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EVELYN WAUGH NEWSLETTER and STUDIES Vol EVELYN WAUGH NEWSLETTER AND STUDIES Vol EVELYN WAUGH NEWSLETTER AND STUDIES Vol. 33, No. 3 Winter 2003 Wights Errant: Suffixal Sound Symbolism in the Novels of Evelyn Waugh by Simon Whitechapel He who hesitates is lost. Particularly in the novels of Evelyn Waugh, where little serves to damn a character as readily as hesitation and uncertainty. In the prologue to Brideshead Revisited (1945), for example, Charles Ryder accompanies his C.O. on an inspection of the camp: ‘Look at that,’ said the commanding officer. ‘Fine impression that gives to the regiment taking over from us.’ ‘That’s bad,’ I said. ‘It’s a disgrace. See that everything there is burned before you leave camp.’ ‘Very good, sir. Sergeant-major, send over to the carrier-platoon and tell Captain Brown that the C.O. wants this ditch cleared up.’ I wondered whether the colonel would take this rebuff; so did he. He stood irresolutely prodding the muck in the ditch, then he turned on his heel and strode away.1 The C.O. is never named, perhaps because Waugh had already bestowed his favorite suffix of contempt on another character in the prologue, Hooper, who accordingly joins Beaver, Trimmer, Atwater, Dr Messinger, Mulcaster, Corker, Salter, Lord Copper, Peter Pastmaster, Box-Bender, Pennyfeather, and Ryder among what might be called Waugh’s wights errant. The last two characters, who are partly autobiographical, prove that Waugh did not spare himself: Paul Pennyfeather, the hero of Decline and Fall (1928), suffers misfortune after misfortune because he is too trusting and unassertive, and Charles Ryder, the narrator of Brideshead, though perhaps partly shielded by his patrician “y”, is still worthy of serious blame for his behavior. After months away painting “unhealthy pictures” in South America, he returns home to continue a love-affair he has begun in mid-Atlantic with Julia Mottram of the aristocratic family who own Brideshead: ‘I’m going there tonight.’ ‘Not tonight, Charles; you can’t go there tonight. You’re expected at home. You promised, as soon as the exhibition was ready, you’d come home. Johnjohn and Nanny have made a banner with “Welcome” on it. And you haven’t seen Caroline yet.’2 Caroline is Ryder’s own new-born daughter and Ryder, not yet a convert to Catholicism, is condemning himself out of his own mouth. This is why he is not an exception to the rule that, in the novels of Evelyn Waugh, characters whose surnames end in “-er” are never positive ones: there is always something contemptible or ridiculous or in some way blameworthy about them. If the critic Cyril Connolly (1903-74) had recognized this he would have avoided a bad mistake in his review of Men at Arms (1952), the first volume of Waugh’s Sword of Honour trilogy, when he confused Apthorpe with Atwater. Apthorpe, though ridiculous, is nevertheless strangely dignified and is not one of Waugh’s villains; Atwater, from the never-completed novel Work Suspended (1942), is both ridiculous and undignified and is certainly one of Waugh’s villains. Atwater, indeed, belongs to the great triumvirate of Waugh’s contemptibles, which is completed by Beaver, from A Handful of Dust (1934), and Trimmer, from Sword of Honour (1952-61). file:////uol.le.ac.uk/...c144/My%20Documents/Evelyn%20Waugh/Evelyn%20Waugh%20Studies/Newsletters/Newsletters/Newsletter_33.3.htm[04/12/2013 14:45:02] EVELYN WAUGH NEWSLETTER AND STUDIES Vol Atwater’s surname could be read as the urinary equivalent of “at stool”; Trimmer’s is a reference to his career as a ladies’ hairdresser; and Beaver’s is American slang for “vulva” and may be an ironic reminder of the phrase “busy as a beaver”, which is something Beaver himself never is. However, the suffix that ends their surnames can also be read as a symbol of hesitation and uncertainty. “Er” and its labialized equivalent “um” mark pauses for thought in standard British English and both use what is technically known as a mid central vowel; that is, one formed by the tongue in roughly the middle and center of the mouth. In this way it physically symbolizes hesitation and uncertainty, because it is roughly equidistant from the other English vowels, which are formed at varying heights at the back or front of the mouth. And so Arthur Atwater, like the vowel that ends both his names, is hesitant and uncertain.3 He drifts rather than drives: ‘... I’ve thought everything out. I’ve got a pal who went out to Rhodesia; I think it was Rhodesia. Somewhere in Africa, anyway. He’ll give me a shakedown till I get on my feet. Won’t he be surprised when I walk in on him! All I need is my passage