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EVELYN WAUGH NEWSLETTER AND STUD

EVELYN WAUGH NEWSLETTER AND STUDIES Vol. 36, No. 2 Autumn 2005

Up to a Point, Mr. Foxwell: The Adaptation of by Robert Murray Davis University of Oklahoma

In October 1962, Evelyn Waugh wrote to his agent A. D. Peters that he was willing to listen to Ivan Foxwell’s proposal to film Decline and Fall, though he assumed that “modernization of the story means ‘proletarianization’” (Catalogue E1288). During the spring and early summer of 1963, as Waugh was gloomily preparing to sign the contract for the sale of film rights to The Loved One, in disappointment at the meager fee rather than in anticipation of the horrors which followed, the final touches to the contract with Foxwell were being negotiated. He was delighted, he told Peters, with the Daily Express report that Foxwell’s “social graces” helped him secure the rights. Knowing Waugh’s view of film people, one can assume that he was being sarcastic. Donat Gallagher tells me that Margaret Waugh said that her father liked what he had seen— probably of the treatment or script, since the film was not released until 1968, two years after Waugh’s death. If he saw anything at all, he may have been comparing that with Tony Richardson’s The Loved One (1965). At least Decline and Fall of a Birdwatcher is not entirely disgraceful. Up to a point—that being the end of the third word of the title—Foxwell and his collaborators were faithful to Waugh’s novel in many details if not in spirit. The added prepositional phrase encapsulates most of the film’s positive distortions. Overtly, there is only one use of the conceit. At the beginning, Paul Pennyfeather is returning to his rooms, spots a bird on a rooftop, and looks through his binoculars, unaware that two half-dressed young women are in the window behind. Mistaken for a peeping tom, he flees, encounters the upper-class rowdies, is debagged, and flees again, only to collide with and fall atop of a young woman. No other birds make an appearance, if memory serves. Perhaps running about trouserless was not, in 1968, grounds for dismissal from Oxford; attempted rape had to be added. Metaphorically, of course, “bird-watching” was at the time more suggestive in English than in American slang. With “indecent behavior” established as heterosexual, Foxwell and company relentlessly straighten out the novel’s sexual innuendos. In the preliminary heats of the sports, the boys disappear in pursuit not of basic creature comforts but of a bevy of girls who ogle them across the fence. And though Clutterbuck is mentioned in the credits (see http://us.imdb.com/), I realized that he was in the film at all only when I read the credits. Captain Grimes, admirably played by Leo McKern, is metamorphosed into an incorrigible heterosexual, or at least bigamist, married at least four times before he encounters Flossie Fagan. It is hard to quarrel with most of the casting. Robin Phillips is suitably blank as Paul; Donald Wolfit as Fagan and Rodney Bewes as Potts look exactly as people like them are supposed to look, as do many other cast members. One might object to the casting of Geneviève Page as Margot Beste-Chetwynde (not, as one Waugh critic argued some years ago, pronounced “Beast- Cheating” but as any American would pronounce it). As in the casting of Simone Signoret as the adulterous wife in Room at the Top (1959), English directors of that period found it impossible to believe that an Englishwoman could be sexually desirable, let alone threatening. Some things are done well, even brilliantly. The sets, especially Oxford’s dreaming towers, Llanabba Castle, the rebuilt King’s Thursday, Margot’s office, Paul’s suite at the Ritz, and the prison are, if not exactly what I imagined from reading the novel, striking in themselves and in their contrasts with each other. And every time a Beste-Chetwynde Rolls Royce appears (instead of the Hispano Suiza in the novel), it is a different color—a minor stroke of wit, but

file:////uol.le.ac.uk/...c144/My%20Documents/Evelyn%20Waugh/Evelyn%20Waugh%20Studies/Newsletters/Newsletters/Newsletter_36.2.htm[04/12/2013 14:44:42] EVELYN WAUGH NEWSLETTER AND STUD

effective. The film also enforces some parallels from the novel and adds others. Director John Krish draws effective comparisons between Paul’s attic room at Dr. Fagan’s school, reached after a climb up many flights of stairs, and his prison cell, similarly elevated if much starker and, drawing on Prendy’s and Paul’s different analogies between school and prison, between the crowding and noise of both. Paul’s debagging at Oxford is repeated when he is forced to disrobe at the prison. When Grimes appears at King’s Thursday, he says to Paul, “Not a word, old boy.” And in the closing scene, when Paul is leaving his supposed funeral, he encounters Grimes dressed as a chauffeur and repeats the line before he bounds off into the distance, shedding various articles of clothing, to begin a new life. The most startling and to my mind the most effective innovation is having Prendy’s body cremated at Paul’s funeral. This allows, if it does not excuse, the decision to ignore the novel’s return to Oxford, but it does point up the parallels between the Modern Churchman with no beliefs and the theology student with unexamined beliefs and implies that Paul will be able to cope with the chaotic world in which he has been immersed. Other innovations make little difference or can be explained by the mores of 1968—the period to which the story is transferred. Grimes’s proclivities are changed, verbally as well as dramatically, from “sex and temperament” to “temperament ... and ... my appetite” (ellipses to indicate delivery). Philbrick goes through with the plot to kidnap Lord Tangent and sells him as a rickshaw boy in the Far East, though the buyer is upset by his having only one foot. Mrs. Grimes has a big scene with Flossie (whose sister is cut for the film) to reveal Grimes’s bigamy and shows up, as chaperone, when Margot is auditioning girls for Latin American Entertainment. Paul goes not to Marseilles but to Tangier to extricate them. And in the interpolations to “O God, Our Help in Ages Past,” revealing Prendy’s fate, the lines “Damned lucky it was Prendergast, / Might ‘ave been you or me” are given to Paul in what the Christian Century critic thinks a “D above middle C.” The trio of Philbrick, Grimes, and Paul performs this very well—but the callousness of the line is completely out of character for Paul. The much altered opening scene, bird and all, establishes a pattern in which physical slapstick substitutes for verbal wit. When Philbrick shows Paul to his room at the school, things fall out of cupboards and grotesque noises emerge from the bathroom. At dinner, Paul has to wrestle his chair free from a boy holding it beneath the table. On the Sports Day, a heavy rain falls (breaking while Margot appears), filling the Llanabba Silver Band’s tuba. Toward the end of the film, when Paul learns that he is to be arrested, he falls backward into a bathtub. And when Philbrick relates his plan to be named prison chaplain after Prendy’s death by his good friend the Archbishop of Canterbury, Paul elbows him off a bench. And the doctor who signs Paul’s death certificate wobbles about in wildly exaggerated stage-drunk fashion. Foxwell and his collaborators make some attempt to preserve the novel’s verbal wit, but they consistently miss opportunities. A close comparison of the scenes at the scholastic agency and the interview with Dr. Fagan shows the flattening. Dr. Fagan’s notice of vacancy, read aloud, says something like “Reply to Dr. Fagan, Ph.D.” and so on, much flatter than the novel’s “Reply promptly but carefully to Dr. Fagan ('Esq., Ph.D.,' on envelope), enclosing copies of testimonials and photograph, if considered advisable....” When the agent says, “School is pretty bad,” the novel continues, “I think you’ll find it a very suitable post.” And the “temper discretion with deceit” line and echo are cut entirely, as are many of the best lines in the novel. Some reviewers actually liked the film. Hollis Alpert hated the title but thought the film “as good a satire as I have seen lately” and thought “the fun is there and fairly constant.” It’s hard to tell whether Marion Armstrong in Christian Century liked the film or not, but the review describes the film at some length. The Village Voice had no doubt—the reviewer hated almost everything about the film, though he admitted that “there are many moments of institutional incompetence and grotesque school-tie sentimentality that reduce me to helpless laughter....” On-line reviews are also mixed. Time Out Film Guide’s reviewer thought it “Faithful to the letter if not quite the spirit of Waugh (it lacks the novel's bite, and is also unwisely updated), it's nevertheless endowed with strong performances all round and civilized, if literary, direction by Krish.” The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Office for Film and Broadcasting reviewer file:////uol.le.ac.uk/...c144/My%20Documents/Evelyn%20Waugh/Evelyn%20Waugh%20Studies/Newsletters/Newsletters/Newsletter_36.2.htm[04/12/2013 14:44:42] EVELYN WAUGH NEWSLETTER AND STUD

