited.” ARIEL: A Review of International English Literature 25.4 (1994): 77-89. Hitchens, Christopher. “The Permanent Adolescent.” The Atlantic Monthly 291.4 (2003): 107- 16. Kermode, Frank. Introduction. Waugh, ix-xxiv. Koleva, Sylvia. “The Audience is Part of the Story Backstage: An Appreciation of Brideshead Revisited.” Evelyn Waugh Newsletter and Studies. 33.3 (2003): 9-11. 13 May 2003.
Impressions of Logroño International Symposium: One Hundred Years of Evelyn Waugh University of La Rioja, 15-17 May 2003
The Evelyn Waugh Symposium in Logroño, La Rioja, was a very welcome and eagerly anticipated event for me. I have now been working on Waugh for over four years and have had to cope with a lot of negative reactions regarding my research 'object'--being labeled reactionary myself merely for my choice of author among them. The Symposium consequently offered a welcome break from that kind of criticism and a chance to meet like-minded researchers and scholars from all over the world. It proved to be a well-organised event in a beautiful setting, dominated by the enthusiasm of all delegates that fuelled debate and discussion. I am already looking forward to the next Waugh event in Oxford this September. Christine Berberich, University of Derby
The faultless organisation (weather included) by Carlos Villar Flor and his team of the Waugh Centenary Symposium allowed me to renew contact with old friends after two decades' separation but not silence. That led me to the conclusion (prompted by Christine Berberich's paper) that 'all gentlemen are very old' . . . except us! Indeed R. M. (Bob) Davis was at his best (stentorian and erudite) as a kind of avuncular M.C., Donat Gallagher proved his courteous but passionate, knowledgeable but modest guardian of the Waugh canon, George McCartney kept his keen insight into all subtleties of Waugh's art and thought. We all resumed acquaintances interrupted by the vagaries of life with enormous pleasure and profit. On top of these personal recollections, I also realised the vitality of Waugh studies around the world and the new blood, Spanish et alia, infused into the society. Not John Sutro's 'Railway Club', not a gathering of old friends, but a living, expanding group ready to further Waugh studies and embark on new adventures. I, for one, do think that the time has come for example to study Waugh in the light of the more modern schools of criticism. To conclude, I was impressed by the UniRioja meeting. It played the part once held by the
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HRHRC at Austin [Texas] and permitted the birth of a Waugh network which will allow Waugh scholars of all origins and generations to work together. In this respect I look forward to the Oxford conference organised by John Wilson next September in Oxford as a new stage in this development. All my thanks then go to both Carlos and John. Alain Blayac, University of Montpellier
I enjoyed very much the Rioja conference, mostly because up to then I had felt rather alone in the study of Waugh. When I had the chance to speak and listen to the experts on Waugh and the newly arrived generations, I felt much encouraged. I was also expectant to hear the English academics and was not disappointed. I began to understand why almost no English student studies Waugh in the UK. I think it was very positive that politics, religion and biographical aspects were discussed, sometimes heatedly but in the end with mutual respect. I believe it is time we judge Waugh as a writer and give him the place he deserves. At La Rioja we made some first steps toward that reassessment, acknowledging that Waugh deserves it and reflecting on how we should try to avoid political antipathies and religious sympathies when dealing with his works. I hope that we can continue talking about all this in Oxford in September. Maybe the food, wine and weather won't be so good, probably the university won't go to the same lengths as La Rioja's, but surely there are many of us who are looking forward to speaking about Waugh in the places where he studied and lived. There are also many of us who need to be encouraged; if the circumstances do not help, we'll do it ourselves. Eulàlia Carceller Guillamet, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona
The Logroño symposium provided me, a relative newcomer to Waugh studies, with invaluable insight into the various schools which have established themselves within the discipline. I left with the impression that, while the facts of Waugh's life and work are largely well-catalogued, too often the analysis of these facts either results in recapitulation of the stories we already know (an inward-looking appreciation of the jokes we all find funny), or has succumbed to what might be termed "special interests," which have proven particularly unassailable because they are so much in harmony with Waugh's own ideological, sociological, and theological interests. Faced with a society, and with a reading public (both lay and academic) which is increasingly unsympathetic to much of Waugh's political, social, and religious ideology, a great deal of Waugh criticism has, rather than truly critiquing the works, too often sought to provide apologias. Nearly forty years after the author's death, it is time to take a truly objective view of the works and the man, to acknowledge the failings (both in art and life) when and where they occur, and to observe the works afresh, with as little critical bias as any of us can muster. Patrick Denman Flanery, St Cross College, Oxford
The best conference I have ever attended. Despite some of the ideological differences regarding Waugh among the group, everyone really enjoyed the company of everyone else. Dan S. Kostopulos, Arkansas School for Mathematics and Sciences
The Centenary Symposium at the Universidad de la Rioja was one of the most enjoyable conferences I have ever participated in thanks to Dr. Carlos Villar Flor's gracious, unflagging attention to everyone's needs. Further, it was heartening to hear so many perceptive talks on Waugh from an assembly of international scholars. The proceedings gave testimony to Waugh's continuing and, I believe, growing importance in world literature. George McCartney, St. John's University
The man sitting in front of me on the bus from Madrid was Donat Gallagher. I knew he must be attached to the symposium because he was reading something by Waugh (Robbery under Law?). Our early acquaintance would be my first experience of what I found to be most remarkable and memorable about the symposium in Logroño: a genuine community feeling.
