THE MATURING OF EVELYN WAUGH

by

Ann McCaskey Hitt

A Thesis Submitted to the Faculty of the

College of Humanities in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts

Florida Atlantic University Boca Raton, Florida December 1988 THE MATURING OF EVELYN WAUGH

by

Ann McCaskey Hitt

This thesis was prepared under the direction of the candidate's thesis advisor, Dr. William Coyle, Department of English, and has been approved by the members of her supervisory committee. It was submitted to the faculty of the College of Humanities and was accepted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts.

SUPERVISORY COMMITTEE

KLL~ LJ ) j~/ v

Department of English

~ ~ "'- \( UMJn:rt J Dean, College of Humanities

l t /z.. z. I r:1. Dean for Advanced Studies Date I I

i i Abstract

Author: Ann McCaskey Hitt

Title: The Maturing of Evelyn Waugh

Institution: Florida Atlantic University

Degree: Master of Arts

Year: 1988

Evelyn Waugh began his literary career soon after the end of

World War II ~hen the lif2 style he had kno~n all his life,

that of the upper class and the aristocratic, ~as soon to be

over. He was distressed at the loss of his world to the

modern age. His early works are bitter satires attacking the

changes he sa~ in the people he knew and the world he loved.

His first protagonists were flat shallow characters who were

totally una~are of the havoc of their world. As Waugh

matured, his characters changed and became more realistic and

better able to cope with the problems in their lives. The

protagonists of the later novels are fully developed and manage their l1ves very well even though the ~orld is still

in a chaotic state. As Waugh matured, he was belter able to contend with the problems he faced, and this maturity is reflected in the protagonists of his novels.

i i i Table of Contents

Chapter I Introduction ...... 1

Chapter II The Early Novels ...... 10

Chapter III Brideshead Revisited ...... 21

Chapter IV The War Trilogy ...... 34

Chapter V Conclusion •...... 56

Works Cited ...... 58

iv Chapter I

Introduction

Immediately following the first World War dramatic changes took place in the life-styles of England, especially in the aristocratic and upper classes. The results of higher taxes, t h 0 breakdown of the class system, the start of what is called the modern age, and the beginning of the breakup of the British Empi re along with the attendant political chaos are the situations with which Evelyn Waugh deals in his novels.

There was also a degree of chaos in Waugh's personal life: he was unable to establish himself in a career after he left

Oxford without earning his degree; his wife deserted him; and i n his search for the traditional way of life he had known when h e was young and a security he could depend on, he joined the Roma n

Catholic Church.

Waugh also uses the old structures in which his characters live and visit to create anchors for their lives as well as his own. In each of the novels under consideration there are structures described, and for the most part they are architecturally significant. Waugh draws a clear picture of th ~ houses or hotels and sometimes the surrounding landscape, and a ~ he develops his characters they are placed in relationship to t h e

1 2

structures. He especially admires ancient houses that represent

tradition and resistance to change.

The protagonists in his novels reflect the chaos Waugh

felt as they deal with the problems England and Waugh faced at the time. Among the problems are the attitudes of the men who run Oxford toward those students who are not well connected and are not wealthy; the bigotry of the public

school system; the prison system; marriage; the Anglican church; and The Bright Young People, young people who were

totally unaware of the world around them.

The early novels have flat protagonists who are not permitted to solve the problems created by the situations in which they find themselves, they deal only with the crises of the moment. Waugh puts his characters in the real world of upper class England in the 1920s and 1930s, in situations over which they had little or no control, and their lack of control destroyed their fortunes, their morals, and their mores. In the later novels the protagonists are permitted to make choices that determine their roles in the performances

Waugh presents. The men are liars, cheats, thieves, adulterers, fornicators, and bigamists; the women with whom these men associate are little better than prostitutes. As

Waugh matured, his protagonists were given tighter control of their lives, and these changes in the protagonists' attitudes show the change in Waugh's thoughts and a maturity in his attitudes. When a comparison is made between Waugh's treatment of the protagonists in the novels written in the

1940s and the protagonists of the early novels of the late

1920s and 1930s his change in attitude is quite clear.

Waugh's novels are written in bitter satire and cruel

irony and he shows his rejection of the modern age. His writings set up situations that are quitt normal, such as teaching school or taking a ferry from France to England or attending church on Sunday. He peopled these scenes with characters whose outlook and actions are decadent, and at times obscene, and he indicates that the results of their actions are caused by a series of unseen forces or by their own foolishness. In his early work, especially the first novels, Decline and Fall, Vile Bodies, and A Handful of Dust,

Waugh makes no positive statement for the possibility of accommodation to the reality of the new world. As he matured as an artist, as a writer, and as a man, his later novels--

Brideshead Revisited and the war trilogy, Men at Arms,

Officers and Gentlemen, and The End of the Battle--became less bitter; and he took a position that admitted compromise and permitted hope. He never lost sight of his vision of the world returned to the solid social tradition of his boyhood and made a continuing cry against moral bankruptcy.

In the three early novels being considered, Waugh hammers home his ideas of the breakdown of the upper class as he knows it. He is funny, at times hilarious, but there is always an undercurrent of bitterness even in the most comic 4

scenes. Not much in the lives of these people is sacred to

Waugh. His first novels attacked "The decay o f a

civilization, futile sensuality leading to boredom, [and] the

poverty of spiritual life" (Carens 13) and Waugh puts his

characters into plots that involve seemingly normal people

whose reactions to pain, death, and all human horror border

on indifference and incoherence. The protagonists in the

early novels, Paul Pennyfeather in Decline and Fall, Adam

Fenwick-Symes in Vile Bodies, and Tony Last in A Handful of

Dust, are victims of the circumstances of their lives; only

Tony Last is a real anti-hero. The other two, Paul and Adam,

have a bit of their former lives left in the end. Paul has

gone back to Oxford, and although he lost his love, he does

have another opportunity to make his life as he wants it.

Adam has another chance also. He has lost Nina, the girl he

tries to marry throughout Vile Bodies, but he is alive and he

does get his money from his drunken major although its value

has fallen because of inflation. At the end he is on a

battlefield with a war going on in the distance, but he is

alive and unhurt. However, Tony is lost in the jungles of

Brazil with no hope of rescue. He has lost everything, his

home, his family, and whatever fortune he may have had. There

is no pattern or destination in the lives of these three

protagonists.

From the first, Waugh's novels achieved critical and popular acclaim. Decline and Fall, pub l ished i n 1928, 5 eventually ran to "six hard-back editions of approximately

2000 copies each by 1931," and this book established Waugh's

"reputation as a bright young author .... Vile Bodies, published in 1930, was an instant success and secured Waugh's position as a ... writer'' (Stannard 14-15). A Handful of

Dust ''is now regarded as Waugh's masterpiece"; however, at the time of publication in 1934 it received good reviews,

"but the extraordinary power of the work and its superiority to Waugh's earlier fiction was not widely recognized."

Stannard suggests that A Handful of Dust may have lost some of its initial power and impact when it first appeared because it was first published in serial form in "five monthly installments in Harper's Bazaar in both Britain and

America" (21). The first novels were received by the critics with joyous laughter. Gerald Gould in the Observer for

September 23, 1928, said of Decline and Fall that Waugh "is a critic of life, whose weapon is the joke disguised as the simple statement" (Stannard 81); and J.M.S.G. in Cherwell,

October 28, 1928 said, "A genuinely new humorist has presented himself in the person of Evelyn Waugh, whose

Decline and Fall is an uncompromising and brilliantly malicious satire" (Stannard 82). Of Vile Bodies, Ralph

Straus, in Bystander, for January 15, 1930, said: "I cannot conceive of a droller or more cunning or more subtly ironical commentary on the juvenile absurdities of today. . It is all utterly fantastic, and yet it is--very nearly--life as 6 the popular Press would have us believe it to be" (Stannard

96). There were a few negative reviews: Ernest Oldmeadow, editor of the Tablet, a Catholic publication, said of Vile

Bodies, "Mr. Evelyn Waugh's latest novel would be a disgrace to anyone professing the Catholic name" (Stannard 133).

Douglas Woodruff replaced Mr. Oldmeadow as editor of the

Tablet three years later and "from that time Waugh's books were generally applauded by the magazine" (Stannard 132).

