It would probably be quite fair to admit that Evelyn Waugh, for all the critical success and the high quality of his novels, never earned a reputation as a master of technique. Generally speaking, Waugh suits his style and presentation to the content of the particular novel; for example, Vile Bodies, depicting as it does the frivolous-minded society of the Bright Young Things, employs the Firbankian techniques of detached episodic structure and staccato speech filled with non sequiturs, and Helena, in an effort to make Roman Catholic history and apologetics more palatable to the reader of fiction, translates all the dialogue into a colloquial and even slang-filled modern idiom and keeps the "period flavour" to an absolute minimum except in content. These are obvious examples of the relationship of a novel's style to its content; however, Waugh often chooses to use a particular stylistic device to produce more subtle effects. One such technique is that of allusions in the direct speech of the characters either to an ambiguity in a situation of which the speaker sees only one aspect (which allusion I term a "double-entendre" in the course of this article) or to future events unforeseen by themselves but foreshadowed in their speech. The name under which I have grouped these devices for the sake of convenience - "allusive conversation " - is also applicable to statements which, in metaphorical terms, comment on situations more significant than the ones which gave rise to them, or to ironic self-revelation unsuspected by the speaker. Isolated examples appear here and there in the Waugh canon, but allusive conversation plays a significant part only in A Handful of Dust and Brideshead Revisited, the only Waugh novels based on potentially tragic situations, but otherwise two totally dissimilar books. To attempt to establish any thematic similarity other than the one already mentioned on the grounds of one stylistic device that the two novels have in common would be far-fetched; nonetheless, the technique of allusive conversation serves the same purposes in both books, either to reinforce Waugh's assessment of a character or to provide the effect, be it comic or dramatic, which he considers to be required but which the situation in itself cannot bring about at the desired point in the novel.
In no other book is Waugh so reliant upon the carefully placed double-entendre as he is in A Handful of Dust. Upon its first occurrence, the double-entendre carries with it a slightly obscene interpretation; this is in itself unusual for Waugh, who distinguishes himself by avoiding euphemism and circumlocution whenever his characters' speech so demands. However, the innuendo is required here in order to provide the double meaning, and, when Brenda, complimented by Tony on her "heroism" with Beaver, replies, "Oh, I quite enjoy coping,"(1) her choice of words indicates her willingness to put up with him at the moment and also the pleasure she is to take in her affair with him later. This particular double-entendre, like the next, carries with it a very thinly disguised foreshadowing.
Mrs. Beaver, discussing with her san the possibility of Brenda's taking a flat in London and commenting on the popularity of her flats, makes the statement, "I shall have to look about for another suitable house to split up." (page 61) This particular conversation has reflected Mrs. Beaver's two concerns, her success as rental agent and interior decorator and her interest in John's keeping himself occupied. Hence, it is important to her that she find another house to split up, both in order to make more profit from her flat rentals and in order to prepare herself for the possibility that John's affair with Brenda Last might fail. For it is, in fact, Mrs. Beaver who is to a great degree responsible for the failure of the marriage of Brenda and Tony; had she not fitted Brenda out for her venture into adultery by providing both locale and lover, the affair would never have taken place. One has the impression that Brenda took Beaver on as a lover simply because he was near at hand; and, had he not been in her presence at the opportune time, she would have carried on as she had done before his appearance.
Other fairly insignificant double-entendres appear from time to time in A Handful of Dust, such as Ben Hacket's observation that Thunderclap, the pony that threw John Andrew, "might do for (Mr. Westmacott's) little girl" (page 141), suggesting that it has already "done for" John Andrew by throwing him, but their value is minimal apart from the constant play on the name "John" in which Waugh indulges after the boy's death. The first occurrence of this particular device is found on page 125; Tony, in conversation with the Shameless Blonde just after Jock's departure for London to break the news to Brenda, says of his wife that "... she'd got nothing else, much, except John." There is a bitter truth in what Tony says, a truth of which he has no idea whatever; John Beaver, in fact, is the focal point of Brenda's life. Her existence does revolve round "John", but not John Andrew, for whom she has shown remarkably little love. As if to bring home to the reader that Tony's blind faith in Brenda is totally misplaced, Waugh has him say a few lines down that "... she's seen so little of John lately." Tony is again unaware of the hidden implication that "John" may refer to Beaver, but, even if he were speaking of Brenda's lover, ignorant as he is of her infidelity, he would make the same statement. The double-entendres in this passage establish Tony for the first time as a fully pathetic figure.
