PERSPECTIVES

The World of

The late Edmund Wilson, America's foremost critic, once hailed Britain's Evelyn Waugh as "the only first rate comic genius in English since George Bernard Shaw." Waugh's more serious work, including and his war trilogy , has steadily gained renown in this country. Yet until last fall, when they were re-issued here to coincide with the publication of his diary, Waugh's early comic novels were hard to find in America. Here, we present Kathleen Darman's profile of Waugh, followed by several excerpts from those penetratingly funny early books.

by Kathleen Emmet Barman

A comic, detached ambivalence lies cism. (Still, he found the Church's at the heart of Evelyn Waugh's work. Index of forbidden books a "conven- He immersed himself in the glitter- ient excuse for not reading Sartre.") ing, sordid swirl of prewar England He came out of a Victorian middle- but at the same time believed it class family but chose the high life would be "very wicked indeed to do among the titled rich, the merely anything to fit a boy for the modem rich, and the leisured indigent-most world." He could be generous, chari- of whom he both loved and deplored. table, and kind, but in his novels he His first published essay was a de- clearly, if genially, detests Ameri- fense of Cubism; but in the end, as he cans, blacks, peers, machines, Eng- conceded in his autobiographical lishmen, Jews, everything. He meted The Ordeal of Gilbert Pinfold, "his out prejudice equitably, outrage- strongest tastes were negative. He ously, irresistibly. abhorred plastics, Picasso, sunbath- He hated Communism, existen- ing, and jazz-everything, in fact, tialism, Liberalism, and at times, al- that had happened in his lifetime." though a devout Catholic, Catholi- This mix of intimacy and detach-

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Decline and Fall was behind him, yet to come, when Evelyn Waugh, aged 26, sat for this portrait by Henry Lamb. He was like a "prancing faun," recalled Oxford friend , "thinly disguised by conventional apparel." But Waugh switched disguises-the reckless dandy, the pious Christian, the crusty Tory- several times before his death in 1966.

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ment made Waugh, as Edmund Wil- preconceptions of "a quintessential son put it, "the only first rate comic Oxford which I knew and loved from genius in English since George Ber- afar and intended to find." He was nard Shaw." Waugh could not have not disappointed. captured the world of fashionably Near the end of his second term, he decadent, upper-crust England if he joined the Hypocrites Club, a center had been born into it. He had not. of hard drinking, dandyism, and Ox- And Wilson ("Is he an American?" ford high life. Here Waugh found the sniffed Waugh), one of the first critics Oxford he was seeking; the world of to take Waugh seriously, recognized the "Bollinger Club" he would re-cre- this as an asset rather than a liabil- ate in ; the "smooth ity. Approaching the social young men of uncertain tastes" scene as an outsider, Waugh had to whose backgrounds were drama- re-create it for himself. tically, seductively unlike his own; Evelyn Arthur St. John Waugh was exotics like aesthete Harold Acton; born in London in 1903. His father, aristocratic dandies like Hugh Ly- Arthur Waugh, was a publisher of gon, a model for Sebastian Flyte in some note who described himself as Brideshead Revisited. "incorrigibly Victorian," though he Waugh was not a leader in this lived until 1943. group; he was too poor, too socially Reacting against what he per- insecure, too ambivalent in his feel- ceived as his father's emotionalism ings about "modernity." But he was and "weakness," Evelyn cultivated a an enthusiastic follower, relishing all different style. Even as a schoolboy, that Oxford offered him-from The he was ostentatiously aggressive, at Waste Land to drunkenness and, times a downright bully. for a time, homosexuality. Only aca- Despite his parents' rather tepid demic work failed to excite him and Anglicanism, Waugh early showed he never received a degree. But he did an unusual interest in religion and receive access to the "hot springs of was sent to Lancing, a public school anarchy" in his nature, which his up- with pronounced High-Church ten- bringing had undervalued and ig- dencies. He was a reasonably con- nored. tented and, his diaries suggest, sur- As the '20s waned, the dandies' prisingly conventional schoolboy, world shifted from Oxford to Lon- but in his last years at Lancing there don, and the circle expanded to in- was a change. At school he was rebel- clude younger, more daring ele- lious; at home, openly hostile toward ments-the Bright Young People of his father. Vile Bodies, whose parties were The real break came at Oxford. theatrical productions, lavishly exe- Waugh went up to Hertford College cuted in full costume. Condemned by in 1922 and spent his first two terms the newspapers as the epitome of quietly. But he had formed romantic reckless modern youth, the Bright

Kathleen Emmet Daman, 35, is completing a critical study of Evelyn Waugh's life and work. Born in Boston, she received a B.A. in history and literature from Radcliffe (1964) and an M.A. from Tufts (1971). She has taught at Federal City College (now the University of the District of Columbia) and American University in Washington, D.C.

