Masaryk University Faculty of Arts

Department of English and American Studies

English Language and Literature

Petr Řeháček

Belief, Society and Change in World War II Britain in Evelyn Waugh's Sword of Honour Trilogy Master’s Diploma Thesis

Supervisor: Stephen Paul Hardy, Ph. D.

2012

I declare that I have worked on this thesis independently, using only the primary and secondary sources listed in the bibliography.

…………………………………………….. Author’s signature

Acknowledgement I would like to express many thanks to my supervisor Stephen Paul Hardy, Ph.D. for his valuable advice and kind support.

Table of Contents

Introduction ...... 1

Evelyn Waugh‟s Life and Work ...... 6

1 The „Waste Land‟ Generation ...... 8

2 The Disillusioned Romantic ...... 13

3 The End of the Age of Heroes ...... 23

4 The Age of the Common Man ...... 32

5 A Single Unselfish Act ...... 41

Conclusion ...... 49

Bibliography ...... 54

List of Abbreviations

MA Men at Arms

OG Officers and Gentlemen

SH Sword of Honour

US Unconditional Surrender

Introduction

The Sword of Honour trilogy, originally published in three separate volumes,

Men at Arms (1952). Officers and Gentlemen (1955), and Unconditional Surrender

(1961), presents the final, and probably the most mature work by British novelist

Evelyn Waugh. Portraying the life of Guy Crouchback, a descendent of an ancient yet dilapidating aristocratic family, during the turbulent period of the Second World War,

Waugh voices his implacable attitude towards the „modern age‟ which has irreversibly destroyed the long-established traditional values. Although the trilogy is not directly autobiographical, “its shape is partly determined by . . . Waugh‟s own life” (Kermode xiv) since many of Guy Crouchback‟s war experiences reflect those of his literary creator. Nevertheless, Waugh‟s aim was much higher than describing the destiny of an individual person. In Christopher Sykes‟ words, “in his work Evelyn attempted to achieve a great ambition: to describe in terms of a fictional experience close to his own the significance to men and women of the ordeal of the crisis of civilization which reached its climax in World War II” (Sykes 415).

To understand Waugh‟s view of this crisis, however, it is indispensable to get an insight into his own incompatible personality. Unquestionably, “Evelyn Waugh would present a formidable challenge to any biographer” (Toynton). Noël Annan calls him

“the real deviant of my generation” who “deviated from the values we esteemed”

(Annan 213). Even his closest friends like Christopher Sykes do not deny his shortcomings; all the more his enemies accuse him of snobbishness, intolerance, bigotry or even fascism. Surprisingly, even Waugh himself admits his peculiarities. In the largely autobiographical novel The Ordeal of Gilbert Pinfold (1957), the author concisely characterizes the protagonist, a middle-aged writer, as a man whose “strongest tastes were negative. He abhorred plastics, Picasso, sunbathing, and jazz – everything in

1 fact that had happened in his own lifetime” (14). Not only did Waugh idealize the past, but he also connected this ideal with the concept of the English gentleman exclusively.

Significantly, “despite his own middle-class origins, he remained to the end a virulent advocate of the old aristocratic order that everyone else in post-war England was busily trying to dismantle”; and even “increasingly immersed himself in his self-parodying role as 19-th century country squire” (Toynton).

Another distinctive feature of this talented British writer is his fervent adherence to the Catholic Church, to which he converted at the age of twenty-seven. There is a lot of speculation about this moment in Waugh‟s life; some biographers and critics stress

“his determined attempts to live, despite an inherently dry soul, as a believing Catholic”

(Dirda); others emphasize the rational nature of his belief; the only apparent fact is, however, his ardent apology for the Church in which “he found his rock” in consistency with his “extremely conservative political position” (Carens 69). Characteristically,

Waugh despised the changes in the Catholic Church, like the replacement of Latin with vernacular languages in the mass celebration, introduced by the Second Vatican

Council. In the Preface to the revised version of Sword of Honour, he even calls these changes “a superficial revolution”, realizing that, unintentionally, the trilogy became

“an obituary of the Roman Catholic Church in England as it had existed for many centuries”. Therefore, in Waugh‟s opinion, both the aristocracy and the Church as the symbols of civilization are annihilated by the increasingly opportunistic modern society.

Against the background of the large conflict of values, Waugh depicts the fate of the individual characters. From Decline and Fall (1928) to Sword of Honour (1965), the main character of Waugh‟s novels is usually a „passive hero‟, a “victim exposed to forces with which he cannot contend” (Sykes 86), and an innocent man to whom unfortunate things merely happen without any possibility of his averting them.

2 However, contrary to Waugh‟s first works in which the world is simply absurd and incomprehensible, Sword of Honour tries to propose at least a vague hope of an individual‟s mission in this senseless world. While Paul Pennyfeather in Decline and

Fall undergoes infliction without learning from his mistakes, Guy Crouchback in Sword of Honour corrects his original enthusiasm by replacing “quantitative judgements” with individual charity. Although Waugh maintains his thoroughly pessimistic view of the world, always describing “a lunatic world posing as the reasonable order of things”

(Lane), the scathing sarcasm of his early works has been supplemented with a discernible moralizing and apologetic element. Despite his Catholic self-projection, however, Guy Crouchback remains a solitary figure till the end of the novel.

This thesis examines the ways in which Waugh depicts the Second World War as a decisive moment of the civilization crisis which resulted in the advent of „the age of the common man‟ as Waugh derisively called the post-war period. In as much as

Waugh intended the trilogy to be read as a single work, this thesis primarily focuses on the wording of the revised, eleven-chapter Sword of Honour published in 1965; with consideration of some relevant variations in the original three volumes. Chapter 1 contextualizes Waugh‟s life and work within the larger frame of the generation of authors concerned with the destiny of man in the changing modern society, such as

Aldous Huxley, George Orwell or Graham Greene. Chapter 2, dealing with Men at

Arms, focuses on Guy Crouchback‟s idealized view of the coming war as a conflict between the forces of good and evil, his love affair with the army and inescapable disillusion; and compares Guy‟s story with Waugh‟s own military career in the first year of the war. Chapter 3, concerned with Guy‟s further adventures as described in

Officers and Gentlemen, investigates how Waugh perceives the Second World War as a turning point at which the old ideal of personal honour was abandoned in favour of the

3 increasingly depersonalized and bureaucratized warfare. The final part of the trilogy,

Unconditional Surrender is investigated from two different perspectives. Firstly, chapter 4 shows how Guy‟s repugnance to British co-operation with Stalin and Tito reflects Waugh‟s deep-rooted aversion not only to the East-European totalitarian regimes, but also to the British Welfare State. Finally, Chapter 5 is focused on the evolution of Guy‟s religious opinions from the ambition to rescue the Kingdom to the modest fulfilment of single unselfish tasks, which is particularly interesting with respect to Waugh‟s own problematic character. The chapter is also concerned with Waugh‟s disappointment at the changes in the Catholic Church towards the end of his life when he published the revised Sword of Honour.

With respect to Waugh‟s difficult and essentially unhappy personality of which he was never able to get rid as well as the irreconcilable Catholicism of his post-war years, it is interesting to observe how Sword of Honour, his final and most mature work, completed towards the end of his life, organically joins together both sides of Waugh as an author – the satirist and generally subversive early Waugh lacking any sense in the inexplicable modern world, and the zealous Catholic apologist who finds in religion the last refuge from the overall chaos and futility. Although the Catholic accent of the trilogy may seem obscure to the reader and many of the author‟s opinions subjective and indefensible, this thesis demonstrates that Guy Crouchback‟s transformation from a romantic crusader seeking „quantitative‟ solutions to a disillusioned yet „enlightened‟ man concentrating on single acts of mercy can be understood not only in strictly religious terms, but also as a general call to human compassion as a prerequisite of any civilized society. Apparently, it is this new feature in Waugh‟s work that so effectively complements his well-proven humour and irony and accounts for the long-standing appeal of the trilogy.

4 The basic sources on which this thesis draws include the biography written by

Christopher Sykes, Waugh‟s close friend, companion in arms, writer and journalist.

Donat Gallagher, a lecturer in the English Department of James Cook University in

North Queensland, is not only a prolific researcher into Waugh‟s life and work, but also the editor of a collection of Waugh‟s essays and articles. Humphrey Carpenter, an

English writer and broadcaster, and Noël Annan, an intelligence officer and academic, examine Waugh‟s life within the context of the whole „Brideshead Generation‟. Ian

Littlewood, a lecturer in English literature, focuses his book on Waugh‟s literary achievements. Essential historical data on the Second World War are drawn from The

Saga of World War II by Robert Leckie, an American author of historical and non- fiction literature. To get a wider insight into the post-war development in Britain, the works have been utilized of Arthur Marwick, Alan Sked and David Childs, professors of history and politics. Data on the inter- and post-war development of the British

Catholic Church are drawn from the book by Adrian Hastings, a Catholic priest and

Church historian. Besides these books, numerous essays and articles have been employed for the purpose of this thesis.

5 Evelyn Waugh’s Life and Work

Evelyn Waugh was born in Hampstead on 28 October 1903 as the second son of

Arthur Waugh, publisher and literary critic. Reading Modern History at Hertford

College, Oxford, in 1922-4, Waugh became a member of the Hypocrites, an avant-garde circle led by Harold Acton, where he met many of his later friends and literary companions. Dissatisfied with his several schoolmaster‟s jobs in 1925-1927, he finally launched a full-time career of a writer and journalist in 1928, when his first novel,

Decline and Fall, was published, followed by other successful titles: Vile Bodies (1930),

Black Mischief (1932), and A Handful of Dust (1934), which established Waugh‟s reputation of a leading comic and satiric author. A lot of Waugh‟s works were inspired by his numerous travels, among them the journeys to Abyssinia and Mexico resulting in books like Waugh in Abyssinia (1936), or Robbery under Law (1939), which revealed the author‟s increasingly conservative opinions. After the failure of his first marriage in 1929, annulled by the Catholic Church to which he converted in 1930,

Waugh finally married Laura Herbert in 1937.

At the beginning of the Second World War, the thirty-six-year-old Waugh voluntarily enlisted in the army and was commissioned in the Royal Marines with which he participated in his first military action in Dakar in August 1940. In November

1940, he was posted to the Layforce unit with which he was sent to the Mediterranean and witnessed the evacuation of British troops from Crete in May 1941. Disillusioned by the military routine and injured in parachute training, Waugh started to write

Brideshead Revisited, his most famous novel, in 1944. From July 1944, Waugh took part in Randolph Churchill‟s mission in Yugoslavia, from where he returned to England in March 1945. Nevertheless, it was not until the 1950s that Waugh incorporated his war experiences in a series of three novels, Men at Arms (1952). Officers and

6 Gentlemen (1955), and Unconditional Surrender (1961), later reworked into the one- volume Sword of Honour (1965).

After the war, Waugh was increasingly disappointed with the development in the British society as well as the Catholic Church, which resulted in his numerous highly conservative and apologetic articles and essays. Besides the Sword of Honour trilogy, Helena (1950), Waugh‟s only historic novel, as well as the biography of his friend Ronald Knox are worth mentioning. The nervous breakdown during the voyage to Ceylon gave rise to the inexorably sincere autobiographical novel The Ordeal of

Gilbert Pinfold (1957). Although Waugh was often criticized and even ridiculed for his peculiar character and opinions, regarded as a misfit and lunatic in the post-war atmosphere, the quality of his literary achievement is unquestionable. Evelyn Waugh died at Combe Florey on Easter Sunday, 10 April 1966. Almost fifty years later, he is still considered one of the greatest British writers of the 20th century.