The next play on the name "John" (page 136) is probably the most notable single passage in the novel, as it reveals the priority of love in Brenda's mind not only to herself but also to Jock Grant-Menzies and to the reader. Brenda is stunned by grief as long as she believes that it is Beaver who has been killed; when Jock makes it clear to her that it is in fact her son, she bursts into tears, first of relief, then of a combination of guilt and grief. This incident is an epiphany to all its witnesses; to Brenda, it reveals that she does in fact love Beaver and is not merely amusing herself with him, and that there is no longer any reason for her remaining with Tony; to Jock and to the reader, it reveals that, even before her own discovery of her love, she has put her commitment to the world of Mayfair and to Beaver (or, rather, her affair with Beaver) before that of the world of Hetton, Tony, and John Andrew. Realizing afterward (page 137) that she has betrayed her feelings to Jock, Brenda is unable to explain the revelation, either to herself or to the bearer of the news (and hence to the reader, who shares Jock's point of view at this moment in the novel). It is at this stage that Brenda alienates herself from the reader's sympathy - or such, at any rate, appears to have been Waugh's intent.
The name "John" is used in a double-entendre yet once more. At the point where Brenda informs Tony that she proposes to leave him, he begins an attempt to persuade her to stay with, "Of course we can never forget John." (page 142) This is a bitter truth for Tony; unable to forget his love for Brenda, he will carry both memories, that of his son, whose death helped cause the breakdown of the marriage, and that of John Beaver, who came between Brenda and himself, with him for the remainder of his life.
Waugh also uses allusive speech, without any double meanings attached, to foreshadow important events and situations. A few allusions to Brenda's affair with Beaver occur before it begins; for example, on pages 29-30, when Tony complains of having to honour the invitation he gave Beaver in a careless moment while drinking at Brat's, Brenda's unsympathetic answer is, "That's what comes of going up to London on business and leaving me alone here." In fact, everything that happens afterward - Brenda's affair, John Andrew's death (the absent Brenda had not wanted him to go on the hunt, her one show of love for him in the whole novel), and Tony's fate reading Dickens to Mr. Todd in Brazil - is the result of that one business trip. This statement of Brenda's will also be recalled when she begins to make trips to London to transact her own "business".
Both the affair and John Andrew's death are alluded to in a rather unusual manner when Beaver "tells Brenda's fortune" on page 40. He declares that "there is going to be a sudden death which will cause (her) great pleasure and profit"; there is, in fact, a sudden death, that of John Andrew, but, far from the "pleasure and profit" which Brenda expects will come of her planned divorce from Tony and marriage to Beaver, the death brings her a long period of suffering which is only brought to a close by her eventual marriage to Jock.
The major examples of foreshadowing in A Handful of Dust prepare the reader for John Andrew's accidental death. In Tony's letter to Brenda prior to the hunting weekend, he humorously expresses the hope that John Andrew "doesn't break his neck" (page 114), perhaps in an effort to reassure her that, despite the boy's being allowed to go hunting against her wishes, no harm will result. As is usual for Tony, he is unable to conceive of anything possibly disrupting his idyllic life at Hetton.
The other two intimations of John Andrew's death come, curiously, enough, from the boy himself. On page 116, John and his disapproving nanny are discussing his seeing the outcome of the hunt; when John speaks of being "in at the death", his nanny retorts, "You won't see any death." This is an ironic and unfortunate truth; the only death that occurs is that of John Andrew himself, which he is in at but cannot see.
Once the hunt party reaches the covert, Ben Hacket determines to take John Andrew home the child naturally argues, as he had expected to actually see the hounds in pursuit of the fox. When Ben attempts to console him by holding out the promise of another day's hunting, John Andrew's reply is, "But there mayn't be another day. The world may come to an end." (page 118) John's world does in fact come to an end a few minutes later, and with it comes the end of Tony's Hetton dream-world.
Alone among Waugh's novels in this respect, A Handful of Dust relies almost entirely on dialogue to make its major points (one cannot truthfully say that the dialogue-filled Vile Bodies has any major points to make). However, in Brideshead Revisited, a novel notable for the use of indirect speech in many places where dialogue would be expected, the allusive technique reappears in the conversation of the characters. The double-entendre has vanished - shelved after A Handful of Dust, it appears, to be brought to light again on a few occasions in the Sword of Honour trilogy - but the thinly-veiled foreshadowing is once more in use, along with two new forms of allusive conversation, the metaphorical foreshadowing and the ironical statement by means of which the speaker reveals something of his own character.