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The superior intellectual quality of the proceedings might have been expected, what with a roster of speakers many of whom have devoted long and famous careers to Waugh studies. I, for one, returned to Chicago humbled but also energized with the sense of possibility to which many of the papers opened my eyes. It is even harder, though, to cultivate the kind of fellowship that characterized the symposium. For gracefully accomplishing both, Professor Villar Flor and his assistants are to be commended. I am only very early in my career, but I know it will be hard to match the experience of May 2003 at the Universidad de La Rioja. Patrick Query, Loyola University
Editor's Note: Photographs of the symposium have been posted at www.unirioja.es/100yWaugh/.
Book Reviews
A Plaintive Traveler Waugh Abroad: Collected Travel Writing, by Evelyn Waugh. New York: Knopf, 2003. 1064 pp. $25.00. Reviewed by K. J. Gilchrist, Iowa State University.
A collection of Evelyn Waugh's travel writing makes a convenient if slightly bulky volume. It has a nicely compact font on acid-free paper, reminiscent of the splendid Köneman editions, but also contains maps, photos, woodcuts, bibliography, and a chronology of events from the author's life juxtaposed with literary and historical events. It enlarges the 1946 anthology of Waugh's travel writing (When the Going Was Good), and Nicholas Shakespeare's new introduction balances well with the texts. The volume contains seven works: Labels: a Mediterranean Journal (1930), Remote People (1931), Ninety-Two Days (1934), Waugh in Abyssinia (1936), Robbery Under Law (1939), The Holy Places (1952), and A Tourist in Africa (1960). They are not merely stories of place and journey; as Nicholas Shakespeare notes, personality is more clearly revealed here, even in the rare "dead" sentence, than in Waugh's novels. Waugh's persistently Bright Young voice, plaintive and discontent ("I can only be funny if I have something to complain about"), comically exposes the idiosyncrasies of hotels and their concierges, of travel-companions, of boats, trains, planes, and the reluctant comfort of various beds (one of which "was, I think, stuffed with skulls"). We begin to suspect that today's travel writers—like Bill Bryson or Burt Wolf—may be less original in their wit and comic patterns than we once assumed. But more: Waugh's striking perceptions into human foibles and hilarious reversals are, in the early pieces, shining and, so many years beyond, still relevant for travelers. Beyond his personality, readers familiar with Waugh's novels discover sources for events in his fiction. We observe the darkening of his vision, his increasing discontent with the modern world, as well as his considered (and increasingly explicit) seclusion within the ordered world of his Catholicism. Labels presents a Bright Young Person abroad, comparable to a careening but delighted Agatha Runcible on a cruise (though decidedly more perceptive in gauging and exposing his subjects' pretenses); later works have the distinct sense that Waugh, like William Shakespeare, discovered a world darker than one imagined in youth. Waugh becomes Father Rothschild looking upon the world disapprovingly while it is merely being its mundane self. Waugh is decreasingly amused by that world except as a religious pilgrim iterating his credo: "I believe that man is, by nature, an exile and will never be self-sufficient or complete on this earth; that his chances of happiness and virtue, here, remain more or less constant through the centuries [. . . .]" Waugh seems to make the pilgrimages (had they occurred) of a sobered and pensive Charles Ryder after Brideshead. In Labels, Waugh's eyes are fixed on his travel companions and the locals providing the means by which romantic "labels" long attached to various destinations are exploded for falsity or confirmed in prejudices. Expressing more about the machinations of the patrons or matrons file:////uol.le.ac.uk/...c144/My%20Documents/Evelyn%20Waugh/Evelyn%20Waugh%20Studies/Newsletters/Newsletters/Newsletter_34.2.htm[04/12/2013 14:45:04] EVELYN WAUGH NEWSLETTER AND STUDIES Vol
