This past year has produced, oddly enough, a veritable feast of memoir and reminiscence - a feast so rich that surfeited guests have to compare offerings, each against the others, and rank them from the delicious to the bland - but famine itself could not feed happily from the all but empty table of Waugh criticism. Aside from the items published in EWN, only one genuinely critical morsel appeared, so far as I can determine, during the whole of 1973: Robert Murray Davis, "How Waugh Cut Merton," The Month, N.S. 6 (April, 1973), 150-3. When Waugh transformed The Seven Storey Mountain into Elected Silence, he "cut over one-fifth of the original text … to 'make the narrative move more rapidly, to give it point and emphasis, and to focus it, as the new title implies, upon the central issue of the book: Merton's movement from the secular world to the life of contemplation." Generous examples of Waugh's editing ("intelligent and ruthless") illustrate a discussion which is always to the point, lucid, well-argued; and this article, though brief, offers intelligent comment upon Waugh's craftsmanship.
Two possibilities for piecing out the year's critical portion unfortunately proved illusory. One was an essay omitted from last year's roster, Ann B. Dobie and Carl Wooton, "Spark and Waugh: Similarities by Coincidence," Midwest Quarterly, 13 (July, 1972), 423-34. Numerous parallels are cited as the coincidental similarities between Pinfold and Muriel Spark's The Comforters, both published in 1957; but the parallels in themselves are this article's reason for being, and the end result, though painless, seems critically unprofitable. The other candidate was Richard Gill's Happy Rural Seat: The English Country House and the Literary Imagination (New Haven: Yale, 1972). Last year, having been unable to read it, I quoted Cyril Connolly's remark that the author is "at his best" when writing about Waugh. This year, having read the book, innocence having fallen to experience, I wish to rescind the recommendation. Professor Gill is at his best on Henry James, at least acceptable on Woolf, Forster, and Elizabeth Bowen, but he is not seriously engaged in the Waugh trade. In considering Waugh as a satirist he notes some of the contrasts between Brideshead Revisited and Sword of Honour, and the only other work examined is A Handful of Dust (Helena is mentioned; Vile Bodies is quoted). The great house obviously functions importantly in these three novels, and in others which are ignored, but any symbolic image is meaningful only in terms of the context which defines, its function within the particular work of art. Considered by itself the great house simply does not yield much insight into the work which provides its necessary context. Mr. Connolly's boost thus seems to have been in the wrong direction; however, even Arnold wrote "Who prop, thou ask'st, in these bad days, my mind," even Homer nodded, and even Palinurus could have penned his review on an off day.
Certainly the most important memoirs published during the year are "The Private Diaries of Evelyn Waugh," edited by Michael Davie, which appeared in the London Observer Magazine on eight successive Sundays commencing March 25, 1973. (After the final installment a Waugh article by Tom Driberg, which I've not seen, was promised for "next week" - May 27.) The photographs alone are worth the price of the entire run. Also, each installment offers a brief "Who's Who in the World of Evelyn Waugh" which identifies those names the Observer felt could be mentioned without a prohibitive risk of libel; whenever this list is especially short the text is infested with asterisks. The first entry quoted is from August 12, 1916, the last, Easter 1965 - a year before Waugh's death. The editing, in itself no small feat, allows a reasonable continuity in the narrative from the diaries throughout the first six installments; the seventh is a bit spotty because it attempts to cover almost a decade - from April, 1947, to October, 1956 - and the eighth is laced with aphorisms which, though indeed welcome for their own sake, do not enhance the sense of an orderly progression. Some of the gaps in the record - not always the editor's fault - are quite startling if one actually examines the dates: nothing at all appears from March, 1927, to June, 1928; from February, 1931, to December, 1932; from January, 1933, to September, 1936; from April, 1937, to July, 1939; from December, 1939, to May, 1941; from November, 1942, to May, 1944; and - greatest gap of all - from August, 1947, to September, 1952. Waugh's diary-keeping was admittedly intermittent, and some of these periods contain events too painful to be recorded while in others the press of daily experience made writing impossible; but it is just as well to have these blank areas specified. At least a modest truckload of treasure must be still in the vault.