thought that “Director John Krish has caught the satirically solemn flavor of the original and his fine British cast never cracks a smile in carrying on with Waugh's outrageous lampooning of English high and low life. Stylish comedy even for those who don't usually like British humor.” (On a somewhat higher intellectual plane of Catholicism, Philip Hartung of Commonweal hated almost everything about it.) Presumably the Radio Times reviewer, being British, did like British humor, and he or she was appalled, calling the adaptation “a vainglorious attempt, as the joys of this hilarious comedy of upper-class manners lie solely on the page; neither Krish nor his trio of scriptwriters have the satirical wit or irreverent verve to translate them to the screen. Their cause isn't helped by Robin Phillips's ghastly performance as Paul Pennyfeather.” I think that the reviewer is wrong about that: Paul’s job is to react to other characters, not -- until the end of the novel or the film -- to dominate scenes. But the judgment of the dialogue is accurate. Years ago, in a conversation with Sam Marx, who once held the film rights to and had known F. Scott Fitzgerald, he wondered why a satisfactory film had never been made of a Fitzgerald novel or story. “Because,” I said, “every time Fitzgerald got into trouble he tried to write his way out rather than think his way out. And you can’t film style.” (The Granada production of avoided that problem not so much by filming style but by putting it in the voice-over—easier to justify in first-person narrative.) To put it another way, Stanley Kauffmann reported that Waugh was uninterested in theater and that “his genius lay largely in the way he chose words to be seen, not heard, to be wrung silently in our minds.” The same could be said of Hemingway, whose dialogue on-screen is often excruciating. Decline and Fall of a Birdwatcher -- as far as I can discover Foxwell’s last screen credit, though he lived until 2002 -- is not the very worst adaptation of an Evelyn Waugh novel -- that dubious honor will, please God, always remain with Tony Richardson’s The Loved One, followed closely by the English television version of , made painfully unfunny -- but one can view with dismay the many opportunities he and his collaborators missed in translating Decline and Fall to the screen.

Works Cited Alpert, Hollis. “Fall of the British Establishment.” Saturday Review 15 Feb. 1969: 50. Armstrong, Marion. “Ravage of an Innocent.” Christian Century 5 Mar. 1969: 323. Davis, Robert Murray. A Catalogue of the Evelyn Waugh Collection at the Humanities Research Center, The University of Texas at Austin. Troy, NY: Whitston, 1981. “Films.” The Village Voice 6 Feb. 1969: 53. Foxwell, Ivan, et. al., writ. Decline and Fall of a Birdwatcher. 1968. The script, which I have not seen, can be located in the Twentieth Century Fox archive of the Special Collections at the University of Iowa. Hartung, Philip T. “The Screen.” Commonweal 28 Mar. 1969: 48. Kauffmann, Stanley. “Decline and Fall of a Bird Watcher.” New Republic 15 Feb. 1969: 22+. P., D. Rev. of Decline and Fall of a Birdwatcher. http://212.58.235.200/servlet_film/com.icl.beeb.rtfilms.client.simpleSearchServlet? frn=4313&searchTypeSelect=5 Rev. of Decline and Fall of a Birdwatcher. Time Out Film Guide. www.timeout.com/film/65194.html Rev. of Decline and Fall of a Birdwatcher. U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Office for Film and Broadcasting. www.usccb.org/movies/d/d.htm

Decline and Fall as a Critique of Marxism

file:////uol.le.ac.uk/...c144/My%20Documents/Evelyn%20Waugh/Evelyn%20Waugh%20Studies/Newsletters/Newsletters/Newsletter_36.2.htm[04/12/2013 14:44:42] EVELYN WAUGH NEWSLETTER AND STUD

