EVELYN WAUGH NEWSLETTER AND STUDIES Volume 34

EVELYN WAUGH NEWSLETTER AND STUDIES Volume 34, Number 1 Spring 2003

Evelyn Waugh Centenary Conference Schedule

Monday, 22 September 2003 9:30 a.m. Arrival at Castle Howard, Yorkshire 10:00-11:15 a.m. Private tour of Castle Howard 11:15-12:30 p.m. Free time 12:30-1:30 p.m. Luncheon 2:00-3:15 p.m. tour of the Grounds 3:15-4:15 p.m. Lecture on Castle Howard 4:15-5:15 p.m. Afternoon Tea

Tuesday, 23 September 2003 Travel to Hertford College, Oxford

Wednesday, 24 September 2003 9:00 a.m. Arrival and Registration 9:30 a.m. Panel: Waugh and Modernism Eulàlia Carceller Guillamet, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Chair

The Persistence of Waste Lands in Waugh’s Fiction K. J. Gilchrist, Iowa State University "I Must Have a Lot of That": Modernity, Hybridity, and Knowledge in Black Mischief Lewis MacLeod, Memorial University of Newfoundland Eliot and Waugh: Sally C. Hoople, Maine Maritime Academy "The Age of Hooper": Brideshead Revisited, Modernism, and the Welfare State Peter Kalliney, University of South Florida-St. Petersburg Against Emotion: Evelyn Waugh's Modernistic Stance Alain Blayac, University of Montpellier

12:00 noon Luncheon 2:00 p.m. Walking tour of Waugh’s Oxford (weather permitting) John Howard Wilson, Lock Haven University of Pennsylvania Patrick Denman Flanery, St Cross College, Oxford Sebastian Perry, Merton College, Oxford 4:00 p.m. Afternoon Tea 5:00 p.m. Visit to Campion Hall (half of group) 6:30 p.m. Dinner 8:00 p.m. Panel: Waugh on Film (NTSC VCR) Sebastian Perry, Merton College, Oxford, Chair

“Litera Scripta Manet”: Film and the Novel of the Thirties Robert Murray Davis, University of Oklahoma Waugh, Powell, and Hollywood Lisa Colletta, Babson College Framing Chaos: Evelyn Waugh's Cinematic Imagination George McCartney, St. John's University

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Englishness or Merely Nostalgia? The Uses of History in Brideshead Revisited and The Remains of the Day Monika Fludernik, University of Freiburg

Thursday, 25 September 2003 8:00 a.m. Breakfast 9:00 a.m. Waugh's --Waffle Scramble Ann Pasternak Slater, St Anne's College, Oxford 10:00 a.m. Panel: Brideshead Revisited Mark S. Dittman, University of St. Thomas, Chair

Homosexuality in Brideshead Revisited Peter G. Christensen, Cardinal Stritch University Saint Sebastian at Brideshead: Spirituality and Sexuality in Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited Susanna Itäkare, University of Helsinki Anthony Blanche meets Boy Mulcaster–et in pansy ball ego: Male Representations in Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited Livia Hekanaho, University of Helsinki The BBC Brideshead, 1956 Patrick Denman Flanery, St Cross College, Oxford

12:00 noon Luncheon 1:00 p.m. Panel: Waugh and Religion Peter G. Christensen, Cardinal Stritch University, Chair

La Fontana di Futilità: Fountain of Futility Mark S. Dittman, University of St Thomas Brideshead Revisited and the Liturgy of Exile Chip Long, Portland State University Power in Waugh's Edmund Campion and Irina Kabanova, Saratov State University Waugh’s History of Anachronism: The Timelessness of the Secular in Helena Marcel Decoste, University of Regina "A Later Development": Evelyn Waugh and Conversion John Mahon, Iona College

4:00 p.m. Afternoon Tea 5:00 p.m. Visit to Campion Hall (half of group) 6:30 p.m. Dinner 8:00 p.m. Panel: Waugh and the Second World War Marcel Decoste, University of Regina, Chair

Guy Crouchback’s Disillusion: The Crete Diaries, Justice and the Russian Alliance Donat Gallagher, James Cook University Pulped Fiction: Waugh and the Wartime Novel Sebastian Perry, Merton College, Oxford Apthorpe Manipulatus: Perspective and Doubles in Men at Arms Carlos Villar Flor, University of La Rioja "The Supernatural is Real": Fiction, Myth, and Truth in Lewis MacLeod, Memorial University of Newfoundland

Friday, 26 September 2003

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8:00 a.m. Breakfast 9:00 a.m. Depart Hertford College for Madresfield Court, Malvern, Worcs. 11:00 a.m. Arrive at Madresfield Court 1:00 p.m. Depart Madresfield Court 3:00 p.m. Arrive at Piers Court, Glos. 5:00 p.m. Depart Piers Court 7:00 p.m. Arrive at Hertford College 8:00 p.m. Gala Dinner with

Saturday, 27 September 2003 8:00 a.m. Breakfast 9:00 a.m. Panel: Waugh's Travels K. J. Gilchrist, Iowa State University, Chair

More Goood Men than Bad: Waugh in Abyssinia Dan S. Kostopulos, Arkansas School for Mathematics and Sciences The Mediterranean in the Writings of Evelyn Waugh Eulàlia Carceller Guillamet, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona Waugh in Russia Irina Kabanova, Saratov State University Eyes Reopened: Evelyn Waugh’s Dan S. Kostopulos, Arkansas School for Mathematics and Sciences

