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NEWSLETTER AND STUDIES

Volume 31, Number 3 Winter, 1997

WAUGH AND WINE By For a man whose life revolved around wine, Evelyn Waugh wrote surprisingly little on the subject. Even his novels have few references to this lifelong passion, although there is a famous passage from , when Charles Ryder, staying with his friend Sebastian, "first made a serious acquaintance with wine and sowed the seed of that rich harvest which was to be my stay in many barren years". Many will remember the scene when they sit up late in the Painted Parlour, getting their glasses more and more muddled as their praise for the wine grows wilder and more exotic:

" ... It is a little shy wine like a gazelle". "Like a leprechaun". "Dappled, in a tapestry meadow''. "Like a flute by still water". " ... And this is a wise old wine." "A prophet in a cave". " ... And this is a necklace of pearls on a white neck". "Like a swan". "Like the last unicorn ... " "Ought we to be drunk every night?" Sebastian asked one morning. "Yes, I think so". "I think so too".

Goodness knows how many sottish late-night conversations that passage has inspired among later generations of undergraduates, but I feel it belongs among the immortal pieces of wine writing, along with Thurber's famous caption, from Men, Women and Dogs: "It's a NaTve Domestic Burgundy, Without Any Breeding, But I Think You'll be Amused by its Presumption". One might also deduce from the scarcity of Evelyn Waugh's writing about wine that it belonged to that part of his life which he regarded as private. The fierceness with which he defended his own privacy gave rise to many of the stories-gossip columns were full of them-which portrayed him as a monstrous old blimp, roaring and yelling at any intruder into his private domain. In fact he was a gentle, humorous man-sometimes sad, sometimes gloomy-and nowhere near as bad-tempered as he appeared to the Press and public on his few excursions outside the small world of family and friends. But I do not think it is betraying a trust to reveal an aspect of his private life which will be of great interest to wine-drinkers and which has never, so far as I know, been revealed before. The mid-life crisis is familiar among males in our society. Many mark it by leaving their wives of many years and taking up with some luscious young dolly bird or, if they are not married (like ) they may give up their work and go to live at an ashram in Poona. Evelyn Waugh celebrated his own mid-life crisis first of all by going mad soon after his 50th birthday, in January 1954. This episode is well documented in his novel, The Ordeal of Gilbert Pinfold, first published in 1957 but available in Penguin. Next, having recovered his sanity, he sold his house and moved to the huge icebox at , in , where I now live. In the process, he suffered a violent change in his wine-drinking habits which was to remain with him for the rest of his life-he died in 1966-as the only permanent trauma from his experiences at this time. From that moment he could never touch a drop of claret, under any circumstances. It would be interesting to know if others have had the same experience in middle age. His house in Gloucestershire was famous for the excellence of its clarets-as for its vintage ports-but just before moving house, in the late autumn of 1956, he sold every bottle of claret in his cellar, and never bought another. Worse than this, he could not bring himself to drink any red wine from Bordeaux even in the house of friends. A year ago I found myself sitting next to Sir Hugh Greene, the former Director General of the BBC. Like the Ancient Mariner, he held me with his skinny hand and told me a tale of woe which had understandably been haunting him for years. It appeared that at some time in the early 1960s, probably 1963, Evelyn Waugh had visited the BBC to make a broadcast about P.G. Wodehouse, and Greene had decided to give a dinner party at Broadcasting House. In Waugh's honour, Greene had procured rather a special bottle of claret-not just rather, 2 a special bottle, but the classic, never-to-be-forgotten Cheval Blanc 1947. Evelyn Waugh thanked him very much, but declined to take any. End of story. Plainly, this violent repudiation of the world's second best wine-producing area was the result of some psychological trauma, if not actual brain damage. He was quite happy to experiment with wines from unlikely places like Chile (probably of Cabernet base, although in those days they did not specify the grape) and once discovered a new enthusiasm for the red wines of Germany. Even more shaming than that, he came back from Rhodesia