of various local brothels than of structure and statuary of the cathedrals, still Waugh offers interesting distinctions for travelers— the tourist's habit of detecting (and preferring) what is merely an object of antiquity over an object of art. In Remote People, Waugh becomes increasingly political. A "special correspondent" for The Times, he reports on the coronation of Haile Selassie in Addis Ababa. His eye lifts from fellow travelers and the locals to muddling officials and rifle-toting colonists of various nations. Through narrative pictures of absurdities and nightmarish events, Waugh posits that a seamless juncture between Western cultures and cultures of "tribal integrity" will not succeed. Ninety-Two Days seems slightly less political, with Waugh in British Guiana and Brazil on a journey important to A Handful of Dust—a drink of cocoa at a party brings Waugh to fall asleep, and waking next morning he finds Mr. Christie "still talking of visions and mystic numbers." Supporting "Signor Mussolini's" invasion of Africa, Waugh in Abyssinia rehearses politics more strenuously than in earlier performances. He supports Italian sufficiency, asserting its right to bring order to the Ethiopian peoples while ending mismanagement under "mildly comic incidents" of Haile Selassie's government. The fun of this book is not only in Waugh's delightful satirizing of fellow journalists, but in viewing opinions that rankled in his day as well as in our own. George Orwell wrote on Brideshead, "Waugh is about as good a novelist as one can be [. . .] while holding untenable opinions," and so we gather about Waugh the travel writer. But as Christopher Hitchens noted, "Waugh wrote as brilliantly as he did precisely because he loathed the modern world." Robbery Under Law thus presents a very dark Waugh in Mexico recording a history of how modern political, social, and economic trappings donned in the Western world "in Latin America [. . .] have always been farcical"—and deadly. Mexico's operations move by corruption empowered with guns, through systems that "conformed to the new, Nazi statecraft." Here Waugh's writing falters and ends with a sermon: the hope of Mexico is within the unity of Christianity, not in a country that jostles violently in division. It's natural, then, that the next book is Waugh visiting The Holy Places. This short work, with engravings by Reynolds Stone, traces the history and saints important to the Holy Land. His political valuations emerge up front: the Englishman "surrendered our mandate to rule the Holy Land for low motives," moving Waugh to abandon his pride in being English. The work, written I think to English Catholics, complements the rest of the volume in providing a sense of Waugh's faith beneath his disillusion. The last book presents Waugh as A Tourist in Africa, colicky and reluctant, even in beginning: "I needed to go abroad for my health"—a necessity, not an adventure. Nicholas Shakespeare believes this work is Waugh's "thinnest" writing in the collection, but one giving us a deeper view into the biographical Pinfold. While of value to scholars, Waugh Abroad is a great asset for historians of peoples and ideas, as valuable as Herodotus in Egypt, but, as Waugh says about one port of call, "gentle readers [including those sensitive to politically incorrect writing] should keep clear."
