EVELYN WAUGH NEWSLETTER

Volume 9 Number 1 - Spring 1975

THE YEAR'S WORK IN WAUGH STUDIES

Jeffrey M. Heath (University of Toronto)

In a slim but interesting year, by far the best memoir was Leo Rosten's hilarious "How I Met Evelyn Waugh," Saturday Review/World, 2 (21 September 1974), 35 and 2 (5 October 1974), 39. Here the comic genius who gave us Hyman Kaplan brings his powers of observation to bear upon Waugh as he was just after the publication of Pinfold. After warmly reviewing a Rosten book Waugh first declined and then accepted Rosten's invitation to tea; then he broke silence only to cross-examine his host on his double-breasted blazer and moccasins. Rosten's description of Waugh is among the most striking I have read:

He might have stepped out of Trollope. He was pudgy, moon-faced, pink cheeked, his skin very clear and shiny, a roly-poly figure in a countryman's heavy tweed suit and waistcoat. It was his eyes that arrested me: small, set far apart in that fair, moony globe, intensely blue; and they glittered … [He was] a florid Humpty Dumpty plumped on a too-small chair, … his pixie eyebrows executing a silent dialogue - not with me, but with whatever satirical selves were bubbling within him.

Rosten's tribute is noteworthy: "Waugh was an altogether original writer, an artist with a mordant eye, an elegant (if vitriolic) pen, and a riotous felicity in dissecting characters." He was "a genius. But he was obsessed and tormented by ungovernable terrors."

The aftermath of the funny Claud Cockburn article, "Evelyn Waugh's Lost Rabbit," Atlantic, 232 (December 1973), 53-9, can be found in "Memories" Atlantic, 233 (April 1974) 36. Alec Waugh protests that Evelyn did not coax Cockburn to ask Alec for £200. Nor did Evelyn and his cronies ever burst in upon "The Baldhead" when he was with a girl nor did Evelyn have to cross Hampstead Heath to have his mail stamped with the fashionable N.W.3. postmark. But yes, Evelyn did sometimes refer to Alec as "The baldheaded lecher," and once "climbed over the roofs towards [his] flat, shouting into each bedroom as he passed, 'Is the baldheaded lecher sleeping here?'" In contrast, Eric Newby's "The Most Unforgettable Character I Never Met," Horizon, 16, 3 (Summer 1974), 110-111, is an unfunny set of anecdotes which proves that while "not being introduced to a famous author can provide its own satisfactions," it cannot provide much illumination.

The Diaries of Sir Robert Bruce Lockhart (London: MacMillan, 1973) refer to Waugh. The entry for Sunday, 7 July 1929 describes Waugh as one of several "strange young men with long hair and an esthetic pose and a strong predilection for cocktails." Robert Byron, Nancy Mitford, and "a Guinness girl" are also mentioned. As there is a large gap in Waugh's diaries between November 11, 1928 and May 19, 1930, Lockhart's entry stands as a fact, however small, about the disastrous Vile Bodies summer.

In an illuminating new introduction to A Burnt-Out Case (London: William Heinemann and The Bodley Head, 1974), pp. ix-xv, Graham Greene describes the disillusioning effect which his novel produced on Waugh. Before A Burnt-Out Case, Waugh had actively defended Greene as a "Catholic" writer; after it he wrote to Greene that the book was a plain repudiation of faith and he referred regretfully to Browning's "Lost Leader." Greene implies that religious absolutism ("faith or no faith") precluded Waugh's appreciation of the grey areas which Greene investigated and prevented him from seeing that the novel was "Comedy." Luckily, the correspondence ended in an amicable manner; nevertheless, "It was very true all the same that Evelyn Waugh and I inhabited different waste lands."

Two commentaries, "Biffing," TLS, September 13, 1974, p. 976 and "A Farewell to Biffing," TLS, November 1, 1974, p. 1228, describe the recent eleven-part B.B.C. adaptation of Sword of Honour. Apthorpe was excellent, Ritchie-Hook "donnishly precise" and Virginia properly "metallic." Guy Crouchback' s voice was too young for him; even "when rising 50, he still twittered like an undergraduate." Despite a failure to communicate the significance of Claire's desertion and the Madame Kanyi episode, the broadcasts were successful. In another note, "General Cruttwell's Emporium," TLS, October 25, 1974, p. 1197, Alan Bell tells us that the original for the shop in Scoop was Lawn and Alder of Hatton Garden, later mentioned in Waugh's Wine in Peace and War. Elizabeth Longford refers to Waugh in The Royal House of Windsor (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1974), and James F. Buckley alludes to Black Mischief in Inveighing We Will Go.