by Greg Shupak

Frederick L. Beaty comments that Evelyn Waugh was “sceptical about the ability of any political system to improve either man or society” (119) and that Waugh felt “bitter hostility toward socialist philosophy” (20). Decline and Fall (1928), for instance, criticizes the theories of Karl Marx. Waugh objects to the prospect of severing ties to traditional values and existing social relations. He also resists the idea of proletarian revolution. Waugh disagrees with Marx’s idea that atheism is a vehicle to human emancipation. Furthermore, Waugh creates camaraderie between different classes and a socially mobile protagonist. In these ways, he undermines Marx’s notions of class consciousness, class struggle, and revolution. One prominent difference between Waugh’s novel and Marx’s theories is their treatment of religion. Marx believes that religion is a symptom of alienated labour, a destructive diversion from the misery of the working class (Wolff 20-1). In Decline and Fall, on the other hand, faith is a source of redemption. After the tumult of expulsion, imprisonment, and failed engagement, Paul’s life becomes much more tranquil. Specifically, he is in his “third year of uneventful residence at Scone” (213), studying to be a clergyman (214). This commitment is incompatible with Marx’s claim. For Paul, preparing for ordination has not been destructive. Instead, it has brought stability to his life. Moreover, Paul does not turn to religion to divert his attention from misery. Shortly after his death is faked, he tells Silenus of his plan to study theology (207). Paul is beginning his life anew when he decides to pursue religious scholarship. Having been declared legally dead, Paul no longer needs to be distracted. It is noteworthy that he reveals this choice in a chapter entitled “Resurrection.” Paul’s death and rebirth suggest that he has had a religious experience. A divine event, not desolation, inspires Paul to become a clergyman. Two of the wealthier characters seek escape. Margot is taking sleeping pills (127) and her son, Peter, is an alcoholic (125). Waugh inverts Marx’s theory and presents bourgeois characters who are trying to divert themselves. Waugh’s belief in providence is also important. Contrary to Marx’s idea that humans need to overcome the illusion of God, Waugh believes that God designs the world in meaningful order. Both Jeffrey Heath and Douglas Lane Patey note the tension between fortune and providence in Decline and Fall. Patey describes a world of fortune “seemingly governed by chance, where reward is disconnected from desert” (71). Put another way, fortune involves people receiving what they have not earned. Marx’s vision of an atheist society would “inscribe on its banners: from each according to his ability to each according to his need” (Wolff 95). Such a system is a perversion for Waugh. It is an arrangement where “there are priests without faith, unjust judges, a physician who kills, mannish women and womanish men, childlike adults and children […] prematurely catapulted into adult knowingness” (Patey 62). In these respects, Waugh warns against giving rewards where there is no merit. He believes that chaos is the only alternative to divine order. Marx believes that people must empower themselves by discarding the idea that human life is governed by divine providence and then redistribute goods to the needy. It is important to note a rhetorical tension: Marx’s rational, just order is what Waugh calls fortune, a world governed by the irrational. The root of this discrepancy lies in the source of reason: for Marxists it is the human mind, but for Waugh it is God. Paul Pennyfeather demonstrates Waugh’s faith in providence. Early in the text, Paul's life is governed by fortune. He proposes a toast, “[t]o Fortune, […] a much-maligned lady” (157). Yet Paul’s life stabilizes when he joins the church. As Patey observes, “from the start, characters point out their life stories to Paul in confessions that hint the appropriateness of his clerical vocation” (72). As such, providence has guided Paul toward the clergy. The crucial point is that Paul finds his vocation only after he steps off Fortune’s Wheel (209). Waugh is sceptical of the idea that man must depart from the past to achieve morality. Describing the destruction of an old Tudor estate, Waugh demonstrates reverence for tradition: “the work of demolition proceeded, with the aid of all that was most pulverizing in modern machinery” (119). For Waugh, this process represents the destruction of social roots.[1] A Marxist revolution also involves a break from tradition. Furthermore, Marx argues that social arrangements change when technology improves (Wolff 55). The machines that Waugh file:////uol.le.ac.uk/...c144/My%20Documents/Evelyn%20Waugh/Evelyn%20Waugh%20Studies/Newsletters/Newsletters/Newsletter_36.2.htm[04/12/2013 14:44:42] EVELYN WAUGH NEWSLETTER AND STUD

describes are analogous to the technology that Marx believes will liberate the proletariat. Waugh is critical of such changes, as in this sarcastic remark: “the drains [are] satisfactory, but […] underground” (125). Houses can be symbols of social relations. A house is a physical structure, akin to an economic arrangement, a social structure. Each generation leaves its mark by creating homes, so scholars study historical architecture to learn about the past. That the Tudor house is demolished and replaced by a hideous modern building suggests that Waugh is apprehensive about the future; he implies that newness does not necessarily equal progress, particularly when it requires a departure from tradition. Patey, moreover, draws attention to the imagery of destruction. He points out that Oxford authorities “watch as the Bollers destroy a Matisse, a grand piano, the manuscript of a prize poem – embodiments of cultural traditions” (61). For Waugh, deviating from tradition precipitates the destruction of time-tested values. He is certainly very sceptical of Marx’s notion that humans must shed capitalism and religion in order to be free. Secularism is the deviation that Waugh is most concerned about. Prendergast, a “‘Modern Churchman’ who […] need not commit himself to any religious belief” (141), is decapitated after he becomes a prison chaplain. The elimination of a non-denominational clergyman demonstrates Waugh’s contempt for secularism. Marxists would support a secular movement away from alienation, a shift that can mitigate religious strife and facilitate class consciousness. Socialists would also endorse non-denominational faith, because it is a step away from organized religion and thus a shift toward the rule of reason. Waugh believes that secularism destroys longstanding values, as it destroys Prendergast. Silenus is the cold, sterile architect who designs the new King’s Thursday. Heath points out that Silenus is associated with inebriation and that Waugh’s book presents a history of drunkenness (64) wherein faulty values are attributed to erratic discipline (68). Principles are being eroded because adults are too feral, too self-indulgent to teach morals to the younger generation. This kind of behaviour is sometimes associated with socialist states where, in Marx’s words, “I can do one thing today and another tomorrow […] just as I have a mind” (Wolff 95). Silenus is more clearly linked to Marxism in a parody of Hamlet, as he “speaks for those who would replace faulty but striving humanity with the antiseptic perfection of the automaton” (Heath 70). Automation is a key feature of communism, because machines will take over the means of production and free people to occupy themselves as they wish. “Antiseptic” describes not only machines, but also impersonal bureaucracies that are responsible for allocating resources in socialist states. Waugh therefore uses a name associated with drunkenness to suggest that Marx’s utopia would undermine morality and create a dehumanized society; Silenus, who does not sleep, barely seems human. Grimes, by contrast, is Waugh’s figure of insatiable appetite. Grimes states, “I don’t believe anyone can ever be truly unhappy for long provided one does just exactly what one wants to and when one wants,” and Heath notes that Waugh depicts a “perverted world in which the love of God has been ousted by the love of the senses” (74). Marx wants people to be emancipated from capitalism so that they can cultivate their minds by using increased leisure time to absorb high culture. Grimes perverts Marx’s thoughts into a license to desert in wartime, to walk out on his wife, and to break out of prison. Waugh’s criticism is that Marxism erodes ethics and undermines discipline. Grimes indulges in sensual pleasures, which are inherently divorced from spirituality. Grimes lives a godless, unprincipled life, Waugh’s warning against the perils of Marxism. Sir Wilfred Lucas-Dockery, a prison governor, also destroys history. Patey notes that Lucas- Dockery acts without regard to legal precedents, “the vehicle by which the accumulated wisdom of past generations is transmitted to the present” (69). Lucas-Dockery believes that inmates ought to be allowed to express themselves artistically. Through this character, Waugh mocks another of Marx’s theories of alienation. For Marx, a person who is not creative is alienated, detached from human experience (Wolff 35). In Decline and Fall, after speaking to Paul, Lucas-Dockery has a conversation with the Chief Warder:

