Evelyn Waugh

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Evelyn Waugh
travelogue
, autobiography, satire, humour
Spouses
​
​
(m. 1928; ann. 1936)​
Laura Herbert
​
(m. 1937)​
Children7, including Auberon Waugh

Arthur Evelyn St. John Waugh (/ˈiːvlɪn ˈsɪndʒən ˈwɔː/; 28 October 1903 – 10 April 1966) was an English writer of novels, biographies, and travel books; he was also a prolific journalist and book reviewer. His most famous works include the early satires Decline and Fall (1928) and A Handful of Dust (1934), the novel Brideshead Revisited (1945), and the Second World War trilogy Sword of Honour (1952–1961). He is recognised as one of the great prose stylists of the English language in the 20th century.[1]

Waugh was the son of a publisher, educated at

country house
society.

He travelled extensively in the 1930s, often as a special newspaper correspondent; he reported from Abyssinia at the time of the 1935 Italian invasion. Waugh served in the British armed forces throughout the Second World War, first in the Royal Marines and then in the Royal Horse Guards. He was a perceptive writer who used the experiences and the wide range of people whom he encountered in his works of fiction, generally to humorous effect. Waugh's detachment was such that he fictionalised his own mental breakdown which occurred in the early 1950s.[2]

Waugh converted to

Brideshead Revisited
(1981).

Family background

Lord Cockburn, the Scottish judge, was one of Waugh's great-great-grandfathers.

Arthur Evelyn St. John Waugh was born on 28 October 1903

Huguenot origins. Distinguished relatives included Lord Cockburn (1779–1854), a leading Scottish advocate and judge, William Morgan (1750–1833), a pioneer of actuarial science who served The Equitable Life Assurance Society for 56 years, and Philip Henry Gosse (1810–1888), a natural scientist who became notorious through his depiction as a religious fanatic in his son Edmund's memoir Father and Son.[4] Among ancestors bearing the Waugh name, the Rev. Alexander Waugh (1754–1827) was a minister in the Secession Church of Scotland who helped found the London Missionary Society and was one of the leading Nonconformist preachers of his day.[5] His grandson Alexander Waugh (1840–1906) was a country medical practitioner, who bullied his wife and children and became known in the Waugh family as "the Brute". The elder of Alexander's two sons, born in 1866, was Evelyn's father, Arthur Waugh.[6]

After attending

Chapman and Hall, publishers of the works of Charles Dickens.[7] He had married Catherine Raban (1870–1954)[8] in 1893; their first son Alexander Raban Waugh (always known as Alec) was born on 8 July 1898. Alec Waugh later became a novelist of note.[9] At the time of his birth the family were living in North London, at Hillfield Road, West Hampstead where, on 28 October 1903, the couple's second son was born, "in great haste before Dr Andrews could arrive", Catherine recorded.[10] On 7 January 1904 the boy was christened Arthur Evelyn St John Waugh but was known in the family and in the wider world as Evelyn.[11][n 1]

Childhood

Golders Green and Heath Mount

North End Road
, Golders Green, London

In 1907, the Waugh family left Hillfield Road for Underhill, a house which Arthur had built in

North End Road, Hampstead, close to Golders Green,[12] then a semi-rural area of dairy farms, market gardens and bluebell woods.[13] Evelyn received his first school lessons at home, from his mother, with whom he formed a particularly close relationship; his father, Arthur Waugh, was a more distant figure, whose close bond with his elder son, Alec, was such that Evelyn often felt excluded.[14][15] In September 1910, Evelyn began as a day pupil at Heath Mount preparatory school. By then, he was a lively boy of many interests, who already had written and completed "The Curse of the Horse Race", his first story.[16] A positive influence on his writing was a schoolmaster, Aubrey Ensor. Waugh spent six relatively contented years at Heath Mount; on his own assertion he was "quite a clever little boy" who was seldom distressed or overawed by his lessons.[17] Physically pugnacious, Evelyn was inclined to bully weaker boys; among his victims was the future society photographer Cecil Beaton, who never forgot the experience.[16][18]

Outside school, he and other neighbourhood children performed plays, usually written by Waugh.

Lord Kitchener, but never did.[21]

Family holidays usually were spent with the Waugh aunts at

altar boy at the local Anglican church.[23] During his last year at Heath Mount, Waugh established and edited The Cynic school magazine.[16][n 2]

Lancing

Lancing College Chapel

Like his father before him, Alec Waugh went to school at Sherborne. It was presumed by the family that Evelyn would follow, but in 1915, the school asked Evelyn's older brother Alec to leave after a

officer, and, while awaiting confirmation of his commission, wrote The Loom of Youth (1917), a novel of school life, which alluded to homosexual friendships at a school that was recognisably Sherborne. The public sensation caused by Alec's novel so offended the school that it became impossible for Evelyn to go there. In May 1917, much to his annoyance, he was sent to Lancing College, in his opinion a decidedly inferior school.[21]

Waugh soon overcame his initial aversion to Lancing, settled in and established his reputation as an

aesthete. In November 1917 his essay "In Defence of Cubism" (1917) was accepted by and published in the arts magazine Drawing and Design; it was his first published article.[25] Within the school, he became mildly subversive, mocking the school's cadet corps and founding the Corpse Club "for those who were bored stiff".[26][27] The end of the war saw the return to the school of younger masters such as J. F. Roxburgh, who encouraged Waugh to write and predicted a great future for him.[28][n 3] Another mentor, Francis Crease, taught Waugh the arts of calligraphy and decorative design; some of the boy's work was good enough to be used by Chapman and Hall on book jackets.[30]

In his later years at Lancing, Waugh achieved success as a house captain, editor of the school magazine and president of the

debating society, and won numerous art and literature prizes.[26] He also shed most of his religious beliefs.[31] He started a novel of school life, untitled, but abandoned the effort after writing around 5,000 words.[32] He ended his schooldays by winning a scholarship to read Modern History at Hertford College, Oxford, and left Lancing in December 1921.[33]

Oxford

Hertford College, Oxford; Old Quadrangle

Waugh arrived in Oxford in January 1922. He was soon writing to old friends at Lancing about the pleasures of his new life; he informed

Isis, and he acted as a film critic for Isis.[36][37] He also became secretary of the Hertford College debating society, "an onerous but not honorific post", he told Driberg.[38] Although Waugh tended to regard his scholarship as a reward for past efforts rather than a stepping-stone to future academic success, he did sufficient work in his first two terms to pass his "History Previous", an essential preliminary examination.[39]

The arrival in Oxford in October 1922 of the sophisticated

Lord Sebastian Flyte in the novel Brideshead Revisited, though this is rather disputed and was most likely a blend of numerous individuals including Stephen Tennant).[26][43]

He continued to write reviews and short stories for the university journals, and developed a reputation as a talented graphic artist, but formal study largely ceased.[26] This neglect led to a bitter feud between Waugh and his history tutor, C. R. M. F. Cruttwell, dean (and later principal) of Hertford College. When Cruttwell advised him to mend his ways, Waugh responded in a manner which, he admitted later, was "fatuously haughty";[44] from then on, relations between the two descended into mutual hatred.[45] Waugh continued the feud long after his Oxford days by using Cruttwell's name in his early novels for a succession of ludicrous, ignominious or odious minor characters.[46][n 4]

