Waugh, Rex Whistler and the English Martyrs

Posted on May 16, 2018 by Jeffrey Manley

Peter Hitchens has written an essay entitled “Latimer and Ridley Are Forgotten: A Protestant Understanding of England’s Martyrs.” This appears in the current issue of First Things, a nonsectarian religious journal. He argues that Roman Catholics have more effectively promoted their martyrs in the cause of their religion in England than has been the case with martyrs for the Anglican cause. His arguments are intended to put both sets of martyrdoms into a more balanced historic context.

In the course of his essay, he refers to a painting depicting Roman Catholic martyrs done by Rex Whistler. According to Hitchens, the Roman Catholics:

… needed a martyrs’ memorial. [Thomas] More and Fisher, like Latimer, Ridley, and Cranmer, were undeniably great and courageous Englishmen, and eloquent ones, too. One especially potent use of their memory can be found in St Wilfrid’s Chapel in the Brompton Oratory in London, perhaps the supreme headquarters of Catholic militancy in England. Above the altar of the English martyrs, in a side chapel of this majestic church, is a powerfully sinister and suggestively grim mural. It looks very old, but it was painted in 1938 by Rex Whistler (who is possibly the model for Charles Ryder in Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited). It depicts executions at Tyburn, London’s principal place for such things, and is flanked by idealized portraits of More and Fisher.

The execution scene is a masterpiece. The callous, lumpish crowd, backs turned on us, watches as several bodies dangle from a triangular gibbet. …  A strong impression of evil and cruelty comes out of the frame, as I am sure it is meant to do. I would not want an impressionable child to see it. It is one of the most powerful pieces of propaganda I have ever experienced. When I recently revisited it, I was astonished to find how small it actually is. I had remembered it as huge.

But it is not quite true. It does not make the point it seeks to make. More and Fisher died for political offenses at the hands of a Catholic coreligionist [Henry VIII] who believed in the Real Presence and other essentials of the unreformed faith until the day he died, excommunication or no excommunication. Nor did More and Fisher die amid the crowded squalor of Tyburn, on a gibbet or in the flames. They were beheaded, a swift and merciful death by the standards of the age, at Tower Hill. Whistler’s gruesome picture…refers to something entirely different.

This is said to be Whistler’s only painting of a religious subject. He was not a Roman Catholic. Waugh knew him through mutual friends such as Diana Cooper. Waugh also used Whistler’s drawings to illustrate his postwar pamphlet Wine in Peace and War and commented on his work in letters and essays. He is also the model for a minor character in Scoop. But so far as I am aware, Waugh never mentions this religious painting in the Brompton Oratory, although he was surely aware if it. It was painted only after Waugh wrote Edmund Campion in 1935, which also deals with the subject of martyrdom. According to Whistler’s biographers, the painting was stolen in 1983, but there are photos on the internet (although these may depict a restored copy). The biographies offer little by way explanation of how Whistler came by the commision to paint it.

 

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Early TV Adaptations: Vile Bodies and Put Out More Flags

Posted on May 15, 2018 by Jeffrey Manley

IMDB recently updated the archival information in its database relating to two little-known BBC TV adaptations of Waugh’s works from 1970. These are Vile Bodies  and Put Out More Flags. Both were 90-minute productions on BBC2, but some archival information is still incomplete.

Vile Bodies (9 December 1970): adapted by John and Michael Ashe, directed by Alan Cooke; it was produced by the BBC but the name of the producer is unavailable. Only five cast members are listed (although your correspondent just submitted to IMDB updated information on that point from the BBC’s archives). Among those listed, the most notable is Vivian Pickles as Lottie Crump. The program was not reviewed in either The Times or Daily Telegraph but was reviewed by Thomas Gribble in the Evelyn Waugh Newsletter 5.1 (Spring 1971, pp. 5-6). According to Gribble, the production was difficult to follow because an industrial dispute with the electrical workers caused some scenes to be omitted or curtailed. This may explain why the London papers did not review it. Gribble thought the adaptation put more emphasis on the humor at the expense of the book’s underlying seriousness. He also noted that the most effective scene was Simon Balcairn’s last report to his paper.