‘[W]hat a difference it made to him to think that, far from being a mere nameless file:////uol.le.ac.uk/...c144/My%20Documents/Evelyn%20Waugh/Evelyn%20Waugh%20Studies/Newsletters/Newsletters/Newsletter_36.2.htm[04/12/2013 14:44:42] EVELYN WAUGH NEWSLETTER AND STUD

slave, he has now become part of a great revolution in statistics.’ ‘Yes, sir,’ said the Chief Warder, ‘and, by the way, there are two more attempted suicides being brought up tomorrow. […] Those sharp tools you’ve issued to the Arts and Crafts School is just putting temptation in the men’s way.’ (168)

Waugh undermines Marx’s theory by demonstrating that not everybody has creative capacity. He indicates that a criminal might use tools for violence, as in the murder of Prendergast. In the absence of creative instincts, humans do not need art to realize themselves. Waugh’s idea is especially emphatic because he turns the idea of creative emancipation on its head: far from using art to become fully human, to live a fuller life, the prisoners take these tools and try to end their lives. In this passage, the refutation of Marxism goes even further. It is ironic that Lucas-Dockery assumes Paul will feel liberated when he becomes a statistic instead of a prisoner. Furthermore, Lucas-Dockery says that Paul will no longer be a nameless slave. Yet becoming a number is hardly a humanizing process, and becoming a statistic implies namelessness. Lucas-Dockery is an appointee of the Labour government (171), so his political beliefs are leftist, and Waugh makes him a figure of ridicule. Lucas-Dockery’s reference to “revolution,” moreover, reminds the reader of Marxism. Indeed, there is a parallel between Lucas-Dockery’s fallacy and Marx’s idea that socialism will free labourers from being slaves to capitalists. In a planned economy, when the state allocates resources, people become numbers instead of servants of the bourgeoisie. Questioning Lucas-Dockery’s logic, Waugh suggests that being a statistic is akin to slavery. Lucas-Dockery also portrays the amity that, at times, exists between the upper and lower classes in Decline and Fall. He has a knighthood or baronetcy, served as the “Chair of Sociology at a Midland university” (166), and became governor of the prison by political appointment. Though his efforts are badly misguided, and perhaps narcissistic, Lucas-Dockery reaches out to his prisoners. He treats the incarcerated with an alarming amount of tenderness. Waugh writes that Lucas-Dockery’s predecessor, Colonel MacAdder, told him, “‘[d]on’t bother about the lower warders or the prisoners. Give hell to the man immediately below you.’ […] Sir Wilfred, however, had his own ideas. ‘You must understand,’ he said to Paul, ‘that it is my aim to establish personal contact with each of the men under my care’” (167). The officers and the prisoners are beneath Lucas-Dockery in both the prison’s hierarchy of authority and in social status, but he disregards MacAdder’s advice. In other words, Lucas-Dockery chooses not to exploit people in the classes beneath him; he deliberately eschews class consciousness. In this instance, there is no class warfare. Similarly, there are class implications when Paul is engaged to Margot. At the beginning of the novel, Paul is expelled from Scone College after Trumpington’s Bollinger Club deprives him of his trousers in public (12-13). At this point in the text, Trumpington represents the elite and Paul is the upper middle class. After being expelled and then denied his inheritance (16), Paul is left without money or an education. Hired at a modest salary, Paul goes to Llanabba Castle and meets his wealthy fiancée. He goes from having nothing to living a life of decadence. In Waugh’s providential world, Trumpington did Paul a favour by getting him expelled from Scone: he set him on the path to privilege. Paul expresses his gratitude by making Trumpington the best man at his wedding. This choice demonstrates that, with the help of providence, a wealthy man has helped someone to improve his social position. Clearly, such assistance is the antithesis of exploitation. That God helps to guide Paul up the social hierarchy is a further affront to Marx, who believes that religion is a symptom of exploitation and a barrier to proletarian progress. Decline and Fall also demonstrates discord that exists within classes. Paul’s guardian keeps Paul’s inheritance and spends it on his daughter so that she will be more desirable for a wealthy suitor (16). Paul and his guardian are from the same class. Since he has to resort to taking Paul’s money to improve his daughter’s social position, it is reasonable to conclude that the guardian is not particularly affluent. Having been chosen to watch over Paul, the guardian was close to Paul’s father and therefore likely to be in a comparable socio-economic class. It file:////uol.le.ac.uk/...c144/My%20Documents/Evelyn%20Waugh/Evelyn%20Waugh%20Studies/Newsletters/Newsletters/Newsletter_36.2.htm[04/12/2013 14:44:42] EVELYN WAUGH NEWSLETTER AND STUD

