Arthur Evelyn St. John Waugh (/ˈiːvlɪnˈsɪndʒənˈwɔː/; 28 October 1903 – 10 April 1966) was an English writer of novels, biographies, and travel books; he was also a prolific journalist and book reviewer. His most famous works include the early satiresDecline and Fall (1928) andA Handful of Dust (1934), the novelBrideshead Revisited (1945), and the Second World War trilogySword of Honour (1952–1961). He is recognised as one of the great prose stylists of the English language in the 20th century.[1]
Waugh, the son of a publisher, was educated atLancing College and then atHertford College, Oxford. He worked briefly as a schoolmaster before he became a full-time writer. As a young man, he acquired many fashionable and aristocratic friends and developed a taste forcountry house society.
He travelled extensively in the 1930s, often as a special newspaper correspondent; he reported fromAbyssinia at the time of the1935 Italian invasion. Waugh served in the British armed forces throughout the Second World War, first in theRoyal Marines and then in theRoyal Horse Guards. He was a perceptive writer who used the experiences and the wide range of people whom he encountered in his works of fiction, generally to humorous effect. Waugh's detachment was such that he fictionalised his own mental breakdown which occurred in the early 1950s.[2]
Waugh converted toCatholicism in 1930 after his first marriage failed. His traditionalist stance led him to strongly oppose all attempts to reform the Church, and the changes by theSecond Vatican Council (1962–65) greatly disturbed his sensibilities, especially the introduction of the vernacularMass. That blow to his religious traditionalism, his dislike for thewelfare state culture of the postwar world, and the decline of his health all darkened his final years, but he continued to write. He displayed to the world a mask of indifference, but he was capable of great kindness to those whom he considered his friends. After his death in 1966, he acquired a following of new readers through the film and television versions of his works, such as the television serialBrideshead Revisited (1981).
Lord Cockburn, the Scottish judge, was one of Waugh's great-great-grandfathers.
Arthur Evelyn St. John Waugh was born on 28 October 1903[3] toArthur Waugh and Catherine Charlotte Raban. Distinguished relatives includedLord Cockburn, a leading Scottish advocate and judge,William Morgan, a pioneer ofactuarial science andPhilip Henry Gosse, a natural scientist who became notorious through his depiction as a religious fanatic in his sonEdmund's memoirFather and Son.[4] Among ancestors bearing the Waugh name,Alexander Waugh was a minister in theSecession Church of Scotland who helped found theLondon Missionary Society and was one of the leadingNonconformist preachers of his day.[5] His grandson Alexander Waugh was a country medical practitioner, who bullied his wife and children and became known in the Waugh family as "the Brute". The elder of Alexander's two sons, born in 1866, was Evelyn's father, Arthur Waugh.[6]
After attendingSherborne School andNew College, Oxford, Arthur Waugh began a career in publishing and as aliterary critic. In 1902 he became managing director ofChapman and Hall, publishers of the works ofCharles Dickens.[7] He had married Catherine Raban[8] in 1893; their first sonAlexander Raban Waugh (always known as Alec) was born on 8 July 1898. Alec Waugh later became a novelist of note.[9] At the time of his birth the family were living inNorth London, at Hillfield Road,West Hampstead where, on 28 October 1903, the couple's second son was born, "in great haste before Dr Andrews could arrive", Catherine recorded.[10] On 7 January 1904 the boy was christened Arthur Evelyn St John Waugh but was known in the family and in the wider world as Evelyn.[11][n 1]
In 1907, the Waugh family left Hillfield Road for Underhill, a house that Arthur had built inNorth End Road,Hampstead, close toGolders Green,[12] then a semi-rural area of dairy farms, market gardens and bluebell woods.[13] Evelyn received his first school lessons at home, from his mother, with whom he formed a particularly close relationship; his father, Arthur Waugh, was a more distant figure, whose close bond with his elder son, Alec, was such that Evelyn often felt excluded.[14][15] In September 1910, Evelyn began as a day pupil atHeath Mount preparatory school. By then, he was a lively boy of many interests, who already had written and completed "The Curse of the Horse Race", his first story.[16] A positive influence on his writing was a schoolmaster, Aubrey Ensor. Waugh spent six relatively contented years at Heath Mount; on his own assertion he was "quite a clever little boy" who was seldom distressed or overawed by his lessons.[17] Physically pugnacious, Evelyn was inclined to bully weaker boys; among his victims was the future society photographerCecil Beaton, who never forgot the experience.[16][18]
Outside school, he and other neighbourhood children performed plays, usually written by Waugh.[19] On the basis of thexenophobia fostered by the genre books ofinvasion literature, that the Germans were about to invade Britain, Waugh organised his friends into the "Pistol Troop", who built a fort, went on manoeuvres and paraded in makeshift uniforms.[20] In 1914, after theFirst World War began, Waugh and other boys from the Boy Scout Troop of Heath Mount School were sometimes employed as messengers at theWar Office; Evelyn loitered about the War Office in hope of glimpsingLord Kitchener, but never did.[21]
Family holidays usually were spent with the Waugh aunts atMidsomer Norton inSomerset, in a house lit with oil lamps, a time that Waugh recalled with delight, many years later.[22] At Midsomer Norton, Evelyn became deeply interested inhigh Anglican church rituals, the initial stirrings of the spiritual dimension that later dominated his perspective of life, and he served as analtar boy at the local Anglican church.[23] During his last year at Heath Mount, Waugh established and editedThe Cynic school magazine.[16][n 2]
Like his father before him, Alec Waugh went to school at Sherborne. It was presumed by the family that Evelyn would follow, but in 1915, the school asked Evelyn's elder brother Alec to leave after ahomosexual relationship came to light. Alec departed Sherborne for military training as anofficer, and, while awaiting confirmation of hiscommission, wroteThe Loom of Youth (1917), a novel of school life, which alluded to homosexual friendships at a school that was recognisably Sherborne. The public sensation caused by Alec's novel so offended the school that it became impossible for Evelyn to go there. In May 1917, much to his annoyance, he was sent toLancing College, in his opinion a decidedly inferior school.[21]
Waugh soon overcame his initial aversion to Lancing, settled in and established his reputation as anaesthete. In November 1917 his essay "In Defence of Cubism" (1917) was accepted by and published in the arts magazineDrawing and Design; it was his first published article.[25] Within the school, he became mildly subversive, mocking the school's cadet corps and founding the Corpse Club "for those who were bored stiff".[26][27] The end of the war saw the return to the school of younger masters such asJ. F. Roxburgh, who encouraged Waugh to write and predicted a great future for him.[28][n 3] Another mentor, Francis Crease, taught Waugh the arts ofcalligraphy and decorative design; some of the boy's work was good enough to be used by Chapman and Hall on book jackets.[30]
In his later years at Lancing, Waugh achieved success as a house captain, editor of the school magazine and president of thedebating society, and won numerous art and literature prizes.[26] He also shed most of his religious beliefs.[31] He started a novel of school life, untitled, but abandoned the effort after writing around 5,000 words.[32] He ended his schooldays by winning a scholarship to read Modern History atHertford College, Oxford, and left Lancing in December 1921.[33]