one day announcing a new discovery from Portugal called Mateus Rose, and drank it through one whole summer. Whenever challenged with this I loyally maintain that the Mateus Rose of the late '50s was a quite different wine from the sugary pink fizz of today, but I do not honestly know where the truth lies. At any rate, no claret ever entered the cellar at Combe Florey until 1971, when I moved back. At Evelyn Waugh's death in 1966 he left four or five dozen Chamberlin 1955 from Berry Bros-a magnificent wine, but one which would have improved with keeping in less frigid surroundings than the cellars at Combe Florey. Although so far as I know, no wine has ever actually frozen solid down there, I cannot think why not as the temperature in his day was frequently below freezing point. He also had two cases of Richebourg from Berrys'-1 think the vintage was also 1955-some odd parcels of rather old Sauternes, notably Suduiraut 1947, and a !ot of champagne, notably Clicquot Rose for which he had developed an o!d man's passion. There were no bottles of vintage port and nothing else. I think I may have one clue, which is neither psychological nor biochemical, for Evelyn Waugh's repudiation of claret. For some reason, he always referred to it as "clart", even in such homely expressions as "to tap the claret", meaning to draw blood in a fight. "Have a glass of clart", he would say. Some had difficulty in understanding what he meant, but he persisted. Then in 1956 there was published a rather shameful book called "Noblesse Oblige", edited by Nancy Milford, with contributions from herself, Waugh, , Christopher Sykes and others, discussing the characteristics of the English upper class. In the course of his contribution, Sykes-who was a friend of my Father's, despite being as he frequently pointed out, of better breeding-mentioned "a Gloucestershire landowner'' who believed "that persons of family always refer to the wines of Bordeaux as 'clart', to rhyme with cart". Mr. Sykes opined that "this delusion "showed "an impulse towards gentility" which might be preferable to the contrary impulse, among true aristocrats, towards affecting the mannerisms of the proletariat. My Father spotted the reference to himself immediately, and although he took it in good part, it must have left him in something of a quandary. Either he had to drop his harmless affection in deference to the mockery of a younger man and a lesser artist, which he did not deign to do, or he had to persist in the awareness that everyone was sniggering at him as the Gloucestershire landowner who said "clart" when he meant 'claret'. I do not know how much influence it had on his subsequent behaviour, but it is fact that within a year he had sold not only his house in Gloucestershire but also his claret, and never touched the stuff again. I cannot leave the subject without touching on Evelyn Waugh's wine-writing such as it was. His main contribution to the field (I exclude his work on a history of Veuve Clicquot) was a booklet called Wine in Peace and War published by Saccone and Speed in 1947. It has never been reprinted, and has little of contemporary relevance in it. I observe from his correspondence with his Agent, A.D. Peters, that he was paid at the rate of 12 bottles of champagne per 1000 words-not an immensely generous rate, I would say. Perhaps that explains why he wrote so little on the subject. I am sure he could have done better. The last thing he wrote about wine appeared in the New York Vogue in the year before he died. It dealt with champagne, and described the circumstances in which it should be drunk: "For two intimates, lovers or comrades, to spend a quiet evening with a magnum, drinking no aperitif before, nothing but a glass of cognac after-that is the ideal... The worst time is that dictated by convention, in a crowd, in the early afternoon, at a wedding reception". That comment strikes me as profoundly true. Immense harm is done to champagne by the English habit of drinking it, usually warm and in a sort of trifle dish, at weddings in the early afternoon. That is why so many people in England claim to dislike champagne. An even profounder claim is made in the first writing I have been able to trace by him in the December 1937 issue of Harper's Bazaar, under the title "Laying Down a Wine Cellar''. "Wine lives and dies; it has not only its hot youth, strong maturity and weary dotage, but also its seasonal changes, its mysterious, almost mystical, link with its parent vine, so that when the sap is running in the wood on the middle slopes of the Cote d'Or, in a thousand cellars a thousand miles away the wine in its bottle quickens and responds". 3

