Newsletter_41.2 EVELYN WAUGH NEWSLETTER AND STUDIES Vol. 41, No. 2 Autumn 2010 ‘I am Trimmer, you know . .’ Lord Lovat in Evelyn Waugh’s Sword of Honour by Donat Gallagher James Cook University Call me foolhardy, but I am resolved to boldly go where Paul Johnson has already been threatened with violence. Some years ago Mr Johnson recounted a conversation he had with Simon Fraser, 15th Lord Lovat in which Lord Lovat said that he had ‘kicked Evelyn Waugh out’ of the Special Service Brigade ‘for the Brigade’s good.’ This, of course, had aroused Waugh’s ‘undying fury.’ Nor had Lovat mellowed. ‘By kicking [Waugh] out,’ he explained, ‘I saved his life.’ Lovat was alluding to very silly gossip that Waugh’s men would have shot him if he went into action. ‘But no good deed goes unpunished. He survived to write [Sword of Honour (1)] portraying me as a horrible hairdresser. For I am Trimmer, you know.’ In reply to Johnson, Lord Lovat’s doughty nephew, Sir Charles Maclean (son of Sir Fitzroy), virtually accused him of lying. Doubting that the conversation ‘actually took place,’ he promised Johnson a ‘Glasgow kiss’ if he ‘showed his florid mug north of the border.’[2] Improbable as it might seem to a loyal nephew that Lord Lovat—MacShimi of the Fraser Clan, proud heir to Beaufort Castle (that focus of Old Roman Catholic culture) and ‘dashing’ scion of celebrated generals—could be portrayed as a ‘horrible hairdresser,’ it is in fact very likely that Trimmer/McTavish reflects Lovat. And no one will doubt that Waugh drew the portrait in revenge for Lovat’s ‘kicking him out’ of the Commandos. The motto of the Scots Guards is ‘Nemo me impune lacessit’ (‘No one attacks me with impunity’): Lovat therefore had to punish the insulting portrait. And the Lovat family maxim—‘Hit them hard, hit them often and always below the belt’[3]—ensured that the punishment meted out would be extreme. Hence the amazingly vituperative, and almost purely fictional, counterattack on Waugh in Lovat’s memoir, March Past (233-36). Is Trimmer/McTavish a caricature of Lord Lovat? Some people ‘in the know’ have always believed that Trimmer ‘was’ Lovat, especially in his temporary shape of McTavish. Ann Fleming—the socialite gossip—teased Waugh: 'May I have permission … to imagine that Trimmer McTavish is Lord Lovat?'[4] More authoritatively, Sir Robert Laycock, for many years Lovat’s commanding officer, writing to thank Waugh for a specially bound copy of Officers and Gentlemen, asked: ‘Have you sent bound copies to Shimi, the Hairy Highlander and poor Colville (or was it Colvin?)?’[5] Lt Colonel Colvin is universally regarded as one of the ‘models’ for Major Hound in Sword of Honour; but does some other character in the novel reflect ‘Shimi, the Hairy Highlander’? In 1978 Alan Watkins, while making other identifications, said that ‘Trimmer … is based on Lord Lovat, with whom [Waugh] did not get on.’[6] And Auberon Waugh stated that Lovat ‘had been ridiculed as “Trimmer” in the war trilogy.’[7] On the other hand, readers (like the present writer) with no direct knowledge of the principals have tended to deny the identification, for man and character are at opposite ends of the social and heroic scales. Lord Lovat won the DSO at Dieppe: ‘Saw the film at Combined Operations Club,’ Waugh wrote. ‘Shimi Lovat did brilliantly, the only wholly successful part of the raid.’[8] By contrast, the ‘classless’ Trimmer—a.k.a. Gustave, the ladies’ hairdresser; a.k.a. Captain McTavish, the leader of ‘Popgun’—is an incompetent coward. Professor David Wykes puts the case for doubt: ‘[The identification] is certainly not deducible from the book itself … file:////uol.le.ac.uk/...c144/My%20Documents/Evelyn%20Waugh/Evelyn%20Waugh%20Studies/Newsletters/Newsletters/Newsletter_41.2.htm[04/12/2013 14:44:51] Newsletter_41.2 Waugh’s son presumably relied on information from his father…. But the dissimilarities are so huge that if Waugh intended Trimmer to be identified as Lovat he can only have failed to plant clues that would lead that way.’[9] Understandable as are these hesitations, I will nevertheless argue that Waugh did ‘plant clues’ that would lead to Lovat’s being recognizable in Trimmer/McTavish. Colleagues or friends probably saw in Trimmer, qua Trimmer, reflections of Lovat not evident to others. Nevertheless, others may speculate about seeming hints. The ‘devastatingly good looking’[10] Laird often attracted praise like ‘film-star,’ ‘matinee idol’ or ‘upper-class Errol Flynn.’ Are Trimmer’s sexy good looks meant to mirror a down-market quality in Lovat’s? Throughout March Past, Lovat either delights in his troops’ singing or insists that they sing. Is this why Trimmer incessantly croons? Professor John Wilson believes that Trimmer’s ‘trucking about with raised hands in little shuffling dance steps’ whenever jazz is playing (Sword 52) corresponds with Waugh’s description of Lovat as a ‘Palais de Dance hero.’