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Newsletter_41.2

EVELYN WAUGH NEWSLETTER AND STUDIES Vol. 41, No. 2 Autumn 2010

‘I am Trimmer, you know . . .’ Lord Lovat in ’s by Donat Gallagher James Cook University

Call me foolhardy, but I am resolved to boldly go where Paul Johnson has already been threatened with violence. Some years ago Mr Johnson recounted a conversation he had with Simon Fraser, 15th Lord Lovat in which Lord Lovat said that he had ‘kicked Evelyn Waugh out’ of the Special Service Brigade ‘for the Brigade’s good.’ This, of course, had aroused Waugh’s ‘undying fury.’ Nor had Lovat mellowed. ‘By kicking [Waugh] out,’ he explained, ‘I saved his life.’ Lovat was alluding to very silly gossip that Waugh’s men would have shot him if he went into action. ‘But no good deed goes unpunished. He survived to write [Sword of Honour (1)] portraying me as a horrible hairdresser. For I am Trimmer, you know.’ In reply to Johnson, Lord Lovat’s doughty nephew, Sir Charles Maclean (son of Sir Fitzroy), virtually accused him of lying. Doubting that the conversation ‘actually took place,’ he promised Johnson a ‘Glasgow kiss’ if he ‘showed his florid mug north of the border.’[2]

Improbable as it might seem to a loyal nephew that Lord Lovat—MacShimi of the Fraser Clan, proud heir to Beaufort Castle (that focus of Old Roman Catholic culture) and ‘dashing’ scion of celebrated generals—could be portrayed as a ‘horrible hairdresser,’ it is in fact very likely that Trimmer/McTavish reflects Lovat. And no one will doubt that Waugh drew the portrait in revenge for Lovat’s ‘kicking him out’ of the . The motto of the Scots Guards is ‘Nemo me impune lacessit’ (‘No one attacks me with impunity’): Lovat therefore had to punish the insulting portrait. And the Lovat family maxim—‘Hit them hard, hit them often and always below the belt’[3]—ensured that the punishment meted out would be extreme. Hence the amazingly vituperative, and almost purely fictional, counterattack on Waugh in Lovat’s memoir, March Past (233-36).

Is Trimmer/McTavish a caricature of Lord Lovat?

Some people ‘in the know’ have always believed that Trimmer ‘was’ Lovat, especially in his temporary shape of McTavish. —the socialite gossip—teased Waugh: 'May I have permission … to imagine that Trimmer McTavish is Lord Lovat?'[4] More authoritatively, Sir , for many years Lovat’s commanding officer, writing to thank Waugh for a specially bound copy of , asked: ‘Have you sent bound copies to Shimi, the Hairy Highlander and poor Colville (or was it Colvin?)?’[5] Lt Colonel Colvin is universally regarded as one of the ‘models’ for Major Hound in Sword of Honour; but does some other character in the novel reflect ‘Shimi, the Hairy Highlander’? In 1978 Alan Watkins, while making other identifications, said that ‘Trimmer … is based on Lord Lovat, with whom [Waugh] did not get on.’[6] And stated that Lovat ‘had been ridiculed as “Trimmer” in the war trilogy.’[7]

On the other hand, readers (like the present writer) with no direct knowledge of the principals have tended to deny the identification, for man and character are at opposite ends of the social and heroic scales. Lord Lovat won the DSO at Dieppe: ‘Saw the film at Combined Operations Club,’ Waugh wrote. ‘Shimi Lovat did brilliantly, the only wholly successful part of the raid.’[8] By contrast, the ‘classless’ Trimmer—a.k.a. Gustave, the ladies’ hairdresser; a.k.a. Captain McTavish, the leader of ‘Popgun’—is an incompetent coward. Professor David Wykes puts the case for doubt: ‘[The identification] is certainly not deducible from the book itself …

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Waugh’s son presumably relied on information from his father…. But the dissimilarities are so huge that if Waugh intended Trimmer to be identified as Lovat he can only have failed to plant clues that would lead that way.’[9] Understandable as are these hesitations, I will nevertheless argue that Waugh did ‘plant clues’ that would lead to Lovat’s being recognizable in Trimmer/McTavish.

Colleagues or friends probably saw in Trimmer, qua Trimmer, reflections of Lovat not evident to others. Nevertheless, others may speculate about seeming hints. The ‘devastatingly good looking’[10] Laird often attracted praise like ‘film-star,’ ‘matinee idol’ or ‘upper-class Errol Flynn.’ Are Trimmer’s sexy good looks meant to mirror a down-market quality in Lovat’s? Throughout March Past, Lovat either delights in his troops’ singing or insists that they sing. Is this why Trimmer incessantly croons? Professor John Wilson believes that Trimmer’s ‘trucking about with raised hands in little shuffling dance steps’ whenever jazz is playing (Sword 52) corresponds with Waugh’s description of Lovat as a ‘Palais de Dance hero.’[11]

But explicit parallels between Trimmer and Lovat occur only when Trimmer temporarily morphs into McTavish. After being ousted from the Halberdiers, Trimmer takes his mother’s name, McTavish, joins a Highland regiment, becomes an officer and is left behind when the regiment deploys to Iceland. In full Highland regalia, Captain McTavish and his detachment then undertake the defence of Mugg. While on leave posing as a major, McTavish is quizzed by a senior officer from his regiment and, to avoid exposure, transfers to the Commandos (Sword 317-19, 340-54).

Lovat began the war in the Lovat Scouts, a Highland regiment raised by his own family. However, after many previous provocations, he finally abused his commanding officer at a staff meeting and was given the choice of ‘a transfer (in other words the sack) or facing a court on a charge of insubordination’ (March 171). Lovat chose ‘the sack.’ The Lovat Scouts then deployed to the Faroe Islands, close to Iceland. Abandoned, Lovat found his way to the Commandos, where his Highland dress became famous. The parallels can scarcely be coincidental. Both Trimmer and Lovat are (a) ‘chucked out’ of their original regiments, viz. the Halberdiers and the Lovat Scouts; (b) both belong to Highland regiments that leave them behind when deployed to the Iceland region; and (c) both find a haven in the Commandos.

One might ask whether McTavish’s generosity with travel vouchers is meant to parallel Lovat’s. By joining the Commandos, McTavish leaves his troops in Army limbo. To buy their silence, he sends them ‘on leave’ and ‘empties his book of travel-vouchers’ (Sword 358). This profligacy might recall the fact that Lovat several times created public rows and incurred reprimands by freely handing out travel-vouchers. On one such occasion Brigadier Antony Head wrote to Lovat’s commanding officer enclosing Lovat’s ‘rude’ and ‘insolent’ explanation of his conduct: ‘I am annoyed with one of your temperamental prima donnas in the shape of Lovat … the Commandos have plenty of enemies and it is merely providing them with welcome ammunition if the Commanding Officers decide to flout all conventional procedure, and, having done so, to explain their behaviour with rudeness which, in a more rigid HQ would be considered insolence.’[12]

But the most calculated identification of Lovat with McTavish is surely found in the ‘Operation Popgun’ episode in Sword of Honour (387-91, 418-29). ‘Popgun’ is a cross-channel raid, led by McTavish, and it seems to take its inspiration from ‘Operation Abercrombie,’ a cross-channel raid led by Lovat. Both raids turn out fiascos but are nevertheless lauded in the press; both leaders receive the Military Cross; both are employed in wartime propaganda.