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Young People obligingly turned note in the form of some appropriate London into an immense children's verses from Euripides. This, too, playground. Their parties and proved unsuccessful in a wonderfully hoaxes were duly reported in the Waugh-like way; a jellyfish stung gossip columns and consumed with him on the leg, and the pain drove relish and indignation. Such heavy him back to shore. investments in fantasy and frippery By 1927, however, Waugh had were foredoomed; in Vile Bodies, fallen in love with . Waugh makes the frailty and unreal- Her mother, Lady Burclere, was not ity of his so-called Bright Young receptive to the prospect of an im- Things very clear. Even at Oxford he poverished schoolteacher as a son- realized that the aristocracy was in-law, so Waugh settled down to more aura than energy and had in writing, although it had never given fact been largely replaced by a him as much pleasure as drawing. menagerie of arrivistes, Fleet Street Nevertheless, he went seriously to barons, and trendy socialites. But work. Waugh remained enchanted with In June of 1928, the two Evelyns their antics, and the enchantment were secretly married in London. lasted all his life. Three months later, Decline and Fall Waugh came down from Oxford was published and well received, and £20 in debt, with no serious ambi- the Waughs, though not well off, tions or plans for a career. For a time seemed happily established. He- and he attended art school but soon she-Evelyn, as they were known, realized he had "not the talent nor were a striking pairÑ4'lik two little the application-I lacked the moral boys," said; at home qualities." Nor did steady jour- in their "smart little bandbox of a nalism seem to be his metier. A stint house," they seemed to combine at Lord Beaverbrook's Daily Express sophistication with idyllic inno- lasted 16 days. cence. Within a year, however, the Worse, he was unhappily in love idyll was over, disastrously. with Olivia Plunket-Greene, one of The 1929 London season had been the Bright Young People, a moody particularly feverish, and in July and difficult girl. Partly through Waugh went to the country for some Olivia, Waugh was drawn into the peace to work on Vile Bodies. In his London scene, where he led an in- absence, she-Evelyn fell in love with creasingly expensive and exhausting a mutual friend. She confessed the social life. He went deeper into debt affair but attempts at a reconcilia- and was obliged, like Paul Pen- tion failed. In September, Waugh nyfeather in Decline and Fall, to get a sued for a divorce, and it was job as a schoolmaster, first at a granted. A year later, he entered the school in Wales, then at a school near . The wound of she- Oxford (from which he was fired for Evelyn's betrayal was deep, yet drunkenness), finally in London. Al- neither divorce nor conversion pro- though these episodes would later duced a dramatic change in Waugh's bear comic fruit, Waugh saw them at writing or his way of life. the time only as dreary additions to With the publication of Vile Bodies "an almost continuous record of fail- in 1930, Waugh achieved a certain ure." At one point, he tried to drown celebrity. Access to the glittering himself, leaving behind a suicide inner circles was far more easy than

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it had been in the '20s, and in his habits of peace. London diary for these years, he Still, it is characteristic of Waugh's sounds tough, self-assured, very divided nature that the heroes of the much the dandy about town, con- novel, the characters who engage spicuously enjoying his success. Waugh's deepest imaginative atten- But Waugh, like others of his gen- tion, are two brilliant misfits, Am- eration, found England in the '30s a brose Silk and Basil Seal. They will less congenial place. He spent much have nothing to do with the war and of his time roaming, usually to re- continue the solitary, anarchic ways mote and primitive places. He went they followed in peacetime. to Ethiopia for Haile Selassie's coro- Ultimately, the war disappointed nation and, later, to cover the Ital- Waugh. Because of his age, he had ian invasion. He traveled in Africa, trouble getting a commission. Even- in South America, and to the tually he was accepted into the Royal Spitzbergen Islands in the Arctic. Marines and later transferred to a Out of these voyages came material commando unit under Colonel for newspaper stories that he ulti- Robert Laycock, whom he liked and mately turned into the comic novels respected. Waugh served bravely in Black Mischief (1932), A Handful of combat at Dakar and on Crete but, on Dust (1934), and (1938). the whole, he was impossible: rude In 1937, when the Catholic Church to his superiors, a bully to his men. finally annulled his first marriage, When Laycock sailed for Italy, he left Waugh married Laura Herbert, a Waugh behind, confiding to a friend, cousin of his first wife. ("I thought "I'm afraid Evelyn will be shot. . . . we'd heard the last of that young Oh, I don't mean by the enemy." man," one aunt said.) For the first The most important event of the time Waugh had a permanent home war years in terms of Waugh's artis- of his own-Piers Court in Glouces- tic career was Brideshead Revisited tershire. The decision to leave Lon- (1945), his first serious, fictional at- don and establish himself as a coun- tempt to reconcile his religion with try squire was an indication that he his art. The first part of the novel is a was forsaking dandyism for a more wonderfully nostalgic evocation of traditional way of life. Scoop was his Oxford and the aristocratic coun- first novel from Piers Court, and the try-house world. The second half, a brief portrait of the preposterously religious story of redemption and feudal Boot family, for all its osten- conversion, is less successful. As a sible irony, reveals Waugh's roman- whole, the novel is a radical failure, tic attraction to rural, eccentric for the new order that Waugh finds "Englishness." in the Catholic Church is never de- With the same traditional en- picted with the conviction he brings thusiasm, Waugh welcomed World to the eccentric, irresponsible age he War I1 as a heroic renaissance for has renounced. himself and for England. Put Out Modern times pressed hard on More Flags (1942), perhaps his finest Waugh in his last decades. The de- novel, conveys the optimism of his cline of the aristocracy, the en- early wartime years. The central croachment of American power, and, group of the novel are the rogues and above all, the ascendence of the lib- dandies of earlier books who now, in eral movement in the Catholic wartime, have put aside the feckless Church appalled and depressed him.