We turn now to those who have approached Waugh in a more scholarly manner. Donald Greene convincingly argues in "Sir Ralph Brompton - An Identification," EWN, 8, 3, (Winter 1974), 1-2, that Brompton is Sir Harold Nicolson. Additional news is that "Old Ruby" is Lady Cunard, and that "the unnamed poetry-quoting Commander-in-Chief" in Officers and Gentlemen is Field Marshall Lord Wavell. We already knew that Spruce is Connolly, that Parsnip and Pimpernell are Auden and Isherwood and that Mrs. Stitch is Lady Diana Cooper. But we did not (I think) know with quite so much certainty that Ritchie-Hook is "Waugh's commander, Brigadier Laycock." Steven Marcus, in "Evelyn Waugh and the Art of Entertainment," Partisan Review, 23 (Summer 1956), 354, holds quite a different opinion. Another identification is to be found in Paul Johnson's "Phoney," New Statesman (November 1, 1974), 622-623, a review of Andrew Boyle, "Poor Dear Brendan": The Quest for Brendan Bracken (London: Hutchinson, 1974). According to Johnson, Bracken "survives, thanks to one mordant and hostile observer, in the pages of Brideshead Revisited, as the brash Canadian adventurer, Rex Mottram." Until I have obtained a copy of Boyle's book and more evidence, I'll remain skeptical of this identification.

In "Evelyn Waugh: Satire and Symbol, "Georgia Review, 27, 2 (Summer 1973), 166-174, Jerome Meckier focuses on Vile Bodies and re-cycles much old information in defending his contention that Waugh uses "a kind of novelist's shorthand wherein symbols sum up what it would take too long otherwise to express." Examples are the circle, the house, the horse, the automobile, the card game of A Handful of Dust and, oddly, the chestnuts which Paul contemplates in Decline and Fall. While Mr. Meckier is undoubtedly right in seeing that Waugh uses an inlaid symbolic shorthand, his argument needs to be amplified and clarified. Why, for example, does Waugh use a symbolic shorthand? Surely it's not just to "sum up what it would otherwise take too long to express."

My own ventures into Waugh criticism have been limited (mercifully, perhaps) to two. In "Vile Bodies: A Revolution in Film Art" EWN, 8,3 (Winter, 1974) 2-7, I suggest that Waugh's youthful interest in film (as metaphor, not merely as technique) lies behind much of his early fiction and illuminates his view of history. I argue, convinced if not convincingly, that there are suggestive parallels between the principles of optical and ironic inversion and religious conversion. The relevance of Mr. Isaac's "film-life" of John Wesley is that post-Reformation England is a film from the point of view of one who has returned to the faith which England repudiated with the "Anglican Revolt." The result of the inversion of English history is an antic and debased world populated by frauds and shadows. In "Apthorpe Placatus?" Ariel, 5, 1 (January 1974), 5-24, I extend this argument to maintain (like F.J. Stopp) that Guy Crouchback is plagued by a parasitical double, Apthorpe, from whom he must be liberated before he can achieve stability. The pattern fits other Waugh protagonists. Scandalously, I suggest that the psychomachia which underlies works like Men at Arms, A Handful of Dust and (remarkably) "The Balance," may find its origins inside Waugh's own head. The argument remains the same even without the psychological lingo: the celebrated country house is not a type of the City of God, as Kermode says, but a rival material duplicate, only one of a multitude of imitations here in "Shadowland." Waugh's cruel but responsible comedy comes into play when it explodes and exposes what is "bogus" in the inverted modern world.

One of the year's most significant contributions to Waugh scholarship is Alain Blayac's "The Evelyn Waugh - Dudley Carew Correspondence at the Humanities Research Center, University of Texas, Austin," EWN, 8, 2 (Autumn, 1974), 1-6. There can be no question that the letters are important documents, and Mr. Blayac has performed a valuable service in digging them out and publishing them. At the same time I am obliged to say that I cannot agree with some of Mr. Blayac's prefatory remarks. It is too strong, for example, to state, "There is a great depth of thought but also an equal fastidiousness and the exacting harshness of a master towards his disciple." Their "depth of thought" is not what strikes the reader of these letters; they are valuable for their style. And the "harshness" is almost entirely facetious. Carew himself described the letters as "counters in a game of uproarious fantasy we were always playing," and has stressed that to "catch the essence of Evelyn as he was between 17 and 18 until, say, a quarter of his way through Oxford, it is essential to grasp our fundamental innocence (in spite of our sophistication) and the atmosphere of light, freedom and happiness in which we developed. The shadows came later." In the early letters it is clear that Waugh is playing a role tacitly agreed upon by writer and recipient. In the later letters Waugh's sentimental ties with Lancing diminish and his pose of cavalier yet solicitous mentor fades. At another point Mr. Blayac speaks of Waugh's "self-assurance" and "superiority," but to this it must be added that Waugh frequently drops his sophisticated mask to give the reader unexpected access to the mind of a troubled young romantic. On two occasions Mr. Blayac draws a contrast between the confident tone of the letters and the timidity of the diaries. But in view of the fact that no diaries exist for the period which the letters cover (1921-1924) it is hard to see how such a contrast can be legitimate. The ordering of the letters seems accurate, but the article's major shortcoming is that the letters are too mercilessly synopsized, a regrettable, if necessary, sacrifice of style to space. Despite these quibbles, the letters remain fascinating and Mr. Blayac is to be commended. Dudley Carew's A Fragment of Friendship (Everest Press, 1974) undoubtedly sheds more light on the subject; unfortunately, it is unavailable, as is the new Duckworth Rossetti.