To be fair to the Commandos and other soldiers engaged in cross-channel raiding, Britain’s demoralizing defeats from 1939 to 1943 dictated that the Ministry of Information splash stories of British offensive action. As Ian Kilbannock puts it in Sword of Honour: ‘Heroes are

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urgently required to boost civilian morale’ (374). Highly publicized cross-channel raids filled this ‘urgent requirement’ until real victories made them redundant. The raids were always controversial, Lovat retrospectively calling them ‘usually time-wasting’ and ridiculing in a highly personal way the officers who led early efforts (March 269, 184-87). Of course, many raids were heroic and valuable, as when two Royal Engineers in a kayak sank a ship laden with copper in Boulogne harbour, or when vital radar intelligence was brought back from Bruneval, or when the St-Nazaire docks, essential for German shipping in the Atlantic, were demolished. Nevertheless, some raids were undertaken for their news value, and Lord Louis Mountbatten, as Chief of Combined Operations, not only seized ‘every opportunity to make sure of a good … reaction from the newspapers and the BBC’ but on occasion bullied officers into giving ‘glowing accounts’ of ‘catastrophes.’[13] During this propaganda-obsessed period, newspapers and magazines regularly featured pictures of ‘dashing Major Lord Lovat’ as the ‘face’ of the Commandos; and they attributed to him utterances (no doubt crafted by some real-life Ian Kilbannock) that were often ludicrous fictions.

When Laycock was campaigning in , Lovat was Deputy Commander of the Special Services Brigade in England. Waugh (who had been famously left behind) wrote to Laycock, his Brigadier, criticizing Lovat’s obsession with publicity and his ‘alarming negligence’ in preparing for raids:

The Brigade now seems chiefly interested in the production of cinema films and the entertainment of Wrens. Their small operational commitments are being treated with alarming negligence. As you know, it was decided that the various small parties involved were to come under Brigade for training and detailed planning; the indifference and neglect shown by Shimi … has caused grave concern to the planners here [at Combined Operations HQ].[14]

It is perhaps fair to say that ‘Operation Popgun’ fantasticates these charges of ‘neglect’ and obsession with publicity. But I would argue that its most important inspiration is ‘Operation Abercrombie,’ led by Lovat. Despite the extraordinary keenness of the troops involved, which shines through their first-hand accounts, ‘Abercrombie’ and ‘Popgun’ have much in common.

Rationale and Scope: ‘Popgun’ is invented to save Hazardous Offensive Operations (HOO)—a fictional version of Combined Operations—from being disbanded. General Whale, Director of Land Forces (DLF), is summoned to a committee to hear the death sentence. Desperate, he plays his only trump cards: ‘Ministry of Information … civilian morale … American opinion.’ Outpointed, the committee grants a reprieve. But Whale must now make good by ‘mounting a successful operation and calling in the Press.’ The operation he chooses is ‘Popgun’ and only McTavish is available to lead it (Sword 387-91). The operation proves farcical. But Ian Kilbannock, HOO’s Press Officer, portrays it as a triumph and McTavish receives the Military Cross (Sword 418-29).

‘Abercrombie,’ led by Lovat, was intended to boost Dominion morale by allowing Canadian troops to go into action with British Commandos. Its stated aim was to reconnoitre German defenses around Hardelot (a village close to Boulogne), take prisoners and destroy installations. Official accounts and newspaper reports starkly conflict with the recollections of participants—differences that historians must adjudicate. For present purposes it will suffice to rely on the reports made to the Combined Operations Recorder by Captain J. P. Ensor, commander of the Canadian forces, and by Lt A. D. C. Smith, Adjutant to Lord Lovat,[15] supplemented by other first-hand accounts reprinted in John Parker’s Commandos.[16] This operation was also a fiasco, but a journalist who went with the troops wrote a laudatory report using the Kilbannock method, and Lovat received the Military Cross.

‘Neglect’ and False Starts: McTavish’s preparation for ‘Popgun’ is of course derisory.

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A sergeant ‘makes a successful, trial explosion’ but when repeated in front of observers ‘one of the men is incapacitated’ (Sword 419). The party then embarks on the raid but has to turn back because of mines. A second attempt is made.

Lovat’s preparations for ‘Abercrombie’ included full-scale rehearsals of the landings. But avoidable errors caused them all to fail. One rehearsal had to be aborted because it intruded into an out-of-bounds high-security area. Another took place on a ‘beach’ that turned out to be waist-deep bog. On other occasions the boats towing the landing craft ran aground. Nothing daunted, on 19/20 April four landing craft set off for France towed by a motor gunboat. But under tow the landing craft shipped water and close to the French coast one of them overturned. Lives were lost (estimates vary from two to thirty). A second attempt was made on 21/22 April.

“—- security!” When McTavish’s batman deserts, security is ‘compromised.’ Alerted to this, DLF HOO retorts: ‘— security!’ and the party embarks for the second time. ‘Abercrombie’s’ security was more severely compromised than ‘Popgun’s.’ A ‘regatta’ atmosphere marked the first departure, and the rescue of survivors under lights close to the French coast gave the enemy spectacular warning. Cancellation was expected but did not eventuate.

‘Brought to the wrong place’: ‘Popgun’ aims to demolish a structure located on an island. But the captain of the submarine ferrying the raiders confesses: ‘I seem to have lost your bloody island.’ Later, after the island has been ‘found,’ the raiders go ashore only to discover that they are on the French mainland (Sword 421-24). ‘Abercrombie’ also had bizarre ‘navigational problems.’ The raiders were to go ashore at two spots: British Commandos north of Hardelot at Red Beach, Canadians south of Hardelot on White Beach. In the event, after a major last-minute correction, the British Commandos arrived only a mile from their destination. But the Canadians were brought, not south of Hardelot as planned, but well north of the Commandos, many miles out of their way. Worse, their landing craft became separated and circled about in the mist in search of each other until a rocket ordered return. Lovat says that the Canadians became ‘stuck on a sandbank’ (March 269), which is not true. The Canadian commander was furious at having been ‘brought to the wrong part of the coast and … separated.’ He blamed faulty compasses and the ‘junior and inexperienced officers of the RNVR.’

Shambles: Landed in the wrong place, ‘Popgun Force’ degenerates into pure farce. A dog barks and McTavish lets off his revolver. A ‘broad woman’ appears at a door and fires a shotgun. McTavish ‘bolts’ for the beach. Anxious to leave at once, he must wait by the boat for his sergeant, who is missing. At the appointed time the sergeant (Waugh loved sergeants) calmly appears, having blown up the railway line (Sword 422-27).

‘Abercrombie’ was strangely similar. Having landed unopposed, the Commandos crossed the beach to the sand dunes where they encountered a small group of Germans (estimates vary from two to seven). After an exchange of fire, during which no one was hurt, the Germans fled. A party in search of a radar installation reported killing a German. A larger demolition party under a sergeant reached a searchlight battery and cut through the surrounding wire; but before charges could be set off, Lovat prematurely fired the rocket signaling return. Although he never admitted it, Lovat had been panicked by naval gunfire into believing the Germans were attacking on the ground. And just as McTavish waits fretfully for his sergeant, so Lovat had to wait impatiently for his searchlight party.

Publicity: Ian Kilbannock’s citation for McTavish’s Military Cross cunningly elevates a fiasco into a feat of arms. One illustration of the technique must suffice. After the ‘broad woman’ fires her shotgun into the night, the terrified McTavish flees back to the boats, ‘teeth chattering’ with cold and fright. The citation praises McTavish’s ‘exemplary coolness under small-arms fire’ (Sword 429).