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Waugh, like his father, had a his- himself, to be used and judged by trionic streak; he promoted his others." But this is only partly true, "idiosyncratic Toryism" and played for Waugh's novels are passionate the role of curmudgeonly squire with extensions of himself. Why he chose gusto. He realized that his behavior to project a veneeer of detachment could be trying and, when told as remains a complex question. much, once replied: "Can you imag- In early life, Waugh adopted the ine how much worse I'd be if I arrogant, upper-class pose of "never weren't a Catholic?" In his last years, apologize, never explain." Later, he found his pleasures chiefly in his sadly, aloofness came to reflect his family and a small circle of friends. distaste for the modern world. But in He died on Easter Sunday 1966. his best work he creates a tension be- Waugh claimed to regard writing tween the two: between his strong not as an investigation of character sense of tradition and the pleasure he but as "an exercise in the use of lan- took in assaulting it. For the man guage." Like Gilbert Pinfold, he "re- who publicly wished he'd been born garded his books as objects which he in the 13th century always knew that had made, things quite external to he was peculiarly a child of the 20th.

DECLINE AND FALL

Waugh published Decline and Fall in 1928, shortly after his first marriage. This comic novel traces the career of Paul Pennyfeather, a young man of piety who is expelled from Oxford for indecent behavior. Pennyfeather's misfortunes begin with the annual dinner of Oxford's exclusive Bollinger Club. As the book opens, Mr. Sniggs, the Junior Dean, and Mr. Postelthwaite, the Domestic Bur- sar, are in their rooms overlooking the inner court of Scone College, listening to a "confused roaring and breaking ofglass."

There is tradition behind the Bol- days they had been pouring into Ox- linger; it numbers reigning kings ford: epileptic royalty from their vil- among its past members. At the last las of exile; uncouth peers from dinner, three years ago, a fox had crumbling country seats; smooth been brought in in a cage and stoned young men of uncertain tastes from to death with champagne bottles. embassies and legations; illiterate What an evening that had been! This lairds from wet granite hovels in the was the first meeting since then, and Highlands. . . . All that was most from all over Europe old members sonorous of name and title was there had rallied for the occasion. For two for the beano.