Waugh arrived in Oxford in January 1922. He was soon writing to old friends at Lancing about the pleasures of his new life; he informedTom Driberg: "I do no work here and never go to Chapel".[34] During his first two terms, he generally followed convention; he smoked a pipe, bought a bicycle, and gave his maiden speech at theOxford Union, opposing the motion that "This House would welcome Prohibition".[35] Waugh wrote reports on Union debates for both Oxford magazines,Cherwell andIsis, and he acted as a film critic forIsis.[36][37] He also became secretary of the Hertford College debating society, "an onerous but not honorific post", he told Driberg.[38] Although Waugh tended to regard his scholarship as a reward for past efforts rather than a stepping-stone to future academic success, he did sufficient work in his first two terms to pass his "History Previous", an essential preliminary examination.[39]
The arrival in Oxford in October 1922 of the sophisticatedEtoniansHarold Acton andBrian Howard changed Waugh's Oxford life. Acton and Howard rapidly became the centre of anavant-garde circle known as theHypocrites' Club (Waugh was the secretary of the club),[40] whose artistic, social and homosexual values Waugh adopted enthusiastically;[41] he later wrote: "It was the stamping ground of half my Oxford life".[42] He began drinking heavily, and embarked on the first of several homosexual relationships, the most lasting of which were withHugh Lygon,Richard Pares andAlastair Graham (potentially the inspiration for the fictional characterLord Sebastian Flyte in the novelBrideshead Revisited, though this is rather disputed and was most likely a blend of numerous individuals includingStephen Tennant).[26][43]
He continued to write reviews and short stories for the university journals, and developed a reputation as a talented graphic artist, but formal study largely ceased.[26] This neglect led to a bitter feud between Waugh and his history tutor,C. R. M. F. Cruttwell, dean (and later principal) of Hertford College. When Cruttwell advised him to mend his ways, Waugh responded in a manner which, he admitted later, was "fatuously haughty";[44] from then on, relations between the two descended into mutual hatred.[45] Waugh continued the feud long after his Oxford days by using Cruttwell's name in his early novels for a succession of ludicrous, ignominious or odious minor characters.[46][n 4]
Waugh's dissipated lifestyle continued into his final Oxford year, 1924. A letter written that year to a Lancing friend,Dudley Carew, hints at severe emotional pressures: "I have been living very intensely these last three weeks. For the last fortnight I have been nearly insane.... I may perhaps one day in a later time tell you some of the things that have happened".[47] He did just enough work to pass his final examinations in the summer of 1924 with a third-class. However, as he had begun at Hertford in the second term of the 1921–22 academic year, Waugh had completed only eight terms' residence when he sat his finals, rather than the nine required under the university's statutes. His poor results led to the loss of his scholarship, which made it impossible for him to return to Oxford for a final term, so he left without a degree.[48]
Back at home, Waugh began a novel,The Temple at Thatch, and worked with some of his fellow Hypocrites on a film,The Scarlet Woman, which was shot partly in the gardens at Underhill. He spent much of the rest of the summer in the company of Alastair Graham; after Graham departed forKenya, Waugh enrolled for the autumn at a London art school,Heatherley's.[49]
Waugh began at Heatherley's in late September 1924, but became bored with the routine and quickly abandoned his course.[50] He spent weeks partying in London and Oxford before the overriding need for money led him to apply through an agency for a teaching job. Almost at once, he secured a post atArnold House, a boys'preparatory school inNorth Wales, beginning in January 1925, and staying atPlas Dulas nearby. He took with him the notes for his novel,The Temple at Thatch, intending to work on it in his spare time. Despite the gloomy ambience of the school, Waugh did his best to fulfil the requirements of his position, but a brief return to London and Oxford during the Easter holiday only exacerbated his sense of isolation.[51]
In the summer of 1925, Waugh's outlook briefly improved, with the prospect of a job inPisa, Italy, as secretary to the Scottish writerC. K. Scott Moncrieff, who was engaged on the English translations ofMarcel Proust's works. Believing that the job was his, Waugh resigned his position at Arnold House. He had meantime sent the early chapters of his novel to Acton for assessment and criticism. Acton's reply was so coolly dismissive that Waugh immediately burnt his manuscript; shortly afterwards, before he left North Wales, he learned that the Moncrieff job had fallen through.[52] The twin blows were sufficient for him to consider suicide. He records that he went down to a nearby beach and, leaving a note with his clothes, walked out to sea. An attack byjellyfish changed his mind, and he returned quickly to the shore.[53]
During the following two years Waugh taught at schools inAston Clinton inBuckinghamshire (from which he was dismissed for the attempted drunken seduction of a school matron) andNotting Hill in London.[54] He considered alternative careers in printing or cabinet-making, and attended evening classes in carpentry at Holborn Polytechnic while continuing to write.[55] A short story, "The Balance", written in an experimentalmodernist style, became his first commercially published fiction, when it was included by Chapman and Hall in a 1926 anthology,Georgian Stories.[56] An extended essay on thePre-Raphaelite Brotherhood was printed privately by Alastair Graham, using by agreement the press of theShakespeare Head Press inStratford-upon-Avon, where he was undergoing training as a printer.[57][58] This led to a contract from the publishersDuckworths for a full-length biography ofDante Gabriel Rossetti, which Waugh wrote during 1927.[59] He also began working on acomic novel; after several temporary working titles this becameDecline and Fall.[60][61] Having given up teaching, he had no regular employment except for a short, unsuccessful stint as a reporter on theDaily Express in April–May 1927.[62] That year he met (possibly through his brother Alec) and fell in love withEvelyn Gardner, the daughter ofLord and Lady Burghclere.[63]
Canonbury Square, where Waugh and Evelyn Gardner lived during their brief marriage
In December 1927, Waugh and Evelyn Gardner became engaged, despite the opposition of Lady Burghclere, who felt that Waugh lacked moral fibre and kept unsuitable company.[64] Among their friends, they quickly became known as "He-Evelyn" and "She-Evelyn".[26] Waugh was at this time dependent on a £4-a-week allowance (equivalent to £302 in 2023) from his father and the small sums he could earn from book reviewing and journalism.[65] The Rossetti biography was published to a generally favourable reception in April 1928:J. C. Squire inThe Observer praised the book's elegance and wit; Acton gave cautious approval; and the novelistRebecca West wrote to express how much she had enjoyed the book. Less pleasing to Waugh were theTimes Literary Supplement's references to him as "Miss Waugh".[61]