money -- third class, I don’t care. ...’4 Then the narrator, John Plant, meets Atwater again at London Zoo and listens as he muses on the animals there: ‘... Think what they’ve seen -- forests and rivers, places probably where no white man’s ever been. It makes you long to get away, doesn’t it? Think of paddling your canoe upstream in undiscovered country ... hanging your hammock in the open at night and starting off the morning with no one to worry you, living off fish and fruit -- that’s life,’ said Atwater. Once again I felt compelled to correct his misconceptions of colonial life. ‘If you are still thinking of settling in Rhodesia,’ I said, ‘I must warn you you will find conditions there very different from those you describe.’ ‘Rhodesia’s off,’ said Atwater. ‘I’ve other plans.’5 But his “other plans” are equally vague and equally impossible of realization. Beaver is the same: he drifts through life as both a metaphorical and a literal parasite: the word comes from the Greek para, “beside”, and sitos, “food”, and originally meant one who exchanged sycophancy for meals. Beaver, with little money and little inclination to earn any, lives by making up the numbers at lunch and dinner-parties and by forcing himself on other people’s hospitality on the strength of vague invitations. This is how he meets Brenda Last and why she, bored in the country with her “madly feudal” husband Tony, pursues him for the excitement of an affair. Like that of Beaver’s surname, the suffix of Brenda’s Christian name might be significant: it uses the same vowel but perhaps in her case it can read as appropriately vague and uncertain. He who hesitates is lost. That’s Beaver. She who hesitates is scheming. That’s Brenda. But there is another important difference between the suffixes of these two names. Beside marking pauses for thought, “er” in English is also an agentive suffix: butcher, baker, candlestick-maker. Perhaps that is part of why Waugh uses it as he does: it’s appropriate for those who have to work (or, in Beaver’s case, grub) for a living. Atwater is a commercial traveller; Trimmer was a ladies’ hairdresser; Charles Ryder is a painter. Ryder’s surname is also close to “writer”, Waugh’s own profession (and in American English, it’s very close or identical). The suffix of Brenda’s name, on the other hand, is not agentive, it’s feminine: it marks her not as one who has to work for a living, like Trimmer, but as one who is female. So do the suffixes in the Christian names of Julia Mottram, from Brideshead, Julia Stitch, from various novels, and Virginia Troy, from Sword of Honour. Virginia is clearly a villainess: she is promiscuous and selfish and at one point in the trilogy goes looking, in vain, for an abortion. Julia Mottram is an apostate for much of Brideshead and Julia Stitch, although based on file:////uol.le.ac.uk/...c144/My%20Documents/Evelyn%20Waugh/Evelyn%20Waugh%20Studies/Newsletters/Newsletters/Newsletter_33.3.htm[04/12/2013 14:45:02] EVELYN WAUGH NEWSLETTER AND STUDIES Vol Waugh’s great friend Diana Cooper (1892-1986), in some ways has the same empty life as Beaver: she is constantly searching for ways to fill her time and get herself into the newspapers: William walked to Hyde Park. A black man, on a little rostrum, was explaining to a small audience why the Ishmaelite patriots were right and the traitors were wrong. William turned away. He noticed with surprise that a tiny black car was bowling across the grass; it sped on, dextrously swerving between the lovers; he raised his hat but the driver was intent upon her business. Mrs Stitch had just learned that a baboon, escaped from the Zoo, was up a tree in Kensington Gardens and she was out to catch it.6 But lack of direction and purpose are much less reprehensible in women and perhaps this is yet another condemnation of the erring men, because in one sense their names are feminine too: M[ale] & masculine, female & feminine, are used to distinguish rhymes & line- endings having a final accented syllable (m[ale] or masculine: Now is the winter of our disconte'nt) from those in which an unaccented syllable follows the last accented one (female or feminine: To be or not to be, that is the que'stion).7 Trimmer, Beaver, Hooper, and Atwater are all feminine rhymes. So are Mulcaster, from Brideshead, Peter Pastmaster, from Put Out More Flags (1942),8 and Corker, Lord Copper, and Salter, all from Scoop (1938). Trimmer’s lack of manly resolution and decision is very plain here in Officers and Gentlemen (1955): ‘I don’t like this at all,’ said Trimmer. ‘What the hell are we going to do?’ ‘You’re in command, old boy.
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