I wonder if there is any truth in this theory. We have all noticed extraordinary variations from bottle to bottle within a matter of a month or two but I have never thought of relating them to seasonal changes in Burgundy, Bordeaux, the Lebanon or wherever. Perhaps it is true that many wines-not ports nor old-fashioned 'cooked' Burgundies-go to sleep in the winter. If this is true, we should drink Australian, South African and Chilean wine throughout the winter, French wine only in the spring and summer months. Californian wines, by the same token, can be drunk all the year round. Or perhaps it is all a load of codswallop. I was never entirely convinced that my Father, for all his poetic gifts knew very much about wine. Certainly his brother, Alec, knew much more. When Evelyn wrote those words, he was just laying down his first cellar. My Grandfather, Arthur Waugh, who was a publisher and critic, drank nothing but Keystone Australian Burgundy, a beverage which he believed to have tonic properties, much to the embarrassment of his two sons. Even so, my Father, who wrote in 1937 that "nothing is easier than to ruin a fine wine by careless handling", was among the worst offenders in this respect. He never brought up a wine to the dining room more than half an hour before a meal-not that it would have made much difference if he had, as the dining room was nearly as cold as the cellar; and he never opened a bottle before it was time to drink it. In his last years he drank splendid Burgundy, day after day, at temperatures which many would judge too cold for Sauternes. But the saddest part of the article, written as a young man of 33, concerns ports oi a great vintage: "it is at least fifteen years before they become drinkable, and fifty before they are at their prime; some superlative vintages will live a century. It is these vintages which one should buy as soon as they are shipped and lay securely down for one's old age, or for posterity". Perhaps he had rather lost his enthusiasm for posterity by the time he died, at the sadly young age of 62. Despite his golden opportunity to lay down the 1963 vintage before his death in 1966, he left no port at all.* This essay was published as part of a booklet entitled "Number Three Saint James's Street". The publisher was Berry Bros. & Rudd Ltd., wine merchants at that address in London.