WhenDecline and Fall was completed, Duckworths objected to its "obscenity", butChapman & Hall agreed to publish it.[66] This was sufficient for Waugh and Gardner to bring forward their wedding plans. They were married in St Paul's Church,Portman Square, on 27 June 1928, with only Acton,Robert Byron, Alec Waugh and the bride's friendPansy Pakenham present.[67] The couple made their home in a small flat inCanonbury Square,Islington.[68] The first months of the marriage were overshadowed by a lack of money, and by Gardner's poor health, which persisted into the autumn.[69]
In September 1928,Decline and Fall was published to almost unanimous praise. By December, the book was into its third printing, and the American publishing rights were sold for $500.[70] In the afterglow of his success, Waugh was commissioned to write travel articles in return for a freeMediterranean cruise, which he and Gardner began in February 1929, as an extended, delayed honeymoon. The trip was disrupted when Gardner contractedpneumonia and was carried ashore to the British hospital inPort Said. The couple returned home in June, after her recovery. A month later, without warning, Gardner confessed that their mutual friend,John Heygate, had become her lover. After an attempted reconciliation failed, a shocked and dismayed Waugh filed for divorce on 3 September 1929. The couple apparently met again only once, during the process for theannulment of their marriage a few years later.[71]
Waugh's first biographer,Christopher Sykes, records that after the divorce friends "saw, or believed they saw, a new hardness and bitterness" in Waugh's outlook.[72] Nevertheless, despite a letter to Acton in which he wrote that he "did not know it was possible to be so miserable and live",[73] he soon resumed his professional and social life. He finished his second novel,Vile Bodies,[74] and wrote articles including (ironically, he thought) one for theDaily Mail on the meaning of the marriage ceremony.[73] During this period Waugh began the practice of staying at the various houses of his friends; he was to have no settled home for the next eight years.[74]
Vile Bodies, a satire on theBright Young People of the 1920s, was published on 19 January 1930 and was Waugh's first major commercial success. Despite its quasi-biblical title, the book is dark, bitter, "a manifesto of disillusionment", according to biographer Martin Stannard.[75] As a best-selling author Waugh could now command larger fees for his journalism.[74] Amid regular work forThe Graphic,Town and Country andHarper's Bazaar, he quickly wroteLabels, a detached account of his honeymoon cruise with She-Evelyn.[74]
On 29 September 1930, Waugh was received into the Catholic Church. This shocked his family and surprised some of his friends, but he had contemplated the step for some time.[76] He had lost his Anglicanism at Lancing and had led an irreligious life at Oxford, but there are references in his diaries from the mid-1920s to religious discussion and regular churchgoing. On 22 December 1925, Waugh wrote: "Claud and I took Audrey to supper and sat up until 7 in the morning arguing about the Roman Church".[77] The entry for 20 February 1927 includes, "I am to visit a Father Underhill about being a parson".[78] Throughout the period, Waugh was influenced by his friend Olivia Plunket-Greene, who had converted in 1925 and of whom Waugh later wrote, "She bullied me into the Church".[79] It was she who led him to FatherMartin D'Arcy, aJesuit, who persuaded Waugh "on firm intellectual convictions but little emotion" that "the Christian revelation was genuine". In 1949, Waugh explained that his conversion followed his realisation that life was "unintelligible and unendurable without God".[80]
EmperorHaile Selassie, whose coronation Waugh attended in 1930 on the first of his three trips toAbyssinia
On 10 October 1930, Waugh, representing several newspapers, departed forAbyssinia to cover the coronation ofHaile Selassie. He reported the event as "an elaborate propaganda effort" to convince the world that Abyssinia was a civilised nation which concealed the fact that the emperor had achieved power through barbarous means.[81] A subsequent journey through theBritish East Africa colonies and theBelgian Congo formed the basis of two books; the travelogueRemote People (1931) and the comic novelBlack Mischief (1932).[82] Waugh's next extended trip, in the winter of 1932–1933, was toBritish Guiana (now Guyana) in South America, possibly taken to distract him from a long and unrequited passion for the socialiteTeresa Jungman.[83] On arrival inGeorgetown, Waugh arranged a river trip by steam launch into the interior. He travelled on via several staging-posts toBoa Vista in Brazil, and then took a convoluted overland journey back to Georgetown.[84] His various adventures and encounters found their way into two further books: his travel accountNinety-two Days, and the novelA Handful of Dust, both published in 1934.[85]
Back from South America, Waugh faced accusations of obscenity andblasphemy from the Catholic journalThe Tablet, which objected to passages inBlack Mischief. He defended himself in an open letter to theArchbishop of Westminster, CardinalFrancis Bourne,[86] which remained unpublished until 1980. In the summer of 1934, he went on an expedition toSpitsbergen in theArctic, an experience he did not enjoy and of which he made minimal literary use.[87] On his return, determined to write a major Catholic biography, he selected theJesuit martyrEdmund Campion as his subject. The book, published in 1935, caused controversy by its forthright pro-Catholic, anti-Protestant stance but brought its writer theHawthornden Prize.[88][89] He returned to Abyssinia in August 1935 to report the opening stages of theSecond Italo-Abyssinian War for theDaily Mail. Waugh, on the basis of his earlier visit, considered Abyssinia "a savage place whichMussolini was doing well to tame" according to his fellow reporter,William Deedes.[90] Waugh saw little action and was not wholly serious in his role as a war correspondent.[91] Deedes remarks on the older writer's snobbery: "None of us quite measured up to the company he liked to keep back at home".[92] However, in the face of imminent Italian air attacks, Deedes found Waugh's courage "deeply reassuring".[93] Waugh wrote up his Abyssinian experiences in a book,Waugh in Abyssinia (1936), whichRose Macaulay dismissed as a "fascist tract", on account of its pro-Italian tone.[94] A better-known account is his novelScoop (1938), in which the protagonist, William Boot, is loosely based on Deedes.[95]
Among Waugh's growing circle of friends wereDiana Guinness andBryan Guinness (dedicatees ofVile Bodies),Lady Diana Cooper and her husbandDuff Cooper,[96]Nancy Mitford who was originally a friend of Evelyn Gardner's,[97] and theLygon sisters. Waugh had knownHugh Patrick Lygon at Oxford; now he was introduced to the girls and their country house,Madresfield Court, which became the closest that he had to a home during his years of wandering.[98] In 1933, on a Greek islands cruise, he was introduced by Father D'Arcy to Gabriel Herbert, eldest daughter of the late explorerAubrey Herbert. When the cruise ended Waugh was invited to stay at the Herbert family's villa inPortofino, where he first met Gabriel's 17-year-old sister, Laura.[99]
On his conversion, Waugh had accepted that he would be unable to remarry while Evelyn Gardner was alive. However, he wanted a wife and children, and in October 1933, he began proceedings for theannulment of the marriage on the grounds of "lack of real consent". The case was heard by anecclesiastical tribunal in London, but a delay in the submission of the papers to Rome meant that the annulment was not granted until 4 July 1936.[100] In the meantime, following their initial encounter in Portofino, Waugh had fallen in love with Laura Herbert.[101] He proposed marriage, by letter, in spring 1936.[102] There were initial misgivings from theHerberts, an aristocratic Catholic family; as a further complication, Laura Herbert was a cousin of Evelyn Gardner.[26] Despite some family hostility the marriage took place on 17 April 1937 at theChurch of the Assumption in Warwick Street, London.[103]
