A few weeks ago, the following Twitter message was posted:
Evelyn Waugh was the least Christmassy of beings. ‘A poor Christmas Day’ he wrote in his diary on 25th December 1919. ‘Like birthdays, Christmas gets duller and duller. Soon it will be merely a day when the shops are most inconveniently shut.’ He was 16 at the time.
The posting is accompanied by a photo-shopped version of the well known portrait of Waugh by Henry Lamb. It’s well worth a look.
Waugh resumed his diary in June 1924 and left this description of his Christmas that year:
“Christmas Day 1924
I have decided to try to grow a moustache because I cannot afford any new clothes for several years and I want to see some change in myself. Also if I am to be a schoolmaster it will help to impress the urchins with my age. I look so intolerably young now that I have had to give up regular excessive drinking. Christmas Day always makes me feel a little sad; for one reason because strangely enough my few romances have always culminated in Christmas week–Luned [Jacobs], Richard [Pares], Alastair [Graham]. Now with Alastair a thousand miles away and my heart leaden and my future drearily uncertain things are not as they were. My only letter this morning was notice of a vacancy from Truman & Knightley. There are coming to dinner tonight Stella Rhys and Audrey Lucas and Philippa Fleming. I should scarcely think it will be a jovial evening.” Diaries, p. 194.
As it turned out, according to the next entry, it “wasn’t at all a bad evening.”
Merry Christmas from the Evelyn Waugh Society.