Evelyn Waugh began a second career as a novelist after the second World War when Brideshead Revisited was published in 1945, and by 1961 he had written his masterful war trilogy: Men at Arms, Officers and Gentlemen, and The End of the Battle. There is some critical comment to the effect that Waugh became an apologist for Roman Catholicism. There is a strong Roman Cathoiic emphasis in Brideshead and the war trilogy, but he satirizes organized religion throughout and cannot be considered as a true apologist. As Evelyn Waugh matured his satire softened, but still he had the bitter undercurrent in the later books, and he still cried outrage at the breakdown of the behavior of the ?ristocracy. The critics described Brideshead Revisited as Waugh's effort to discover the effect of God's grace in the lives of men

(Carens 98); his purpose may have been more to find order in the chaos of his world and he used religion as one possibility to achieve harmony. The protagonist of

Brideshead, Charles Ryder, finally accepts the possibility 7 that Catholicism is a viable solution to human agony. It is not clear that Charles joins the church himself, but he does respect the tradition of the sanctuary light burning again in the chapel at Brideshead. It can be said that Waugh, if not a real apologist, was a traditionalist and found the unchanging quality of Roman Catholicism an answer for the problems with which he dealt.

Guy Crouchback, on the other hand, is born and raised a

Catholic but for most of his life his belief is dry and restricted to the letter of the law with no feelings of the spirit of love or community as the teachings of Catholicism suggest. He finally learns at the end of the second World

War to accept a less than perfect arrangement with his world when he remarries his former wife and accepts as his own her child by another man.

The themes that Waugh established in the earlier novels of the chaos of twentieth century life, a lack of tradition, extreme materialism and a lack of spirituality in the lives of men, continue in these later novels. After the second

World War, however, when Waugh was older, his work became more romantic, especially in Brideshead Revisited.

His characters in both phases of his career are essentially "flat" as they are used primarily to represent ideas or attitudes.. Although he does not describe his characters, he creates a stage setting and drops the characters in place during the action of the story. This 8

method gives the reader a feeling of involvement with the

character. It is like being in a room and hearing people

talking in a hall outside the door, walking to the door and

looking at the people. Immediately the space is visible, as

are the people, but the space is all surface and there is

nothing else to know about it that is available visually.

The people are also visible, on the surface, but there is

much to know about them that is not available from just

looking at them. Two of Waugh's most fully developed

characters, Charles Ryder in Brideshead Revisited and Guy

Crouchback in the war trilogy, are a case in point. These

men are similar in personality and attitude, but nothing is

said of their physical appearance except that they are

slender and in their late thirties. Both men must deal with

unfaithful wives, faithless friends, pointless military orders and the demands of Roman Catholicism. They both are almost anti-heros but not quite because they both win in the end.

Waugh traveled over the world for nearly ten years, until 1937 when he remarried and gathered the background for travel books and his novels (Carens v). Considering the value Waugh placed on the traditional lifestyle, the footloose life he led may have encouraged him to react to his world rather than to try to take control of it because he had no solid base of home and family. "Waugh began to absorb his 9 life experiences as he encountered them, transforming them into the stuff of fiction" (Phillips 5). Chapter II

The Early Novels

When Evelyn Waugh began his career as a novelist with the publication of Decline and Fall in 1928, he was at a low point in his personal life. In Decline and Fall as well as the other early novels, he allows his secondary characters to take over the story from the protagonists. The secondary characters appear, disappear and reappear, and in the process

Waugh develops them fully while he allows the protagonists to be static and uninvolved as life swirls around them but causes little change in their attitudes. It is interesting that the secondary characters, who are usually malcontents and misfits, manage to come through all their troubles with little effort, while the protagonists fail in their ambitions. Waugh may have drawn his protagonists as reflections of himself, perhaps he saw himself as an antihero and drew pictures of failure, but when he looked at the people he knew and associated with he saw them as successful and thus wrote successful, rounded parts drawn from life for the secondary characters

The early novels of Evelyn Waugh examine various situations in the modern world in which he sees changes happening that are unpleasant. The themes are different,

10 11

although closely related, in the three novels being

considered. The themes are a lack of interest and concern by

friends and family for those who have been hit by misfortune

especially when the misfortune is not brought on by actions

of the persons involved; he examines the indifference of

Oxford dons, public officials, wives, and friends of victims.

In his first novel, Decline and Fall, Paul Pennyfeather,

the protagonist, is done in by Sir Alastair Digby-Vaine-Trum­

pington who is having the annual dinner of the Bollinger

Club, a group of aristocratic young men, in his rooms at

Oxford. It is Sir Alastair and his friends who remove Paul's

trousers in the garden quad during a drunken playful mood, and Paul is dismissed from Oxford for indecent behavior.

After Paul is dismissed he takes a position at Llanabba

Castle as a school master. The owner and headmaster is Dr.

Augustus Fagan, a con man who cheats Paul of part of his salary because he "can hardly pay one hundred and twenty pounds to any one who has been sent down for indecent behavior. Suppose that we fix your salary at ninety pounds a year to begin with?" (236). Fagan's school is second rate at best, and yet he has some wealthy aristocratic students.

The settings of Waugh's work reflected the aristocracy and one thing that never failed Evelyn Waugh was his love of the fine old houses he knew and visited and put into his stories. The houses were an anchor and usually they stood 12 firm in a changing world. In Decline and Fall, Llanabba Castle is the first old house Waugh described. Llanabba Castle • . . from the back looks very much like any other large country house, with a great many windows and a terrace, ... from the front ... one goes past at least a mile of machicolated wall before reaching the gates; these are towered and turreted and decorated with heraldic animals and a workable portcullis. Beyond ... stands the Castle, a model of mediaeval impregnability. (237-38)

At the school, Paul meets Edgar Grimes, who has been dismissed frequently in the past from other pos i tions because he is a pederast and he often "lands in the soup. 'I don't believe I was ever meant by Nature to be a schoolmaster. Temperament,' said Grimes, with a far-away look in his eyes-- 'that's been my trouble, temperament and sex'" (245). Grimes goes to work for an uncle in Canada who is "in the brush trade" (246) whose business is destroyed by poor trade conditions during the first World War. Grimes returns to England and joins the army. One night when Paul and Grimes go to the local bar, Grimes reminisces aloud to Paul, "I don't suppose I was really sober for more than a few hours for the whole of that war. Then I got into the soup again, pretty badly that time. Happened over in France." (246) The officers caught him and hoped that he would commit suicide in order to avoid a court-martial. Gr i mes was left alone with a gun and a decanter of whiskey and it was hoped that he would commit suicide. Instead he got drunk and it 13 was necessary to court-martial him; the major who was to conduct the court-martial was an old school chum.

"God bless my soul," he said, "if it isn't Grimes of Podger's! What's all this nonsense about a court-martial?" So I told him. "H'm." he said, "pretty bad. Still, it's out of the question to shoot an old Harrovian .... And next day I was sent to Ireland on a pretty cushy job connected with postal service. You can't get into the soup in Ireland, do what you like." (246-47)

There was a real model for Grimes in Waugh's life. He was a man named Young who was Waugh's fellow teacher during Waugh's miserable school master days.

Waugh's assertion that Decline and Fall was not based on his real-life experiences as a teacher must have been made in order to avoid possible libel suits by some of the people he caricatures in the novel, for his diaries and autobiography prove quite the contrary. (Phillips 9)

Grimes reappears later in the story as a "manager of a place of entertainment" (348) in Argentina for Margot Beste-

Chetwynde, Paul Pennyfeather's fiance. Margot is the owner of another country house that Waugh describes in detail and which Margot tears down and replaces witt a modern monstrosity.

This is one of Waugh's clearest statements of the intrusion of the modern age into the traditional life of

England. Margot's house was called

King's Thursday, and stood on the place which since the reign of Bloody Mary had been the seat of the Earls of Pastmaster . . . . In the last fifty years Hampshire 14

had gradually become proud of King's Thursday. From having been considered rather a blot on the progressive county, King's Thursday gradually became the Mecca of week-end guests. [The old house] was recognized as the finest piece of domestic Tudor in England. (325-26)

Paul Pennyfeather is in love with Margot and for this

reason goes to jail, accused of white slavery, when it is

Margot who is guilty. She has "financial" interests in South

America which she euphemistically calls "places of

entertainment" while in reality they are houses of

prostitution. While in prison he again meets Grimes and

other characters from Llanabba Castle. Margot decides to get

Paul out of prison by faking an emergency appendectomy. He

is supposed to die on the operating table at the hospital owned and run by Dr. Augustus Fagan, the school master from

Llanabba Castle. Around and around the characters go acting and interacting with each other again and again but Paul is unable to gain control of his life. Phillips suggests that,

The fact that Paul Pennyfeather does not disintegrate has a simple explanation: he is not a person but a device--the device Waugh uses to carry his reader along on a satirical sightseeing tour of a crumbling civilization. (ll)

It may be, however, that Paul is the way he is because he has some of the qualities of Evelyn Waugh. Like Waugh, Paul is socially adept, qualified as a writer, and qualified as an observer of all but himself, but spiritually immature. 15

Paul manages to return to Oxford and resume his life there as if nothing had happened. In the closing scene of the book it is again the night of the Bollinger Club dinner.

