Evelyn Waugh

Arthur Evelyn St. John Waugh (IPA: /ˈiːvlɪn ˈwɔː/) (October 28, 1903 – April 10, 1966) was an English writer, best known for such satirical novels as Decline and Fall, Vile Bodies, Scoop, A Handful of Dust and The Loved One, as well as for broader and more personal works, such as Brideshead Revisited and the Sword of Honour trilogy, that are influenced by his own experiences and his conservative and Catholic viewpoints. Many of Waugh's novels depict British aristocracy and high society, which he satirizes but to which, paradoxically, he was also strongly attracted. In addition, he wrote short stories, three biographies, and the first volume of an unfinished autobiography. His travel writings and his extensive diaries and correspondence have also been published.

In 1944, American literary critic Edmund Wilson pronounced Waugh "the only first-rate comic genius that has appeared in English since Bernard Shaw,"[1] while Time magazine declared, in a 1966 obituary, that he had "developed a wickedly hilarious yet fundamentally religious assault on a century that, in his opinion, had ripped up the nourishing taproot of tradition and let wither all the dear things of the world."[2] Waugh's works were very successful with the reading public and he was widely admired by critics as a humorist and prose stylist. In his notes for an unpublished review of Brideshead Revisited, George Orwell declared that Waugh was "about as good a novelist as one can be while holding untenable opinions."[3] The American conservative commentator William F. Buckley, Jr. found in Waugh "the greatest English novelist of the century,"[4] while his liberal counterpart Gore Vidal called him "our time's first satirist."[5] Even the "overt racism" of his African writings has been forgiven by Ethiopian luminaries because his humour, satire, cruelty and wit were spread even-handedly, attacking the foibles of his own country at least as vigorously as those of foreigners. [6]
Biography

[edit] Early life
Born in London, England, Evelyn Waugh was the son of noted editor and publisher Arthur Waugh. He was brought up in upper middle class circumstances in the wealthy London suburb of Hampstead, where he attended Heath Mount School[7]. His only sibling was his older brother Alec, who also became a writer. Both Arthur and Alec had been educated at Sherborne, an English public school, but Alec had been asked to leave early during his final year and had then published a very controversial novel, The Loom of Youth, based on his school life. Sherborne therefore refused to take Evelyn and his father sent him to Lancing College, a school of lesser social prestige with a strong High Church Anglican character. This circumstance would rankle with the status-conscious Evelyn for the rest of his life but may have contributed to his interest in religion, even though at Lancing he lost his childhood faith and became an agnostic.

After Lancing, he attended Hertford College, Oxford as a history scholar. There, Waugh neglected academic work and was known as much for his artwork as for his writing. He also threw himself into a vigorous social scene populated by both aesthetes such as Harold Acton, Brian Howard and David Talbot Rice, as well as members of the British aristocracy and the upper classes. His social life at Oxford influenced Waugh's personal transformation into a snob and provided the background for some of his most characteristic later writing. Asked if he had competed in any sport for his College, Waugh famously replied "I drank for Hertford."

Waugh's final exam results qualified him only for a third-class degree. He refused to remain in residence for the extra term that would have been required of him and he left Oxford in 1924 without taking his degree. In 1925 he taught at a private school in Wales. In his autobiography, Waugh claims that he attempted suicide at the time by swimming out to sea, only to turn back after being stung by jellyfish. He was later dismissed from another teaching post for attempting to seduce the matron, telling his father he had been dismissed for "inebriation".

He was briefly apprenticed to a cabinet-maker and afterwards maintained an interest in marquetry, to which his novels have been compared in their intricate inlaid subplots. He also worked as a journalist, before he published his first novel in 1928, Decline and Fall. The title is from Gibbon, but whereas Gibbon charted the bankruptcy and dissolution of Rome, Waugh's was a witty account of quite a different sort of dissolution, following the career of the harmless Paul Pennyfeather, a student of divinity, as he is accidentally expelled from Oxford for indecency ("I expect you'll be becoming a schoolmaster, sir," says the College porter to Paul, "That's what most of the gentlemen does, sir, that gets sent down for indecent behaviour") and enters into the worlds of schoolmastering, high society, and the white slave trade. Other novels about England's "bright young things" followed, and all were well received by both critics and the general public.