Good Companions: William Deedes and Evelyn Waugh in Abyssinia At War with Waugh: The True Story of Scoop, by W. F. Deedes. London: Macmillan, 2003. 135 pp. £12.99. Reviewed by Donat Gallagher, James Cook University
Readers of the Newsletter will welcome W. F. Deedes’s At War with War: The True Story of Scoop for its fascinating new information about Waugh. For several months in 1935 the two correspondents shared quarters in Addis Ababa and adventurous travel beyond it. The first-hand experience of Waugh that Lord Deedes recounts outweighs any amount of gossip or intelligent analysis. Now aged 90 and still active in good causes, Lord Deedes covered the Italo-Abyssinian conflict for the Morning Post in 1935. Though weighed down by a quarter ton of luggage (no cleft sticks!), he insists he was “not William Boot.” On arrival in Addis Ababa, Deedes teamed up with Evelyn Waugh for the Daily Mail, who lived out of a single suitcase, and Stuart Emeny
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for the News Chronicle, an experienced radical journalist with a huge medicine chest. Most correspondents lived three or four to a room in the Hotel Imperial (Hotel Liberty in Scoop), but Waugh led this threesome to the Deutsches Haus (with its militant goat), immortalized in the novel as Pension Dressler. Here, and on several rough trips, Deedes observed Waugh. Primarily this book is about Deedes’s own reporting, which he took seriously. He identifies the roles that many of his colleagues, or their professional practices, play in Scoop and explains the frustrations of a reporter kept away from the action by government decree, while fed a “mean diet of pronouncements” by the Press Bureau. Deedes urbanely describes, not only the journalists’ exaggerations and inventions, but the pressures under which they lived. It is all excellent background for Scoop, as is Deedes’s sketch of contemporary politics. In the absence of hard information, Waugh in Abyssinia made the bizarre activities and conventions of the press its real subject, sharply analysing the ways in which it manufactured news and killed true stories. The book was disliked and dismissed. By contrast, the same activities portrayed in Scoop were enjoyed--but as hilarious fantasy. In 1975 Phillip Knightley’s authoritative The First Casualty (Chapter 8, “The Real Scoop”) set the record straight. Far to the left of Waugh politically, Knightley nevertheless confirmed Waugh’s strictures on the news that came out of Abyssinia: “When Scoop was published in 1938 . . . it was hailed as a ‘brilliant parody’ . . . What only the war correspondents present at the time knew was that Scoop was actually a piece of straight reportage, thinly disguised as a novel.” About Evelyn Waugh himself, Lord Deedes is acute and original. Aware of Waugh’s faults, real and mythic, he still offers judicious praise. Waugh was already an experienced traveller— East Africa, Spitzbergen, British Guiana--when he covered the war. Deedes saw him as a “natural leader,” and, surprisingly in view of later history, an obvious “officer.” He “drew respect” as the man to turn to if one had been “bitten by a scorpion” or had to learn to ride or plan a camping trip. When bombing loomed, his not “getting the wind up” was “deeply reassuring.” Deedes experienced Waugh’s irritability—is the title At War with Waugh intentionally ambiguous?—but on balance found him a “good companion.” Conscious that the socialite novelist preferred smart society, Deedes discovered that he was also “adept at conversing with people of small importance” and actually listened to what they said (which might explain the perfect pitch of his dialogue). As for Waugh’s journalism, this book makes amends. In 1962 Deedes’s introduction to the Folio edition of Black Mischief took its tone from Waugh’s self-deprecating stories and amiably ridiculed his reporting of Haile Selassie’s coronation in 1930. Now, having read the copy Waugh sent to The Times, Deedes finds that the paper “made a very good choice” of correspondent. He also points out that the author of The Loved One, who charmed so many secrets out of the morticians of Forest Lawn, was a born reporter. Some minor slips might be noted. Grimes, not Giles in Decline and Fall; Julia, not Josephine Stitch (Josephine is “the eight-year-old Stitch prodigy”). Waugh did not have “roughly the sort of deal [with the Daily Mail] he had secured for the Emperor’s coronation.” Working for The Times in 1930, Waugh was “on space” and received no expenses. At War with Waugh is a warm, wise, beautifully written book which everyone interested in Evelyn Waugh, Scoop, truthful reporting, the trade of journalism and the Italo-Abyssinian conflict will want to own—just the thing for the Waugh centenary.
Burning Questions Flesh Inferno: Atrocities of Torquemada and the Spanish Inquisition, by Simon Whitechapel. Creation Books, 2003. 192 pp. $14.95. Reviewed by Sebastian Perry.