As a wedding present the bride's grandmother bought the couplePiers Court, a country house nearStinchcombe in Gloucestershire.[104] The couple had seven children, one of whom died in infancy. Their first child, a daughter, Maria Teresa, was born on 9 March 1938 and a son,Auberon Alexander, on 17 November 1939.[105] Between these events,Scoop was published in May 1938 to wide critical acclaim.[106] In August 1938 Waugh, with Laura, made a three-month trip to Mexico after which he wroteRobbery Under Law, based on his experiences there. In the book he spelled out clearly his conservative credo; he later described the book as dealing "little with travel and much with political questions".[107]
Waugh left Piers Court on 1 September 1939, at the outbreak of theSecond World War and moved his young family toPixton Park in Somerset, the Herbert family's country seat, while he sought military employment.[108] He also began writing a novel in a new style, using first-person narration,[109] but abandoned work on it when he was commissioned into theRoyal Marines in December and entered training atChatham naval base.[110] He never completed the novel: fragments were eventually published asWork Suspended and Other Stories (1943).[111]
Waugh's daily training routine left him with "so stiff a spine that he found it painful even to pick up a pen".[112] In April 1940, he was temporarily promoted tocaptain and given command of acompany of marines, but he proved an unpopular officer, being haughty and curt with his men.[113] Even after theGerman invasion of the Low Countries (10 May – 22 June 1940), his battalion was not called into action.[114] Waugh's inability to adapt to regimental life meant that he soon lost his command, and he became the battalion's Intelligence Officer. In that role, he finally saw action inOperation Menace as part of the British force sent to theBattle of Dakar in West Africa (23–25 September 1940) in August 1940 to support an attempt by theFree French Forces to overthrow theVichy French colonial government and install GeneralCharles de Gaulle. Operation Menace failed, hampered by fog and misinformation about the extent of the town's defences, and the British forces withdrew on 26 September. Waugh's comment on the affair was this: "Bloodshed has been avoided at the cost of honour."[115][116]
In November 1940, Waugh was posted to acommando unit, and, after further training, became a member of "Layforce", under Colonel (later Brigadier)Robert Laycock.[115] In February 1941, the unit sailed to the Mediterranean, where it participated in an unsuccessful attempt torecapture Bardia, on the Libyan coast.[117] In May, Layforce was required to assist in the evacuation ofCrete: Waugh was shocked by the disorder and its loss of discipline and, as he saw it, the cowardice of the departing troops.[118] In July, during the roundabout journey home by troop ship, he wrotePut Out More Flags (1942), a novel of the war's early months in which he returned to the literary style he had used in the 1930s.[119] Back in Britain, more training and waiting followed until, in May 1942, he was transferred to theRoyal Horse Guards, on Laycock's recommendation.[120] On 10 June 1942, Laura gave birth to Margaret, the couple's fourth child.[121][n 5]
Waugh's elation at his transfer soon descended into disillusion as he failed to find opportunities for active service. The death of his father, on 26 June 1943, and the need to deal with family affairs prevented him from departing with his brigade for North Africa as part ofOperation Husky (9 July – 17 August 1943), the Allied invasion ofSicily.[123] Despite his undoubted courage, his unmilitary and insubordinate character were rendering him effectively unemployable as a soldier.[124] After spells of idleness at the regimental depot inWindsor, Waugh began parachute training atTatton Park, Cheshire, but landed awkwardly during an exercise and fractured afibula. Recovering at Windsor, he applied for three months' unpaid leave to write the novel that had been forming in his mind. His request was granted and, on 31 January 1944, he departed forChagford, Devon, where he could work in seclusion. The result wasBrideshead Revisited: The Sacred & Profane Memories of Captain Charles Ryder (1945),[125] the first of his explicitly Catholic novels of which the biographerDouglas Lane Patey commented that it was "the book that seemed to confirm his new sense of his writerly vocation".[126]
Waugh managed to extend his leave until June 1944. Soon after his return to duty he was recruited byRandolph Churchill to serve in theMaclean Mission toYugoslavia, and, early in July, flew with Churchill fromBari, Italy, to the Croatian island ofVis. There, they metMarshal Tito, the Communist leader of thePartisans, who was leading the guerrilla fight against the occupyingAxis forces with Allied support.[127] Waugh and Churchill returned to Bari before flying back to Yugoslavia to begin their mission, but their aeroplane crash-landed, both men were injured, and their mission was delayed for a month.[128]
The mission eventually arrived atTopusko, where it established itself in a deserted farmhouse. The group's liaison duties, between theBritish Army and the Communist Partisans, were light. Waugh had little sympathy with the Communist-led Partisans and despised Tito. His chief interest became the welfare of the Catholic Church in Croatia, which, he believed, had suffered at the hands of theSerbian Orthodox Church and would fare worse when the Communists took control.[129] He expressed those thoughts in a long report, "Church and State in Liberated Croatia". After spells inDubrovnik and Rome, Waugh returned to London on 15 March 1945 to present his report, which theForeign Office suppressed to maintain good relations with Tito, now the leader of communist Yugoslavia.[130]
Brideshead Revisited was published in London in May 1945.[131] Waugh had been convinced of the book's qualities, "my first novel rather than my last".[132] It was a tremendous success, bringing its author fame, fortune and literary status.[131] Happy though he was with this outcome, Waugh's principal concern as the war ended was the fate of the large populations of Eastern European Catholics, betrayed (as he saw it) into the hands ofStalin'sSoviet Union by the Allies. He now saw little difference in morality between the war's combatants and later described it as "a sweaty tug-of-war between teams of indistinguishable louts".[133] Although he took momentary pleasure from the defeat ofWinston Churchill and hisConservatives in the1945 general election, he saw the accession to power of theLabour Party as a triumph of barbarism and the onset of a new "Dark Age".[131]
In September 1945, after he was released by the army, he returned to Piers Court with his family (another daughter, Harriet, had been born at Pixton in 1944)[134] but spent much of the next seven years either in London, or travelling. In March 1946, he visited theNuremberg trials, and later that year, he was in Spain for a celebration of the 400th anniversary of the death ofFrancisco de Vitoria, said to be the founder ofinternational law.[135] Waugh wrote up his experiences of the frustrations of postwar European travel in a novella,Scott-King's Modern Europe.[136] In February 1947, he made the first of several trips to the United States, in the first instance to discuss filming ofBrideshead. The project collapsed, but Waugh used his time in Hollywood to visit theForest Lawn cemetery, which provided the basis for his satire of American perspectives on death,The Loved One (1948).[26] In 1951 he visited theHoly Land with his future biographer, Christopher Sykes,[137] and in 1953, he travelled toGoa to witness the final exhibition before burial of the remains of the 16th-century Jesuit missionary-priestFrancis Xavier.[138][139]
