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Evelyn Waugh Newsletter EVELYN WAUGH NEWSLETTER Volume 15, Number 2 Autumn 1981 THE NATURE OF A TRIMMER By Thomas A. Gribble Alan Watkins, in The Observer, and Auberon Waugh, in Books and Book men, have written that the character of Trimmer in the Sword of Honour trilogy might have been suggested by Lord Lovat, Waugh's superior officer in the commandoes who forced his resignation from the brigade in the summer of 1943. Certainly there was no love lost between these fellow Catholics. Lord Lovat's autobiography, March Past, contains one of the most vituperative portraits of Waugh in print. Waugh's diaries and letters show that he was deeply offended and wounded by what he considered to be a plot on Lord Lovat's part to remove him from the commandoes, and it is not far~fetched to surmise that he was striking back for his wartime humiliation by caricaturing the Scots aristocrat as a bogus hero and a former ladies hairdresser. It is ironic that Major General Robert Laycock, the commanding officer for whom Waugh had the utmost respect and to whom Officers and Gentlemen is dedicated, was, according to his obituary in The Times, the true possessor of tonsorial skills. Trimmer, however, !ike a!! of Waugh's characters, does not depend upon any rea! person for his existence. Waugh's characters all have their place in the design of his novels and that alone justifies their existence. Trimmer's function is to suggest certain characteristics of the 'wasteland' figures who inhabit the modern world described in Waugh's novels, the "hollow men" who have no true sense of identity. One immediately concludes that Trimmer was so named because of his former profession as a hairdresser, but the word trimmer has another meaning which suggests Trimmer's nature. During the seventeenth century, a trimmer was a compromiser or someone who tried to straddle both sides of an issue, unable or unwilling to commit himself. The positive role of the compromiser was stressed by the seventeenth century politician George Savile, the Marquis of Halifax, in his pamphlet The Character of a Trimmer. In it he argued the benefits of pursuing a central line of policy between Whig and Tory extremes. A more jaundiced view of the nature of a trimmer was taken by Dryden. In his "Epilogue from the Duke of Guise", he wrote: We Trimmers are for holding all things even Yes- just like him that hung 'twixt Hell and Heaven. (11 33-34) and further on described trimmers as: Damn'd Neuters, in their middle way of steering, And neither Fish, nor Flesh, nor good Red-Herring: Not Whiggs, nor Tories they; nor this, nor that; Not Birds, nor Beasts; but just a kind of Bat: A Twilight Animal; true to neither Cause; With Tory Whigs, but Whiggish Teeth and Claws. (11 39-44) The negative connotation that Dryden gave to the word trimmer prevailed despite Savile's attempt to make it acceptable, and in the twentieth century it has been associated with the spiritual rather than the political condition. Philip R. Harding in his 1964 book on T. S. Eliot described the wasteland inhabitants of the unreal city of London as having: ... those attitudes of soul symbolized in Dante's Inferno ... by the trimmers- who 'lived without blame, and without praise' and who are admitted neither to heaven nor the depths of hell.' Mr. Harding was referring to the lines in ''The Wasteland" which read: A crowd flowed over London bridge, so many 1 had not thought death had undone so many. He pointed out that in the notes to "The Wasteland", Eliot attributes his lines to lines 55-57 of Canto Ill of the Inferno, the portion dealing with those souls who are at the vestibule of Hell. Ronald Bottrall, in his portion of a 1966 translation of the Inferno done for the BBC, also described those souls who refused to make a choice and were thus despised by Heaven and Hell as 'Trimmers"'. In his translation, they are: The saddened souls ... Who existed without blame and without praise. They are mixed up with that malignant strain -2- Of angels who would not rebels be, Nor true to God, but for themselves remain. Heaven chased them out to keep its pristine beauty; And bottomless hell receives them not, For over them sinners could have some glory. (Canto Ill, 11 34-42) Dryden's, Eliot's, and Dante's trimmers all lack a stable and secure identity. They are neither one thing nor the other. In the twentieth century wasteland of Waugh and Eliot they are the living dead. They are not compromisers who refuse to make a choice between God and the devil or God and mammon because in an increasingly materialistic society that had at