Much of the straightforward foreshadowing in Brideshead Revisited is put into the mouth of Sebastian. For example, when refusing to introduce Ryder to his family, Sebastian tells him in what appears to be a childishly petulant manner, "All my life (my family have) been taking things away from me. If they once got hold of you with their charm, they'd make you their friend, not mine, and I won't let them."(2) Almost everything associated with the Sebastian of the Arcadian days is taken from him by his family, largely through the agency of Lady Marchmain's peculiar brand of Catholicism; not only do his beauty and the fascination he exerts disappear, but, by the end of the novel, Julia has taken away Ryder's allegiance to Sebastian and transferred it to herself.
During Ryder's first extended visit to Brideshead, he and Sebastian take up wine-tasting, using the wine that has lain unused in the cellars of the house since Lord Marchmain's departure. One morning, after feeling the effects of the previous evening's wine-tasting session, Sebastian asks Ryder, "Ought we to be drunk every night?" (page 84) to which Ryder replies in the affirmative. Ryder follows up this opinion with the some degree of commitment and dedication he brings to all his statements - none at all; Sebastian, however, does finally reach the stage of being drunk every night, and every day as well.
Easter at Brideshead marks the public fall from grace of Sebastian. The morning after the great concern over his drunkenness, Sebastian comes into Ryder's room dressed for a journey, announcing his intention to leave Brideshead once and for all; when Ryder tries to reason with him, maintaining that running away is foolish, Sebastian's reply is, "And I couldn't care less. And I shall go on running away, as far and as fast as I can." (page 135) While Sebastian does go on running away, not only from Brideshead itself but from all it represents as well, the foreshadowing takes a twist again here, as it is clear that there is nothing he worries about more than the error of running away; once finally settled In the Tunisian monastery, he has returned to Catholicism - to the ideals, in fact, represented by Brideshead and by his family.
Ryder's speech as well as Sebastian's foreshadows much of the later course of the novel. Coming up to Oxford for their second year, both Sebastian and Ryder sense that they will be unable to recapture the pleasures of their first; Ryder finally sums up their feelings with the statement, "I believe we have had all the fun we can expect here." (page 105) It is true enough that the pair will find no more pleasure at Oxford - the close surveillance of Sebastian by Lady Marchmain and her appointees, together with the departure of Anthony Blanche, has ensured that; moreover, Sebastian has had all the fun he can expect at Oxford or anywhere else. He is, in a sense, a figure symbolic of idyllic youth; with the advent of maturity - that is to say, Ryder's maturity - the idyll disappears and with it Sebastian's élan vital.
After Sebastian's Easter disgrace, he and Ryder, when at the latter's home in London, once more discuss the point of whether Ryder is still in sympathy with him. Ryder's assurance is, "I'm with you, Sebastian contra mundum" (page 140); in fact, Ryder does remain with Sebastian, either through the memory of him or through his alter ego Julia, throughout the novel, and always contra mundum. There can be no question that, beside Ryder's love for Julia, he does see her as either a surrogate Sebastian or a sop for his feeling of guilt at not having been able to keep Sebastian from his alcoholic collapse.
The general impression given by Ryder throughout Brideshead Revisited is that of a somewhat superficial observer of life. Discussing Sebastian's alcoholism with Brideshead, Ryder comments, "It seems to me that without your religion Sebastian would have the chance to be a happy and healthy man," (page 145) to which Brideshead responds, "It's arguable." For once Brideshead, just as superficial as and more crass than Ryder, has been able to foretell the future correctly; although Sebastian's Catholicism is, through the nature of his family life, the means of his downfall, it is also the means of his eventual resurgence and return to happiness serving the monks in Tunis.
Another dialogue between Ryder and Brideshead provides what is, for Waugh and for any reader who can share Waugh's Catholic point of view, a particularly striking piece of foreshadowing. Ryder insists, "If you worry (Sebastian) with keepers and cures he'll be a physical wreck in a few years"; to which Sebastian's brother replies, "There's nothing wrong in being a physical wreck, you know. " (pages 163-164) Ryder's prediction is such a truism that it scarcely merits the name of foreshadowing; however, the Jesuitical Bridey has unconsciously anticipated Waugh's apparent opinion that, in the final analysis, there is something right in Sebastian's becoming a physical wreck, as his suffering is the cause of the saintly life - in Catholic terms such as those Waugh uses as standards - that he finally takes up.