In between his journeys, Waugh worked intermittently onHelena, a long-planned novel about the discoverer of theTrue Cross that was by "far the best book I have ever written or ever will write". Its success with the public was limited, but it was, his daughter Harriet later said, "the only one of his books that he ever cared to read aloud".[140]
In 1952 Waugh publishedMen at Arms, the first of his semi-autobiographical war trilogy in which he depicted many of his personal experiences and encounters from the early stages of the war.[141] Other books published during this period includedWhen The Going Was Good (1946),[136] an anthology of his pre-war travel writing,The Holy Places (published by theIan Fleming-managedQueen Anne Press, 1952) andLove Among the Ruins (1953), adystopian tale in which Waugh displays his contempt for the modern world.[142] Nearing 50, Waugh was old for his years, "selectively deaf, rheumatic, irascible" and increasingly dependent on alcohol and on drugs to relieve his insomnia and depression.[26] Two more children, James (born 1946) and Septimus (born 1950), completed his family.[143]
From 1945 onwards, Waugh became an avid collector, particularly of Victorian paintings and furniture. He filled Piers Court with his acquisitions, often from London'sPortobello Market and from house clearance sales.[144] His diary entry for 30 August 1946 records a visit toGloucester, where he bought "a lion of wood, finely carved for £25, also a bookcase £35 ... a charming Chinese painting £10, a Regency easel £7".[145] Some of his buying was shrewd and prescient; he paid £10 for Rossetti's "Spirit of the Rainbow" to begin a collection of Victorian paintings that eventually acquired great value.[n 6] Waugh also began, from 1949, to write knowledgeable reviews and articles on the subject of painting.[144][n 7]
By 1953, Waugh's popularity as a writer was declining. He was perceived as out of step with theZeitgeist, and the large fees he demanded were no longer easily available.[138] His money was running out and progress on the second book of his war trilogy,Officers and Gentlemen, had stalled. Partly because of his dependency on drugs, his health was steadily deteriorating.[147] Shortage of cash led him to agree in November 1953 to be interviewed on BBC radio, where the panel took an aggressive line: "they tried to make a fool of me, and I don't think they entirely succeeded", Waugh wrote to Nancy Mitford.[148]Peter Fleming inThe Spectator likened the interview to "the goading of a bull by matadors".[149]
Early in 1954, Waugh's doctors, concerned by his physical deterioration, advised a change of scene. On 29 January, he took a ship bound forCeylon, hoping that he would be able to finish his novel. Within a few days, he was writing home complaining of "other passengers whispering about me" and of hearing voices, including that of his recent BBCinterlocutor, Stephen Black. He left the ship inEgypt and flew on toColombo, but, he wrote to Laura, the voices followed him.[150] Alarmed, Laura sought help from her friend,Frances Donaldson, whose husband agreed to fly out to Ceylon and bring Waugh home. In fact, Waugh made his own way back, now believing that he was suffering fromdemonic possession. A brief medical examination indicated that Waugh was suffering frombromide poisoning from his drugs regimen. When his medication was changed, the voices and the other hallucinations quickly disappeared.[151] Waugh was delighted, informing all of his friends that he had been mad: "Clean off my onion!". The experience was fictionalised a few years later, inThe Ordeal of Gilbert Pinfold (1957).[152][n 8]
In 1956,Edwin Newman made a short film about Waugh. In the course of it, Newman learned that Waugh hated the modern world and wished that he had been born two or three centuries sooner. Waugh disliked modern methods of transportation or communication, refused to drive or use the telephone, and wrote with an old-fashioneddip pen. He also expressed the views that American news reporters could not function without frequent infusions ofwhisky, and that every American had been divorced at least once.[154]
Combe Florey, the village in Somerset to which Waugh and his family moved in 1956
Restored to health, Waugh returned to work and finishedOfficers and Gentlemen. In June 1955 theDaily Express journalist and reviewerNancy Spain, accompanied by her friendLord Noel-Buxton, arrived uninvited at Piers Court and demanded an interview. Waugh saw the pair off and wrote a wry account forThe Spectator,[155] but he was troubled by the incident and decided to sell Piers Court: "I felt it was polluted", he told Nancy Mitford.[156] Late in 1956, the family moved toCombe Florey House in the Somerset village ofCombe Florey.[157] In January 1957, Waugh avenged the Spain–Noel-Buxton intrusion by winning libel damages from theExpress and Spain. The paper had printed an article by Spain that suggested that the sales of Waugh's books were much lower than they were and that his worth, as a journalist, was low.[158]
Gilbert Pinfold was published in the summer of 1957, "my barmy book", Waugh called it.[159] The extent to which the story is self-mockery, rather than true autobiography, became a subject of critical debate.[160] Waugh's next major book was a biography of his longtime friendRonald Knox, the Catholic writer and theologian who had died in August 1957. Research and writing extended over two years during which Waugh did little other work, delaying the third volume of his war trilogy. In June 1958, his son Auberon was severely wounded in a shooting accident while serving with the army inCyprus. Waugh remained detached; he neither went to Cyprus nor immediately visited Auberon on the latter's return to Britain. The critic andliterary biographer David Wykes called Waugh's sang-froid "astonishing" and the family's apparent acceptance of his behaviour even more so.[161]
Although most of Waugh's books had sold well, and he had been well-rewarded for his journalism, his levels of expenditure meant that money problems and tax bills were a recurrent feature in his life.[162] In 1950, as a means oftax avoidance, he had set up a trust fund for his children (he termed it the "Save the Children Fund", after thewell-established charity of that name) into which he placed the initial advance and all future royalties from the Penguin (paperback) editions of his books.[163] He was able to augment his personal finances by charging household items to the trust or selling his own possessions to it.[26] Nonetheless, by 1960, shortage of money led him to agree to an interview on BBC Television, in theFace to Face series conducted byJohn Freeman. The interview was broadcast on 26 June 1960; according to his biographerSelina Hastings, Waugh restrained his instinctive hostility and coolly answered the questions put to him by Freeman, assuming what she describes as a "pose of world-weary boredom".[162]
In 1960, Waugh was offered the honour of aCBE but declined, believing that he should have been given the superior status of aknighthood.[164] In September, he produced his final travel book,A Tourist in Africa, based on a visit made in January–March 1959. He enjoyed the trip but "despised" the book. The criticCyril Connolly called it "the thinnest piece of book-making that Mr Waugh has undertaken".[165] The book done, he worked on the last of the war trilogy, which was published in 1961 asUnconditional Surrender.[166]
Waugh's grave in Combe Florey, adjacent to but not within the Anglican churchyard.