WANDERING JEWS IN THE FICTION OF EVELYN WAUGH, PART II By John Howard Wilson (Dakota Wesleyan University) Waugh published in 1950, then started a story without Jewish characters, eventually titled Love Among the Ruins (1953). By then, Waugh had written Men at Arms (1952), the first volume of a trilogy set during the Second World War. The story centers on Guy Crouchback, an Englishman living in , a Roman Catholic feeling "no brotherhood" (13), only "a void" (1 0). Though not interested in Jewish affairs, Guy and his family are wanderers, like the Flytes in Brideshead Revisited. Guy has also lived in , and his two brothers died away from home, Gervase in France in the First World War, lvo in a suburb of London. Their father has moved from the ancestral estate at Broome to Matchet, a seaside resort. In his mid thirties, Guy secures a commission in the , and Waugh refers to the partition of Poland, as in Put Out More Flags. Guy's regiment is still far "from the frontier of Christendom where the great battle had been fought and lost; from those secret forests where the trains were ... rolling east and west with their doomed loads" (98). Waugh adds that the same trains "were to roll on year after year bearing their innocent loads to ghastly unknown destinations" (169). Guy's nephew is captured in France, suggesting that English officers have something in common with Jewish prisoners. As if to strengthen the connection, Waugh observes that "all Europe had suddenly become" a "lightless concentration-camp" (303). Men at Arms is not overtly concerned with the Jewish question, but the novel does prepare for a meeting between English and Jewish characters. Jews are even less conspicuous in (1955), the trilogy's second volume, though Guy's experiences enable him to appreciate others' perspectives. Eager to go into battle, Guy is sent to , along with other reinforcements. Under German attack, British soldiers become cowardly and venal, and Guy prefers the of Italian prisoners (259). As the Allies are beaten, Guy returns to "the deep sense of desolation which he had sought to cure, which from time to time momentarily seemed to be cured" (284). Almost taken prisoner, like his nephew and the Poles, Guy manages to escape, reaching in an open boat. Dehydrated, Guy has to be hospitalized, almost as if he had survived a concentration camp: "they suspended a jar of slats above him and ran a rubber tube from it into the vein of his arm just as gardeners fatten vegetable marrows for the Flower Show, and his horrible tongue had become small and red and wet once more as the liquid surged through him. They had oiled him like a cricket-bat and his old, wrinkled 4 skin grew smooth. Very soon the hollow eyes that glared so fiercely from the shaving-glass had resumed their habitual soft melancholy. The wild illusions of his mind had given place to intermittent sleep and vague, calm consciousness." (312) At a friend's house, Guy meets Jewish guests, among others (324), but he is more concerned with his country's having been "led blundering into dishonour'' (325). Guy is only beginning to realize that patriotism is not enough, that honor often involves defending those who are different. Before he finished Officers and Gentlemen, Waugh suffered hallucinations caused by alcohol and sleeping draughts. He wrote about the experience in The Ordeal of Gilbert Pinfold (1957). Another wanderer, Pinfold goes to Ceylon to escape the English winter. Aboard ship, he begins to hear music and voices. One says that the Gestapo discovered the "three-eight rhythm" and played it "in the cells. It drove the prisoners mad" (62). As the voyage continues, the voices become more personal and abusive. Pinfold is said to be an "old queer'' (96), a Jew who came to England "in 1937 with the German refugees. He was called Peinfeld then" (99). Pinfold considers these charges "totally preposterous" (105), but three of them recur in Waugh's late fiction, as if the author sensed his own deficiencies. One is want of compassion: "Mr. Pinfold, they said, had let his mother die in destitution. He was ashamed of her because she was an illiterate immigrant, had refused to help her or go near her, had let her die alone, uncared for, had not attended her pauper's funeral" (102). An Englishwoman born in India (Learning 31 ), Waugh's mother died in 1954. Second is lack of faith: Pinfold's Catholicism is supposed to be "humbug, assumed in order to ingratiate himself with the aristocracy" (1 03). The third is the death wish (148). Driven to distraction, Pinfold begins to believe in "the Box," an apparatus invented by Germans "for the examination of prisoners" (199). Though finally persuaded that the "whole thing's utterly impossible" (226), Pinfold has been transformed into a , introduced to many of his own shortcomings. Waugh returned to the story of Guy Crouchback in The End of the Battle (1961; Unconditional Surrender in the United Kingdom). More critical of British policy, Guy "believes that the just cause of going to war has been forfeited in the Russian alliance" (xiv). After his father's death, Guy recognizes the "deadly core of his apathy," and he prays, asking to be shown "what to do" (81). A superior officer compares Guy with Uriah the Hittite (154), the soldier sacrificed by David in 2 Samuel. Guy's ex-wife becomes pregnant with another man's child, and Guy decides to remarry her. Virginia is incorrigible, but Guy is conscious of "another life to consider" (196). Guided by religion, Guy still feels "the despair in which his brother lvo had starved himself to death" (220). Another character sees that "Crouchback has the death wish" (221), religion having specified duty, not having led to fulfillment. Guy finds himself in , replacing Major Gordon in a narrative much like "Compassion." Waugh had written a trilogy in order to return to his story, published years before. In the novel, the story is more complicated, with converging plots and additional characters. One is Frank de Souza, an English officer described as "dark" and "drily humorous" in Men at Arms (102). In The End of the Battle, de Souza identifies himself as "Anglo-Sephardi" (151 ), descended from Jews who settled in Spain and Portugal. Guy wants to help Jewish refugees in Yugoslavia, but de Souza says it's "time to forget we're Jews and simply remember we are anti-fascist" (268-9). Guy doesn't "feel like that about Catholics" (269), his commitment religious rather than political. Though many of Waugh's Jewish characters are ethnically ambiguous, few deny that they are Jews; by emphasizing politics, de Souza disclaims religion, a link with other people and God. Distancing himself from British politics, Guy decides that he "had never really liked Frank de Souza" (297). In his last novel, Waugh still seems ambivalent about Jews, and h'1s hero does not simply identify himself with an ethnic group. Guy imagines himself as "Moses leading a people out of captivity" (298), but the Jews' next stop is the concentration camp, as in "Compassion." Madame Kanyi once again explains the move, but in the novel she has more to say: "Is there any place that is free from evil? It is too simple to say that only the Nazis wanted war .... Many of my people wanted it, to be revenged on the Germans, to hasten the creation of the national state. It seems to me there was a will to war, a death wish, everywhere. Even good men thought their private honour would be satisfied by war. They could assert their manhood by killing and being killed. They would accept hardships in recompense for having been selfish and lazy. Danger justified privilege. I knew Italians - not very many, perhaps- who felt this. Were there none in England?" "God forgive me," said Guy. "I was one of them." (305) As in the dialogue at the end of Helena, Jews and gentiles depend on each other. Again, most insight comes from the Jewish character, who resolves the question left at the end of "Compassion." The refugees 5