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The publicity for Lovat’s ‘Abercrombie’ was more than usually deceptive, perhaps ‘under the instruction of Mountbatten,’[17] perhaps because ‘dashing Lord Lovat’ was directly involved. The popular press simply lied—‘Canadians Land in France’—but the quality press used the Kilbannock technique. , the most sober, ran a news item and a report by the Special Correspondent who went with the troops.[18] The news item, ‘Landing near Boulogne: A Reconnaissance Raid: Every Man Safely Back,’ begins bathetically: ‘Every man returned with his equipment from a raid near Boulogne which lasted two hours.’ But the next sentence creates a radically misleading impression: ‘German troops, who were completely surprised, were driven back and the defences were penetrated over a frontage of 800 yards…. The German troops holding the coast were driven back before the advance of our troops.’ Given that the only Germans ‘surprised’ were a party of two to seven who fled and one soldier who resisted, statements like ‘German troops … holding the coast were driven back before the advance of our troops’ could be the model for the McTavish citation.

The report of the Special Correspondent, ‘Enemy Completely Surprised: Commandos Led by Lord Lovat,’ mentions Lovat so often as to seem a personal puff. It is full of ‘colour’—‘blackened faces,’ ‘we could have faced withering machine gun fire’—but the basic distortion is the same as that in the news item: ‘By now the raiders had gained the initiative, and until the withdrawal the Germans were always fighting where they were compelled to. “We penetrated the enemy defences over a frontage of 800 yards,” said [Lord Lovat].’ Again, the impression created of British forces dictating the terms of engagement to organized German resistance is blatantly untrue.

Lovat’s account of ‘Abercrombie’ in March Past is modest, but not modest enough. He plays it down as ‘an overrated affair,’ whereas the reports cited above (with prominent photographs of ‘Major Lord Lovat’) radically falsified it. He claims that ‘No. 4 Commando [carried out] all of its objectives’ (March 269), although the Operation Order specified, inter alia, ‘demolitions’ and ‘taking prisoners,’ which did not occur. Lovat does correctly admit that ‘the awards handed out [he won the Military Cross] were undeserved.’

At the risk of further provoking Sir Charles Maclean and dismaying cautious scholars, I can only say that, on the evidence, McTavish is indeed a caricature of Lord Lovat. Of course Trimmer’s primary function in the novel is not to guy Lovat, but to counterattack aggressive People’s War propaganda. Nevertheless, Waugh did turn Trimmer into the Highlander McTavish; and he did ensure that McTavish, like Lovat, was left behind when his regiment went off to Iceland. What other motive could he have had for giving McTavish the same history if not to indicate that he was caricaturing Lovat? Then again, it is fair to say that ‘Abercrombie’ became ‘Popgun,’ because in both operations the preparations were botched; the first attempts were calamitous; the execution was bungled in similar ways; Alice-in-Wonderland reports using the same propaganda methods turned both bungles into triumphs; and both leaders received an undeserved MC. And finally the spoof comes to a pointed close when McTavish, now promoted to colonel, is ‘officially [re]named Trimmer’ because ‘the Minister decided there were too many Scottish heroes’ (Sword 540).[19]

Notes [1] Evelyn Waugh, Sword of Honour: The Final Version of the Novels Men at Arms (1952), Officers and Gentlemen (1955) and Unconditional Surrender (1961) (London: Chapman & Hall, 1965). This essay uses the recension Sword of Honour rather than the original novels. [2] Paul Johnson, ‘In Sword of Honour truth is stranger than fiction; more painful too,’ Spectator, 13 Jan. 2001, 27; Charles Maclean, ‘Letters,’ Spectator, 20 Jan. 2001, 26. [3] Lord Lovat, March Past: A Memoir (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1978), 41. [4] Ann Fleming to Waugh, 12 July [1955] in The Letters of Ann Fleming, ed. Mark Amory (London: Collins Harvill, 1985), 156. [5] (BL), Laycock to Waugh, 27 Sept. 1955; Evelyn Waugh, Officers and

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Gentlemen (London: Chapman & Hall, 1955), later incorporated into Sword of Honour. [6] Alan Watkins, Observer, 29 Oct. 1978, 48. [7] Auberon Waugh, ‘Hairdressers’ Revolution,’ Books and Bookmen, Dec. 1978, 8-13; Will This Do? The First Fifty Years of Auberon Waugh: An Autobiography (London: Century, 1991), 49. [8] Evelyn Waugh, The Diaries of Evelyn Waugh, ed. Michael Davie (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1976), 525. [9] David Wykes, Evelyn Waugh: A Literary Life (London: Macmillan, 1999), 181. [10] Carol Mather, When the Grass Stops Growing: A War Memoir (London: Leo Cooper, 1997), 31. [11] Letter from Prof. Wilson to author. Evelyn to Laura Waugh, 28 Sept. 1943, in Mark Amory, ed. The Letters of Evelyn Waugh (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1980), 172: ‘Shimi has won every point & escaped going to the Far East [the Commandos were under consideration for Burma] & is just where he wants to be as a Palais de Dance hero.’ [12] Liddell Hart Centre (LHC) Laycock Papers, Folder 24. Brig. Antony H. Head GCMG CBE MC PC to Laycock, 9 Sept. 1942. Brig. Head later became Minister of State for War. [13] John Parker, Commandos: The Inside Story of Britain’s Most Elite Fighting Force (London: Headline, 2000), 100-01. Parker cites Major Harry Holden-White’s account of a meeting with Mountbatten. [14] LHC Laycock Papers, Waugh to Laycock, 31 July 1943. [15] These and many other reports are available at www.mapleleafup.org/forums/archive. The Combined Operations Recorder was Hilary St John Saunders. [16] Parker, 96-101, reprints several accounts lodged in the . [17] Parker, 96. [18] The Times, 23 April 1943, 4. [19] After ‘Popgun,’ Whale tells Kilbannock to give McTavish ‘any rank you want’ (Sword 435); at the meeting with the American journalists McTavish is a colonel but called both Trimmer and McTavish (Sword 499-506).

Poems from by James Morris

The Point of You

Mrs Beaver came to mind, A favourite phrase, Of Mrs Beaver's.

I heard it again-- The other day-- 'I cannot see the point of you'

Still current, After all these years, Still as nasty.

Mrs Beaver had many variations; 'I wish I could see her point' 'I wish Angela could see her point'

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Really dreadful thing to say, Denying human dignity, In a terrible way.

Reader-- What is the point of you? What is your point?

Really-- We ought to ask humbly-- What is your point of view?

I cannot see your point, But I would like to, Please explain more clearly.

She really was an innocent-- The woman the other day-- 'I thought it was a witty thing to say'

As though-- It was new and up-to-date, Seventy years after Waugh recorded it.

Waugh (the subtle moralist) Doesn't point the finger of course, Doesn't labour the point.

But I cannot think of a better figure, To express his utter contempt-- For the society he lived in.

But getting back to my main point-- He said it to her face-- (Even Mrs Beaver was incapable of that)

'I cannot see the point of you' And she was celebrating the fact-- She was held in contempt.

No, not that. She didn't realise--overwhelmed with Celebrity,

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She didn't see his point.

Mrs Beaver's Nose for Business

The snout On the scout Sniffing about.

The Death of John Andrew (not John Beaver)

Such a shock for Brenda; 'John . . . John Andrew . . .

I . . . oh, thank God'. Such a shock for Jock.

Princess Jenny

Her scars,

The Moulay,

The East,

Musk,

Her furs,

'Shall I purr Teddy?'

'Er...'

Vision of Hetton

The fleur de lys, Tudor roses, (All the intricate tracery), Plain plaster.

The old stone fireplace, (Casting shadows into corners) A radiator.

The wrought-iron spiral staircase, (In the central clock tower) A lift.

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*

The Great Hall (With its hammer beam roof removed) A Conference Room.

*

From its turreted battlements, Balloons hanging, Instead of bunting.

Amazons

Rose, With her 'pig-like' face, In a clearing in front of the hut, Tracing the head of her friend for lice.

Mrs Northcote, With the point of a pencil-case, Tracing the lines on Brenda's foot, At Lady Cockpurse’s.

The Last of Tony

Trapped in the Amazonian Rain Forest, Reading Little Dorrit, To Mr Todd.