11:15 a.m. Evelyn Waugh, Book Collector Richard W. Oram, University of Texas at Austin 12:00 noon Luncheon (outside the college) 2:00 p.m. Evelyn Waugh and Anthony Powell: A Literary Friendship Christine Berberich, University of Derby 2:30 p.m. Clubs of Waugh Hubert Picarda 3:00 p.m. How Dare He!? Michael Johnston 4:00 p.m. General Discussion: The Future of Evelyn Waugh 6:00 p.m. Depart for Spread Eagle Hotel, Thame 7:00 p.m. Dinner at Spread Eagle 9:00 p.m. Return to Hertford College

Conference ends. Breakfast is available on Sunday morning.

The Anglo-American Impasse: "Never the Twain Shall Meet" by N. N. Newaliya

Evelyn Waugh’s first visit to the United States, in 1938, had been a very brief one. He had visited the country while going to Mexico and also before returning home. He did not maintain any diary during this period and, therefore, we know very little about his impressions of America or the Americans at that time. Waugh’s second visit to the States in early 1947, however, was his first sustained visit to that country and he had the opportunity to observe things from close quarters. This journey was purely in the nature of a business trip to discuss with MGM the details about filming Brideshead Revisited. This novel, published in 1945, had captured the imagination of the American public, had been named Book-of-the-Month "and sold 600,000 copies" (Philip Stratford, “Evelyn Waugh and ‘,’” Encounter Sept. 1978: 46). The negotiations failed to yield any file:////uol.le.ac.uk/...c144/My%20Documents/Evelyn%20Waugh/Evelyn%20Waugh%20Studies/Newsletters/Newsletters/Newsletter_34.1.htm[04/12/2013 14:45:03] EVELYN WAUGH NEWSLETTER AND STUDIES Volume 34

result – Waugh had been offered $150,000 for the film rights – as the script-writers viewed the novel “purely as a love story” (Diaries of Evelyn Waugh, 673) and wanted some changes to be made. Waugh feared that they “would make a hideous vulgarization of his most ambitious work” (Christopher Sykes, Evelyn Waugh: A Biography, 404). He was well aware of the Hollywood producers’ “complete inability to follow a plain story” (Essays, Articles and Reviews of Evelyn Waugh, 328), and how many well-known books had been “sterilized” (Essays 329) by them. To his great shock and amazement, Waugh found that “none of the top studio brass had ever read the book” (“A Knife in the Jocular Vein,” review of The Loved One, Time 12 July 1948: 86). They had decided to film the book simply because they had heard a lot about it. (One is reminded of a famous joke which neatly illustrates the situation. There was this Hollywood producer who had heard a great deal about William Shakespeare. He asked his assistant to get hold of Shakespeare for their next film. When informed that Shakespeare was dead, the producer remarked, “Why, no one told me the poor fellow was so seriously ill!”) The trip, however, as is well-known, was not an utter failure as it resulted in the writing of The Loved One. Waugh has mentioned five ideas that were in his mind when he wrote the novel (Sykes, Evelyn Waugh, 417), one of them being “The Anglo-American impasse – ‘never the twain shall meet’”. While discussing this standpoint of Waugh, it may be interesting, first, to know about Waugh’s views on America and the Americans in general. Waugh, it appears, had some sort of a love-hate relationship with America and things American. He gleefully pocketed the American dollars that his books earned for him in the American market, and also felt immensely contented with the large readership that he had in the States. And yet, surprisingly, he never acknowledged his gratitude to the American public for these favours. On the contrary, he never hesitated in making disparaging remarks about the Americans, their low intellect and even lower morals. Interestingly, Waugh’s father, as managing director of the publishing firm of Chapman and Hall, was equally ill-disposed towards the Americans. Waugh has described how his father regarded one of his firm’s "most profitable connections," with an American publishing company, "as something almost shady … [Their visits] were strictly confined to an exchange of politeness … and a swift relegation to the hands of a young … subordinate… [He never invited them home though they] had come 3,000 miles to bring him business" (Evelyn Waugh, ,75). Waugh, of course, went far ahead in his prejudices and “took savage pleasure in annoying the Americans – ‘Erle Stanley Gardner,’ he announced sweetly to one visitor, ‘is the finest living American author’” (“The Beauty of His Malice,” Time 22 April 1966: 55). Deep in his heart, probably, the colonial hang-over still lay buried but surfaced once in a while. What was most galling to him was the increasing “dependence of Britain upon the United States” (Dixon Wecter, “On Dying in Southern California,” Pacific Spectator 2.4 (1948) : 377), and the manner in which the British were getting vitiated by the lure of big money that could be had there. The flocking to Hollywood, in particular, of literary Britons for writing film-scripts was something which he viewed with alarm. Waugh considered Americans “ a pretty rum lot … regicides, dissenters, tradesmen, individualists, vulgarians who had renounced authority for willfulness, culture for anarchy” (Wecter 379). It is not surprising that Pimpernell and Parsnip, two despicable, phony English poets, mentioned in three of Waugh’s works, namely Put Out More Flags, Love Among the Ruins, and Basil Seal Rides Again, are described as having escaped to America soon after the outbreak of the war. That Waugh had rather a poor opinion of the Americans is further illustrated by a story narrated by Christopher Sykes. At a dinner party, Waugh was accosted by an American lady who told him that she considered Brideshead Revisited one of the best books ever read by her. Waugh’s reply: “I thought it was good myself, but now that I know that a vulgar, common American woman like yourself admires it, I am not so sure” (Evelyn Waugh 387). In Waugh’s opinion, thus, there was a clear divide between the two peoples separated by the Atlantic. Particularly after the Second World War the equation had drastically changed and the balance now clearly tilted in favor of the Yankees. Waugh had journeyed to the States traveling first class in the ship America. He could afford it as MGM were paying for it. He, however, notes in his diary: “The only English on board … are travelling second class, a sign of the file:////uol.le.ac.uk/...c144/My%20Documents/Evelyn%20Waugh/Evelyn%20Waugh%20Studies/Newsletters/Newsletters/Newsletter_34.1.htm[04/12/2013 14:45:03] EVELYN WAUGH NEWSLETTER AND STUDIES Volume 34