Put Out More Flags (16 December 1970): name of adapter withheld by BBC due to contractual reasons, according to Sunday Telegraph (13 December 1970); directed by Mark Cullingham and produced by Mark Shivas for the BBC. The cast and crew list appear to be complete. It was reviewed by The Times (Stanley Reynolds) and the Daily Telegraph (Sean Day-Lewis) in their 17 December editions, as well as by Thomas Gribble in the EWN as noted above. The Times reviewer thought that the adaptation made good work of the comedy, praising especially the performance of Sheraton Blount as Marlene Connolly (which Mr Gribble also singled out for approval). Both also thought that the performance of Basil Seal by Anthony Valentine was weak and that the adaptation suffered from the lack of attention to characters such as Cedric Lyne and Alastair Tumpington. But both thought the production worked well over all. The Telegraph’s critic was less kind and thought the adaptation was playing up to those who were already familiar with the book:

All efforts were made toward letting the original jokes do the work and pulling any extra punches, or punch lines, that might have distracted. The result was a sluggish pace and an air of 1939-45 gloom, as faded as it was visually precise…[I]n this careful production, too many of the lines were spoken with an awed and therefore misplaced reverence.

The Times reviewer saw the two 1970 productions as a “little season” devoted to Waugh’s works and hoped for more.  These early TV dramatizations are notable because they came at was probably the lowest point of Waugh’s literary reputation, before the publication of his Diaries (1976) and Letters (1980), several biographies and the 1981 ITV/PBS broadcast of the Granada TV version of Brideshead Revisited. Whether copies of these productions  survive is not known. From Thomas Gribble’s description of Vile Bodies, they may have been live broadcasts. And if they were in color (which would probably have been the case in 1970), any tapes may have been wiped and reused after the agreed number of repeat broadcasts.

A later film adaptation of Vile Bodies by Steven Fry was released in 2003 under the title Bright Young Things.   The IMDB also records a 1939 BBC TV series called Table d’Hote in which one episode was entitled “Doubting Hall”. The information on this is sketchy but several characters listed also appear in Vile Bodies.  There was also a stage version of that novel in the early 1930s which Waugh mentions. But this 1970 BBC TV production may be the only film version of Put Out More Flags ever made.

During the period following Waugh’s death in 1966 up to the 1981 broadcast of the Granada Brideshead series on ITV, the BBC offered several other adaptations. Prior to the two in 1970, there was an adaptation by Giles Cooper of Sword of Honour in early 1967 covering three 90-minute episodes. Waugh himself played a minor role in that adaptation, meeting with the writers and offering comments on the script. This is listed on IMDB under Theatre 625 which was an ongoing series of BBC dramatic productions in which it was included. BFI has a copy of this adaptation which is available to view at several of its “Mediatheque” locations in the UK. There was also an adaptation of Waugh’s 1936 story “Winner Take All”, written by Peter Nichols and broadcast on 26 November 1968 as part of a BBC series of 14 independent dramas called The Jazz Age, which is where IMDB has it filed. And in 1972 there was a series of seven 30-minute episodes of Scoop. This was adapted by Barry Took, best known for his collaboration with Marty Feldman on the radio series Round the Horne. It broadcast on the BBC between 8 October and 19 November 1972, and the reviews in the Spectator and The Times were between negative and hesitant. IMDB comments that this one has apparently been lost, so it was presumably wiped.

During this same “post-Waugh/pre-Brideshead” period, London Weekend Television produced a one-off  53-minute adaptation of Waugh’s 1935 story “Mr Loveday’s Little Outing.” This was written by Willis Hall and directed by Donald McWhinnie (who also directed the BBC’s earlier Sword of Honour). It was broadcast on 1 June 1973 by ITV as part of a series of dramas called Between the Wars. There were also two film adaptations of Waugh’s works in this period: The Loved One (1965) and Decline and Fall (entitled Decline and Fall… of a Birdwatcher) in 1968, about both of which the less said, the better.

 

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Duncan McLaren in Grahamland

Posted on May 14, 2018 by Jeffrey Manley

Duncan McLaren has added a new essay to his website. This is entitled “Evelyn Concluded or Ask Alastair” and is devoted exclusively to Alastair Graham and his on and off relationship with Evelyn Waugh in the 1920s and a bit of the 1930s. He uses effectively what little archival information is available about the elusive Alastair, relying heavily on Duncan Fallowell’s book How to Disappear and adding information and photos from a book by David N Thomas about Dylan Thomas’s life in New Quay.