This time the dinner is being given in the rooms of Peter

Beste-Chetwynde, Margot's son. Paul reads a bit and then goes to bed this time without mishap.

In Vile Bodies Waugh does the same sort of weaving together of the characters' lives. Adam Fenwick-Symes, the protagonist, allows life to swirl around him, and is not noticeably affected. Waugh has dropped Grimes from his cast of characters, but he reprises Sir Alastair and Margot in this story. While Paul was in prison, Margot married Lord

Metroland, while professing to still love Paul and at the same time having an affair with Sir Alastair.

Vile Bodies is a dark comment on modern society as Waugh knew it. Although the characters are not fully described, he once again gives detailed descriptions of houses. There is the feeling that Waugh trusted the houses more than he did the people, and it was the people who destroyed the houses.

The first is description is of Shepheard's Hotel, where Adam registers after his return from France. Adam has no money but he knows that Lottie Crump, the proprietress of

Shepheard's, will allow him to stay. Lottie is described as

"a fine figure of a woman, singularly unscathed by any sort of misfortune and superbly oblivious of those changes in the social order which agitate the more observant grandes dames 16 of her period" (40). It is, to Waugh, a shelter and he presents it as such: "one can go to Shepheard's parched with modernity any day, if Lottie likes one's face, and still draw up, cool and uncontaminated, great, healing draughts from the well of Edwardian certainty" (40-41). Waugh does not give a full description of the building, but he does give a description of the atmosphere:

Shepheard's has a plain, neatly pointed brick front and large, plain doorway. Inside it is like a country house. Lottie is a great one for sale~, and likes, whenever one of her great houses of her day is being sold up, to take away something for old times' sake. (41)

Adam Fenwick-Symes is engaged to marry Nina Blount, but when his manuscript is confiscated at the Customs office and his prospects ruined, Nina suggests that Adam go to see her father, Colonel Blount, who lives past Aylesbury, at Doubting

Hall. Doubting Hall is a country house with a lofty

Palladian facade (88). Adam does see Colonel Blount and does ask him for money to enable him and Nina to marry. The colonel agrees and gives Adam a check. Later, on closer examination, Nina discovers that her father has signed the check "Charlie Chaplin" (109). The satire of Adam's lack of moral fibre and constant need of money is characterized by one of the critics:

Man as an exile from Eden is epitomized in the central character--named, by no coincidence, Adam. Adam Fenwich-Symes's total lack of moral convictions is illustrated in his turning over his fiancee, Nina Blount, to a rival in 17

exchange for having his hotel bill paid; he later retrieves Nina with a worthless check. (Phillips 16)

Vile Bodies was started before and finished after

Waugh's first wife betrayed him and asked for a divorce.

This novel reflects decay and rottenness throughout. There is

no light: no character comes to a good end through his own

choice and effort. A semblance of order was imposed in

Decline and Fall, but in Vile Bodies nothing is done except

the ultimate ordering: war. James Carens says that "one

positive alternative to social and personal disorder . . is

war" (1). A continuing theme in all Waugh's novels was the

attempt to order the chaotic world of the 1920s and 1930s.

In Vile Bodies Waugh solves Adam's problems by sending him

off to war. At the end of the story Adam has gone off and

met his drunken major, now a general, who took his money in

the beginning of the story and prevented his marriage to

Nina, "Nina, I don't think we shall be able to get married

after all ... I gave [my money] to ... rather a drunk

[major]" (55). At the end of the story Adam is "on a

splintered tree stump in the biggest battlefield in the

history of the world, [where] Adam sat down" (314), and as

the drunken general and Chastity, a prostitute who has been

in South America at one of Margot Metroland's "places of entertainment," prepare to make love, Adam "sank into sleep"

(320). 18

Waugh speaks out again and again of people who should be leaders but who abdicate the responsibility of their lives.

Although he cries against the lack of responsibility, Waugh makes no effort to allow the protagonists to grow and seek solutions to their problems perhaps because he himself is too immature and bitter to see the solution. Waugh manipulates and then abandons his characters; especially Adam Fenwick­

Symes, to whom he has given no purpose or resolution. The reader feels as though he too has been abandoned. In A

Handful of Dust Waugh clearly abandons Tony Last, the protagonist. Unfortunately, Waugh sees no redemption in either the good or the bad, and he peoples his stories with unruly, immoral, amoral, and unpleasant characters as though he considered the times in which he lived incapable of producing admirable people.

A Handful of Dust, Evelyn Waugh's fourth novel, con­ sidered by some critics his most powerful, "depicts the collapse of the family" (Carens 15). A Handful of Dust is quite different from Decline and Fall and Vile Bodies in that the hero-victim, Tony Last, is concerned only with his son and his ancestral home, Letton Abbey, while Paul and Adam are really interested only in themselves. Although we do not know what Tony looks like, we do know more about his thought processes and about his love for his home and his son. At one time Letton Abbey was a beautiful structure, but it was 19

remodeled in the nineteenth century and its architectural

significance was destroyed (15).

But there was not a glazed brick or encaustic tile that was not dear to Tony's heart .... The line of its battlements against the sky; the central clock tower where quarterly chimes disturbed all but the heaviest sleepers; the ecclesiastical gloom of the great hall, . things of tender memory and proud possession. (16-17)

Tony's wife, Brenda, starts a chain of events that ruin

Tony when she takes up with John Beaver, a social parasite;

this infidelity and the death of their son, John Andrew,

bring the marriage to an end. Tony goes off to Brazil with a

friend, Dr. Messinger, in search of a fabled city. Dr.

Messinger is killed and Tony is lost forever in Brazil, held

prisoner by Mr. Todd, an illiterate person whose father had

been a missionary. Tony Last ends his days reading Dickens

to Mr. Todd. A Handful of Dust brings together Waugh's

concern for the individual in a hostile society and for the

society itself. Stephen J. Greenblatt says "that A Handful

of Dust is a terrifying and bitter examination of humanism

and modern society" (qtd. in Cook 123). Once again Waugh

focuses on the victim living in a society that cares nothing

for the man. "The corrupt society founded on materialism and amorality and the declining effete aristocracy in this novel are identical to the. upper-class decadence described in the first two novels" (Cook 123-24). Slowly Waugh brings all the aspects of the modern world into focus for his readers. 20

Still, he suggests no solution. As with his heroes­

antiheroes, Waugh himself is only an observer; he is never

involved in the chaos of life until after World War II.

However, Waugh is beginning to see, as he shows in the development of Tony Last, that the answers he searches for are within himself and that they must be acted upon. Chapter III

Brideshead Revisited

Brideshead Revisited continues Evelyn Waugh's search for order in the chaos of the modern world; at this point, a world at war. At the time Waugh wrote Brideshead Revisited he was in the army, and it may have been this experience that showed him it was possible for hope to exist along with dishonor and violence.

Waugh had not yet come to the realization that the world would not change to what it had been when he was a child; he must change to accommodate the new reality. He may have thought that his Catholicism had given him a degree of stability, but it seems unlikely that Catholicism changed him as much as did his service in the army. "Evelyn didn't join the Catholic church for its ritual .. What did impress

Waugh about Roman Catholicism was its historical continuity"

(Phillips 52-53). During his service in the army Waugh may have for the first time associated with all kinds and sorts of men from all levels of society and become aware of men as people and not as satirical situations.

Evelyn Waugh's maturing personality shows in the relationships he establishes between the protagonists and the other characters of the novels. In the early novels, the protagonists are unable to control their lives. The stronger

21 22 secondary characters take over and decide what the protagonists should do. Margot Beste-Chetwynde makes all

Paul Pennyfeather's decisions for him. Nina Blount makes decisions for Adam Fenwick-symes, and Brenda Last certainly pushes Tony Last beyond hope.

Brideshead Revisited relates the memories of Charles

Ryder recalled by his arrival at Bridesh£ad Castle during the second World War. At the beginning, Charles is remote and uninvolved with life as were Paul Pennyfeather, Adam Fenwick-

Symes, and Tony Last.