follows that the guardian steals from someone in his own class when he refuses to give Paul the money. This theft is not a case of a Marxist inter-class war; it is an intra-class betrayal. Clearly, class consciousness is diluted when there is economic discontent within a class. Similarly, Margot lets Paul go to prison for being involved in her prostitution ring but does not accept a share of the blame. Paul is released from prison because of an order from “the Home Secretary granting leave for you to go into a private nursing-home for the removal of your appendix” (200). Since Margot is engaged to the Home Secretary and Paul does not need this surgery, it is implied that Margot helps Paul get out of jail. Margot reverses a key tenet of Marxism: she helps Paul when he is in a lower class and mistreats him when they are in the same social realm. Margot’s and the guardian’s decisions reflect internal class strife and undermine Marx’s theory of class consciousness. It is also worthwhile to examine Paul’s social positions in the text. He goes from being middle class at Oxford to having nothing to sharing in Margot’s affluence and then to incarceration. Back at Scone, Paul begins his career as a clergyman, back in the same socio- economic place. Clearly, Paul is socially mobile. More striking is that his status shifts so dramatically in less than one year (209). This fluidity is perhaps Waugh’s strongest refutation of Marxism. For Marx, class is an inexorable force that precipitates “world-historical change” (Wolff 51). In Decline and Fall, class is so fickle that Paul experiences life on the highest rungs of society and in its lowest depths in a matter of months. With all of these social fluctuations, Paul does not truly belong to any particular socio-economic group. When a person’s position shifts so frequently, there can be no class warfare; there can be no class struggle when Paul and Trumpington shift from social antagonism to friendship so quickly. Such rapid mobility, moreover, undermines class consciousness. Without class warfare and class consciousness, Marx’s prediction of a socialist revolution seems unlikely. Waugh does not defend capitalism, but he does ridicule Marx’s conception of tradition, revolution, and religion. Waugh adds specificity to some of Marx’s ideas, such as creativity and alienation, to demonstrate that Marx’s notions are too general. Similarly, Waugh does not suggest that there is unity between the classes, but at times he presents civility between them; the critical point is that, in Decline and Fall, the upper class does not consummately, ruthlessly exploit the lower class. Waugh censures Marxism by negating some of its key tenets.

Note [1] Waugh suggests that the house has failed to adapt over time: “[m]odern democracy called for lifts and labour-saving devices, for hot-water taps and cold-water taps” (117). This indictment, however, is a criticism of the Beste-Chetwyndes, who have failed to maintain a link between progress and the past. In doing so, the family has failed to honour the past.

Works Cited Beaty, Frederick L. The Ironic World of Evelyn Waugh: A Study of Eight Novels. DeKalb, IL: Northern Illinois UP, 1992. Heath, Jeffrey. The Picturesque Prison: Evelyn Waugh and His Writing. London: McGill- Queen’s UP, 1982. Patey, Douglas Lane. The Life of Evelyn Waugh: A Critical Biography. Oxford: Blackwell, 1998. Waugh, Evelyn. Decline and Fall. 1928. London: Penguin, 1970. Wolff, Jonathan. Why Read Marx Today? New York: Oxford UP, 2002.

What of Bubbles? by David Bittner

In Brideshead Revisited, Anthony Blanche tells Charles Ryder, at the restaurant in Thame, file:////uol.le.ac.uk/...c144/My%20Documents/Evelyn%20Waugh/Evelyn%20Waugh%20Studies/Newsletters/Newsletters/Newsletter_36.2.htm[04/12/2013 14:44:42] EVELYN WAUGH NEWSLETTER AND STUD

that Sebastian Flyte’s conversation is so superficial that it is forgettable: “Tell me, candidly,” Anthony asks Charles, as he “devilishly” tries in one of numerous ways to turn Charles against Sebastian (and perhaps thus to steal Charles from Sebastian), “have you ever heard Sebastian say anything you have remembered for five minutes?” He continues:

You know, when I hear him talk, I am reminded of that in some ways nauseating picture of ‘Bubbles.’ Conversation, as I know it, is like juggling; up go the balls and the balloons and the plates, up and over, in and out, spinning and leaping, good solid objects that glitter in the footlights and fall with a bang if you miss them. But when dear Sebastian speaks it is like a little sphere of soap-suds drifting off the end of an old clay pipe, anywhere, full of rainbow light for a moment and then—phut— vanished, with nothing left at all, nothing. (Little, Brown, 56-7)

What exactly was this picture, Bubbles, that reminded Anthony of Sebastian, and what does Anthony find nauseating about it? It was painted by the English portrait and historical artist Sir John Everett Millais, who flourished in the second half of the nineteenth century. According to an article on the Internet, Millais was very popular in his day but has been criticized since for his “sickly sweet” portraits of children. Millais painted Bubbles in 1886, using his grandson, William James, as his model, and giving his old pipe to William to blow soap bubbles with. Frances Hodgson Burnett had just published her very successful novel, Little Lord Fauntleroy, about a poor little rich boy, whose grandfather, an English earl, has disinherited his son because he married an American. The popularity of the book on both sides of the Atlantic surely explains why Millais painted his grandson in a velvet suit with a lace collar and cuff, and ringlet curls, just like Little Lord Fauntleroy. Perhaps in the painting’s subject, Anthony saw a reflection of himself, thwarted and pitiable. Bubbles became notorious when it was acquired by the Pears soap company for advertising purposes. Subsequently the picture was reproduced on dishes, candy boxes, and countless other commercial objects in England, which also explains why Anthony got sick of it. The ubiquity of Bubbles may have reminded Anthony of Sebastian’s "seeming to be everywhere," or at least with Charles and Anthony that night at Thame. If Anthony’s association of Bubbles with Sebastian caused him to feel “sick,” maybe he was partly sick with jealousy. In the novel it is clearly suggested that Anthony is jealous not only of Sebastian’s looks, pedigree, and wealth, but also of his popularity wherever he goes. At Eton, Sebastian “never got into trouble” with the masters, whereas Anthony and the rest of the boys were “constantly being beaten in the most savage way on the most frivolous pretexts” (51). And you can bet that at Oxford Sebastian never got put in Mercury! Even Edward Ryder, Charles’s puckish father, likes Sebastian because he is “very amusing,” and he tells Charles to “ask him often” (128). Bubbles continued to be associated with its subject, William James, throughout his long life. In fact, to James’s chagrin, “Bubbles” became his nickname. For a career officer in the Royal Navy, who rose to the rank of admiral and received the G.C.B., K.C.B., and C.B., the association may not have been nauseating, but one can imagine that it became tiresome. Admiral James wrote some ten books on naval life and history and died in 1973 at the age of 92.