times. There was also a curious proletarian colony of GI brides – trousers, babies, cockney accents – travelling first class, another sign of the times” (Diaries 669). The references made to the Americans in his novels are also not very flattering. They are generally shown as lacking taste, lax in morals, stupid, and irritating. For example, when Paul Pennyfeather, in , ventures the opinion that the next war will be against the Americans, Lord Circumference says, “No, indeed, I hope not. We had German prisoners on two of the farms. That wasn’t so bad, but if they start putting Americans on my land, I’ll just refuse to stand it” (Decline and Fall 68). That there is a distinctive difference between American and the English standards is made obvious during the conversation that Charles Ryder’s father has with one Jorkins, mistaking him to be an American (Brideshead Revisited 68). In the same novel, an American woman, sitting bare-shouldered at a coffee house in Venice, is described as being driven away by the Venetian crowd as a show of their “moral disapproval” (96). The whole drama in Scoop starts because John Boot, the novelist, wants to get away from his American girlfriend, who had already “driven three men into the bin” (10) and was driving him also crazy. The Loved One, of course, takes the whole thing to an abysmal depth by adding a new dimension to the American psyche, with Whispering Glades and Happier Hunting Ground serving as typical manifestations of the Americans’ ludicrous absurdity. It is also worth noting, as John H Wilson has mentioned, that Waugh was not at all happy when his eldest daughter decided to marry John D’Arms, an American. For quite some time he could not come to terms with “the horror of losing his daughter to ‘a penniless American’” (Evelyn Waugh Newsletter and Studies, Vol. 33, No. 2, Autumn 2002). Isn’t it one of the most bizarre ironies that it is America and the Americans, more than anyone else, who have nurtured and kept alive scholarly interest in Waugh’s works? Waugh must be smiling impishly, tongue in cheek, of course, wherever he is, if not wagging his tails.

Nanny Hawkins and the Servant Problem by David Bittner

The character of Nanny Hawkins in Brideshead Revisited has seldom been dealt with, and I, for one, think it is high time that she be debunked. It is my belief that she belongs to the dubious tradition of ineffectual servants exemplified by Juliet Capulet's Nurse. Both women are rather effete characters, more concerned about pleasing themselves than being truly useful. The difference between the two is that Nanny's days of authority are behind her, while Juliet's Nurse continues to exert her influence. The Boots' servants in Scoop, who wait upon the family in "desultory fashion," may be a source for Nanny. That Nanny is really rather detached from the Flyte siblings is made quite clear by Waugh. He says, following Sebastian's return from his Levantine jaunt, "Nanny did not particularly like to be talked to. She liked visitors best when they paid no attention to her and let her knit away, and watch their faces and think of them as she had known them as small children; their present goings-on did not signify much beside those early illnesses and crimes." When Charles and Julia inform Nanny about their plans to marry, it does not occur to her to "question the propriety" of the match. In the PBS presentation of Brideshead Revisited, when Julia plays halma with Nanny, Sebastian says, "Dear Nanny Hawkins. She lives entirely for pleasure." It is a measure of Nanny's detachment from the real activities of the Flytes that she believes the upper classes spend most of their leisure evenings in the ballroom. Juliet's Nurse is just as inert as Nanny but shows no sign of fading into the background as she ages. Mark van Doren says of the Nurse that she takes a "prurient interest in love-business, the details of which she mumbles toothlessly, reminiscently, with the indecency of age." He adds that the Nurse's delight in reminiscence is, among other things, "lickerish." The Twayne series' book on Romeo and Juliet, by Cedric Watts, is scarcely more admiring of the Nurse. Watts says, "Her idiom, tending so often toward the vulgarly colloquial, makes clear file:////uol.le.ac.uk/...c144/My%20Documents/Evelyn%20Waugh/Evelyn%20Waugh%20Studies/Newsletters/Newsletters/Newsletter_34.1.htm[04/12/2013 14:45:03] EVELYN WAUGH NEWSLETTER AND STUDIES Volume 34

her social class. She uses credibly habitual forms of endearment to Juliet and takes a partly prurient pride in Juliet's eligibility for marriage." Watts adds that when the Nurse urges Juliet to accept Paris as her husband, "her practical cynicism becomes overt." Watts's point about the colloquial quality of the Nurse's speech has its counterpart in Waugh's description of Nanny's speech in her old age, "formerly sharpened by years of gentle conversation," but "reverted now to the soft, peasant tones of its origin." And Nanny, like the Nurse, is more concerned about herself than about making a difference in the household she serves, the way Scarlett O'Hara's Mammy and Mr. B's Hazel and Miss Daisy's Hoke all do. As Waugh writes, "the changes of the last years had come too late in [Nanny's] life to be accepted and understood." All Nanny can say in regard to the blitzed Lady Brideshead's misfortune, for instance, is "It doesn't seem right." But let's be fair. If good help is hard to find, it is probably also true, as Montaigne said, that "few men are admired of their familiars."