What we are given are various episodes in Waugh's life from Waugh's own point of view; and though the style never wavers, though the ironic wit slashes and jabs throughout, some of these episodes seem more vivid, as units in themselves, than others. My own preferences are for the first two installments - which incidentally present enough drinking and weird sexual activity to make The Sun Also Rises sound like a temperance tract for misogynists - the detailed experience in Crete and Yugoslavia, and the uneasy period immediately following the war. The narrative is studded with gems such as the entry for September 9, 1945: "went to Mass there, where a ranting Irish Passionist threatened hellfire to anyone who left before the last gospel; left before the last gospel." Nor are these diaries devoid of critical interest. Anyone interested in distinguishing irony from satire, for example, would be well-advised to read the item for August 17, 1943: "I dislike the Army. I want to get to work again. I do not want any more experiences of life … I have succeeded, too, in dissociating myself very largely with the rest of the world. I am not impatient of its manifest follies and don't want to influence opinions, events, or expose humbug or anything of that kind. I don't want to be of service to anyone or anything. I simply want to do my work as an artist."
Publication of the diaries evoked considerable discussion, and though some of it apparently came through clenched teeth no one has as yet shown much eagerness to identify himself as a clutch of asterisks. Four examples of published comment will have to suffice. Wilfrid Sheed produced a wonderfully stupid review (to put it charitably): "The Good Word: No Snob Like a Snubbed Snob," New York Times Book Review, July 1, 1973, p.2. As Mark Twain said of Cecil Rhodes, I admire Mr. Sheed, and when his time comes I shall buy a piece of the rope for a keepsake. Auberon Waugh, "Waugh's World," New York Times Magazine, October 7, 1973, pp. 20-21, 100-102, 106, presents the facts which led to the publication of the diaries, offers some decent critical remarks about their contents, and seeks to hang, draw, and quarter Cyril Connolly. Anthony Rhodes, "Evelyn Waugh's Yugoslavia Diaries," The Times, June 2, 1973, p. 13, reveals that, in actively but privately promoting the interests of the Catholic Church in Yugoslavia, Waugh antagonized the Foreign Office. At a time when Britain officially supported Tito, Waugh doggedly recorded the systematic murder of dozens of priests by the communists, and "indictment on a military secrets charge was seriously considered." Finally, PHS, "How True Are the Waugh Diaries?" The Times, May 16, 1973, p. 18, notes specific inaccuracies and suggests, therefore, that "it is a mistake to take the diaries too literally." Several people probably would be quite happy to second this motion if only they could do so anonymously.
Second to the diaries in quality, but not in quantity, is an excellent essay by Claud Cockburn, Waugh's cousin, friend, and contemporary at Oxford: "Evelyn Waugh's Lost Rabbit," Atlantic, 232 (December, 1973), 53-9. After telling of a harebrained attempt to capitalize upon the diaries in a television program - potential participants tended to head for Heathrow at top speed as soon as they were approached - Cockburn simply reminisces. The anecdotes, particularly one which illustrates Waugh's strategy in manipulating his ear trumpet, are delightful, and they are presented with an expertise which Waugh himself could not have faulted. Also, I found this essay uproariously funny (which means, probably, that no one else will).
Second to the diaries in quantity is David Pryce-Jones, ed., Evelyn Waugh and His World (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1973), a beautifully wrought book, thick paper, large type, several photographs. The text, however, as usually happens with such creations, is a mixed bag: sixteen pieces, at least three of which pretend to be criticism, the others all reminiscences by various friends. The critics are Malcolm Bradbury, David Lodge, and Eric Newby, but each seems to have been inhibited by the deluxe format of the book. Malcolm Bradbury's essay on The Loved One wanders about in vain search of a tenable thesis and ends with a gratuitous sneer at the vaults of the University of Texas; while it is better to end with such a wow than with no wow at all, Mr. Bradbury has in the past shown himself capable of more hardnosed stuff. Much the same caveat applies to David Lodge's essay on Waugh's literary journalism; it has to be called superficial, but it no longer seems quite so superficial after one has read Eric Newby's survey of the travel books. The memoirs - by Roger Fulford, Peter Quennell, Dudley Carew. Anne Fleming, Father Martin D'Arcy, Lady Dorothy Lygon, John Jolliffe, Penelope Chetwode, Douglas Woodruff, Alan Pryce-Jones, the Earl of Birkenhead, Fitzroy Maclean, and Handasyde Buchanan - are somewhat more palatable, but the implication seems unavoidable that they, like the photographs, would be more impressive if the diaries had not been published. Anne Fleming deserves a bouquet for a short, well-written contribution which does not hesitate to present her subject as she saw him. Also, the Earl of Birkenhead's piece is of real value for understanding what went on in Yugoslavia; Waugh emerges from this essay comparatively unruffled, but if Randolph Churchill can be aware of it he must now be jogging in his grave.