Waugh entered into a brief, unhappy marriage in 1928 to the Hon. Evelyn Gardner, youngest daughter of Lord Burghclere. (Their friends called them He-Evelyn and She-Evelyn.) Gardner's infidelity would provide the background for Waugh's novel A Handful of Dust. The marriage ended in divorce in 1930. Waugh converted to Catholicism and, after his marriage was annulled by the Church, he married Laura Herbert, a Catholic, daughter of Aubrey Herbert, and granddaughter of Henry Herbert, 4th Earl of Carnarvon. This marriage was successful, lasting the rest of his life, producing seven children, one of whom, Mary, died in infancy. His son Auberon Waugh followed in his footsteps as a notable writer and journalist.


[edit] The 1930s
Waugh's fame continued to grow between the wars, based on his satires of contemporary upper class English society, written in prose that was seductively simple and elegant. His style was often inventive (a chapter, for example, would be written entirely in the form of a dialogue of telephone calls). His conversion to Roman Catholicism in 1930 was a watershed in his life and his writing. It elevated Catholic themes in his work, and aspects of his deep and sincere faith, both implicit and explicit, can be found in all of his later work. For example, in A Handful of Dust the thematic similarities between the primary character's life-events -- especially what he does before and what befalls him after his departure from England -- and the circles of Hell in Dante's Inferno tell much about the intrinsic needs and beliefs that led Waugh to embrace Catholicism.

At the same time (and perhaps because it integrated both his beliefs and his natural "dark humor"), Black Mischief and A Handful of Dust contain episodes of the most savage farce. In some of his fiction Waugh derives comedy from the cruelty of mischance; ingenuous characters are subject to bizarre calamities in a universe that seems to lack a shaping and protecting God, or any other source of order and comfort. The period between the wars also saw extensive travels around the Mediterranean and Red Sea, Spitsbergen, Africa (most famously Ethiopia) and South America. Sections of the numerous travel books which resulted are often cited as among the best writing in this genre. A compendium of Waugh's favourite travel writing has been issued under the title When The Going Was Good.


[edit] Second World War
With the advent of the Second World War, Waugh used "friends in high places", such as Randolph Churchill — son of Winston — to find him a service commission. Though 36 years old with poor eyesight, he was commissioned in the Royal Marines in 1940. Few can have been less suited to command troops. He lacked the common touch. Though personally brave, he did not suffer fools gladly. There was some concern that the men under his command might shoot him instead of the enemy. Promoted to captain, Waugh found life in the Marines dull.

Waugh participated in the failed attempt to take Dakar from the Vichy French in late 1940. Following a joint exercise with No.3 Commando (Army), he applied to join them and was accepted. Waugh took part in an ill-fated commando raid on the coast of Libya. As special assistant to the famed commando leader Robert Laycock, Waugh showed conspicuous bravery during the fighting in Crete in 1941, supervising the evacuation of troops while under attack by Stuka dive bombers.

Later, Waugh was placed on extended leave and later reassigned to the Royal Horse Guards. During this period he wrote Brideshead Revisited. He was recalled for a military/diplomatic mission to Yugoslavia in 1944 at the request of his old friend Randolph Churchill. He and Churchill narrowly escaped capture or death when the Germans undertook Operation Rösselsprung, and paratroops and glider-borne storm troops attacked the partisans' headquarters where they were staying. During his time in Yugoslavia Waugh produced a formidable report detailing Tito's persecution of Catholics and the clergy. It was "buried" by Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden as being largely irrelevant.

Some of Waugh's best-loved and best-known novels come from this period. Brideshead Revisited (1945), is an evocation of a vanished pre-war England. It is an extraordinary work which in many ways has come to define Waugh and his view of his world. It not only painted a rich picture of life in England and at Oxford University at a time (before World War II), which Waugh himself loved and embellished in the novel, but it allowed him to share his feelings about his Catholic faith, principally through the actions of his characters. Amazingly, he was granted leave from the war to write it. The book was applauded by his friends, not just for an evocation of a time now — and then — long gone, but also for its examination of the manifold pressures within a traditional Catholic family. It was a huge success in Britain and in the United States. Decades later a television adaptation achieved popularity and acclaim in both countries, and around the world; a film adaptation is planned for 2008. Waugh revised the novel in the late 1950s because he found parts of it "distasteful on a full stomach" by which he meant that he wrote the novel during the gray privations of the latter war years.