Trapped In the Amazonian Rain Forest, With Arthur Clennam, In the Circumlocution Office.

Trapped In the Circumlocution Office, In Little Dorrit, In the Amazonian Rain Forest.

Trapped With Mr Todd, In the Amazonian Rain Forest, In the Circumlocution Office.

Trapped With Arthur Clennam, In the Circumlocution Office, In the Amazonian Rain Forest.

Trapped

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In the Circumlocution Office, In the Amazonian Rain Forest.

Trapped In the Circumlocution Rain Forest.

Trapped In the Amazonian Circumlocution Office.

Trapped, trapped.

A Neglected Address: 25 Adam Street by John Howard Wilson Lock Haven University of Pennsylvania

In his Diaries for 6 July 1928, Evelyn Waugh writes that “Our honeymoon came to an end” and specifies that he (and presumably his wife, ) “Spent the following week at ,” undoubtedly his parents’ house. That would have occupied their time through Friday, 13 July. On Saturday, however, Waugh writes that he “Returned to 25 Adam Street.” He does not explain whether or not She-Evelyn accompanied him, and it is possible that Waugh went alone to work on a “wrapper for novel for Chapman & Hall” and “proofs of .” He at least seems to have spent ten days there, from Saturday, 14 July, to Monday, 23 July. Then he “left 25 Adam Street and came to live at 145 North End Road” (Diaries 295), his parents’ house. Waugh also gave “25 Adam Street, Portman Square” as his “Town Address” to Anderson & Sheppard, the tailors. His card can be viewed at Newsletter 39.3.

None of Waugh’s biographers mentions 25 Adam Street, though Selina Hastings does say that Waugh had a flat near in Portman Square (175). Christopher Sykes claims that He-Evelyn and She-Evelyn stayed at “’s flat which he put at their disposal” (84), but Acton did not live in Adam Street, and Waugh’s Diaries do not refer to any such arrangement. All the biographers assume that Waugh and his wife moved in with his parents after the wedding, though the Diaries clearly indicate a brief interval at Waugh’s flat.

Adam Street is now Robert Adam Street, renamed to distinguish it from other Adam Streets in London. In a 1930 article entitled “Address Snobbery,” Waugh noted that “London is full of these misleading addresses.” Robert Adam Street runs east off Baker Street to the brick wall that encloses the Wallace Collection. Across Baker Street to the west is Portman Square. Waugh apparently moved to Adam Street to pursue Evelyn Gardner, who had moved from 54 Sloane Square to Montagu Square, just west of Portman Square (). These moves explain why He-Evelyn and She-Evelyn were married at St Paul’s, Portman Square: in the Church of England, one marries in the parish where one resides.

Robert Byron’s letters provide some perspective on the relationship between He-Evelyn and She-Evelyn. Byron moved into 6 Adam Street in May 1928: the house was “most charming,” and the rent was “not too cheap” at £2 15s. per week (98). On 7 June 1928, Byron noted that “Evelyn Waugh has come to live opposite—Evelyn Gardner is living on the ground floor at Upper Montagu Street—so they both spend all their lives here—as their own rooms are so disgusting.” According to the postman, Adam Street was “so improper that during the recent election none of the candidates dared canvass it at all” (Byron 103). On 25 June, two days before the Evelyns’ wedding, Byron found his duties to be “really too awful—I have to fetch Evelyn

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Gardner to the church and I know she won’t come” (103n). She did come, but neither party was fully committed to the marriage, and it collapsed a year later. After the divorce, Byron received a letter from He-Evelyn, who was “still paying for the furniture in the flat [in Square] now inhabited by the other Evelyn and [John] Heygate.” Byron considered She-Evelyn “quite harmless and the most irresponsible person in existence,” but he also believed that they had “both behaved abominably” (169).

St Paul’s, Portman Square, was a rather low church that displayed placards asking “ARE YOU SAVED?” (Hastings 175). Waugh described his wedding: “A woman was typewriting on the altar. Harold [Acton] best man. Robert Byron gave away the bride, Alec [Waugh] and Pansy [Pakenham] as witnesses” (Diaries 295). Martin Stannard claims that “no one was typing on the altar. The vicar was typing his Sunday sermon in the vestry” (154). The source of Stannard’s information is unclear. Acton wrote that he appeared, “in the guise of ‘best man’, at a secret wedding in a Protestant church off Baker Street.” To Acton, She-Evelyn seemed so “overcome … that she could scarcely bring herself to breathe the words ‘I do’” (202). Alec observed that “She-Evelyn appeared to giggle when He-Evelyn promised to endow her with all his worldly goods” (187).

Evelyn Waugh provides more background in a letter written on 16 December 1929, when he stayed at the Spreadeagle Hotel in Thame, where Charles Ryder dines with Anthony Blanche in . Addressing the editor of the , Waugh commented on an “enthusiastic account of the cordial welcome … at St Pauls Church, Portman Square.” Waugh recounted his own experience:

I was living last year in St Pauls parish and went to Mr Holden’s church to be married. Although the address is rather imposing the parish for the most part lies among side streets inhabited by comparatively poor people. The fees charged for marriages vary slightly from church to church but are usually somewhere about a pound or thirty shillings. In many poor districts they are less. The fee demanded by Mr Holden was five guineas. I asked the reason for this and was told ‘Why people come from all over England to hear Mr Holden preach’. I replied that my interest in Mr Holden was entirely confined to his priestly office; this seemed a new point of view. Eventually I was told I could have the curate for three guineas. This incident is completely accurate & seems to give an interesting sidelight upon the spirit behind many extensively advertised evangelical churches. I cannot imagine a cordial welcome of this sort in a Roman Catholic or Anglo-.

John Stuart Holden (1874-1934) was vicar of St Paul’s, Portman Square, from 1905 until his death. The curate’s “moustache, heavy black boots and cockney accent made the bride giggle” (Hastings 176). As Waugh would write in 1930, “Address Snobbery” is “the most inaccurate guide to income” and “social importance.” Waugh’s disenchantment with the Church of England evidently contributed to his conversion to Roman Catholicism in September 1930. In his Diaries, Waugh does, however, state that he “preferred St Paul’s and Boulestin,” where Harold Acton had given them a “wedding breakfast” (Memoirs 202), to “Charles Drage’s wedding. St Margaret’s [near Parliament] and Claridge’s [a distinguished hotel] (295). A Bibliography of Evelyn Waugh adds that this letter was “probably never printed” (Davis 50). In 1929, Waugh had published only Rossetti and Decline and Fall, and he was perhaps not yet famous enough to command the attention of the Daily Express. In February 1930, however, Byron noted that “Evelyn’s book he says is making him rich and famous” (169).

St Paul’s, Portman Square was built in 1779 but torn down in 1970 and rebuilt, ironically, in Robert Adam Street, where Waugh used to live. The church became a Chapel of Ease in the parish of All Souls, Langham Place in 1988. There one can view a portrait of John Stuart Holden. file:////uol.le.ac.uk/...c144/My%20Documents/Evelyn%20Waugh/Evelyn%20Waugh%20Studies/Newsletters/Newsletters/Newsletter_41.2.htm[04/12/2013 14:44:51] Newsletter_41.2

The interlude in Adam Street is not very important in Waugh’s life or work. It does show, however, how ardently he pursued Evelyn Gardner. It also shows that Waugh prevailed upon an acquaintance, Robert Byron, to further his romance, though he and Byron were never close friends. Waugh’s experience at St Paul’s, Portman Square also seems to have encouraged him to convert to Roman Catholicism. If she returned with Waugh to 25 Adam Street, and if his rooms were really as “disgusting” as Byron thought they were, She-Evelyn may well have had second thoughts about her marriage. On the other hand, if Waugh went to 25 Adam Street by himself for ten days, She-Evelyn may well have grown bored and lonely. In either case, the time spent in Adam Street probably did not strengthen the marriage.