This is a book that wears its heart on its sleeve. Part of a ‘Blood History Series’ that includes such titles as Caligula: Divine Carnage and The Bloody Countess, Flesh Inferno is a lurid exposition of the grislier aspects of Catholicism’s history. Avowing from the start his contempt
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for the Catholic Church, Simon Whitechapel sets out to show how she is the “Mother of Abominations” (5) and only quantitatively rather than qualitatively different from Nazism in the persecution of her opponents. Along the way, he discusses subjects ranging from the paintings of Hieronymus Bosch and the writings of Sir Thomas Browne to modern psychological research, behavioural conditioning, game theory and mitochondrial DNA, all in his characteristically incisive and polished prose style.[1] Among the writers he quotes are Machiavelli, C.S. Lewis, George Orwell, Evelyn Waugh, Lytton Strachey, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and the Marquis de Sade. Impressive as this eclecticism may be, the result is a narrative at times diffuse and unfocused. A mention of the Host, in the context of the popular belief that Jews regularly desecrated it, prompts a list of seven graphic examples of wafer-defilement from The 120 Days of Sodom, apparently because this will help us “gain some understanding of the horror” (41) of such an act to a devout Catholic. These and other quotations seem to have been included for their own sake rather than that of the argument. Another distraction is his maddening preoccupation with etymology. In places it can be illuminating, as when he discusses the link, obscured in modern English, between Ioudas (Judas) and hoi Ioudaioi (the Jews) in John’s Gospel. Elsewhere, however, his philological enquiry is as exhausting as it is exhaustive. Is it of particular importance or interest to note that Domingo de Guzmán’s surname means “good man” (27) or that Torquemada’s combines the Latin imperative, “torture,” with the Spanish word for “burnt” (51)? Does even the most ignorant non-Latinist need to be told that a spectacle “literally means something to look at” (66)? Sherlock Holmes’s method was “founded upon the observation of trifles”[2]: Mr Whitechapel similarly manages to wring deep significance from the most trivial of details. Thus, among the “uncanny” (33) resemblances between Catholicism and Nazism is the fact that members of the Inquisition and the Gestapo were both clad in black. One is inclined to respond with the words of Herod in Wilde’s Salomé: “It is not wise to find symbols in everything that one sees. It makes life too full of terrors.” But the above are minor irritations, compared to the book’s chief intellectual failing: its astonishingly reductive and scornful attitude to religion. Christianity is described, with a nod to Richard Dawkins, as a “mental virus” (17); Judaism is later characterized as “a kind of obsessive-compulsive disorder” (109). Actually, I’m being rather disingenuous. To anyone even cursorily familiar with Simon Whitechapel’s opinions, the arguments of this book will hardly come as a shock. What is surprising is the blunt way in which they are expressed and the minimal effort taken to defend or explain them. This passage provoked the largest number of marginal exclamation marks:
Christian morality is in fact no kind of morality at all: it is based on a simple calculus of benefit and loss that appeals not to abstract concepts of good and evil but to pure self-interest. In Christian doctrine, one does not do good and avoid evil as ends in themselves but as ends [sic] to gaining a reward and escaping a punishment. (90)
The drawback to this kind of polemic is that it only caters to those who share the author’s opinions. Anyone not already convinced that religion is the radix omnium malorum is unlikely to be won over by such poorly explained assertions. Of the few Christians with the inclination or stomach to read Flesh Inferno, I doubt that any will recognize in it their religion as they actually live and experience it. “Christianity,” the author opines, “like all religion, is now and has always been a Bad Thing” (6). That in itself is debatable, but the possibility that for many centuries it was a Necessary Thing, or at least an Inevitable Thing, is never acknowledged. Despite being a history book, this is an oddly a-historical work. It makes ample use of contemporary sources but is somehow entirely lacking in a sense of period. The narrative is pervaded by a rationalist disdain that seems to preclude any possibility of empathy with its subjects. One does not get the impression that the author cares any more for the victims of the Inquisition than for the men who tortured them. They are all contemptible entries in his catalogue of religious folly. And while it is grudgingly acknowledged in the preface that recent research has shown the death-toll of the Inquisition to be much smaller than had been
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previously thought, no attempt is made in the course of the book to place the Catholic Church’s activities within the context of the (often far bloodier) practices of other churches and secular authorities: “I agree that numbers and methods are very important as matters of objective historical fact, but beyond that my reaction is: so what?” (6). Indeed, putting the slaughter in proportion would hardly suit his anti-Papist agenda or live up to the sensationalist promise of the front cover. Therefore we get mealy-mouthed equivocation--“The Inquisition killed as many as it had to, and if it had had to kill many more it would have done so” (105)–and a virtual exculpation of Protestantism (6, 152) that is hard to justify, given its own record of atrocities. All this is a pity, because there are truths in this book that many have yet to acknowledge: that complacency about the Inquisition among modern-day Catholics is reprehensible; that the Holocaust did not spring ex nihilo but grew at least partly out of centuries of institutionalised Christian anti-semitism; that the Catholic Church has still not admitted to wrongdoing in these matters; that theocracies are every bit as undesirable as secular totalitarian regimes. But, marred as it is by such a virulent anti-Catholic animus, Flesh Inferno will invite only derision from the people in whom it should provoke the most thought. Perhaps one day Simon Whitechapel will write a book that engages in debate with Christians and does not treat them as laboratory mice suffering from assorted pathological afflictions. In the meantime, I fear he will only be preaching to the converted.