7 1 The ‘Waste Land’ Generation

Characteristically, the two striking features of Evelyn Waugh‟s work, namely the sense of „disillusionment‟ and „appearance of antiheroic type‟ (Carens 46), are not only typical of many writers who entered into literature in the 1920s, but of the entire society affected by the Great War which totally shattered the established values. As for the phenomena which “influenced the conception of man as he is depicted in modern fiction”, Carens gives a few examples: “the disruption of Western civilization, the waning of religion, political revolution, mass production, industrialism, Darwinism, naturalism, the impact of scientific scepticism” (46). Besides the horrors of modern warfare, it was primarily the doctrine of Einstein and Heisenberg‟s Uncertainty

Principle that disputed the old belief in the world as big clockwork observing explicable laws of nature. Above all, the First World War raised pressing questions about the origin of the evil in human nature and the future development of mankind. Accordingly,

“literary men … reacted to this disenchantment by repudiating those conditions and institutions which they deemed responsible for, or involved in, the disorder of the age”

(Carens 124). Disappointed with the overall social development, many of them assumed radical political positions, on the right as well as on the left.

As far as the formative literary influences which shaped Waugh‟s generation are concerned, T. S. Eliot‟s The Waste Land (1922) “as the quintessential post-war text, the modern poem” (Cunningham 58) should be mentioned in the first place. Eliot, who was baptized and confirmed in the Church of England in 1927 (Hastings 236) regarded „the

Original Sin‟ as the cause of human depravation and inability to achieve perfection

(467). Symptomatically, as Carpenter observes, “The Waste Land made its first appeal to those who were undergraduates when it appeared, not to the established literary set”

(303). In Richard‟s words, the poem “expresses the post-war „sense of desolation, of

8 uncertainty, of futility, of the baselessness of aspirations, of the vanity of endeavour”

(qtd. in Cunningham 58). The influence of The Waste Land on Waugh‟s early works is unquestionable, as evident from the title of his third novel, A Handful of Dust (1934), taken over from Eliot‟s poem. Moreover, Waugh undoubtedly shared Eliot‟s rightist political opinions as well as his dislike for “mass-education, mass-production, mass- meetings, mass-identity, mass-civilization” (Cunningham 277).

Mistrust of mass movements of all kinds, particularly fascism and nationalism, and manipulation of the crowds by the name of a better future are also major features of the works by Aldous Huxley (1894-1963); according to whom, “in no century have the disillusionments followed on one another‟s heels with such unintermittent rapidity as in the twentieth” (qtd. in Carens 124). Moreover, Huxley predicted the disastrous effects of scientifically-based mass production on individual lives. Cunningham observes that

“Huxley‟s Brave New World (1932) quickly became the key dystopian fiction, expression of widespread Western disquiet over the triumph of machine-age materialism . . . and in particular anxieties over the application of scientific factory routines to human processes that were better left messy, domestic and slow” (399-400).

His gloomy vision of a world in which human beings are born as alpha, beta or gamma subjects forebodes not only the horrors of Nazi Germany, but also a far more distant future in which “consumerist propaganda, mass-entertainment in feelie-palaces and dance-halls” (284) superseded essential humane acts.

As far as Evelyn Waugh‟s immediate contemporaries are concerned, Graham

Greene (1904-1991) undoubtedly ranked among his closest friends. Despite their common Catholic faith (to which both of them converted in adult age), there are distinct differences between these two outstanding writers. Basically, Greene was a socialist, even a short-term communist in the 1920s, with much higher interest in the „common

9 man‟ than his friend. Although considered a Catholic author, Greene seems to have accepted religious dogmas only after a long rational struggle, probably as the only alternative to the “drugstore and the Coca-Cola, the hamburger, the graceless, sinless empty chromium world” (Carens 92), and never have been a pattern Catholic. In his two best-known novels concerned with Catholic topics, The Power and the Glory (1940) and The Heart of the Matter (1948), Greene openly juxtaposes love and compassion to strict observance of religious rules. Superficially, the „whisky priest‟ or Major Scobie are sinners; in reality, however, they prove to be the only men with integrity in their stories. In this way, Greene confronts on one hand “the Catholic Church with its pieties and self-certainties and on the other … the equally pious and self-certain socialist ideals of so many 1930s intellectuals” (Carpenter 327). Although Waugh‟s and Greene‟s concepts of Christianity may seem incongruous, there are evident points of concurrence between the above mentioned novels and Waugh‟s rejection of quantitative judgments in favour of compassion as the only reliable building blocks of civilization.

While Greene and Waugh shared at least their Catholic religion, George Orwell

(1903-1950) seems to be a total counterpart of Evelyn Waugh at first sight; even these seemingly incompatible middle-class authors, however, share some common views.

Admittedly, Orwell remained a dedicated socialist all his life, aware of social injustice; he was, nevertheless, also a resolute opponent of totalitarianism, who recognized the true face of communism not only after the Second World War, when he published his two famous novels, Animal Farm (1945) and Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949), but as early as the 1930s when many of his contemporaries regarded the Soviet Union as the only barrier to the rising fascism. In common with the above-mentioned authors, Orwell was disgusted at “the real ugliness of industrialism – an ugliness so frightful and so arresting that you are obliged, as it were, to come to terms with it” (qtd. in Cunningham 225).

10 Quite contrary to Waugh, who tried to dress and behave like a country squire, Orwell attempted to disguise in poverty-stricken clothes (Sykes 294), only too aware that all he thinks and does is a result of class distinctions (Cunningham 241).

There is still another feature in which Waugh was a typical representative of the

„Brideshead generation‟; namely, the admiration of country houses and ruralism in general as opposed to urban life symbolized by quickly sprawling suburbs. John

Betjeman (1906-1984), another member of Waugh‟s social circle, passionately attacked suburban life in Continual Dew (1937) by his invocation, “Come, friendly bombs, and fall on Slough / It isn‟t fit for humans now, / There isn‟t grass to graze a cow / Swarm over, Death! (qtd. in Carpenter 298). Similarly, Graham Greene “calls the lifestyle of suburbia „a sinless empty grassless chromium world‟” (302); George Orwell claimed that suburban life “served a delusion, „wide-spread day-dream‟ . . . of being a „feudal landowner‟ (Cunningham 256); Anthony Powell (1905-2000) observed that “even the countryside suffered from the same blight” (Carpenter 300). Although Cyril Connolly

(1903-1974) distanced himself “from the anti-suburban passions of his friends”, he also admitted that the “middle-class suburbs are incubators of apathy and delirium” (301).

All the more, right-wingers of Waugh‟s nature adhered to the idea of a landed gentleman as a quintessence of true „Englishness‟.

Although Sword of Honour was published in the 1950s, it still features the main motives contained not only in the early books by Evelyn Waugh, but also in the works of many of Waugh‟s contemporaries who grew up and graduated in the period after the

First World War and were influenced by T. S. Eliot‟s The Waste Land. Just as the devastating effects of profit-oriented capitalism with its mass production and uniformity eliminated the old aristocratic code of behaviour, the opportunism and bureaucracy penetrating the army eroded the ideal of „officer and gentleman‟. In advance of most of

11 his countrymen, Waugh predicted the danger of East-European totalitarian regimes.

Although many of his opinions may seem naïve, ridiculous or even intolerant, the slightly dystopian ending of the trilogy poses pressing questions about the future of

European civilization.

12 2 The Disillusioned Romantic

The first part of the trilogy, Men at Arms1, depicts the destiny of Guy

Crouchback, a descendent of an ancient Catholic aristocratic family, from the beginning of the Second World War in September 1939 until September 1940. Based on Evelyn

Waugh‟s own experiences, the novel portrays Guy‟s life on the background of real historic events, such as the Soviet-German Pact of August 1939 with subsequent occupation of Poland and Britain‟s entry in the war, the period of the „Phoney War‟,

German invasion of France and the evacuation of British troops, Russian invasion of

Finland, and, finally, the Dakar expedition in which the protagonist participates. In compliance with his chivalric ideas and Catholic faith, Waugh regards the World War as a conflict between traditional Christian civilization and the barbaric modern age represented by both the Nazi Germany and communist Russia. Following his ancestor

Roger of Waybroke, Guy Crouchback enlists in the army to fight the forces of evil, only to be disillusioned by the completely bureaucratic and unchivalrous modern warfare.

Characteristically, Waugh portrays his hero as a victim to the society which completely fails to understand his noble purpose.

Symptomatically, when the news of the Russian-German alliance “shook the politicians and young poets of a dozen capital cities” in August 1939, it “brought deep peace in one English heart” (SH 3-4). While both the politicians and the general public were anxious about the future of the country as well as the whole of Europe, for Guy

Crouchback “everything had become clear” (4). In reality, however, it was not the thirty-five-year-old nobleman exiled in the town of Santa Dulcina in Italy who rejoiced at the beginning of the war, yet his literary creator, a middle-class writer of the same

1 Men at Arms is the title of the first novel of the original trilogy, published in 1952. In the one-volume Sword of Honour (1965), it is divided into chapters one to four.

13 age, Evelyn Waugh, who “welcomed the conflict”, feeling that “it offered him a chance to begin again” (Kermode xii). Calder emphasises the enormous importance of the notorious treaty signed by the foreign ministers of Germany and the Soviet Union,

Ribbentrop and Molotov, with the subsequent invasion of Poland and British declaration of war, in the scheme of Sword of Honour (667-8). Characteristically, the

Nazi Germany and, first and foremost, the communist Soviet Union personify the godless modern age; therefore, after the two powers have formed an alliance, for Guy

Crouchback “the enemy is at last plain in view, huge and hateful, all disguise cast off”.

Drained of life and love, deeply frustrated by his unsuccessful marriage, Guy has decided to return to his endangered fatherland for “there is a place for him in that battle”

(4).

Nevertheless, however much Guy‟s determination resembles Waugh‟s at the beginning of the War, the characteristic features of the author as a master of irony and satire are also apparent from the first pages of Men at Arms. Although the sincere distaste for “the modern age in arms” incited Waugh to devotedly look for a military job despite his advanced age, he avowedly portrays Guy‟s endeavour in this respect as both noble and chivalric as well as naïve and boyish. Not only does Guy see himself as a follower of his crusading ancestor, Sir Roger of Waybroke, but he also lives in a town of Santa Dulcina, protected by a patroness whose name, as Wilson observes, “recalls

Dulcinea del Toboso, the women who inspires Don Quixote”. At the beginning of the first part of the trilogy, archaically titled Men at Arms, Guy Crouchback, praying to the

„Santo Inglese‟ and running his finger along Roger‟s sword, deliberately stylizes himself into a typical knight-errant coming to the aid of his “endangered kingdom” (5).