This project is not yet complete. I would like to obtain photographs of St Paul’s, Portman Square and 25 Adam Street. I would also like to learn the identity of the curate who married He- Evelyn and She-Evelyn. His name may be in the records of the London Metropolitan Archives. I plan to visit these sites on my next trip to London, but perhaps someone else can beat me to it.

Works Cited Acton, Harold. Memoirs of an Aesthete. London: Methuen, 1948. Byron, Robert. Letters Home. Ed. Lucy Butler. London: John Murray, 1991. Davis, Robert Murray, et al. A Bibliography of Evelyn Waugh. Troy, NY: Whitston, 1986. Hastings, Selina. Evelyn Waugh: A Biography. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1994. Stannard, Martin. Evelyn Waugh: The Early Years, 1903-1939. 1986. New York: Norton, 1987. Sykes, Christopher. Evelyn Waugh: A Biography. Boston: Little, Brown, 1975. Waugh, Alec. My Brother Evelyn and Other Portraits. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1967. Waugh, Alexander. E-mail to the author. 9 October 2009. Waugh, Evelyn. “Address Snobbery.” , 12 July 1930: 8. ---. The Diaries of Evelyn Waugh. Ed. Michael Davie. Boston: Little, Brown, 1976. ---. Letter to the editor, Daily Express. December 16th [1929]. Box 11, Evelyn Waugh Manuscript Collection. Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas at Austin.

Abstracts of Japanese Essays about Evelyn Waugh, 1981-1987 by Yoshiharu Usui

Obayashi, Mikiaki. “Evurin Wo oboegaki--Furaitoke to Kurauchibatsukuke” [“A Note on Evelyn Waugh--The Flytes and the Crouchbacks”]. Feris Jogakuindaigaku Kiyo [Bulletin of Ferris University] 16 (1981): 41-58. Abstract: Evelyn Waugh portrayed a phase of the English ruling class in the Flytes in Brideshead Revisited and the Crouchbacks in Men at Arms, Officers and Gentlemen and Unconditional Surrender. He depicted how these two representative families acted and how they survived in the new times from the 1920s to the end of World War II. Unknown forces are working in our daily lives. The young Flytes and Guy Crouchback tried to fulfill their wishes, but they could not do it because of these forces. Waugh portrayed them as an inner force in the Flytes and an outer force in the Crouchbacks. The former is faith and the latter is politics.

Suzuki, Shigenobu. “Kindai no fuushika Evurin Wo--Suibouki wo chuushi ni” [“On a Modern Satirist, Evelyn Waugh--A Study of Decline and Fall”]. Kyoto Sangiodaigaku Ronshu [Acta Humanitica et Scientifica Universitatis Sangio Kyotiensis] 11 (1982): 77-93. Abstract: Evelyn Waugh’s Decline and Fall caricatured the English upper class. This novel was received with much applause. Satire expresses fury. Jonathan Swift did that. Waugh did

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not, however. He neither cursed nor reformed society. He was a modern man. He knew the modern age was chaotic. He kept his distance from the chaotic world to describe it; otherwise he would have gone mad like Swift. Detachment became his standpoint through life. Decline and Fall looks like a picaresque novel. “” are the models. They felt ennui and faced the void. Waugh used traditional literary techniques such as flat characters, like Dickens. Decline and Fall has a circular ending. This technique is typical of the modern novel. Waugh must have thought that he could not describe modern times with the old cause-and-effect plot. Decline and Fall is a novel of the twentieth century.

Hariu, Susumu. “Kagami no kuni―Evurin Wo no Suibouki ni tsuite” [“Through the Looking Glass―On Evelyn Waugh’s Decline and Fall”]. Hakuoh Daigaku Ronshu [Hakuoh University Journal] 1 (1987): 1-17. Abstract: Though Evelyn Waugh’s Vile Bodies quotes Through the Looking-Glass, the epigraph is more appropriate for his Decline and Fall. Like Alice, Paul Pennyfeather must run as fast as he can to stay in the same place. However, even though he runs, he goes back where he belongs. Paul also travels to the land through the looking-glass. There Paul waits for his wedding, which is never held, and becomes a defendant though he is innocent. Finally Paul gets out of looking-glass land and wakes up at Scone. Readers notice, however, that looking-glass country is not the only fake: the “real” world is also inside out.

Hariu, Susumu. “Shissou to Seishi―Evurin Wo no Kegareta Nikutai ni tsuite” [“Dash and Stillness―On Evelyn Waugh’s Vile Bodies”]. Seijo bungei [Seijo University Arts and Literature Quarterly] 120 (1987): 384-98. Abstract: In Evelyn Waugh’s Vile Bodies, the words of the Queen of Hearts (“Faster! Faster!”) make not only the Bright Young Things but also time itself hasten. The next war comes sooner than it did in reality. However, the Queen expects to remain in the same place. It is the opposite of Father Rothschild’s view that stasis is normal. Though we believe that our society is progressing and improving, the storm of war reflects our savagery. In the last chapter, Adam cannot draw the vision of the future on the battlefield. He is allowed only to read Nina’s letter, which tells how things around her have changed.

The “Real” Charles Ryder Eludes Us Once Again by David Bittner

In response to two letters I wrote, one on March 25, the second on April 28, 2010, concerning some elusive source-material for Brideshead Revisited, came a reply from a man regretfully informing me that my first letter arrived shortly after the addressee, his father, passed away on March 28 at age 89. The letter was signed “Charles W. Ryder, III.”

Charles Ryder III and his recently deceased father are the son and grandson of Major General Charles W. Ryder, American commander of forces in both the North African and Italian campaigns during World War II, after whom, it might be supposed, Evelyn Waugh named the narrator-hero of Brideshead Revisited. In my letters to Mr. Ryder, I asked if he could tell us anything about Waugh’s reason for “immortalizing” his father in his famous wartime novel. Did his father ever cross paths with Waugh and Waugh’s commanding officer Robert Laycock?

Charles Ryder III wrote, in his letter dated May 13, 2010, “Unfortunately, neither my brother nor I can shed any light on any connection between my grandfather and the character in Brideshead Revisited. It was never a subject of conversation that I can recall with my parents or grandparents.” Charles Ryder II was a major general in his own right and a West Point

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graduate. He served in World War II, Korea, and Vietnam.

Reviews

Wealth of Details Mad World: Evelyn Waugh and the Secrets of Brideshead, by Paula Byrne. New York: HarperCollins, 2010 [2009 in UK]. $25.99. Reviewed by Robert Murray Davis, University of Oklahoma.

I doubt that I overestimate Newsletter readers by saying that the secret promised in Paula Byrne’s title is hardly news. Several biographies and notes to the diaries and letters contain the scenario of Waugh’s connection to and use in Brideshead Revisited of the wealthy and beautiful Lygon family and Madresfield, their country house, as well as the story of the rich, handsome, talented, and politically powerful Lord Beauchamp’s being hounded out of society and England, though his tastes were, shall we say, more catholic than those of Lord Marchmain. Hugh, the charming and beautiful younger son, was part of Oxford’s cream (“rich and thick,” as Byrne puts it far more succinctly than Anthony Blanche does in speaking of Sebastian), aimless and increasingly subject to alcoholism. His older brother, Lord Elmley, dull and serious, married a woman past child-bearing who boasted of her descent from a Danish admiral. Mary (Maimie) was beautiful but unhappily married; Dorothy (Coote) was plain but far more useful in a series of practical jobs. (The other two sisters, Lettice and Sibell, don’t fit into the Brideshead scheme and get far less attention.)

