Some time ago Mr. O'Keefe of the Catholic Herald (London) very kindly informed me that Waugh had written a number of "hilarious" letters to his paper under the pseudonym, Mrs. Teresa Pinfold. Unfortunately, as he had no precise memory of these letters, he could not give any more details. Since Australia does not possess a file of the Catholic Herald, and since the paper's offices do not keep an index or author files, I employed a professional searcher to look for the letters. After consulting with Mr. O'Keefe, my searcher could find only one. I also wrote, with many grave misgivings about intruding on her privacy, to ask Mrs. Waugh for information, imagining that Mrs. Waugh would be the one person certain to know about the letters. Mrs. Waugh was so good to reply as follows:
My husband certainly wrote more than one letter under the pseudonym of Teresa Pinfold - I think several to the Catholic Herald, possibly to the Tablet and possibly one to the Times - I think he used a pseudonym when he did not want to get involved in a controversy or when he just wanted to have a joke.
The Theresa Pinfold letter I discovered will be of interest only to the most devoted Waugh specialists. It was written as a humorous answer to an angry, rhetorical attack ("semi-blasphemous ...graffiti") on a little book of cartoons about life in a Benedictine monastery, Cracks in the Cloister. The attack was so incongruously severe, and so capably done, that I suspected Waugh had written it, simulating indignation in order to advertise the book; but Mrs. Waugh has assured me that her husband was not the letter's pseudonymous author "Oblate."
Waugh's letter, "Victim of a Hoax?", is brief and self-explanatory:
I read the letter signed "Oblate" with close attention and have come to the conclusion that you have been made the victim of a hoax.
I do not impute complicity to publisher or author, but plainly the letter is a parody, written with the wish to advertise these admirable drawings.Manchester (Mrs.) Teresa Pinfold
Waugh's contribution was followed by a note from the editor of the Catholic Herald indicating that he knew the author:
Our office Sherlock Holmes suggests that it is in fact this letter which may be a hoax, for the handwriting is oddly similar to that of a well-known Catholic novelist, and so was the postmark on the envelope.
EDITOR, "C.H."
The editor might have noted that the letter was in the style of other short letters written by a "well-known Catholic novelist" and that no attempt was made to assume the style of an imaginary Mrs. Teresa Pinfold.
Waugh may have been a little deflated when he saw his joke in print because the same letter column in which it appeared contained the following contribution from F. J. Sheed, the publisher of the book:
I should like to make it clear that Oblate's letter attacking Cracks in the Cloister was not written by any member of our firm.
F.J. Sheed.
Mr. Sheed's intention was probably the same as Waugh's to suggest that Oblate's letter was silly; it was so extreme that it looked like a parody. Or did both men know that the letter was in fact written as a joke? Several other correspondents replied to what one of them called "Oblate's masterpiece of vituperation," most of them humorously.
I have been informed that a number of interested people in England are at present searching for the rest of Waugh's pseudonymous letters. One can only hope that what has been said here will encourage them to persevere.
At my request Mrs. Waugh commented on her husband's choice of pseudonym. "Pinfold" was taken from the man who built Piers Court, the house where the Waugh family lived so long. Mrs. Waugh could find no explanation for the Christian name "Teresa."
The bibliographical details of Waugh's letter are as follows:
(Mrs.) Teresa Pinfold (pseudonym adopted by Evelyn Waugh), "Victim of a Hoax?," Catholic Herald. September 16,1955, p. 2. Response to "Cloister Cracks" (letter by Oblate attacking Cracks in the Cloister), Catholic Herald, September 9, 1955, p. 2. Other letters in this exchange appear in Catholic Herald, September 16, September 23. and October 7, 1955, p. 2.
The one published volume of Evelyn Waugh's autobiography, A Little Learning,(1) suggests that there are many connections between the author and his fictional character Charles Ryder, the protagonist of Brideshead Revisited.(2) As a novelist, Waugh was careful not to make this parallel complete. But the stylistic similarities in description of Oxford between Brideshead Revisited and A Little Learning seem to be nothing short of remarkable.
Evelyn Waugh and Charles Ryder share many things: their talent for painting, their attendance at a public school other than Eton, their friendships at Oxford with graduates of Eton - aesthetes par excellence, their religious agnosticism, their neglect of studies, their delight in the languor of youth, their habit of drinking at the George, their affinity for the same kind of living quarters, their voluntary decisions to leave Oxford. What is important is that the things they share are described in the same way.