Waugh's dissipated lifestyle continued into his final Oxford year, 1924. A letter written that year to a Lancing friend, Dudley Carew, hints at severe emotional pressures: "I have been living very intensely these last three weeks. For the last fortnight I have been nearly insane.... I may perhaps one day in a later time tell you some of the things that have happened".[47] He did just enough work to pass his final examinations in the summer of 1924 with a third-class. However, as he had begun at Hertford in the second term of the 1921–22 academic year, Waugh had completed only eight terms' residence when he sat his finals, rather than the nine required under the university's statutes. His poor results led to the loss of his scholarship, which made it impossible for him to return to Oxford for that final term, so he left without his degree.[48]

Back at home, Waugh began a novel, The Temple at Thatch, and worked with some of his fellow Hypocrites on a film, The Scarlet Woman, which was shot partly in the gardens at Underhill. He spent much of the rest of the summer in the company of Alastair Graham; after Graham departed for Kenya, Waugh enrolled for the autumn at a London art school, Heatherley's.[49]

Early career

Teaching and writing

Dante Gabriel Rossetti, the subject of Waugh's first full-length book (1927)

Waugh began at Heatherley's in late September 1924, but became bored with the routine and quickly abandoned his course.[50] He spent weeks partying in London and Oxford before the overriding need for money led him to apply through an agency for a teaching job. Almost at once, he secured a post at Arnold House, a boys' preparatory school in North Wales, beginning in January 1925. He took with him the notes for his novel, The Temple at Thatch, intending to work on it in his spare time. Despite the gloomy ambience of the school, Waugh did his best to fulfil the requirements of his position, but a brief return to London and Oxford during the Easter holiday only exacerbated his sense of isolation.[51]

In the summer of 1925, Waugh's outlook briefly improved, with the prospect of a job in Pisa, Italy, as secretary to the Scottish writer C. K. Scott Moncrieff, who was engaged on the English translations of Marcel Proust's works. Believing that the job was his, Waugh resigned his position at Arnold House. He had meantime sent the early chapters of his novel to Acton for assessment and criticism. Acton's reply was so coolly dismissive that Waugh immediately burnt his manuscript; shortly afterwards, before he left North Wales, he learned that the Moncrieff job had fallen through.[52] The twin blows were sufficient for him to consider suicide. He records that he went down to a nearby beach and, leaving a note with his clothes, walked out to sea. An attack by jellyfish changed his mind, and he returned quickly to the shore.[53]

During the following two years Waugh taught at schools in

Duckworths for a full-length biography of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, which Waugh wrote during 1927.[59] He also began working on a comic novel; after several temporary working titles this became Decline and Fall.[60][61] Having given up teaching, he had no regular employment except for a short, unsuccessful stint as a reporter on the Daily Express in April–May 1927.[62] That year he met (possibly through his brother Alec) and fell in love with Evelyn Gardner, the daughter of Lord and Lady Burghclere.[63]

"He-Evelyn" and "She-Evelyn"

Canonbury Square, where Waugh and Evelyn Gardner lived during their brief marriage

In December 1927, Waugh and Evelyn Gardner became engaged, despite the opposition of Lady Burghclere, who felt that Waugh lacked moral fibre and kept unsuitable company.

Times Literary Supplement's references to him as "Miss Waugh".[61]

When Decline and Fall was completed, Duckworths objected to its "obscenity", but Chapman & Hall agreed to publish it.[66] This was sufficient for Waugh and Gardner to bring forward their wedding plans. They were married in St Paul's Church, Portman Square, on 27 June 1928, with only Acton, Robert Byron, Alec Waugh and the bride's friend Pansy Pakenham present.[67] The couple made their home in a small flat in Canonbury Square, Islington.[68] The first months of the marriage were overshadowed by a lack of money, and by Gardner's poor health, which persisted into the autumn.[69]

In September 1928, Decline and Fall was published to almost unanimous praise. By December, the book was into its third printing, and the American publishing rights were sold for $500.[70] In the afterglow of his success, Waugh was commissioned to write travel articles in return for a free Mediterranean cruise, which he and Gardner began in February 1929, as an extended, delayed honeymoon. The trip was disrupted when Gardner contracted pneumonia and was carried ashore to the British hospital in Port Said. The couple returned home in June, after her recovery. A month later, without warning, Gardner confessed that their mutual friend, John Heygate, had become her lover. After an attempted reconciliation failed, a shocked and dismayed Waugh filed for divorce on 3 September 1929. The couple apparently met again only once, during the process for the annulment of their marriage a few years later.[71]

Novelist and journalist

Recognition

Waugh's first biographer,

Christopher Sykes, records that after the divorce friends "saw, or believed they saw, a new hardness and bitterness" in Waugh's outlook.[72] Nevertheless, despite a letter to Acton in which he wrote that he "did not know it was possible to be so miserable and live",[73] he soon resumed his professional and social life. He finished his second novel, Vile Bodies,[74] and wrote articles including (ironically, he thought) one for the Daily Mail on the meaning of the marriage ceremony.[73] During this period Waugh began the practice of staying at the various houses of his friends; he was to have no settled home for the next eight years.[74]

Vile Bodies, a satire on the

Town and Country and Harper's Bazaar, he quickly wrote Labels, a detached account of his honeymoon cruise with She-Evelyn.[74]

Conversion to Catholicism

On 29 September 1930, Waugh was received into the Catholic Church. This shocked his family and surprised some of his friends, but he had contemplated the step for some time.

Jesuit, who persuaded Waugh "on firm intellectual convictions but little emotion" that "the Christian revelation was genuine". In 1949, Waugh explained that his conversion followed his realisation that life was "unintelligible and unendurable without God".[80]

Writer and traveller

Emperor Haile Selassie, whose coronation Waugh attended in 1930 on the first of his three trips to Abyssinia

On 10 October 1930, Waugh, representing several newspapers, departed for

British East Africa colonies and the Belgian Congo formed the basis of two books; the travelogue Remote People (1931) and the comic novel Black Mischief (1932).[82] Waugh's next extended trip, in the winter of 1932–1933, was to British Guiana (now Guyana) in South America, possibly taken to distract him from a long and unrequited passion for the socialite Teresa Jungman.[83] On arrival in Georgetown, Waugh arranged a river trip by steam launch into the interior. He travelled on via several staging-posts to Boa Vista in Brazil, and then took a convoluted overland journey back to Georgetown.[84] His various adventures and encounters found their way into two further books: his travel account Ninety-two Days, and the novel A Handful of Dust, both published in 1934.[85]

Back from South America, Waugh faced accusations of obscenity and

Mussolini was doing well to tame" according to his fellow reporter, William Deedes.[90] Waugh saw little action and was not wholly serious in his role as a war correspondent.[91] Deedes remarks on the older writer's snobbery: "None of us quite measured up to the company he liked to keep back at home".[92] However, in the face of imminent Italian air attacks, Deedes found Waugh's courage "deeply reassuring".[93] Waugh wrote up his Abyssinian experiences in a book, Waugh in Abyssinia (1936), which Rose Macaulay dismissed as a "fascist tract", on account of its pro-Italian tone.[94] A better-known account is his novel Scoop (1938), in which the protagonist, William Boot, is loosely based on Deedes.[95]