The real interest and very great value of Byrne’s book lies in the wealth of details: a key to the argot of Eton, alma mater of Sebastian and Anthony Blanche as well as Hugh, Harold Acton, and ; the densely interwoven fabric of kinship among the upper and upper- middle classes; the careful description of the stained glass in the chapel at Madresfield (obviously the model for that at Brideshead), far too biographical and complex for the casual visitor to understand; testimony by people known to have known Waugh, in far more detail than I have seen elsewhere, as well as spear-carriers like the man who collaborated with Waugh on a film scenario in 1931. This material gives a fuller and clearer picture of this period in Waugh’s life than, as Byrne argues at the beginning, in “‘cradle to grave’ narratives.”

That clarity is somewhat dimmed by the book’s lack of documentation. Every careful reader will keep asking, “Where can I find this?” and sometimes “Who said that?” Not that she has necessarily distorted her sources; I can testify that Byrne has made fair and effective use of details about Waugh’s revisions of Brideshead. But I know where they come from.

There are some mistakes. The heroine of ’s The End of the Affair is not named Helen. Baron Corvo was certainly, in fact almost incredibly, homosexual but never, despite his pretension, ordained a priest. Waugh was far less devoted to Gothic Revival architecture than Byrne asserts, and though Hetton Abbey in A Handful of Dust may obviously be modeled on Madresfield, that was not necessarily a good thing in his view. And while that novel may contain private jokes from the Waugh-Lygon intercourse (in the original sense), there are, as Joseph Heller says in Catch-22, a lot of funny things not going on. There is no evidence that I know of that “The Temple at Thatch” began with a chapter in the form of a film script, as does “The Balance.” Waugh returned to Abyssinia not to do research for but to be able to complete Waugh in Abyssinia. And Byrne’s claim that Waugh falsified the diary for the Cretan debacle would, as Donat Gallagher has shown repeatedly, prompt a gleeful Waugh to file an action for libel.[1]

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This last is an odd failing for a writer whose secondary purpose, after disclosing the non- secret, is to reveal “the real Waugh” rather than the snob and misanthrope of popular conception. So is her claim that “His emotional and intellectual development ended in 1945” on the grounds that he lost touch with the modern world and that “his writing afterwards is retrospective.” This dismisses some very fine work, including parts of and The Ordeal of Gilbert Pinfold and most of Sword of Honour in which he wrote at least as well as, though differently than, he ever had. It’s as if Byrne is implying that without Lygons, the quality of Waugh’s fiction suffers.

Of course, by 1945, Brideshead had been written, so there are no more parallels with the Lygons to discuss. Moreover, Waugh’s relationship with the Lygons had become somewhat attenuated by new circumstances and, in his case, family ties, and that weakens, annoyingly, Byrne’s dramatic arc. The truth is, as people age—writers too—their lives tend to get duller and less subject to the kind of upheavals that Waugh had used to good effect in his early novels.

Despite these shortcomings, infinitesimal or invisible to most readers, judging from early reviews, this is a lively and carefully textured account of Waugh, the Lygons, and the world in which they moved. Anyone hoping to interest friends and relatives in any of these topics should urge them to read Mad World.

Notes [1] See Donat Gallagher, “Inventing Invention: Alan Munton, Sword of Honour and the Invention of Disillusion,” Evelyn Waugh Newsletter and Studies 37.3 (Winter 2007), his most recent examination of the misapprehensions about Waugh’s part in the evacuation of . See also his “The Lygons, the Flytes and Evelyn Waugh,” review of Mad World, by Paula Byrne and Madresfield: One Home, One Family, One Thousand Years, by , Quadrant LIV, no. 3 (March 2010), 96-99, for a comparative review that goes into much greater detail than I have. Also available at Evelyn Waugh Newsletter and Studies 41.1 (Spring 2010).

Genuine Literary Promise Selected Letters, by Julian Maclaren-Ross, ed. Paul Willetts (London, Black Spring Press, 2008). £9.95. Reviewed by Jeffrey A. Manley.

Julian Maclaren-Ross was a writer of fiction, literary journalism and radio/film/TV scripts whose talent was consistently recognized by other writers and editors but whose rackety lifestyle precluded a successful career. He was simply incapable of living within his means. He was not lazy, nor did he lack ambition; indeed, his substantial and varied output can be gleaned from these letters, almost all of which relate to writing projects in various states of planning or completion. The life they reflect is, however, very much in the Grub Street tradition of , and they make very bleak reading.

One of the writers who early recognized JMR’s talent was Evelyn Waugh. JMR broke into the literary marketplace when published two of his stories in early numbers of Horizon in 1940 and 1941. These were written while he was serving in the army, where his difficult personality was proving a barrier to advancement, as in whatever employment he tried in the civilian world. To help his literary reputation, JMR wrote to Waugh in 1942 asking him, somewhat rashly, to provide a critical assessment of his writing. Waugh reportedly responded with a “flippant letter telling Julian to wait until he’d died.” Unfortunately, neither of those letters seems to have survived.[1] In a letter to Rupert Hart-Davis (his editor at Jonathan Cape, considering publication of a collection of JMR’s stories), dated 27 August 1942, JMR mentions

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that “Evelyn Waugh wrote me very nicely” about one Horizon story, not quite what Willetts reports Waugh to have written. In a letter to John Lehmann, editor of Penguin New Writing, dated 15 September 1942, JMR cited Waugh’s approval and urged Lehmann to include some of his stories.

Jonathan Cape did publish a collection of JMR’s stories (The Stuff to Give the Troops) in 1944. Two more story collections, a novella and a novel followed from 1945 to 1947, an impressive output for a new writer. JMR also engaged in other writing during the war and postwar years, with reviews and articles in TLS and scripts for the BBC.[2] In addition, he collaborated with Dylan Thomas on documentary film scripts for Strand Films, financed by the Ministry of Information. After the war, JMR fell into a pattern of continuous movement, one living space and girlfriend after another, much time (and money) spent in the watering holes of Soho and Fitzrovia, with never enough to live on. He applied to the Royal Literary Fund for support, aided by Waugh, who on 4 July 1950 wrote the following letter:

I have followed Mr. Maclaren-Ross’s work since the first publication of a sketch of military life which I read in Horizon. I thought that it showed genuine literary promise and accomplishment of a rare kind, and I think now that he has developed his talent well and that, given proper opportunities, he shall develop into a first-class writer. I believe that one of the things he needs most is financial support during this crucial stage of his career. I therefore greatly hope that you will be able to give him the freedom from immediate anxiety which is needed to mature his undoubted talent. (129n. 1)

According to Willetts, the Committee of the Royal Literary Fund was probably persuaded by Waugh’s letter to award JMR a grant of £100. Just what drew Waugh to his work is not explained, but JMR's stories were highly original.[3] Supporting a struggling young writer seems to have been a characteristic gesture for Waugh and was repeated a few years later when he extended similar help to and Angus Wilson.