When he arrives at Oxford, Ryder is visited by cousin Jasper: "You're reading History? A perfectly respectable school. The very worst is English Literature and the next worst is Modern Greats" (BR 29, 3). Mr Waugh autobiographically comments: "English Literature was for women and foreigners; a new disreputable school named Modern Greats was for 'publicists and politicians'" (LL 173, 1). Logically enough, both Waugh and Ryder were majors in History Previous. ". . . I had large rooms on the ground floor of the front Quad and these were seldom empty" (LL 171, 4). Jasper says to Ryder: "… Change your rooms … I've seen many a man ruined through having ground-floor rooms in the front quad." (BR 30, 2).
The most remarkable parallelism is seen in a comparison of the following two passages. First, from Brideshead Revisited: "I kept a tenuous connection with the History School … Besides this I started my second year by joining the Ruskin School of Art; … twice a week we drew from the nude in a small room over a teashop in the Corn … the models came up from London for the evening and were forbidden by the proctors to stay the night in the city for fear of their corrupting our morals …" (LL 190, 2). Mr. Waugh repeats the adjective "tenuous"; mentions the teashop in both passages; and, with only a slight variation, recounts the precautions taken concerning the model. Ryder's rooms were the center of activity, where "mulled claret" (BR 33, 3) was enjoyed. For Mr. Waugh, "in early winter, the staple drink was mulled claret …" (LL 179, 2). Early in his stay at Oxford, Ryder "felt at heart that this was not all Oxford had to offer" (BR 31,1). Mr. Waugh felt that "I wanted to taste everything Oxford could offer and consume as much as I could hold" (LL 171,4).
Unaware that they would not come up to Oxford next term, Ryder and Sebastian "… looked for lodgings for the coming term and found them in Merton Street, a secluded, expensive little house near the tennis court" (BR 131,2). Mr. Waugh and his friend Hugh Lygon "… looked forward to a ninth term … and …had engaged digs together in Merton Street next door to the tennis-court" (LL 207,3). Mr. Waugh, like his fictional character, never lived in Merton Street since both went down never to return.
Evelyn Waugh wrote in A Little Learning: "The novelist does not come to his desk devoid of experience and memory. His raw material is compounded of all he has seen and done" (p. 196). What is remarkable is that, at least in the passages quoted, the author's style in his description of life at Oxford has remained unchanged. In A Little Learning, Waugh provided a straight-forward, unembellished account of his undergraduate days. In Brideshead Revisited, he drew on the broad outline of past experience and expanded it to suit his fancy: he wrote a novel.
Thus is the novelist intimately related to his character. And yet, paradoxically, the relationship is strictly limited in nature. If Charles Ryder could be identified as Evelyn Waugh, we would no longer be dealing in fiction but in autobiography. The narrative of A Little Learning can be used to demonstrate parallels in the lives of Waugh and his fictional character. But much more importantly, this autobiographical volume shows the continuity in an author's thoughts and mode of expression over a period of years - the language and phrases of Brideshead Revisited survive twenty years after the novel was written.
Footnotes
1 All references to A Little Learning are from the Little, Brown edition (Boston, 1964). It is cited as LL followed by page, then paragraph. number.
2 All references to Brideshead Revisited are from the Dell Laurel paperback edition (New York, 1960). It is cited as BR with page number followed by paragraph number.
Five essays omitted from last year's roster of the work published in 1970 will serve admirably as raw material with which to prepare oneself for the rigors of 1971, particularly because the first of these - Barry Ulanov "The Ordeal of Evelyn Waugh," in The Vision Obscured: Perceptions of Some Twentieth-Century Catholic Novelists. ed. M. J. Friedman (New York: Fordham University Press, 1970), pp. 79-93 - seems quite as raw as one could wish. The material is hackneyed, the argument weak. As a New Twist, Waugh is said to have written "allegory of irony"; and anyone who suspects these terms of uniting less happily than gin and vermouth will not be disabused by reading this essay.