Editor's Note: There is a good reproduction of Bubbles at http://artyzm.com/world/m/millais/bubbles.htm

Reviews

The Idea of Europe , by Evelyn Waugh. Intro. George Weigel. Loyola Classics. Chicago: Loyola Press, file:////uol.le.ac.uk/...c144/My%20Documents/Evelyn%20Waugh/Evelyn%20Waugh%20Studies/Newsletters/Newsletters/Newsletter_36.2.htm[04/12/2013 14:44:42] EVELYN WAUGH NEWSLETTER AND STUD

2005. 239 pp. Paperback. $12.95. Reviewed by Patrick Query.

Waugh’s personal favorite among his works, Helena has always been among his least popular. Critical attempts to resuscitate it over the years—as historical fiction, as a feminist touchstone, as a saint’s life, as a postmodern novel—have availed only little to keep it in print, even less to keep it on the public radar. Loyola Press’s current recuperation of the novel as a spiritual guidebook, under the banner of “Connecting today’s readers to the timeless themes of Catholic fiction” (back cover), while commendable, is unlikely to lift the general fog of indifference about Helena. The stated mission of the press is “to nurture lived faith through building relevant and enduring bridges between our 2000-year-old Catholic faith and the needs and desires of today’s spiritual seekers” (www.loyolapress.com). George Weigel, biographer of Pope John Paul II, has been enlisted to write the Introduction and Questions for Reflection and Discussion that bracket Waugh’s text. Both of these additions guide the reader into a warm reflection on Catholic spirituality and themes of vocation and sacrament. Unfortunately, swaddling the novel in so much spiritual clothing has obscured one of the most “relevant bridges” between ancient Church history and the present moment: the idea of Europe. Weigel compulsively uses descriptors like “deeply,” “intensely,” and “profound,” a stylistic weakness that betrays a conceptual limitation. Such terms banish the very precision for which he wants Catholicism to stand. As in his own recent book, Letters to a Young Catholic, Weigel, in his zeal to assert the sacramental link between Catholic spirituality and material particulars— here, the true cross—happily ignores the equally important implications of historical times and places—here, third- and fourth-century Europe, and a subject far more temporal than “timeless.” His Catholic theology is, of course, sound, but his reading of Helena is disappointingly one-dimensional. “Helena’s sense of vocation,” he writes, “and the Christian scandal of particularity (the mystery of the omnipotent, omnipresent God revealing himself through limited creation, from the people of Israel to the wood of Christ’s cross), to which her vocation bore witness, was what attracted Waugh to the fourth-century empress . . .” (xiii). Her story also defies “gnosticism, the ancient heresy that denies the importance or meaningfulness of the world . . . the denial of the Christian doctrine of original sin” (xiv-xv). It reveals God, says Weigel, saving the world “by embracing our humanity in order to transform it through the mystery of the cross—the mystery of redemptive suffering, vindicated in the resurrection of Jesus from the dead” (xvi). After this majestic buildup, the reader is surprised to find that the overwhelming majority of the novel takes place firmly on the recognizable European ground. Waugh’s research for Helena was punctilious, and the novel charts third- and fourth-century locales from Britain to Rome precisely and in earthy detail. With Homer always in her mind (“in Latin paraphrase”), Helena leaves Britain and passes through a series of cultures only loosely bound by the skeleton of Roman rule. How far is it to Nish?

“A month or six weeks. The couriers used to do it in a fortnight. That was in the old days when the post stages were properly organized with the best horses in the empire waiting fresh every twenty miles and the roads safe to ride at night. Things aren’t so good now” (43).

Although the legendary end of her quest is Jerusalem and the true cross, the object to which her thoughts most often return is Rome, which she habitually associates with Troy. Waugh presents her circuitous journey as both part of and parallel to the formation of a civilization with Rome at its center.

“And is—is Nish far from Rome?” “It’s on the way to Rome,” said Constantius. “Not directly, perhaps. One does not travel direct to Rome” (44).

Both processes are incomplete, we come to realize, without the lynchpin of the cross, but the trip

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to the Holy Land still figures as a kind of addendum to the main narrative. Very little of Helena is actually about the quest for the true cross. In this edition, the text of the novel proper runs nearly 230 pages. The question that defines St. Helen and is supposed to define the novel, “Where is the cross, anyway?” doesn’t come until page 183. Another question, “But aren’t we going to Rome?” occupies far more of Helena’s attention (42). Most of the story is not about the wooden cross but about the slow process by which Christianity comes to order Europe. Even after the cross is found, it finds its true significance in the novel in its dispersal among the several churches of Europe, its journey back across the loose and miscellaneous lands Helena has crossed, bringing order where lethargy, superstition, and anxiety had held sway. Its power as a spiritual object, a “fact,” is matched by its function as a kind of glue helping the nascent Church to cohere. No doubt Helena can be of real utility to the searcher into the mysteries of Catholic spirituality. The spiritual lessons of the novel are rich and plenty, and they are, for better or worse, what Loyola Press has chosen to foreground. However, this approach to the book hardly seems likely to stir it from the general disregard in which it has been mired for half a century. Its utility in framing an idea of western civilization seems far more likely to succeed. For instance, Waugh’s nuanced comparison of his heroine’s Britannic qualities with those of the Mediterranean cultures in which she spends most of her life provides a rich meditation on the crucial question European Union leadership has chosen to term, with unfortunate banality, “unity in diversity.” Considering the current crisis of identity in which Europe finds itself, trying to order its parts under the aegis of economic and political cooperation, while at the same time coming to terms with, or disavowing, its spiritual inheritance, Helena’s moment could be now, not so much for its “timeless” themes as for its timely ones.

Complex, Subtle, Jesuitical Graham Greene’s Catholic Imagination, by Mark Bosco, S. J. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005. American Academy of Religion Academy Series. 205 pp. $45.00. Reviewed by Robert Murray Davis, University of Oklahoma.