Among Waugh's growing circle of friends were

Hugh Patrick Lygon at Oxford; now he was introduced to the girls and their country house, Madresfield Court, which became the closest that he had to a home during his years of wandering.[98] In 1933, on a Greek islands cruise, he was introduced by Father D'Arcy to Gabriel Herbert, eldest daughter of the late explorer Aubrey Herbert. When the cruise ended Waugh was invited to stay at the Herbert family's villa in Portofino, where he first met Gabriel's 17-year-old sister, Laura.[99]

Second marriage

On his conversion, Waugh had accepted that he would be unable to remarry while Evelyn Gardner was alive. However, he wanted a wife and children, and in October 1933, he began proceedings for the

annulment of the marriage on the grounds of "lack of real consent". The case was heard by an ecclesiastical tribunal in London, but a delay in the submission of the papers to Rome meant that the annulment was not granted until 4 July 1936.[100] In the meantime, following their initial encounter in Portofino, Waugh had fallen in love with Laura Herbert.[101] He proposed marriage, by letter, in spring 1936.[102] There were initial misgivings from the Herberts, an aristocratic Catholic family; as a further complication, Laura Herbert was a cousin of Evelyn Gardner.[26] Despite some family hostility the marriage took place on 17 April 1937 at the Church of the Assumption in Warwick Street, London.[103]

As a wedding present the bride's grandmother bought the couple Piers Court, a country house near Stinchcombe in Gloucestershire.[104] The couple had seven children, one of whom died in infancy. Their first child, a daughter, Maria Teresa, was born on 9 March 1938 and a son, Auberon Alexander, on 17 November 1939.[105] Between these events, Scoop was published in May 1938 to wide critical acclaim.[106] In August 1938 Waugh, with Laura, made a three-month trip to Mexico after which he wrote Robbery Under Law, based on his experiences there. In the book he spelled out clearly his conservative credo; he later described the book as dealing "little with travel and much with political questions".[107]

Second World War

Royal Marine and commando

Waugh left Piers Court on 1 September 1939, at the outbreak of the

Second World War and moved his young family to Pixton Park in Somerset, the Herbert family's country seat, while he sought military employment.[108] He also began writing a novel in a new style, using first-person narration,[109] but abandoned work on it when he was commissioned into the Royal Marines in December and entered training at Chatham naval base.[110] He never completed the novel: fragments were eventually published as Work Suspended and Other Stories (1943).[111]

Waugh's daily training routine left him with "so stiff a spine that he found it painful even to pick up a pen".

Free French Forces to overthrow the Vichy French colonial government and install General Charles de Gaulle. Operation Menace failed, hampered by fog and misinformation about the extent of the town's defences, and the British forces withdrew on 26 September. Waugh's comment on the affair was this: "Bloodshed has been avoided at the cost of honour."[115][116]

In November 1940, Waugh was posted to a commando unit, and, after further training, became a member of "Layforce", under Colonel (later Brigadier) Robert Laycock.[115] In February 1941, the unit sailed to the Mediterranean, where it participated in an unsuccessful attempt to recapture Bardia, on the Libyan coast.[117] In May, Layforce was required to assist in the evacuation of Crete: Waugh was shocked by the disorder and its loss of discipline and, as he saw it, the cowardice of the departing troops.[118] In July, during the roundabout journey home by troop ship, he wrote Put Out More Flags (1942), a novel of the war's early months in which he returned to the literary style he had used in the 1930s.[119] Back in Britain, more training and waiting followed until, in May 1942, he was transferred to the Royal Horse Guards, on Laycock's recommendation.[120] On 10 June 1942, Laura gave birth to Margaret, the couple's fourth child.[121][n 5]

Frustration, Brideshead and Yugoslavia

Waugh's elation at his transfer soon descended into disillusion as he failed to find opportunities for active service. The death of his father, on 26 June 1943, and the need to deal with family affairs prevented him from departing with his brigade for North Africa as part of

Operation Husky (9 July – 17 August 1943), the Allied invasion of Sicily.[123] Despite his undoubted courage, his unmilitary and insubordinate character were rendering him effectively unemployable as a soldier.[124] After spells of idleness at the regimental depot in Windsor, Waugh began parachute training at Tatton Park, Cheshire, but landed awkwardly during an exercise and fractured a fibula. Recovering at Windsor, he applied for three months' unpaid leave to write the novel that had been forming in his mind. His request was granted and, on 31 January 1944, he departed for Chagford, Devon, where he could work in seclusion. The result was Brideshead Revisited: The Sacred & Profane Memories of Captain Charles Ryder (1945),[125] the first of his explicitly Catholic novels of which the biographer Douglas Lane Patey commented that it was "the book that seemed to confirm his new sense of his writerly vocation".[126]

Waugh managed to extend his leave until June 1944. Soon after his return to duty he was recruited by

Partisans, who was leading the guerrilla fight against the occupying Axis forces with Allied support.[127] Waugh and Churchill returned to Bari before flying back to Yugoslavia to begin their mission, but their aeroplane crash-landed, both men were injured, and their mission was delayed for a month.[128]

The mission eventually arrived at

Foreign Office suppressed to maintain good relations with Tito, now the leader of communist Yugoslavia.[130]

Postwar

Fame and fortune

Brideshead Revisited was published in London in May 1945.

Stalin's Soviet Union by the Allies. He now saw little difference in morality between the war's combatants and later described it as "a sweaty tug-of-war between teams of indistinguishable louts".[133] Although he took momentary pleasure from the defeat of Winston Churchill and his Conservatives in the 1945 general election, he saw the accession to power of the Labour Party as a triumph of barbarism and the onset of a new "Dark Age".[131]

St. Helena
, the subject of Waugh's 1950 novel

In September 1945, after he was released by the army, he returned to Piers Court with his family (another daughter, Harriet, had been born at Pixton in 1944)[134] but spent much of the next seven years either in London, or travelling. In March 1946, he visited the Nuremberg trials, and later that year, he was in Spain for a celebration of the 400th anniversary of the death of Francisco de Vitoria, said to be the founder of international law.[135] Waugh wrote up his experiences of the frustrations of postwar European travel in a novella, Scott-King's Modern Europe.[136] In February 1947, he made the first of several trips to the United States, in the first instance to discuss filming of Brideshead. The project collapsed, but Waugh used his time in Hollywood to visit the Forest Lawn cemetery, which provided the basis for his satire of American perspectives on death, The Loved One (1948).[26] In 1951 he visited the Holy Land with his future biographer, Christopher Sykes,[137] and in 1953, he travelled to Goa to witness the final exhibition before burial of the remains of the 16th-century Jesuit missionary-priest Francis Xavier.[138][139]

In between his journeys, Waugh worked intermittently on Helena, a long-planned novel about the discoverer of the True Cross that was by "far the best book I have ever written or ever will write". Its success with the public was limited, but it was, his daughter Harriet later said, "the only one of his books that he ever cared to read aloud".[140]

In 1952 Waugh published

When The Going Was Good (1946),[136] an anthology of his pre-war travel writing, The Holy Places (published by the Ian Fleming-managed Queen Anne Press, 1952) and Love Among the Ruins (1953), a dystopian tale in which Waugh displays his contempt for the modern world.[142] Nearing 50, Waugh was old for his years, "selectively deaf, rheumatic, irascible" and increasingly dependent on alcohol and on drugs to relieve his insomnia and depression.[26] Two more children, James (born 1946) and Septimus (born 1950), completed his family.[143]