A much less subtle, if equally effective, piece of foreshadowing is put into the mouth of Rex Mottram, one of the most unpleasant personalities in the entire Waugh canon. In recommending the quack at Zurich as "just the man" to cure Sebastian's alcoholism, Rex points out as another of the man's virtues, "He takes sex cases, too, you know." (page 165) When one thinks of the details of Sebastian's meeting with Anthony Blanche in Marseilles and his involvement with Kurt in Fez, one may be forgiven for thinking that, in the terms of the Marchmains if not Waugh's own, Rex's quack would indeed have been "just the man" for him.
In a passage significantly omitted from the revised 1960 edition of Brideshead Revisited, Anthony Blanche tells Ryder, still intoxicated by his new acquaintance with Sebastian, about the latter's family. Blanche describes Julia as "... a fiend - passionless, acquisitive, intriguing, ruthless killer." (page 54) In this statement, we find a capsule description - taking into account Blanche's penchant for overstatement - of the eventual course of the relationship between Ryder and Julia, who, alone of all the Flytes, is able to temporarily put her religion and in obligations aside in order to win Ryder. However, in finally renouncing him, Julia behaves with all the coldness Blanche attributes to her by, as it were, suddenly discovering the importance of her faith to her once more. There can be no doubt of her sincerity at this point, but grave doubt may be cast on the impression of being prepared to ignore the dictates of her religion - the impression which she gives Ryder earlier on in the novel.
Figurative language of any kind appears to be notably absent from all Waugh's novels except Brideshead Revisited. In this novel, the opposite is the case, and full advantage is taken of the effects of metaphor and simile in passages such as the two great set-pieces, Julia's discourse on sin and Lord Marchmain's dying soliloquy; there are, besides, examples of metaphors used for the purpose of foreshadowing. The first of these occurs at the point where Ryder and Sebastian, stopping for lunch between Swindon and Brideshead, admire the beauty of the summer day, and Sebastian muses, "I should like to bury something precious in every place where I've been happy and then, when I was old and ugly and miserable, I could come bock and dig it up and remember." (page 24) He does in fact bury something precious - something of himself - in every place where he has shared his happiness with Ryder; however, contrary to his expressed wish, once "old and ugly and miserable" in Tunis, he has forgotten every one of his characteristics that brought happiness to himself and to Ryder in their Arcadian Oxford years, but has ironically remembered and come to cherish the one thing - his Catholicism - that accounted for so much of his youthful misery.
The novel then flashes back to the circumstances of Ryder's first meeting with Sebastian; prior to the actual encounter. Lunt, Ryder's scout, having had to clean the floor of Ryder's room as a result of Sebastian's sickness, says of Sebastian, "I'm sure it's quite a pleasure to clean up after him." (page 30) While Lunt is never faced with this task again, Ryder, metaphorically, is always "cleaning up after" Sebastian, forever attempting to reconcile him with his family and, unsuccessfully, to keep him out of awkward situations.
Returning once more to Sebastian's Easter-tide flight from Brideshead, during the discussion of it with Ryder (an example of his trying to clean up after Sebastian), Sebastian announces, "I'm coming to stay with you." (page 135) This ostensibly refers to Sebastian's plan to stay at Ryder's house while in London, but, in fact, he stays with Ryder throughout the latter's life, first as a welcome memory of old pleasures and times that can never be recaptured, and then in the form of his sister and alter ego Julia.
After Lady Marchmain's funeral, Ryder takes Cordelia to dinner at the Ritz Grill. Recalling the closing of the chapel at Brideshead once the funeral was over, Cordelia quotes the first four words of the first verse of the book of Lamentations (page 220). The full verse in the Vulgate version runs:
Quomodo sedet sola civitas olim plena populo! facta est quasi vidua domina gentium; princeps provinciarum facta est sub tributo.
Cordelia is thinking, of course, of the desolation of the Temple in comparison with that of the chapel at Brideshead; however, the Vulgate verse applies equally well to the wartime condition of Brideshead itself. Plena populo in the days when Ryder visited Sebastian and paid court to Julia, domina gentium in the time of Lady Marchmain's matriarchal dominion, princeps provinciarum when the Flytes ranked high among county families, the soldiers have, with their spoliation and damaging of the house followed by their abandonment of it, left it sola, quasi vidua; in the Hooperian Age foreseen by Ryder (and Waugh), Brideshead, together with the ideals it represents, will be indeed, in the opinion of author and narrator, sub tributo, and dominated by an order far inferior to that of the Flytes.
