This checklist is intended as a supplement to my bibliography of Evelyn Waugh criticism, published in Twentieth Century Literature, XI (1965/66), 211-215. It includes items published up to the end of 1966 which were either omitted from or incomplete in the earlier bibliography, or which appeared after its publication.
Albérès, R.-M., "Evelyn Waugh ou de I'humour à I'essentialisme", Revue de Paris, LXIII, No.4 (April, 1956), 83-91.
Amis, Kingsley, "Crouchback's Regress", Spectator, CCVII (1961), 581-582 (on Unconditional Surrender).
Bradbury, Malcolm, Evelyn Waugh, Writers and Critics (Edinburgh, London, 1964).
Brady, Charles A., "In Memoriam Arthur Evelyn St. John Waugh 1903, 1966", America, CXIV (1966), 594-595.
Brander, Donald M., "Die Romane von Evelyn Waugh: Charaktere als algebraische Figuren in einer irrealen Welt", Deutsche Universitätszeitung (Göttingen), XI, No.4 (1956), 13-15.
Brien, Alan, "Permission to Speak, Captain?", Spectator, CCXVI (1966), 462-3.
Burgess, Anthony, "The Comedy of Ultimate Truths", Spectator, CCXVI (1966), 462.
Burgess, Anthony, "La comédie des vérités ultimes", La Table Ronde, No. 220 (May, 1966), 8-12.
Butcher, Maryvonne, "Evelyn Waugh: Er machte Kunst und Schlagzeilen", Dokumente (Cologne), XXII (1966), 236-238.
Cameron, J.M., "Evelyn Waugh, R.I.P.", Commonweal, LXXXIV (1966), 167-8.
Carens, James F., The Satiric Art of Evelyn Waugh (Seattle, London, 1966).
Cecchin, Giovanni, "Echi di T .S. Eliot nei Romanzi di Evelyn Waugh", English Miscellany (Rome), XIV (1963), 237-275.
Chastaing, Maxime, "Les romans humoristiques d'Evelyn Waugh", Esprit (Paris), XXII (1954), 247-266.
Davis, Robert Murray, "Evelyn Waugh's Early Works - The Formation of a Method", Texas Studies on Literature and Language, VII (1965/66), 97-108.
Davis, Robert Murray, "Evelyn Waugh on the Art of Fiction", Papers on Language and Literature, II (1966), 243-252
Delasanta, Rodney, and Mario L. D'Avanzo, "Truth and Beauty in Brideshead Revisited", Modern Fiction Studies, XI (1965), 140-152.
Doyle, Paul A., "The Persecution of Evelyn Waugh", America, XCIX (1958), 165-169.
Doyle, Paul A., "The Church, History, and Evelyn Waugh", American Benedictine Review, IX (1958/59), 202-208.
Doyle, Paul A., "Brideshead Rewritten", Catholic Book Reporter, II (1962), 9-10.
Doyle, Paul A. , "Waugh's Brideshead Revisited", Explicator, XXIV (1966), item 57.
Ellis, G.U., Twilight on Parnassus: A Survey of Post-War Fiction and Pre-War Criticism (London; 1939), pp. 370-385.
Fielding, Gabriel, "Evelyn Waugh: The Price of Satire", Listener, LXXII (1964), 541-542.
Fraser, G.S., The Modern Writer and His World (London, revised ed. 1964), pp. 141-144.
Fulford, Roger, "'You'll Do Right'", Time and Tide, XXXIX (1958), 1373-4.
Glanz, Luzio, "Der Mensch und die Eschata: Gedanken zu Dichtungen von Evelyn Waugh, Clive Staples Lewis, Edzard Schaper und Boris Pasternak", in: Hermann Kirchhoff (ed.), Kaufet die Zeit aus: Beiträge zur christlichen Eschatologie: Festgabe für Theoderich Kampmann (Paderborn, 1959), pp. 113-132.
Götz, Karl-August, "Die Romane von Evelyn Waugh", Die Anregung (Cologne), VIII (1956), Beilage pp. 40-43.