Terry Eagleton's chapter. 'Evelyn Waugh and the Upper-Class Novel," in Exiles and Emigres: Studies in Modern Literature (London: Chatto and Windus, 1970), pp. 33-70, is no better. After ten pages about other authors, Eagleton's thesis - that Waugh's "conflict … is essentially between a sense of morality and a sense of style" (p. 43) immediately precludes discussion of certain novels; but such omissions are not all that regrettable because the thesis wavers on Vile Bodies and emerges from A Handful of Dust doing a St. Vitus' dance. Eagleton concludes, quite early on, that Waugh's "scrupulous neutrality which implies a kind of control on the novelist's part is really an illusion: it is essentially a way of concealing a more deep-seated lack of control, an inability to interpret. evaluate and understand the experience recorded" (p. 47). Further comment seems gratuitous.
Harvey Curtis Webster's chapter, "Evelyn Waugh: Catholic Aristocrat," in After the Trauma: Representative British Novelists Since 1920 (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1970), pp. 72-92, contains some delightful surprises. The first of these. "Evedyn Waugh" (p. 73) - like his upside-down apostrophe (p. 75) - may be a misprint, but there is also "Lord Coppers" (p. 73) and "Lodovic" (p. 88). That "meek naturalist, William Boots," apparently reports the war in Black Mischief (p. 81); and "Jumbo Trotter, a barber and a middle-aged masher, comes off well as a run-of-the-mill soldier" (p.88). Lady Marchmain is "an almost-saint whom people often despise because they hate her conception of God as a well-intentioned matriarch who frequently does the wrong thing" (p. 85). He notes Ivor Claire's being described as quintessential England; but "this. in view of Claire's anomalous behavior … is an irony, probably unintended" (p.89). Webster's 'criticism' is appreciative - I think; at least I appreciate it.
Gene Kellogg's chapter on Waugh, in The Vital Tradition: The Catholic Novel in a Period of Convergence (Chicago: Loyola University Press, 1970), pp. 101-110, is far too brief, and nothing after Brideshead Revisited is mentioned. But what little there is here is most acceptable. Her argument that "if … Waugh's stories combine the loveless, the cruel, the empty, the grotesque, and the disgusting, it is obvious that these can be experienced only if the writer has in mind some standard that makes them what they are - if, in other words, he implicitly holds the opposite concepts: love, compassion, reason, beauty, and decorum" (p. 107), implies that she could have done well by Sword of Honour. Also reasonable is the suggestion that A Handful of Dust is "apologue," a form in which "the emotions aroused in the reader come not from sympathy for the characters but from assent to the statement made by the action" (p. 107). Kellogg has other comments worth the reading, and the pity of it is that most of them remain provisional until she takes the rest of the canon into account. If and when she does, she can be assured that at least one reader will want to see the result.
D. Paul Farr's essay, "The Edwardian Golden Age and Nostalgic Truth," Dalhousie Review, 50 (Autumn, 1970), 378-393, is scholarship, thoroughly researched and well argued. Nostalgic truth is still truth, even though the emotions filter out the "dross of history." Farr admits all the dross, and then presents the historical basis for the nostalgic view: wealth, faith in man and progress. leisure, freedom from anxiety - all the cream and dappled unicorns that vanished into the cesspit of World War I. Waugh entered the circle of "the Souls" during his Oxford days, and "of all these friends, the most important, both as an individual and as a symbol, was Ronald Knox" (p. 383). Farr also reminds us that "in his American lecture tour of 1949, Waugh chose Knox as the representative of the old tradition" (P. 384).
With one bibliographical entry - Melvyn New, 'Ad Nauseam: A Satiric Device in Huxley, Orwell and Waugh," Satire Newsletter, 8 (Fall, 1970), 24-28 - we enter 1971. Even with excellent assistance I have been able to locate only four items, aside from the work published in EWN: two articles and two books.
David Lodge, Evelyn Waugh (New York: Columbia University Press, 1971), 48 pp., trims infinite possibilities to fit a snuffbox. Lodge has done well at this impossible gambit, and he would be the first to admit the superficiality of his pamphlet. But anyone contemplating a Waugh apprenticeship could do far worse than begin with this survey: a common-sense critical orientation is solidly established; the facts, dates, Characters. and plot synopses are scrupulously correct; and the style is excellent. Lodqe's book is good of its kind, and his readers will regret that the kind in itself imposes such unmerciful limitations.