As the bitterly ironic prologue opens, Charles Ryder, a captain in the British Army during World War II, is shifted from one army camp to a second locale. Arriving at night, he does not discover until morning that his new headquarters are the baroque country seat of the Flytes. This discovery moves Charles in Book I to memories of his undergraduate days and of his warm friendship with Sebastian; and in Book II, wherein Sebastian, Lord Marchmain and Julia are all drawn back to their faith by the urgency of God's will, to memories of his love affair with Lady Julia. (Carens 103)

Because of his service in the army, Charles's reactions to the characters he meets tell the story of his development.

He is the first protagonist who develops to the extent that he becomes financially successful on his own. Charles becomes an architectural painter of houses about to be destroyed, and he is very successful at what he does.

The financial slump of the period, served to enhance my success. After my first exhibition I was called to all parts of the country to make 23

portraits of houses that were soon to be deserted or debased. (227)

Charles interacts with many characters in Brideshead

Revisited, but there are two, Anthony Blanche in Book I and

Rex Mottram in Book II, that Waugh uses to assess the state of the world during this period, and who define Charles Ryder to himself and the reader. Anthony Blanche represents a time and place that were special in many ways, England in the

1920s; and Rex Mottram represents the modern business man/politician, whose type still haunts the world today.

These two characters make Waugh's statement of the decadence of the twentieth century.

At his first luncheon with Sebastian, Charles meets

Anthony Blanche:

This, I did not need telling, was Anthony Blanche, the "aesthete'' per excellence, ... ageless as a lizard, as foreign as a Martian. He had been pointed out to me often in the streets, as he moved with his own peculiar stateliness, as though he had not fully accustomed himself to coat and trousers and was more at his ease in heavy, embroidered robes; and now meeting him, under the spell of Sebastian, I found myself enjoying him voraciously, like the fine piece of cookery he was. (32-33)

Charles Ryder recalls his years of association with Lord

Marchmain and his family and the intimate relationship he shared with Sebastian Flyte. The first book tells of the years with Sebastian when they were students at Oxford.

Sebastian is very rich, and although Charles is from an upper middle class family, he is not wealthy. Sebastian lures him 24 into a lifestyle Charles cannot afford, but which he enjoys. Charles has had a lonely existence; his mother was killed in the first World War and his father has been withdrawn since then and has paid little attention to Charles. In his relationship with Sebastian, Charles finds a new way of life. With Sebastian, it seemed as though I was being given a brief spell of what I had never known, a happy childhood, and though its toys were silk shirts and liqueurs and cigars and its naughtiness high in the catalogue of grave sins, there was something of nursery freshness about us that fell little short of the joy of innocence. (45) Charles experiences isolation throughout the novel and seldom experiences joy at being alive. There is a restraint about him that continues to the end. Waugh develops another character to tell of the state of Charles's world, Hooper, his aide and a platoon commander in the regiment. One of Waugh's definitions of the future is Charles's thoughts about Hooper: In the weeks we were together Hooper became a symbol to me of Young England, so that whenever I read some public utterance proclaiming what Youth demanded in the Future and what the world owed to Youth, I would test these general statements by substituting ''Hooper" and seeing if they still seemed as plausible. ( 9 ) Waugh is still sharp and critical in his satire but he is less unkind. The first time we meet Hooper is in the mess one evening after dinner. The commanding officer sets another junior officer to cutting Hooper's hair, much to 25 everyone's embarrassment. In the earlier novels Waugh never apologized for anyone's actions. This time he has Charles Ryder apologize to Hooper: "That young officer is one of yours, isn't he Ryder? he said to me. "His hair wants cutting. "It does, sir," I said. It did. "I'll see that it's done." ( 8) The Commander orders another young officer to get a scissors and cut Hooper's hair there in the mess hall. It was embarrassing for all who were there and Charles later apologizes to Hooper. In the prologue Waugh contrasts the attitude of Hooper toward his servant with the attitude of the commanding officer toward Charles. Waugh takes an idea with two parts and plays the parts against each other. Hooper says he had to take time to pack his own gear because his servant was busy, "But you know how it is. He had his own stuff to do. If you get on the wrong side of these fellows they take it out of you other ways." (10) Later the same morning, Charles meets with the Commanding Officer of his regiment and the Commander tells Charles to have a ditch cleaned before they leave for a new station, Charles says to the Sergeant-major, "Send over to the carrier-platoon and tell Captain Brown that the C.O. wants this ditch cleared up." I wondered whether the colonel would take this rebuff; so did he. He stood a moment irresolutely prodding the muck in the ditch, then he turned on his heel and strode away. "You shouldn't do it, sir," said the sergeant-major, who had been my 26

guide and prop since I joined the company. "You shouldn't really ... you know how it is. If you get on the wrong side of senior officers they take it out of you other ways." (ll)

Both the servant and the Commanding Officer are petty enough that they will remember the slight, or rebuff, and seek revenge. Hooper, the essence of the lower class modern man, and the commanding officer, a man of education and training, both have the same get-even attitude.

James Carens says, "in Brideshead Revisited Evelyn turned from the nihilistic rejection of his early satires to an affirmative commitment; ... [he] affirmed a vision [of

Roman Catholicism] which he believed gave unity to life"

(98). Carens quotes both positive and negative reviews of

Brideshead Revisited by such critics as Christopher Hollis and A. A. DeVitis who praised the work and Edmund Wilson,

Sean O'Faolin, and Donat O'Donnell who damned it. The negative revie~s concern themselves, for the most part, with

Waugh's loss of satirical detachment; the positive reviews see Brideshead Revisited as an apologetic for Roman

Catholicism, and Carens suggests that it is a romance and that it is not an apologetic.

Edmund Wilson and Charles J. Rolo feel that Waugh's commitment to Catholicism has been so complete as to distort the nature of reality; .. Sean O'Faolain ... argues that in Brideshead Waugh has failed to universalize his art, . .De Vitis, ... and the reviewer from the Tablet regard Brideshead as a great book because they believed that it was apologetic .... Christopher Hollis 27 claimed to the contrary, that Erideshead "is in no way a work of apologetics."(99) The early novels Waugh wrote from a spirit of hope­ lessness. Unlike Waugh's earlier protagonists, Charles Ryder expresses a glimmer of hope amid the ruins of his life and a world destroyed by war. This change in Waugh's point of view

in Brideshead is no doubt in part the result of his experience in the army. He was thrown in with many different types of men, a cross section of English society, and his

perspective was broadened. For the first time he became aware of the reality of personal dishonor, amoral conduct,

and cheating. In the early novels Waugh spoke to the issue of the moral decline of the people again and again, but he saw no relationship of the situation to himself. Waugh was a Catholic when he wrote Vile Bodies and A Handful of Dust; he joined the Catholic Church in 1930, but his thinking did not seem to be unduly influenced at that time. His original theme, a search for order in the chaos in the modern world, expressed in Decline and Fall, continues throughout all the novels. In the early novels there is no possibility of salvation for mankind; in Brideshead Revisited, however, he expresses a bit of hope; but the brand of Catholicism practiced by the Flyte family in Brideshead Revisited speaks more to the letter of the law than it does to the spirit. Waugh's change of attitude is clearly visible in his treatment of Charles Ryder. Although Ryder reflects Waugh's "own strength--a love of the past, a sense of beauty, a moral 28

awareness of the sterility of much contemporary life," Waugh

is committed to Ryder's and his own, weaknesses: "snobbery,

smugness, narrowness of sympathy, and superficial

idealizations" (Carens 106-107). Waugh shows these attitudes

by his use of circular patterns of contrast. The structure

of the novel is circular. The prologue and epilogue act as a

frame set in the war years of the 1940s. Charles Ryder is

back at Brideshead after many years' absence. The earlier

visits make up the main story of Brideshead Revisited in Book

I. As well as following a circular pattern, Waugh compares

and contrasts many people and places. He speaks of Ryder and

the various aspects of Brideshead, prewar and postwar, with

Sebastian and with Julia. He compares Charles's wife with

Julia, Julia's husband with Charles, and Waugh's purpose in

the comparisons is usually to show how much better the past

was. If there is an element of romanticism in Brideshead

Revisited, it is in these comparisons between present and

past. The past is of course romanticized and idealized, and

the present and future dim. Waugh's romantic attitude can be

seen in his descriptions of the gardens, the chapel, and

especially in his treatment of the fountain. The fountain is a metaphor for Charles Ryder's growth and later decline. The

fountain is usually mentioned in scenes that are a turning point in Charles's life. In the Prologue and Epilogue, when

Charles is back at Brideshead during the second World War; in

Book I when Charles is at Brideshead with Sebastian; and in 30

The first book of Brideshead Revisited tells of Charles

Ryder's relationship with Sebastian Flyte. The second book tells of Charles's relationship with Julia Flyte. It is in this relationship that Waugh speaks most clearly in the voice of Roman Catholicism. Julia had married a divorced man in the latter part of Book I; by the time of Book II she has realized that she has made a tragic mistake. Charles has also made a tragic marriage. He found out his wife had an affair, and he removed himself to South America to paint and was gone for two years. He is returning from New York when he meets Julia. Charles's wife has gone to New York to meet him and they are all returning to England by boat. There is a terrible storm and most of the people, including Charles's wife, are seasick. Charles and Julia escape this fate and renew their friendship, which quickly develops into a love affair. Although Waugh has seen a bit of hope for the world in this novel, he still has his characters in situations that have no resolution. There is no way, except by appeal to the

Pope, that Julia can remarry with the blessing of the

Catholic Church. It interesting that Evelyn Waugh used this device for himself when he wished to remarry, but he does not allow such forgiveness for his characters.