certainly help the one who tried to help them, as Guy learns to interpret the past. In accord with Catholic teaching, Guy has performed acts of mercy, such as feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, and visiting the imprisoned. In return for his modest efforts, Guy receives an inestimable gift, atonement with both God and man, explained by a Jew. Madame Kanyi is again condemned, and after their escape from Croatia, the other Jews are put "back behind barbed wire" in Italy (308). Guy is allowed to return to England, marry again, and raise an heir. Waugh clearly favored Catholics, and in his fiction Jews are doomed to wander. Jews nevertheless stimulate understanding and compassion, moving later heroes toward redemption. Catholic characters also suffer, but Jews have to contend with anti-Semitism and the ambiguity of Waugh's later fiction. Waugh's heroes survive their ordeals, but their victories are only partial, compromised by the suffering of Jews and other characters. In "Compassion" and The End of the Battle, the heros' naive benevolence leads to the deaths of two Jews, though they are executed by the partisans. Waugh's last story is Basil Seal Rides Again (1963). A slight work, Basil Seal nevertheless returns to the plight of Jews among gentiles. Almost as if he could not bear to leave Ambrose Silk in Ireland, as he had in Put Out More Flags, Waugh brings Ambrose back to "his native London" (4). After travels in Tangier, Telaviv, Ischia, and Portugal, Ambrose and friends celebrate his "sixtieth birthday and his investiture with the Order of Merit" (3). Basil Seal happens to attend, but the hero is otherwise identified with Jews. After Basil loses weight at a health spa, his daughter calls him a "Belsen atrocity" (33-4). The fate of the Jews seems to have preoccupied Waugh in his later years. Preoccupation is evident not only in fiction, but also in his last book, his autobiography, (1964). Describing "mild austerities" at public school during the First World War, Waugh realized that readers had "vicariously supped full with the horrors of the concentration camp" (115). By the end of his life, Waugh often compared his experience with that of Jews. Born into the upper middle class in 1903, Waugh had been alienated from family and school, drawn to other examples of alienation in the Jews of . Waugh affirmed his own alienation by converting to Roman Catholicism in 1930, and he remained Roman Catholic until his death in 1966. As atrocities mounted in the 1930s, Waugh became more concerned with the Jewish problem, and his fictional heroes identify more and more closely with Jews. Though the heroes are often Catholic, and though they find meaning in religion, something is missing from their lives. In "Compassion," Helena, and The End of the Battle, Jewish characters utter the greatest insights, and in Brideshead Revisited, Scott-King's Modern Europe, and Gilbert Pinfold, heroes have to pass through Jewish experiences in order to understand suffering. Expanding sympathy is not often associated with Waugh, supposed to be such a monster, but it is nevertheless evident in the late fiction. Waugh clearly admired Jewish tradition, and he grieved for the abuse of its heirs. His fiction is in part an attempt to integrate Judaism and , religions that sprang from the same source but developed into separate streams. United, they offered more hope of resisting, or at least understanding, the viciousness of the modern world.

Works Cited.

Carens, James F. on Evelyn Waugh. ·aoston: Hall, 1987. Carpenter, Humphrey. The Brideshead Generation: Evelyn Waugh and his Friends. Boston: Houghton, 1990. Doyle, Paul A. A Reader's Companion to the Novels and Short Stories of Evelyn Waugh. Norman, OK: Pilgrim, 1988. Greenridge, Terence. Evelyn Waugh in Letters. Ed. Charles Linck. Commerce, TX: Cow Hill, 1994. Heath, Jeffrey. The Picturesque Prison: Evelyn Waugh and his Writing. Kingston, ON: MeGill-Queen's UP, 1982. Stannard, Martin. Evelyn Waugh: The Later Years 1939-1966. New York: Norton, 1992. Waugh, Evelyn. Basil Seal Rides Again or The Rake's Regress. Boston: Little, 1963. Black Mischief. 1932. Boston: Little, 1977. Brideshead Revisited: The Sacred and Profane Memories of Captain Charles Ryder. Boston: Little, 1945. Charles Ryder's Schooldays and Other Stories. Boston: Little, 1982. "Compassion." The Month Aug. 1949: 79-98. . 1928. Boston: Little, 1956. The End of the Battle. Boston: Little, 1961. Evelyn Waugh, Apprentice: The Early Writings, 1910-1927. Ed. Robert Murray Davis. Norman, OK: Pilgrim, 1985. 6

