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Evelyn Waugh in his own Words

3. Face to Face

 

In this recorded television interview, first broadcast on 26th June 1960, John Freeman’s questions concentrated on Waugh’s childhood, youth and difficult character. He did not attempt to encourage many literary revelations, though he does elicit the interesting information that Waugh himself thought that Helena was the best of his novels. Waugh told Ann Fleming in a letter, “My interviewer showed no interest in the literary life, or my aesthetic preferences, or my opinions of other writers, the places where I had travelled, the technicalities of composition or style - nothing like that.” From the point of view of Waugh’s books, much the most interesting section is the story of Waugh’s hallucinations which were later transmuted into The Ordeal of Gilbert Pinfold.

The BBC has now put about half the interview, in five excerpts, on its website, making my site redundant except for the Pinfold section, which the BBC has not included. I therefore retain that section here.

You may find the BBC excerpts at http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcfour/voices/profilepages/waughe1.shtml

You may read a transcript of the complete interview here.

 

Pinfold

LISTEN to this extract.
mp3 file, 476KB long, lasting 121 seconds and taking around two minutes to download.

 JF

Could I ask you some questions now about Pinfold. The question that everybody broadly wants to ask you is how far Pinfold is an account of your own brief illness. 

 EW

Almost exact. In fact it had to be cut down a lot. It would be infinitely tedious to have recorded everything. It’s the account of three weeks’ hallucinations going on absolutely continuously. 

 JF

And you heard voices? 

 EW

Oh, these voices. If I had written down everything the voices said it would be immensely boring. One had to be selective. 

 JF

But did they say the same things to you that they said to Pinfold? 

 EW

Oh yes, rather, again and again and again, day and night ...  It was not in the least like losing one’s reason, it was simply one’s reason working hard but on the wrong premisses. 

 JF

Yes. But I wonder why the voices said what they did. I mean, have you any notion why - 

 EW

Well, I’ve always wondered that. 

 JF

-why you should conjure up this lovely girl who made appointments for you? 

 EW

No, I’ve always wondered that. 

 JF

And you never kept the appointment? 

 EW

Half did - 

 JF

Yes. 

 EW

- if you remember the story, went out to look for her and she wasn’t there. 

 JF

And then the other, the most odious voices, said that Pinfold was a homosexual, a Communist Jew, a parvenu, and so on - were these the kind of hallucinations that you yourself felt? 

 EW

Oh yes, these are, those are the voices, exactly. 

 JF

And in your own life, was it the neighbours who were making these remarks, because again, if you remember, in Pinfold his neighbours were involved in this persecution. 

 EW

I’ve no idea what my neighbours said about me. 

 JF

But did you feel that your neighbours were involved - 

 EW

No, no. The whole thing was so puzzling I had to, if you remember, invent the theory that the Broadcasting Society, your own people, were involved. 

 JF

Well, I was going to ask you, have you in fact a particular deep feeling about the BBC? 

 EW

No. 

 JF

Because it comes again into a number of your books, which is why I ask, always in a slightly pejorative context. 

 EW

Well, everyone thinks ill of the BBC, but I don’t think I’m more violent than anybody else.

Notes :
a) In early 1954 Waugh took a ship bound for Colombo in order to recover some of his shattered health. His wife Laura was very unwilling to see him go alone, but he persuaded her that the trip would do him certain good. Once on board he began to suffer the hallucinations described above. His letters and cables home alarmed her exceedingly, and she urged him to return. Once home, he was diagnosed as suffering from a potent mixture of sleeping draughts and alcohol. Once this was put right he recovered quickly, though to this day there is discussion about whether the illness was a deeper one than this diagnosis suggests. He himself used to go around openly proclaiming, “I was mad, absolutely bonkers!”
A psychiatrist-friend asked him to write down his experiences as a help to students, and Waugh amply complied by writing his novel The Ordeal of Gilbert Pinfold, which he published in 1957. So revealing and cogent were the revelations contained within the book that, though a novel, it became required reading in alienist circles.
b) The BBC is the British Broadcasting Corporation, not a private society as Waugh mischievously pretends to think. Until well after World War II it had a monopoly of broadcasting in Britain, in both television and radio, and people who wanted to use its services were expected to buy a licence (as is indeed still the case with television though there are many other services available now). This monopoly position did not appeal to many conservatives (like Waugh), particularly as they suspected the BBC of being a mouthpiece for official and especially government propaganda, whether of the left or the right.

EW in the TV studio

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