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"The fines!" said Mr. Sniggs, sheets, and threw the Matisse into gently rubbing his pipe along the his water jug; Mr. Sanders had no- side of his nose. "Oh, my! the fines thing to break except his windows, there'll be after this evening!" but they found the manuscript at There is some highly prized port in which he had been working for the the senior common-room cellars that Newdigate Prize Poem, and had is only brought up when the College great fun with that. . . . But there fines have reached £50 was still a treat to come. "We shall have a week of it at Paul Pennyfeather was reading for least," said Mr. Postlethwaite, "a the Church. It was his third year of week of Founder's port." uneventful residence at Scone. He A shriller note could now be heard had come there after a creditable rising from Sir Alastair's rooms; any career at a small public school of who have heard that sound will ecclesiastical temper on the South shrink at the recollection of it; it is Downs, where he had edited the the sound of the English county magazine, been President of the De- families baying for broken glass. . . . bating Society, and had, as his re- "There must be fifty of them at port said, "exercised a wholesome least," said Mr. Postlethwaite. "If influence for good" in the House of only they were all members of the which he was head boy. . . . College! Fifty of them at ten pounds Little suspecting the incalculable each. Oh, my!" consequences that the evening was "It'll be more if they attack the to have for him, he bicycled happily Chapel," said Mr. Sniggs. "Oh, back from a meeting of the League please God, make them attack the of Nations Union. There had been a Chapel ." most interesting paper about plebi- "I wonder who the unpopular scites in Poland. He thought of undergraduates are this term. They smoking a pipe and reading another always attack their rooms. I hope chapter of the Forsyte Saga before they have been wise enough to go out going to bed. He knocked at the for the evening." gate, was admitted, put away his "I think Partridge will be one; he bicycle, and diffidently, as always, possesses a painting by Matisse or made his way across the quad to- some such name." wards his rooms. What a lot of "And I'm told he has black sheets people there seemed to be about! . . . in his bed." Out of the night Lumsden of "And Sanders went to dinner with Strathdrummond swayed across his Ramsay MacDonald once." path like a druidical rocking stone. "And Rending can afford to hunt, Paul tried to pass. but collects china instead." Now it so happened that the tie of "And smokes cigars in the garden Paul's old school bore a marked re- after breakfast." semblance to the pale blue and "Austen has a grand piano." white of the Bollinger Club. The dif- "They'll enjoy smashing that.". . . ference of a quarter of an inch in the It was a lovely evening. They width of the stripes was not one that broke up Mr. Austen's grand piano, Lumsden of Strathdrummond was and stamped Lord Rending's cigars likely to appreciate. into his carpet, and smashed his "Here's an awful man wearing the china, and tore up Mr. Partridge's Boiler tie," said the Laird. It is not

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for nothing that since pre-Christian "The case of Pennyfeather," his family has exercised chief- Master was saying, "seems to be tainship over uncharted miles of quite a different matter altogether. barren moorland. He ran the whole length of the Mr. Sniggs was looking rather ap- quadrangle, you say, without his prehensively at Mr. Postlethwaite. trousers. It is unseemly.". . . "They appear to have caught "Perhaps if we fined him really somebody," he said. "I hope they heavily?" suggested the Junior don't do him any serious harm.". . . Dean. At length the crowd parted, and "I very much doubt whether he Mr. Sniggs gave a sigh of relief. could pay. I understand he is not "But it's quite all right. . . . It's well off. Without trousers, indeed! Pennyfeather-some one of no im- And at that time of night! I think we portance.'' should do far better to get rid of him "Well, that saves a great deal of altogether. That sort of young man trouble. I am glad, Sniggs; I am, does the College no good.". . . really. What a lot of clothes the young man appears to have lost!" At the gates Paul tipped the porter. Next morning there was a lovely "Well, good-bye, Blackall," he College meeting. said. "I don't suppose I shall see you "Two hundred and thirty again for some time." pounds," murmured the Domestic "No, sir, and very sorry I am to Bursar ecstatically, "not counting hear about it. I expect you'll be be- the damage! That means five eve- coming a schoolmaster, sir. That's nings, with what we have already what most of the gentlemen does, collected. Five evenings of Founder's sir, that gets sent down for indecent port! " behaviour."

Copyright @ 1928 by Evelyn Waugh. @ renewed I956 by Eelyn Waugh

VILE BODIES Vile Bodies (1930) is a manic tale of Londpn's 1920s smart set. Through a whirl ofparties~"Masked parties, Savage parties, Victorian partiesu-runs the on-again, off-again romance between Adam Fenwick-Symes, an impoverished writer, and Nina Blount, daughter of a batty country aristocrat. Coming home from France, Adam has had the typescript of his autobiog- raphy-his only hope of solvency-impounded by an English customs officer, along with a copy of Dante's Purgatorio. ("French, eh? . . . and pretty dirty, too, I shouldn't wonder.") Desperate, he is hired as Mr. Chatterbox, the gossip