A Handful of Dust. 1934. Boston: Little, 1962. Helena. 1950. Boston: Little, 1951. The Letters of Evelyn Waugh. Ed. Mark Amory. 1980. New York: Penguin, 1982. A Little Learning: The First Volume of an Autobiography. Boston: Little, 1964. Love Among the Ruins. 1953. London: Chapman, 1962. : An Anglo-American Tragedy. 1948. Boston: Little, 1977. Men at Arms. Boston: Little, 1952. Officers and Gentlemen. 1955. Boston: Little, 1979. The Ordeal of Gilbert Pinfold: A Conversation Piece. 1957. Boston: Little, 1979. Put Our More Flags. 1942. Boston: Little, 1977. . 1938. Boston: Little, 1977. Scott-King's Modern Europe. 1947. Boston: Little, 1949. Tactical Exercise. Boston: Little, 1954. , 1930. Boston: Little, 1958. Work Suspended. 1942. Tactical Exercise. Boston: Little, 1954. 129-234.

EVELYN WAUGH: A SUPPLEMENTARY CHECKLIST OF CRITICISM By Gerhard Wolk (University of Wuppertal, Germany) This is a continuation of the earlier checklists, published in Evelyn Waugh Newsletter and Studies (EWNS). It includes books and articles published since 1995, as well as some items omitted from previous lists. Bittner, David, "Mr. Ryder- Daddy Dearest", EWNS, 30.3 (1996), 4-5. Bittner, David, "Sebastian's Silence- The result of Viewpoint Limitations", EWNS, 31.1 (1997), 2-4. Blayac, Alain, " et Evelyn Waugh: Hommes du XXe siecle, Cycnos, 11.2 (1994), 137-45. Davis, Robert Murray, "Brenda Last's Reading", EWNS, 30.2 (1996), 7-8. Davis, Robert Murray, "Waugh, , and Yugoslavia", EWNS, 31.1 (1997), 4-5. Gallagher, Donat, "Acrimonious Anthropology", EWNS, 31.1 (1997), 5-6. · Gallagher, Donat, "The Miracle and Letter: Did Evelyn Waugh Approve?", EWNS, 31.1 (1997), 1-2. Gallagher, Donat, "Munificence in Manchester", EWNS, 30.3 (1996), 5-6. Gallagher, Donat, (ed.), The Sayings of Evelyn Waugh (London: Gerald Duckworth, 1996). Reviewed by Paul A. Doyle, EWNS, 30.3 (1996), 7. Hastings, Selina, Evelyn Waugh: A Biography. Reviewed by John Bayley, "Mr. Toad", London Review of Books, 20 Oct. 1994), 23-24; D. J. Taylor, Times Literary Supplement, 28 Oct. 1994, 6. Holmes, Daryl, "The Uses of Games in Brideshead Revisited", EWNS, 30.2 (1996), 1-6 and 30.3 (1996), 1-4. Lauder, Robert E., "A Masterpiece: Literary and Visual", The Long Island Catholic, Jan. 22, 1997, p.11. [Brideshead]. Lauder, Robert E., "Revisited Again", The Long Island Catholic, Jan. 15, 1997, p. 13. [Bridesheadl. Loe, Thomas, "Design and Satire in Decline and Fall", Studies in Contemporarv Satire, 17 (1990), 31-41. Seed, David, "Party-Going: The Jazz Age Novels of Evelyn Waugh, Wyndham Lewis, F. Scott Fitzgerald and ", in: Ann Massa and Alistair Stead (eds.), Forked Tongues? Comparing Twentieth Centurv British and American Literature (London: Longman, 1994), 117-34. Wells, Walter, "Between Two Worlds: Aldous Huxley and Evelyn Waugh in Hollywood", in: David Fine (ed), Los Angeles in Fiction: A Collection of Essays. From James M. Cain to Walter Mosley (Albuquerque: Univ. of New , 1995), 187-206. Wilson, John Howard, "Addendum to 'EW in the Land of WA' (EWNS 28.3", EWNS, 31.1 (1997), 4. Wilson, John Howard, Evelyn Waugh: A Literary Biography, 1903-1924 (Cranbury, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson Univ. P., 1996). Reviewed by Charles E. Linck, Jr., EWNS, 30.3 (1996), 6-7.