TWO SUPPOSITIOUS LETTERS BY EVELYN WAUGH

Robert Murray Davis

Four clippings in the Evelyn Waugh collection at the University of Texas hold considerable interest for the student of Waugh, especially the student of the background to the Yugoslavian episodes of Sword of Honour. All letters to the Times, all titled "Marshall Tito's Regime," all on page 5 of their respective issues, they encompass a brief controversy about the proper English attitude towards Yugoslavia. The first and last, published May 23 and June 5, 1945, and reprinted in full below, are by a severe critic of Tito who signs himself "A British Soldier Lately in Yugoslavia." The intervening letters defend Tito: "An American War Correspondent Lately in Yugoslavia" denied on May 24 that the charges are justified; on May 26, "Another British Officer from Yugoslavia" defended the execution of enemies of the Allies and quoted as definitive government guarantees of freedom of religion.

Without additional evidence, one cannot firmly identify Waugh as "A British Soldier Lately in Yugoslavia." Tentative identification, however, can be made on three grounds. First, although the style is not unarguably Waugh's, nothing in the diction or sentence structure of the letters is inconsistent with his other writing, and the careful qualification in the final sentence of the June 5 letter is a feature of his style. Second, the content of the letters and the attitudes expressed are demonstrably parallel to Waugh's public statements about Tito. Most important, of course, is the fact that Waugh kept the clippings. He rarely kept work by others unless it commented on his own, and he never identified anonymous or pseudonymous work known to be his.

Even if Waugh did not write these two letters, his choosing to preserve them is significant, for it shows that he did not lose interest in Yugoslavia when he left, to pick up the thread only when several years later he began to turn his experience into fiction. Moreover, there are obvious parallels between the letters and his fiction. American correspondents blind to the truth and British officers bemused by naïve idealism figure prominently in Sword of Honour; civilians executed because they speak English to British troops are obvious sources for the Kanyis in "Compassion" [Month, 2 n.s. (August 1949), 79-98] and the couple of the same name in Sword of Honour. Waugh did not choose to deal in his fiction with the more virulent expressions of anti-Catholicism. though he was clearly aware of them. Perhaps, having disillusioned Guy Crouchback about one kind of crusade, he did not wish to confront him with situations which might seem to demand another. Moreover, Guy's movement of charity towards the Jews is more impressive than a defense of his co-religionists would be.

May 23, 1945
"Marshal Tito's Regime."
To the editor of The Times

Sir - There is evident danger that the urgent and human problem of the disposition of the former Italian and Austrian territories claimed by Marshal Tito may be treated as an academic matter to be settled at leisure for ethnologists, while, in fact, the Slav partisans are in effective possession, busily shooting and deporting people who are legally under our protection. It would be entirely inconsistent with our own histories if Great Britain and the United States were to accept the hypothesis that the ethnological issue is paramount. Just rule is needed there and everywhere, not any kind of rule so long as the rulers can claim common descent from the same remote and barbarous ancestors. The assertion of race as the sole bond between men was one of the more absurd and odious errors of our late enemies.

We have, in our thanksgiving for victory, reaffirmed the fact that we are a Christian nation and have solemnly and sincerely dedicated the peace to Christian principles. Within a few days of these ceremonies we are being invited to acquiesce in a gross extension of a spectacle which touched the conscience of our grandfathers - the subjection of the Christian peoples of the Balkans to non-Christian tyrannous rule. The peoples now overrun by the forces of Marshal Tito are predominantly Roman Catholic. The attitude of his regime to their Church is not a matter of conjecture: it has long been evident in Croatia; but the knowledge is confined to those who, owing it to official sources, may not speak. Has the time not come to proclaim the truth? During the German war it was thought convenient to attribute heroic virtues to any who shared our quarrel and to suppress all mention of their crimes. There can now be no honourable reason for further concealment.

