The Restripping of the Altars Evelyn Waugh and the Reforms of Vatican Ii

Religion and the Arts 19 (2015) 121–131 RELIGION and the ARTS brill.com/rart

The Restripping of the Altars Evelyn Waugh and the Reforms of Vatican ii

Kevin J. Gardner Baylor University

Barber, Michael. Evelyn Waugh. Brief Lives. London: Hesperus Press, 2013. Pp. 140. £8.99 paper.

Brennan, Michael G. Evelyn Waugh: Fictions, Faith, and Family. London and New York: Bloomsbury, 2013. Pp. xx + 170. $34.95 paper.

Gallagher, Donat et al., eds. A Handful of Mischief: New Essays on Evelyn Waugh. Madison and Teaneck nj: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2013. Pp. 254 + 1 illustration. $80.00 cloth.

Reid, Alcuin, ed. A Bitter Trial: Evelyn Waugh and John Carmel, Cardinal Heenan on the Liturgical Changes. Foreword Joseph Pearce. 1996. Expanded edition. San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2011. Pp. 123. $11.95 paper.

The life of Evelyn Waugh has attracted an inordinate number of biographers, but a full critical appreciation of his literary achievement continues to lag well behind. No doubt this has much to do with his political conservatism and devout Roman Catholicism. However, a number of recently published and reis- sued books about Waugh are paving the way for more scholarly and critically sustained analyses of Waugh’s writings. These new books include a brief biography, a biographically-oriented literary study, a highly specialized compilation of primary source material, and a collection of critical essays. Owing to its pub- lisher’s intractability, one other biography intended for inclusion in this essay was unavailable for review: Capuchin Classics’s 2013 reissue of Selina Hastings’s 1994 life of Waugh. Hastings corrected a number of errors in Martin Stannard’s two-volume biography and offered a wider perspective on Waugh’s ethos than Frederick Stopp, Christopher Sykes, or John Howard Wilson. Capuchin is thus to be commended for returning this magisterial biography to print. Of all the new scholarship on Waugh, the most highly anticipated is the projected forty- two-volume CompleteWorksofEvelynWaugh, launched in 2013 at the University

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2015 | doi: 10.1163/15685292-01901007 122 review essays of Leicester under the general editorship of Alexander Waugh and forthcoming from Oxford University Press. As this project nears its anticipated 2018 comple- tion, there are sure to be many more Waugh-related publications. Michael Barber’s short biography, published in Hesperus Press’s admirable “Brief Lives” series, is timed to capitalize upon the renewed interest in Waugh. The volumes in this series are intended to be lean yet highly authoritative biographies of major literary figures, each written by an expert in the field. Bar- ber, a journalist and the author of biographies of novelists Simon Raven and Anthony Powell, has produced a thin yet sharply defined account of Waugh’s life. It is by no means either authoritative or original, however; instead, it is a condensation of meatier, extant biographies. Which biographies these are is difficult to determine as Barber does not specify or document his sources; it appears primarily to be based largely on the work of Martin Stannard and Christopher Sykes along with Waugh’s diaries and letters. The lack of documen- tation is an ordinary feature of little biographies such as these, but Barber’s frequent practice of quoting without even mentioning his source is distract- ing and puzzling. This is problematic for the reader with anything beyond a superficial interest in the topic. The book’s ultimate appeal is for the student or perhaps the general reader who requires only the barest biographical intro- duction. Throughout the book, Barber anticipates well the demands of a reader new to Waugh. Only on rare occasions does he miss the mark and devote more attention to certain events than is really necessary in a short life of an author. For instance, Waugh’s World War ii experiences, including his fantasies and failures as an officer, unfold over nearly fifteen pages, with surprisingly little reference to Sword of Honour. More problematic is Barber’s focus on the epicene and homosexual culture of Oxford in the 1920s, which is entirely out of proportion and has within it an awkward anxiety, exhibited in such dubi- ous phrases as “card-carrying homosexuals” (21). We might also note that the sexual proclivities of Oxford don Sir Maurice Bowra are probably not relevant either, though the topic does give Barber the even more tangential opportunity to argue with Leslie Mitchell, Bowra’s biographer, over these details. Likewise, Barber digresses into salacious gossip about Randolph Churchill and inexplica- bly devotes more than two pages to Cyril Connolly. At other occasions, Barber fails to offer even the scantest necessary details, instead assuming his reader is as much an insider to Waugh’s world as he is. For instance, Barber recounts how Sir Duff Cooper proposed for membership in White’s (Waugh’s London Club) “Evelyn’s bête noir, the suave man of letters Peter Quennell” (88); his readers are left wondering why Waugh’s former friend might have become so reviled.

Religion and the Arts 19 (2015) 121–131