From 1945 onwards, Waugh became an avid collector of objects, particularly Victorian paintings and furniture. He filled Piers Court with his acquisitions, often from London's

Portobello Market and from house clearance sales.[144] His diary entry for 30 August 1946 records a visit to Gloucester, where he bought "a lion of wood, finely carved for £25, also a bookcase £35 ... a charming Chinese painting £10, a Regency easel £7".[145] Some of his buying was shrewd and prescient; he paid £10 for Rossetti's "Spirit of the Rainbow" to begin a collection of Victorian paintings that eventually acquired great value. Waugh also began, from 1949, to write knowledgeable reviews and articles on the subject of painting.[144][n 6]

Breakdown

By 1953, Waugh's popularity as a writer was declining. He was perceived as out of step with the Zeitgeist, and the large fees he demanded were no longer easily available.[138] His money was running out and progress on the second book of his war trilogy, Officers and Gentlemen, had stalled. Partly because of his dependency on drugs, his health was steadily deteriorating.[146] Shortage of cash led him to agree in November 1953 to be interviewed on BBC radio, where the panel took an aggressive line: "they tried to make a fool of me, and I don't think they entirely succeeded", Waugh wrote to Nancy Mitford.[147] Peter Fleming in The Spectator likened the interview to "the goading of a bull by matadors".[148]

Early in 1954, Waugh's doctors, concerned by his physical deterioration, advised a change of scene. On 29 January, he took a ship bound for

demonic possession. A brief medical examination indicated that Waugh was suffering from bromide poisoning from his drugs regimen. When his medication was changed, the voices and the other hallucinations quickly disappeared.[150] Waugh was delighted, informing all of his friends that he had been mad: "Clean off my onion!". The experience was fictionalised a few years later, in The Ordeal of Gilbert Pinfold (1957).[151]

In 1956, Edwin Newman made a short film about Waugh. In the course of it, Newman learned that Waugh hated the modern world and wished that he had been born two or three centuries sooner. Waugh disliked modern methods of transportation or communication, refused to drive or use the telephone, and wrote with an old-fashioned dip pen. He also expressed the views that American news reporters could not function without frequent infusions of whisky, and that every American had been divorced at least once.[152]

Late works

Combe Florey, the village in Somerset to which Waugh and his family moved in 1956

Restored to health, Waugh returned to work and finished Officers and Gentlemen. In June 1955 the Daily Express journalist and reviewer Nancy Spain, accompanied by her friend Lord Noel-Buxton, arrived uninvited at Piers Court and demanded an interview. Waugh saw the pair off and wrote a wry account for The Spectator,[153] but he was troubled by the incident and decided to sell Piers Court: "I felt it was polluted", he told Nancy Mitford.[154] Late in 1956, the family moved to Combe Florey House in the Somerset village of Combe Florey.[155] In January 1957, Waugh avenged the Spain–Noel-Buxton intrusion by winning libel damages from the Express and Spain. The paper had printed an article by Spain that suggested that the sales of Waugh's books were much lower than they were and that his worth, as a journalist, was low.[156]

Gilbert Pinfold was published in the summer of 1957, "my barmy book", Waugh called it.[157] The extent to which the story is self-mockery, rather than true autobiography, became a subject of critical debate.[158] Waugh's next major book was a biography of his longtime friend Ronald Knox, the Catholic writer and theologian who had died in August 1957. Research and writing extended over two years during which Waugh did little other work, delaying the third volume of his war trilogy. In June 1958, his son Auberon was severely wounded in a shooting accident while serving with the army in Cyprus. Waugh remained detached; he neither went to Cyprus nor immediately visited Auberon on the latter's return to Britain. The critic and literary biographer David Wykes called Waugh's sang-froid "astonishing" and the family's apparent acceptance of his behaviour even more so.[159]

Although most of Waugh's books had sold well, and he had been well-rewarded for his journalism, his levels of expenditure meant that money problems and tax bills were a recurrent feature in his life.

Face to Face series conducted by John Freeman. The interview was broadcast on 26 June 1960; according to his biographer Selina Hastings, Waugh restrained his instinctive hostility and coolly answered the questions put to him by Freeman, assuming what she describes as a "pose of world-weary boredom".[160]

In 1960, Waugh was offered the honour of a CBE but declined, believing that he should have been given the superior status of a knighthood.[162] In September, he produced his final travel book, A Tourist in Africa, based on a visit made in January–March 1959. He enjoyed the trip but "despised" the book. The critic Cyril Connolly called it "the thinnest piece of book-making that Mr Waugh has undertaken".[163] The book done, he worked on the last of the war trilogy, which was published in 1961 as Unconditional Surrender.[164]

Decline and death

Waugh's grave in Combe Florey, adjacent to but not within the Anglican churchyard.

As he approached his sixties, Waugh was in poor health, prematurely aged, "fat, deaf, short of breath", according to Patey.[165] His biographer Martin Stannard likened his appearance around this time to that of "an exhausted rogue jollied up by drink".[166] In 1962 Waugh began work on his autobiography, and that same year wrote his final fiction, the long short story Basil Seal Rides Again. This revival of the protagonist of Black Mischief and Put Out More Flags was published in 1963; the Times Literary Supplement called it a "nasty little book".[167] However, that same year, he was awarded with the title Companion of Literature by the Royal Society of Literature (its highest honour).[168] When the first volume of autobiography, A Little Learning, was published in 1964, Waugh's often oblique tone and discreet name changes ensured that friends avoided the embarrassments that some had feared.[169]

Waugh had welcomed the accession in 1958 of Pope John XXIII[170] and wrote an appreciative tribute on the pope's death in 1963.[171] However, he became increasingly concerned by the decisions emerging from the Second Vatican Council, which was convened by Pope John in October 1962 and continued under his successor, Pope Paul VI, until 1965. Waugh, a staunch opponent of Church reform, was particularly distressed by the replacement of the universal Latin Mass with the vernacular.[172] In a Spectator article of 23 November 1962, he argued the case against change in a manner described by a later commentator as "sharp-edged reasonableness".[173][174] He wrote to Nancy Mitford that "the buggering up of the Church is a deep sorrow to me .... We write letters to the paper. A fat lot of good that does."[175]

In 1965, a new financial crisis arose from an apparent flaw in the terms of the "Save the Children" trust, and a large sum of back tax was being demanded. Waugh's agent, A. D. Peters, negotiated a settlement with the tax authorities for a manageable amount,[176] but in his concern to generate funds, Waugh signed contracts to write several books, including a history of the papacy, an illustrated book on the Crusades and a second volume of autobiography. Waugh's physical and mental deterioration prevented any work on these projects, and the contracts were cancelled.[177] He described himself as "toothless, deaf, melancholic, shaky on my pins, unable to eat, full of dope, quite idle"[178] and expressed the belief that "all fates were worse than death".[179] His only significant literary activity in 1965 was the editing of the three war novels into a single volume, published as Sword of Honour.[180]

On Easter Day, 10 April 1966, after attending a Latin Mass in a neighbouring village with members of his family, Waugh died of heart failure at his Combe Florey home, aged 62. He was buried, by special arrangement, in a consecrated plot outside the Anglican churchyard of the