Cyril Connolly's article "Apotheosis in Austin," The Sunday Times, June 6,1971, tells of his opening Waugh's copy of The Unquiet Grave, at the university of Texas, and learning that Waugh had let loose on Cyril Connolly. He quotes generously, and adds that "worse was to follow: on page after page Evelyn recorded his disapproval, his hate (and, dare I say, envy)." But having known Waugh for twenty years, Connolly should at least have suspected this booby trap had long been set; for what Waugh created, with vicious accuracy, was a superb ironic contrast to his friend. A. D. Peters once informed me that Waugh, in the spirit of good clean fun, used to tell the most frightful lies about all his friends, and that Randolph Churchill was the only one of them to get the wind up over this amusement - at least before June, 1971. Hence, someone really should assure Connolly that authors who naturally view the world ironically have a penchant for such pranks, that the portrait of "a bog-trotting, lapsed Catholic immigrant in fear of Hell Fire" should not suggest that Waugh liked his good friend any the less.
D. Paul Farr's essay, "The Success and Failure of Decline and Fall," Etudes Anglaises, 24 (Juillet-Septembre, 1971), 257-270, is on par with his 1970 performance. This novel, he argues, must have "some base from which a unified and cohesive attack is developed. Such a base exists, I think, in Waugh's use of 'the standards of civilization' - his term for the sanity, order, and discipline provided by a continuing tradition - as a means of measuring just how mad the modern world has become" (p. 257). Farr shows how this implicit norm damns the "modern combination of license, snobbishness, and deceit" which has replaced it in a world where Mr. Crouchback's "qualitative values and civilized standards have been supplanted by mere quantitative values" (p. 258). The 'failure' he finds is our inability to decide whether Paul Pennyfeather ends as "only 'the shadow' or … a real person" (p. 266), a question which cannot be resolved because evidence supports both Waugh's approval and condemnation of him (p. 268). Paul clearly learns from experience, and Waugh is "interested in his protagonist for his own sake and not merely as a means for satire"; but Paul also "recognizes different species and … one law for himself and another law for Margot," and his finally rejecting Peter Pastmaster "denies the responsibilities of his [own] world and his law" (p. 268). All things considered, I believe this essay is critically the best work on Waugh published during 1971.
The book by William J. Cook, Jr. Masks, Modes, and Morals: The Art of Evelyn Waugh (Cranbury, N.J.: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1971), 352 pp., is, most unhappily, the worst. And it is not entirely the author's fault. This began as a thesis at Auburn University, and therefore it had a director; it was accepted for publication, and therefore it had a critical reading by a specialist; it was printed, and therefore it had an editor. None of these professionals has discharged his responsibility commendably, and the author thus bears their collective failure as well as his own.
To begin with matters of style, no thesis - good, bad, or indifferent - ever should be taken up raw and printed, as this one was, because the techniques and purposes which shape a book are quite different from those which shape a thesis. This thesis, registered 1968, was most likely defended in 1967: the book's bibliography - except for one entry - stops at 1966. Quotations are far too numerous: the text is so hirsute with useless references that one aches to shave it before reading it. Carens is cited on sixty-nine pages (determined by count because the Index is inaccurate); DeVitis places at second, Stopp third. Complete data is printed for each first reference in each chapter - apparently a house rule and an immensely stupid one - and thus Carens' entire credentials appear seven times (not counting either acknowledgements or bibliography). The repetition, pointlessness, and sheer volume of quoted passages all slow the pace of the argument to an unbearable tedium: readers vulnerable to either sleep or apoplexy will perish enroute. Even the proof was poorly read: besides the expectable typographical belches, a quotation from Greenblatt appears twice (pp. 54, 76) with different punctuation, and one from Officers and Gentlemen appears three times (pp. 274, 294, 304) in three different versions.
