EVELYN WAUGH NEWSLETTER AND STUDIES Vol EVELYN WAUGH NEWSLETTER AND STUDIES Vol. 33, No. 1 Spring 2002 Auberon Waugh, 1939-2001 Auberon Waugh, eldest son of Evelyn Waugh, died at his home, Combe Florey in Somerset, in January 2001. He was 61 years old. Tributes came from luminaries such as V. S. Naipaul; others preferred to dance on his grave. Many of Auberon Waugh’s English obituaries can still be read at Doubting Hall. Auberon Waugh’s American obituaries were consistently positive, perhaps because of distance. Both the New York Times and the Philadelphia Inquirer compared him to Jonathan Swift; as a “scourge of pomposity and hypocrisy” (Times, 18 Jan. 2001), Auberon Waugh would have been the first to denounce such a pretentious stretch. The Times noted that he was a “charming and courteous man,” while the Inquirer described him as a “beaming figure, generous, hospitable, and invariably well-mannered.” Drawing heavily on Auberon Waugh’s autobiography, Will This Do? (1991), the Times managed to make a few errors and neglected to mention the “Bad Sex Awards.” The Inquirer duly observed that Auberon Waugh “delighted in presenting . an annual accolade feared by novelists and awarded for the ‘worst, most embarrassing or most redundant description of the sexual act’” (18 Jan. 2001). What has not been said is that Auberon Waugh was a friend of scholarship. He is acknowledged, often in first place, in books written or edited by Mark Amory, Alain Blayac, Artemis Cooper, Michael Davie, Paul A. Doyle, Donat Gallagher, Robert R. Garnett, Selina Hastings, Charlotte Mosley, and Martin Stannard. Auberon Waugh also wrote introductions to books by Iain Gale and Annette Wirth. Auberon Waugh occasionally contributed to Evelyn Waugh Newsletter and Studies. His autobiography is an invaluable record of his family’s private life, especially his father’s idiosyncrasies. His father referred to one of his son’s headmasters as “The Conjurer,” and on a visit to the school Evelyn Waugh watched the headmaster’s “every movement with exaggerated attention as if he expected him to draw a rabbit from his pocket.” If Auberon Waugh had been more circumspect, we would know less about Evelyn Waugh’s life and its relationship to his writing. I was fortunate enough to acknowledge Auberon Waugh in my last book. I proposed a visit, and he invited me to luncheon. The food was excellent: roast chicken, rice, and salad, with cheese, fruit, and coffee afterward. Auberon Waugh served claret; later I acquired his and his wife’s The Entertaining Book (1986) and read that chicken impels the host “to upgrade the wine . or guests will feel they are being short-changed.” I certainly did not feel that way: I was shown a number of relics of Evelyn Waugh, including his grave, and Auberon Waugh submitted to yet another interview. Auberon Waugh’s encouragement of scholars is curious, since his mother was shy, his father notoriously hostile to those in search of material for theses. Auberon Waugh won an exhibition to Christ Church, Oxford, a feat that impressed even his father. He followed his father’s advice, however, switched from English to Politics Philosophy and Economics (PP&E), lost interest, and dropped out after a year. Though he never became an academic, Auberon Waugh recognized the importance of scholarship in the long-term evaluation of a writer. Many inquisitors were interested only in his father, and he graciously yielded. Through the years of questions that must have grown tedious, Auberon Waugh earned a modest kind of immortality: anyone who writes about Evelyn Waugh should be grateful to the memory of his eldest son. Auberon Waugh is the third of Evelyn Waugh’s children to pass away. He is survived by his wife, two brothers, two sisters, two sons, two daughters, and several grandchildren, nieces and nephews. (JHW) file:////uol.le.ac.uk/...c144/My%20Documents/Evelyn%20Waugh/Evelyn%20Waugh%20Studies/Newsletters/Newsletters/Newsletter_33.1.htm[04/12/2013 14:44:43] EVELYN WAUGH NEWSLETTER AND STUDIES Vol My Father the Anarchist by Alexander Waugh In his autobiography, Will This Do?, Auberon Waugh touched on the problem of writing about his father. “I had thought, at one stage, of a short memoir of Evelyn Waugh but could not decide what to call him: Evelyn? Unthinkable. Papa? Too sentimental. Waugh? I did not dare. The problem remains unresolved . .” I face the same anxieties now. To his face I called him Papa (pronounced “Pupper,” not “Puppah,” as he called Evelyn), but I blush to see that word in print. From here on in, let us call him Edwidge. He would not have minded in the least, for names were a constant