As he approached his sixties, Waugh was in poor health, prematurely aged, "fat, deaf, short of breath", according to Patey.[167] His biographer Martin Stannard likened his appearance around this time to that of "an exhausted rogue jollied up by drink".[168] In 1962 Waugh began work on his autobiography, and that same year wrote his final fiction, the long short storyBasil Seal Rides Again. This revival of the protagonist ofBlack Mischief andPut Out More Flags was published in 1963; theTimes Literary Supplement called it a "nasty little book".[169] However, that same year, he was awarded with the titleCompanion of Literature by theRoyal Society of Literature (its highest honour).[170] When the first volume of autobiography,A Little Learning, was published in 1964, Waugh's often oblique tone and discreet name changes ensured that friends avoided the embarrassments that some had feared.[171]
Waugh had welcomed the accession in 1958 ofPope John XXIII[172] and wrote an appreciative tribute on the pope's death in 1963.[173] However, he became increasingly concerned by the decisions emerging from theSecond Vatican Council, which was convened by Pope John in October 1962 and continued under his successor,Pope Paul VI, until 1965. Waugh, a staunch opponent of Church reform, was particularly distressed by the replacement of the universalLatin Mass with thevernacular.[174] In aSpectator article of 23 November 1962, he argued the case against change in a manner described by a later commentator as "sharp-edged reasonableness".[175][176] He wrote to Nancy Mitford that "the buggering up of the Church is a deep sorrow to me .... We write letters to the paper. A fat lot of good that does."[177]
In 1965, a new financial crisis arose from an apparent flaw in the terms of the "Save the Children" trust, and a large sum of back tax was being demanded. Waugh's agent, A. D. Peters, negotiated a settlement with the tax authorities for a manageable amount,[178] but in his concern to generate funds, Waugh signed contracts to write several books, including a history of the papacy, an illustrated book on the Crusades and a second volume of autobiography. Waugh's physical and mental deterioration prevented any work on these projects, and the contracts were cancelled.[179] He described himself as "toothless, deaf, melancholic, shaky on my pins, unable to eat, full of dope, quite idle"[180] and expressed the belief that "all fates were worse than death".[181] His only significant literary activity in 1965 was the editing of the three war novels into a single volume, published asSword of Honour.[182]
On Easter Day, 10 April 1966, after attending a Latin Mass in a neighbouring village with members of his family, Waugh died of heart failure at his Combe Florey home, aged 62. He was buried, by special arrangement, in a consecrated plot outside the Anglican churchyard of theChurch of St Peter & St Paul, Combe Florey.[183] ARequiem Mass, in Latin, was celebrated inWestminster Cathedral on 21 April 1966.[184]
In the course of his lifetime, Waugh made enemies and offended many people; writerJames Lees-Milne said that Waugh "was the nastiest-tempered man in England".[185] Waugh's son,Auberon, said that the force of his father's personality was such that, despite his lack of height, "generals and chancellors of the exchequer, six-foot-six and exuding self-importance from every pore, quail[ed] in front of him".[186]
In the biographicMad World (2009),Paula Byrne said that the common view of Evelyn Waugh as a "snobbish misanthrope" is a caricature; she asks: "Why would a man, who was so unpleasant, be so beloved by such a wide circle of friends?"[187] His generosity to individual persons and causes, especially Catholic causes, extended to small gestures;[188] after his libel-court victory overNancy Spain, he sent her a bottle of champagne.[189] Hastings said that Waugh's outward personal belligerence to strangers was not entirely serious but an attempt at "finding a sparring partner worthy of his own wit and ingenuity".[190] Besides mocking others, Waugh mocked himself—the elderly buffer, "crusty colonel" image, which he presented in later life, was a comic impersonation, and not his true self.[191][192]
As an instinctive conservative, Waugh believed that class divisions, with inequalities of wealth and position, were natural and that "no form of government [was] ordained by God as being better than any other".[193] In the post-war "Age of the Common Man", he attacked socialism (the "Cripps–Attlee terror")[194] and complained, after Churchill'selection in 1951, that "the Conservative Party have never put the clock back a single second".[195] Waugh never voted in elections; in 1959, he expressed a hope that the Conservatives would winthat year's election, which they did, but would not vote for them, saying "I should feel I was morally inculpated in their follies" and added: "I do not aspire to advise my sovereign in her choice of servants".[196]
Waugh's Catholicism was fundamental: "The Church ... is the normal state of man from which men have disastrously exiled themselves."[197] He believed that the Catholic Church was the last, great defence against the encroachment of the Dark Age being ushered in by thewelfare state and the spreading ofworking-class culture.[198] Strictly observant, Waugh admitted to Diana Cooper that his most difficult task was how to square the obligations of his faith with his indifference to his fellow men.[199] When Nancy Mitford asked him how he reconciled his often objectionable conduct with being a Christian, Waugh replied that "were he not a Christian he would be even more horrible".[200]
Waugh's conservatism wasaesthetic as well as political and religious. Although he praised younger writers, such asAngus Wilson,Muriel Spark andV. S. Naipaul, he was scornful of the 1950s writers' group known as "The Movement". He said that the literary world was "sinking into black disaster" and that literature might die within thirty years.[201] As a schoolboy Waugh had praisedCubism, but he soon abandoned his interest in artisticmodernism.[202] In 1945, Waugh said thatPablo Picasso's artistic standing was the result of a "mesmeric trick" and that his paintings "could not be intelligently discussed in the terms used of the civilisedmasters".[203] In 1953, in a radio interview, he namedAugustus Egg (1816–1863) as a painter for whom he had particular esteem.[n 9] Despite their political differences, Waugh came to admireGeorge Orwell, because of their shared patriotism and sense ofmorality.[204] Orwell in turn commented that Waugh was "about as good a novelist as one can be ... while holding untenable opinions".[205]
Waugh has been criticised for expressingracial andanti-semitic prejudices. Wykes describes Waugh's anti-semitism as "his most persistently noticeable nastiness", and his assumptions ofwhite superiority as "an illogical extension of his views on the naturalness and rightness ofhierarchy as the principle of social organization".[206]
Wykes observes that Waugh's novels reprise and fictionalise the principal events of his life, although in an early essay Waugh wrote: "Nothing is more insulting to a novelist than to assume that he is incapable of anything but the mere transcription of what he observes".[181] The reader should not assume that the author agreed with the opinions expressed by his fictional characters.[207] Nevertheless, in the Introduction to theComplete Short Stories, Ann Pasternak Slater said that the "delineation of social prejudices and the language in which they are expressed is part of Waugh's meticulous observation of his contemporary world".[208]
The criticClive James said of Waugh: "Nobody ever wrote a more unaffectedly elegant English ... its hundreds of years of steady development culminate in him".[209] As his talent developed and matured, he maintained what literary critic Andrew Michael Roberts called "an exquisite sense of the ludicrous, and a fine aptitude for exposing false attitudes".[210] In the first stages of his 40-year writing career, before his conversion to Catholicism in 1930, Waugh was the novelist of theBright Young People generation. His first two novels,Decline and Fall (1928) andVile Bodies (1930), comically reflect a futile society, populated by two-dimensional, basically unbelievable characters in circumstances too fantastic to evoke the reader's emotions.[211] A typical Waugh trademark evident in the early novels is rapid, unattributed dialogue in which the participants can be readily identified.[208] At the same time Waugh was writing serious essays, such as "The War and the Younger Generation", in which he castigates his own generation as "crazy and sterile" people.[212]