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columnist on London's Daily Excess. Unfortunately, Lord Monomark, the newspaper's owner, has forbidden further mention of the 62 most prominent Londoners, including the Prime Minister and the Archbishop ofCanterbury, all of whom are suing the paper. (Adam's predecessor had deliberately libeled all of them in his last column.) Forced to write about "a murky world of nonentities," Adam nevertheless brings a certain ingenuity to the task-culminating in his invention of the re- markable Imogen Quest. He started a series of "Notable In- was a popular young attach6 at the valids," which was, from the first, Italian Embassy called Count Cin- wildly successful. . . . He followed it cinnati. He was descended from the up with a page about deaf peers and famous Roman Consul, Cincinnatus, statesmen, then about the one- and bore a plough as his crest. Count legged, blind and bald. . . . Finally, he Cincinnati was held to be the best ransacked the lunatic asylums and amateur cellist in London. Adam saw mental houses of the country, and for him one evening dancing at the Cafe nearly a week ran an extremely de la Paix. A few evenings later Lord popular series under the heading of Vanburgh [a rival gossip columnist "Titled Eccentrics.". . . on the Morning Despatch] noticed him at Covent Garden, remarking "Lady -, whose imitations of that his collection of the original de- animal sounds are so life-like that she signs for the Russian ballet was un- can seldom be persuaded to converse equalled in Europe. Two days later in any other way . . ." Adam sent him to Monte Carlo for a And so on. few day's rest, and Vanburgh hinted Besides this, arguing that people that there was more in this visit than did not really mind whom they read met the eye, and mentioned the about provided that a kind of vicari- daughter of a well-known American ous inquisitiveness into the lives of hostess who was staying there at her others was satisfied, Adam began to aunt's villa. . . . invent people. But Adam's most important crea- He invented a sculptor called tion was Mrs. Andrew Quest. There Provna, the son of a Polish nobleman, was always some difficulty about in- who lived in a top-floor studio in troducing English people into his Grosvenor House. Most of his work column as his readers had a way of (which was all in private hands) was verifying his references in Debrett. constructed in cork, vulcanite and . . . However, he put Imogen Quest steel. . . . Such is the power of the down one day, quietly and deci- Press, that soon after this a steady sively, as the most lovely and popu- output of Early Provnas began to lar of the younger married set. And travel from Warsaw to Bond Street from the first she exhibited signs of a and from Bond Street to Cali- marked personality. Adam wisely es- fornia. . . . chewed any attempts at derivation, Encouraged by his success, Adam but his readers nodded to each other began gradually to introduce to his and speedily supplied her with an readers a brilliant and lovely com- exalted if irregular origin. Every- pany. He mentioned them casually at thing else Adam showered upon her. first in lists of genuine people. There She had slightly more than average

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height, and was very dark and slim, disposed on the chairs and dressing- with large Laurencin eyes and the tables ostentatiously addressed to negligent grace of the trained athlete Mrs. Andrew Quest. He could hear (she fenced with the sabre for half an her name spoken reverently in hour every morning before break- cocktail clubs, and casually let slip in fast). Even Provna, who was notori- such phrases as "My dear, I never see ously indifferent to conventional Peter now. He spends all his time beauty, described her as "justifying with Imogen Quest," or "As Imogen the century.". . . would say. . ." or "I think the Quests Soon Imogen Quest became a have got one like that. I must ask byword for social inaccessibility- them where it came from.". . . the final goal for all climbers. Finally a message came down that Adam went one day to a shop in Lord Monomark was interested in Hanover Square to watch Nina buy Mrs. Quest; could Mr. Chatterbox some hats and was seriously incom- arrange a meeting? That day the moded by the heaps of bandboxes Quests sailed for Jamaica.

Copyright 0 1930 by Evelyn Waugh. 0 renewed 1958 by Evelyn Waugh.

BLACK MISCHIEF

Black Mischief (1932) centers on the quixotic fortunes of Seth, Emperor of Azania, Lord of Wanda, and "Bachelor of the Arts of Oxford University." Hav- ing imperfectly assimilated the fruits of Western progress, young Seth has em- barked on an ambitious One Year Plan to move his backward African home- land into a New Age. To that end he has appointed Basil Seal, a college ac- quaintance and irrepressible cad-about-London, as Minister of Modernisation. Seal in turn, is assisted by an expatriate Armenian wheeler-dealer, Youkou- mian, who serves as Financial Secretary. In his relentless quest for modernity, Seth has organized a Pageant of Birth Control to promote infertility among his bewildered people. Although the idea is opposed by the Awnian nobility, the Nestorian Church, and "a few of the decayed Arab intelligentsia," the tribesmen and villagers are surprisingly enthusiastic.

This development was due directly dom of postponing the gala, the Em- and solely to the power of advertise- peror found among the books that ment. In the dark days when the were mailed to him monthly from prejudice of his people compassed Europe, a collection of highly inspir- him on every side and even Basil ing Soviet posters. . . . spoke unsympathetically of the wis- An artist was next found in the