Greenblatt, Stephen Jay, Three Modern Satirists: Waugh, Orwell, and Huxley (New Haven, London,1965).
Greene, George, "Scapegoat With Style: The Status of Evelyn Waugh", Queen's Quarterly, LXXI (1964/65), 485-493.
Hart, Jeffrey, "The Seriousness of Evelyn Waugh", National Review, XVI (1964), 1152-1153.
Hart, Jeffrey, "The Roots of Honor", National Review, XVIII (1966), 168-169 (on Sword of Honour).
Hinchcliffe, Peter, "Fathers and Children in the Novels of Evelyn Waugh", University of Toronto Quarterly, XXXV (1966), 293-310.
Hohoff, Curt, "Satire als Zeugnis oder Der Romancier Evelyn Waugh", Wort und Wahrheit, VII (1952), 39-44.
Hortmann, Wilhelm, Englische literatur im 20. Jahrhundert, (Bern, Munich, 1965), pp. 115-118, 146-147.
Isaacs, Neil D., "Evelyn Waugh's Restoration Jesuit", Satire Newsletter, III, i (Fall, 1965), 91-94 (on Vile Bodies).
Jebb, Julian, "Evelyn Waugh: An Interview", Paris Review (Summer-Fall, 1963), 73-85.
Kosok, Heinz, "Evelyn Waugh: Brideshead Revisited', in: Horst Oppel (ed.), Der moderne englische Roman: Interpretationen (Berlin, 1965), pp. 301-327.
Kranz, Gisbert, "Vier große Erzähler aus christlichem Geist: Sigrid Undset, Werner Bergengruen, Graham Greene, Evelyn Waugh", Die Kirche in der Welt (Munster), XI (1960), 357-370.
Lennartz, Franz, Ausländische Dichter und Schriftsteller unserer Zeit: Einzeldarstellungen zur Schönen Literatur in fremden Sprachen (Stuttgart, 3rd ed. 1960), pp. 714-718.
Lorda Alaiz, F.M. , "De romanschrijver Evelyn Waugh", Raam, No.12 (1964), 13-29.
MacShane, Frank, "Forest Lawn", Prairie Schooner, XXXV (l961), 137-148 (on The Loved One).
Meyer, Heinrich, "Evelyn Waugh (1903-66)", Books Abroad, XL (1966), 410-411.
Nettesheim, Josefine, "Gnade und Freiheit: Ist Evelyn Waughs Weg zur Kirche eine Sensation?" Die Friedensstadt (Paderborn), XIV (1951), 47-50.
Parker, Kenneth, "Quantitative Judgments Don't Apply", English Studies in Africa, IX (1966),192-201.
Pritchett, V.S., "Mr. Waugh's Exile", New Statesman, LXVIII (1964), 445-446 (on A Little Learning).
Pryce-Jones, Alan, "Evelyn Waugh", Commonweal, LXXXI (1964), 343-45.
Raymond, John, "Waugh's Last Post", New Statesman, LXXI (1966), 608.
Roos, Hans-Dieter, "Die zwei Gesichter des Evelyn Waugh", Die KuItur (Munich), VII (1958/59), No.118, 10.
Seidler, Manfred, "Die übergroßen und die kleinen Sünder: über die Romane der englischen Konvertiten Graham Greene und Evelyn Waugh", Werkhefte katholischer Laien (Munich), XII (1958), 234-239, 258-262.
Seidler, Manfred, "Evelyn Waugh, Moralist und Satiriker", Die Kirche in der Welt (Munster), VII (1954), 377-380.
Servotte, Herman, "Evelyn Waugh 1903-1966: Vlucht in de komiek", Dietsche Warande en Belfort, CXI (1966), 334-346.
Sonnenfeld, Albert, "Twentieth Century Gothic: Reflections on the Catholic Novel", Southern Review, n.s. I (1965), 388-405.
Spoerri, Erika, "Der Tod in Hollywood: Zu Evelyn Waughs neuem Roman", Universitas (Stuttgart), V (1950), 1529-1531 (on The Loved One).