Much of Waugh's war experience is reflected in the Sword of Honour trilogy. It consists of three novels, Men at Arms (1952), Officers and Gentlemen (1955) and Unconditional Surrender (1961), which loosely parallel his wartime experiences. His trilogy, along with his other work after the 1930s, became some of the best books written about the Second World War. Many of his portraits are unforgettable, and often show striking resemblances to noted real personalities. Waugh biographer Christopher Sykes, felt that the fire-eating officer in the Sword of Honour trilogy, Brigadier Ben Ritchie-Hook, "...bears a very strong resemblance to..." Lieutenant-General Sir Adrian Carton De Wiart VC, a friend of the author's father-in-law. Waugh was familiar with Carton De Wiart through the club to which he belonged. The fictional commando leader, Tommy Blackhouse, is based on Major-General Sir Robert Laycock, a real-life commando leader and friend of Waugh's, whom he greatly admired.


[edit] Later years
The period after the war saw Waugh living with his family in the West Country, first at Piers Court, and from 1956 onwards, at Combe Florey, Somerset, where he enjoyed the life of a country gentleman and continued to write. (Combe Florey was bought from his widow by their son Auberon[8].) Waugh was highly critical of Vatican II's 1960s changes to his beloved Tridentine liturgy, which he in part loved for what he saw as its timelessness. (Cf. Bitter Trial by Waugh)

For a base in London, he was a member of the St James's Club in Piccadilly.[9]

The Ordeal of Gilbert Pinfold (1957) depicts its hero's steady descent into madness — the experience was actually Waugh's own, the result of mixing sleeping medication with alcohol that induced a severe bout of paranoia that reached its peak on a sea voyage to Ceylon (now Sri Lanka).[citation needed] During this period he wrote Helena, (1953), a fictional account of the Empress Helena and the finding of the True Cross, which he regarded as his best work. [10]

Waugh's health declined in later life. He put on weight, and the sleeping draughts he continued to take, combined with alcohol, cigars and little exercise, weakened his health. His productivity also declined, and his output was uneven. His last published work, Basil Seal Rides Again, revisiting the characters of his earliest satirical works, did not meet critical or popular approval, but is still read today. At the same time, he continued as a journalist and was well received. He appeared in two television interviews with BBC in the early 1960s, the only time his appearance was recorded publicly, during which the interviewers sought to corner him as an anachronistic figure. He overcame them, particularly in the second interview. His diaries, published in the 1970s, were widely acclaimed. His correspondence with lifelong friends, such as Nancy Mitford, are still published today. He is a fruitful source for biographers; three major works have been produced since Christopher Sykes's friendly and familiar account of Waugh's life was published in the 1970s.

Evelyn Waugh died, aged 62, on 10 April 1966, after attending Mass on Easter Sunday. He suffered a heart attack in the lavatory of his home, Combe Florey. His estate at probate was valued at £20,068. This did not include the value of his lucrative copyrights, which Waugh put in a trust (humorously named the 'Save the Children Fund') for his children. He is buried at Combe Florey, Somerset.[citation needed]