Requiem Mass, in Latin, was celebrated in Westminster Cathedral on 21 April 1966.[182]

Character and opinions

In the course of his lifetime, Waugh made enemies and offended many people; writer James Lees-Milne said that Waugh "was the nastiest-tempered man in England".[183] Waugh's son, Auberon, said that the force of his father's personality was such that, despite his lack of height, "generals and chancellors of the exchequer, six-foot-six and exuding self-importance from every pore, quail[ed] in front of him".[184]

In the biographic Mad World (2009), Paula Byrne said that the common view of Evelyn Waugh as a "snobbish misanthrope" is a caricature; she asks: "Why would a man, who was so unpleasant, be so beloved by such a wide circle of friends?"[185] His generosity to individual persons and causes, especially Catholic causes, extended to small gestures;[186] after his libel-court victory over Nancy Spain, he sent her a bottle of champagne.[187] Hastings said that Waugh's outward personal belligerence to strangers was not entirely serious but an attempt at "finding a sparring partner worthy of his own wit and ingenuity".[188] Besides mocking others, Waugh mocked himself—the elderly buffer, "crusty colonel" image, which he presented in later life, was a comic impersonation, and not his true self.[189][190]

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As an instinctive conservative, Waugh believed that class divisions, with inequalities of wealth and position, were natural and that "no form of government [was] ordained by God as being better than any other".[191] In the post-war "Age of the Common Man", he attacked socialism (the "Cripps–Attlee terror")[192] and complained, after Churchill's election in 1951, that "the Conservative Party have never put the clock back a single second".[193] Waugh never voted in elections; in 1959, he expressed a hope that the Conservatives would win the election, which they did, but would not vote for them, saying "I should feel I was morally inculpated in their follies" and added: "I do not aspire to advise my sovereign in her choice of servants".[194]

Waugh's Catholicism was fundamental: "The Church ... is the normal state of man from which men have disastrously exiled themselves."[195] He believed that the Catholic Church was the last, great defence against the encroachment of the Dark Age being ushered in by the welfare state and the spreading of working-class culture.[196] Strictly observant, Waugh admitted to Diana Cooper that his most difficult task was how to square the obligations of his faith with his indifference to his fellow men.[197] When Nancy Mitford asked him how he reconciled his often objectionable conduct with being a Christian, Waugh replied that "were he not a Christian he would be even more horrible".[198]

Waugh's conservatism was

Augustus Egg (1816–1863) as a painter for whom he had particular esteem.[n 7] Despite their political differences, Waugh came to admire George Orwell, because of their shared patriotism and sense of morality.[202] Orwell in turn commented that Waugh was "about as good a novelist as one can be ... while holding untenable opinions".[203]

Waugh has been criticised for expressing

white superiority as "an illogical extension of his views on the naturalness and rightness of hierarchy as the principle of social organization".[204]

Works

Themes and style

Wykes observes that Waugh's novels reprise and fictionalise the principal events of his life, although in an early essay Waugh wrote: "Nothing is more insulting to a novelist than to assume that he is incapable of anything but the mere transcription of what he observes".[179] The reader should not assume that the author agreed with the opinions expressed by his fictional characters.[205] Nevertheless, in the Introduction to the Complete Short Stories, Ann Pasternak Slater said that the "delineation of social prejudices and the language in which they are expressed is part of Waugh's meticulous observation of his contemporary world".[206]

The critic

Bright Young People generation. His first two novels, Decline and Fall (1928) and Vile Bodies (1930), comically reflect a futile society, populated by two-dimensional, basically unbelievable characters in circumstances too fantastic to evoke the reader's emotions.[209] A typical Waugh trademark evident in the early novels is rapid, unattributed dialogue in which the participants can be readily identified.[206] At the same time Waugh was writing serious essays, such as "The War and the Younger Generation", in which he castigates his own generation as "crazy and sterile" people.[210]

Waugh's conversion to Catholicism did not noticeably change the nature of his next two novels, Black Mischief (1934) and A Handful of Dust (1934), but, in the latter novel, the elements of farce are subdued, and the protagonist, Tony Last, is recognisably a person rather than a comic cipher.[209] Waugh's first fiction with a Catholic theme was the short story "Out of Depth" (1933) about the immutability of the Mass.[211] From the mid-1930s onwards, Catholicism and conservative politics were much featured in his journalistic and non-fiction writing[212] before he reverted to his former manner with Scoop (1938), a novel about journalism, journalists, and unsavoury journalistic practices.[213]

In Work Suspended and Other Stories Waugh introduced "real" characters and a first-person narrator, signalling the literary style he would adopt in Brideshead Revisited a few years later.

Helena (1950) is Evelyn Waugh's most philosophically Christian book.[216]

In Brideshead, the

proletarian junior officer Hooper illustrates a theme that persists in Waugh's postwar fiction: the rise of mediocrity in the "Age of the Common Man".[26] In the trilogy Sword of Honour (Men at Arms, 1952; Officers and Gentlemen, 1955, Unconditional Surrender, 1961) the social pervasiveness of mediocrity is personified in the semi-comical character "Trimmer", a sloven and a fraud who triumphs by contrivance.[217] In the novella Scott-King's Modern Europe (1947), Waugh's pessimism about the future is in the schoolmaster's admonition: "I think it would be very wicked indeed to do anything to fit a boy for the modern world".[218] Likewise, such cynicism pervades the novel Love Among the Ruins (1953), set in a dystopian, welfare-state Britain that is so socially disagreeable that euthanasia is the most sought-after of the government's social services.[219] Of the postwar novels, Patey says that The Ordeal of Gilbert Pinfold (1957) stands out "a kind of mock-novel, a sly invitation to a game".[158] Waugh's final work of fiction, "Basil Seal Rides Again" (1962), features characters from the prewar novels; Waugh admitted that the work was a "senile attempt to recapture the manner of my youth".[220] Stylistically this final story begins in the same fashion as the first story, "The Balance" of 1926, with a "fusillade of unattributed dialogue".[206]

Reception

Of Waugh's early books, Decline and Fall was hailed by Arnold Bennett in the Evening Standard as "an uncompromising and brilliantly malicious satire".[221] The critical reception of Vile Bodies two years later was even more enthusiastic, with Rebecca West predicting that Waugh was "destined to be the dazzling figure of his age".[74] However, A Handful of Dust, later widely regarded as a masterpiece, received a more muted welcome from critics, despite the author's own high estimation of the work.[222] Chapter VI, "Du Côté de Chez Todd", of A Handful of Dust, with Tony Last condemned forever to read Dickens to his mad jungle captor, was thought by the critic Henry Yorke to reduce an otherwise believable book to "phantasy".[223] Cyril Connolly's first reaction to the book was that Waugh's powers were failing, an opinion that he later revised.[224]

In the latter 1930s, Waugh's inclination to Catholic and conservative polemics affected his standing with the general reading public.[26] The Campion biography is said by David Wykes to be "so rigidly biased that it has no claims to make as history".[225] The pro-fascist tone in parts of Waugh in Abyssinia offended readers and critics and prevented its publication in America.[226] There was general relief among critics when Scoop, in 1938, indicated a return to Waugh's earlier comic style. Critics had begun to think that his wit had been displaced by partisanship and propaganda.[213]

Waugh maintained his reputation in 1942, with Put Out More Flags, which sold well despite wartime restrictions on paper and printing.