Staley, Thomas F., "Waugh the Artist", Commonweal, LXXXIV (1966), 280-282.
Sykes, Christopher, "Forward to Victory", Time and Tide, XXXVI (1955), 871-872 (on Officers and Gentlemen).
Todd, Olivier, "Evelyn Waugh ou le faux ennemi", Temps modernes (Paris), VIII (1953), 1406-1423.
Van Zeller, Dom Hubert, "An Appreciation of Evelyn Waugh", Downside Review, LXXXIV (1966), 285-287.
Van Zeller, Dom Hubert, "Evelyn Waugh", Month, XXXVI (1966), 69-71.
von Puttkamer, Annemarie, "Evelyn Waugh", Frankfurter Hefte, V (1950), 869-872.
Wagner, Linda Welshimer, "Satiric Masks: Huxley and Waugh", Satire Newsletter, III, ii (Spring, 1966), 160-162.
Waugh, Auberon, "Death in the Family", Spectator, CCXVI (1966), 562-563.
West, Paul, The Modern Novel ( London, 1963), pp. 66-68.
Like the title of a forthcoming textual study, "Notes Toward a Variorum Brideshead," "The Year's Work in Waugh Studies" sounds rather pretentious if not absurd. This defensiveness may be natural, and diffidence about advancing too many claims for Waugh is probably laudable. In a sense, however, both reactions are excessive, for if Waugh deserves serious study, then that study should be professionally pursued. Therefore, I hope in this and in subsequent yearly reviews to comment on the past year's most significant contributions in English to our appreciation of Waugh's novels and to our knowledge of his life and work; to criticize as candidly and as objectively as possible the theses and support of these contributions; and to try to observe, when possible, the directions in which discussions of Waugh seem to be moving.
It seems to me that such a review should not deal with material which is merely symptomatic of fluctuations in Waugh's stock in the literary marketplace, such as brief or non-scholarly reviews of secondary sources and general appreciations of his work. (Omission of a title does not imply a judgment on its quality; it may mean that I did not see it.) Nor should the review take refuge in mere abstracting of articles which are partly or wholly inadequate. This decision is not made capriciously. One of the most valuable functions of the Newsletter has been to put students of Waugh in touch with each other and thus to encourage a fruitful exchange of ideas and information. It would be foolish to mar that good will needlessly, but some objectivity must be maintained if the Newsletter is to be more than a fan-club magazine. Besides, most of us are professionally concerned with Waugh, and anything less than candor would destroy whatever claims to accuracy that the yearly review might have. Finally, a critical review of articles may be useful to their authors.
There is one other problem. My own work falls within the scope of this year's review, and hopefully it will continue to do so. Yet, unless we find some means of dividing the review, the problem would exist for any member of the editorial board.
In one way, this is a good year to begin such a review, for the opening statement of principles and aims serves to flesh out what otherwise would be slender fare. For one thing, the quantity of work on Waugh is considerably less than in 1966, when sixteen items (seven occasioned by Waugh's death) were listed in the PMLA International Bibliography. For another, the work of 1967 has not been markedly original but given rather to summary, to consolidation, to statement in clearer or better documented terms of what we already knew. It deepens slightly rather than broadening significantly our knowledge.
Half of the six items that I have discovered are primarily biographical. Shortest and of least significance is Evelyn Waugh - a brief life narrated by Christopher Sykes (Listener, LXXVIII (August 24, 1967), 222-229), strung together from comments by the narrator and eighteen other friends and acquaintances of Waugh. It would be unfair to suggest that the piece is good largely for providing material for a game of Waugh Botticelli at some future MLA meeting (though it would) or that its seriousness might be judged by the narrator's statement that "Evelyn left Oxford in 1924 with a bad Third Class degree." It does provide snippets of information new to me, at least, and several anecdotes equal in quality to any I have heard - especially Waugh's insistence that Tito was not only a woman but a Lesbian. Undoubtedly the "brief life" was far more effective as a broadcast than an article.