This book was enthusiastically reviewed by Julian Jebb, "Impossible Object," New Statesman, 12 (October, 1973), 523-4. It was also 'reviewed' by a cat-fancier, one Beverly Nichols, "Unholy Waugh," Spectator, October 27, 1973, pp. 546-7. This 'review' is unrelieved tripe, beneath even the standard set by Mr. Sheed, and I mention it only because it elicited a superb rebuttal from Graham Greene - the Spectator, November 10, 1973, p. 596 - a letter of concentrated revulsion, and one need not even read Nichols' mewings to appreciate it.
Finally, John St John, To the War with Waugh (London: Whittington Press, 1973), is another beautifully made book, pleasant reading, but woefully light. Its ultimate effect is to affirm, implicitly, the superiority of fiction to fact, for it reveals that the fates' insensitivity to formal considerations is appalling.
Gentle reader, as Voltaire is said to have said, "Once, a philosopher; twice, a pervert." And having written the "Year's Work" three times in succession, I believe it now should be turned over to a more normal person. Other evidence unhappily supports this decision: upon reading the title of Professor Davis' article I immediately wondered why Waugh should have wished to cut so quiet and inoffensive a chap as Merton. Also, assuming successful convalescence, I hope eventually to publish a snippet or two on Waugh myself, and if this were to happen my discussing them in a subsequent "Year's Work" might, like other bigamous relationships, offend the conservative subscribers. Therefore, gentle reader, for all these good and sufficient reasons, with this issue I humbly take my leave.
The literal definition of "pinfold" is "a place for confining stray or distrained cattle, horses, sheep, etc.; a pound; in later use, sometimes, a fold for sheep, cattle, horses, sheep, etc.; a pound; in later use, sometimes, a fold for sheep, cattle, etc.," (OED (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1961), VII, 880-881). This use of the word seems fairly constant from the thirteenth through the nineteenth centuries. The most well-known literary use of the word is perhaps in Robert Green's The Pinner of Wakefield, where George-a-Greene controlled such a pinfold. This example aside, however, it is clear that the word "pinfold" has appealed to the literary imagination in a figurative sense. Milton uses it in the opening lines of "Comus"(1) to heighten the contrast between the mortal and the immortal spheres.
Before the starry threshold of Jove's court
My mansion is, where those immortal shapes
Of bright aerial spirits live insphered
In regions mild of calm and serene air,
Above the smoke and stir of this dim spot
Which men call Earth, and with low-thoughted care,
Confined and pestered in this pinfold here,
Strive to keep up a frail and feverish being.
(11, 1-8)
The comparison of the earth to a pinfold suggests that Milton used the word in a figurative sense: "a place of confinement; a pen; a trap: a spiritual 'fold'" (OED, p. 881). Milton is concerned here with men, not cattle, and the confinement is primarily spiritual.
Isabella's remark to Lollio in The Changeling(2) suggests a similar meaning of trap, or prison.
Isabella: Is it your master's pleasure, or your own,
To keep me in this pinfold?
Lollio understands her metaphor, and adds a further pun on "pound."
Lollio: 'Tis for my master's pleasure, lest being taken in another man's corn, you might be pounded in another place.
(III, iii, 7-10)
Later still in the seventeenth century, Samuel Butler makes the figurative use of "pinfold" very clear in "Hudibras."(3)
Oaths were not purpos'd more than Law,
To keep the Good and Just in awe,
But to confine the Bad and Sinful
Like Moral Cattle, in a Pinfold.
(II,II,197-200)
The Oxford English Dictionary also lists a verb form, "to pinfold": "to shut up or enclose in a pinfold; to pound; hence fig. to confine within narrow limits" (OED, p. 881). An example is cited from one T. Hutton's religious tract of 1605, "Reasons for Refusal of Subscription to the Booke of Common Praier." "Take heede, howe they pinfold the word (faith) in this or that sense after their own private imagination" (OED, p. 881). In this sense, "pinfold" means limiting or trapping scripture in a confining or sectarian definition.
Although the name Pinfold was doubtless suggested by the name of the builder of Piers Court4, one might well ask why Waugh decided upon that particular name for his most enigmatic hero. On the assumption that no proper name, however insignificant, is ever casual or accidental with Waugh, it seems worthwhile to speculate on what "pinfold" might mean in the context of the novel.