At the end of the first book of Brideshead Revisited,

Waugh's bitterness is evident when Charles meets Rex Mottram,

Julia's husband, in Paris and takes him to dinner at a very fine restaurant. Rex is a Canadian, according to Waugh a 31 lower breed (Colonials are), but he is also very arrogant and difficult. The satire in the restaurant has to do with Rex's not knowing the very best when it is served to him. Rex is unaware of the high quality of the food and wine and wants only to talk of himself. Charles tries to get Rex to wait until after dinner, but Rex continues to intrude his own problems on the atmosphere. He had by no means reached the cognac, but here we were on the subject of himself. In twenty minutes I should have been ready for all he had to tell .. But sentences came breaking in on my happiness, recalling me to the harsh, acquisitive world which Rex inhabited. (77) Evelyn Waugh spends much time on Rex Mottram. In Book I, Rex is determined to marry Julia Flyte. Rex is an older version of Hooper, he is smarter than Hooper, and he is also more dishonest, more vulgar and trashy. Waugh uses Rex Mottram in Book II of Brideshead Revisited as he uses Anthony Blanche in Book I. They represent the change in attitude of the new man in England. Rex is a politician in the House of Commons, who hopes to gain social status and money by marrying Julia. He also explains Julia's depression at the state of life when Charles meets her on board the ship. Julia loses a child early in her marriage, and she becomes aware of how Rex has used her. Each has affairs and their marriage is a sham. At the time Julia and Charles meet again, Charles is returning from two years in South America. He is an artist and has spent his 32

career painting old houses, usually just before they are torn down, another comment by Waugh on the violence with which his world is being dismantled. Charles and Julia want to marry, but each is married to someone else. This will involve two divorces. The problem is resolved when Lord Marchmain returns to Brideshead Castle to die. When Lord Marchmain reclaims his place in the Roman Church, he makes it impossible for Julia to marry Charles. Lord Marchmain has reminded Julia of her promises to the Church, and she determines to be true to those promises. Lord Marchmain joined the Catholi c Church when he married. After the first World War he did not return to England, but lived with a mistress in Italy. He returns to England only after his wife is dead and he is old and ill. Just before he dies he acknowledges his Catholic affiliation. A priest has been called and says to Lord Marchmain, "Make a sign, if you can. You're sorry, aren't you?" (338). But there was no sign. Then, Suddenly Lord Marchmain moved his hand to his forehead; I thought he had felt the touch of the chrism and was wiping it away. "0 God," I prayed, "don't let him do that." But there was no need for fear; the hand moved slowly down his breast, then to his shoulder, and Lord Marchmain made the sign of the cross. (338-39) This scene foretells the end of the relationship between Charles and Julia. Although Julia is not a strong Catholic, 33 she can no longer violate the law of the church with Charles

(340).

Waugh does not tell what Charles and Julia do with their lives. The Epilogue continues the second World War and the part Charles plays while stationed at Brideshead Castle. He never clearly becomes a Catholic but in the end he is in the

Chapel and experiences hope:

Something quite remote from anything the builders intended has come out of their work, and out of the fierce little human tragedy in which I played. [A lamp] of deplorable design, relit before the beaten-copper doors of a tabernacle; the flame which ... could not have been lit but for the builders and the tragedians. (351) Charles Ryder never seems to think things out for himself. He is influenced most strongly by those he loves, first Sebastian, then Julia. If Julia had not experienced a spiritual awakening after her father's death, Charles would not have gone his way. He is more mature than the protagonists in the early novels, but not yet ready to accept responsibility for his actions.

In his masterly work of art, the war trilogy, Evelyn

Waugh finally presents a protagonist who is not a victim. Guy

Crouchback accepts his humanness and becomes husband and father and continues the family tradition at Broome, the family estate. Chapter IV The War Trilogy

In 1954 Evelyn Waugh published the first volume of the war trilogy, Men at War. For the first time, Waugh presents a protagonist, Guy Crouchback, who develops into a reasonable example of a hero. Guy is victimized but he is able to become a real person at the conclusion of the trilogy and although he never develops a career as Charles Ryder does, he resumes the responsibility of the family estates. The protagonists in the early novels are broke (Adam Fenwick-Symes) or not yet into a career (Paul Pennyfeather) or receive a family inheritance (Tony Last); they do not enter the world at large in order to compete and progress financially or spiritually. Guy Crouchback comes from a wealthy family. And although his family have property in Italy and England, through the generations and because of taxes and general changes in the financial state of the English economy, the family land has been sold off. Guy's growth is more psychological and emotional, and he represents the new Englishman from a positive point of view. In the war trilogy Waugh introduces a really old solid house to indicate the strength of tradition and its hold on the characters of his novels. In Men at Arms, the first book of the trilogy, Guy Crouchback's grandfather and grandmother are on their honeymoon when they first see Santa Dulcina

34 35 delle Reece. This is a lovely small town in Italy where Gervase and Hermione buy land that contains an old "castle of some kind comprising two great bastions and what seemed a ruined watch-tower" (4). They have a new house built and there Guy lives after his divorce and before he returns to England to take part in the second World War. Waugh introduces a secondary character in the war trilogy who survives all three parts. He is Roger of Waybroke, a crusader who is buried in the little church in Santa Dolcina. Guy had never become simpatico with the people of Santa Dulcina; even as a chi ld he had stood apart, but in Roger he found solace and comfort. As he prepares to leave Italy and return to England to j oin the army and contribute his bit to the second World War, ''he came to bid good-bye to a life-long friend who lay, as was proper for a man dead eight hundred years, in the parish church" (8). For many centuries the Roman Catholic Church has fought the charge of idolatry because of the worshipers veneration and prayers for intercession to the Virgin Mary and various saints whose statues are displayed in its churches. Evelyn Waugh's treatment of Roger of Waybroke, Knight (so it was inscribed on his tomb in the little church) (8-9), is quite different from what might be expected from an author who is thought by some critics to be an apologist for Roman Catholicism (Carens 99). Waugh accepted and loved the 36 tradition and solid foundation of the Roman Church. The patron saint of the town was St. Dulcina, titular patroness of the town, ... reputedly a victim of Diocletian .... [But] her place as benefactor had been usurped by another figure whose tomb was always littered with screws of paper bearing petitions, whose fingers and toes were tied in bows of coloured wool as aide-memoires. (8) Evelyn Waugh, through Guy Crouchback, acknowledges his need for divine help and guidance in time of trouble. But it is a hard put-down of the Roman Church for Guy to pray for intercession by a well respected man rather than intercession by Santa Dulcina, the recognized patron of the town. Guy saw a relationship between himself and the Crusader as Guy started off to war to protect what he most loved, England. All his life, but especially in recent years, Guy had felt an especial kinship with "il Santo Inglese." Now, on his last day, he made straight for the tomb and ran his finger ... along the knight's sword. "Sir Roger, pray for me," he said, "and for our endangered kingdom." (9) Waugh's digression with Roger of Waybroke foretells in large part Guy Crouchback's adventures in the army and throughout the trilogy. Roger of Waybroke is called upon in times of stress or fear, and he is used particularly as a standard of conduct, honesty, and integrity. Guy lives by the letter of the Roman Catholic law, but possesses none of the spirit. He confesses regularly, he receives communion, and after he is divorced he refuses to 37 enter into a relationship with a woman other than his wife because it would be a serious violation of Catholic law. Waugh himself was divorced and asked for and received an annulment from Rome so that he could remarry. Guy could have done the same thing; it is interesting that Waugh did not permit his protagonist this relief. It is clear that Evelyn Waugh had grown spiritually, emotionally, and artistically at this time in his life, but he still had remnants of fear and uncertainty with which he had not dealt. It is possible to follow Evelyn Waugh's life as Guy CLouchback walks along in the army world. Waugh's development of Guy Crouchback as a hero is a slow process and takes Guy through many situations which Waugh had experienced during the second World War. [Waugh] makes a political and moral judgment on the war which, though debatable, is thoughtful and telling; and its treatment of soldiering is consistently ironic and antiheroic. The story is long and complicated, but more than narrative continuity binds the three novels together. (Lodge 39) Guy initially returns to England from Italy to relieve the dryness and lack of commitment in his life. He is in his middle thirties and childless and has been deserted by his wife. "Seven days earlier he had opened his morning newspaper on the headlines announcing the Russian-German alliance. News that shook the politicians and young poets of a dozen capital cities brought deep peace to one English heart" (Men at Arms 7). Guy now had the reason and resolve to return to England because "The enemy at last was plain in 38 view, huge and hateful, all disguise cast off. It was the

Modern Age of arms. Whatever the outcome there was a place for him in that battle" (7-8).