[edit] List of works

[edit] Novels
Decline and Fall (1928): satire of the upper classes and social climbers
Vile Bodies (1930): satire; adapted to the screen by Stephen Fry as Bright Young Things (2003).
Black Mischief (1932): satire on Haile Selassie's efforts to modernise Abyssinia (Waugh was deeply critical of modernity and notions of rational progress)
A Handful of Dust (1934): subtle critique of civilization set in English country house and Dutch Guyana.
Scoop (1938): describes the rush of war reporters to a thinly disguised Abyssinia (now Ethiopia). A Chicago theater company's 1996 playbill cited it as the inspiration for Tom Stoppard's play Night and Day.
Put Out More Flags (1942): satire of the phony war and wartime sillinesses
Brideshead Revisited (subtitled The Sacred and Profane Memories of Captain Charles Ryder) (1945): details the spiritual lives behind the facades of an aristocratic family and their friend, the protagonist. Filmed as a lauded ITV drama (1981).
The Loved One (1947) (subtitled An Anglo-American Tragedy): describes the excesses of a Californian funeral business.
Helena (1950): historical fiction about the Empress Helena and the founding of pilgrimage sites in the Holy Land; also a Catholic apologetic about the True Cross.
Love Among the Ruins. A Romance of the Near Future (1953): a satire set in a dystopian quasi-egalitarian Britain, following the life of an arsonist released from prison.
Sword of Honour Trilogy
Men at Arms (1952)
Officers and Gentlemen (1955)
Unconditional Surrender (1961)
The Ordeal of Gilbert Pinfold (1957)

[edit] Biography
Saint Edmund Campion: Priest and Martyr
The Life of the Right Reverend Ronald Knox
Dante Gabriel Rossetti

[edit] Autobiography and memoirs
Waugh in Abyssinia (1936), a journalistic account of the war and what led up to it
A Little Learning (1964)

[edit] Biographies of Waugh
Evelyn Waugh: Portrait of a Country Neighbour by Frances Donaldson, 1967.
Evelyn Waugh by Christopher Sykes, 1975.
Evelyn Waugh: The Early Years 1903 – 1939 by Martin Stannard, 1987.
Evelyn Waugh: The Later Years 1939 – 1966 by Martin Stannard, 1994.
Evelyn Waugh: a Biography by Selina Hastings, 1994.
The Life of Evelyn Waugh: A Critical Biography by Douglas Lane Patey, 1998.
Fathers and Sons: The Autobiography of a Family by Alexander Waugh, 2007.

[edit] Cultural references
'Evelyn Waugh' is used as a pseudonym for an American actress staying at a hotel in Tokyo in the film Lost in Translation, 2003. (Kelly (Anna Faris): "I'm under Evelyn Waugh." Charlotte (Scarlett Johansson): "Evelyn Waugh was a man.")
In one episode of the comic strip Pearls Before Swine, by Stephan Pastis, Pig is writing a love letter to an authoress who has captivated him. In the last panel, a letter beginning "Dear Evelyn Waugh" is shown.
Whether either of the writers involved were aware that a London reviewer of Waugh's first book Dante Gabriel Rossetti had described him as "Miss Waugh" throughout his review[citation needed] is uncertain.
In Alan Bennett's play, Kafka's Dick, Kafka's father looks at the bookcase and says "Vile Bodies, Evelyn Waugh. I bet she knew how to treat a man!"
In Kingsley Amis' novel, Lucky Jim, one of Jim's "faces" is the Evelyn Waugh face

[edit] References
^ " 'Never Apologize, Never Explain', The Art of Evelyn Waugh," The New Yorker, 4 March 1944, reprinted in Classics and Commercials, A Literary Chronicle of the Forties, by Edmund Wilson, page 140, Vintage Books, New York, 1962
^ Evelyn Waugh (1903–1966): The Beauty of his Malice, obituary in Time, Apr. 22, 1966
^ Quoted in Christopher Hitchens, "The Permanent Adolescent," The Atlantic Monthly, May 2003
^ "Evelyn Waugh, R.I.P.", National Review, May 3, 1966 [1]
^ "Evelyn Waugh," New York Times Book Review, 7 January 1962, reprinted in Rocking the Boat, by Gore Vidal, pages 235-243, Little Brown, Boston, 1962
^ [2] BBC World Service "Anniversary Waugh of words" 23 April 2003
^ http://www.heathmount.org
^ Auberon Waugh, Will this do?, p206 Century/random house, London 1991
^ WAUGH, Evelyn Arthur St John in Who Was Who 1897–2006 online (accessed 10 January 2008)
^ "It's the best written; the most interesting theme." Evelyn Waugh, appearing on the BBC television "Face to Face" interview with John Freeman, 18 June 1960