Characteristically of Waugh, “the conflict between civilization and barbarism is almost always conceived as a conflict between past and present, ancient and modern. Waugh‟s

14 commitment is to the past, the classics, the age of heroes” (Littlewood 79-70).

Moreover, Waugh considers civilization inseparable from Christianity; or rather, from

Catholicism as the traditional part of Christianity. In his article “Converted to Rome”, published in Daily Express soon after his conversion in 1930, Waugh defined the essential issue in the present age of European history as that “between Christianity and

Chaos” (103). More than that, it is “high-born warriors, defending civilization” who should lead “the grateful common people on to victory” (Dirda). Despite the humorous undertone, intensified by Guy‟s „Hollywood‟ fantasies about Scottish clans gathering around Prince Charles during the Rising of 1745 (MA 160) (left out in the revised version of Sword of Honour), Waugh earnestly identifies himself with the Quixotic quest of his hero even though (or perhaps just because) his cause seems to be lost and ridiculous.

Inasmuch as the story and character of Guy Crouchback include discernible autobiographical elements, it is impossible to understand Guy‟s spiritual world and motivation without examining Evelyn Waugh‟s peculiar personality. When Guy is leaving his Castello, all people from his household kiss his hand, most of them weep, children throw flowers into the car; nevertheless, Guy knows that he is not loved, not

„simpatico‟ (7). Even his religion gives him no sense of brotherhood (8). Significantly, all of Waugh‟s biographers including his closest friends like Christopher Sykes agree on the difficulty of the character of this outstanding writer. Although Evelyn had been a misfit since his childhood, experiencing loneliness, making a suicide attempt at the age of twenty-two, his mental condition deteriorated after the failure of his first marriage in

1929. From that time, his friends “saw a new hardness and bitterness and an utter disillusion which showed itself in cruelty” (Sykes 96). Quite surprisingly, Waugh‟s personality underwent no substantial change after his conversion to the Catholic Church

15 in 1930; not only did Waugh never get rid of his pettish and bullying character, but he also “got enjoyment from taking up unacceptable views” (Sykes 133). Unlike Guy

Crouchback, Waugh finally achieved annulment of his first marriage by the Church and married again in 1937; yet, similarly to his aristocratic hero, he suffered from an

“internal wound” for which only the coming war between good and evil seemed to be the right cure.

As far as Waugh‟s conversion to the Catholic Church is concerned, even his close friend and fellow-Catholic Christopher Sykes admits not being able to find its definite reason. Historically, the interwar period featured an increase in the number of

Catholics in England, including significant conversions of prominent intellectuals, like

G. K. Chesterton, Graham Greene or Ronald Knox. Undoubtedly, Catholicism was no longer represented by poor Irish priests only. Nevertheless, Waugh seems to have been attracted by something more than the increasingly intellectual environment of the

Catholic Church, although he was certainly able to find a highly intelligent audience among English Catholics (Carpenter 271). Admittedly, several biographers agree on

Waugh‟s “rational approach to faith, remarkable for lack of emotion” (Sykes 105).

Carpenter emphasises the “dry, logical necessity” as the “nature of Waugh‟s

Catholicism at the time of his reception into the Church” (271). Sykes explicitly denies such reasons for Evelyn‟s conversion as his “devotion to art” or “delight in ecclesiastical ceremony” (which sometimes even bored him) (105-6). Interestingly, even though Men and Arms (1952) and Officers and Gentlemen (1954) were published in the period when Waugh acted as a fervent Catholic apologist, there is hardly any spiritual enthusiasm in Guy Crouchback who just seems to perform his religious duties mechanically and obediently. Paradoxically, there seems to have been just one point of

16 the Catholic doctrine which filled Waugh with enthusiasm and convinced him of its truth; namely, the existence of evil in the world and himself.

As mentioned before, in Waugh‟s view, the conflict between good and evil, between civilization and barbarism, equalled to the conflict between Christianity and the modern age. Therefore, advocating his conversion, Waugh claims that the civilization deprived of Christianity cannot resist the “ideal of a materialistic, mechanized state, already existent in Russia and rapidly spreading south and west”

(Waugh, “Converted to Rome” 104). Apparently, in his later, „Catholic‟ novels, Waugh merely adapted his former concept of a passive hero, like Paul Pennyfeather in Decline and Fall, lost in the ruthless world, to the concept of a Catholic hero, like Guy

Crouchback, desperately defending true values against the increasingly barbaric world.

Regarding the reasons for Waugh‟s conversion, John Strachey, British Labour politician and writer, concisely observes that “Mr. Waugh had clearly only three alternatives open to him. He could commit suicide, become a communist, or immure himself within the

Roman Catholic Church” (qtd. in Cunningham 32). His rationalistic faith, therefore, provided Evelyn with both a refuge from despair and a “point of view from which his own acts of resistance could be performed” (Long 16).

Although after the conclusion of the Soviet-German treaty, the enemy is at last plain in Guy‟s (and Evelyn‟s) view (SH 4), and thus the vision of the materialistic state spreading westward confirmed, reading Sword of Honour as well as Waugh‟s essays and articles reveals that it is undoubtedly communism which Waugh considered a much greater enemy of civilization than fascism. Guy himself sees the Italian fascism “neither as a calamity nor as a rebirth; as a rough improvisation only”. Although he knows the

German Nazis “to be mad and bad”, the Munich Agreement a year before “left him quite indifferent” (SH 4). As far as Waugh is concerned, he is often accused of fascism

17 or at least sympathies with fascism by his adversaries. Admittedly, he was “a man of the right, an apologist for Mussolini and Franco, who despised parliamentary politics”

(Annan 214); as a newspaper correspondent in Abyssinia he straightforwardly welcomed Italian invasion of this African land (York); in the debate on the Spanish

Civil War he openly took the part of Franco – typically, Guy is convinced that the

German Nazis “dishonoured the cause of Spain” (SH 4). Nevertheless, he was by far not the only British intellectual of the interwar period who despised democracy or even sided with the rising fascism. Moreover, as Hastings observes, “that English Catholics sympathized with fascism is not surprising”. The Lateran Treaty of 1929 recognized the sovereignty of Vatican, so “it was hard not to accept the verdict that the person who had made it possible [Mussolini] was, indeed, the „Man of Providence‟” (Hastings 324).

Similarly, Franco‟s Nationalists were often regarded as „crusaders‟ preventing the advance of the godless Republicans and communists. Despite Waugh‟s extreme rightist positions, however, he seems never to have been a convinced fascist, for “nothing could have been more hostile to Evelyn Waugh‟s political romanticism than fascism and nothing more distant from his social ideal than a totalitarian state” (Carens 135).

Naturally, the pact of September 1939 clarified Guy‟s bipolar, good-evil, civilized- barbaric vision of the world.

Upon his return to England, however, the ardent crusader finds out that the others “completely fail to understand what is happening; they do not so much as entertain the concept of the Just War, and so do not know what they are fighting for”

(Kermode xx). For Arthur Box-Bender, Guy‟s brother-in-law, a pragmatic politician and non-believer, “soldiering is something that belongs to extreme youth, like butterscotch and catapults” (SH 11). Aware of Guy‟s resemblance to his mentally ill brother Ivo, Box-Bender just intends to provide his delirious relative with a safe job.

18 When Guy raises the issue of Russia invading Poland at Bellamy‟s, he finds no sympathy among the First World War veterans (16) who are still encumbered with terrible memories of the trench war. Whereas Guy‟s enthusiastic spirit resembles “the attitudes to war displayed at the outbreak of the First World War” (Wisniewski 281), he does not understand the utterly different social climate in which the ancient concept of honour is no longer viable. In Annan‟s words:

Honour was not a virtue that played much part in the moral discourse of

Our Age. Honour was one of the words which Paul Fussell identified as

debased by the language of the First World War where men died

drowning in mud or frothing at the lips, gassed in a crater (329).

Even his sister Angela reminds Guy that he “was just a schoolboy going short of sweets” when the telegram came about his brother Gervase‟s death (SH 23). Obsessed with his just mission as Guy is, however, it is only much later, after the defeat of

Finland, that he starts to realize “that he is engaged in a war in which courage and a just cause are quite irrelevant to the issue” (123).

With respect to the discernible autobiographical elements in the novel, it is hard to distinguish fictitious characters and incidents from those that are based on the author‟s real military career. Although ennoblement remained Waugh‟s unfulfilled aspiration for all his life and, contrary to Guy, he was only a Catholic convert without an impeccable and saintly father, Waugh definitely endowed his literary creation with his own ambition to become a commander and a hero leading his men into battle for true values. After a lot of effort Waugh finally “unexpectedly achieved a commission in the Royal Marines” (Kermode xvi), which doubtless became a model for the

Halberdiers. In reality, however, Waugh‟s service in the army seems to have been from the beginning much more problematic than Guy‟s idealized “love affair with the army”.

19 In spite of their lifelong friendship, even Christopher Sykes, Waugh‟s “companion in arms” to whom the first part of the trilogy is dedicated (MA 5) admits that

“commanding officers … were only too pleased to see him transferred from their jurisdiction. They found him critical and disruptive” (Sykes 199). Not only was he not able to communicate with his inferiors from lower social classes, but he was also

“equally scornful towards superiors in rank whose social credentials he thought inadequate” (Calder viii). In the People‟s War which partly equalized class distinction in the British society and paved the way for the Welfare State, Waugh still obstinately adhered to the outdated concept of the army led by upper-class men. In addition, according to Sykes, “he made few friends in the army” (199) and had no fellow officer similar to Apthorpe; there is also no record in his diary that he was ever addressed as

„uncle‟ by the younger officers (Carpenter 409). Gallagher, however, disclaims the

„myth‟ originated by Sykes and repeated by other biographers, according to which

Waugh was in danger of being shot by his men. Some men who served directly under

Waugh even claimed that “he got on very well, or at least sufficiently well, with Other

Ranks” (Gallagher, “Was Evelyn Waugh in Danger…”). Yet in contradiction to Guy

Crouchback, Waugh probably never experienced the sense of „brotherhood‟ in arms.

Whereas on the outside Guy‟s military career more or less corresponds to

Evelyn‟s, Sykes doubts that Evelyn experienced any “love affair” with the army. In his opinion, “the fiction is only indirectly representational, and reflects a hope and an ideal rather than an emotional involvement which Evelyn went through” (Sykes 200). Bitterly disillusioned by the post-war development in Britain and the “age of the common man”,

Waugh incorporated his ideal of “officers and gentlemen” in the Royal Corps of

Halberdiers, renowned for their tradition and discipline. In this unit, Guy finds what he has lacked in the decadent society; growing a moustache and buying a monocle, he

20 “gives up individually and believes he can be defined by the Halberdiers” (Logan) because “it seems impossible that anything conducted by the Halberdiers could fall short of excellence” (SH 74). Symptomatically, “for all Halberdiers everywhere he has a warmer sentiment than for anyone outside his family”. Apparently, the Corps compensates Guy for both his failed marriage and the lack of religious community. At the same time, however, Waugh clearly shows that Guy‟s (or rather, his own) fantasies are merely a temporary escape from reality into “happy adolescence” (37). Typically of

Waugh, disillusionment comes inevitably.

