–The Burns Library at Boston College has posted a photo of Evelyn Waugh that I have not previously seen. Here’s a link. Although there is no accompanying text, the photo must have been taken during Waugh’s short visit to Boston College in November 1948. This was in connection with his research for the Life magazine article “Catholics in America” which appeared in 1949. While he was visiting the college, he made a short presentation to a group of students. This was a sort of dry run for the lecture tour he planned to present at a number of eastern US Catholic colleges in early 1949. Here’s a description of the visit from an article in EWS 43.3, Winter 2013 (footnotes omitted):
Waugh went to Boston on 15 November and stayed until the 18th. He visited his publisher, Little, Brown, and stopped at Boston College, where he attended a creative-writing class reported in the student newspaper, The Heights (19 November 1948, 1, 8). Waugh said he preferred to write by hand rather than typewriter, since that facilitated revision as he went along. He usually wrote two complete drafts before publication, made no advance plan, and simply sat down to write chapter by chapter. He emphasized that a writer should “know his language thoroughly … and be especially familiar with the ‘etymology of each word that he uses so that he will know its true derivation and meaning, rather than its colloquial shadings.’” The finished product should have words strung together to form a melodious pattern. In response to questions, Waugh explained that The Loved One originated in California’s modern paganism and people without roots. When asked why he withdrew Brideshead from the filming process, he explained that Hollywood producers were “horrified”that he should want the essence of the story kept intact. “The Marchmain family, I hope, represent a normal Catholic family facing the modern world. Cordelia is the good Catholic woman standing up against all obstacles; Sebastian is the youth assailed by temptation—in this case, alcoholism.”…
Here is another link to photos on the Burns Library website. This has a group photo that has appeared in other contexts as well as the one noted above where he is leaving the car. There is also a third photo posted separately below these first two. I think that one has also been posted or published before. The lecture tour is described in a three-part series of articles in the EWS archives: “Something Entirely Unique”: Evelyn Waugh’s 1948-49 Tours of North America. Thanks to Dave Lull for sending the Burns Library website link.
–The Dutch stage adaptation of Brideshead Revisited mentioned in a recent post has taken to the road. Here’s a description:
Brideshead Revisited comes to the Netherlands this week. Performances run 30 October – 11 December 2024 at De Warme Winkel. [The play] premiered at the Holland Festival in June 2023, playing to sold-out audiences for a month in the main hall of theatre hub De Sloot. Due to popular demand, the show is now embarking on a tour across the Netherlands and Belgium.
This masterpiece had a cult status among both queers and conservatives in the previous century, but nowadays, this novel seems to have been consigned to oblivion. Yet, perhaps, it remains the most romantic and Anglophile book literature has ever produced. After the success of Lady Chatterley’s Lover, De Warme Winkel brings another English literary classic to the theatre. Florian Myjer, together with Abke Haring, thrusts Brideshead Revisited into the 21st century.
The secretively autobiographical Brideshead Revisited (1945) by Evelyn Waugh tells the story of Charles Ryder, who, as a young student at Oxford in the early 20th Century, falls under the spell of the aristocratic Flyte family. One sultry summer long, he basks in their opulent life at the heavenly family country estate, where he falls in love with both the son Sebastian and daughter Julia Flyte. Yet, with the end of summer and the rise of fascism, adulthood also presents itself. No matter how much Charles would like it to, the freedom of those golden August days is not coming back. What had appeared to be the prelude to a radically honest and free-spirited life transpires to be the eve of a desperate and cynical existence.
Trapped in a bitter worldview himself, for Evelyn Waugh writing this novel was an attempt to recover the happiness of his younger years. Inspired by this soul-searching, De Warme Winkel exploits Brideshead Revisited as a vehicle for an autopsy of love and an unfolding of our (sexual) identity. With live music composed by Rik Elstgeest and the memories and fantasies of Florian and Abke as the beating heart, they finally resuscitate the epic love story Waugh so longed for.
The quoted story appeared this week online and in several Dutch and Belgian papers and was translated by Google. Schedule of performances and ticketing are available at this link.