A PARTISAN FAREWELL TO WAUGH Robert Murray Davis and Dragan Milivojevic (University of Oklahoma) Unaccountably listed in either my A Catalogue of the Evelyn Waugh Collection at the Humanities Research Center, The University of Texas at Austin (Whitston, 1981) or my "Waugh Memorabilia in Austin" (EWN, 17:1 [Spring 1983], 3-5) is a telegram ordering that he be given safe and immediate passage out of Yugoslavia to 7

Bari, Italy. As is clear from his diaries and from Mark Amory's note to his letter of February 1945 (Letters, 201 ), the Partisans were eager to get rid of him. The translation of the telegram from Serbo-Croatian by Professor Milivojevic is given below: Telegram Headquarters Second Shock Brigade of the People's Liberation Front 15 February 1945 ANNOUNCEMENT For Mr. Waugh, English Captain, who is traveling from to (Italy) of his own wish. The above-named should be helped to reach Bari on the first available ship. While he is in our territory all military (rear echelon) powers should cooperate with him in every way. DEATH TO FASCISM-- FREEDOM TO THE PEOPLE FOR THE HEADQUARTERS Assistant to the Head Milif (?) Dapcedie

THE CHARACTER OF SEBASTiAN By John W. Osborne (Rutgers University) Sebastian's surface personality characteristic is charm; his deepest feelings are those of a religious mystic. Early in the book he charms Ryder's scout, and a barber. Later, he exercises this faculty over Ryder's difficult father, and finally with the British Consul and the Catholic brother in Africa. Cordelia has the last word about Sebastian, and she tells Ryder that her brother is still loved wherever he goes or whatever condition he is in (Waugh 304). Yet the charm of Sebastian is mostly talked about by others. Waugh seldom demonstrates this quality in Sebastian by speech or action. This is unlike Tolstoy's handling of Natasha Rostov in War and Peace, as we seem to see and feel Natasha as a vibrant character. I believe that Waugh does not deal with this aspect of Sebastian's character as well as he might. In his The Situation of the Novel, Bernard Bergonzi criticizes a grossly inferior novelist, C.P. Snow for this failure. (pp. 141-142). We quickly learn that Sebastian is the opposite of Hooper, except that both are inept in dealing with the world. Sebastian has a tolerance of people as different as Blanche and Mulcaster (on page 61 the discussion between Ryder and Sebastian ends with the latter making a facetious comment to his teddy bear. But in the revised version of the manuscript, Waugh added a sentence which reads "And then Boy Mulcaster came into the room." Waugh wanted to prepare the reader for Sebastian's acceptance as a companion of the odious Mulcaster during the party in London, after which Ryder, Sebastian, and Mulcaster go on to the night club.) Later on Sebastian takes care of another disreputable person, Kurt. Furthermore, criticism of others is seldom on Sebastian's lips. On one level, Sebastian is a child who never has grown up. Cara points this out in . Ryder compares him to a Polynesian, innocent of the ways of the outside world. Sebastian reminds the reader of the Eloi in H. G. Wells The Time Machine. He may also have a touch of Harpo Marx. ChildiSh about his foot injury, a reader of News of the World, interested in pretty things rather than facts, finally drawn to primitive North Africa, Sebastian indeed seems to be a simple person. Of course, Ryder's student friend, Collins, learns nothing about Sebastian by using Freud as a guide. How are we then to account for his descent into alcoholism and for his hatred of his mother? Both Sebastian and Ryder are heavy drinkers, but as Ryder puts his drinking under control, Sebastian gets worse, and this is a reason for their estrangement. It is also the surface cause of his problems with his family. Sebastian's hatred of his mother is lasting, and in his last reference to her he calls Lady Marchmain a "femme fatale," who "killed at a touch" (Waugh 214). Originally, Waugh had the words "his mother drove him mad" in the narrative, but this phrase was removed before the final version (Davis, 158). In Africa his need to serve Kurt outweighed any feeling of sympathy toward his dying mother, and Sebastian had by now found a purpose in life. This fact provides a clue, but before turning to Sebastian's complex religious nature, it is necessary to confront directly the matter of his homosexuality. This is hinted at in the dialogue between Sebastian and Ryder on page 86 in which Sebastian acknowledges that he is wickeder than his non-believer friend (because 8 of Sebastian's Roman Catholic upbringing). Ryder's reference to "naughtiness high in the catalogue of grave sins" (Waugh 45) also helps to prepare us for the veiled but recognizable message on page 203. Here Anthony Blanche