Significantly, the overall progress from naïve expectations to realistic disenchantment is interwoven with sarcasm and black humour. The light-hearted humour of Guy‟s first weeks in the army gradually gives way to more bitter undertones.

While Apthorpe‟s battle over his thunder-box is merely comic, the total chaos of the

„Phoney War” including false alarms, aimless redeployments and confusing rumours contains within its almost burlesque narration a germ of Guy‟s imminent disappointment with the modern warfare. To begin with, despite that “he has had a sense of well-doing” (SH 146), Guy is not promoted, thereby his “desire to prove himself a true Halberdier” fails to be satisfied (Logan). Next, after “the most exhilarating sensation of his life, his first foothold on enemy soil” (SH 196), Guy becomes an innocent victim of Ritchie-Hook‟s wilful action; losing, paradoxically, his captaincy of which he has not known (203). In this way, Guy follows on the series of

Waugh‟s passive heroes exposed to social forces which they cannot control. As

Littlewood observes, “the first volume of the trilogy records an attempt by Waugh to sustain a comic response to a grave situation. In the end it is abandoned” (59). After he has unwillingly killed his best friend Apthorpe, Guy‟s love affair with the Halberdiers ends in shame; in the last paragraph of the original Men at Arms, they “speak of Guy in

21 the past tense. He has momentarily been of them; now he is an alien” (MA 246). In common with Sir Roger of Waybroke, Guy has not reached his „Holy Land‟; his

Quixotic quest has failed, not because of his own faults, but owing to the modern society which no longer favours heroic ideals.

From the start, Evelyn Waugh intended Men at Arms to be just an opening part of a larger saga encompassing the entire period of the Second World War. His essential purpose, however, was not to describe the war or individual combat actions in detail, yet to present the war period as a turning point in British history which meant an irrevocable disappearance of the old high-principled civilization which was replaced by the purposeless “age of the common man”. Therefore, Guy Crouchback‟s evolution in

Men at Arms, from an enthusiastic crusader looking for his place in the battle to a frustrated officer repudiated by the corps which he loved, constitutes the opening part of an existential drama in which the aging author disappointed by the post-war development tries to answer, in his own way, the pressing questions about the sense of human life and the direction in which the civilization moves.

22 3 The End of the Age of Heroes

The second part of the trilogy, Officers and Gentlemen2, follows Guy

Crouchback‟s adventures after his involuntary return to Britain at the time of the

Blitzkrieg in September 1940. Having innocently failed as a Halberdier, Guy finds a new place in the commando led by his friend Tommy Blackhouse; nevertheless, despite numerous comic situations with which Waugh enlivens the commando‟s military training on the Isle of Mugg, Guy is well aware that the time of his juvenile infatuation with the army is beyond recovery. Similarly to Waugh‟s real unit, Guy‟s brigade is posted to Egypt, where the British Middle-East headquarters are located, and then sent to reinforce the British troops on Crete, only to end in the notorious evacuation from the island in May 1941. Not only does this shameful event present the climax of Officers and Gentlemen, but it also constitutes (together with the almost parallel German assault on the Soviet Union) an apparent turning point of the entire trilogy. While Men at Arms ends with Guy‟s personal disillusionment and loss of his heroic romanticism, Officers and Gentlemen clearly portray the entire nation‟s renunciation of honour and bravery in favour of opportunism and mediocrity as represented by such characters as the quasi- hero Trimmer, the diabolic Corporal-Major Ludovic, or the cowardly Major Hound. In the increasingly mechanical warfare, true „officers and gentlemen‟ are no longer appreciated as natural leaders of their men.

Although the plot of Officers and Gentlemen immediately follows on the conclusion of Men at Arms, Waugh himself underwent a serious personal crisis in the three-year interim between the publication of the two novels, which undoubtedly added to the almost desperate denouement of the second volume. As a result of overdosing on

2 Officers and Gentlemen is the title of the second novel of the original trilogy, published in 1955. In the one-volume Sword of Honour (1965), Waugh reworked the novel into chapters five to seven, whereas “Officers and Gentlemen” is the title of only the seventh chapter, describing the defeat of British troops on Crete.

23 chloral and alcohol, the author, approaching the age of fifty, “felt particularly wretched in the cold winter of 1952-3. To obtain release from a chilly and rationed England, he undertook, like Pinfold, a sea voyage – something he normally enjoyed” (Kermode xiii), only to be haunted by “Pinfoldian” hallucinations. Fortunately, “purged by his experience, he could carry on with a long book, a book that was meant to be great, with great themes hardly to be undertaken by a mean-minded, self-absorbed man” (Kermode xiv). Sykes stresses the striking “change in tone and spirit between Men at Arms and

Officers and Gentlemen”, the new “freedom and freshness about the writing” (420).

Typically of Waugh, the second part of the trilogy starts with colourful description of an air raid during which “the sky over London was glorious, ochre and madder, as though a dozen tropic suns were simultaneously setting round the horizon”, “everywhere the shells sparkled like Christmas baubles”, and “half-way down Turtle‟s Club was burning quickly” (SH 216). In the fifth chapter of SH, peculiarly titled “Apthorpe Placatus”, against all expectations, Waugh recovers his fresh and comic style lost at the end of

Men at Arms – in the midst of the falling bombs, Guy‟s preoccupation is to „placate the spirit‟ of his unintentionally killed friend by handing over his enormous gear. Despite the apparent comic, however, bitter undertone is still prevailing – it is only due to his uselessness as a Halberdier officer that Guy can travel about the country on his seemingly secret mission.

In contrast to its ironic title, Officers and Gentlemen in fact witness the process of gradual degradation of these concepts in the increasingly bureaucratic and mechanical war. Appropriately, the Penguin edition of Sword of Honour has been supplemented with a list of as many as sixty-seven abbreviations with which Waugh as a great satirist intertwines the official military language in order to both burlesque and encrypt the dialogues and instructions as well as to accentuate its contrariety to Sir

24 Roger‟s simple language of honour. At the beginning of Officers and Gentlemen, the

Commando force to which Guy (similarly to Waugh) has been transferred may still be regarded as a „gentlemen‟s club‟, as evident from Tommy Blackhouses‟s declaration,

“It‟s going to be a long war. The great thing is to spend it among friends” (SH 255).

Nevertheless, not being called „uncle‟ any longer, Guy perceives that “he is not one of the family at all, merely a passing guest” (292). Although there was already some sense of disillusionment during his Halberdier training at Kut-al-Imara, it is upon his arrival on the Isle of Mugg that Guy realizes the lack of real brotherhood in arms when the officers, having heard of the injury of one of them, are mainly concerned about getting the vacated room (257). As Logan observes, “Waugh depicts the army as more and more grasping . . . officers at a club fighting over food, forswearing gentlemanly manners”. While “the beginning of the war is a gentlemanly, clubby affair . . . later events prove that not even Guy‟s circle of gentlemen rankers is exempt from self- interest and even treachery” (Lane). Apparently, Waugh, who himself was disillusioned by the “low morale and slack discipline” of his own commando unit (Calder x), proves to be well aware that even the higher social ranks have been affected by the oncoming modern age.

The central figure representing Guy‟s unfulfilled expectations and one of his greatest disappointments in the entire trilogy is Ivor Claire, a pattern aristocrat whom

Guy first worships as “the fine flower” (318) and even “a young prince of the Near

East” (255). Ivor‟s role in the novel disproves the frequent claim about Waugh‟s alleged uncritical admiration of the upper classes; not only does Waugh show that even true gentlemen may prove to be incompetent leaders, but he also admits certain blindness of those who, like Guy, idealize them. At the beginning of Officers and Gentlemen, Waugh still displays some longing for a “happy civilization where differences of rank were

25 exactly defined and frankly accepted” (Kermode xxii). Symptomatically, it is not a

Halberdier yet an Air Marshal who is covering under the table at Bellamy‟s, because, according to Kermode, the Air Force and Navy officers “tended to be of a lower social caste than those of the better regiments” (xxii). From the very first moment, Ivor Claire is the personification of “the self-assurance of the upper classes” which Waugh himself admired (Annan 224); moreover, Guy recognizes “certain remote kinship with this most dissimilar man, a common aloofness . . . a common melancholy sense of humour“

(SH 295); until the truth about his escape from Crete has been disclosed, Guy thinks about this dandy in a number of metaphors, which culminate in the vision of a “young prince of Athens sent as sacrifice to the Cretan labyrinth” (433). This is, however, an example of the author‟s masterful irony, through which

the old shadows of classical mythology are deployed again, this time to

exalt the fate of the most romantic of all the „happy warriors‟, the

resourceful dandy of tradition who was, in Guy‟s imagination,

„quintessential England‟. (Littlewood 102).

It is Guy‟s romantic ignorance that reveals Waugh‟s ability as a great comic author to ridicule even his own stubborn adherence to some untenable opinions. In this respect,

Calder generalizes that “Waugh‟s snobbery is so much disintegrated by irony in Sword of Honour that it effectually disappears” (xxiv).

Although Guy has found in Ivor a quintessence of an officer and gentleman, and probably a compensation for his own lost ideal of a crusader, he is (deliberately?) blind to the fact that it is first and foremost Ivor‟s disposition that prevents him from becoming a fearless commander of his men, for his “isolation is motivated by self- interest” (Logan). When Ivor speaks about the next war in which it “will be quite honourable for officers to leave their men behind” (SH 421), he may merely seem to

26 voice Waugh‟s own distaste for the “completely democratic future”; with respect to his intended escape, however, he may in fact be suggesting that such an act is probably justifiable. As Littlewood observes:

the detachment that gives Claire his style is also what cuts him off from

those commitments which could have checked his drift into dishonour.

There is no logical objection to his argument in favour of desertion; the

only counter to it would be an appeal to loyalties from which he has

withdrawn himself . (31)

Significantly, it is other members of Guy‟s social rank, Julia Stitch and Tommy

Blackhouse, who cover up Ivor‟s act, whether for personal loyalty or fear of the entire unit‟s disgrace. For Guy, however, “the man who has been his friend has proved to be an illusion” (SH 439). Similarly to the loss of his personal ideal of a warrior at the end of Men at Arms, Guy has to lose even the compensatory one towards the end of Officers and Gentlemen.