Waugh's conversion to Catholicism did not noticeably change the nature of his next two novels,Black Mischief (1934) andA Handful of Dust (1934), but, in the latter novel, the elements offarce are subdued, and the protagonist, Tony Last, is recognisably a person rather than a comic cipher.[211] Waugh's first fiction with a Catholic theme was the short story "Out of Depth" (1933) about the immutability of the Mass.[213] From the mid-1930s onwards, Catholicism and conservative politics were much featured in his journalistic and non-fiction writing[214] before he reverted to his former manner withScoop (1938), a novel about journalism, journalists, and unsavoury journalistic practices.[215]
InWork Suspended and Other Stories Waugh introduced "real" characters and a first-person narrator, signalling the literary style he would adopt inBrideshead Revisited a few years later.[216]Brideshead, which questions the meaning of human existence without God, is the first novel in which Evelyn Waugh clearly presents his conservative religious and political views.[26] In theLife magazine article "Fan Fare" (1946), Waugh said that "you can only leave God out [of fiction] by making your characters pure abstractions" and that his future novels shall be "the attempt to represent man more fully which, to me, means only one thing, man in his relation to God."[217] As such, the novelHelena (1950) is Evelyn Waugh's most philosophically Christian book.[218]
InBrideshead, theproletarian junior officer Hooper illustrates a theme that persists in Waugh's postwar fiction: the rise of mediocrity in the "Age of the Common Man".[26] In the trilogySword of Honour (Men at Arms, 1952;Officers and Gentlemen, 1955,Unconditional Surrender, 1961) the social pervasiveness of mediocrity is personified in the semi-comical character "Trimmer", a sloven and a fraud who triumphs by contrivance.[219] In the novellaScott-King's Modern Europe (1947), Waugh's pessimism about the future is in the schoolmaster's admonition: "I think it would be very wicked indeed to do anything to fit a boy for the modern world".[220] Likewise, such cynicism pervades the novelLove Among the Ruins (1953), set in a dystopian, welfare-state Britain that is so socially disagreeable thateuthanasia is the most sought-after of the government's social services.[221] Of the postwar novels, Patey says thatThe Ordeal of Gilbert Pinfold (1957) stands out "a kind of mock-novel, a sly invitation to a game".[160] Waugh's final work of fiction, "Basil Seal Rides Again" (1962), features characters from the prewar novels; Waugh admitted that the work was a "senile attempt to recapture the manner of my youth".[222] Stylistically this final story begins in the same fashion as the first story, "The Balance" of 1926, with a "fusillade of unattributed dialogue".[208]
Of Waugh's early books,Decline and Fall was hailed byArnold Bennett in theEvening Standard as "an uncompromising and brilliantly malicious satire".[223] The critical reception ofVile Bodies two years later was even more enthusiastic, with Rebecca West predicting that Waugh was "destined to be the dazzling figure of his age".[74] However,A Handful of Dust, later widely regarded as a masterpiece, received a more muted welcome from critics, despite the author's own high estimation of the work.[224] Chapter VI, "Du Côté de Chez Todd", ofA Handful of Dust, with Tony Last condemned forever to read Dickens to his mad jungle captor, was thought by the criticHenry Yorke to reduce an otherwise believable book to "phantasy".[225]Cyril Connolly's first reaction to the book was that Waugh's powers were failing, an opinion that he later revised.[226]
In the later 1930s, Waugh's inclination to Catholic and conservative polemics affected his standing with the general reading public.[26] The Campion biography is said by David Wykes to be "so rigidly biased that it has no claims to make as history".[227] The pro-fascist tone in parts ofWaugh in Abyssinia offended readers and critics and prevented its publication in America.[228] There was general relief among critics whenScoop, in 1938, indicated a return to Waugh's earlier comic style. Critics had begun to think that his wit had been displaced by partisanship and propaganda.[215]
Waugh maintained his reputation in 1942, withPut Out More Flags, which sold well despite wartime restrictions on paper and printing.[229] Its public reception, however, did not compare with that accorded toBrideshead Revisited three years later, on both sides of the Atlantic.Brideshead's selection as the AmericanBook of the Month swelled its US sales to an extent that dwarfed those in Britain, which was affected by paper shortages.[230] Despite the public's enthusiasm, critical opinion was split.Brideshead's Catholic standpoint offended some critics who had greeted Waugh's earlier novels with warm praise.[231] Its perceived snobbery and its deference to the aristocracy were attacked by, among others,Conor Cruise O'Brien who, in the Irish literary magazineThe Bell, wrote of Waugh's "almost mystical veneration" for the upper classes.[232][233] Fellow writerRose Macaulay believed that Waugh's genius had been adversely affected by the intrusion of his right-wing partisanalter ego and that he had lost his detachment: "In art so naturally ironic and detached as his, this is a serious loss".[234][235] Conversely, the book was praised by Yorke,Graham Greene and, in glowing terms, byHarold Acton who was particularly impressed by its evocation of 1920s Oxford.[236] In 1959, at the request of publishers Chapman and Hall and in some deference to his critics, Waugh revised the book and wrote in a preface: "I have modified the grosser passages but not obliterated them because they are an essential part of the book".[237]
In "Fan Fare", Waugh forecasts that his future books will be unpopular because of their religious theme.[217] On publication in 1950,Helena was received indifferently by the public and by critics, who disparaged the awkward mixing of 20th-century schoolgirl slang with otherwise reverential prose.[238] Otherwise, Waugh's prediction proved unfounded; all his fiction remained in print and sales stayed healthy. During his successful 1957 lawsuit against theDaily Express, Waugh's counsel produced figures showing total sales to that time of over four million books, two thirds in Britain and the rest in America.[239]Men at Arms, the first volume of his war trilogy, won theJames Tait Black Memorial Prize in 1953;[240] initial critical comment was lukewarm, with Connolly likeningMen at Arms to beer rather than champagne.[241] Connolly changed his view later, calling the completed trilogy "the finest novel to come out of the war".[242] Of Waugh's other major postwar works, the Knox biography was admired within Waugh's close circle but criticised by others in the Church for its depiction of Knox as an unappreciated victim of the Catholic hierarchy.[243] The book did not sell well—"like warm cakes", according to Waugh.[244]Pinfold surprised the critics by its originality. Its plainly autobiographical content, Hastings suggests, gave the public a fixed image of Waugh: "stout, splenetic, red-faced and reactionary, a figure from burlesque complete with cigar, bowler hat and loud checked suit".[245]
In 1973, Waugh's diaries were serialised inThe Observer prior to publication in book form in 1976. The revelations about his private life, thoughts and attitudes created controversy. Although Waugh had removed embarrassing entries relating to his Oxford years and his first marriage, there was sufficient left on the record to enable enemies to project a negative image of the writer as intolerant, snobbish and sadistic, with pronounced fascist leanings.[26] Some of this picture, it was maintained by Waugh's supporters, arose from poor editing of the diaries, and a desire to transform Waugh from a writer to a "character".[246] Nevertheless, a popular conception developed of Waugh as a monster.[247] When, in 1980, a selection of his letters was published, his reputation became the subject of further discussion.Philip Larkin, reviewing the collection inThe Guardian, thought that it demonstrated Waugh's elitism; to receive a letter from him, it seemed, "one would have to have a nursery nickname and be a member ofWhite's, a Roman Catholic, a high-born lady or an Old Etonian novelist".[248]
Castle Howard, inYorkshire, was used to represent "Brideshead" in the 1981 television series and in a subsequent 2008 film.