Like this rapid summary, two more substantial memoirs emphasize far more frequently Waugh's rudeness than his wit. Frances Donaldson's Evelyn Waugh: Portrait of a Country Neighbour (London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 1967) shows us a man who seems almost the pattern for the Freudian description of the wit (see Martin Grotjahn, Beyond Laughter) - melancholic, bored, lashing out defensively at a world against which, he knows, his defenses are inadequate. It must be added that there are lighter sides to Mrs. Donaldson's portrait, but James F. Carens may be right in assuming that it will "convince simplicistic biographical critics that Waugh's melancholia and illness marred his later works…" (EWN, No.3, Winter, 1967). I am less concerned about such misconceptions, for people who judge artists, particularly satirists, in terms of their limitations are probably incorrigible, and if the truth encourages them, so much the worse for them, not for the truth.
Indeed, Mrs. Donaldson's portrait seems to be essentially true, confirmed not only by Pinfold but by Alec Waugh's My Brother Evelyn and Other Portraits (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1968). According to Alec, his younger brother was always difficult as well as witty; it did not take a world war and a Labour government to make him moody and waspish. In fact, Evelyn seems to have been really content only during the late 1930's - the period of Waugh in Abyssinia, Scoop, Mexico: an Object Lesson, and Work Suspended. I have not the space to argue that in this period Waugh produced no major work; I doubt that I need it. One might argue plausibly - as Alec certainly implies - that to do has best work, Waugh needed some sort of irritant.
Both of these memoirs have one glaring weakness: they lack information about and sympathy for Waugh's Catholicism. But so does almost every other source. Fr. Martin d'Arcy and others in a position to discuss it have not commented extensively on this aspect of Waugh's life. Until they do, our knowledge of the man is incomplete, though it may be that his novels reveal all that we need to know about him as an artist.
Like the biographical material, the scholarly and critical work of 1967 tends to go over old ground with the support of new detail. In a way, Steven A. Jervis's "Evelyn Waugh, Vile Bodies, and the Younger Generation" (South Atlantic Quarterly, LXVI (Summer 1967), 440-448) is typical. The essay is a workmanlike job; it displays familiarity with most of the critical study of Waugh's attitudes towards the younger generation; and it is usually correct in such major judgments as "While Waugh is able to see the claims of both sides in the clash of generations, his concern and allegiance are finally with the young"; perhaps more questionably, "the book is less the attack on youthful celebrants that it may appear than a qualified vindication of them"; and "Agatha's death is central to the book; it is made to seem representative of her generation." But it is not clear whether the article is biographical, thematic, or critical in its direction. The result is a certain diffuseness and lack of significantly new point.
Perhaps too ambitious is my review essay, "The Mind and Art of Evelyn Waugh" (Papers on Language and Literature, III (Summer 1967), 270-287). Besides suggesting new directions for the scholar and critic, the essay attempts to define Waugh's basic mental attitudes and, by extension, his basic vision, the techniques necessary to embody that vision successfully, and the rank, according to this standard, to which each of his novels should be assigned. Whatever weaknesses the essay may have can, I think, be ascribed In part to my desire to make my standards of judgment as clear as possible. In doing so, I may have made them too narrow and too dogmatic. One obvious weakness is my failure to make adequately clear that my judgment of Waugh's personality was based on his writings and thus is a description of the implied author, to use Wayne Booth's terms, rather than of the private man. If the article has merits, they are due in large part to the advice of Nicholas Joost, editor of PLL. He deserves special thanks for his encouragement of Waugh studies, for he has published or will soon have published three articles on Waugh in three years. In return, perhaps we should see to it that his journal is available in all libraries to which we can give orders.