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Armenian colony who, on Mr. she very good, work hard in field: Youkoumian's introduction, was man he good too: eleven children: willing to elaborate Seth's sketches. one very mad, very holy. And in the Finally there resulted a large, highly middle: Emperor's juju. Make you colored poster well calculated to like that good man with eleven chil- convey to the illiterate the benefits of dren. birth control. . . . And as a result, despite admoni- It portrayed two contrasted scenes. tions from squire and vicar, the On one side a native hut of hideous peasantry began pouring into town squalor, overrun with children of for the gala, eagerly awaiting initia- every age, suffering from every phys- tion to the fine new magic of virility ical incapacity~crippled,deformed, and fecundity. . . . blind, spotted and insane; the father prematurely aged with paternity "If you ask me," said Basil, one squatted by an empty cook-pot; morning soon after the distribution through the door could be seen his of the poster, "loyalty to the throne is wife, withered and bowed with child one of the hardest parts of our job." bearing, desperately hoeing at their "Oh, gosh, Mr. Seal, don't you ever inadequate crop. On the other side a say a thing like that. I seen gentle- bright parlour furnished with chairs men poisoned dead for less. What's e and table; the mother, young and done now?" beautiful, sat at her ease eating a "Only this." He handed Mr. huge slice of raw meat; her husband Youkoumian a chit which had just smoked a long Arab bubble-bubble arrived from the Palace: (still a caste mark of leisure through- out the land), while a single, healthy For your information and necessary ac- child sat between them reading a tion; I have decided to abolish the follow- newspaper. Inset between the two ing: pictures was a detailed drawing of Death penalty. some up-to-date contraceptive ap- Marriage. paratus and the words in Sakuyu: The Sakuyu language and all native dialects. WHICH HOME DO YOU CHOOSE? Infant mortality. Totemism. Interest in the pictures was un- Inhumane butchery. bounded; all over the island woolly Mortgages. heads were nodding, black hands pointing, tongues clicking against Emigration. filed teeth in unsyntactical dialects. Please see to this. Also organise system Nowhere was there any doubt about of reservoirs for city's water supply and the meaning of the beautiful new pic- draft syllabus for competitive examina- tures. tion for public services. Suggest compul- See: on right hand: there is rich sory Esperanto. Seth. man: smoke pipe like big chief: but his wife she no good: sit eating meat: "E's been reading books again, Mr. and rich man no good: he only one Seal, that's what it is. You won't get son. no peace from im, not till you fix im See: on the left hand: poor man: with a woman. Why can't e drink or not much to eat: but his poor wife something?"

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Later, two representatives of England's Society for the Prevention of Cruelty of Animals, Dame Mildred Porch and Miss Tin, arrive in Azania on a fact-finding tour. Seth decides to demonstrate Azania's new-found modernity by honoring the visiting ladies with a state dinner. He tells Basil:

"It shall be an entirely Azanian "It is so English," explained Seth. party. I want the English ladies to "From courtesy to your great Em- see how refined we are. I was doubt- pire.". . . ful about asking Viscount Boaz. What do you think? Will he be sober? Presently when the last vitamin . . . and there is the question of food. I had been guzzled, Viscount Boaz have been reading that now it is rose to propose the health of the called Vitamins. I am having the guests of honour. His speech was menu printed like this. It is a good, greeted by loud applause and was modern, European dinner, eh?" then done into English by the Court Basil looked at the card. A month Interpreter: ago he might have suggested emen- "Your Majesty, Lords and Ladies. dations. Today he was tired. . . . It is my privilege and delight this So the menu for Seth's first dinner evening to welcome with open arms party went to the Courier office to be of brotherly love to our city Dame printed and came back a packet of Mildred Porch and Miss Tin, two handsome gilt edged cards, laced ladies renowned throughout the fa- with silk ribbons in the Azanian col- mous country of Europe for their ours and embossed with a gold great cruelty to animals. We Aza- crown. nians are a proud and ancient nation ^ but we have much to learn from the March 15th. white people of the West and North. IMPERIAL BANQUET FOR WELCOMING We too, in our small way, are cruel to THE ENGLISH CRUELTY TO ANIMALS our animalsM-and here the Minister Menu of Foods. for the Interior digressed at some Vitamin A length to recount with hideous detail Tin Sardines what he had himself once done with Vitamin B a woodman's axe to a wild boar- Roasted Beef 'but it is to the great nations of the Vitamin C West and North, and specially to Small Roasted Suckling Porks their worthy representatives that are Vitamin D with us tonight, that we look as our Hot Sheep and Onions natural leaders on the road of prog- Vitamin E ress. Ladies and gentlemen we must Spiced Turkey be Modem, we must be refined in our Vitamin F Cruelty to Animals. That is the mes- Sweet Puddings sage of the New Age brought to us by Vitamin G our guests this evening. May I, in Coffee conclusion, raise my glass and ask Vitamin H you to join with me in wishing them Jam old age and prolonged fecundity." Copyright @ 1932 by Evelyn Waugh. @renewed 1960 by Evelyn Waugh.