In Men at Arms the first "comic anti-hero" Guy meets on his way to join the Halberdiers, his regiment during the war, is Apthorpe. When the new recruits first form with the brigade,

Apthorpe alone looked like a soldier. He was burly, tanned, moustached, primed with a rich vocabulary of military terms and abbreviations. Until recently he had served in Africa in some unspecified capacity. His boots had covered miles of bush trail. (53)

Apthorpe is a pompous and impertinent man, but because he and

Guy are about the same age among a group of much younger men, they become companions. Guy slowly overcomes his basic shyness and apprehension (56) and learns his way about the military life. "It seemed to Guy that in the last weeks he had been experiencing something he had missed in boyhood, a happy adolescence" (57). Waugh says this same thing about

Charles Ryder in Brideshead Revisited when Charles meets

Sebastian at Oxford. Sebastian could also be considered a comic antihero.

Guy had been in the Corps of Halberdiers only a few weeks when he discovered that

[He] loved Major Tickeridge [the man responsible for Guy being in the Halberdiers] and Captain Bosanquet [the adjutant]. He loved Apthorpe. He loved the oil-painting over the fireplace of the unbroken square of Halberdiers in the 39 desert. He loved the whole Corps deeply and tenderly. (65) Guy has found companionship, tradition, and the solid background that he needed in his life. Waugh does not give a full description of an old house, there is only a partial description of the house in Italy in this first part of the war trilogy. In this novel he uses the tradition of the Halberdiers and their headquarters building. This was the atmosphere that Waugh searched for throughout in his own life and in his novels. Unfortunately, Apthorpe dies at the end of Men at War, but he has a counterpart in Trimmer, who is in the regiment with Guy and Apthorpe at the beginning of the war. Trimmer is a real comic antihero. He survives in the trilogy until the end of the third book, The End of the Battle. Waugh twists Trimmer into Guy's life, and he is first described as Not one of the youngest. His large, long-lashed, close-set eyes had a knowing look. Trimmer concealed under his cap a lock of golden hair which fell over his forehead when he was bare-headed. He spoke with a slightly refined Cockney accent and when the wireless in the billiards-room played jazz, Trimmer trucked about with raised hands in little shuffling dance steps .... As surely as Apthorpe was marked for early promotion, Trimmer was marked for ignominy. (55) When Evelyn Waugh joined the army he was exposed, perhaps for the first time, to people of the lower classes and this is shown in the war trilogy. Apthorpe was more acceptable to Guy Crouchback because he had a military 40 background, and the military life has always been an acceptable one to the English; even the royal family serve in the military. But Trimmer was obviously lower middle class, and both Waugh and Guy found him objectionable. Waugh probably did not know that such people existed before his time in the army. Trimmer has no redeeming characteristics, as Apthorpe does. Apthorpe had served in some capacity in Africa, and Waugh uses him to enlighten himself as to the good qualities of the lower classes and uses Trimmer to show that he, Waugh, had been correct that the lower classes were worthless. Between the two levels of character, Waugh matures in his outlook on mankind. Apthorpe shows his military training in his ability to correctly respond to the "detail for piling arms." With an expression of strain he [Apthorpe] got it right--" .•.. the odd numbers of the front rank will seize the rifles of the even numbers with the left hand crossing the muzzles, magazines turned outward, at the same time raising the piling swivels with the forefinger and thumb of both hands . . . " and the squad marched off. (59-60) Although Apthorpe is from a lower class background, he is capable of doing something correctly. Guy Crouchback experienced many frustrations during his time in the army; some from Apthorpe and from Trimmer. One was on the rifle range. Guy's performance had been poor and he becomes angry with Trimmer when Trimmer teases him. Guy calls Trimmer a "bloody, half-baked pipsqueak" (137), and 41 then realizes that this is not what Roger of Waybroke would do. Guy Crouchback, and Evelyn Waugh also, relate closely to Roger of Waybroke. All three were led by the ideals of war rather than the reality. Eight years prior to the action of the novel, Guy's wife, Virginia, had left him for another man, Tommy Blackhouse. One night while Guy is in training with the Halberdiers, he has dinner with a new friend, Mr. Goodall, a Catholic who is interested in Guy's genealogy. While they are talking, he tells Guy of another member of the Crouchback family who had experienced the problem of an unfaithful wife. She eventually returns to her husband, and Mr. Goodall assures Guy that there is no sin when the man resumes marital relations with his former wife. Thus does Evelyn Waugh introduce Guy's former wife, Virginia. Some of the sharpest satire of Men at Arms follows as Guy goes to London and finds Virginia. During a leave in London, Guy is at Bellamy's Club. His service in the Halberdiers has renewed his self-confidence which Virginia had destroyed when she left him. London had not yet lost its store of riches (because of the war). It was the same city he had avoided all his life, whose history he had held to be mean, whose aspect drab. Here it was, all round him, as he had never seen it before, a royal capital. Guy was changed. He hobbled out into it with new eyes and a new heart. (102) 42

On New Year's Eve Guy is at Bellamy's, and there he finds

Tommy Blackhouse, the man Virginia left Guy for. Now

Virginia has divorced Tommy and married a Mr. Troy. She has

now left Mr. Troy and has just returned from America. Tommy

is a career officer, and because of his adultery with

Virginia he was dismissed from the Coldstream Guards. Now he

is in a Coldstream uniform again.

Tommy Blackhouse had to send in his papers and leave the Brigade of Guards . . . . Now, it seemed, he was back in the Coldstream. [He meets Guy and says] "I got back to the Brigade all right last year--adultery doesn't matter in war time apparently." (104-05)

Later in the evening Tommy gives Guy a ride to his hotel.

During the trip Tommy says, "Virginia's back in England.

She's in great form. I saw her this evening in Claridge's.

She asked after you but I didn't know then where you were."

Guy replies, "Do you suppose she wants to see me really?"

Tommy answers, "I got the impression she wants to see the

whole world. She was all over me" (106). Guy goes to see

Virginia, they have lunch and talk and G~y returns to his

military duties. Later, after his conversation with Mr.

Goodall and the discovery that it is not a sin to sleep with

a former wife, Guy goes back to London to again find

Virginia. He is unable to reserve a room at Claridge's,

where Virginia still resides, and Tommy helps him get one.

When he gets to Virginia's room, Tommy is there, just getting

dressed. Guy goes to Virginia's room, 43 He passed through the sitting-room. The bedroom door was open; the bed unmade; clothes and towels and newspapers all over the place. . .. She was staring intently in the glass doing something to her eye. Tommy Blackhouse carne unconcernedly from the bathroom. (163) After Tommy and Virginia leave, Guy returns to Bellamy's and looks at himself in the mirror. He reflects that "his uniform was a disguise, his whole new calling a masquerade" (165). He meets with Virginia again the next evening; they discuss old times and Guy tries to make love to her. Suddenly she realizes "that I am the only woman in the whole world your priests would let you go to bed with. That was my attraction. You wet, smug, obscene, pompous, sexless lunatic pig" (178). Waugh has once again put his protagonist in an untenable position. Guy is unable to remarry, unable to make love with any woman other than Virginia, and she is little better than a prostitute. It took war itself to make a man of Guy Crouchback. When the Brigadier explained that "these are the officers who will command you in battle," Guy's shame left him and pride flowed back. He ceased for the time being to be the lonely and ineffective rnan--the man he so often thought he saw in himself, past his first youth, cuckold, wastrel, prig--... he was one with his regiment, with all their historic feats of arms behind him, with great opportunities to come. He felt from head to foot a physical tingling and bristling as though charged with galvanic current. (184-85) 44

As the war in Europe went from bad to worse, the

Halberdiers trained and finally were considered fit for action.