[11] But explicit parallels between Trimmer and Lovat occur only when Trimmer temporarily morphs into McTavish. After being ousted from the Halberdiers, Trimmer takes his mother’s name, McTavish, joins a Highland regiment, becomes an officer and is left behind when the regiment deploys to Iceland. In full Highland regalia, Captain McTavish and his detachment then undertake the defence of Mugg. While on leave posing as a major, McTavish is quizzed by a senior officer from his regiment and, to avoid exposure, transfers to the Commandos (Sword 317-19, 340-54). Lovat began the war in the Lovat Scouts, a Highland regiment raised by his own family. However, after many previous provocations, he finally abused his commanding officer at a staff meeting and was given the choice of ‘a transfer (in other words the sack) or facing a court on a charge of insubordination’ (March 171). Lovat chose ‘the sack.’ The Lovat Scouts then deployed to the Faroe Islands, close to Iceland. Abandoned, Lovat found his way to the Commandos, where his Highland dress became famous. The parallels can scarcely be coincidental. Both Trimmer and Lovat are (a) ‘chucked out’ of their original regiments, viz. the Halberdiers and the Lovat Scouts; (b) both belong to Highland regiments that leave them behind when deployed to the Iceland region; and (c) both find a haven in the Commandos. One might ask whether McTavish’s generosity with travel vouchers is meant to parallel Lovat’s. By joining the Commandos, McTavish leaves his troops in Army limbo. To buy their silence, he sends them ‘on leave’ and ‘empties his book of travel-vouchers’ (Sword 358). This profligacy might recall the fact that Lovat several times created public rows and incurred reprimands by freely handing out travel-vouchers. On one such occasion Brigadier Antony Head wrote to Lovat’s commanding officer enclosing Lovat’s ‘rude’ and ‘insolent’ explanation of his conduct: ‘I am annoyed with one of your temperamental prima donnas in the shape of Lovat … the Commandos have plenty of enemies and it is merely providing them with welcome ammunition if the Commanding Officers decide to flout all conventional procedure, and, having done so, to explain their behaviour with rudeness which, in a more rigid HQ would be considered insolence.’[12] But the most calculated identification of Lovat with McTavish is surely found in the ‘Operation Popgun’ episode in Sword of Honour (387-91, 418-29). ‘Popgun’ is a cross-channel raid, led by McTavish, and it seems to take its inspiration from ‘Operation Abercrombie,’ a cross-channel raid led by Lovat. Both raids turn out fiascos but are nevertheless lauded in the press; both leaders receive the Military Cross; both are employed in wartime propaganda. To be fair to the Commandos and other soldiers engaged in cross-channel raiding, Britain’s demoralizing defeats from 1939 to 1943 dictated that the Ministry of Information splash stories of British offensive action. As Ian Kilbannock puts it in Sword of Honour: ‘Heroes are file:////uol.le.ac.uk/...c144/My%20Documents/Evelyn%20Waugh/Evelyn%20Waugh%20Studies/Newsletters/Newsletters/Newsletter_41.2.htm[04/12/2013 14:44:51] Newsletter_41.2 urgently required to boost civilian morale’ (374). Highly publicized cross-channel raids filled this ‘urgent requirement’ until real victories made them redundant. The raids were always controversial, Lovat retrospectively calling them ‘usually time-wasting’ and ridiculing in a highly personal way the officers who led early efforts (March 269, 184-87). Of course, many raids were heroic and valuable, as when two Royal Engineers in a kayak sank a ship laden with copper in Boulogne harbour, or when vital radar intelligence was brought back from Bruneval, or when the St-Nazaire docks, essential for German shipping in the Atlantic, were demolished. Nevertheless, some raids were undertaken for their news value, and Lord Louis Mountbatten, as Chief of Combined Operations, not only seized ‘every opportunity to make sure of a good … reaction from the newspapers and the BBC’ but on occasion bullied officers into giving ‘glowing accounts’ of ‘catastrophes.’[13] During this propaganda-obsessed period, newspapers and magazines regularly featured pictures of ‘dashing Major Lord Lovat’ as the ‘face’ of the Commandos; and they attributed to him utterances (no doubt crafted by some real-life Ian Kilbannock) that were often ludicrous fictions. When Laycock was campaigning in Italy, Lovat was Deputy Commander of the Special Services Brigade in England. Waugh (who had been famously left behind) wrote to Laycock, his Brigadier, criticizing Lovat’s obsession with publicity and his ‘alarming negligence’ in preparing for raids: The Brigade now seems chiefly interested in the production of cinema films and the entertainment of Wrens. Their small operational commitments are being treated with alarming negligence.