What Cook has to say originated with his sound perception that, in all ironic writing, the felt presence of the author is a constant element, and that an implicit relationship therefore exists between author and reader. Such a premise is the anteroom to a critical vault which, thus far, has been largely ignored; but Cook seems to have left this foyer by the wrong door. His thesis is that "the key … to successful thematic development and to evoking the proper response through the tonal effects lies in the relationship of the narrator-persona to the character-persona" (p. 51). In chasing this relationship through the novels Cook seems to consider irony simply as expression, never as perception; and his book therefore explores specific ironic devices which communicate specific ironies, a form of inquiry more appropriate to a handbook for creative writers - 'How to Express Oneself Ironically: The Various Devices and How They Function.' But unless I have grossly misread his work, the devices themselves are more or less common to all ironic writing. Thus, much of what is said of Waugh could also be said, more or less applicably, of Cervantes, Swift, Fielding, Voltaire, Mark Twain, Stephen Crane, Nathanael West - of ironic prose in general - and if so then it cannot offer great insight into Waugh in particular. As the author himself said, in the abstract of his thesis, "considered separately and clinically these factors [narrative, tone, and theme] may seem only moderately significant." I heartily agree; and I recommend that he try again, preferably with a different director, certainly with a different editor and press.
This is a continuation of the earlier checklists, published in Evelyn Waugh Newsletter (EWN), II, i; III, i; IV, i; and V, i. It includes books and articles published since 1970, as well as some items omitted from the previous lists.
Boone, Colin C., and Wilfried Keutsch, Praxis der Interpretation: englische Prosa (Tübingen, 1971), pp. 25-27.
Cohen, Martin S., "Allusive Conversation in A Handful of Dust and Brideshead Revisited", EWN, V, ii (1971),1-6. This article is referred to by Neil McCaffrey in his Letter to the Editor: EWN, V, iii (1971), 9.
Cohen, Martin S., "Brideshead Revisited and Jaspar Tristram", EWN, V, iii (1971), 6-8.
Cook, William J., Jr., Masks, Modes, and Morals: The Art of Evelyn Waugh (Cranbury, N.J., 1971).
Connolly, Cyril, "Apotheosis in Austin," Sunday Times, June 6, 1971.
Doyle, Paul A., "Some Unpublished Waugh Correspondence III", EWN, V, i (1971), 3-4.
Doyle, Paul A., Winnifred Bogaards, and Robert M. Davis, "Works of Waugh 1940-66: A Supplementary Bibliography, Part 2," EWN, V, i (1971), 8-13.
Duer, Harriet Whitney, "All Us Exiles: The Novels of Evelyn Waugh", Unpub. Doct. Diss. (Connecticut, 1970); Dissertation Abstracts, XXXI, 1269A.
Eagleton, Terry, "Evelyn Waugh and the Upper-class Novel", in Exiles and Emigres: Studies in Modern Literature (London, 1970), pp. 33-70.
Enkemann, Jurgen, Die satirische Spiegelung der desinteqrierten Gesellschaft. Dargestellt am Motiv der Party und ãhnlicher Gruppensituationen in der Prosa Aldous Huxleys, Evelyn Waughs und Angus Wilsons, Doct. Diss. Berlin, 1971.
Farr, D. Paul "The Edwardian Golden Age and Nostalgic Truth," Dalhousie Review, L (Autumn 1971), 378-393.
Farr, D. Paul, "The Success and Failure of Decline and Fall," Etudes anglaises, XXIV (1971), 257-270.
Gallagher, D.S., "Towards a Definitive Waugh Bibliography: Notations on the 1957 BB Checklist", EWN, V, i (1971), 6-8.
Gallagher, D.S., "Additional Waugh Bibliography," EWN, V, ii (1971), 6-7.
Gallagher, D.S., "Waugh's Letters-to-the-Editor 1923-966: A Supplementary Bibliography," EWN, V, iii (1971), 2-5.
Gordon, Gerald T., "'Lake Island of Innisfree': A Classical Allusion in Evelyn Waugh's The Loved One," EWN, V, iii (1971), 1-2.
Gribble, Thomas, "Recent BBC Productions of Waugh Stories," EWN, V, i (1971), 5-6.
Kellogg, Gene, The Vital Tradition: The Catholic Novel in a Period of Convergence (Chicago, 1970), pp. 101-110.
LaFrance, Marston, "The Earliest Waugh Reference Known," EWN, V, ii (1971), 8-9.
Linck, Charles E., Jr., "The Year's Work in Waugh Studies, Part I," EWN, V, i (1971), 1-3.
Lodge, David, Evelyn Waugh, Columbia Essays on Modern Writers, 58 (New York and London, 1971).
Lowe, Keith Delroy, "Evelyn Waugh: Man Against History," Unpub. Doct. Diss. (Stanford, 1969); Dissertation Abstracts, XXX, 1142A.