Reviews

Cagey Hagiography Saint Graham and Saint Evelyn, Pray For Us, by Mark Lawson. Dir. Robyn Read. BBC Radio 4. 7 March 2003. Reviewed by Sebastian Perry.

The framing device for this diverting, if ultimately unsatisfying, radio piece is a meeting of the Sacred Congregation for the Decency of Literature. Appalled by the depravity of modern fiction, the intractable Cardinal Copper informs his subordinates, Monsignors Crutwell and Hale, of the dire need to revive the Index Librorum Prohibitorum. Countering that the Index is effectively only a “study guide for adolescent boys,” the earnest Msgr Hale proposes an alternative: the canonization of a Roman Catholic writer as a positive role model for the present age. “In the middle of the twentieth century,” Hale somewhat dubiously asserts, “all the major fiction writers were Roman Catholic.” It seems that, from this pantheon of piety, he has two figures in mind as especially suitable candidates for sainthood. What follows is an imaginative reconstruction of a handful of meetings between Waugh and Greene over the course of their thirty-year friendship, punctuated by prelatical bickering over just how meritorious the two of them really were. Mark Lawson has leafed through the relevant studies--Norman Sherry and Selina Hastings are referred to by name in the programme, no doubt indicating the extent of his debt to them – and pieced together a dialogue from fragments of biographical trivia and epistolary witticisms. Aficionados are unlikely to learn anything new about either writer but there is nonetheless something to be gained from this approach. Waugh’s irascibility is almost axiomatic but merely reading about his rages does not convey what it was like to be on the receiving end. In Simon Day’s portrayal, his eruptions of ire (be it over the negligence of a waiter or the mention of Pope John XXIII) manage to be genuinely startling. Also vividly depicted is the wheezing debility of Waugh in his decline. John Sessions is a less likeable Greene, affected and oleaginous, but perhaps this is simply because Greene was the less likeable man. Occasionally Lawson’s desire to make a point turns his subjects into ventriloquist dummies. It is undoubtedly of interest to note that both Waugh and Greene were depressives and unsuccessful suicides but to have them comment on the correlation themselves with cries of “snap!” and “ditto” rings a little false. That the pair faced the world in “costumes,” “disguises” and “chosen pretences” is true enough but that they should utter such a biographer’s platitude themselves is far-fetched. The need to sustain a compelling narrative also results in one or two strange distortions. When Waugh was asked why he had suspended his usual belligerent censoriousness in having Greene and his mistress, Catherine Walston, to stay at Piers Court, he responded with the story of an early pope who would avoid spiritual pride by running through

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Rome wearing a paper hat; Walston, he explained, was Greene’s paper hat. Lawson, however, has Waugh pronounce this venomously to Walston herself, thus suggesting an animosity between them that is explicitly belied on the very page of the Hastings biography (507) from which Lawson culled the original anecdote. I have greater misgivings about the play’s conclusion. Hale (who seems to be little more than a mouthpiece for the author) has been quixotically attempting to present Waugh and Greene as “saints for the present day.” In all their “messy, sympathetic humanity,” he argues, they offer us “a model of Christian friendship and tolerance.” We only think the saints and martyrs were perfect because of the selective bias of hagiography; in reality, “all people are flawed” and their greatness resides in “how they, and we, negotiate those flaws.” Cardinal Copper is unmoved by this “liberal casuistry” and abandons the hearing. In disgust, Hale tenders his resignation from the priesthood, citing issues of faith and authority. “Here love had died between me and the Church,” he mutters on exiting. “Vanity of vanities, all is vanity.” This would have been a trite moralization in any context but to conclude a play about Evelyn Waugh in this manner takes it to new levels of fatuousness. It is an irony seemingly lost on Lawson that the obdurate orthodoxy that repels Hale from the Church is also a defining characteristic of one of the men he is seeking to beatify. The fact that Waugh would have sided with his detractors rather than his putative advocate says much about Lawson’s confused agenda. The underlying problem is his inability to decide precisely why the pair should be eulogized in the first place. If Waugh and Greene are indeed paragons of sanctity and charity for the modern age (which is hard to credit) then the fact that they were also novelists is neither here nor there. Yet it is plain that without their works they would never receive this degree of scrutiny or this kind of accolade. Aesthetic appreciation of their literary prowess has somehow been converted into moral approbation of their accomplishments as human beings. More discomfiting is the way in which their novels continue to lend credibility and allure to Catholicism, even if only by virtue of their having been written by Catholics. As Lawson put it in a newspaper article published shortly before the broadcast, “for around 40 years in the middle of the last century[,] these two novelists were perhaps the best publicists Catholicism ever had. Growing up as a Catholic in the 1970s, I remember my father, a convert from Anglicanism, suddenly looking up from a Penguin paperback Greene and announcing that the Catholics had all the best writers.”[1] It’s not clear to me in what sense works like The Heart of the Matter or A Burnt-Out Case could be said to be good publicity for Catholicism, unless one subscribes to the dictum that all publicity is good publicity. Still, Lawson is right. Having the best writers doesn’t make the claims of an institution any truer or its activities more just, but the best writing can induce emotional acquiescence irrespective of its argument. Waugh made a similar observation himself:

One might combine two proverbs and say: ‘Art is long and will prevail.’ You see it is equally possible to give the right form to the wrong thing, and the wrong form to the right thing. Suppose that in years to come, […] there should come an apostate of my own trade [….] He might be refuted again and again but what he wrote would remain in people’s minds when the refutations were quite forgotten. That is what style does – it has the Egyptian secret of the embalmers. It is not to be despised.[2]

Is it inappropriate to see Waugh’s prose as a kind of literary formaldehyde, preserving the sheen of life on an antique cadaver? “The novels […] will survive,” Lawson writes, “but the peculiar literary-religious culture which produced them has evaporated like last Sunday's incense.” Of course, the liberal Catholicism Lawson espouses could hardly have flourished without the evaporation of that culture but this does not hinder him from wistful lamentation. Lawson goes on to complain that the “true implications” of Brideshead Revisited would be “alien” to English students of today, without considering how alien his own beliefs and practices would be to Charles Ryder. Perhaps the seductive prose of Brideshead would be better compared to lotos- fruit. Assent is unwittingly granted, cares and anxieties fade, as the reader is lulled into an

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unthinking, unquestioning reverie. That is what style does.

Notes [1] ‘Catholic tastes’, , 1 March 2003. [2] Helena, (1950; Penguin, 1982), p. 80; see also Patey, Life, p. 297.

A Little Life Evelyn Waugh: A Literary Life, by David Wykes. : Macmillan, 1999. 224 pp. £42.50. Reviewed by K. J. Gilchrist, Iowa State University.

A volume of Macmillan's Literary Lives series, the book is meant to be, as the series, direct and brief. Unlike "traditional biography," it is meant to "follow the outline of the writers' working lives" while focusing on "professional, publishing, and social contexts" (i). Wykes moves along his subject by groups of years — 1903-24, 1924-30, 1930-39, 1939-51, and 1951- 66 — touching on life events and corresponding publications during each period. He posits his view in the preface and introduction that Waugh's "comic intelligence matches Jane Austen's and his exuberance [. . .] is Dickensian" but remarks that no biography or other work "can explain how he came by this power" (1). One could wish, however, that Wykes had attempted to explain various influences upon Waugh's literary art while at the same time (albeit giving the novels "precedence" over the other writings) answering the question, "how did this life support this fiction?" (10). The book traces Waugh's personal and social life, stopping for moments to examine closely the travel, events, and personages entering his life that appear in his works — but more: Wykes examines and attempts explanation of issues philosophically central to Waugh's fiction. Much (too much?) is made, for instance, of Evelyn's unspoken rivalry with and disapproval of his brother, . Persons like Waugh's Oxford tutor, C. R. M. F. Cruttwell, or Peter Rodd — connections sometimes made explicit, other times left implicit — shape characters central to the fiction, and what are both important and peripheral events are explored for being fictionally represented in a work:

[. . . ]on leaving Greece he seems to have definitively put away homosexuality as a way of life for himself. On the voyage back to Italy, he stopped for two hours at Corfu, which he liked and which reminded him of Brighton. In Decline and Fall he gave Margot a house on Corfu. (51)

Chief among Wykes's focal points are the predominance of Catholicism and the "quite bewilderingly enjoyable" early fiction. On the former issue much time is spent, and explanation of Waugh's credo within Catholicism is set forth point by point. The only other event beyond his conversion to Catholicism that colored Waugh's vision on "everything of any importance" was the fiasco of his first marriage to , which, as Wykes explains, "was the most important event of his life, though the argument can be made that in his literary life it was the most important event" (63). The divorce shaped much of his pre-Brideshead fiction but would disappear beneath changes wrought by the propensity of Waugh's Catholic readers to misconstrue such works as Black Mischief (Wykes believes it is Waugh's best work); agreeing with Stannard, Wykes asserts that such things led Waugh to abandon darker fictional explorations, those Wykes calls his "light novels" (142); Brideshead thus becomes to Waugh "the first of my novels" (qtd. 141). Perhaps due to the brevity in the Literary Lives series, we hear comparatively little of Waugh's reading, little concerning authors from whom Waugh learned his craft. Ronald Firbank, for instance, is mentioned briefly on three occasions, the most extensive passage remarking "Firbankian features and mannerisms," that in Waugh's hand are "given muscle and are used to ends very different from Firbank's" (95). The features and mannerisms remain file:////uol.le.ac.uk/...c144/My%20Documents/Evelyn%20Waugh/Evelyn%20Waugh%20Studies/Newsletters/Newsletters/Newsletter_34.1.htm[04/12/2013 14:45:03] EVELYN WAUGH NEWSLETTER AND STUDIES Volume 34