Whereas Ivor Claire is a striking example of the decline of gentlemanhood, there are several characters in Sword of Honour whom from the beginning Waugh portrays as social climbers or downright cowards, who nevertheless attain high rankings or even admiration of the general public; typically of Waugh, they are usually of lower class origin and leftist disposition. The crucial character of Trimmer as a symbol of „the age of the common man‟ is dealt with in chapter 4; another character who becomes prominent in Officers and Gentlemen is Ludovic, “a homosexual and atheistic intellectual of Communist sympathies and working class origins, and so five times damnable” (York), a man with “a gift of tongues” (SH 414) who can change his voice

“from its plummy to its plebeian mode” (404). Nevertheless, even this abominable character may reflect some autobiographical features as evident from his novel written

27 during the wartime, by which Waugh seems to ironically allude to his own Brideshead

Revisited. Major Hound, on the other hand, constitutes a tragic figure from the beginning, probably based on a real officer suffering a shell-shock on Crete (Calder xi).

Significantly, Hound has “chosen a military career because he was not clever enough to pass into the civil service” (SH 323); under critical conditions, he prefers the “heady precipice of sensual appetite” to “the steep path of duty” (379) which finally leads to his definite failure. Apparently, in Waugh‟s opinion, the Second World War revealed the incapacity of the new officers to live up to the time-honoured standards which were no longer in demand anyway.

The elaborate description of the ordeal on Crete gave rise to many speculations about Waugh‟s own role in one of the greatest British defeats during the Second World

War. Unanimously, commentators agree on his outstanding bravery “to the point of utter recklessness” as well as his “contempt for his fellow countrymen” (Calder xi) that so easily (and probably unnecessarily) left the island. Both Calder and Kermode, however, indicate that there may have been some sense of guilt in Waugh‟s fervent denunciation of the evacuation; according to Calder, Waugh was disappointed in his commander, Bob Laycock, an aristocratic officer who embarked leaving some troops behind, for which Waugh may have “felt like a cheat himself “(Calder xi). Kermode is even stricter, claiming that “Waugh needed to give his own orders to justify his escape”

(xxiv). Gallagher, on the other hand, disclaims the theory of Laycock‟s (and Waugh‟s) personal blame, pointing out to the fact that Laycock, who “was an ambitious professional soldier . . . had nothing to hide and he allowed Waugh to write a frank and detailed account of proceedings” (Gallagher, “Inventing Invention …”). In any case, despite his personal shortcomings, consistently with his ideals, Waugh was a brave soldier indignant at the “cowardice that infected the spirit of the army” (215).

28 Accordingly, Guy Crouchback is proud that “he was behaving pretty much as a

Halberdier should” for, symptomatically, it is the Halberdiers who, “cleanshaven . . . all their equipment in place”, maintain their integrity in the overall chaos (SH 381). But again, Guy‟s exultation is ephemerous, since he must soon realize that he is only “a guest from a higher formation . . . without place or function, a spectator . . . Philoctetes without his bow. Sir Roger without his sword” (410). Personal courage, therefore, cannot deliver Guy from the overwhelming sense of loneliness and futility.

The memory of Sir Roger diverts the reader‟s attention from the most spectacular depiction of military actions in the entire trilogy back to Guy‟s innermost feelings and motivations. Although religious festivals and obligations form an inseparable background of the whole novel, Guy has undergone spiritual stagnation since he lost his crusade enthusiasm. Moreover, having been questioned by a priest immediately after confession (327), he realizes that even the church provides no longer a safe refuge for his dreary soul. From now on, “no one is to be trusted, for betrayal has insinuated itself into Guy‟s most cherished inner life – his religious belief” (Lane). The overall sense of failure is enhanced by the fate of the unknown soldier whom Guy finds lying “like an effigy on a tomb – like Sir Roger in his shadowy shrine in Santa Dulcina”

(406). In conformity with the „passive hero‟ concept, Guy is unable to perform even the essential acts of mercy for his deceased fellow-believer; whereas the burial is prevented by stony ground, worldly machination hinders even the delivery of the soldier‟s identity disk. Significantly, it is not Guy, yet his aging father, seemingly an unimportant character unknowingly engaged in petty domestic battle over his lodgings, whom

Waugh portrays as the vehicle of religious integrity. With his dismissal of „quantitative judgements‟, Mr. Crouchback paves the way for his son‟s final conversion to individualized unselfish mercy.

29 The great silence in which Guy seeks refuge after his excruciating experience is a prelude to the conversion from the ambitious desire to save the Kingdom to the modest recognition of personal mission which becomes the dominant theme of

Unconditional Surrender. Having finally lost his illusions “that the Second World War is being fought by men of principle, officers and gentlemen” (Wisniewski 285), Guy refuses to speak for a long time for “once he spoke he would re-enter their world”

(SH 429), the world in which he is no longer interested. Resembling his deceased brother Ivo, Guy finds himself on the verge of sanity. Although he is rescued by

Mrs. Stitch, soon the “day of apocalypse” (439) comes on which Hitler invades Russia, completely thwarting the idea with which Guy enrolled in the army. Contrary to

Mrs. Stich‟s pragmatic view that “it‟s nice to have one ally” (440), for Guy (and

Waugh) “the theme of national irresponsibility and dislocation of value emerges in full force” (Carens 160). From now on, he will gradually admit his father‟s simple wisdom by “dissociating himself from the army in matters of real concern” (Littlewood 160).

Nevertheless, there are still several years of dreary routine before Guy to fully adopt his father‟s philosophy. For the present, “he is back after less than two years‟ pilgrimage in a Holy Land of illusion” (SH 440). The old motif of victimization recurs; similarly to the end of Men at Arms, Guy is involuntarily sent back to England to do tedious office jobs for the next two years. Typically of Waugh, there is an obvious parallel between Crete and London. As Lane observes, through the “loss of general identity in the milling crowd of stragglers separated from their units, and the loss of personal identity under the unrelenting pressure of enemy shelling . . . Waugh implies that Western civilization has also reached a similar impass”. Significantly, the battle of

Crete is the first and the last serious conflict included by Waugh in his trilogy; instead of writing a war chronicle or even celebrating the final victory over the horrible enemy,

30 he uses the war as an opportunity to reflect upon the meaning of the individual‟s life in the increasingly meaningless society.

31 4 The Age of the Common Man

At the beginning of Unconditional Surrender3, two years have passed since

Guy‟s return from the Middle East and Germany‟s assault on the Soviet Union, which made communist Russia into Britain‟s new ally. While the crowds blindly worship the

Sword of Stalingrad in Westminster Cathedral and admire the bravery of the Red Army,

Guy regards Stalin‟s successes as further westward advance of godless barbarism. By an irony of fate, Guy is sent to Yugoslavia to act as a liaison officer (mirroring again

Waugh‟s own military career) among Tito‟s communist partisans. Disenchanted by

British foreign policy, Guy starts to appreciate his deceased father‟s emphasis on individual acts of charity. Reconciliation with his wife Virginia, financially ruined and expecting Trimmer‟s child, or the persistent effort to help a group of wretched

Yugoslavian Jews illustrate a significant revaluation of Guy‟s preferences and his definite shift from „public‟ to „private‟ mission.

To understand the reasons for Guy‟s internal conversion, one must understand not only its religious essence, but also the overall development within the British society, starting in the interwar period, intensifying during the Second World War, and culminating in the Welfare State introduced by the Labour government in the post-war years; the development which Waugh considered a betrayal of traditional British values and a gateway for the arrival of communism and atheism in Britain. With his typical scathing sarcasm, Waugh depicts the crowds queuing before Westminster Abbey to see the Sword of Stalingrad, the King‟s gift to “the steel-hearted people of Stalingrad”.

Significantly, many of them are entering the abbey for the first time in their lives; yet all fall quite silent “as though they were approaching a corpse lying in state” (SH 456-7).

3 Unconditional Surrender is the title of the third novel of the original trilogy, published in 1961. In the one-volume Sword of Honour (1965), Waugh reworked the novel into chapters eight to eleven, whereas “Unconditional Surrender” is the title of only the last chapter.

32 By means of pseudo-religious symbols and allusions to Sir Roger‟s sword which Guy touched before leaving Santa Dulcina to serve his King, Waugh evokes the atmosphere of blasphemy and desecration of the national shrine. In the period of “popular enthusiasm for the triumphs of „Joe‟ Stalin (457), only Guy‟s uncle Peregrin would

“sooner see the Japanese in Europe – at least they have a king and some sort of religion”

(556). On the other hand, the pragmatic Box-Bender, representing the new kind of politicians whom Waugh detests, welcomes the increase in production caused by the workers‟ admiration for Russia, supposing that “it doesn‟t do any harm to let them have a pot of red paint and splash round with hammers and sickles” for “it‟ll all wash off”

(446). Whereas this admiration originated in the thirties when, contrary to the British government‟s appeasement policy, “the Soviet Union appeared … to be the only country that would oppose fascism with arms if necessary” (Annan 265), it provided the proponents of public ownership with a forceful argument thanks to “the successes of the

Red Army, which were thought to be based on a highly successful economic system created by the state from nothing” (Childs 25). Paradoxically, however naïve and untenable Waugh‟s nostalgic for the past and aversion to the Socialists‟ policies might have been, he clearly foresaw the advance of communist totalitarianism across Europe against the predominant view of many of his countrymen.

Similarly, many of Guy‟s fellow-officers seem to idealize the Yugoslavian partisans led by Josip Broz Tito. For Major Cattermole, “the partisans are a revelation – literally”; “officers and men . . . share the same rations and quarters”, which is a

“transforming experience” (SH 594). Symptomatically, Cattermole admires some of those properties which Waugh lacks in the increasingly bureaucratic British army – bravery, honour, solidarity and devotion. This admiration, however, is a sign of Guy‟s countryman‟s blindness rather than true appreciation of Tito‟s guerrillas which Waugh

33 despised no less than the Red Army. Contrary to Cattermole‟s disinterested view of

Yugoslavian home politics, or even Frank de Souza‟s pragmatic stress on “cementing anti-fascist solidarity” (619), Guy is concerned about the post-war fate of his fellow-

Catholics with whom he feels spiritually bound. Moreover, he finds the support to Tito a betrayal of Britain‟s former ally, “General Dragoljub Mihailovic, who was loyal to the

Royalist Yugoslav government-in-exile in London” (Calder, “Notes” 686). Again, Guy, who has ironically got to Yugoslavia owing to a series of coincidences launched by the

Electronic Personnel Selector (465), a typical product of modernity, contradicts the official policy with an idealistic, yet completely unfeasible opinion, which, nevertheless, contains a germ of truth.

Inasmuch as Guy‟s Balkan adventures are mostly based on Waugh‟s mission in

Croatia where he accompanied Randolph Churchill, his unfavourable opinion on the partisans reflect Waugh‟s own resentment toward “Tito‟s forces as enemies of

Christendom”. Not only did Waugh “wrote a long report on the plight of the Yugoslav

Catholics” after his return to England in 1945 (Kermode xviii), but he also remained a passionate opponent of Tito years after the war when the Yugoslavian leader won even more sympathies for separating from Stalin. In his article “Our guest of Dishonour” published in Sunday Express on 30 November 1952, Waugh protests against Tito‟s visit in Britain, pointing out that by means of “all the specialized mechanism of modern statesmanship . . . Tito is seeking to extirpate Christianity in Yugoslavia” (427).