Book of the Month swelled its US sales to an extent that dwarfed those in Britain, which was affected by paper shortages.[228] Despite the public's enthusiasm, critical opinion was split. Brideshead's Catholic standpoint offended some critics who had greeted Waugh's earlier novels with warm praise.[229] Its perceived snobbery and its deference to the aristocracy were attacked by, among others, Conor Cruise O'Brien who, in the Irish literary magazine The Bell, wrote of Waugh's "almost mystical veneration" for the upper classes.[230][231] Fellow writer Rose Macaulay believed that Waugh's genius had been adversely affected by the intrusion of his right-wing partisan alter ego and that he had lost his detachment: "In art so naturally ironic and detached as his, this is a serious loss".[232][233] Conversely, the book was praised by Yorke, Graham Greene and, in glowing terms, by Harold Acton who was particularly impressed by its evocation of 1920s Oxford.[234] In 1959, at the request of publishers Chapman and Hall and in some deference to his critics, Waugh revised the book and wrote in a preface: "I have modified the grosser passages but not obliterated them because they are an essential part of the book".[235]

In "Fan Fare", Waugh forecasts that his future books will be unpopular because of their religious theme.[215] On publication in 1950, Helena was received indifferently by the public and by critics, who disparaged the awkward mixing of 20th-century schoolgirl slang with otherwise reverential prose.[236] Otherwise, Waugh's prediction proved unfounded; all his fiction remained in print and sales stayed healthy. During his successful 1957 lawsuit against the Daily Express, Waugh's counsel produced figures showing total sales to that time of over four million books, two thirds in Britain and the rest in America.[237] Men at Arms, the first volume of his war trilogy, won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize in 1953;[238] initial critical comment was lukewarm, with Connolly likening Men at Arms to beer rather than champagne.[239] Connolly changed his view later, calling the completed trilogy "the finest novel to come out of the war".[240] Of Waugh's other major postwar works, the Knox biography was admired within Waugh's close circle but criticised by others in the Church for its depiction of Knox as an unappreciated victim of the Catholic hierarchy.[241] The book did not sell well—"like warm cakes", according to Waugh.[242] Pinfold surprised the critics by its originality. Its plainly autobiographical content, Hastings suggests, gave the public a fixed image of Waugh: "stout, splenetic, red-faced and reactionary, a figure from burlesque complete with cigar, bowler hat and loud checked suit".[243]

Reputation

In 1973, Waugh's diaries were serialised in The Observer prior to publication in book form in 1976. The revelations about his private life, thoughts and attitudes created controversy. Although Waugh had removed embarrassing entries relating to his Oxford years and his first marriage, there was sufficient left on the record to enable enemies to project a negative image of the writer as intolerant, snobbish and sadistic, with pronounced fascist leanings.[26] Some of this picture, it was maintained by Waugh's supporters, arose from poor editing of the diaries, and a desire to transform Waugh from a writer to a "character".[244] Nevertheless, a popular conception developed of Waugh as a monster.[245] When, in 1980, a selection of his letters was published, his reputation became the subject of further discussion. Philip Larkin, reviewing the collection in The Guardian, thought that it demonstrated Waugh's elitism; to receive a letter from him, it seemed, "one would have to have a nursery nickname and be a member of White's, a Roman Catholic, a high-born lady or an Old Etonian novelist".[246]

Castle Howard, in Yorkshire, was used to represent "Brideshead" in the 1981 television series and in a subsequent 2008 film.

The publication of the diaries and letters promoted increased interest in Waugh and his works and caused publication of much new material. Christopher Sykes's biography had appeared in 1975, between 1980 and 1998 three more full biographies were issued and other biographical and critical studies have continued to be produced. A collection of Waugh's journalism and reviews was published in 1983, revealing a fuller range of his ideas and beliefs. The new material provided further grounds for debate between Waugh's supporters and detractors.[26]

The 1981

BBC in 1967, but the impact of Granada's Brideshead was much wider. Its nostalgic depiction of a vanished form of Englishness appealed to the American mass market;[26] Time magazine's TV critic described the series as "a novel ... made into a poem", and listed it among the "100 Best TV Shows of All Time".[247] There have been further cinematic Waugh adaptations: A Handful of Dust in 1988, Vile Bodies (filmed as Bright Young Things) in 2003 and Brideshead Revisited again in 2008. These popular treatments have maintained the public's appetite for Waugh's novels, all of which remain in print and continue to sell.[26] Several have been listed among various compiled lists of the world's greatest novels.[n 8]

Stannard concludes that beneath his public mask, Waugh was "a dedicated artist and a man of earnest faith, struggling against the dryness of his soul".[26] Graham Greene, in a letter to The Times shortly after Waugh's death, acknowledged him as "the greatest novelist of my generation",[250] while Time magazine's obituarist called him "the grand old mandarin of modern British prose" and asserted that his novels "will continue to survive as long as there are readers who can savor what critic V. S. Pritchett calls 'the beauty of his malice' ".[251] Nancy Mitford said of him in a television interview, "What nobody remembers about Evelyn is that everything with him was jokes. Everything. That's what none of the people who wrote about him seem to have taken into account at all".[252]

Bibliography

For a listing of Waugh's works, see Evelyn Waugh bibliography.

Notes

  1. ^ Some biographers have recorded his forenames as "Evelyn Arthur St. John", but Waugh gives the "Arthur Evelyn" order in A Little Learning, p. 27. The confusion may in part be attributable to differences in the forename order between Waugh's birth and death certificates. The former specifies "Arthur Evelyn St. John", and the latter "Evelyn Arthur St. John".
  2. ^ In 1993 a blue plaque commemorating Waugh's residence was installed at Underhill, which by then had become 145 North End Road, Golders Green.[24]
  3. ^ A biography of Roxburgh (who went on to be first headmaster of Stowe School) was the last work given a literary review by Waugh, in The Observer on 17 October 1965.[29]
  4. ^ "Cruttwell" is a brutal burglar in Decline and Fall, a snobbish Member of Parliament in Vile Bodies, a social parasite in Black Mischief, a disreputable osteopath in A Handful of Dust and a salesman with a fake tan in Scoop. The homicidal Loveday in "Mr. Loveday's Little Outing" was originally "Mr. Cruttwell". See Hastings, pp. 173, 209, 373; Stannard, Vol. I pp. 342, 389
  5. ^ Earlier, Laura had borne a daughter, christened Mary, on 1 December 1940, but she lived only a few hours.[122]
  6. ^ See, for example, "Rossetti Revisited", 1949 (Gallagher (ed.)), pp. 377–379; "Age of Unrest", 1954 (Gallagher (ed.)), pp. 459–460; "The Death of Painting", 1956 (Gallagher (ed.)), pp. 503–507
  7. ^ Excerpts from the text of the broadcast, on 16 November 1953, are given in the 1998 Penguin Books edition of The Ordeal of Gilbert Pinfold, pp. 135–143
  8. ^ See Time's List of the 100 Best Novels; The Observer critics' "100 greatest novels of all time";[248] Random House Modern Library's "100 Best Novels".[249]