Maes-Jelinek, Hena, Criticism of Society in the English Novel between the Wars, Bibliothèque de la Faculté de Philosophie et Lettres de l'Université de Liège, Fascicule CXC (Paris, 1970).
Markovic, Vida E., "Tony Last," in: The Changing Face: Disintegration of Personality in the Twentieth-Century British Novel, 1900-1950 (London and Amsterdam, 1970), pp. 70-81.
New, Melvyn, "Ad Nauseam: A Satiric Device in Huxley, Orwell, and Waugh," Satire Newsletter, VIII (Fall, 1970), 24-28.
Phillips, Gene D., "The Page Proofs of Brideshead Revisited," EWN, V, ii (1971), 7-8.
Robson, N.W., Modern English Literature (London, Oxford, New York, 1970), pp. 141-143.
Seidler, Manfred, "Evelyn Waugh," in: Rudolf Suhnel and Dieter Riesner (eds.), Englische Dichter der Moderne: Ihr Leben und Werk (Berlin, 1971), pp. 399-410.
Shaw, Valerie A., "The Middle Age of Mrs. Eliot and Late Call: Angus Wilson's Traditionalism," Critical Quarterly, XII, i (1970), 9-27.
Ulanov, Barry, on Waugh in: Melvin J. Friedman (ed.), The Vision Obscured: Perceptions of Some Twentieth-Century Catholic Novelists (Bronx, N.Y., 1970), pp. 79-93.
Webster, Harvey Curtis, After the Trauma: Representative British Novelists Since 1920 (Lexington, Ky., 1970), pp. 72-92.
Haymann, Ronald, "Le roman anglais d'après-guerre," in Situation de la littérature anglaise d'après-guerre, Paris, Les Lettres Nouvelles, 1955. pp. 93-95.
Monod, Sylvere, Histoire de la littérature anglaise de Victoria a Elizabeth II, Paris, Colin, 1970, pp. 331-333.
Natter, Francois, A review of The Ordeal of Gilbert Pinfold, La Nation Française, 20.9, 1957.
Nimier, Roger, "Journées de Lecture," Paris, La Table Ronde, 1949, XVI. pp. 664-668.
Zeraffa, Michel, Personne et personnage, le romanesque des années 1920 aux années 1950, Paris, Klincksieck, 1969, p. 336, p. 413.
Evelyn Waugh is at present receiving considerable critical attention in France. This can be illustrated by a brief survey of the "work in progress." I list below the theses (Doctorat d'Etat or Doctorat de 3eme cycle) on which research students or University lecturers in French universities have been working since 1966 and 1968:
Melle Benoit: "Thèmes, personnages et valeurs dans l'oeuvre d'Evelyn Waugh" (Directed by Professor Mayoux, Paris-Sorbonne).
Melle Desarmenien: "La satire et I'humour dans l'oeuvre d'EW." (Professor Blondel, Faculté des Lettres, Clermont-Ferrand).,
Melle de Wavrin: "E.W. as a satiric novelist" (Professor Moreux, Université de Lille).
M. Blayac: "L'art d'E.W., peintre et satiriste de la societé contemporaine" (Professor Mayoux, Paris-Sorbonne).
M. Clark: "Le comique dans les romans d'E.W." (Professor Monod, Paris-Sorbonne). '"
M. Tosser: "Le sens de l'absurde dans l'oeuvre d'E.W." (Professor Maitre, Université de Haute-Bretagne, Rennes).
Professor Monod also mentions that he is directing several other theses which will include studies of Evelyn Waugh's literary production or will provide further analysis of his work and influence. Among these are:
M. Lacotte: "La satire dans le roman anglais entre les deux guerres mondiales";
M. Dehoux: "L'inquietude dans le roman anglais entre guerres mondiales";
M. Bodin: "La deuxième guerre mondiale dans le roman anglais";
M. Raby: "Les rapports du roman et de la politique dans la littérature anglaise du XXeme siecle."
In addition to these research activities, Melle Dayras is writing a thesis on Ronald Knox and Mme Leray's subject is: "L'enfant dans le roman anglais 1920-1960."
It is understandably difficult to foresee the dates of publication of these studies. However, judging by our academic tradition (and standards) - and by the dates of registration - one may hold firm hopes that several theses on Evelyn Waugh will be completed in France within two or three years.