Thomas Churchill's "The Trouble with Brideshead Revisited" (Modern Language Quarterly, XXVIII (June 1967), 213-228) may be the best critical article of the year. It is certainly the most provocative in the sense both of stimulating and irritating. I agree with most of his premises - the familiar ones that Waugh's early work is superior to the later; that his attempt to embody a positive vision is unsuccessful; and so on - and many of his conclusions, but I found myself quarreling with his method. His stated intention is to make "a detailed study of the faults that caused a writer with considerable reputation to fall from the excellence he had once attained and to remain under the shadow of that fall to the present time…' A bit later, he states that he is re-examining the novel in light of Waugh's 1960 revision. Later still, he asks, "Is Brideshead, for all its insistence upon old guard, old school, good old days, and good old house, really a complicated piece of middle-aged rebellion? " At the end of the essay, he maintains that Waugh does not really sympathize with the house - surely his most original and controversial point - and that Charles Ryder, "who may be seen to represent a side of Waugh that can never be totally 'convinced,' is not mocked to elicit humor in the way Waugh's younger heroes had been, but with impatient disapproval." If he does not exactly suggest a new way of reading the novel, he does attempt to approach the author's intention in a new way. However, his various methods - textual, thematic, historical, critical, biographical - have not been fused. I have not read Churchill's dissertation, but I have the impression that the article has been pulled from it; the loose ends that resulted have been tucked into place as best they can be. But in the process the clarity of Churchill's line of argument has suffered.
There are more serious weaknesses in the article that should be remedied. Most easily put right are Churchill's misleading quotations of Ryder's views on architecture. He says that the 1945 passage that he quotes is more materialistic and "anti-life" than the 1960 version, but he does not tell us that the bulk of the quotation from the latter, used to show that it promotes the house without demeaning man, is also to be found in the 1945 edition. His basic point may not be affected, but his evidence is certainly misleading. More serious is his tendency towards mere assertiveness in the latter part of the essay, as in "Somehow I prefer Margot's treatment of Paul Pennyfeather" to Julia's renunciation of Charles and "I simply find (Sebastian) unconvincing as a martyr, and I cannot help feeling that he perished, not in the service of God but of stubbornness and expediency." Perhaps the process of revision led Churchill to employ this a-critical shorthand. However, the essay's shortcomings should not be allowed to obscure the fact that he has a case and it deserves - and needs - further development.
All of the work of 1967 has pointed to the need for and to some of the requisites for definitive work on Waugh, but it has not in itself been definitive. The Newsletter is no exception. Yet, as a clearing-house for information, it may prove to be the most useful work on Waugh published last year.
| 1. ALS | 2 pp. Piers Ct., Stinchcombe, Glos., October 18, (1956?). To Terence Greenidge. Waugh thanks Greenidge for information about the Foundation Theatre and refuses to send Miss Bonnick £10, for he is not a lover of the drama. He hopes that Greenidge's "pacifist plays are having a great success." (This letter from the collection of Terence Greenidge was given to Charles Linck in June, 1960. This letter and item 2 are now in the possession of Professor Linck.) |
| 2. APCS | Combe Florey House, Combe Florey, Nr. Taunton, July 13, 1960. To Charles E. Linck. In answer to several questions relative to Charles Linck's prospective study of Waugh's career (presently available through University Microfilms, Ann Arbor, Michigan and entitled The Development of Evelyn Waugh's Career: 1903-1939), Waugh advised Linck to read Stopp's book, and answered three specific questions with a "No," "Impossible," "Not Understood." Linck had asked if they could collaborate, if Waugh would reveal who the people were in some of the novels, and whether Waugh had travelled with book publishers' subsidies or among friends only. Waugh wrote, "I travelled where I wanted to go and wrote about it afterwards." |
| 3. APCS | Combe Florey House, Combe Florey, Nr. Taunton, June 22, 1964. To Larned G. Bradford. Waugh remarks that the typescript of A Little Learning, which Little, Brown has received from him is not the final revised version. The version that Waugh wants Little, Brown to set its edition from has just recently appeared in proof at Chapman and Hall. (Mr. Bradford was Waugh's editor at Little, Brown. This item and the two following letters were kindly loaned by Mr. Bradford and Little, Brown and Co. for display in a special memorial exhibit at Nassau College Library commemorating the first anniversary of Waugh's death. This exhibit, which was on view for four weeks in March-April 1967, featured copies of Waugh first editions, several limited editions, signed and presentation issues, some letters, photos, and memorabilia. It is believed that this exhibit was the first extensive library memorial tribute to Waugh.) |
| 4. ALS | 1 p. Combe Florey House , Combe Florey, Nr. Taunton, December 23, 1964. To Larned G. Bradford. Waugh thanks Bradford for a handsome leather bound copy of A Little Learning sent as a Christmas gift. He hopes that Little, Brown will sell "a few copies" of A Little Learning: "I have heard from four American readers. Perhaps there may be some others." |
| 5. ALS | 1 p. Combe Florey House, Nr. Taunton , Oct. 10, 1965. To Larned G. Bradford. Waugh thanks Bradford for sending him the Sheed and Ward publication about Ronald Knox. He says that he is now sometimes absent-minded and does not remember giving permission for the use of such "extensive quotations." Finds that Father Corbishley's contribution is really a précis of his own book on Knox. Praises Robert Speaight's criticism. Objects to Sheed and Ward's advertisement and has asked Speaight to rebuke them. |
Alec Waugh. My Brother Evelyn and Other Portraits. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, Inc., 1968. $6.95. Reviewed by Robert M. Davis (University of Oklahoma).