But the grant did little good to JMR. During the 1950s he lived primarily through literary journalism and scriptwriting, always behind in rent and never finding any regular employment or settled relationship. He managed to publish in 1953 one volume of memoirs of his early life and in 1956 a miscellany of comic writing, The Funny Bone, including some parodies, among his best work. These parodies had appeared mostly in TLS and Punch, where was, successively, fiction and literary editor.[4] In a letter to Powell in November 1954, JMR proposed to write a parody of Waugh:

‘Waugh Among the Ruins’ (remember Waugh in Abyssinia): Guy watching entranced as mushroom-shapes blossom in the ambient air over Grosvenor House etc.; with Grimes etc. appearing reproachfully before their creator during the Atom War, and the heroine— a strong woman called Helena, of the new Amazon Race, nostalgically showing photographs of the Royal Family and her mother dressed as a deb, to the hero in an underground cave … (or something). (191-92)

On 15 October 1955 JMR sent another letter to Powell mentioning that he had attempted the Waugh parody after an extract of Officers and Gentlemen had appeared in London Magazine (252-53). That would have been the June 1954 issue (“Apthorpe Placatus”), before JMR sent his first letter on the subject. The second letter mentions having received from The Listener a review copy of the “new Waugh” (Officers and Gentlemen). JMR’s review appeared on 14 July 1955 (75). It was a favorable and thoughtful assessment. JMR’s reservations related to Waugh’s plan, announced on the O&G dust-wrapper, to dispense with the third volume of his war trilogy. According to JMR, this truncation of the series would leave many characters stranded and underdeveloped. JMR also preferred the first half of O&G, which is written “in the author’s happiest vein,” to the second half (the evacuation of Crete) “since continuous file:////uol.le.ac.uk/...c144/My%20Documents/Evelyn%20Waugh/Evelyn%20Waugh%20Studies/Newsletters/Newsletters/Newsletter_41.2.htm[04/12/2013 14:44:51] Newsletter_41.2

narrative is less suited to Mr. Waugh’s talent than the elliptical, impressionistic method that he formerly favored.”[5] JMR does not seem to have reviewed Waugh’s later work or to have produced the projected parody. The latter would have been interesting, to judge from his other parodies, and it is unfortunate that it was never completed.

In one of the most bizarre episodes of his postwar life, JMR became infatuated with Sonia Brownell, ’s widow. This attachment ripened into an obsession, and he began to stalk her. She urged some of their mutual acquaintances to call him off. In letters he defends himself and seems very creepy indeed.

JMR was immortalized in the character of X. Trapnel, who appears in the later volumes of Anthony Powell’s A Dance to the Music of Time, published after JMR’s death. Waugh, an avid admirer, was also dead by the time those volumes appeared. We might otherwise have heard more from Waugh about his connections with JMR, either in reviews or correspondence with Powell.

JMR remained unable to manage his life. He died in 1964, having consumed too much brandy upon receipt of an unexpected repeat fee from the BBC. He was buried in an unmarked grave in Paddington Cemetery, Mill Hill, North London. In 2006, after fundraising, a memorial headstone was erected. The headstone was decorated with a stone carving provided by Waugh’s grandson Tom.

Notes [1] Paul Willetts, Fear and Loathing in Fitzrovia: The bizarre life of writer, actor, dandy Julian Maclaren-Ross (Stockport, UK: Dewi Lewis, 2003), 116. Willetts has devoted considerable effort to documenting JMR’s career, and that has resulted in republication of several of his works as well as these letters and a substantial biography. The sources for JMR’s early approach to Waugh may be anecdotal, since Willetts provides detailed references for most other comparable exchanges but says nothing about any written record of this one. [2] He was invalided out of the army in August 1943 as ‘unfit for military service.’ [3] In his biography of Anthony Powell (London: Duckworth Overlook, 2004), Michael Barber includes an extended discussion of JMR. Apparently Waugh reviewed JMR’s 1944 collection of stories, JMR’s first published book. Barber quotes Waugh as finding JMR’s stories “deliciously funny, especially to those who were more fortunate in their military adventures … and despite their heroes’ reluctance ‘to do their bit’” (165; additional quotes in e-mail from Michael Barber based on research notes). Barber’s notes cite no source, although he strongly believes he copied it from a review. It certainly sounds like Waugh. However, neither the Waugh bibliography nor his Essays mentions such a review. A query on the Waugh e-mail list failed to produce any references. Perhaps the quote appears in a review by a writer who quoted a recollection of Waugh’s assessment. However, since Waugh himself published hardly anything in 1944, the year that JMR’s stories appeared, it seems unlikely that a review by Waugh himself would have gone unnoticed. [4] Several of these parodies are collected in JMR, Bitten by the Tarantula and Other Writing, ed. Paul Willetts (London: Black Spring Press, 2005). [5] Paul Willetts provided a copy of the review in The Listener and pointed out the quote in Michael Barber’s book (see note 3).

Two Further Points Bright Young People—The Rise and Fall of a Generation: 1918-1940, by D. J. Taylor. London: Chatto & Windus, 2007. 322 pp. £20.00. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2009. 384 pp. $17.00 (paper). Reviewed by Robert Murray Davis, University of Oklahoma.

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Jeffrey A. Manley’s review of Taylor’s book (EWNS 39.1, Spring 2008) gives a fair and accurate account of the book’s many good qualities. Having come to it belatedly, I would like to make two further points.

First, although I am familiar with some of the more obscure material he covers (e.g., Beverley Nichols’s novel Crazy Pavements and, through Charles Linck’s dissertation, journalism about the Bright Young Things), I was struck by the ease and grace with which Taylor blended diverse materials into a compelling narrative.

Second, and more generally, Taylor avoids doing what many of us, understandably and necessarily, have done in our commentary on Waugh: make him the center of a much broader narrative. Instead, Taylor places him, accurately, at first on the fringes of the circle and later among the earliest to dissociate himself from its excesses and general spirit, if not always from some of its members.

Otherwise, I second Manley’s views and recommend the book to those interested not only in Waugh but also in the period when he began to flourish.

The Ghastly Light of Television In Their Own Words: British Novelists. Episode 1, “Among the Ruins: 1919-1939,” 16 August 2010. Episode 2, “The Age of Anxiety: 1945-1969,” 23 August 2010. Episode 3, “Nothing Sacred: 1970-1990,” 30 August 2010. BBC4 TV. Reviewed by Jeffrey A. Manley.

The first installment of the BBC4 TV series on British novelists was transmitted on Monday, August 16, 2010. It was entitled “Among the Ruins: 1919-1939.”[1] It featured clips from TV interviews with Evelyn Waugh, among many others. Although promoted as a series based primarily on archival material, commentary from talking heads and voiceovers equaled the recorded interviews and statements of the writers themselves.

The Waugh segment lasted about four to five minutes (the average length for most segments). It followed interviews of P. G. Wodehouse and clips from BBC TV dramatizations of his novels. The Waugh segment opened with a voiceover describing him as a disciple of Wodehouse but noting that, unlike Wodehouse, Waugh parodied and satirized privileged circles and sacred institutions. The first clips were from his film The Scarlet Woman. Scenes from his 1960 BBC TV interview on the Face to Face series followed, intercut with excerpts from a much later reminiscence by the interviewer, John Freeman, probably made at the time of the 1987 rebroadcast. Contemporary critic and novelist D. J. Taylor briefly introduced a selection from the 1964 Monitor interview conducted by Elizabeth Jane Howard. Taylor expressed puzzlement that Waugh had agreed to another interview after having professed his distaste for public appearances, but both Waugh in his letters and Howard in her memoirs explain that Waugh did it for the money. As an added inducement, the Monitor producers allowed him to vet the questions before the interview. There were no excerpts from dramatizations of Waugh’s works, nor were there any extended commentaries on his work.

Other writers receiving similar coverage included E. M. Forster, Elizabeth Bowen, Barbara Cartland, Jean Rhys, Robert Graves, T. H. White, , Aldous Huxley, George Orwell (who worked for two years at the BBC writing and reading broadcasts, none saved in the archives, if they were ever recorded), and Graham Greene (who agreed only to sound recordings even for TV programs). There were also brief films of H. G. Wells and G.

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K. Chesterton and a sound-only interview of Virginia Woolf.