There is only one significant use of the ironical self-revelatory statement in Brideshead Revisited, but it is so extensive, and so remarkable, that it bears discussion as an important example of allusive conversation in the novel. It is, of course, Lady Marchmain's rebuke of Ryder, and occurs on pages 168-169:
"I don't understand it," she said. "I simply don't understand how anyone can be so callously wicked."...
"I'm not going to reproach you," she said. "God knows it's not for me to reproach anyone. Any failure in my children is my failure. But I don't understand it. I don't understand how you can have been so nice in so many ways, and then do something so wantonly cruel. I don't understand how we all liked you so much. Did you hate us all the time? I don't understand how we deserved it."
Ryder has behaved less than admirably - this is undeniable - but we can nonetheless see why he, faulty judge of character though he normally may be, was "unmoved". First of all, significantly, the phrase "I don't understand" occurs no less than six times in the nine sentences Lady Marchmain speaks. These are the only words of hers in which she betrays any evidence of self-awareness at all; no matter what situation any of Lady Marchmain's family found himself in, her reaction, if she were to have been honest with herself and with others, would have been, "I don't understand." At the same time she makes another direct self-revelatory statement, prompted by what seems to be a variety of false modesty: "... it's not for me to reproach anyone. Any failure in my children is my failure." Lady Marchmain has a great many failures to atone for.
A further effect of Lady Marchmain's incomprehension in this passage is self-revelation while applying epithets to Ryder; it is in fact she who, while her children have considered her "so nice in so many ways", has in fact been "callously wicked" and "wantonly cruel". It is, in a sense, fortunate for her that her death spares her reaping the full harvest of her cruelty in that she sees its effects on only one of her children; while Sebastian's lapse into alcoholism has indeed made her suffer, she misses Julia's disappointment in love, Brideshead's grotesque marriage, and Cordelia's turning to the total escapism that her religion affords - all in part, if not entirely, due to Lady Marchmain's early influence.
It would probably be impossible to compare A Handful of Dust and Brideshead Revisited in any other terms; they are products both of the periods in which they were written and of Waugh's preoccupations at the time of their writing, and, in conception, bear no resemblance to each other at all. It is hoped, however, that this discussion has brought out one significant point: that, in the two novels perhaps most frequently acknowledged to be his best, Evelyn Waugh has skilfully employed the some technique of allusive conversation, conspicuously absent from nearly all his other work, to develop character and to enhance comic or dramatic effect.
NOTES
1 Evelyn Waugh, A Handful of Dust, New Uniform Edition (London, 1964), p. 40.
2 Brideshead Revisited (Boston, 1945), p. 37.
(a) Works of Waugh 1930-1940: Book Reviews
"Mr Fleming in Brazil", (review of Brazilian Adventure). Spectator, CL (August 11, 1933), 195-196
"History in Rhymes", (review of A Box of Dotes for Children). Spectator (Book Supplement), CLlII (November 23, 1934), 24.
"Blinding the Middlebrow", (review of Eyeless in Gaza). Tablet, CLXVIII (July 18, 1936), 84.
"An English Humorist", (review of Laughing Gas). Tablet, CLXVIII (October 17, 1936), 532-533.
"Abyssinian Aftermath", (review of Crazy Campaign). Tablet, CLXVIII, (December 5,1936), 784.
"A Times Correspondent", (review of Caesar in Abyssinia) Tablet, CLXIX (January 23,1937), 128-129.
"Through European Eyes", (review of Anno XIIII), London Mercury and Bookman, XXXVI (June 1937), 147-150. (This item seems to me to be incorrectly entered as an article in Paul A. Doyle's "Evelyn Waugh: A Bibliography", Bulletin of Bibliography, May-August, 1957), p.60. I take it to be primarily a review of Marshall de Bono's Anno XIIII.)
"The Oxford Arctic Expedition", (review of Under the Pole Star). Tablet, CLXXI (January 15, 1938), 80-81.
"The Habits of the English", (review article on First Year's Work, 1937-38, by Mass Observation). Spectator, CLX (April 15, 1938), 663-664. (Listed as a book review in Doyle's bibliography.)
"Fine Ladies", (review of The Ladies of Alderley). Tablet, CLXXII (July 23, 1938), 110-112.