Men at Arms is divided into three parts. Book Two finally gets the Halberdiers to the war, into action, almost.

In Book Three, Brigadier General Ritchie-Hook declares his own little war and Apthorpe takes sick and dies. Book Three also concerns itself with the awful hurry-up-and-wait of the military. Guy's brigade is moved and removed around England, and they are taunted and teased with rumors of going to

Europe but get there only after many months. The brigade leaves England finally and goes to Africa. Brigadier General

Ritchie Hook get bored and goes on a private war while they are anchored off the coast of Dakar. Ritchie-Hook decides to send a patrol ashore to check on an intelligence report. He asks Guy to head the patrol. The patrol goes ashore and while there they are challenged by a sentry, one man goes forward and gets shot.

Guy's one emotion was anger and his first words were: "I'll have you court­ martialled for this," and then: "Are you hit?" "Of course I am," said the crawling figure. "Give me a hand." Not until . . . the boat was running full speed out to sea did he give his attention to the wounded man. He turned his torch to the face [of Ritchie-Hook]. Then Ritchie-Hook busied himself with his wound but not before he had laid in Guy's lap the wet, curly head of a negro. (316) 45

Of course, Ritchie-Hook gets caught and Guy with him. So Guy

finally experiences his first action in the second World War.

But he was acting under orders. The Colonel says, "You're in

the clear legally. But it'll be a black mark. For the rest

of your life when your name comes up, someone is bound to

say: 'Isn't he the chap who blotted his copy-book at Dakar in

'40?'" (320). They discuss what will happen to the

Brigadier,

Guy asked: "Does he know what you told me, Colonel? I mean about his being in for a row?" "Of course he does. He's got out of more rows than anyone in the service." .. . "He's the wrong age. You can be an enfant terrible or you can be a national figure no one dares touch. But the Brig's neither of those things. It's the end for him--at least he thinks it is and he ought to know." (321-22)

The brigade, now in Africa, was still waiting orders but leave had been granted those who wanted to go hunting.

"Apthorpe was one of the first to go" (323) He was taken ill and returned "slung in a sheet between two bearers" and put in the hospital. Guy goes to visit him in the hospital and takes him a bottle of whisky. "And then, of course, they poison themselves with whisky.They snuff out like babies"

(334). Apthorpe dies from drinking the whiskey Guy has brought him in the hospital.

Apthorpe had to die, for he symbolizes the high spirits and optimism with which Guy entered the service and which have been drained from him in the course of Men at Arms. Waugh eliminated Apthorpe at the novel's end because he realized 46 that Apthorpe belonged to Guy's belated adolescence and would not fit into the increasingly serious atmosphere of the latter volumes. (Phillips 118) Apthorpe is buried with full military honors while Guy is sent back to England with the Brigadier to explain his part in the landing at Dakar and Apthorpe's death. The book closes with Guy and the Brigadier returning in disgrace to England. The second book of the trilogy, Officers and Gentlemen, opens immediately after Guy returns to London. In Officers and Gentlemen Waugh has developed Guy Crouchback from a shy, remote man into one who is able to talk of his troubles in Bellamy's with his friends and relatives. His social graces have not yet developed, but he at least is not afraid to speak his mind. When Guy returns to England none of the paper work needed to assign him a new position has followed from Africa. Before he left Africa and before Apthorpe died, Guy promised Apthorpe that he would see to his possessions; a collection of camp gear collected over many years. Apthorpe wished it to be given to a man, a friend from Africa, "Chatty" Corner. To this end Guy is granted leave by the Adjutant at Halberdier headquarters. (19-20) As Guy goes off to find Chatty Corner, he stops to see his father in Matchet, a sea coast town in which Mr. Crouchback, Senior, has lived since he rented the family estate at Broome to an order of teaching nuns for a school. When Guy is needed by the military, a Halberdier, Colonel Jumbo Trotter, who has come out of retirement to help the war 47

effort as best he can, is sent to Matchet to find Guy. Jumbo

finds Guy and Guy gets his orders to return to London and with Jumbo's help gets Apthorpe's gear into a "lorry" and off

they go. Guy is assigned to "X Commando, Isle of Mugg" (54).

X Commando is under the command of Tommy Blackhouse,

the man who took Guy's wife from him. The Major who gives

Guy his orders asks if Tommy is a friend of Guy's. "Yes, he married my wife." "Did he? Did he?" asked the Major (55).

Guy and Jumbo go to the Isle of Mugg.

Before reporting to the training camp, Guy manages to cut through a great deal of red tape and deliver Apthorpe's gear to Chatty Corner. For Guy it is a gesture of loyalty to his deceased friend. As Chatty signs a receipt for Apthorpe's kit, Guy senses that this is a "holy moment," for the spirit of Apthorpe is now placated. (Phillips 119)

Waugh reintroduces Trimmer, one of the men who was dismissed from the early training sessions of the Halberdiers in Men at Arms. In Officers and Gentlemen Trimmer reappears as Alistair McTavish. He has changed his name, gotten a new start, and is having an affair with Virginia, Guy's former wife.

The battle of Crete is the centerpiece of the story in

Officers and Gentlemen, and the episode of the battle of

Crete is literally in the center of the second book of the trilogy. England was defeated by the Germans at Crete and

Guy Crouchback discovered his disenchantment with the army to 48 be real; he discovers that friends and superior officers are cowards and deserters. One of the officers of the battle of Crete is Major Fido Hound. Major Hound was a real person under whom Waugh served during this period. There is a footnote in The Diaries of Evelyn Waugh that notes this particular situation: In Waugh's novel, Officers and Gentlemen, the collapse of the military machine in Crete and the behaviour of its officers ends the illusion of the hero Guy Crouchback that the war was is being fought by men of principle, officers and gentlemen. The disintegration of "Major Fido Hound" closely parallels the conduct of the officer whose real name has here been suppressed. (n.p. 496)

In Officers and Gentlemen Evelyn wa~gh gives a vivid picture of the horrors of war--not only the blood and guts part, but the confusion, mismanagement, and the contradictory nature of the orders sent and received. The group with which Guy Crouchback is serving at this time is sent from Alexandria, Egypt, toward Crete. The boat must return because of engine trouble; Tommy Blackhouse, the commanding officer of the group, falls and breaks his leg on the second journey to Crete; and no one will believe the utter chaos of the troops and officers, those who were left behind after the British were defeated (213-225). A "lighter" was to have met the ship which carried Guy and the replacement troops; finally it arrived, Sure enough a large dark shape was approaching across the water. The men all round him [Guy] began to hoist their 49 burdens. The sailors had already thrown a rope net over the side. The troops crowded to the rail. A voice from below called: "Two hundred walking wounded coming aboard." ... "That MLC must go back, land the wounded, come back empty for us, land us and then take on the wounded. That's the way it should be done." No one heeded him. (225) The regiment finally lands on Crete only to find the Commander, Colonel Prentice, dead and the entire English force in disarray. Replacements had not shown up at the time they were expected; the trucks were bombed, "there was no . sign of the people who were supposed to come through and relieve us. So we sat there for an hour being shot at from all directions" (229). Amid the chaos and turmoil of the defeated army, Hound tries to set up a traditional headquarters. They had reached the high ground where Major Hound had sited his headquarters .. A signaller stood at the side of the road as sentry and guide .... "Well, I think I'll turn in. It'll be light in an hour .... But he did not sleep. Guy and Major Hound have had nothing to eat for some time and are quite hungry. Fido stood at a parting of the ways. Behind him lay a life of blameless professional progress; before him the proverbial alternatives: the steep path of duty and the heady precipice of sensual appetite. It was the first great temptation of Fido's life. He fell. (235,239-40) Fido trades four cigarettes for the bully beef and two biscuits (240). Guy has been separated from the Halberdiers for some

time, but "It occurs to him on that morning of uncertainty 50 that he was behaving pretty much as a Halberdier should"

(242). Just as Guy is thinking of the Halberdiers, Colonel

Tickeridge, his old friend and companion, appears and is looking for Creforce headquarters, the other group of defenders of Crete. After all the effort and strain of getting to Crete, Hookforce, the Commando unit to which Guy is attached and the Halberdiers learn that the island is to be abandoned (244). The entire force moves toward the beach where they are to be rescued, but

Someone's got to stay behind and cover the final withdrawal. Hookforce were last on, so I'm afraid you're the last off. Sorry, but there it is." (268)

The orders that Hookforce is to stay behind and surrender to the Germans causes Fide Hound to suffer battle fatigue and complete disintegration. The commanders on Crete give money to Fide to get him and his men to Alexandria

(269), if that is possible. He is found later that night by his aide, Corporal-Major Ludovic. Ludovic has tried to escape but found the paths blocked by guards who permitted only organized groups of military access to the beach where the Navy had sent ships to evacuate the men. Ludovic has returned to find an officer to assist him in his escape. He suggests escape to Fide and Fide replies, "What you're suggesting is entirely irregular, Corporal-Major" (276).