In his 1957 review of Pinfold, J. B. Priestley seizes on the word and invents a new verb: "pinfolding - the artist elaborately pretending not to be an artist."(5) Priestley goes on to accuse Pinfold of being false to himself, of avoiding the traditional role of the artist in society, of hiding in the country "among fox-hunters, pheasant slaughterers, horse and cattle breeders" (p. 244). Even though Priestley states that "it is not Mr. Waugh but Gilbert Pinfold who is the subject of this essay" (Ibid.), it is clear that he is speaking obliquely to Waugh. If Priestley had his way, the voices would "stop clowning," and exhort the artist to be in some way more true to himself. "'Pinfold, you are a professional writer, a novelist, an artist, so stop pretending you represent some obscure but arrogant landed family that had never had an idea in its head'" (Ibid.).
"Pinfolding," as Priestley uses it, is false coin. It does nothing to shed light on the enigma of the hero's name; instead, Priestley seems more interested in the role of the writer in England. All English artists, he claims, are guilty of "pinfolding," "thanks to our aristocratic tradition and our public suspicion of intellect and the arts" (Ibid.). Such an interpretation might have come from ignoring the traditional uses of "pinfold," and concentrating instead on the common meaning of ".fold" as doubl(ing) or bend(ing) (cloth, paper, etc.) over upon itself" (American College Dictionary (New York: Random House, 1964), p. 470).
It is not necessary and is indeed misleading, to go so far afield. Many of Waugh's heroes have names which help to identify them: Tony Last and Sebastian Flyte are two examples. Many critics have sought to "find out who Pinfold is" by comparing the details of his life to Waugh's. A far simpler procedure is to seek Pinfold's identity (in the largest sense of the word) through what he is called. His identity as a semi-autobiographical figure created by Waugh is far less important than his identity in terms of the novel itself.
At the beginning of the novel, we are told much about Pinfold's family, friends, and habits; we also know that when he begins his voyage, he is "not himself." In the best of health, he feels himself an outcast from the twentieth century. In his illness he suffers from delusions, finding the enclosed space of the Caliban, and especially his cabin, a trap or prison where he is tortured by the voices. The modern age, in the form of the young men who had interviewed him for the B.B.C. before the voyage began, becomes the agent of his suffering. The voices surround him; he is imprisoned by them, "fenced off" from reality by a wall of words. He is thus in a pinfold, and it is not until he can reassert control over events that he is free.
In another sense, Gilbert Pinfold is a pinfold. The voices torture him with accusations of the wildest sorts, or so he thinks. He is variously a Nazi, a social climber, a fraud. The voices accuse him of all the horrors of this century, the "fashionable agonies of angst"(6) from which he had thought himself free. In the enclosed space of his mind, the real locus of the novel, Pinfold finds the excesses and anxieties of the twentieth century screaming and jibing at him. His voyage is thus an inward one; return home is impossible until he can restore a normal balance.
Until Pinfold can resolve the problem, he is both the victim of the trap, like Butler's "Moral Cattle," and the pinner, or jailer. The concept is essentially a mediaeval one; Waugh's familiar austerity of outlook pervades this book, as others. If the body encloses the soul, the Pinfold's frail and diseased body acts as a trap for his soul, giving it misinformation, torturing it, threatening violence. Aboard the Caliban, where the voices are the most intense, Pinfold is cut off from normal human communication. His body is the "little world," his mind the setting of the action. Through his body and senses, the voices attack his inner self with personal threats and accusations drawn from just that secular world, the modern age, in which he has always felt an outcast. He can regain sanity and emerge victorious only when the proper balance of body (secular world) and soul (inner self) is restored. In order to become free, Pinfold must take arms against the Hooligans. He does just this.
His victory over the voices is the victory of the soul over the body, but the battle is joined on secular terms. Angel and the Hooligans have used language to paralyze Pinfold, to cut him off from normal human communication, to confuse his senses. Pinfold the writer fights them on their own ground, using language as his weapon. He reads to them from the ponderous Westward Ho!, a tale of a voyage of discovery which thematically parallels his own voyage. But he scrambles the sense of the words, reading relentlessly until the voices beg for mercy. After this, their hold on him decreases; he becomes openly contemptuous of them. They do not disappear completely, however, until Pinfold receives two opinions, one from his doctor, the other from his priest - the keepers of body and soul, respectively.