first turned away from God and has now gradually come to ignore Him, they are not aware that a choice need be made. How­ ever, like the compromisers, they lack the secure identity that comes from the knowledge that they are creations of God. Trimmer is, therefore, an apposite name for one of the characters in Waugh's wasteland. He is a character of multiple roles and identities - Gustave the hairdresser, Captain MacTavish - later promoting himself to major for a week in Glasgow, and finally he is officially named Trimmer. He became a hero after 'Operation Popgun,' but that is just another role because he had become the creation of the public relations man at HOO HQ, Ian Kilbannock. The story that Kilbannock gave to the press about the raid and Trimmer's heroism was a fabrication. Instead of behaving in an heroic manner, Trimmer was a coward who wanted tore-embark before his men returned and he was given credit for an initiative taken by his sergeant. He was a manufactured hero, used to meet the needs of General Whale who feared that unless he could make a stand against the enemy- and in his case the enemy were the British Service Chiefs -he would lose HOO. Trimmer's donning of the hero's mantle was also assured because his appearance fit the concept of the People's Hero that the pub- . licists were then trying to sell to the public. As lan tells Virginia Troy: 'With that accent, that smile and that lock of hair he was absolutely cut out to be a great national figure.' (OG 219) 3 With his multiple identities and an heroic image created by others, Trimmer is lacking in the single and secure identity that would make his life meaningful. Waugh suggests the lack of a secure identity among the trimmers of the wasteland by references to disguises and stage roles. This is first seen when Guy Crouch back joins the army because for him and for most of his comrades who are not professional soldiers- and for some who are -the uniform is a disguise, an actor's costume used to hide, in some cases deliberately, the real personality. Apthorpe looked like a soldier, but he was "gloriously over- Technicoloured like Bonny Prince Charles in the film" (MA 165). lan Kilbannock was "an arch-imposter in his Air Force dress" (MA 124). Guy grows a moustache and sports a monocle to embellish his crusader's costume, but when he failed to impress Virginia and Tommy Blackhouse: ... he reflected, his uniform was a drsguise, his whole new calling a masquerade. (MA 124) Even Evelyn Waugh, after he joined Lt. Col. Laycock's commando was a: ... novelist temporarily disguised as a Captain in the Royal Horse Guards ... • There are several references to suggest that the characters are taking part in a play. Job, the porter at Bellamy's, acted the part of a stage butler. I an Kilbannock emerged cautiously from a wash­ room "as in a stage farce" ((OG 14). Officers enter the hotel on Mugg "as in an old-fashioned, well constructed comedy" (OG 49). Sir Ralph Brompton "seemed a figure of obsolescent light comedy" (US 29). Ludovic on all fours was "a figure from antiquated farce" (US 114). lan Kilbannock "had momentarily seen himself as a figure of melodrama" (US 88). The conversation between Guy and Virginia during Christmas 1943, when she reversed the roles of their encounter on Valentine's Day 1940 by trying to seduce him, was "as light as the heaviest drawing-room comedy" (US 146). Of all the wasteland characters, lan Kilbannock fits most easily into his new role. He too is a character of multiple personalities - democratic for the American reporters and lordly for Air Marshall Beech, a left wing sympathizer who is upset when he can get no one to carry his bags on Mugg, an advocate of the People's Hero and a peer of the realm who is a prominent member of Bellamy's. Like Ludovic, he has a gift of tongues. What he is above all else, however, is an op­ portunist- a true trimmer. He uses the class war to his own advantage- for promotion and position after the war. As a public relations man he is one of the new gods of the modern world who can take a lump of clay and create a hero named Trimmer. But really he is an insubstantial figure whose life, as far as what really matters in Waugh's view, has no more meaning or significance than if he were a character in a stage play. When he is in France with Trimmer during 'Operation Popgun,' he -3- declaims two lines from Noel Coward's Private Lives, "'Very flat, Norfolk' " (OG 145} and "'Moon light can be cruelly deceptive'" (OG 146}, as if he were taking part in a play, an imitation of life rather than I ife itself.
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