References

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  4. ^ Waugh, A Little Learning, pp. 3–10
  5. ^ Stannard, Vol I p. 12
  6. ^ Hastings, p. 3
  7. ^ Stannard, Vol. I pp. 22–25
  8. ^ Stannard, Vol. II p. 357
  9. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/31813. (Subscription or UK public library membership
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  14. ^ Stannard, Vol I pp. 34–35
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  16. ^ a b c Stannard, Vol. I p. 40
  17. ^ Waugh, A Little Learning, p. 86
  18. ^ Hastings, p. 44
  19. ^ Hastings, pp. 30–32
  20. ^ Hastings, p. 33
  21. ^ a b Stannard, Vol I pp. 42–47
  22. ^ Waugh, A Little Learning, pp. 44–46
  23. ^ Hastings, pp. 39–40
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  25. ^ Gallager (ed.), pp. 6–8
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  27. ^ BBC Radio, https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01qmbsc
  28. ^ Waugh, A Little Learning, pp. 160–161
  29. ^ "Portrait of a Head", first published in The Observer, 17 October 1965, reprinted in Gallagher (ed.), pp. 638–639
  30. ^ Sykes, p. 25
  31. ^ Sykes, pp. 32–33
  32. ^ Slater (ed.), pp. xvi, 535–547
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  44. ^ Waugh, "A Little Learning", p. 175
  45. ^ Stannard, Vol. I pp. 76–77
  46. ^ Sykes, p. 45
  47. ^ Amory (ed.), p. 12
  48. ^ Hastings, p. 112
  49. ^ Stannard, Vol. I pp. 93–96
  50. ^ Waugh, A Little Learning, pp. 210–212
  51. ^ Hastings, pp. 116–134
  52. ^ Stannard, Vol. I p. 112
  53. ^ Waugh, A Little Learning, pp. 228–230
  54. ^ Hastings, pp. 148–149
  55. ^ Stannard, Vol. I pp. 145–247
  56. ^ Patey, pp. 19–20
  57. ^ Stannard, Vol. I p. 505
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  59. ^ Sykes, pp. 73–75
  60. ^ Waugh diaries, 3 and 4 September 1927: Davie (ed.), p. 289
  61. ^ a b Hastings, pp. 168–170
  62. ^ Sykes, pp. 72–73
  63. ^ Hastings, pp. 152–153
  64. ^ Hastings, pp. 164–165
  65. ^ Hastings, pp. 160–161
  66. ^ Sykes, p. 84
  67. ^ Hastings, pp. 175–176
  68. ^ Stannard, Vol. I p. 157
  69. ^ Hastings, pp. 177–179
  70. ^ Hastings, pp. 180–182
  71. ^ Davie (ed.), pp. 305–306
  72. ^ Sykes, p. 96
  73. ^ a b Amory (ed.), p. 39
  74. ^ a b c d e Patey, pp. 33–34
  75. ^ Stannard, Vol. I pp. 203–204
  76. ^ Patey, pp. 35–39
  77. ^ Waugh diaries, 22 December 1926: Davie (ed.), p. 237
  78. ^ Waugh diaries, 20 February 1927: Davie (ed.), p. 281
  79. ^ Sykes, p. 107
  80. ^ "Come Inside", first published in The Road to Damascus (1949), ed. John O'Brien. London, W.H. Allen, reprinted in Gallagher (ed.). pp. 366–368
  81. ^ Patey, p. 91
  82. ^ Sykes, p. 109
  83. ^ Stannard, Vol. I pp. 276, 310
  84. ^ Hastings, pp. 272–281
  85. ^ Hastings, pp. 296, 306
  86. ^ Amory (ed.), pp. 72–78
  87. ^ Stannard, Vol. I pp. 367–374
  88. ^ Patey, p. 126
  89. ^ Hastings, pp. 324–325
  90. ^ Deedes, p. 15
  91. ^ Davie, p. 391
  92. ^ Deedes, pp. 35–36
  93. ^ Deedes, pp. 62–63
  94. ^ Patey, p. 141
  95. ^ Stannard, Vol. I p. 406
  96. ^ Hastings, p. 263
  97. ^ Hastings, p. 191
  98. ^ Byrne, p. 155
  99. ^ Hastings pp. 284–287
  100. ^ Hastings, pp. 290–293
  101. ^ Byrne, pp. 240–241
  102. ^ Amory (ed.), pp. 103–105
  103. ^ Byrne, pp. 260–261
  104. ^ Hastings, pp. 358–359
  105. ^ Hastings, pp. 336, 392
  106. ^ Stannard, Vol. I pp. 470–471
  107. ^ Sykes, p. 184
  108. ^ Hastings, pp. 384–386
  109. ^ Sykes, pp. 273–276
  110. ^ Hastings, pp. 391–392
  111. ^ Stannard, Vol. I pp. 490–501
  112. ^ Stannard, Vol. II, p. 2
  113. ^ Stannard, Vol. II p. 9
  114. ^ Stannard, Vol. II p. 15
  115. ^ a b Stannard, Vol. II pp. 16–20
  116. ^ Amory (ed.), p. 141
  117. ^ Hastings, pp. 421–422
  118. ^ Sykes, pp. 215–216
  119. ^ Patey, p. 171
  120. ^ Stannard, Vol. II pp. 66–67
  121. ^ Hastings, p. 442
  122. ^ Stannard, Vol. II p. 24
  123. ^ Hastings, pp. 445–446
  124. ^ Sykes, pp. 229–230
  125. ^ Hastings, pp. 454–462
  126. ^ Patey, p. 296
  127. ^ Stannard, Vol. II pp. 113–114
  128. ^ Stannard, Vol. II pp. 116–121
  129. ^ Hastings, pp. 468–473
  130. ^ Hastings, pp. 485–491
  131. ^ a b c Hastings, pp. 494–495
  132. ^ Patey, p. 224
  133. ^ Gallagher (ed.), pp. 289–290
  134. ^ Hastings, pp. 462, 494–497
  135. ^ Stannard, Vol. II p. 168
  136. ^ a b Patey, p. 251
  137. ^ Sykes, pp. 338–342
  138. ^ a b Hastings, p. 554
  139. ^ Waugh's article on the Goa visit, "Goa, the Home of a Saint", is reprinted in Gallager (ed.), pp. 448–456
  140. ^ Patey, p. 289
  141. ^ Stannard, Vol. II, pp. 5, 82, 340
  142. ^ Hastings, p. 553
  143. ^ Hastings, pp. 531, 537
  144. ^ a b Patey, pp. 153–154
  145. ^ Davie (ed.), p. 658
  146. ^ Patey, p. 324
  147. ^ Amory (ed.), p. 415
  148. ^ Brown, Mark (15 April 2008). "Waugh at the BBC: 'the most ill-natured interview ever' on CD after 55 years". The Guardian. Retrieved 10 November 2010.
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  150. ^ Donaldson, pp. 56–61
  151. ^ Patey, pp. 326, 338–341
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  153. ^ "Awake, My Soul, It Is a Lord", published in The Spectator, 8 July 1955, reprinted in Gallagher, (ed.), pp. 468–470
  154. ^ Amory (ed.), p. 636
  155. ^ Stannard, Vol. II pp. 385–386
  156. ^ Stannard, pp. 382–383
  157. ^ Amory (ed.), p. 477
  158. ^ a b Patey, pp. 339–341
  159. ^ Wykes, p. 194
  160. ^ a b Hastings, pp. 591–592
  161. ^ Stannard, Vol II, pp. 254–255
  162. ^ Stannard, Vol II pp. 415–416
  163. ^ Patey, pp. 346–347