unexplained, and no examples from Firbank's work, no titles, are provided. Still, many interesting vignettes emerge: Waugh's visiting and rankling in America, whose two artists he says are Charlie Chaplin and Walt Disney (153) — one notes Chaplin came from England. Otherwise, Americans are "infantile idiots" and "American civilization" oxymoronic. With The Loved One, however, his "comic talent was worked out" (167-168), and unique works like Brideshead could not be re-attempted. Waugh turns to the Sword of Honor novels, with their contrasting characters — Guy, the cuckold Catholic, and Trimmer, the Modern Man — and to autobiography. Wykes concludes somewhat oddly (for a work tracing life in fiction) that "A Little Learning reminds its reader forcefully how much more preferable fiction can be to fact" (210). His last years unhappy, Waugh slumped into despair and viewed even the marriages of his children as "defeats" (210), yet ends his life in faith, a life "not at all easy for literary history to categorize" (211). Brief and occasionally uneven in both writing and in exploration of details, the work yet touches important points that assist us in teasing out connections between Waugh's life and his works.

Extensive Field Experience Mid-Life Mojo: A Guide for the Newly Single Male, by Robert Murray Davis. Springfield, IL: Oak Tree Press, 2003. 178 pp. $11.95. Reviewed by John Howard Wilson, Lock Haven University of Pennsylvania.

In case you ever wondered what a scholar of Evelyn Waugh does in his spare time, Robert Murray Davis has provided at least part of the answer in Mid-Life Mojo. Recently retired from teaching at the University of Oklahoma, Davis has "shifted his writing emphasis from modern literature to broader aspects of contemporary culture." He has also been divorced for twenty years and has acquired "what social scientists call 'extensive field experience' in a number of . . . relationships" (14). Mid-Life Mojo is the fruit of Davis's research. The book is a "survival manual" for the "recently divorced heterosexual male somewhere around fifty" (9-10), or for "the man who wants to get back in the game" (13). Aside from his own experience, Davis also draws on "statistical research by sociologists and psychologists and on personal testimony given to and by journalists" (14). Interesting as the research is, it's refreshing to reach Davis's pithy conclusions. He advises us never to "sleep with someone who has more problems than you do" (26), and "to get your diet under control so that . . . your ex will not see what a mess you've become" (27). Mid-Life Mojo is written crisply, and the book can be read in a few hours. Davis leads us through the various stages of seeking a new relationship, from "Picking Up the Pieces" to "Merger Talks." In one of his field reports, Davis even provides three examples of personal ads written by himself, along with the quantity and quality of responses each attracted. Davis doesn't take himself too seriously, and his frankness helps to make the book both compelling and valuable. All that research on Waugh did not go to waste, though it is kept to a minimum in Mid-Life Mojo. Regarding personal ads, Davis quotes The Loved One, where Dennis Barlow presents Aimee "with an irresistible picture not so much of her own merits or even of his, as of the enormous gratification he was offering" (69-70). More than fifty years have passed since that novel was written, but Waugh still seems relevant in surprising ways. Waugh was himself divorced, and he might have been amused by Davis's chapter on "False Starts," including "Something Cheap and Superficial," "Back Street Affairs," "Feeling the Young Again," and "Cloning Your Ex." Waugh tried all of those in the early 1930s, before his second marriage, which lasted. Maybe there is hope for the rest of us, and maybe Mid-Life Mojo can help.

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The Third Man by Simon Whitechapel

If you had to draw up a list of the three greatest English comic writers of the twentieth century, Evelyn Waugh and P. G. Wodehouse would be very obvious choices, but who would be the third man? I think there's a very good case for his being a columnist on called Peter Simple, who has been writing astonishingly inventive and intelligent fantasies, satires, polemics, and whimsies for more than fifty years and who was a very important influence on much more famous (and sadly much less talented) writers like . A short appreciation of him can be found at www.theambler.com/nov6-15_02 (search for "greatest living Englishman") and many of his columns can be read on-line at www.opinion.telegraph.co.uk (search for "Peter Simple"). In a recent interview with W. F. Deedes, Peter Simple, a.k.a. Michael Wharton, mentions Evelyn Waugh as an influence: news.telegraph.co.uk. Best of all, however, find and read one of the collections of his writing available at Amazon.com.

New Edition of Waugh's Travels Everyman's Library is scheduled to publish Waugh Abroad: The Travel Writing of Evelyn Waugh in August 2003. William Dalrymple has written the introduction to a large edition of 960 pages, priced at $25.00. has gone out of print in the United States, so the new, more comprehensive edition is particularly timely. Waugh Abroad can be ordered from Amazon.com. Look for a review in a forthcoming issue of the Newsletter.

Brideshead Revisited: The Movie According to an article entitled "Stately Home May Not Be Revisited," posted on the web's This is York, a script for the new film version of Brideshead Revisited was due at Easter, and shooting may begin within a year. Producer Douglas Rae of Ecosse Films said that "we have not decided where we are going to film it." The company is "unlikely" to use Castle Howard in York, where the television series was shot over twenty years ago. Rae said that he "didn't want to be accused of making a feature film of the TV series." Rae also said that Ecosse has "no intentions of condensing the 11-hour TV series into a Hollywood movie." The new production "will appeal to an audience who have never read the book or seen the serial." To read the article, please visit www.thisisyork.com. In other news, Hello! magazine reports that the producers are seeking Colin Farrell to play Charles Ryder and Jude Law to play Sebastian Flyte. To read the article, please visit www.hellomagazine.com.