records that in Paris he took Sebastian to a homosexual prostitute. These few and somewhat indirect words have seldom been discussed, but they admit of no other meaning. The fact adds a dimension to Sebastian's personality. He no longer carries his teddy bear with him, but is deep into human wickedness. Family and religion are linked with Sebastian. He warns Ryder against the charm of his relatives, loves his nanny, who is of childhood and innocence, but is not much interested in Brideshead Castle except for the chapel (he tells the awed Ryder not to be such a tourist). When the still agnostic Ryder follows Sebastian's lead and genuflects in the chapel, Sebastian is angry (Waugh 38). He reveals the irritation of a genuinely religious person when he is confronted by an unbeliever miming an action in a feeble effort to be polite. Sebastian later is upset about his mother hearing about his jail experience because he knows that Lady Marchmain will be "understanding" in a way that does not comprehend the situation. On page 89, Sebastian informs Ryder about his family's religious views and notes that happiness doesn't seem to have much to do with religion, and that he wanted to be happy. He then wished that he liked Catholics more. Neither he nor Ryder are aware of St. Augustine's famous remark about God making me good but not yet (Waugh 86). As Sebastian became an alcoholic, Ryder observed that Sebastian "was sick at heart somevvhere" (V"Jaugh 128). Brideshead (145) and Cordelia (308) both claimed that God prefers drunkards iike Sebastian to some respectable people, but Ryder was unconvinced. The skeptical Ryder was of no use to a man troubled by conscience, religion, and human relations. Sebastian was fighting against his holiness, as Julia was struggling against her religious conscience. Cordelia and Brideshead don't question the faith, but Julia marries Mottram and Sebastian drinks in efforts to escape from God. By fleeing from his family, he tries to flee from God. Finally, in North Africa, Sebastian stops running from God. Like his father, Sebastian reacts against the demands of the , and also like his father, he comes to hate Lady Marchmain with her smothering personality. The youthful Sebastian will not acknowledge his holiness. He is ashamed of himself (Waugh 37, 78, 86). Superficially, his rebellion may be seen as that of a weak person (inward, not outward). As De Vilis says, Sebastian ends by succumbing to a religious vocation that he had struggled against all his life (49). Despite his alcoholism, homosexuality, and cruelty toward his mother, Sebastian was marked by God as holy. Much of Sebastian's religious character is revealed by Cordelia, just as his charm is often glimpsed second hand. In her soliloquy, Cordelia notes Sebastian's desire to serve pygmies, cannibals, lepers -- anybody. She goes on to say that Sebastian had a religious vocation and hated it. His whole revolt is due to a refusal to accept grace. As a youth, he wanted to be happy instead of holy but he finishes by being both. On this point, Waugh's skillful writing allows us to view the down and out Sebastian becoming an impressive human being. Cordelia said he was "very near and dear to God," and he was much like a spiritual character in a novel by Dostoyevsky. Ultimately Sebastian achieved what as a young man he had not believed possible - contentment in the faith. Works Cited Bergonzi, Bernard. The Situation of the Novel. Pittsburgh: U of P Press, 1978. Davis, Robert Murray. Evelyn Waugh. Writer. Norman,OK: Pilgrim, 1981. De Vilis, A.A. Roman Holiday: The Catholic Novels of Evelyn Waugh. NY: Bookman Associates, 1956. Waugh, Evelyn. Brideshead Revisited. Boston: Little, Brown, 1945.

The Evelyn Waugh Newsletter and Studies, designed to stimulate research and continue interest in the life and writings of Evelyn Waugh, is published three times a year in April, September and December (Spring, Autumn, and Winter numbers). Subscription rate $8.00 a year. Single copy $4.00. Checks and money orders should be made payable to the Evelyn Waugh Newsletter. Overseas subscriptions must be paid in US funds: MO, check, or cash. Notes, brief essays, and news items about Waugh and his work may be submitted, but manuscripts cannot be returned unless accompanied by a stamped, self-addressed envelope. Address all correspondence to Dr. P.A. Doyle, English Dept., Nassau Community College, State University of New York, Garden City, N.Y. 11530. Editorial Board- Editor: P.A. Doyle; Associate Editors: Winnifred M. Bogaards (University of New Brunswick); Alfred W. Borrello (Kingsborough Community College); Robert M. Davis (Univ. of Oklahoma); Heinz Kosok (Univ. of Wuppertal); Charles E. Linck, Jr. (East Texas State Univ.). Bibliographical Editor: Gerhard Wolk (Univ. of Wuppertal).