confusion to him, even within the family. For the first eight or ten years of my life, he addressed me as “Fat Fool.” I was very happy with this, even introducing myself at parties as “Fat Fool, pleased to meet you!” but someone earnest must have told him to desist and at some point, Fat Fool disappeared to be replaced with a string of names that weren’t mine: Timmy, Nidge, Roge, Jockey (once when he saw my flies were undone); every time it was different, but I don’t think he ever called me Alexander. Perhaps the closest he got was “Arlex” in a satirical Scottish accent once or twice. When my father-in-law (who is also called Alexander) came to stay, Edwidge threw up his hands in dismay. “This is too confusing,” he said, “I shall have to call you Billy 1 and Billy 2.” Faces were just as confusing to him as names. He often upset people by failing to recognize them, but the problem was much graver than they realized. He once sat next to one of my sisters on a train and talked to her for ten minutes, eventually inquiring “Do you have children of your own? ” Sophia was stunned. “It’s me!” she cried. “Ah, Sophia, how lovely to see you!” Edwidge was a workaholic, up at crack of dawn, writing till lunch time, back after lunch at his desk, there until supper, often retiring to the library after supper as well, all through the holidays, even on Christmas Day. He could not live without his work and on the rare occasions that he rested would feel distinctly queer: “For a week I have done no work at all,” he wrote in his diary, “and marvel at the stamina of the English, who somehow manage to do none all their lives. After a few days, I found myself in a state of nervous exhaustion and moral collapse.” But his workaholism somehow never excluded other passions. He was a brilliant croquet player, loved bridge, collected polished stones and, as is well known, was an expert on wine and libel law, but ultimately he strove only for simple pleasures. “I would be surprised,” he said, “if there is any greater happiness than that provided by a game of croquet played on an English lawn through a summer’s afternoon, after a good luncheon and with a reasonable prospect of a good dinner ahead.” Inevitably, with his mind so much on his work, there was a detectable va et viens between the articles he was writing and the conversations we had at meal times. When I was chucked by a school girlfriend and made a pimply speech to the whole family, he listened quietly as I squeaked and squealed “I never want another girlfriend as long as I live!” (hammering the table) “Girls are odious!” The next day Edwidge called me into the library for a talk—an extremely rare event that must have happened no more than three times in my life. I was apprehensive and stood stiffly in front of his desk waiting for him to speak: “My dear boy,” he said, “the anus was designed for the retention and expulsion of faecal matter, not for the reception of foreign organs, however lovingly placed there.” I left the room, clutching my sides with laughter and was not surprised to see the sentence repeated a few years later in an article he wrote for the Spectator. As a rule he hated bossing as much as he hated being bossed and so, as children, we were seldom if ever disciplined by him. He believed that good behavior, particularly good manners, were taught by example and could never be learned by any system of punishment however subtly contrived. If anyone tried to boss him, he would automatically do the reverse to that which the bosser had intended. His pathological dislike of politicians was grounded in a belief that they only entered politics in the first place to satisfy craven power urges. “The problem with democracy,” he wrote, “is that it is not democracy at all but a zealotocracy or rule by file:////uol.le.ac.uk/...c144/My%20Documents/Evelyn%20Waugh/Evelyn%20Waugh%20Studies/Newsletters/Newsletters/Newsletter_33.1.htm[04/12/2013 14:44:43] EVELYN WAUGH NEWSLETTER AND STUDIES Vol enthusiasts. This is a polite way of saying that as many bossy people as possible get a chance to throw their weight around. It may be lovely for bossy people who like deciding how the rest of us should live, but it is hell for those at the receiving end.” Walking into Westminster Cathedral for a memorial service a few years ago, he spotted a bright plastic sign stuck to its medieval doors, a circular traffic-style notice with a picture of an ice cream and a diagonal red line drawn across it. “Fascists!” he said as he walked past. If he had had the time, I am sure he would have doubled back to buy an ice cream and lick it noisily during the service.