"Present Discontents", (review of Enemies of Promise), Tablet, CLXXII (December 3,1938), 743-744
(b) For the files: some corrections of D. Paul Farr's "Evelyn Waugh: A Supplemental Bibliography" and Paul A. Doyle's "Evelyn Waugh: A Bibliography (1926-1956)."
"For Schoolboys Only", (review of The Mind in Chains etc.). - not The Mind in Change. Night and Day, I (July 8, 1937), 24-25.
"The Great Incomprehensibles", (review of Men of Mathematics). Night and Day, I (August 5, 1937), 24-25. (Not p.24 only).
"Strange Rites of the Islanders", (review of May the Twelfth: Mass Observation Day - surveys) - 'surveys' is part of the title. Night and Day, I (October 14, 1937), 28-30.
"Good Travellers", (review of The Back Garden of Allah etc.). - not "Black". Spectator, CLXIII (August 25, 1939), 300.
On December 3, 1947, Loyola College in Baltimore conferred on Evelyn Waugh an honorary doctorate and Evelyn Waugh in turn conferred on the library of the college a bound volume of the page proofs of Brideshead Revisited. In the inscription in the front of the volume Waugh recounts in his own handwriting how the set of proofs "was sent in October, 1944, to 10 Downing Street, from there it travelled to Italy in the Prime Minister's post bag, was flown from Brindisi and dropped by parachute, . . . was corrected at Topusko and taken. . . by ship to Italy and so home, via Downing Street."
As one turns to the proofs themselves one is surprized to find that Waugh did more than correct typographical errors in going over them; he revised words, phrases, and indeed whole passages so that ultimately the original page proofs of Brideshead differ as much from the first edition as the 1960 revised edition differs from the first edition. It is my purpose at the moment to point out some of these emendations for the future reference of anyone studying the novel who will want to make use of them.
The first thing one notices is that Waugh inserted in his own handwriting a table of contents containing the chapter headings which appeared in the first British edition and reappeared in the revised edition of 1960, but which have never been included in any American edition of the novel.
Perhaps the largest revisions in the entire novel occur at the point where Waugh is describing the veiled hostility which exists between Charles Ryder and his father. This hostility manifests itself in the witty verbal battles which they wage whenever Charles is at home. Possibly because Waugh did not want to overdo the comic function of Charles's father in the novel, he crossed out on entire episode from the page proofs in which the elder Ryder figures. Charles is bored beyond words by having to attend a dinner party which his father has arranged before Charles can leave for a visit to Brideshead. During the course of the evening's entertainment a Miss Pomfrey, one of the guests, does a series of dreary imitations.
To get even with his father for a wretched evening, Charles invites Miss Pomfrey to return for Sunday luncheon to perform again for his father, who has a sacrosanct custom of dining alone on Sundays. This custom probably survives, says Charles, "from the sabbatarian practices of our forebears." His father contrives not to be at home for the luncheon but advises Charles that he shall have to give Miss Pomfrey a remuneration for her performance, since she was not a guest at the party, but a paid entertainer. In the course of their luncheon together Charles learns that she is no such thing and that had he offered her money it would have been very awkward indeed. On his return home later in the afternoon, Mr. Ryder admits his "hoax" was intended as a playful way of getting even with Charles for trying to spoil his Sunday luncheon in the first place. This episode loses a great deal in paraphrase since Waugh narrates it in a very subtle and witty fashion which brings out the uneasy relationship between father and son. (Page proofs, pp. 66-67)
Some of the other revisions which Waugh made in the page proofs follow, in order to indicate the value of the proofs as a whole to the student of Brideshead:
At one point in the novel Julia considers the fact that the Church imposes burdens and obligations which other religions do not: "If she apostatized now, having been brought up in the Church, she would go to hell, while the Protestant girls of her acquaintance, schooled in happy ignorance, could marry eldest sons, live at peace with their world, and get to heaven before her." Waugh softened this passage by deleting the following lines from the proofs: "She must be faithful, she supposed, as the martyrs had been; but why was the palm thus thrust into her hand? It was none of her seeking." (Page proofs, p. 160)
Charles realizes that his friendship with Sebastian was the forerunner of his love for Julia. In the page proofs Waugh even emphasized the physical resemblance of Sebastian and Julia in order to indicate how Charles was led from one to the other, but then deleted the lines: "So for as women and men can share identity, it was shared here by brother and sister; only her sex, embodied in her finer bone and softer skin, distinguished her from my friend." (Page proofs, p. 70)
To underscore the fact that Charles's relation with his wife has completely deteriorated by the time Charles takes up with Julia, Waugh deleted from the page proofs the implication that Charles and Celia had sexual relations during the trip aboard ship to England. He replaces these lines in the published edition of the novels with the following: "We lay in our twin beds, a yard or two apart, smoking." (Page proofs, p. 202 )
The above is a sampling of the emendations to be found in the page proofs of Brideshead. A full account of them would make on interesting study indeed.