'My poor darling,' said Mrs. Pinfold, 'no one's "worked" anything. You're imagining it all. Just to make sure I asked Father Westmacott as you suggested. He says the whole thing's utterly impossible. There just isn't any sort of invention by the Gestapo or the B.B.C. or the Existentialists or the psychoanalysts - nothing at all, the least like what you think.' (p. 179)
The words of the priest, even at second-hand, are sufficiently powerful to exorcise the evil spirits: it is at this point that the voices disappear forever. But it is Dr. Drake who shatters Pinfold's "last illusion," that it was the grey pills which had caused the illness in the first place. Drake diagnoses a case of simple poisoning. "Lots of people hear voices from time to time - nearly always offensive" (p. 183).
'That's a relief,' said Mrs. Pinfold, but Mr. Pinfold accepted this diagnosis less eagerly. He knew, and the others did not know, not even his wife, least of all his medical adviser, - that he had endured a great ordeal and, unaided, had emerged the victor. There was a triumph to be celebrated, even if a mocking slave stood always beside him in his chariot reminding him of mortality. (pp. 183-184)
The good offices of both doctor and priest have been necessary to show Pinfold what he had not known: that while the poisoning itself was the result of overmedication, Pinfold's belief in the voices was not a medical problem, but a sickness of the soul. Pinfold has become himself again, his essential being has emerged victorious; but the "mocking slave" remains to remind him of the fragility of the things of the temporal world. The classic battle of body and soul is here resolved in secular terms. The final lines show Pinfold as pinner, asserting artistic control over events, placing them within a framework - the book which he begins.
NOTES
1. The Poems of John Milton, ed. James Holly Hanford (2d ed.; New York: Ronald Press, 1953), p. 105.
2. Thomas Middleton and William Rowley, The Changeling, ed. N. W. Bawcutt (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1958), pp. 44,45.
3. John Wilders, ed. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1967), p. 132.
4. D. S. Gallagher, "Pinfold Unfolded," EWN, 6 (Spring, 1972), 2.
5. "What was wrong with Pinfold," New Statesman (August 31,1957), p. 244.
6. The Ordeal of Gilbert Pinfold (London: Chapman and Hall, 1957), p. 16.
The more I advance in life, the more I am astonished to see with what apathy and with what ease mankind gives up the only two weapons on which it can rely with any degree of certainty as a remedy for narrow- and broad-mindedness, for extreme stupidity and extreme pride, for the misdeeds of poetry and of the press, of nudity and of dress, I mean caricature and satire.
To a certain extent I can explain the decadence of caricature - by caricature I do not mean cartoon strips, but extravagances with which various forms of art are affected - in a world which is half atheist and whose other half considers its beliefs like its bourgeoisie. I explain it by the fact that caricature is a sacred art. Its incentive is revenge in its most powerful form, not the revenge which an adversary can gain from an adversary, but that which one can gain from oneself, which man as man can gain, with the loathing or hilarity inspired in him by the privilege of belonging to the human race. Religion has put at the caricaturist's disposal his principal canvas, the very canvas of human nature, the skeleton. Every good caricature is derived from the Dance of Death. Primitive art has indeed no other aim than presenting to the gods man in his ugliness and his absurdity, in order to coax them into jealousy and avert their anger. Or else, in order to illustrate human idiocy and awe, to represent the gods themselves extravagantly and foolishly, as on Easter Island or amongst the Méas. In periods of plenty and of belief, disguising himself is a question of vital importance for man; he can exist only if the gods believe him to be deformed, hunch-backed and narrow-minded; if everything which goes to make up his glory and his handsomeness, men's foreheads, women's breasts and loins, incites the great spectator to pity, and if serenity, an object of mistrust, is banished from his face in favour of laughter and rictus. From such a height and in their self-satisfaction or their love, the deities will not distinguish between these symbols of parody, will interpret as awkwardness the most colossal insults, and thus through the very offence which it inflicts upon itself, human freedom will be reserved and preserved. How could there continue to exist a trace, however slight, of that vengeful fury in a world which no longer believes in threat either for the mind or for the eye, and which disguises every Mané, Thécel and Pharès whilst compelling letters of fire to repeat only the most comforting words, Byrrh, Valda or Aspirin-Rhône? Sculpture alone still dares, and with what precautions, to avenge, at the expense of existing humanity, that which does not exist. Since Sade and since Daumier, the archangels have indeed been on holiday.