This is the last of Major Hound; it is presumed by Guy that

Ludovic has killed the Major, although Waugh never clearly states that this is a fact. While Major Hound and Corporal- 51 Major Ludovic are experiencing their failures, Guy has been trying to find Hookforce headquarters. Guy found the remnants of his headquarters where he had left them. He did not inquire for Major Hound. Sergeant Smiley offered no information. They fell in and set out into the darkness. ( 287) The troop marches day and night, until finally they stop to rest in a cave and Guy meets an old friend, Ivor Claire. "Guy? Ivor." Ivor entered and sat bedside him. They sat together, speaking between long pauses in the listless drawl ~f extreme fatigue. (297) Ivor tells Guy that it is true, they are to surrender to the Germans. Guy falls asleep and the next morning he -knows no clear apprehension that this was a fatal morning, that he was that day to resign an immeasurable piece of his manhood. He saw himself dimly at a great distance. "Our orders are to surrender," said Guy. Nothing seemed right that morning, nothing seemed real. (300, 301-302) Guy goes to bathe and meets Corporal-Major Ludovic, who had been with Major Hound. Guy and Sergeant-Major Ludovic rejoin the men on the beach, and find "the point of interest now was the boating party who were pushing their craft towards the water. The sapper Captain was directing them in a stronger voice than Guy had heard for some days" (304) They ask Guy to join them in their attempt to escape. Guy made no calculation .... He was aware only of the wide welcome of the open sea .... "Yes, I'll just talk to my men." Guy said to his section: "There's one chance in five of getting 52 away. I'm going. Decide for yourselves." The ... men of his Intel­ ligence section shook their heads .... Corporal-Major Ludovic turned his pale eyes out to sea and said nothing .. "I'm coming," Guy shouted. He was at the side of the boat when he noticed that Ludovic was close behind him. (304-305) This is the first conscious decision Guy has made s i nce his original decision to join the army when he still lived in Italy. Although it was a negative decision, it was a dangerous one and one that affected Guy for some time to come. While the men are adrift in the boat, trying to reach land somewhere, Guy prays,"Saint Roger of Waybroke defend us in the day of battle and be our safeguard against the wickedness and snares of the devil" (309). Guy is in the hospital for some time after he deserts with Ludovic from Crete. For a long time he is unable to speak. Waugh's handling of the fall of Crete is an example of how deftly he has controlled his material in order to allow its thematic implications to emerge. The general loss of honor is further underlined by the fact that Ludovic, who committed two murders [Major Hound and a man in the boat with them] in the course of his escape from Crete, is subsequently decorated and even commissioned because he brought his party safely to the coast of Africa. (Phillips 126) The third volume of the war trilogy, The End of the Battle, begins two years later, in 1943. Guy "sums up his years of service by saying forlornly that 'it was not for this that he had dedicated himself on the sword of Roger of 53

Waybroke that hopeful morning four years back'" (Phillips

127).

The man, Guy Crouchback, who is in The End of the Battle

is completely different from the man in Men at War. Guy, and

Evelyn Waugh, have matured to the extent that Guy is aware

that it is necessary to give of himself in order to gain the

respect and self esteem for which he has searched throughout

the war trilogy. Guy believes that each man has one thing he

is to do in his life. When Virginia, Guy's ex-wife, becomes

pregnant by Trimmer, Guy remarries her. He knows that this

is the one thing that he, and only he, can do that no one

else can do. He saves one unwanted child. Guy's father had written him a letter in which he had said that "quantitative

judgments do not apply" to the Roman church (The End of the

Battle 8). Mr. Crouchback believed that losing face over a

situation which was good was not losing face. If a man could

really help another man, then he must do it. This is what

The End of the Battle is about. Guy tries to help the Jews

in Yugoslavia and fails. The woman he tried to help, Madame

Kanyi, is executed because of some magazines Guy had given her. "Guy's constant attempts to help the Jews finally

result in his recall from Yugoslavia, and his parting gift of

American magazines to Madame Kanyi results in her execution as a traitor" (Crabbe 135). Guy Crouchback has become a caring, concerned person who at last has grown into a man and a hero. 54 Guy has little to do at this time of the war. There is no post for him and he finds no joy in inactivity. "But it was not for this that he had dedicated himself on the sword of Roger of Waybroke that hopeful morning four years back" (12). He still clings to the ideal that there is honor in war and valor also. One of Guy's problems all through his life has been apathy. His father tried often to call Guy's spirit to his conscious self but Guy did not understand. Soon after the opening of The End of the Battle, Guy's father dies and finally Guy understands. Guy's prayers were directed to, rather than for, his father .... [and his prayer was] "I don't ask anything from you"; that was the deadly core of his apathy; his father had tried to tell him, was now telling him. That emptiness had been with him for years now, even in his days of enthusiasm and activity in the Halberdiers. Enthusiasm and activity were not enough. God required more than that. He had commanded all men to ask. (80-81) Somehow Guy knew that someday something would be required of him that only he could do, "the small service which only he could perform, for which he had been created" (81). Guy is injured in a parachute jump and is unable to function for a long time. He goes to his uncle Peregrine's home to convalesce, and while there he and Virginia, his ex- wife, become friends again. Virginia is down on her luck, broke, and pregnant. She has tried to have an abortion, but in war time London such luxury is not available. In desperation she goes to Guy and tells him of her predicament. 55 He has at last found the one small thing that only he can do. He can marry Virginia and save her child and also get an heir to the Crouchback lands. He is the only surviving son and with his sister, who has only daughters, the heir to a large estate. Guy is selected to go to Yugoslavia after he and Virginia remarry. While he is there Virginia and Uncle Peregrine are killed in London in a bombing raid. Virginia was such an awful person that it is almost as though Guy for once in his life won over fate when she is killed. He is now free to remarry and he, his new wife, and the child move back to Broome, the family estate, and make it a working farm again. Evelyn Waugh and Guy Crouchback have finally come to realize that the world will not be as they wish but that it is possible to make a small secure place for family and friends. Waugh has given Guy a winning life and allowed himself and Guy to grow to maturity. Chapter V Conclusion

Evelyn Waugh takes a long walk through the first half of the twentieth century. He is disappointed that life changes so quickly and that he has no control over the circumstances of the world he knows. The changes were begun after the first World War, continued through the years between the wars, and completed after the second World War. Waugh begins with the pitiful Paul Pennyfeather in Decline and Fall, who lost his way and sealed himself off from life. Waugh gives no resolution to Paul's dilemma. He can find no answer for Adam Fenwick-Symes in Vile Bodies because Adam is not aware that he is not in love with Nina, only in love with himself and looking for a safe place to hide. Tony Last, Waugh's real anti-hero in A Handful of Dust, is lost to the world forever in his search for a place where he can be at home with his family. In Brideshead Revisited, Charles Ryder is left alone with his memories and is unable to function as a complete human being. He had the first glimmer of hope of any of Waugh's protagonists, but in the end he too had nothing. Guy Crouchback is the only hero in the novels by Evelyn Waugh considered here. He alone atones for his apathy by becoming involved in life with a

56 57 family and with a constructive life style. He and his wife make the family estates bloom and be profitable again. Waugh began his career as a novelist satirizing the attitudes of snobbery and elitism held by the aristocratic upper class and he searched for an answer to the chaos that resulted from two World Wars. He thought that joining the Roman Catholic Church would turn back the tide of progress and reform the world to what it had been when he was a boy. He loved the class society he had known; he loved the money, cheap labor that made cooks and nursemaids possible, and made gardeners and domestic servants of all kinds a part of his world. He had difficulty in accepting the change that the World Wars caused in western civilization. Perhaps he did not accept the changes, but he did learn to live beside them.

His service in the army exposed him to all kinds of men and women; he learned from them that there is goodness and mercy in the human spirit. Works Cited

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