–An article in the New Statesman describes luncheon at the Inner Temple amongst the barristers who frequent the premises. The article is by Finn McRedmond and concludes with this:
…And so, here I am eating my greens in Inner Temple, on a geographic and spiritual vacation from reality. I am metres away from Fleet Street. But it is peaceful and clean, and there are no Superdrugs or Holland & Barretts disrupting the view. It is technically a place of work, but with its quads and Georgian-ish buildings and chandeliered dining rooms, it is drawn more from the imagination of Evelyn Waugh than the HR department at Deloitte.
But it is not just a warm bath for Old Harrovians. It’s aspic for a political moment long lost to us. The legal profession was meant to have changed: Keir Starmer (son of a toolmaker, etc) is now the most famous barrister in the country; Jolyon Maugham, before he beat a fox to death, represented the new lefty-activist class; more than 100 members of the barrister-lobby in 2023 unionised against prosecuting climate protesters, and aren’t they supposed to be using the ECHR to crush right-wing Britain?
The paradigmatic Tory in a gown and wig was supposed to have been replaced by a young woman with an X account and spare keffiyeh. I don’t detect much of that energy in the canteen – these people eat like the most right-wing people in Britain. Bathed in custard, longing for Mummy.
–The Independent has an obituary of Nona Summers, journalist, party goer and sometimes addict. This is by Joan Juliet Buck who describes her subject as “The Gypsy of Chelsea”. Here is an excerpt;
…Born to Austrian parents, Nona was more like Mrs Stitch in Evelyn Waugh’s Scoop, the society lady of “dazzling, inebriating charm” who drives her little car down the stairs of the men’s lavatory on Sloane Street; or Lady Pauline Leone in Nancy Mitford’s Don’t Tell Alfred, who refuses to vacate the British Embassy residence when her husband’s turn is up. Both Waugh’s Mrs Stitch and Mitford’s Lady Leone were based on Lady Diana Cooper (nĂ©e Lady Diana Manners, 1892).
However, Nona’s aristocratic disregard for rules did not mean she was an aristocrat. Her mother, Fritzi, had fled Austria after the Anschluss and was so intent on the royal flush she’d been dealt in a poker game that legend has it she gave birth under the card table, naming the baby Nona because she was born on 9 March…
–In the website Jericho Writers, Harry Bingham considers opening passages of novels and how they might or might not succeed in a reader’s engagement in the book in question. Here’s the concluding passage:
…As for the too little, too little observation: there I want to say that some openings don’t do enough to gesture at the story that’s to come. They offer a Dramatic Incident, yes, but that Dramatic Incident doesn’t really do enough to guide me as to the shape of what’s to come.
And all this sounds complex, but it’s easy enough to do. Here, for not much reason except that the novel was to hand, is the opening of Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited:
When I reached C Company lines, which were at the top of the hill, I paused and looked back at the camp, just coming into full view below me through the grey mist of early morning. We were leaving that day. When we marched in, three months before, the place was under snow; now the first leaves of spring were unfolding. I had reflected then that, whatever scenes of desolation lay ahead of us, I never feared one more brutal than this, and I reflected now that it had no single happy memory for me.
Here love had died between me and the army.
As the prologue continues, we learn that the narrator is a captain in the British Army of the Second World War. He’s about to move out of a Scottish training camp with his men.
That’s the bare situation and, yes, it’s interesting enough to sustain us and, yes, small enough that we don’t feel overcrowded by too much story too soon.
But look at those underlinings.
“Paused and looked back”: this whole book is a looking back, a reminiscence. Any novel written in the past tense is, technically, a reminiscence, but BR revels in its nostalgic gaze – makes a feature of it. (The time-of-war narrator looking back at his time-of-peace past emphasises the change in the world between Then and Now.)
“No single happy memory … loved had died”: this tells us that there’s a love story here, but an unhappy one, a failure.
That sounds rather bleak: why would you fork out for a book that’s all set to depress you? Except that I think there’s one more bit of (really lovely) foreshadowing which complicates that simple story. Because Waugh also says, “three months before, the place was under snow; now the first leaves of spring were unfolding.” That’s not a movement from happy to bleak; it’s the exact opposite.
So Waugh has given us two contradictory messages here. The most overt one is, “This is going to be a very bleak love story, with plenty of reminiscence.” But the secondary, almost hidden one is, “this is a story of growth, and bloom, and hope, and life.”
And, darn it, but that’s exactly what this book is: a sad love story (Ryder + Sebastian, and also Ryder + Julia) but also a very hopeful one (Ryder + God.)
Now, I wouldn’t suggest that writing a sad love story about God is a brilliant way to make sales in the 21st century, but your story is what it is. Foreshadow that. Do it with wit. Do it obliquely. Do it with a sentence. Do it with an image. But do it gently. Don’t break the plant that hasn’t yet put down roots.
Got that? Good. Now execute.
–Forum Auctions is selling two Waugh first editions that might be of interest. A first with dust wrapper of Brideshead Revisited. It is not stated whether this is the Book Club or publisher edition which were issued at the same time; the dust wrapper says Chapman and Hall. The other is a first large paper edition (limited to 50 copies) of a signed copy of The Ordeal of Gilbert Pinfold, dedicated to a Miss O’Donnell. The seller offers this comment: “Inscribed to Miss O’Donnell – probably wife of Donat O’Donnell who heavily criticised Waugh’s novel in the July 1957 issue of The Spectator – as an unsuccessful gesture of reconciliation or flattery on Waugh’s part.” These are designated Lots 113 and 114. The auction is scheduled for 25 September at 1pm. Here’s a link for details.