My Brother Evelyn and Other Portraits is aptly named, for Alec Waugh's memoir of his younger brother (more fully developed than the version in the June, 1967, Atlantic) overshadows the other sketches in length, originality, and intrinsic interest. The rest of the book is sometimes interesting, as in the discussion of J.C. Squire's position as literary dictator just after World War I and in Ralph Straus's line, "Little did he guess. ..that he was arguing with the greatest living authority on masturbation." Moreover, there is a kind of morbid fascination in reading about authors, once praised and bought, of whom one has scarcely heard. But even for the non-specialist, the Waugh family will be the major attraction of the book. The specialist will find it essential but, with the exception of the portrait of Evelyn Gardner, not more than ordinarily useful.
Alec's memoir of Evelyn concentrates on the years between January, 1922, and October, 1932, but it gives glimpses of Evelyn's childhood and, in the subsequent essay, "Arthur Waugh's Last Years," of his life during the war. Much of the sketch, and perhaps the least important part, consists of summary about Evelyn's character and career, most of which can be found elsewhere, notably in Charles Linck's dissertation and in Evelyn's A Little Learning, or inferred by the careful reader of Waugh's novels and travel books. Yet these passages do serve to confirm, supplement, or contradict A Little Learning. Alec concedes that Evelyn understood their father better than he because in most important respects father and younger son were similar; he adds a few touches to the picture of their mother - still the most shadowy figure of the family; and he says, of Evelyn's assertion that his diary of 1924-1928 "reveals a warmer and altogether more likeable character than its predecessor," that a likeable: Evelyn at that period must hove been an exercise in character creation, "For in point of fact the Evelyn of those four years was very far from being that." In the last pages of the autobiography, the young Evelyn Waugh is a melancholy figure; Alec shows him to be as sharp-tongued as at any time in his life, driven by his sense of his own failure and by a mixture of envy of and contempt for the success of his Oxford contemporaries.
More significant than the summaries of events and the interpretations of motive are the direct glimpses that Alec gives into the family's life. Others have guessed that Evelyn resented his position as second child; Alec supports this view with some revealing passages of dialogue. "He once said to his mother, 'Daddy loves Alec more than me. But you love me more than you love Alec.' This was indeed true, but my mother felt that she should not show favoritism. 'No,' she said, 'I love you both the same.' 'Then I am lacking in love,' he said." And when Alec's return from school was celebrated with a sign, "Welcome home to the heir of Underhill," the six year old Evelyn remarked, "When Alec has Underhill and all that is in it, what will be left for me?' My father never put the notice up again." Despite Evelyn's assertion that he was a happy child and Alec's comment on his "sunny nature" (immediately followed by "he was emotional and apt to dissolve into tears"), it is obvious that even in his family the younger son was not always agreeable. His mother had occasion to remark on his "besetting sin," "his quick and unkind tongue," and just before their father's death she wrote to Alec, as if surprised, that Evelyn "has been most agreeable…" While it may be "both naive and discourteous to rummage through Waugh's novels looking for details of his personal life," as Peter Hinchcliffe maintains in "Fathers and Children in the Novels of Evelyn Waugh" (University of Toronto Quarterly, XXXV (April 1966), 293), it would be ridiculous to overlook the influence on Waugh's work of his family relationships, not only in Winner Take All, that black comedy of primogeniture, but in all of the works where only children occur in excess of statistical probability. He clearly distanced himself from his material, as Hinchcliffe says, but he did not remove himself from it entirely.