Notes [1] There is one curious lapse: the present-day Church’s attitude to the Jews is described as “anilinguing” (114) and then as “arse-licking” on the following page. Surely this isn’t what Fowler meant by "elegant variation"? [2] Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, "The Bascombe Valley Mystery" (1892).
Rewriting a Dream Oxford in English Literature: The Making, and Undoing, of 'The English Athens,' by John Dougill. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1998. 363 pp. $39.95. Reviewed by John Howard Wilson, Lock Haven University of Pennsylvania.
I read this book to prepare for the Waugh Centenary in Oxford, and I highly recommend Oxford in English Literature to anyone interested in the history of the university, the way it has been treated in literature, or the place of Evelyn Waugh in the tradition. Oxford in English Literature is "not burdened by specialist jargon or theory," and Dougill's prose is enjoyable, even playful. He provides historical context, as when he explains the life of a clerk in Chaucer's time. Organization is chronological, and we tour Oxford in writing of every period from the Middle Ages through the twentieth century. Writers such as J. H. Newman and Lewis Carroll are examined in depth, but Dougill also illustrates points with dozens of incidental references to obscure works. Instead of assuming an air of superiority toward authors, Dougill focuses on strengths that distinguish each work. He demonstrates how Matthew Arnold's "dreaming spires" became symbols of "high moral purpose and the heroic defence of truth" (153), but he is equally attentive to Thomas Hardy's "alternative motif for the city--that of the long wall" (182). As he proceeds, Dougill builds on themes already introduced, and we see how spires led to walls, and how walls led to recent efforts to reduce the importance of self- contained colleges. Take Waugh for example. Dougill concentrates on Brideshead Revisited, though he also refers to Decline and Fall and A Little Learning. Stressing Waugh's knowledge of literature concerning Oxford, Dougill identifies many works Waugh quotes without attribution. Though "style and content . . . owe much to the conventions of the Oxford novel" (173), Brideshead is nevertheless the "culmination of the Oxford myth," as it "rewrites the universal dream of a golden past in the form of a college story" (175). The official History of the University of
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Oxford (1994) emphasizes "how misleading" it is to take Brideshead as a guide to "modern Oxford." The statement is, as Dougill concludes, "remarkable testimony to the potency of imaginative fiction" (244-5). Thus Dougill weaves fact and fiction, reality and imagination, action and reaction. The study and thought that went into Oxford in English Literature are evident on every page, but they are also spelled out in 15 pages of bibliography.
Estate, Author Reach Agreement Regarding Brideshead Regained According to an article entitled "Waugh Family Fury at 'Brideshead' Sequel," published in The Independent on 17 August 2003, the Estate of Evelyn Waugh has reached an agreement with Michael Johnston, the author of Brideshead Regained. The Estate was "unimpressed with Mr Johnston's efforts to follow in the footsteps of Waugh" and insisted on certain conditions regarding sales of the sequel. Brideshead Regained is not to be sold in bookshops, only online. Each copy is to bear a sticker explaining that "This sequel is not authorised by the Waugh estate." The entire story may be read in The Independent or Totalwaugh (message no. 416).