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SCOOP

Written in 1938, soon after the Italian invasion of Ethiopia, Scoop remains a classic, a devastating portrait of the world of the foreign correspondent. William Boot, a countryman and live-at-home nature writer ("Feather footed through the plashy fen passes the questing vole . . .") for London's Daily Beast, has been mistakenly assigned by Lord Copper, the Fleet Street magnate, to cover an incipient civil war in Ishmaelia, located on the African mainland not far from Azania. Young Boot dutifully sets off to join the scores of foreign jour- nalists misreporting events in Jacksonburg, Ishmaelia's capital. En route, aboard the S.S. Francma~onin the Red Sea, he picks up a few tips from Corker, a veteran reporter for the Universal News Service.

Corker looked at him sadly. "You screw; how Wenlock Jakes, highest know, you've got a lot to learn about paid journalist of the United States, journalism. Look at it this way. News scooped the world with an eye- is what a chap who doesn't care witness story of the sinking of the much about anything wants to read. Lusitania four hours before she was And it's only news until he's read it. hit; how Hitchcock, the English After that it's dead. We're paid to Jakes, straddling over his desk in supply news. If someone else has sent London, had chronicled day by day a story before us, our story isn't the horrors of the Messina earth- news. Of course there's colour. Col- quake; how Corker himself, not three our is just a lot of bulls'-eyes about months back, had had the rare good nothing. It's easy to write and easy to fortune to encounter a knight's read but it costs too much in cabling widow trapped by the foot between so we have to go slow on that. See?" lift and landing. . . . "I think so." Many of Corker's anecdotes dealt That afternoon Corker told with the fabulous Wenlock Jakes. William a great deal about the craft ' . . syndicated all over America. of journalism. The Francmacon Gets a thousand dollars a week. weighed anchor, swung about and When he turns up in a place you can steamed into the ochre hills, through bet your life that as long as he's there the straits and out into the open sea it'll be the news centre of the world. while Corker recounted the heroic "Why, once Jakes went out to cover legends of Fleet Street; he told of the a revolution in one of the Balkan cap- classic scoops and hoaxes; of the con- itals. He overslept in his carriage, fessions wrung from hysterical sus- woke up at the wrong station, didn't pects; of the innuendo and intricate know any different, got out, went misrepresentations, the luscious, de- straight to a hotel, and cabled off a tailed inventions that composed con- thousand-word story about barri- temporary history; of the positive, cades in the streets, flaming churches, daring lies that got a chap a rise of machine guns answering the rattle of

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his typewriter as he wrote, a dead filing a thousand words of blood and child, like a broken doll, spread- thunder a day. So they chimed in too. eagled in the deserted roadway Government stocks dropped, finan- below his window-you know. cial panic, state of emergency de- "Well they were pretty surprised clared, army mobilized, , at his office, getting a story like that mutiny-and in less than a week from the wrong country, but they there was an honest to God revolu- trusted Jakes and splashed it in six tion under way, just as Jakes had national newspapers. That day every said. There's the power of the press special in Europe got orders to rush for you. to the new revolution. They arrived "They gave Jakes the Nobel Peace in shoals. Everything seemed quiet Prize for his harrowing descriptions enough, but it was as much as their of the carnage-but that was colour jobs were worth to say so, with Jakes stuff."

Copyright @ 1937,1938 by Evelyn Waugh. @renewed 1965,1966 by Evelyn Waugh.

THE LOVED ONE

The Loved One (1948) is Waugh's most perverse novel; he recommended that the squeamish "return their copies to the library or the bookstore unread." The setting is Whispering Glades Memorial Park, a lush California necropolis modeled, despite disclaimers, on Hollywood's Forest Lawn Cemetery. The title of the book refers to the cemetery's clients as well as to Miss Aimke Thana- togenos, resident cosmetician and aspiring embalmer. She is being amorously pursued by Mr. Joyboy, dean of American morticians, and by a young Eng- lishman, Dennis Barlow, a sometime screenwriter now employed as an at- tendant at the Happier Hunting Grounds, a Whispering Glades for pets. Sir Francis Hinsley, just fired by Megalopolitan Pictures, has hanged himself with his suspenders. Dennis, his friend and fellow countryman, must make arrangements for the funeral. With recorded strains of the "Hindu Love-song" in the background, he opens preliminary negotiations with a Mortuary Hostess.