This point is rendered even more obvious in Waugh's attitude towards women, particularly Brenda Last and Virginia Troy, who betray their husbands and lovers, for that attitude was clearly occasioned by his divorce from Evelyn Gardner. Alec's memoir gives the fullest - in fact almost the only portrait of Evelyn's engagement and marriage to her. Alec describes her as "pretty and neat and gracious; she had winning ways; she had race but unobtrusively. She was friendly, welcoming, and cosy." By this account, the two Evelyns were remarkably happy during the first months of their marriage, and it is in these passages that the sensitive and affectionate side of Evelyn's nature was emphasized, though not presented very concretely. The break-up of the marriage is documented more fully. For example, Alec reproduces part of the conversation in which Evelyn Gardner told him of her love for John Heygate, including her remarkable response to his "You always seemed so happy together": "'Yes, I suppose I was,' then after a pause, 'but never as happy as I've been with my sisters.'"
Alec maintains - and he is undoubtedly correct - that Evelyn Gardner was a major influence on his brother's literary and personal life. Had it not been for her, he says, Evelyn might never have written Decline and Fall or any other book; had he not opened himself completely in the relationship, only to have his trust betrayed, he might have been less caustic and less defensive; and had he been less permanently affected, he might have been able to continue his autobiography. Alec's view that, had the marriage survived, Evelyn would have written merely fashionable comedies must be approached with some reservation, but it seems at least plausible.
Alec's book has other welcome information, bibliographical and biographical. He hints at Evelyn's romantic life after his divorce; he mentions the originals of Bridey's club in Brideshead Revisited and of Uncle Lionel's eating habits in Scoop; he identifies the "Hamish Lennox" of A Little Learning as Alastair Graham; he reveals that Charles Ryder "talks to his wife very much as Evelyn did talk to someone by whom he was irritated..." More important, he announces that he has donated fourteen volumes of Arthur Waugh's diary, covering the years 1930-1943, to the library of Boston University and that he has a "large folder' of letters from Evelyn "which I shall one day annotate and edit for presentation to a university library."
On the whole, one could have hoped for a more thorough and more searching account of Evelyn Waugh's character, his activities, and his milieu. Yet it must be recognized that this is the kind of information - personal, rather diffuse, maddeningly full of hints and undeveloped leads - that we are likely to get for some time to come. It is, in short, the kind of material out of which real biographies will have to be fashioned. The book provides the specialists with raw material and even as it stands enlightens us on several counts. It would perhaps be graceless, certainly futile, to demand more.
The Evelyn Waugh Newsletter, designed to stimulate research and continue interest in the life and writings of Evelyn Waugh, is published three times a year in April, October, and December (Spring, Autumn, and Winter numbers). Subscription rate for libraries and interested individuals: $1.00 a year (10s in England). Single copy 35 cents. Checks or money orders should be made payable to the Evelyn Waugh Newsletter. Notes, brief essays, and news items about Waugh and his work may be submitted but manuscripts cannot be returned unless accompanied by a stamped, self-addressed envelope. Address all correspondence to Dr. P.A. Doyle, c/o English Deportment, Nassau Community College, State University of New York, Garden City, New York 11530.
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| Editorial Board | |
| Editor: | P.A. Doyle |
| Associate Editors: | Alfred W. Borrello (Mercer County Community College) |
| James F. Carens (Bucknell University) | |
| Robert M. Davis (University of Oklahoma) | |
| Heinz Kosok (University of Marburg) | |
| Charles E. Linck, Jr. (East Texas State University) |