View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by University of Birmingham Research Archive, E-theses Repository EVELYN WAUGH , GRAHAM GREENE , AND CATHOLICISM : 1928-1939 by ALICE GLEN REEVE -TUCKER A thesis submitted to the University of Birmingham for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Department of English College of Arts and Law The University of Birmingham April 2012 University of Birmingham Research Archive e-theses repository This unpublished thesis/dissertation is copyright of the author and/or third parties. The intellectual property rights of the author or third parties in respect of this work are as defined by The Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988 or as modified by any successor legislation. Any use made of information contained in this thesis/dissertation must be in accordance with that legislation and must be properly acknowledged. Further distribution or reproduction in any format is prohibited without the permission of the copyright holder. ABSTRACT This thesis considers the development of Evelyn Waugh's and Graham Greene’s Catholicism between 1928 and 1939. Focusing predominantly on Waugh’s and Greene’s novels, it investigates how their writings express Catholic ideas, as well how their faith informs their views of human nature, their political sympathies, and their criticisms of modern secular civilization. While it recognizes the important differences between Waugh’s and Greene’s thinking in this period (such as their diverging political sympathies and their uses of different forms and genres of writing), it also establishes some significant affiliations between their Catholic points of view. Both authors associate the increasingly secular condition of English society with themes of decay and disintegration, acknowledge the reality of Original Sin, and believe in a supernatural reality distinct from its earthly counterpart. The Introduction provides an overview of Greene and Waugh scholarship, noting that there is currently no critical study devoted to the topic of early affiliations between these authors’ Catholic principles. The first two chapters propose that the beginnings of Waugh’s and Greene’s Catholic perspectives can be detected in their early fiction. Chapter Three examines in relation to each other Waugh’s and Greene’s novels between 1930 and 1935. Chapter Four charts the development of their respective vantage-points in the period 1936-1938. The final chapter looks at the year 1939 and assesses the nature of these authors' Catholic views prior to the outbreak of the Second World War. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I want to thank my supervisor, Andrzej Gasiorek, for his continual support, enthusiasm, and encouragement prior to and during the composition of this thesis. His advice, perceptions, and insights have undoubtedly made this a better study, and I am truly grateful to him for the time he has spent challenging my thinking, guiding my arguments, and supervising me. My mum Jenny, my dad Charlie, my brother Luke, and my sister-in-law Julieta have all helped me through this process, especially my dad, who has spent hours reading through this thesis and who has given me some detailed advice. Ali Ahmad has also been a much valued proof-reader. My girlfriends have also been great supporters – they have kept my spirits high, and have always shown interest and enthusiasm in this thesis. Their friendship has provided a source of relief from the toil of writing. Most of all I am grateful to my husband Nathan Waddell. He has endlessly encouraged, advised, and looked after me while I have written this thesis. He has made me laugh, comforted me when things have not gone to plan, and bolstered my confidence when it was low. I simply could not have produced this thesis without his unending patience and love. He is an inspiration, and it is to him that I dedicate this piece of work. EVELYN WAUGH , GRAHAM GREENE , AND CATHOLICISM : 1928-39 ABBREVIATIONS INTRODUCTION : SETTING THE SCENE 1 1. CHAPTER ONE : ‘ON THE WAY TO ROME ’ 29 Bright Young People and Modern Society: “all they seem to do is to play the fool” 33 Suffering from an Almost Fatal Hunger for (Religious) Permanence 41 “Faster, faster!”: Caught Within an Avant-Garde Social Life that is Heading for a Crash 56 Conclusion: Late Modernism? 