Guardian Hay Festival Evelyn Waugh was the subject of three panels at the Guardian Hay Festival, held annually at Hay-on-Wye, Wales. All three panels convened on 26 May 2003. The first panel, "Waugh Waugh One," focused on Black Mischief and Scoop, with comments from Bill Deedes, Christopher Hitchens, and Allan Little. "Waugh Waugh Two" was an opportunity for Stephen Fry to talk about his forthcoming film version of Vile Bodies, to be entitled Bright Young Things. "Waugh Waugh Three" concentrated on A Handful of Dust and Brideshead Revisited, with comments from John Mortimer, Nicholas Rankin, and Alexander Waugh. The program is available at www.hayfestival.co.uk. Unfortunately, Waugh's work was once again groundlessly said to contain "overtones of racism and fascism" in an article entitled "Waugh of Words for Evelyn's Centenary: Hay Festival Debates Legacy of 'Fascist' Founder of Writing Dynasty," by Angelique Chrisafis, in the Guardian for 24 May 2003. Four people are quoted in the article, but only one addresses the charges of racism and fascism. The director of the festival, Peter Florence, dismisses the charges as irrelevant. The entire article can be read at Totalwaugh (message no. 385). The Hay Festival's panels on Waugh were videotaped and broadcast as a special episode of BBC4's Readers & Writers Roadshow. The program first aired on 30 May 2003, and David Cliffe judged it a "remarkably intelligent and cultured event." For more details, see An Evelyn Waugh Website.
Brideshead Revisited: The Movie News concerning the forthcoming film version of Brideshead Revisited continues to be ominous. In an article in the Telegraph for 27 May 2003, scriptwriter Andrew Davies said that he had given the novel a "darker, more heterosexual" treatment than the television production had done. Davies' script focuses on Charles Ryder and Julia Flyte, and it "explores how Roman Catholicism destroys their relationship and families." Davies said he is "much less enamored of all that Oxford snobbery than some people."
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The first draft is finished. It was written "from the point of view of someone who does not believe in the religious themes as Waugh did," Davies said. "If God can be said to exist in my version, he would be the villain." The production is being undertaken by Warner Brothers and Ecosse Films, and a director is now being sought. Candidates include Ang Lee and Roman Polanski. Shooting is to take place in 2004. The article is available at Totalwaugh (message no. 387). In an article in The Times for 31 May 2003, the script is reported to have no reference to the conversion of Charles Ryder. Davies said, "I have completely changed the ending, which is pretty outrageous." He added, "The deluded religion completely ruins the larger-than-life characters." There were several strong reactions. Harriet Dorment, Waugh's daughter, said it is "a shame to change the book." John Mortimer, who wrote the screenplay for the television production of Brideshead, suggested that a writer should "enter the feeling of the author, not the feeling of yourself." John Wilkins, editor of the Tablet, said the script "traduces the intention of the author in writing the book." Ian Ker, the "noted Roman Catholic historian whose next book will contain a chapter on Waugh," said that the "whole point of the novel is Charles's conversion." Alexander Waugh, one of Evelyn's grandsons, said, however, that Brideshead is open-ended, "written so that Catholics can go away happy, but vicious atheists such as myself can too." The film is to be shot in Great Britain or Ireland and released in 2005. The entire article can be read at Totalwaugh (message no. 388). An editorial in the Telegraph on 1 June 2003 emphasized the difference between "elegant modification and literary destruction." The opinion can be read at Totalwaugh (message no. 389).
Bright Young Things In "Fry Pitches Waugh's 'Kind of Morgue Comedy,'" in the Guardian for 27 May 2003, Stephen Fry explained that he changed the title of his forthcoming film to Bright Young Things "partly because he did not want the actors taking him to task on specific parts of the book." Fry did admit that, "on the cutting room floor, he wanted to revert to Vile Bodies." Fry also spoke of the "perils of selling cruelly ironic British films to American money men." Regarding Evelyn Waugh, one executive asked, "Was she well-known in her time?" Another executive asked if Vile Bodies is "some kind of morgue comedy." The article is available at Totalwaugh (message no. 386). In a related story in The Times for 24 June 2003, Waugh's family is reported to be upset about plans to publish a new edition of the novel under the title Bright Young Things. Alexander Waugh called the plans "outrageous," though the family may have overlooked a clause in the contract with the filmmakers. The new edition of Vile Bodies is to be published on 4 September 2003, with the film released on 3 October 2003. The article is available at Totalwaugh (message no. 399).