  164. ^ Hastings, pp. 594–598
  165. ^ Patey, p. 359
  166. ^ Stannard, Vol. II p. 477
  167. ^ Willett, John (14 November 1963). "A Rake Raked Up". The Times Literary Supplement: 921.
  168. ^ "Companions of Literature". Royal Society of Literature. 2 September 2023.
  169. ^ Stannard, Vol. II p. 480
  170. ^ Amory (ed.), pp. 514–515
  171. Saturday Evening Post
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  172. ^ Hastings, pp. 616–620.
  173. ^ Stinson, John J (September 2008). "Evelyn Waugh and Anthony Burgess: Some Parallels as Catholic Writers". Evelyn Waugh Newsletter and Studies. 38 (2). Archived from the original on 9 June 2016. Retrieved 12 May 2016.
  174. ^ "More of the same, Please", first published in The Spectator 23 November 1962, reprinted in Gallagher (ed.), pp. 602–609.
  175. ^ Amory (ed.), p. 633
  176. ^ Stannard, Vol. II p. 485
  177. ^ Hastings, pp. 620–624.
  178. ^ Unpublished letter to John McDougall, 7 June 1965, quoted in Hastings, p. 622
  179. ^ a b Wykes, pp. 209–211
  180. ^ Stannard, Vol. II p. 487
  181. ^ Wilson, Scott. Resting Places: The Burial Sites of More Than 14,000 Famous Persons, 3d ed.: 2 (Kindle Location 49889). McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers. Kindle Edition
  182. ^ Hastings, pp. 625–626
  183. ^ Lees-Milne, p. 169
  184. ^ Auberon Waugh, p. 43
  185. ^ Byrne (postscript), pp. 4–5
  186. ^ Hastings, pp. 504–505
  187. ^ Patey, p. 336
  188. ^ Hastings, pp. 517–518
  189. ^ Hastings, pp. 567–568
  190. ^ Byrne, pp. 117–118
  191. ^ Sykes, p. 185
  192. ^ Hastings, p. 495. Clement Attlee led the post-war Labour government, 1945–51; Sir Stafford Cripps was Chancellor of the Exchequer, 1947–50.
  193. ^ Donaldson, p. 15
  194. ^ "Aspirations of a Mugwump", first published in The Spectator, 2 October 1959, reprinted in Gallagher (ed.), p. 537. A "mugwump" is defined in Collins English Dictionary (2nd ed. 2005), p. 1068 as a politically neutral or independent person.
  195. ^ Unpublished letter to Edward Sackville-West, 2 July 1948, quoted in Hastings, p. 503
  196. ^ Hastings, pp. 503–509
  197. ^ Cooper (ed.), p. 88
  198. ^ Unpublished letter from Nancy Mitford to Pamela Berry, 17 May 1950, quoted in Hastings, p. 505
  199. ^ Patey, pp. 320–321
  200. ^ Gallagher (ed.), p. 5
  201. ^ Amory (ed.), p. 214
  202. ^ Lebedoff, pp. 161–162, 175–177
  203. ^ Hitchens, Christopher (May 2003). "The Permanent Adolescent". The Atlantic Monthly. (Hitchens is quoting Orwell.)
  204. ^ Wykes, p. 82
  205. ^ "People Who Want To Sue Me", Daily Mail, 31 May 1930, in Gallagher, pp. 72–73
  206. ^ a b c Slater, p. xii
  207. ^ James, p. 799
  208. ^ Roberts, pp. 331–332
  209. ^ a b Hollis, pp. 5–7
  210. ^ "The War and the Younger Generation", first published in The Spectator, 13 April 1929, reprinted in Gallagher, pp. 63–65
  211. ^ Hollis, p. 8
  212. ^ Gallagher, p. 155
  213. ^ a b Patey, p. 157
  214. ^ Hollis, pp. 14–15
  215. ^ a b "Fan Fare", first published in Life magazine, 8 April 1946, reprinted in Gallagher (ed.), pp. 300–304
  216. ^ Sykes, p. 319
  217. ^ Patey, pp. 328–329
  218. Buckley, William F. (3 May 1966). "Evelyn Waugh R.I.P."
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  219. ^ Hollis, pp. 35–36
  220. ^ Unpublished letter to Ann Fleming, December 1962, reproduced in Slater, p. 487
  221. ^ Stannard, Vol. I, p. 158
  222. ^ Hastings, pp. 313–314
  223. ^ Stannard, Vol. I, p. 377
  224. ^ Stannard, Vol. I, p. 375
  225. ^ Wykes, p. 112
  226. ^ Hastings, p. 345
  227. ^ Stannard, Vol. II pp. 72–73
  228. ^ Stannard, Vol. II p. 148
  229. ^ Osborne, John W. (2006). "Book Review: Christianity and Chaos". Evelyn Waugh Newsletter and Studies. 36 (3). Lock Haven, Pa.: Lock Haven University. Archived from the original on 28 December 2017. Retrieved 12 May 2016.(subscription required)
  230. ^ Conor Cruise O'Brien in "The Pieties of Evelyn Waugh", reprinted in Stannard: Evelyn Waugh: The Critical Heritage, pp. 255–263. (O'Brien used the pen-name "Donat Donnelly").
  231. ^ Patey, pp. 262–263
  232. ^ Macaulay, Rose (December 1946). "The Best and the Worst II: Evelyn Waugh". Horizon: 360–376.
  233. ^ Carpenter (ed.), p. 288
  234. ^ Hastings, p. 492
  235. ^ From Waugh's preface to the revised edition, published by Chapman and Hall, 1960.
  236. ^ Hastings, pp. 538–541
  237. ^ Stannard, Vol. II pp. 382–385
  238. ^ Patey, p. 309
  239. ^ Stannard, Vol. II p. 306
  240. ^ Stannard, Vol. II pp. 438–439
  241. ^ Patey, p. 343
  242. ^ Amory (ed.), p. 571
  243. ^ Hastings, p. 567
  244. ^ Review by Geoffrey Wheatcroft of The Letters of Evelyn Waugh, Spectator, 11 October 1980. Reprinted in Stannard: Evelyn Waugh: The Critical Heritage, pp. 504–507
  245. ^ a b Hastings, p. 627
  246. ^ Review by Philip Larkin of The Letters of Evelyn Waugh, The Guardian, 4 September 1980. Reprinted in Stannard: Evelyn Waugh: The Critical Heritage, pp. 502–504
  247. ^ "100 Best TV Shows of All Time". Time. Retrieved 29 December 2020.
  248. ^ McCrum, Robert (12 October 2003). "The 100 Greatest Novels of all Time". The Observer. Retrieved 23 November 2010.
  249. ^ "100 Best Novels". Random House. Retrieved 23 November 2010.
  250. ^ Stannard, Vol. II p. 492
  251. ^ "The Beauty of His Malice". Time. 22 April 1966. Archived from the original on 6 November 2012. Retrieved 23 November 2010.
  252. ^ Quoted in Byrne, p. 348

Sources

Further reading

External links

Online editions

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