As indicated by the series title under which Mark Bosco’s impressive book appears, this is at least as much -- sometimes more -- a work of theology as of literary criticism in which it is frequently difficult to decide whether theology is used to illuminate Greene’s novels or the novels are used to illustrate theological points. Bosco’s central purpose is to blur or abolish the distinction frequently made between Greene’s four “Catholic novels”—concentrating on The Power and the Glory and The End of the Affair—and those published after 1951, especially The Honorary Consul, The Human Factor, Dr. Fischer of Geneva, or the Bomb Party, and Monsignor Quixote. Although he mentions Greene’s theological reading and friendships with various priests during the 1930s, nothing before Brighton Rock, except brief mention of The Man Within, gets any attention or even a place in the “References.” Rather than Catholic and post-Catholic, Bosco distinguishes between the four major books written in the context of Catholic doctrine and practice up to the Second Vatican Council and those written after. Pre-Conciliar doctrine and practice he calls “analogical” or vertical, emphasizing the relationship of the individual to God and a “Christology from above,” emphasizing the divinity of Jesus and descending “into concerns of human existence.” The novels written later, in the context of Vatican II debates and documents, reflect, often by implication rather than the Catholic novels’ more direct statement, a faith which emphasizes the “dialectical,” the possibility of detente with other faiths and theories, and a “Christology from below [which] begins with the historical Jesus proclaiming his commitment to the ‘Kingdom of God’ and rises to the dogmatic formulas of the early Christian church.” Pope Paul VI, through his encyclical Populorum Pregressio, becomes a key figure of post-council hope; John Paul II

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and the Curia squelched much of that spirit. Readers raised in the pre-Conciliar Church will find little new in the discussions of the dogmatic context of the Catholic novels, but the presentation of the theological debates that led to and came out of the Council explains to the non-specialist and to Catholics indifferent to theology what happened and why. Most important for Greene’s novels is the post-Conciliar blurring of previous body/spirit divisions and the tendency to regard, as his French influences did, the flesh as inherently evil or at best dangerous. Equally important, both for Greene and his characters, is the distinction between faith and belief. Bosco’s approach is primarily thematic rather than literary, so that, except for late novellas which he admits are weak, he seems to regard all of the novels as equal in quality. I think that he overrates the late novels, though his discussion of The Honorary Consul almost convinces me that I ought to finish a book which I abandoned, some 40 pages in, as a recycling of characters and scenes from earlier Greene. While I find Monsignor Quixote an agreeable work, I do not think it Greene’s “last great novel” but rather a pleasant entertainment occupying in his oeuvre much the same position as The Short Reign of Pippin IV does in John Steinbeck’s. There is ample thematic material in both for extended discussion, but that says nothing about the execution nor does it answer Paul Fussell’s snarky question, “Can Graham Greene Write English?” Students of Waugh will find little to engage them directly. Bosco states that Catholic liberals prefer Greene, Catholic conservatives Waugh. That is not my reaction, since I was first attracted to Waugh in the 1950s because he could be Catholic without being grim. But Bosco’s comments about Greene’s sense of evil led me to wonder if Waugh had a similar sense. Rex Mottram? Trimmer? Ludovic? Ian Kilbannock? It could be argued that they are not fully human and are therefore not culpable. The Communists in ? They are mistaken and possibly amoral, but they act from principle. Indeed, by the end of the trilogy all seems to be, if not forgiven, at least largely forgotten. But this is a question open to debate, perhaps in the Newsletter or at the 2006 meeting of the Waugh Society. It is clear that, given Waugh’s comparative orthodoxy, it would be difficult to produce a book about him that is as complex and subtle, indeed Jesuitical, as Mark Bosco has written about Graham Greene.

Evelyn Waugh Conference The next Evelyn Waugh Conference has been tentatively scheduled for 19-22 October 2006 in Montpellier, France. The theme is "Waugh in His World." If you would like to present a paper, please send a 250-word abstract to Professor Joseph V. Long, Portland State University, UNST, P.O. Box 751, Portland OR 97207, USA, or e-mail it to [email protected]. More details will be forthcoming.

Waugh on Television writes that the BBC's Channel Four has commissioned a 90-minute documentary based on his book Fathers and Sons. The documentary was shot in the summer of 2005, and it is scheduled for broadcast in the spring of 2006. The paperback edition of Fathers and Sons is scheduled to appear on 26 September 2005. Alexander also informs us that the BBC is producing a drama about Evelyn Waugh's breakdown in Ceylon and a "televisualisation" of his short story "Mr Loveday's Little Outing." A documentary on Brideshead Revisited (the book, the television serial, and the future) has been produced by ITV and is scheduled to be broadcast on ITV3 on 17 October 2005.

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Waugh in Translation Ninety-Two Days (1934) has been translated into Catalan by Manuel Piñon and Paula Pascual under the title Noventa y Dos Días, published in La Coruña, Spain by Ediciones del Viento in 2005. Georges Belmont's translation of Brideshead Revisited (1945), Retour à Brideshead, has been republished in Paris by Bibliothèque Pavillons / Robert Laffont in 2005.

New Life for Old Newsletters David Cliffe has generously offered to post every issue of the old Evelyn Waugh Newsletter, published from 1967 through 1998, on the Evelyn Waugh Website. The old Newsletters are now preserved in only one hundred or so libraries, and in the hands of a few dedicated collectors. David's effort will make Waugh scholarship available to many more readers, and we hope it will stimulate additional research. To make the old Newsletters even more useful, David is compiling and posting an extensive index. The first and second volumes are already available at www.abbotshill.freeserve.co.uk.

Evelyn Waugh Discussion List The Evelyn Waugh Discussion List, hosted by the Evelyn Waugh Society and Evelyn Waugh Newsletter and Studies, is now available at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Evelyn_Waugh. The list is moderated, and membership has to be approved by the moderators. Please visit the site and apply for membership.

Evelyn Waugh Society The Evelyn Waugh Society now has 47 members. Members who joined the Society in 2004 are reminded that membership fees for the coming year are now due.

Evelyn Waugh Undergraduate Essay Contest Readers are reminded that the deadline for entering the Evelyn Waugh Undergraduate Essay Contest is 31 December 2005. Please send entries to John H. Wilson, Department of English, Lock Haven University, Lock Haven PA 17745, USA. Entries will be judged by the editorial board of the Newsletter, and the winner will be announced in the spring of 2006. The prize is $250.

Work Suspended The film of Brideshead Revisited has been delayed. According to an article in the Daily Telegraph on 25 April 2005, David Yates deserted Brideshead when offered the chance to direct Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (2007). Douglas Ray of Ecosse Films hopes to find another director and "hopefully go into production next year."

Napoleonic Cyphers The Newsletter has had an inquiry about the dinner between Rex Mottram and Charles Ryder in Paris in Brideshead Revisited. Readers will remember that

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The cognac was not to Rex's taste. It was clear and pale and it came to us in a bottle free from grime and Napoleonic cyphers. It was only a year or two older than Rex and lately bottled. They gave it to us in very thin tulip-shaped glasses of modest size.