Nevertheless, Waugh‟s aversion to both Stalin and Tito, however justifiable from the moral point of view, is completely indefensible politically. Just as “to abandon all aid to the Yugoslav Resistance was to give the Germans a temporary but real advantage”

(Sykes 264), it was impossible for Churchill not to welcome Soviet help in the fight against fascism. In this respect, the final chapters of Sword of Honour restore the

34 conflict between non-viable individualistic adherence to „high principles‟ and pragmatic approach to the „common good‟.

Besides substantial international changes, the Second World War also triggered profound transformations within the British society, both of which Waugh regards as interrelated in Sword of Honour. For Guy, the crowds venerating the Sword of

Stalingrad foreshadow the advent of the „age of the common man‟. At the time when

British troops wander aimlessly throughout Crete, Trimmer, one of the main personifications of this age, stands in the Strand, while the London crowd is shuffling past in a similarly meaningless way,

men in a diversity of drab uniforms, women in the strange new look of

the decade – trousered, turbaned, cigarettes adhering and drooping from

grubby weary faces; all of them surfeited with tea and Woolton pies, all

of them bearing gas-masks which bump and swung to their ungainly

tread. (SH 418)

The bleak appearance of the anonymous London crowd is in sharp contrast to the modest dignity of Mr. Crouchback, probably the only impeccable character in the entire trilogy, a living example of “the English Gentleman” whom Waugh called “our sole, unique, historic creation”, ironically asking whether “he can be made useful to the workers in the awkward interim period before his final extermination” (Waugh, “What to Do with the Upper Classes”). Symbolically, while Guy is engaged in the struggle against the Enemy of civilization, his noble father (unconsciously) undergoes the

“contest over room allocation within the Marine Hotel in which Waugh pits a reduced squire against plebeian usurpers, abetted by a housing officer (the embodiment of intrusive, liberal government)” (Trout). Apparently, the loss of true gentlemanhood poses a risk to the British identity similarly to German pilotless bombers.

35 Nevertheless, it was Waugh‟s repugnancy to the lower classes rather than his admiration for the upper ones that fuelled his denunciation of the war and post-war social changes. Even such a close friend as Christopher Sykes admits his “incapacity for establishing any sort of human relations with his men” (211) – “while he was a highly educated man, most of them were barely literate” (228). Characteristically, when the cabin boy produces a gold medal as evidence of his Christianity, “Guy‟s heart suddenly opens towards him . . . he yearns to show the medal he wears, Gervase‟s souvenir from

Lourdes” (SH 190). Instead, he just tips the boy, compensating the above-mentioned incapacity. In addition to this peculiar streak of character, it is an inbred belief in God- given social order as represented by the long line of Guy‟s ancestors that stimulates

Waugh‟s resistance against what he considers disruptive changes in the army and society. Significantly, “in the Second World War many officers of the Royal Army and

Navy were, for the first time, representatives of the middle or even lower-middle classes, professional, self-made men” (Wisniewski 201). In Sword of Honour, there are undoubtedly both positive lower-class characters, like Ritchie-Hook‟s batman Dawkins, as well as people who have forsaken gentlemanhood, like Ralph Brompton. Their positivity or negativity, however, is not determined by their origin, but by adherence or non-adherence to the given social order.

In reality, however, the Second World War strengthened equalizing tendencies within the British society. Symptomatically, Guy observes that “most English gentlemen at this time believe that they have a particular aptitude for endearing themselves to the lower classes” (SH 151). Although the war did not remove the class division, it reinforced the widespread opinion that at least some social reform was necessary; “undoubtedly, there was a new upper-class and middle-class concern that, having played so crucial a role in the war effort, the workers should not be plunged back

36 into the economic depression of the inter-war years” (Marwick 38). In 1942, Sir

William Beveridge laid the foundations of the Welfare state “as a protection for all from cradle to grave” with his report on Social Insurance and Allied Services (Childs 31).

Inasmuch as Sword of Honour was written a few years after the sweeping victory of the

Labour party in 1945 and the introduction of the Welfare State, it naturally reflects

Waugh‟s prejudice against what he considered a disastrous revolution, represented by such persons as Aneurin Bevan, a former Welsh miner, the Minister of Health in Attlees

Cabinet, “a man of great natural brilliance and courage” (Childs 22). Consequently, in the overall post-war atmosphere, when even writers, like Alan Sillitoe, concerned themselves with problems of the working class, Waugh‟s writings and opinions, despite his unquestionable talent, were considered unbearably snobbish by many readers and reviewers (Calder xviii).

Apart from Evelyn Waugh‟s personal peculiarities, there seem to be several reasons for his fervent anti-socialist rhetoric. To begin with, he regarded the Labour‟s social reform a disruption of the eternal, Gog-given order, as evident from his

“Conservative Manifesto”, in which he openly declares to believe that “inequalities of wealth and position are inevitable and that it is therefore meaningless to discuss the advantages of their elimination” (161). Secondly, like many others in his generation, he was not able to see the great difference between the democratic Labour party and the totalitarian communist system which gained control over several European states thanks to the successes of the Red Army. Although he certainly did not fail to recognize Attlee from Stalin, he held an ultra-conservative opinion of the Welfare State as a unfair system in which “enrichment is enjoyed by only a part of the nation; the largest, but … the least interesting” (“I See Nothing But Boredom…” 538); the part which he calls

“the public man, the common man, the State, the spirit of the age – the many headed,

37 many named monster” (“The Private Man” 581). Finally, together with Winston

Churchill, Waugh considered a classless system “certainly un-British”, threatening

British national character and freedom (Sked 20).

All of the above mentioned reasons are represented by several characters that play significant roles in the last part of the trilogy. Sir Ralph Brompton, despite his origin, holds thoroughly leftist opinions with which he has indoctrinated the British

Army, “preaching subservience to Russia and intriguing for the ousting of

Mihailovitch” (Greene). Standing for all that Waugh disdains, this influential plotter may be found wherever the “dismemberment of Christendom” is discussed (SH 571).

Symptomatically, Brompton is the „spiritual father‟ of Ludovic, one of the two main characters “symbolizing the proletarian takeover of the world” (Johnson); paradoxically, it is Brompton that initiates Guy‟s mission in Yugoslavia, unconsciously participating in the divine purpose. The war has also raised Everard Spruce, so far an average socialist writer, to unrivalled eminence (SH 474); ironically, it is Spruce who has, under the government‟s protection, founded a widely admired magazine devoted to

“survival of values” (474). Captain Gilpin, whom Waugh meets in Yugoslavia,

“epitomizes the official British mood of joyous self-delusion” (Sykes 428); deliberately dissociating himself from the traditions of the army represented by the Halberdiers

(SH 583), Gilpin is so obsessed with the partisans that he totally disregards the fate of the Jews as well as Guy‟s noble mission. Besides these characters, there are several other masterfully portrayed minor figures organically fitting into Waugh‟s concept of the onset of the common man.

The most outstanding and colourfully portrayed character epitomizing the transformation of commonness to glory is, without doubt, Trimmer, a man of plentiful disguises and languages. Characteristically, nobody can ever be certain of the true name

38 of this essentially comic figure. Changing from Gustave to Trimmer or McTavish, wearing a kilt or even false major crowns, trying to adopt a French accent and boasting about his military eminence, he is, nevertheless, a person “marked for ignominy” in

Guy‟s eyes (SH 36), betrayed by his Cockney or Great West Road accent (35, 260).

However, as Ian Kilbannock observes, in the People‟s War the public is not interested in “hopelessly upper-class” units; instead, they “want heroes of the People, to or for the

People, by, with and from the People” (309), convinced that “the army is losing its best potential leaders through snobbery” (358). It is again Waugh‟s scathing sarcasm that probably at the same time when Guy undergoes his plight on Crete, losing his chivalrous ideals for good, Trimmer “lights such a candle by God‟s grace in England as

. . . shall never be put out” (354). While true heroes fall victims to the military inaptitude, Trimmer is not only used to boost civilian morale and production (309, 413), but he even “gives the monarch the idea for the Sword of Stalingrad” (478). Although

Trimmer finally disappears in the United States, where he is considered a typical British soldier owing to the Americans‟ lack of class distinction, he intrudes directly into Guy‟s life by begetting the heir of Broome, thus completing the destruction of the British aristocracy.

In the Preface to Sword of Honour, Waugh calls Brideshead Revisited¸ his best known novel, written during the Second World War, “an obituary of the doomed

English upper class”, which characteristic may also be applied to the trilogy, and to its final part in particular. The crowds venerating the Sword of Stalingrad and celebrating man-made heroes like Trimmer, British politicians changing their alliances, the once mightiest army in the world engulfed by bureaucracy and opportunism, the overall loss of national pride, and, last but not least, the decent life and humble passing of old

Mr. Crouchback – all that organically fits in Evelyn Waugh‟s concept of the Second

39 World War as a period of definite disappearance of the old hierarchical society governed by true gentlemen. Although his uncritical nostalgia and contempt of anything modern or lower-class is definitely indefensible and sometimes even ridiculous and snobbish, his appeal to true values and repugnance to political compromise is what makes his message so impressive.

40 5 A Single Unselfish Act

Besides the resolute disapproval of the social changes initiated during the

Second World War, Unconditional Surrender develops another core topic: the concept of personal „predestination‟ for specific assignments which are given to the individual by the „Providence‟ and cannot be completed by anyone else. After months of disillusion, Guy eventually finds consolation in his deceased father‟s way of seeing things sub specie aeternitatis, rejecting worldly „quantitative judgements‟. Adopting

Trimmer‟s son as an heir to Broome or committing himself to the rescue of wretched

Yugoslavian Jews are Guy‟s single acts of mercy to which he has been called, however trivial or even foolish they may seem to the outsiders. In this, the unique character of

Gervase Crouchback, in fact, the only righteous person in the corrupted world, stands out as a personification of Waugh‟s religious ideals. The stress on mercy and compassion, unique within the context of Waugh‟s entire work, is another striking feature of the last part of the trilogy and a culmination of the story in which the author depicts the destiny of a few individuals standing at the crossroads of history.

As far as Christianity is concerned, it is surprisingly not Guy himself yet his father who represents “positive moral values” (Sykes 425). Although Guy performs his religious duties faithfully, “no attempt is made to excite the reader‟s admiration for

Guy‟s fidelity to the faith of his fathers”; in fact, “the religious interest is centred not on

Guy but on his father” (416). Apparently, whereas Guy reflects Waugh himself with all his doubts and uncertainties, Gervase Crouchback is obviously Waugh‟s ideal of a genuine Catholic aristocrat, “a man of regular habit and settled opinion” to whom

“doubt is a stranger” (SH 232). Albeit he “was born in full sunlight and lived to see night fall”, he is fortified by a memory which keeps only the good things and rejects the ill (25). By rendering Mr. Crouchback‟s blissful unawareness of the plot against him in

41 the Marine Hotel (231) or his admiration of Trimmer‟s „heroism‟ (356), Waugh clearly demonstrates certain naivety in this impeccable character; nevertheless, he also endows him with remarkable ability to endure suffering and adversity. Paradoxically, it is not until his father‟s funeral that Guy fully appreciates his simple, yet forceful philosophy.