The second episode, “The Age of Anxiety: 1945-1969,” began in 1954 with the publication of Lucky Jim, Lord of the Flies, Under the Net, and The Fellowship of the Ring, a watershed in the British novel after the hiatus of the war. The program dealt with the Angry Young Men through interviews of John Braine and Alan Sillitoe, as well as Kingsley Amis. Immigrant novels were briefly mentioned. The spy novel appeared in interviews of and John Le Carre, science fiction in interviews of John Wyndham, Anthony Burgess, and J. G. Ballard. These two genres were linked to the anxiety of the Cold War. Finally, the last ten minutes focused on feminist novels in interviews of Doris Lessing and Margaret Drabble. Despite the publication in this period of Brideshead Revisited (his most popular novel) and the war trilogy, as well as Pinfold, Waugh was not mentioned, effectively relegated to the pre-war period. To be fair, other writers covered in the first episode received similar treatment. George Orwell, for instance, achieved fame only in the post-war period with publication of Animal Farm and 1984.

The third episode, “Nothing Sacred: 1970-1990,” was the weakest. Despite the availability of more raw material, it covered fewer novelists. It continued to examine the feminist novel in interviews with Fay Weldon and Angela Carter, who seemed rather hard core, and Jeanette Winterson, who offered more circumspection on Mrs. Thatcher than most writers have provided. Clips from Booker Award dinners indicated how television has made some writers into celebrities. Most of this episode was devoted to Martin Amis (The Rachel Papers and Money), Ian McEwan (The Cement Garden), and Salman Rushdie (Midnight’s Children and The Satanic Verses), who each made several appearances in multiple contexts. James Kelman (The Bus Conductor Hines) and Hanif Kureishi (The Buddha of Suburbia) served as examples of working-class and immigrant novels. appeared more as critic than novelist. David Lodge was nowhere to be seen.

The BBC has posted on its archives page what appear to be complete versions of several of the interviews excerpted for the series: http://www.bbc.co.uk/archive/writers/. Unfortunately, the two BBC TV interviews of Waugh are not posted as of this writing, though extended versions of interviews with other writers from the Monitor series are available. I queried the BBC Archive through e-mail: they wanted to include the two Waugh TV interviews in the archive posting but had not yet been able to obtain permission from the Waugh estate. Negotiations were continuing.

Note [1] “Among the Ruins” is an allusion to D. H. Lawrence, not to Waugh’s postwar story.

Teresa Cuthbertson, 1907-2010 Teresa Cuthbertson passed away on 11 June 2010. She was 102 years old.

Born Teresa Jungman and known as “Baby,” she attracted Evelyn Waugh, who proposed marriage in 1933. She gave him the “raspberry” (Letters of Evelyn Waugh 81). In 1940, she married Graham Cuthbertson, and they had two children, a son killed in 1965 and a daughter who survives. Teresa’s elder sister Zita James passed away in 2006, also at the age of 102.

“Teresa Cuthbertson,” her obituary, appeared in on 11 June 2010. Paula Byrne published “The Last of the Bright Young Things” in the Daily Express on 17 June 2010. Hugo Vickers wrote “The Jungman Sisters, Part I” and Part II for the New York Social Diary.

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Introduction to Bruno Hat Evelyn Waugh’s introduction to the works of Bruno Hat (five paragraphs) is available at http://www.leicestergalleries.com/art-and-antiques/detail/10464. Waugh wrote the introduction for a spurious exhibition in 1929.

Waugh on Joyce “What Evelyn Waugh has to say on James Joyce, and other tales,” an article by Ceri Radford, was published in the Daily Telegraph on 13 August 2010. Waugh appeared on In Their Own Words: British Novelists, a three-part broadcast on BBC4 beginning on 16 August (reviewed above).

Waugh and Orwell At the Sunday Times Oxford Literary Festival on 7 April 2010, Paula Byrne and D. J. Taylor spoke on Evelyn Waugh and George Orwell. Their presentation is available in six parts on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WUZwbgBstg0.

Boot Meets Brown Stephen Moss published “William Boot: Evelyn Waugh’s legendary journalist” in on 1 June 2010. Actor James Naughtie played Boot in an interview with .

Brideshead on Kindle Odyssey Editions published a Kindle version of Brideshead Revisited on 21 July 2010.

Decline and Fall in Foyle’s War The Penguin edition of Decline and Fall appeared in “The Hide,” an episode of Foyle’s War broadcast on 25 April 2010.

Waugh the Collector Cultural Compass, the blog of the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin, announced on 19 May 2010 that the collection of medieval and early modern manuscripts is accessible online. The collection includes Evelyn Waugh’s German edition of devotional sayings ascribed to Martin Luther. The book was published in the late sixteenth or early seventeenth century.

The Waughs of Midsomer Norton Five Arches, the journal of the Radstock, Midsomer Norton and District Museum Society, has published an article by Monica Evans on Evelyn Waugh’s grandfather, the Brute, “and other Waugh relations in Midsomer Norton.” More information is available at http://www.thisissomerset.co.uk/Evelyn-Waugh-Boer-War-featured-society%27s- journal/article-2489444-detail/article.html.

Mad World in New York Times Tara McKelvey reviewed Mad World: Evelyn Waugh and the Secrets of Brideshead by Paula Byrne in the New York Times on 6 August 2010.

A Friend of Waugh’s Noemie Emery published “Beautiful and Damned: Power, Glamour, and the Vagaries of Transatlantic Alliances” in the Weekly Standard on 21 June 2010. The review focuses on My Three Fathers: And the Elegant Deceptions of My Mother, Susan Mary Alsop, by Bill Patten, and Waugh’s comments on Alsop are quoted. file:////uol.le.ac.uk/...c144/My%20Documents/Evelyn%20Waugh/Evelyn%20Waugh%20Studies/Newsletters/Newsletters/Newsletter_41.2.htm[04/12/2013 14:44:51] Newsletter_41.2

From Waugh to Hitchens In his review of ’s Hitch-22: A Memoir, Terry Eagleton mentions Evelyn Waugh twice. The review appeared in the New Statesman on 31 May 2010.

Link to Love Among the Ruins On 7 August 2010, The American Culture site posted links to Love Among the Ruins and six essays about Evelyn Waugh: http://stkarnick.com/culture/2010/08/07/prose-fiction-update-with- a-bit-of-poetry-tossed-in/.

From Television to Radio On 4 April 2010, BBC Radio 4’s program The Reunion focused on Brideshead Revisited, the television series broadcast in 1981. Reunited were cast members , Anthony Andrews, and Diana Quick, along with director and producer Derek Granger. The program is available at http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00rvxzc.

Evelyn Waugh, the Song A band named Applicants has recorded a music video of their song “Evelyn Waugh,” from their album Escape from Kraken Castle (Tigertrap Records). The video is available at http://fokkawolfe.blogspot.com/2010/07/applicants-evelyn-waugh-video.html.

Evelyn Waugh Club An Evelyn Waugh Club formed in July 2010. Information is available at http://evelynwaughclub.blogspot.com/.

Evelyn Waugh Undergraduate Essay Contest Entries in the Sixth Annual Evelyn Waugh Essay Contest should be submitted to Dr. John H. Wilson, Department of English, Lock Haven University, Lock Haven PA 17745, USA, or [email protected], by 31 December 2010.

Evelyn Waugh Society The Evelyn Waugh Society has 94 members. To join, please visit the web site: http://www.evelynwaughsociety.org/. The Evelyn Waugh Discussion List has 76 members. To join, please visit http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Evelyn_Waugh.

Evelyn Waugh Conference The third Evelyn Waugh Conference will be held at Downside School and Abbey in , UK from 16 to 19 August 2011. The conference will include an excursion to , Waugh's last house and the site of his grave. Grandson Alexander Waugh will preside over discussions. To propose a paper, please contact J. V. Long ([email protected]). To register and for more information, please contact John Wilson ([email protected]).

End of Evelyn Waugh Newsletter and Studies, Vol. 41, No. 2 Home Page and Back Issues Conference

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