It is high time that serious scholars were made acquainted with the earliest historical mention of the Waugh family which thus far has been discovered. This reference can be found in an account of native folk-dancing recorded in Purchas His Pilgrimage, published 1613, p. 637:
One among them, the eldest as he is iudged, riseth right up, the others sitting still: and looking about, suddenly cries with a loud voice, Baugh, Waugh … the men altogether answering the same, fall a stamping round about the fire … with sundrie out-cries.
Skeptics, besotted pedants, and other such detractors will be quick to point out that this branch of the family has been ruthlessly omitted from A Little Learning: but such omission, as any fool should be able to infer, was most probably deliberate.
The invocation Baugh, Waugh, for example, also appears as the odd burthen of Ariel's first song in The Tempest (I, ii, 384, 386), and by the time of the First Folio it already had been corrupted to "bowgh, wawgh." The Jacobeans were stout good fellows, of course, but spelling was not really their long suit, and the corruption thus begun eventually degenerated to the modern "Bow-wow." Waugh probably had little enthusiasm for the prospect of being known, in some future age, as "Evelyn Wow," and - really - I do not find such an attitude unreasonable. Moreover, Waugh did nothing to conceal a marked antipathy toward both American customs and folk-dancing - even British folk-dancing - and connection with an itinerant company of American folk-dancers could hardly have appealed to him. Finally, it must be admitted that this branch of the family apparently did not amount to much: exhaustive research has failed to yield even the slightest reference to their activities after 1613.
Gene Kellogg, The Vital Tradition: The Catholic Novel in a Period of Convergence, Loyola University Press, Chicago, 1970. $8.35 Reviewed by Gene D. Phillips (Loyola University, Chicago).
In The Vital Tradition Dr. Gene Kellogg has given us what is for the most part a comprehensive: and penetrating study of major Catholic novelists in France (Mauriac and Bernanos), England (Waugh and Greene), and America (J.F. Powers and Flannery O'Connor) which emphasizes the specific cultural milieu in which each developed. It is perhaps ironic and unfortunate, therefore, that the only chapter in the book which is really inadequate, the one on Waugh, should be my chief concern in this review since my reservations about it may give the impression that the book as a whole is deficient, which is certainly not the case.
The chief problem with the chapter on Waugh is simply that Dr. Kellogg implies that Waugh stopped writing in 1945, since she mentions nothing which he wrote after Brideshead Revisited. She indicates in her treatment of the early satires that Waugh was getting at meanings that were deeper than the level of satire, but does not elaborate on this even when she has the chance, as when she discusses Tony Last's search for the Lost City. Brideshead itself, she finds, contains a simplistic morality according to which all of the good Catholics in the book are good people and all of the bad Catholics are bad people. One wonders if Waugh can be said to distribute his sympathy for his characters in so high-handed and arbitrary a fashion as the author would suggest.
To me it is inconceivable that an assessment of Waugh's achievement in the context of the development of the Catholic novel should contain no reference whatsoever to his Sword of Honor trilogy in which the Catholic hero must try to come to terms with his beliefs in a world that is, as for as he is concerned, inimicable to them. Sword of Honor certainly deserves from the author the kind of careful analysis which she in fact brings to her splendid treatment of Greene's major novels in the very next chapter. Omission of any mention of the trilogy simply invalidates any generalization which the author makes about Waugh's work as a whole, since nowhere in the chapter does she say that she is confining herself to his novels up to 1945.
Let me emphasize again that the rest of her book is very well done and reflects the kind of conscientious reading and research that certainly must have gone into it. But where her handling of Waugh is concerned, it would be better to have omitted him altogether as have been, say, Gabriel Fielding and Muriel Spark, than to have given him the short shrift which he here receives.
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: $2.50 a year (£1.10p in England). Single copy 90 cents. Check 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 Department, 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 (Kingsborough 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) |