In one of the most touching scenes of the novel, “completely characteristic of late

Waugh, presenting his myth of the Catholic house and the Catholic gentleman, simple, honourable, embarking on his journey through the transit camp of Purgatory” (Kermode xxvi), Guy, engulfed by his sense of emptiness, suddenly realizes that “enthusiasm and activity are not enough” for God “commands all men to ask”. Accordingly,

“somewhere, somehow, something will be required of him” and it is the attention to the summons that matters in his life (SH 500). From that moment on, Guy begins to identify with his father‟s Christianity.

As far as Christianity is concerned, however, it is necessary to realize that

Mr. Crouchback, apart from being a representative of vanishing aristocratic values, is primarily a bearer of traditional Catholic faith which was also dwindling at the time when Waugh was writing the trilogy. In the Preface to the revised Sword of Honour

(1965), Waugh realizes “that he has done something quite outside his original intention.

He has written an obituary of the Roman Catholic Church in England as it has existed for many centuries”. In the post-war years, Waugh zealously opposed all “modernists who wished to give the Church the character of our own deplorable epoch” (Waugh,

“The Same Again . . .” 606). Particularly, Waugh never came to terms with the conclusions of the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965) which redefined some essential doctrines of the Roman Catholic Church. Symptomatically, the original concept of the

Church as a „Monarchy‟ was replaced by a more „democratic‟ notion of the „People of

God‟ (Hastings 527)., which Waugh considered a “superficial revolution”, a conflict

42 between “catholicism with a small c and Catholicism with a large C, inclusivism and exclusivism” (Hastings 488). Particularly, Waugh regretted liturgical changes which involved the replacement of the Mass Latin by the local vernacular. According to him,

“the traditions for which English Catholics have suffered persecution were swept away”

(Calder xviii). Thus the horrible modern age in progress managed that which has been unimaginable for centuries – to penetrate even into the seemingly impregnable Church, sweeping away a Catholic family with its long unbroken line of saints and devotees.

According to Gallagher, nevertheless, there is one specific feature in which

Waugh differs from most of the Catholics of his time; namely, the “emphasis on fulfilling a particular task . . . which only we can do and for which we were each created” (297). At his father‟s funeral, Guy is saved from his apathy by realizing that

“even he must have his function in the divine plan” (SH 500); instead of expecting a heroic destiny, however, Guy now starts to appreciate the significance of small, apparently unimportant acts hardly recognized by others, yet totally indispensible in this divine plan. Contrary to the conviction of many of his co-believers as well as politicians and social reformers of various kinds, “Waugh contends that a religious solution to the human situation has to be personal, never society-wide or national” (Meckier 407). For this reason Guy decides to remarry Virginia and adopt her illegitimate child to the dismay of Kerstie Kilbannock (580) and many others; for this reason he becomes involved, not unlike Moses himself, in the case of wretched Jews about whom no one else, including the Zionists, seems to be concerned (617). However similar Guy‟s fantasies about “the Red Sea drawing asunder” (657) may appear to his original Roger- of-Waybroke crusade ideals, they in fact mean “the end of crusade … in one frustrated act of mercy” (656), which still may count in the world of quantitative judgements.

43 The emphasis on mercy and compassion is a surprising new feature in Waugh‟s work; quite uncharacteristic of his early writings like Decline and Fall. According to

Littlewood, Waugh‟s “writings breathe no very urgent concern for „suffering humanity‟

– they may even, some of them, strike us as lacking in humanity altogether. They are in many cases light, easy to read, unmarked by sorrow” (214). Moreover, the transition from the generally light-hearted undertone of the opening chapters of Men at Arms over the complete disillusion of Officers and Gentlemen to the compassion of the last pages of Unconditional Surrender is very untypical of Waugh himself. With respect to his undeniable “tendency to cruelty” and “clever bullying” (Sykes 96, 246), it is interesting to investigate whether Waugh himself underwent any spiritual development during the thirty-five years from his conversion. From the beginning, contrary to most converts,

Waugh “never expected to change his nature” (Annan 220); peculiarly, Catholicism

“explained to him why he was evil and so often cruel and odious” (215). Even more peculiarly, although a fervent Catholic apologist, he held a basically Protestant opinion of man‟s inability to stop sinning without God‟s mercy. As such, he disregarded the concept of free will, or even the ability of mankind to create a better society by good intentions; in fact, it is Guy‟s free will and good intentions that prevent him from recognizing divine calling for personal acts of mercy.

Nevertheless, it is not only Guy‟s personal acts of mercy, like his adoption of

Trimmer‟s child, but also Waugh‟s depiction of some characters which reveal the above mentioned streak of compassion. Even generally negative figures, like Hound or

Ludovic, are portrayed with surprising sympathy and psychological insight.

Particularly, the character of Guy‟s ex-wife Virginia is remarkable with respect to

Waugh‟s uncompromising Catholicism. From a strictly Catholic point of view, this

“fatal woman who has brought about the fall of the house of Crouchback” (SH 561) is a

44 sinner; at the same time, however, Waugh endowed her with apparent charm and loveliness. Symptomatically, it is the worldly-minded Kerstie Kilbannock, presumably

Virginia‟s friend, a pragmatic woman of quantitative judgements, who totally disregards

Guy‟s chivalrous act (580). Whether she is right or not, whether Virginia deserves

Guy‟s mercy or not, whether her repentance is genuine or she is merely pretending, whether there was a special providence in her death (627) or not, is not vital for Guy, just as it is not substantial for him whether the alliance with Tito is advantageous to the defeat of fascism or not. From now on, it is “cases where he can help” that matter, doing something “beyond the call of duty”, even though it will probably be laughed about at

Bellamy‟s (580). In this, Virginia is primarily regarded by Waugh not as a sinner who must repent, but as a human being in distress who should be helped irrespective of the outcome.

In contradiction to the idealistic crusader of the first chapters of Sword of

Honour, Guy has now adopted his father‟s spirituality which “excludes success as a criterion of value: it is concerned only with the quality of acts” (York). By now he has got rid of the illusion “that one attains a kind of salvation through immersion in larger causes” (Meckier 406), although Arthur Box-Bender considers his act “a middle-aged aberration” (SH 611). Under his father‟s influence, Guy has learned that charity is a more important virtue than honour or even ambition. Significantly, it is again the pragmatic Box-Bender who disputes about the deservedness of some pensions

„credulously‟ paid out by Gervase Crouchback, while his wife Angela is certain of her and Guy‟s continuing them (506). Like many times in the family history, the

Crouchbacks‟ Catholicism clearly stands out contra mundum again; instead of proclaiming hardshell dogmas, however, “beneath huge light and immense air,

Catholicism permits Waugh to erect, as it were, a marquee where his characters can be

45 dispensed forgiveness” (Calder xxii) because “imperfect people should forgive the imperfections of others”. Moreover, sub specie aeternitatis, “imperfect good deeds are better than no good deeds and failed crusading aspirations and noble delusions are better than clearsighted, successful opportunism” (xxviii). From this point of view, even

Guy‟s Quixotic quest was by far not in vain.

The spirituality focused on compassion and individual good deeds also clearly provides refuge from the universal „death wish‟ which permeates the individuals as well as the European civilization as a whole. When Guy confesses to his wish to die, the priest does not regard it as anything serious because “it is quite usual today” (SH 597).

McCartney mentions that Waugh himself during his assignment in Yugoslavia, “to

Randolph Churchill‟s angry dismay, defiantly disdained shelter and walked about in the open while bombing raids were in progress” (149). According to Carpenter, the „death wish‟ characterizes rather the Waugh at the time when he wrote Unconditional

Surrender, suffering from the effects of five years of profound boredom” (458). Yet the death wish of the last part of the trilogy is primarily a general characteristic of the entire

Western civilization engaged in the World War. In one of the crucial scenes of the trilogy, Mme Kanyi challenges the traditional concept of a „just war‟ by asking,

Is there any place that is free from evil? It is too simple to say that only

the Nazis wanted war. These communists wanted it too. It was the only

way in which they could come to power. Many of my people wanted it,

to be revenged on the Germans, to hasten the creation of the national

state. It seems to me that there was a will to war, a death wish,

everywhere. Even good men thought their private honour would be

satisfied by war. (655)

46 It is only now that Guy realizes that he also participates in the “universal burden of guilt for the horrors of World War II” (Lane) because honour in the „quantitative‟ sense is often identical with revenge, violence and insensitivity to human suffering.

Nevertheless, Guy‟s discovery of priority of charity over honour does by far not imply a happy ending of any kind; on the contrary, Guy is clearly faced with the bitter awareness of the ambiguity of many good intentions. The new clothes arouse jealousy of the Jews so that Mme Kanyi can only wear them at night in the hut (653-4). Although the Red Sea has opened miraculously, the escaping Jews are in reality not wanted anywhere (657). The most devastating experience for Guy is the discovery that he caused the tragic fate of the Kanyis by simply presenting them with American magazines. Even Guy‟s post-war marriage is an interesting example of Waugh‟s resentment toward any clear-cut happy ending. Originally, Guy and his second wife

Domenica had two children of their own (US 240), which some readers considered a conventional happy ending, quite against Waugh‟s intentions. Ironically, the birth of the two children should have accentuated the triumph of Trimmer‟s son who was to inherit

Guy‟s ancestral estates. Upon realizing that many people share Box-Bender‟s view of the good turn, however, Waugh „deprived‟ Guy of the two children in the revised Sword of Honour (663). The last pages of the trilogy, therefore, clearly reveal both sides of

Waugh‟s work – Catholic apologetics offering spiritual solution to the problems of the world, as well as the bitter irony of the early Waugh disrupting any definite meaning of human endeavour in the world.

Although Evelyn Waugh, in response to the changes in the Church culminating in the Second Vatican Council, called Sword of Honour an obituary of the Roman

Catholic Church in England, it is not until its last part, Unconditional Surrender, that religion has any profound influence on the protagonist, Guy Crouchback. Or rather, it is

47 not until Mr. Crouchback‟s death that Guy replaces his formalistic adherence to religious rituals by genuine spirituality consisting in compassion and concern for others.

Admittedly, it may be argued that for Guy the notion of good deeds prepared for him by the Providence is a mere refuge from the total futility and disillusionment; the ambiguous outcome of Guy‟s charitable activities really infers a vain human effort rather than supernatural mission. At the same time, however, it is this apparent vanity and weakness of Guy‟s endeavour which carries a clear message that true humanity must not be measured by quantitative judgements of success and recognition.