69 2. CHAPTER TWO : ‘SOMETHING TO CATCH HOLD OF IN THE GENERAL FLUX ’ 72 The Monotony of Endless Days 76 Virtuous Virgins and Promiscuous Whores 85 Varieties of Religious Experience 96 Conclusion: ‘the hope only of empty men’ 106 3. CHAPTER THREE : DISCOVERING THE GROUNDS OF FAITH 112 Waugh’s Catholicism: Christianity Versus Chaos 117 The Desire for Religious Belief in a Secular World 138 Conclusion: ‘Catholic by omission’ 157 4. CHAPTER FOUR : NEGOTIATING BELIEFS AND THE RISE OF POLITICAL CONSCIOUSNESS 161 Political Controversy and Catholic Commitment 167 Greene’s Catholic Social Consciousness 183 Conclusion: Catholic Critiques of Secular Societies 209 5. CHAPTER FIVE : ON THE BRINK OF WAR 213 Mexican Pilgrimages 218 The Nightmare World of Modern Secular Society 241 Conclusion: Catholicism and Civilization in the Face of War 251 CONCLUSION 256 BIBLIOGRAPHY 270 ABBREVIATIONS B Graham Greene, It’s a Battlefield (London: William Heinemann, 1934). BM Evelyn Waugh, Black Mischief (London: Chapman & Hall, 1932). BR Graham Greene, Brighton Rock (London: William Heinemann, 1938). CA Graham Greene, The Confidential Agent (London: William Heinemann, 1939). CE Graham Greene, Collected Essays (London: Penguin, 1978). DF Evelyn Waugh, Decline and Fall (London: Chapman & Hall, 1928). EAR Evelyn Waugh, The Essays Articles and Reviews of Evelyn Waugh , ed. Donat Gallagher (London: Methuen, 1984). EC Evelyn Waugh, Edmund Campion (London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1935). EMM Graham Greene, England Made Me (London: William Heinemann, 1935). GS Graham Greene, A Gun for Sale (London: William Heinemann, 1936). HD Evelyn Waugh, A Handful of Dust (London: Chapman & Hall, 1934). L Evelyn Waugh, Labels (1930), in Evelyn Waugh, Waugh Abroad: Collected Travel Writing, intro. Nicholas Shakespeare (New York: Everyman’s Library, Alfred A. Knopf, 2003): 1-178. LR Graham Greene, The Lawless Roads (1939) (London: Penguin, 1947). LT Graham Greene, ‘The Lottery Ticket’ (1938), in Graham Greene, Nineteen Stories (London: William Heinemann, 1947): 125-39. MW Graham Greene, The Man Within (London: William Heinemann, 1929). NA Graham Greene, The Name of Action (London: William Heinemann, 1930). NTD Evelyn Waugh, Ninety-Two Days (1934), in Evelyn Waugh, Waugh Abroad: Collected Travel Writing, intro. Nicholas Shakespeare (New York: Everyman’s Library, Alfred A. Knopf, 2003): 367-546. OSB Graham Greene, ‘The Other Side of the Border’ (1936), in Graham Greene, Nineteen Stories (London: William Heinemann, 1947): 196-231. RN Graham Greene, Rumour at Nightfall (London: Windmill Press, 1931). RP Evelyn Waugh, Remote People (1931), in Evelyn Waugh, Waugh Abroad: Collected Travel Writing, intro. Nicholas Shakespeare (New York: Everyman’s Library, Alfred A. Knopf, 2003): 179-366. RUL Evelyn Waugh, Robbery Under Law (1939), in Evelyn Waugh, Waugh Abroad: Collected Travel Writing, intro. Nicholas Shakespeare (New York: Everyman’s Library, Alfred A. Knopf, 2003): 713-918. S Evelyn Waugh, Scoop (London: Chapman & Hall, 1938). ST Graham Greene, Stamboul Train (London: William Heinemann, 1932). VB Evelyn Waugh, Vile Bodies (London: Chapman & Hall, 1930). WA Evelyn Waugh, Waugh in Abyssinia (1936), in Evelyn Waugh, Waugh Abroad: Collected Travel Writing, intro. Nicholas Shakespeare (New York: Everyman’s Library, Alfred A. Knopf, 2003): 547-712. WE Graham Greene, Ways of Escape (1980) (London: Penguin Books, 1982). WS Evelyn Waugh, Work Suspended (1939), in Evelyn Waugh, Work Suspended and Other Stories (London: Penguin, 2000): 106-91. INTRODUCTION : SETTING THE SCENE When Graham Greene reflected upon the death of Evelyn Waugh, he wrote: ‘it was the death not only of a writer whom I had admired ever since the twenties, but of a friend’ ( WE 198). 1 Greene’s esteem for Waugh was neither affected by the recognition that their ‘politics were a hundred miles apart’ nor by the knowledge that Waugh regarded Greene’s Catholicism as ‘heretical’ ( WE 202). While Greene reveals that he was aware of Waugh’s writing from the nineteen twenties onwards, they only became friends in the nineteen forties, when they began writing to each other and visiting one another regularly. 2 They were brought together mainly by their shared status as Roman Catholic novelists. Greene converted to Roman Catholicism in 1926, prior to the publication of his first novel A Man Within (1929). 3 When Waugh converted a few years later in 1930, he had already published two novels: Decline and Fall (1928) and Vile Bodies (1930). Despite converting early in their literary careers, neither author explicitly wrote about Catholic characters until years later when they produced what are now known as their first ‘Catholic’ novels: Brighton Rock (1938) by Greene, and Brideshead Revisited (1945) by Waugh. The protagonists in these texts are Roman Catholics and Waugh and Greene explore in detail aspects of Catholic orthodoxy (including issues of damnation and the nature of belief). Following these publications, these authors produced a further eight ‘Catholic’ novels between them, marking what critics have acknowledged to be the ‘Catholic’ phases 1 Waugh died on the 10 th April 1966, and Greene died on the 3 rd April 1991. 2 Greene and Waugh did review each other’s work prior to the forties (see Chapters Four and Five) and they worked together on Greene’s magazine Night and Day in 1937. However, they did not develop a close personal relationship until after the outbreak of the Second World War. 3 Throughout this thesis, whenever I use the term ‘Catholicism’ it is always of the Roman kind. 1 of their literary careers. 4 A vast array of criticism has been dedicated to this body of work. Numerous critics have analysed the writers’ friendship, compared their portrayals of Catholicism, and reflected more generally upon the nature of the post-war ‘Catholic’ novel in England.