If, when the truth is published, it is revealed that the regime of Marshal Tito has all the characteristics of Nazism - a secret, political police, an unscrupulous propaganda bureau, judicial murders of political opponents, the regimentation of children into fanatical, hero-worshipping gangs, the arrest and disappearance of civilians for no other reason than that they spoke English and had exchanged civilities with British troops, the kidnapping of political opponents on allied territory, the arrest and disappearance of a national leader who came under safe conduct to discuss cooperation: that, above all, the Church is subject to persecution aimed at its extinction, that great numbers of priests whose only offence was popular esteem, have been done to death, religious houses closed and religious associations abolished; that the elaborate and violent machine of party propaganda is employed to vilify the religious and that no expression of opinion is possible outside the party machine - if these things are true, the nation will see where its duty lies towards people threatened with an extension of this regime.

We have been obliged to make many painful compromises with justice during the past 10 years, some of which seem irreparable: here is a question where we have the power to do right.

I am, Sir, your obedient servant,

A BRITISH SOLDIER LATELY IN YUGOSLAVIA.

June 5, 1945
"Marshal Tito's Regime"
To the editor of The Times

Sir - In my letter to The Times of May 23 I made no claim to "expert" knowledge of the Balkans. What I said was that Marshal Tito's record in Croatia - the only area where he has ruled any considerable number of Catholics for any considerable time - was beastly. Since my truthfulness seems in question, I beg room for a very few of "the facts."

The most popular party in Croatia was Dr. Macek's Peasant Party. He resisted all inducements to serve the Germans. In September of last year he sent his vice-chairman, Dr. Kosutic, to Topusko, to propose cooperation with the Communists against the invaders; the condition he proposed was that free elections should be held as soon as was feasible, and that the Peasant Party should go to the polls under their existing organization. The answer to this suggestion was the arrest and disappearance of Dr. Kosutic. Since then the partisans join Dr. Macek's name with Pavelic's as "traitor," "Fascist," and "war criminal."

These terms are used indiscriminately of anyone who refuses to accept Communist dictation. They are especially used of the clergy. It is true that a handful of clergy actively supported the Ustashe; it is also true that a handful - only one of whom was the least "distinguished" - supported the partisans. The vast majority went on quietly with their parish duties. Their only offence was that, so far as they held any political opinions, they were anti-Communist.

I have "studied the facts" of the treatment of this offence in a few dioceses. In Sibonik eight priests were killed, in Split 10, in Dubrovnik 14, in the Franciscan Province of the Redeemer 23, in Moster 45. These figures apply to a small area up to the end of February only.

A legally constituted government may, of course, try and punish traitors. In none of these executions was there any semblance of legality. Some of the victims were shot on their doorsteps; others were arraigned before partisan youths; the majority were carried off by Ozna (the secret police) and shot in secret.

All the Church schools have been closed; in the State schools the customary prayers are forbidden and the crosses and religious pictures removed to make room for "wall newspapers," in which the children praise Russia and the Marshal. The order of the alphabet has even been changed in the spelling primers so that T, I, and O are now the first letters. "Pioneers" are organized among the children on the communist "cell" principle with the purpose of undermining the influence of parents and priests. In spite of an overwhelming vote in its favour, religious instruction was abolished in the upper forms. The theological colleges have all been closed. In the agreement proposed at Split for the distribution of allied relief, "private organizations" (by which is meant religious communities) were explicitly excluded from benefit.

Effective power emanates from the Marshal and is transmitted in a chain of command by commissars and party secretaries, independent of the "governing" committees on which sit bemused bourgeois and peasants who lack all authority and knowledge of what is being planned. The gang that was terrorizing Dubrovnik in February was mainly drawn from Korcula and Split.

I wish I could share "Another Officer's" hope that the federal autonomy promised to Slovenia will preserve the Church there. I believe these federal units will have as much autonomy as the States of U.S.S.R.; that the Ozna and the Communist party will continue to transcend these frontiers; that in whatever territory the forces of the Marshal emerge, the future of the Church is precarious and, humanly speaking, hopeless.

I am, Sir, your obedient servant,

A BRITISH SOLDIER LATELY IN YUGOSLAVIA.

A WAUGH QUIZ

Thomas Gribble sent along an article, "The King William's Test Paper," published in the December 24, 1974 issue of The Guardian. This exam given by King William's College on the Isle of Man is taken twice by the boys, once unseen, and then later when they have an opportunity to research the answers. Section 11 of this year's exam deals with Waugh. Perhaps EWN's readers would more appreciate the challenge?