Brideshead Revisited: The Sequel Michael Johnston has written a sequel to Brideshead Revisited, entitled Brideshead Regained: Continuing the Memoirs of Charles Ryder. The novel will be published in 2003 and officially launched at the Evelyn Waugh Centenary Conference in September. The cover of the novel offers the following information:

Many admirers of Evelyn Waugh's classic novel Brideshead Revisited and the celebrated television series must have wondered what lay in the future for Charles

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Ryder and the aristocratic Flyte family he loved. In this 'fine sequel to one of the greatest stories ever told' (Sheridan Morley), Michael Johnston effortlessly recreates their world as we follow Ryder on a dangerous journey through the Second World War.

Ryder's memoirs open in 1945 at Brideshead, where the family have gathered for the funeral of their beloved Nanny Hawkins, triggering his account of the intervening years. Appointed a war artist, Charles was swept into the company of Eisenhower, Churchill and De Gaulle, his painting expeditions leading to a chance encounter with the lost Sebastian. His artistic reputation at an all-time high, Charles tumbles through a war-torn Europe, witnessing the worst horrors and greatest victories, At last, his health in ruins, he is invited back to Brideshead for the funeral . . .

The scene is set for a final high drama as Ryder returns to the company of Julia and Cordelia Flyte, Bridey, Rex Mottram, 'Boy' Mulcaster, his ex-wife Celia and their two children, John & Caroline. In Brideshead Revisited, Michael Johnston has achieved that most difficult of literary tasks, a seamless sequel to one of the greatest works in English literature.

Also according to the cover,

After a business visit to Castle Howard, the television location of Evelyn Waugh's most famous book, Brideshead Revisited, Michael Johnston felt Waugh's centenary had to be marked by a tribute. His offering takes the form of an unauthorised sequel, continuing the memoirs of Charles Ryder.

Johnston has been writing all his life but his published work to date consists of book reviews and several radio documentaries for the BBC. His varied career began reading stories in Children's Hour and interviewing a teenage Françoise Sagan, then continued with freelance broadcasting and programme making, technical video film writing, directing and presenting, becoming the fourth generation in his family to work as a textile designer, a spell as a naval officer witnessing hydrogen bomb tests, a political career as the Leader of his local authority, and work as a globe- trotting businessman speaking and reading several languages.

His enduring interest has been literature. The time spent in aeroplanes has enabled him to read almost everything from Austen to Zola. Several discarded works litter his path but the spur of the Waugh centenary and finally giving up all forms of paid employment gave him the incentive and opportunity to complete his own novel, Brideshead Regained.

Brideshead Regained is now available on Amazon.co.uk at £14.95, and there are plans to market the book in the United States at $24.95 and Canada at $34.95. Further information and excerpts from the novel are available at www.author.co.uk/brideshead/index.htm. Look for a review in a forthcoming issue of the Newsletter.

A Life in French A new biography of Evelyn Waugh has appeared in France to mark the centenary year. The author is Benoît le Roux, the title is Evelyn Waugh, the publisher is L'Harmattan, and the edition is 320 pages in length. More details are available in French at waughbio.free.fr. Look for a review forthcoming in the Newsletter.

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Articles in The Atlantic Atlantic Unbound, The Atlantic's online journal, includes an article entitled "The Cruel Wit of Evelyn Waugh" by Nathan Deuel. The article reviews five other articles about Waugh which have appeared in The Atlantic over the years. "Cruel Wit" has links to these articles, so that one can read them as well. They include "Evelyn Waugh Faces Life and Vice Versa" by John Osborne (Dec. 1966), "Bron and His 'Affec. Papa'" by Geoffrey Wheatcroft (May 2001), "Evelyn Waugh: The Best and the Worst" by Charles J. Rolo (Oct. 1954), "Evelyn Waugh: The Height of His Powers" by L. E. Sissman (March 1972), and "A Maverick Historian" by Penelope Lively (Feb. 2001). A long review entitled "The Permanent Adolescent" by Christopher Hitchens, in the issue for May 2003, is also available on the web site: The Atlantic.

Waugh Back on the Beeb The BBC continues to recognize the centenary of Evelyn Waugh's birth. In an article entitled "Anniversary Waugh of Words," posted on 23 April 2003, BBC News claims that "English novelist Evelyn Waugh remains as controversial now--100 years after his birth--as he ever did." The article raises the old charges of racism and fascism, though comments from interested parties fail to provide support. Read the entire article at news..co.uk or Totalwaugh.

Waugh's Passing Remembered Though most attention this year has been focused on the 100th anniversary of Waugh's birth, a web site called Today in Literature commemorated the 37th anniversary of Waugh's death on 10 April 1966. For those who register, Today in Literature provides free daily e-mail with information about literary events of the day. The message for 10 April 2003 describes the end of Waugh's life with quotations from letters and other sources. Also posted are Waugh's portrait by Henry Lamb, selected books by Waugh, books about Waugh, and recommended links. Today in Literature maintains a file for each author, so Waugh's commemoration can still be accessed: Today in Literature.