48 Conclusion

Although Sword of Honour is often called a war novel and its plot is, on the outside at least, primarily concerned with life in the army, there is surprisingly little description of actual fighting or bravery in battle. Waugh‟s treatment of soldiering is

“consistently ironic and antiheroic . . . not just as a stylistic procedure, but as part of a complex reflection on what heroism is or can be” (York). The enemy is rarely seen, in fact almost invisible; most of the main characters‟ injuries are sustained during training or by accident; deaths are sometimes ridiculous; in general, “seemingly gigantic events or profound historical moments collapse into small-scale farce” (Trout). Mock military actions are produced to satisfy the general public or American generals; quasi-heroes are celebrated, while the overall war conflict breaks down into petty disputes over thunder-boxes, lodgings or meals. Everything seems to be engulfed by total chaos, incompetence and expediency. “Martial glory dies not in the trenches but in the office”

(Trout), for it is primarily the traditional institutions that have collapsed and betrayed high principles of conduct. Moreover, it is also the „common man‟ who replaced true heroes by newspaper celebrities or communist dictators. As York observes, “the inability of modern society to provide a context for real heroism is certainly a major theme of the trilogy”.

Nevertheless, however petty and negligible the dispute over Mr. Crouchback‟s lodgings may seem in the context of the entire novel or even the Second World War in general, it plays a crucial role in Waugh‟s concept of the war as a decisive period in which the dilapidating British aristocracy is overwhelmed by the „common man‟ supported by government officials. Significantly, the „noble-common‟ binary opposition is almost identical with others, like „virtuous-wicked‟, „brave-cowardly‟, „conservative- socialist‟, or „religious-godless‟. In that, the crowds celebrating the Sword of Stalingrad

49 in Westminster Abbey foreshadow the post-war Welfare State, with which Waugh never came to terms. In addition, it is people like Ralph Brompton that, according to the author, have betrayed their class and contaminated both the army and the society with

„un-British‟, potentially dangerous ideas. With the noble exception of the Halberdiers, the only unit which has kept its integrity, the whole army is permeated by political and moral opportunists like Ludovic, Gilpin or even Frank de Souza. Although Waugh‟s bipolar vision of the world and his contempt for the Welfare State is undoubtedly prejudiced, his emphasis on the importance of well-established values as opposed to short-term popular affections seems to be almost prophetic.

As far as the protagonist is concerned, Guy Crouchback apparently follows on the series of Waugh‟s earlier passive heroes; in the course of the trilogy, however, he acquires distinctive new features. For most of his military career, Guy seems to be just a disillusioned romantic enduring vicissitudes which he cannot influence: he is innocently expelled from the Halberdiers; unintentionally poisons his friend; is only able to win back his wife by accepting her illegitimate child; helps distressed Jewish refugees only to cause other trouble to them; puts two of them to death by an act of mercy; and is not able to deliver a dead soldier‟s identity disk to the right place. Even his Catholic faith does not relieve Guy from the overall sense of futility. Nevertheless, despite the evident irony with which Waugh treats his romantic and naïve hero, the “irony is directed against his innocence, not against the ideals with which he associates himself”

(Littlewood 80). Unlike the “antiheroes and victims of Waugh‟s earlier novels”, Guy

Crouchback, particularly after accepting his father‟s opinions, also “helps to establish values. Inarticulate, frequently foolish, an easy dupe of illusion, limited by his social bias . . ., Guy Crouchback is, still, a man of honour and courage” (Carens 158).

50 In contrast to all of the pragmatists and opportunists around him, Guy has been able to learn from his mistakes and adopt lucid moral values.

Having disposed of his original „quantitative‟ ideas of saving the world or at least his endangered Kingdom, Guy is able to accept his father‟s emphasis on the salvation of individuals by focusing on the quality of human deeds irrespective of their superficial impression. And it is, paradoxically, a Jewish woman who helps him to give a negative answer to the question whether a war can contribute to personal honour

(York). Having learnt “not to engage the world beyond a certain point” (Meckier 407),

Guy is now ready to accept even potential ridicule at Bellamy‟s for the sake of fulfilling his personal task. In contradiction to the prevalent post-war opinion, Waugh rejects nationwide remedial measures in favour of highly individualized sense of responsibility towards particular persons in distress. In this respect, Waugh‟s depiction of the end of the war and Guy‟s return to England is surprisingly unenthusiastic, resembling a compromise rather than a victory; in reality, the foreboding of the „modern age in progress‟ against which Guy set out to fight six years ago has even intensified.

Significantly, the trilogy ends in 1951, at the beginning “of a happier decade” (SH 660), when monstrous constructions on the South bank of the Thames appear to host a festival in commemoration of the Great Exhibition of 1851, bearing, paradoxically, further evidence of Britain‟s decline (Calder, “Notes” 695). At the same time, however, Guy lives a relatively content life, knowing that “identity cannot be defined by what one acquires, but rather by living a vocation that requires self-sacrifice” (Logan).

The above mentioned concept of „providential‟ vocation, however, does by far not imply any unequivocal solution to the individual‟s problems. Just as Waugh‟s own faith did not relieve him from doubts and suffering, ambiguousness is an indispensable element in all of Guy‟s deeds and decisions. Despite his „messianic‟ exaltation, it

51 remains uncertain whether he has really been instrumental in the rescue of the

Yugoslavian Jews. If Waugh had not let Virginia be killed „mercifully‟ (and preventively) at the right moment, her adherence to Guy and her new religion would have been quite precarious. Indeed, in Waugh‟s world “innocents suffer as bad people scheme, bullets and bombs fall on good and bad indifferently” (Calder xxvii).

Admittedly, Waugh‟s insistence on individual vocation may to some degree be just a resignation from responsibility for public affairs. Bertrand Russell concisely observes that Waugh “thought of civilized and morally tolerable human life as a dangerous walk on a thin crust of barely cooled lava which at any moment might break and let the unwary sink into fiery depths” (qtd. in Littlewood 214). Consequently, one cannot regard Guy‟s second marriage (whether childless or not) as a purposefully happy or unhappy ending. In this respect, Sword of Honour is open-ended, since the future depends on the choices made by individuals, “who have the freedom to save themselves or perish” (Wilson), which undoubtedly applies to individuals and nations alike.

Symptomatically, when Evelyn Waugh died in 1966, “many newspapers and magazines concentrated in their obituaries on his personal outrageousness, rather than his achievement as a writer” (468). As evidenced by numerous books, essays and reviews of his work, Waugh‟s eccentric personality will probably never cease to provoke discussion on his snobbery, bigotry and intolerance, sometimes to the detriment of objective appreciation of the qualities of his work. Sword of Honour, as his final achievement, apparently declares his conviction of the imminent death of everything meaningful – the British Empire, the English aristocracy, Western civilization, the

English language itself, and even the Catholic Church of his youth (Carens 136).

Explicitly concerned with the events of the Second World War, the trilogy implicitly predicts the post-war development in Britain. In this respect, not being a history book

52 (which can hardly be totally unbiased either), Sword of Honour presents subjective opinions of the author, based mostly on his own experiences, on the turning period in the British history. Remarkably, the trilogy features a unique mixture of conservative desire for order and romantic defiance toward established institutions. It is probably the impressive combination of “a hopeless rearguard action fought against the inevitable process of social evolution” (Littlewood 79) and inherent human craving for safety and stability as well as the undiminished satirical qualities and easily readable style that make Waugh‟s works in general so effective. Sword of Honour, however, completes his life work with a new, striking feature appealing to religious and unreligious persons of all social classes alike – appreciation of mercy and compassion as essential civilizing virtues.

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58 Résumé

This thesis deals with the Sword of Honour (1965) novel by the British writer

Evelyn Waugh (1903-1966), originally published as a trilogy in three separate volumes,

Men at Arms (1952), Officers and Gentlemen (1955), and Unconditional Surrender

(1961). In accordance with his highly conservative social, political and religious views,

Waugh depicts the Second World War as a turning point in which the British society definitely abandoned the traditional values of gentlemanhood and honour in favour of the forthcoming „age of the common man‟. Guy Crouchback, the descendent of an ancient yet dilapidating aristocratic family, whose war adventures partly reflect those of the author himself, epitomizes not only the decline of the British aristocracy, but also a typical disillusioned hero striving to find his position in the rapidly changing society.

The thesis is divided into five chapters. Chapter one contextualizes Evelyn

Waugh‟s life and work within the generation of authors affected by T. S. Eliot‟s The

Waste Land. Chapter two, mainly concerned with Men at Arms, follows Guy

Crouchback‟s transformation from a naïve Quixotic warrior into a disillusioned officer dismissed by his beloved unit. Chapter three, focused on Officers and Gentlemen, demonstrates how, according to Waugh, the old concept of honour and bravery was superseded by increasingly bureaucratic and opportunistic warfare. Chapter four inquires into the ways in which Guy‟s experiences in Unconditional Surrender reflect not only Waugh‟s fear of the expanding communist regimes represented by Stalin or

Tito, but also his repugnance to the increasingly leftist tendencies within the British society embodied in the post-war Welfare State. Chapter five, on the background of

Waugh‟s own religious development, examines the unique process of Guy‟s conversion from „quantitative judgments‟ to personal mission and compassion as a defining concept of an individual life.

59 Resumé

Tato práce se zabývá románem britského spisovatele Evelyna Waugha Meč cti

(Sword of Honour, 1965), který byl původně vydán jako trilogie tvořená samostatnými díly Muži ve zbrani (Men at Arms, 1952), Důstojníci a gentlemani (Officers and

Gentlemen, 1955) a Bezpodmínečná kapitulace (Unconditional Surrender, 1961).

V souladu se svými konzervativními názory na společnost, politiku a náboženství zobrazuje Waugh druhou světovou válku jako rozhodující moment, ve kterém se britská společnost zřekla tradičních hodnot, jako jsou urozenost a čest, ve prospěch nastupujícího „věku obyčejného člověka“. Hlavní hrdina románu, Guy Crouchback, potomek starobylého, avšak vymírajícího šlechtického rodu, jehož vojenská dobrodružství částečně odrážejí vlastní zkušenosti autora, ztělesňuje nejen představitele upadající britské šlechty, nýbrž i typického rozčarovaného hrdinu, který se snaží najít své místo v rychle se měnící společnosti.

Práce je rozdělena do pěti kapitol. První kapitola uvádí Waughův život a dílo do kontextu celé generace autorů ovlivněných Zpustlou zemí T. S. Eliota. Druhá kapitola, zabývající se převážně Muži ve zbrani, sleduje proměnu Guye Crouchbacka z naivního válečníka „donquijotského“ typu ve zklamaného důstojníka vyloučeného z jednotky, kterou miloval. Třetí kapitola, zaměřená na Důstojníky a gentlemany, ukazuje, jak byly podle Evelyna Waugha osvědčené pojmy jako čest a statečnost nahrazeny byrokratickým a oportunistickým způsobem vedení války. Čtvrtá kapitola zkoumá, jak

Guyovy zkušenosti v Bezpodmínečné kapitulaci odrážejí nejen Waughovy obavy z nastupujících komunistických režimů představovaných vůdci jako Stalin nebo Tito, nýbrž také jeho odpor k rostoucím levicovým tendencím v britské společnosti ztělesněným poválečným „sociálním státem“. Pátá kapitola se na pozadí Waughova osobního náboženského vývoje zabývá jedinečným procesem konverze Guye

60 Crouchbacka od „kvantitativních soudů“ k osobnímu poslání a soucitu jako pojmům vymezujícím smysl lidského života.

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