But that satire - a harmless literary form, one which asks neither for the end of the world nor for the proximity of the Leviathan, which is an art basically true to mankind, since far from disputing the opportuneness of existence, it takes its virtues and its failings seriously, which appeals to the states in which it takes most pleasure, disparagement and indignation - should in our age no longer have its credentials, that is what I find the most difficult to explain. In France especially the reading thinking middleclass, in spite of its every itch, no longer accepts this back-scratching fork. It tolerates insult, slander and back-biting. Never will there come to the party in power or to public opinion the idea of protesting against the coarseness and vulgarity of fair and unfair speeches and articles. It even tolerates talent, provided that no irony is involved. It tolerates him who fustigates it, provided that this is done with respect. But it goes so far as to consider the secondary forms of satire, banter or parody, as reprehensible and contrives to take them for crimes against humanity. And it is not the reflex action of a noble and overworked system which accepts death and cannot bear the sting. Nor is it that sluggishness of mind, of the mind, which leads to the intolerance of humour, as sluggishness of the stomach leads to that of the intestine. It is simply intolerance. It is the resentment caused when one ascertains, through reading, that there are some critics who are not critics, some poets who are not poets, some judges who are not judges, in a word, that the problem of established forms of government, of consolidated positions, of tyrannies and of usages, will always arise as long as there are writers, and as long as they are free, with that supreme freedom which is cheerfulness. The selflessness of cheerfulness grows more suspect than spying; satire is a spy who laughs, and who informs against us, not to recognized authorities, which would be legal, but to all that and all those who have nothing to do with the subject in hand, to young people, boys and girls, to the season, to fashion, and who, by employing that truly unendurable irony, whose other name is poetry, makes us feel we are being judged by another race, less solemn than our own. It is the court of fowls, rabbits and hinds, established long ago by Aristophanes and notoriously incompetent in matters civil, commercial and international, which the whole world is at present engaged in challenging, perhaps fearing the resurgence of another Aristophanes … The old man died laughing when he saw an ass eating a prickly pear. It served him right …
That is why when Marie Canavaggia, who is tolerably well acquainted with this planet, thanks to her personal insight, and very well acquainted with the others through the lessons of her sister the astronomer, confided to me her plan to translate Black Mischief for the French public, I sanctioned it whole-heartedly. There it is, translated with that faithfulness which freedom and talent alone can give. It is not my job to introduce Evelyn Waugh to our reader. His reputation and the reports of his success have already crossed the Channel. Like a good customs officer, I simply want to ensure that his characters can enter France with their pockets full of those suspect, non-indexed commodities and objects, which are his cruelty, his acidity and Heaven knows what new-found smile.
David Pryce-Jones, ed., Evelyn Waugh and His World. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1973. $12.95. 248 pages. Reviewed by Robert Murray Davis (University of Oklahoma).
For the expert on Waugh, this collection of reminiscent and critical essays is both essential and disappointing. Only four of the essays are genuinely and consistently informative; eight others contain material useful to the beginning student or to the annotator but are not significant contributions to the understanding of Waugh's life and art; and four (Eric Newby's pedestrian survey of the travel books, John Jolliffe's brief "What's in a Name?" and Peter Quennell's and Alan Pryce-Jones's reminiscences which do not go much beyond material found in A Little Learning) are almost worthless.
Six other reminiscent essays contain much familiar information, but each adds something useful and often indispensable to our knowledge of Waugh's life, character, or habits of mind. Thus Fr. Martin D'Arcy's discussion of Waugh's religion repeats both his earlier statements and some of Waugh's, but he also presents the clearest account of Waugh's death that I have seen. Lady Mary Lygon is not entirely convincing in her contrast of Madresfield and her family with Brideshead and the Flytes, but incidental details about nicknames in their circle and about Waugh's conversion of material from life to fiction only she could give. Penelope Chetwode (formerly Betjeman) reveals that not even Mgr. Ronald Knox was safe from Waugh's sense of mischief, and Anne Fleming contributes lively anecdotes of Waugh's bravery and delight in disaster as well as the text of a letter and the story of her massive retaliation against Waugh's ear-trumpet, which under provocation she whanged with a spoon, causing "terrible reverberations in his ear-drum." Fragments of not very interesting correspondence redeem Handasyde Buchanan's "His Bookseller's View", while Fitzroy Maclean's two-page "Captain Waugh" contains not only the familiar story of Waugh's insistence that Tito was a woman but the fact that Tito knew of it and through an interpreter asked Waugh about it to his wholly uncharacteristic embarrassment.