Rex describes it as "the sort of stuff he put soda in at home," and the waiters are forced, "shamefacedly," to wheel "out of its hiding place the vast and mouldy bottle they kept for people of Rex's sort." Charles describes it as a "treacly concoction" (Little, Brown, 177). Why does Rex reject the first cognac? What is the significance of its being free from "Napoleonic cyphers"? Why does Rex prefer the "mouldy bottle" and the "treacly concoction"? What is the irony of this scene? Any insight would be appreciated.

Waugh 24 Hours a Day Several essays about Evelyn Waugh have been posted at www.24hourscholar.com. If you visit the site and search for "Evelyn Waugh," 24-Hour Scholar provides a list of essays about Waugh and many more that mention him. The essays can be saved for later reading.

An Essay from Estonia Pilvi Rajamäe published "Camelot Revised: The Arthurian Theme in Evelyn Waugh's Novel A Handful of Dust" in Interlitteraria, issue no. 3 (1998). Interlitteraria is the journal of the Estonian Association of Comparative Literature. More information is available at www.ut.ee/inlit/introduction.html.

Beata Beatrix Robert Murray Davis noticed that the Art Institute of Chicago has one of Dante Gabriel Rossetti's paintings entitled Beata Beatrix, dated 1871-2. The painting depicts the death of Beatrice, the muse of Dante Alighieri. Rossetti wrote that the painting is not "a representation of the incident of the death," but "an ideal of the subject, symbolised by a trance or sudden spiritual transformation." The painting was acquired in 1925, and it can be viewed at www.rossettiarchive.org. At the top of the frame is "Jun: DIE 9. ANNO 1290. Quomodo sedet sola civitas!" That is the date (9 June 1290) of Beatrice's death, along with a quotation from Lamentations 1:1, "How doth the city sit solitary." Dante used the quotation in La Vita Nuova to express Florence's grief for Beatrice, and Rossetti translated the book as The New Life in 1861. Waugh also used the quotation at the end of Brideshead Revisited (1945). Chicago's Beata Beatrix is actually two paintings, with a narrative painting functioning as a predella below the main work. At the bottom of the frame is "Mart: DIE 31 ANNO 1300. Veni, Sponsa de Libano." That is the date (31 March 1300) described in Purgatorio, Cantos XXIX-XXXI, when Dante meets Beatrice in the Garden of Eden and she scolds him for having lost his way. As Rossetti wrote, "the words 'Veni, Sponsa di Libano' are sung at the meeting by the women in the train of Beatrice." The words mean "Come, bride, from Lebanon" and appear in the Song of Songs, or Song of Solomon, 4:8. Purgatorio is one of the books seized from Adam Fenwick-Symes at the beginning of (1930). The Tate Collection in London has another Beata Beatrix by Rossetti, dated circa 1864-70. This earlier version has the date of Beatrice's death at the top of the frame, though it is "now partly erased." The bottom of the frame reproduces the quotation "Quomodo sedet sola civitas!" The painting was acquired in 1889, and it can be viewed at the Rossetti Archive or

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www.tate.org.uk. According to the Rossetti Archive, the popularity of the original Beata Beatrix led to the commission for the painting now in Chicago. The Rossetti Archive identifies six different works with the same title, three in oil, one in watercolor, and two in colored chalks. Of these, "the most important is unquestionably … now in the Art Institute of Chicago," and it is a "far more dynamic picture than the original." The third oil, at the Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery, is dated circa 1877-1882. The top of the frame is inscribed "Quomodo sedet sola civitas!" and "Veni, Sponsa de Libano," but without the date. There is no date at the bottom, but there is a quotation: "'Quella beata Beatrice, la quale vive in cielo cogli angioli in terra colla mia anima.' Dante: Convito" (The Banquet, Book 2, Chapter 2: "that blessed Beatrice, who lives in heaven with the angels and on earth with my soul . . ."). Rossetti died in 1882, and the painting was finished by Ford Madox Brown. The painting was purchased in 1891. In Rossetti (1928),Waugh comments on the Beata Beatrix in the Tate Collection. He refers to other versions but may not have seen them. Despite the success of the painting now in Chicago, the original Beata Beatrix contained, Waugh writes, "all that was most tender and most devout in the memory of his wife" (131), and Waugh is disappointed that Rossetti decided to submit "this sacred memorial to the profitable process of replication" (133).

Bridget Grant, 1914-2005 Bridget Grant passed away on 8 July 2005. She was 91 years old. She was born Ann Bridget Domenica Herbert in 1914, and she married Captain Eddie Grant in 1934. Her sister Laura Herbert married Evelyn Waugh in 1937. Waugh was not at first welcome in the Herbert family, because of his failed marriage to one of their cousins, . According to the Daily Telegraph for 23 July 2005, Waugh "admired and was amused by" Bridget Grant, and after 1933 they enjoyed "many years of mediating friendship." At the beginning of the Second World War, Bridget Grant served as the billeting officer at Pixton Park, the Herberts' estate in Somerset. She "saved Pixton from servicemen by filling it with pre-school evacuees," and she is thought to be the model for Barbara Sothill in Put Out More Flags (1942). Bridget Grant was, to quote the Telegraph, a "hugely important parental presence in the lives of her nieces and nephews as well as those of her own three children." She is survived by two of her three children.

Essays on the Internet Readers of the Newsletter may be interested in two essays available on the internet. One is "Darwin or Derrida? Aphorizing Notions of a Biologically Foundationed Science of Literature" by Simon Whitechapel, available at http://web.onetel.com/~amygdala/essays/darwinlit.html. The other is "Sparrows and Gunpowder: An Eminent Edwardian and Evelyn Waugh's Journey to Faith" by Hermione Nettlethwaite, available at http://web.onetel.com/~amygdala/essays/sparrow.html.

Benson Unabridged A company named Once-and-Future Books is publishing the complete fiction, drama, and poetry of Monsignor Robert Hugh Benson (1871-1914). The first three works in the series are The Light Invisible, Lord of the World, and The Dawn of All. Future publications include By What Authority?, The King's Achievement, The Queen's Tragedy, The Necromancers, The

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Sentimentalists, and A Mirror of Shalott. More information is available at www.Benson- Unabridged.com, where Evelyn Waugh is quoted as an admirer of Benson's work.

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