"We want my friend buried." Art. Zones of course vary in price and "This is not your first visit to within the zones the prices vary ac- Whispering Glades?" cording to their proximity to the "Yes." Work of Art. We have single sites as "Then let me explain the Dream. low as fifty dollars. That is in Pil- The Park is zoned. Each zone has its grims' Rest, a zone we are just devel- own name and appropriate Work of oping behind the Crematory fuel

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dump. The most costly are those on be in Shadowland." Lake Isle. They range about a thou- 'I think he would prefer to be with sand dollars. Then there is Lovers' Homer and Miss Bergson." Nest, zoned about a very, very beau- "Then the University Church tiful marble replica of Rodin's fa- would be most convenient. We like to mous statue, the Kiss. We have dou- save the Waiting Ones a long proces- ble plots there at seven hundred and sion. I presume the Loved One was fifty dollars the pair. Was your Loved Caucasian?" One married?" "No, why did you think that? He "No." was purely English." "What was his business?" "English are purely Caucasian, Mr. "He was a writer." Barlow. This is a restricted park. The "Ah, then Poets' Comer would be Dreamer has made that rule for the the place for him. We have many of sake of the Waiting Ones. In their our foremost literary names there, time of trial they prefer to be with either in person or as Before Need their own people." reservations. You are no doubt ac- "I think I understand. Well, let me quainted with the works of Amelia assure you Sir Francis was quite Bergson?" white." "I know of them." As he said this there came vividly "We sold Miss Bergson a Before into Dennis's mind that image which Need reservation only yesterday, lurked there, seldom out of sight for under the statue of the prominent long; the sack or body suspended and Greek poet Homer. I could put your the face above it with eyes red and friend right next to her. But perhaps horribly starting from their sockets, you would like to see the zone before the cheeks mottled in indigo like the deciding?" marbled end-papers of a ledger and "I want to see everything." the tongue swollen and protruding "There certainly is plenty to see. like an end of black sausage. . . . I'll have one of our guides take you "Your are sure that they will be round just as soon as we have all the able to make him presentable?" Essential Data, Mr. Barlow. Was "We had a Loved One last month your Loved One of any special reli- who was found drowned. He had gion?" been in the sea a month and they "An Agnostic." only identified him by his wrist- "We have two non-sectarian watch. They fixed that stiff," said the churches in the Park and a number of hostess, disconcertingly lapsing from non-sectarian pastors. Jews and the high diction she had hitherto Catholics seem to prefer to make employed, "so he looked like it was their own arrangements." his wedding day. The boys up there "I believe Sir Ambrose Abercrom- surely know their job. Why if he'd sat bie is planning a special service." on an atom bomb, they'd make him "Oh, was your Loved One in films, presentable ." Mr. Barlow? In that case he ought to "That's very comforting."

Dennis's next appointment is with the cosmetician of the Orchid Room, Aim& Thanatogenos. Clad in the white livery of her profession, she is, he thinks, the "sole Eve in a bustling, hygienic Eden."

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Her full face was oval, her profile plexion? We usually classify them as pure and classical and light. Her eyes rural, athletic and scholarly-that is greenish and remote, with a rich to say red, brown or white. glint of lunacy. Scholarly? And spectacles? A mon- Dennis held his breath. When the ocle. They are always a difficulty be- girl spoke it was briskly and prosai- cause Mr. Joyboy likes to incline the cally. head slightly to give a more natural "What did your Loved One pass on pose. Pince-nez and monocles are dif- from?" she asked. ficult to keep in place once the flesh "He hanged himself." has firmed. Also of course the "Was the face much disfigured?" monocle looks less natural when the "Hideously." eye is closed. Did you particularly "That is quite usual. Mr. Joyboy wish to feature it?" will probably take him in hand per- "No, let us eliminate the sonally. It is a question of touch, you monocle." see, massaging the blood from the "Just as you wish, Mr. Barlow. Of congested areas. Mr. Joyboy has very course, Mr. Joyboy can fix it." wonderful hands." "No. I think your point about the "And what do you do?" eye being closed is decisive." "Hair, skin and nails, and I brief "Very well. Did the Loved One the embalmers for expression and pass over with a rope?" pose. Have you brought any photo- "Braces. What you call suspen- graphs of your Loved One? They are ders." the greatest help in recreating per- "That should be quite easy to deal sonality. Was he a very cheerful old with. Sometimes there is a perma- gentleman?" nent line left. We had a Loved One "No, rather the reverse." last month who passed over with "Shall I put him down as serene electric cord. Even Mr. Joyboy could and philosophical or judicial and de- do nothing with that. We had to wind termined?" a scarf right up to the chin. But sus- "I think the former." penders should come out quite satis- "It is the hardest of all expressions factorily ." to fix, but Mr. Joyboy makes it his "You have a great regard for Mr. speciality-that and the joyful smile Joyboy, I notice." for children. Did the Loved One wear "He is a true artist, Mr. Barlow. I his own hair? And the normal com- can say no more."

Copyright @ 1948 by Evelyn Waugh. @renewed 1976 by .

All excerpts reprinted by permission of Little, Brown and Company, Inc.

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