Presumably as makeweights and earnests of academic respectability (though as Mr. Plant warned, "Anyone can buy a don"), Malcolm Bradbury and David Lodge contribute two of the longest essays in the book. Bradbury places The Loved One in the context of Black Humor and of the sub-genre of Southern Californian novels, making extended comparisons between Waugh and Nathanael West (failing to note that both writers began as cartoonists) in a loose summary fashion which says little about Waugh's novel. He concludes with the petulant and unfounded complaint that the University of Texas, like Mr. Joyboy, is simply interring the material of the Waugh collection. David Pryce Jones registers a similar complaint in the Introduction, but no one who has seen the material can take the charge seriously or regard any of the contributors with the possible exception of Bradbury and Lodge as capable of or even interested in making use of it.
Like Bradbury, David Lodge is one of the ablest younger English critics, and like Bradbury he does not show to great advantage in the collection. His "The Fugitive Art of Letters" is a rapid survey of Waugh's reviews and essays. Lacking a central point and depending heavily on Paul A. Doyle's seminal but long-superceded checklist and thus ignoring, for example, Waugh's comments on Graham Greene's novels after 1951, the essay will be useful only to those who know nothing of Waugh's journalism or of the various discussions of it by, among others, Frederick J. Stopp and James F. Carens.
There remain four really useful essays: by Roger Fulford on the Lancing College years, including the unmasking of "Buttocks"; by Dudley Carew on the 1927-28 period (this part of a longer unpublished work); by Douglas Woodruff on his relationship with Waugh in various editorial capacities, especially as editor of the Tablet; and by the Earl of Birkenhead on the Yugoslavian period. This last is the most delightful of the collection. Like the other three, it corroborates or alters the self-created image of Waugh. Unlike them, it deals with a relatively short period and a small cast of characters. Besides giving a captive observer's view of the dramatic conflict between Waugh and Randolph Churchill, it is the most vivid account I have seen of the physical circumstances in Topusko. Thus, among other uses, it offers a basis of comparison between reality and the fiction of Unconditional Surrender.
Also welcome are the many photographs and illustrations. Some are familiar to readers of A Little Learning and various memoirs, but those of Waugh's parents, of the author at various ages in various groups, of the interior of the Islington flat c. 1928, of a pre-1928 water color by Waugh, and of the exteriors of Combe Florey and Piers Court are published for the first time in this country. Except for a horrendous misdating of the letter reproduced on p. 184, the captions and other editorial apparatus are helpful and unobtrusive.
On the whole, however, one must conclude that while the volume gives us more than we had, it gives us less than we need. Perhaps the most encouraging thing about the collection is that by its very existence it testifies to a continuing interest in Waugh not merely in the academic world but in the world of general readers.
During the last semester I had planned to use the Dell paperback edition of A Handful of Dust and Decline and Fall for 104 students, yet our college bookstore (despite having strong connections with Barnes and Noble) could not supply copies. Four times during the Fall semester the bookstore manager called Dell only to be told the book was out of stock - note, not out of print, but out of stock, and they could furnish no available date. The same thing has happened to me during the last four years at various times when I assigned the Dell Loved One and Brideshead Revisited. Two years ago another colleague had the same problem obtaining the Dell Brideshead. The books were reported to be out of stock despite a steady demand. Thus, conservatively estimated, about 500 students lost the opportunity of reading Waugh. I can't assign 104 students per semester to the reserved book room to read novels.
Another annoyance occurred when I noticed that, according to Dell's new catalogue, Vile Bodies and Black Mischief are now out of print. (Hopefully this is an error since a landmark book about the Bright Young People should be readily accessible.) Viking Compass and Signet, to mention just two other paperback publishers, treat their standard classroom assigned authors much better. I also wonder if the Waugh Estate knows all about this since, for them, royalties are being lost: at least 500 copies at one college alone. One can imagine that this is not an isolated case. Perhaps Dell should turn over their Waugh paperbacks to a publisher that gives more attention and respect to significant modern British authors. I would very much like to hear from other teachers about Dell's blundering in this area. (PAD)
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 80 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 Wuppertal) | |
| Charles E. Linck, Jr. (East Texas State University) |