Decline and Fall on Film According to his CV posted with PFD (www.pfd.co.uk), one of John Mortimer's current projects is a script for Decline and Fall, to be produced by Festival Film & TV. The project would be the second film based on the novel, following the lightly regarded Decline and Fall of a Birdwatcher (1968).
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New Edition of Four Novels Everyman's Library is bringing out a new edition of four novels, Black Mischief, Scoop, The Loved One, and The Ordeal of Gilbert Pinfold. The novels are in a single hardback volume of 622 pages, priced at $25.00. Ann Pasternak Slater provides an introduction of twenty pages. Look for a review in a forthcoming edition of the Newsletter.
BBC Marks Waugh Centenary According to an e-mail received by the editor, the BBC is "working on a documentary to coincide with EW's Centenary." They plan to show "a trilogy of 'Arenas' . . . covering his life but reinvigorate them with Stephen Fry." The BBC is also intending to interview some "Waugh aficionados" in the United Kingdom. The BBC's radio production of Brideshead Revisited, broadcast in March 2003, is available on tape or compact disc for £15.99 plus shipping. Please visit the BBC Shop.
Lady Mosley, 1910-2003 The Hon. Lady Mosley passed away on 11 August 2003. She was 93 years old. She was born the Hon. Diana Mitford, the fourth of seven children, several of whom became famous. The eldest child was the Hon. Nancy Mitford (1904-1973), the novelist and one of Evelyn Waugh's most faithful correspondents. Diana married the Hon. Bryan Guinness (later Lord Moyne) in 1929. When his marriage broke up that summer, Waugh found a companion in Diana, who had become pregnant. Waugh dedicated his second novel, Vile Bodies, and his first travel book, Labels, to Bryan and Diana Guinness, and he acknowledged their "encouragement and hospitality." Diana divorced Bryan in 1934 and married Sir Oswald Mosley, leader of the British Union of Fascists, in 1936. After the outbreak of war with Germany in 1939, Sir Oswald and Lady Mosley were imprisoned. She and Waugh had drifted apart, but Waugh drew on his memory of her pregnancy in his description of Lucy Simmonds in Work Suspended. Waugh sent a copy of the unfinished novel to Diana in prison. As she worked on her memoirs, A Life of Contrasts (1977), Lady Mosley asked Waugh why their friendship had "petered out." Waugh admitted to having felt "pure jealousy." As Diana "began to enlarge [her] circle," Waugh "couldn't compete or take a humbler place" (Letters of Evelyn Waugh, 638). Lady Mosley is survived by her sister Deborah ("Debo"), the Duchess of Devonshire, and four sons, Jonathan and Desmond Guinness, and Alexander and Max Mosley. Jonathan Guinness, the present Lord Moyne, is Waugh's godson. For more details, please visit An Evelyn Waugh Website.
Claud Cockburn on Internet Claud Cockburn's essay, "A Reminiscence of My Cousin: Evelyn Waugh's Ear Trumpet," appeared on the internet at www.counterpunch.org, though it has since been removed. The essay was originally published in the Atlantic in 1973. It is still available on Totalwaugh (message no. 379)..
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Brideshead Revisited was the only one of Evelyn Waugh's novels to make the list of the BBC's top 100 books, announced on 17 May 2003. The rest of the list is available at Totalwaugh (message no. 383).
Voice of Graham Greene A reader advises that The Voice of Graham Greene, a compact disc, contains Greene's eulogy for Evelyn Waugh. The disc is 60 minutes in length, it costs £10, and it can be ordered from the Graham Greene Birthplace Trust.
Tridentine Mass The Tridentine or Latin Mass was celebrated on 24 May 2003 by Cardinal Dario Castrillon Hoyos at the basilica of St Mary Major in Rome. It was the first time the Tridentine Mass had been celebrated in Rome for more than thirty years. Father Andrew Southwell, an English priest, was also scheduled to celebrate the Tridentine rite at St Peter's Basilica in Rome at the end of May. Toward the end of his life, Evelyn Waugh argued for the retention of the Latin Mass, but the Roman Catholic Church adopted Masses in the vernacular. Waugh did not believe he would "live to see it restored" (Letters 639). Pope John Paul II is expected to remove restrictions on the Tridentine Mass by the end of this year.
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