The publication of the diaries and letters promoted increased interest in Waugh and his works and caused publication of much new material. Christopher Sykes's biography had appeared in 1975, between 1980 and 1998 three more full biographies were issued and other biographical and critical studies have continued to be produced. A collection of Waugh's journalism and reviews was published in 1983, revealing a fuller range of his ideas and beliefs. The new material provided further grounds for debate between Waugh's supporters and detractors.[26]
The 1981Granada Televisionadaptation ofBrideshead Revisited introduced a new generation to Waugh's works, in Britain and in America.[247] There had been earlier television treatment of Waugh's fiction, asSword of Honour had been serialised by theBBC in 1967, but the impact of Granada'sBrideshead was much wider. Its nostalgic depiction of a vanished form of Englishness appealed to the American mass market;[26]Time magazine's TV critic described the series as "a novel ... made into a poem", and listed it among the "100 Best TV Shows of All Time".[249] There have been further cinematic Waugh adaptations:A Handful of Dust in 1988,Vile Bodies (filmed asBright Young Things) in 2003 andBrideshead Revisited again in 2008. These popular treatments have maintained the public's appetite for Waugh's novels, all of which remain in print and continue to sell.[26] Several have been listed among various compiled lists of the world's greatest novels.[n 10]
Stannard concludes that beneath his public mask, Waugh was "a dedicated artist and a man of earnest faith, struggling against the dryness of his soul".[26]Graham Greene, in a letter toThe Times shortly after Waugh's death, acknowledged him as "the greatest novelist of my generation",[252] whileTime magazine's obituarist called him "the grand old mandarin of modern British prose" and asserted that his novels "will continue to survive as long as there are readers who can savor what criticV. S. Pritchett calls 'the beauty of his malice' ".[253] Nancy Mitford said of him in a television interview, "What nobody remembers about Evelyn is that everything with him was jokes. Everything. That's what none of the people who wrote about him seem to have taken into account at all".[254]
^Some biographers have recorded his forenames as "Evelyn Arthur St. John", but Waugh gives the "Arthur Evelyn" order inA Little Learning, p. 27. The confusion may in part be attributable to differences in the forename order between Waugh's birth and death certificates. The former specifies "Arthur Evelyn St. John", and the latter "Evelyn Arthur St. John".
^In 1993 ablue plaque commemorating Waugh's residence was installed at Underhill, which by then had become 145 North End Road, Golders Green.[24]
^A biography of Roxburgh (who went on to be first headmaster ofStowe School) was the last work given a literary review by Waugh, inThe Observer on 17 October 1965.[29]
^"Cruttwell" is a brutal burglar inDecline and Fall, a snobbish Member of Parliament inVile Bodies, a social parasite inBlack Mischief, a disreputable osteopath inA Handful of Dust and a salesman with a fake tan inScoop. The homicidal Loveday in "Mr. Loveday's Little Outing" was originally "Mr. Cruttwell". See Hastings, pp. 173, 209, 373; Stannard, Vol. I pp. 342, 389
^Earlier, Laura had borne a daughter, christened Mary, on 1 December 1940, but she lived only a few hours.[122]
^His collection of Victorian furniture, in particular works byWilliam Burges, became similarly valuable. The pieces, some bought and some received as gifts, were considered almost worthless when Waugh acquired them, but later made large sums for his heirs. An example is theZodiac settle, given to Waugh byJohn Betjeman and sold by Waugh's grandchildren in 2011 for £800,000.[146]
^See, for example, "Rossetti Revisited", 1949 (Gallagher (ed.)), pp. 377–379; "Age of Unrest", 1954 (Gallagher (ed.)), pp. 459–460; "The Death of Painting", 1956 (Gallagher (ed.)), pp. 503–507
^Another piece of Burges furniture gifted by John Betjeman to Waugh, theNarcissus washstand, was central to his breakdown and later featured in the novel. Waugh become convinced that the carriers who transported the washstand to Piers Court had lost an important element of it, and engaged them in violent correspondence threatening legal action. He was unconvinced by Betjeman's assurance that the supposedly missing piece had never existed; "Oh no, old boy. There never was a pipe from the tap to the basin such as you envisaged".[153]
^Excerpts from the text of the broadcast, on 16 November 1953, are given in the 1998 Penguin Books edition ofThe Ordeal of Gilbert Pinfold, pp. 135–143
^Wilson, Scott.Resting Places: The Burial Sites of More Than 14,000 Famous Persons, 3d ed.: 2 (Kindle Location 49889). McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers. Kindle Edition
^"Aspirations of a Mugwump", first published inThe Spectator, 2 October 1959, reprinted in Gallagher (ed.), p. 537. A "mugwump" is defined in Collins English Dictionary (2nd ed. 2005), p. 1068 as a politically neutral or independent person.
^Osborne, John W. (2006)."Book Review: Christianity and Chaos".Evelyn Waugh Newsletter and Studies.36 (3). Lock Haven, Pa.: Lock Haven University. Archived fromthe original on 28 December 2017. Retrieved12 May 2016.(subscription required)
^Conor Cruise O'Brien in "The Pieties of Evelyn Waugh", reprinted in Stannard:Evelyn Waugh: The Critical Heritage, pp. 255–263. (O'Brien used the pen-name "Donat Donnelly").
^Review by Geoffrey Wheatcroft ofThe Letters of Evelyn Waugh,Spectator, 11 October 1980. Reprinted in Stannard:Evelyn Waugh: The Critical Heritage, pp. 504–507
^Review by Philip Larkin ofThe Letters of Evelyn Waugh,The Guardian, 4 September 1980. Reprinted in Stannard:Evelyn Waugh: The Critical Heritage, pp. 502–504
Fussell, Paul (1980). "Evelyn Waugh's Moral Entertainments", inAbroad: British Literary Traveling Between the Wars. Oxford University Press, pp. 171-202.
Ker, Ian Turnbull (2003),The Catholic Revival in English Literature (1845–1961). Newman, Hopkins, Belloc, Chesterton, Greene, Waugh. Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, pp. 149–202.
Waugh, Alexander (2004).Fathers and Sons: The Autobiography of a Family. London: Headline Book Publishing; New York: Nan A. Talese.
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