Who:

1. experimented at Blackstone Gaol?

2. followed Sir Francis Hinsley at Megalopolitan Pictures?

3. moved from 14, Blight Street, HQ?

4. was the first lady embalmer of Whispering Glades?

5. was the founder and editor of Survival?

6. did Bill's wife follow at the Malt House, Grantley Green?

7. was Junior Dean at Scone College?

8. was the diplomatic adviser to HOO HQ?

9. had his thunder-box put out of bounds by Brigadier Ritchie-Hook?

10. was bigamously united with Captain Grimes?

THE 1974 MLA EVELYN WAUGH SEMINAR

Charles Linck

Meeting solemnly in the exclave known as The Hilton, the MLA conducted its schedule of seminars three days before Seminar 186: Evelyn Waugh's Juvenilia was convened on Sunday, Dec. 29, 1974, at 8:30 a.m. Our program included a discussion of R. M. Davis's "Evelyn Waugh's Juvenilia," a paper distributed beforehand, and a showing of "The Scarlet Woman," the 45 minute silent film Waugh and Terence Greenidge made at Oxford and Golders Green in 1924-1925 (see EWN, Autumn, 1969).

Davis, visibly worn by three days of oppressive, secret interviewing in his rooms, opened with a certain Sunday morning zeal. According to my partial cassette recording, he told us that the product of our recent labors, Evelyn Waugh: A Checklist (Whitston, 1972), was due a thorough revision, which, though only "in the talking stage," should probably incorporate new findings such as his own and those of Donat Gallagher, Aussie scholar who worked alongside him at the Texas Humanities Research Center last summer.

Post-film discussion, led by Davis and Linck, coped with details of the film's making and accessibility, the people in it, the letters from Greenidge to Linck about it, and related matters. Interest in the film's wider availability was expressed, the possible legal factors discussed, but not enough is known about such matters - the one viewed was a private gift from Greenidge to Linck. Davis learned from the Peters Papers* that Agent A.D. Peters once expressed, then lost interest in the film when it became evident that profit was negligible. The reluctance of John Sutro and Auberon Waugh to get involved in the Greenidge bankruptcy was referenced by Linck.

Davis's paper about the "forty-odd juvenile items in the Evelyn Waugh collection" at HRC was also discussed. (Will EWN carry it?) This combined with talk about the nature of the humor in the film stimulated some speculation that a proper debate on the comedy of "cheerful inconsequence" could be next. James Carens, present, could be our leader in San Francisco in '75?

* Some 18 file boxes, plus "oh! by the way …" items, making about 1400 entries to add to the Checklist!

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

Combe Florey House
Taunton,
Somerset
13 January 1975

Dear Sir,

I do not wish to comment on any of the other attributions by Donald Greene (Newsletter Vol. 8 no. 3) nor, by failure to comment, indicate assent - anybody who knew Harold Nicolson will be briefly tickled by his posthumous revival as Sir Ralph Brompton - but there is one grotesque error which must not be allowed to stand uncorrected. Gen. Laycock bore no resemblance whatever to Brig. Ritchie-Hook, and nobody who knew him will be in the least bit amused by the identification. So far as Laycock has any fictional counterpart, he is Col. Tommy Blackhouse.

Yours faithfully,
Auberon Waugh

**************************

Dept. of English
University of Waterloo,
Waterloo, Ontario, Canada
27 August 1974

Dear Sir,

During the battle for Crete, Guy Crouchback "noted on his pad: '28/6/41. Adv. Bde. H.Q. established on track … '" (Sword of Honour, Chapman & Hall, 1965, p. 460). As both the context of the novel and of course the facts of history suggest, the date of Crouchback's entry should be "28/5/41." The slip seems to be Waugh's because it appears in the earliest edition (of Officers and Gentlemen) as well as in the "final version."

Yours sincerely,
W.R. Martin

THE WHITSTON WAUGH CHECKLIST: ERRATA AND ADDENDA III

Winnifred M. Bogaards

[Dr. Bogaards is constantly researching Waugh bibliography. Herein are printed additions and corrections to Part B of the Checklist. This material supplements and/or supersedes her EWN Winter 1974 listing. Items left blank are unchecked (at this time). Items which do not appear have been checked correct as entered. The latest Part C material will be published in the next issue of EWN.]

B. Contributions to Books

a) Prefaces and Introductions

b) Fiction

c) Non-fiction

2. Reprinted Material

a) Fiction

b) Non-fiction

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. Copyright P.A. Doyle.