A Centenary Section David Cliffe keeps adding to his Evelyn Waugh Website, much to our delight. The latest addition is a Centenary Section, devoted to various events marking the centenary of Waugh's birth. The page thus far includes information about the conferences in Spain and England and evaluations of three BBC radio productions. The Sunday Telegraph's review of Saint Graham and Saint Evelyn is available, along with Cliffe's reactions to presentations of Waugh's short stories and Brideshead Revisited. There is also a page entitled "Obituaries 2000-2003," since several people associated with Waugh have recently passed away. Included are Anthony Powell (1905-2000), Auberon Waugh (1939-2001), the Earl of Longford (1905-2001), Lady Dorothy Heber-Percy (née Lygon, 1912-2001), the Duke of Norfolk (1915-2002), and Daphne Lady Acton (1911-2003). Cliffe would like to learn of other events marking the centenary: Evelyn Waugh Website.

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Daphne Lady Acton, 1911-2003 Daphne Lady Acton passed away on 18 February 2003. She was a friend of Evelyn Waugh, and Waugh visited her twice in Rhodesia, where she had lived. In 1958, Waugh consulted Lady Acton prior to writing his biography of Ronald Knox. In 1959, he visited her again while gathering material for A Tourist in Africa. Longer obituaries are available at the Evelyn Waugh Website and the Telegraph.

Three of the Best It's not exactly news, but the Newsletter has somehow neglected to mention that Evelyn Waugh wrote three of the 100 best novels published in the English language since 1900. The Modern Library released the list in July 1998. A Handful of Dust came in at number 34, with Scoop at 75, and Brideshead Revisited at 80. Joseph Conrad was the only writer with four novels on the list. Waugh finished in a tie for second place, along with five others represented by three novels: William Faulkner, E. M. Forster, Henry James, James Joyce, and D. H. Lawrence. Waugh admired Forster and James, but he thought little of Faulkner, Joyce, and Lawrence, who "couldn't write for toffee" (Letters 552). Ten authors had two books each on the list: Saul Bellow, Theodore Dreiser, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ford Madox Ford, Ernest Hemingway, Aldous Huxley, Vladimir Nabokov, V. S. Naipaul, George Orwell, and Edith Wharton. Fifty-eight writers had only one book on the list. They included Henry Green, Graham Greene, Anthony Powell, and Virginia Woolf. Waugh failed to make the list of the 100 best nonfiction books. Perhaps he would not have repined. In a broadcast for BBC Radio's Third Programme in 1951, Waugh described a similar list of "the hundred best books" as "A Progressive Game," mostly "dreariness relieved by frivolity." Visit the Modern Library's list at www.randomhouse.com/modernlibrary/index.html.

Wikipedia, Anyone? There is a slightly inaccurate article on Evelyn Waugh in Wikipedia, a "multilingual project to create a complete and accurate open content encyclopedia." Somewhat more plainly, that means "you can edit any article right now." Readers of the Newsletter may wish to correct Waugh's entry or add to it: www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evelyn_Waugh

Collectors' Items Abebooks, which describes itself as "the world's largest online marketplace for used, rare, and out-of-print books," has many of Evelyn Waugh's works for sale. Perhaps the most interesting are a first edition of for £15,000 and a first edition of , in fact the author's presentation copy to Graham Greene, also for £15,000. If those prices seem a bit steep, one can search Abebooks in more affordable ranges. Over 200 items by Waugh cost $500 or more, but thousands of books are available at professorial prices. Abebooks also offers several autograph letters by Waugh, at prices ranging from $550 to $2500. The catalog includes the content of letters, so researchers may find this source somewhat useful: Abebooks.

Cove House for Sale

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According to "Waughs and Peace," an article by Rory Knight Bruce in the Telegraph for 19 April 2003, Cove House in Devon is for sale. Evelyn Waugh's daughter Margaret and her husband Giles FitzHerbert bought the property in 1971 for £15,000. Margaret was killed in an automobile accident in 1986, and since then the house has been home to her brother Septimus and his wife Nicky. Septimus is known as a wood-carver of clerical statues. The library at Cove House includes the "cursed" invalid chair, supposed to have killed Ian Fleming, then Evelyn Waugh, within a year of their acquiring it. Situated in forty acres of woodland and fields, Cove House sells for £1.5 million. The entire article can be read at the Telegraph or Totalwaugh.

Raymond de Trafford Louise Miller Frost writes that she is "researching the life of Alice Silverthorne de Janze de Trafford," and she is interested in "information regarding her second husband Raymond de Trafford, who was a friend of Evelyn Waugh's." Louise has read "Waugh's published diaries and letters," and she believes that "Waugh knew de Trafford both in the UK and in Kenya." She is "not aware that he knew Alice (although he would have known about her--she shot Raymond then married him. It was cause célèbre in 1927, and I believe Waugh visited de Trafford in Kenya in 1930 when he was hiding from her." Louise is "trying to find out if Waugh wrote more about de Trafford." She "left an online message with the University of Texas," and she hopes that readers of the Newsletter may be able to help with "references and information, or suggestions of where else" to look. Please contact Louise Miller Frost at [email protected] or P.O. Box 1570, Mount Barker, South Australia 5251.

Not Just a Cigar Inspired by David Bittner's article on smoking in Brideshead Revisited, Richard Walker asks where and when Evelyn Waugh said, "The most futile and disastrous day seems well spent when it is reviewed through the blue, fragrant smoke of a decent cigar." Walker has found that "This quote is ubiquitous in the cigar literature, but the context is never cited, and I haven't run across it in Waugh's diaries, letters, novels or journalism." Can anyone identify the source of this quotation?

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