I would like to mention an interesting sidelight on Waugh: in his preface to Portrait d' un inconnu by Nathalie Sarraute (Paris, 1956), Jean Paul Sartre describes (while writing an introduction to the French "nouveau roman") the early novels of Waugh as "anti-novels," thus stressing the modernity of Waugh's technique of novel writing.
Finally a query: could anyone help me to trace the exact reference (presumably, a French weekly in 1945) of a review of the French translation of A Handful of Dust by Claude-Edmonde Magny? I have received this article, in cut out form, from a friend; it is, significantly, titled: "Evelyn Waugh" un romancier anglais de l'absurde."
David Lodge, Evelyn Waugh, New York and London, Columbia University Press, 1971, £1.00, 48 pages. Reviewed by Paul A. Doyle.
This is a new booklet, in the "Columbia Essays on Modern Writers" series, written for those who wish a brief introduction to Waugh's career. Professor Lodge, whose own considerable debt to Waugh may be observed in his own wildly imaginative novel The British Museum Is Falling Down, surveys his subject's biography and literary works stressing main trends and highlight aspects. Lodge writes exceedingly well, and his comments are generally judicious. His conclusion is particularly reasonable and properly laudatory:
Measured against the very great novelists, whether of the nineteenth century or the twentieth, Waugh falls a little short of the first rank. But almost everything he wrote displayed the integrity of a master craftsman, and much of it was touched with comic genius. His best novels will bear infinite rereading, and still retain their power to reduce the solitary reader to tears of helpless laughter. That is a rare and elusive gift.
8 January 1972
Dear Sir,
I should like to thank Mr. Neil McCaffrey for his attention to my "Allusive Conversation in A Handful of Dust and Brideshead Revisited" (EWN, V, ii, 1-6). However, I feel I must point out that Mr. McCaffrey's letter lists what are in fact alternative readings - which are to be welcomed! - rather than "factual errors." I hope that the following notes will help to clarify precisely how I came to say what I did and to set Mr. McCaffrey's mind at ease.
First of all - why do I not say that Sword of Honour is "based on a potentially tragic situation"? The breakdown of marriage and a thwarted love affair are tragic situations; I don't think that the disillusionment of a man who has unrealistic ideals - which is, after all, what the war trilogy is about - is in any way potentially tragic, especially since Guy falls on his feet in the end. Pathetic, perhaps. Not tragic.
Regarding the establishment of Tony as a pathetic figure - the facts of Brenda's affair and John Andrew's death are, I grant, the tragedies of Tony's life. What I have singled out are the ways in which the pathos of his delusion are made clear, and the delusion is, I think, the main reason why he is a pathetic figure. After all, Lady Circumference loses her son, but is she pathetic as a result?
"The Jesuitical Bridey" - his very fine distinction between what one likes and what is good is hardly the mark of a plain, blunt man.
There is no evidence that Sebastian ever put his religion aside; it seems to have been with him all the time. Lord Marchmain became a Catholic only to marry Lady Marchmain, and never really took up the obligations of his religion; as for Julia, at the time of her betrothal to Rex, she was concerned enough to persuade him to convert to Catholicism. I see no reason why Ryder should be believed when he says that Julia "hardened her heart against her religion" - Ryder is an unreliable witness virtually all the time.
I think Mr. McCaffrey may be reading between the lines when he talks of the rebellion against Lady Marchmain, and his conclusion is rather different from mine. It seems to me that the rebellion is not against Catholicism in general, just against her view of it and her way of forcing it upon her children. She is hardly a symbol of orthodox Catholicism.
Regarding Brideshead's marriage - I wasn't talking about the happiness of it! He and Mrs. Muspratt may have lived happily ever after and died in the odour of sanctity for all anyone, including Ryder, knows or cares, but I find it impossible to see characters existing outside the context of the novel, and, in context, the marriage is grotesque. Even Mr. McCaffrey grants that.
Concerning Cordelia's escapism - one escapes from something to something else, and Cordelia has escaped from the ambience of Brideshead to her religion and its duties - which for her include nursing in the Spanish Civil War.
I hope that the above notes have helped to clarify things for Mr. McCaffrey and anyone else who was uncertain about my reading of Brideshead Revisited. Factual errors? I should think not.
Yours very sincerely,
Martin Cohen
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, September, 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) |