As usual, McLaren adds comments from his previous writings and observations from his on-the-ground research in the locations he describes. In this case, he makes an extended visit to New Quay (where Graham lived out his final years in seclusion) and describes the setting as it exists today, illustrated with helpful and detailed photographs. He also offers discussions about Graham’s sister Jane, who may have contributed to the character of Cordelia in Brideshead, as well as his relations with poet Ewan Morgan (later Viscount Tredegar).

This is probably as close as we will ever get to a biography of Alastair Graham. It makes interesting and enjoyable reading for Waugh fans and may well encourage those newly introduced to McLaren’s work to spend a wet weekend going back over the other essays he has posted, as well as his book Evelyn!

While McLaren suggests this essay is “rounding out” his work, at least for the moment, one hopes that it will soon resume. It seems unlikely that he will be able to avoid having his curiosity pricked by some bit of Waviana others have overlooked or underestimated and take the time and effort to set matters straight. We look forward to the next installment.

UPDATE (17 June 2018): Duncan McLaren advises that the repair work on his website has been completed. The link to the site is now available at: http://evelynwaugh.org.uk/styled-68/index.html.

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Waugh and Fake News

Posted on May 13, 2018 by Jeffrey Manley

The Mexican newspaper Milenio, which is published in several editions in all the major Mexican cities, has printed a feature length article on Evelyn Waugh. This is by Danubio Torres Fierro and is entitled “Las fake news segĂșn Evelyn Waugh” (“Fake News According to Evelyn Waugh”). It appears in the newspaper’s weekly magazine, Laberinto (Labyrinth).

The article opens with a reference to Waugh’s 1939 essay “Well-Informed Circles–and How to Move in Them.” In this, according to Torres Fierro, Waugh spelled out the motivations and mechanics for the production of what is effectively fake news by journalists and others. After quoting several passages from Waugh’s essay, Torres Fierro

…comes to what matters in this article. It is not at all surprising that Waugh attacked with viciousness (and sarcasm) what he understood to be an unedefying and harmful act; often he himself put it to practice as a journalist, but above all always raised to the rank of a true writer, Waugh was mandated by supreme shelter in irony, and with it and from it to dedicate himself to not leave a puppet with a head [titere con cabeza] and liquidate the commonplace hypocrites.

Waugh’s article first appeared in Harper’s Bazaar (London) in January 1939 and later that year in Vogue (New York). It is collected in Essays, Articles, and Reviews (p. 241). Torres Fierro gives the original publication date as 1956.

The second half of the article is devoted to what is effectively a review of Philip Eade’s recent biography of Waugh. This is not a Spanish translation but the US edition of the book. What Torres Fierro seems to find most fascinating is Waugh’s correspondence, as quoted in the biography. He cites several letters to other writers such as Nancy Mitford and Graham Greene. He describes Eade’s book as revealing

a real life…as it unfolds and grows, incorporates, registers and distorts the characters that were part of the environment of the creator and inhabited the landscape that framed it.

The review seems to be a favorable one (although not entirely accurate since he sees in it “three marriages and a long progeny”). It closes with some thoughts on what George Orwell might have written in his projected essay on Waugh and the impact of Waugh’s conversion to Catholicism on his political beliefs. Although full of opinionated enthusiasm for Waugh’s life and work, it is somewhat disappointing that Torres Fierro did not apply some of that to a brief consideration of Waugh’s book on Mexico, Robbery Under Law, which was written at about the same time as the essay “Well-Informed Circles” with which the article opens. This may be down to the fact that Eade’s biography spends only about 2 pages on that book.

The paper also prints Spanish translations of two letters of Waugh,  separately and without apparent comment, although this must be connected to the main article. One is an October 1961 latter to the editor of The Times about the issue of indexes in novels, and the other is a July 1947 letter to the editor of an Irish religious journal defending his Catholicism. Both are included in the collected Letters (1980).

The translation is by Google and is not, in this case, as good as it should be. But this may be due to some extent to the difficulty of conveying the vigorous and idiosyncratic style of the original Spanish into English.

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Patrick Leigh Fermor Enters the Canon

Posted on May 12, 2018 by Jeffrey Manley

Dominic Green, writing in the Weekly Standard, discusses the career of Patrick Leigh Fermor. The article prominently features serveral points of contact with Evelyn Waugh, not least their service in WWII Crete (Waugh’s in retreat, Leigh Fermor’s in heroism) and their sharing of friendship and correspondence with Diana Cooper and Ann Fleming (and, he might have mentioned, Nancy Mitford). Green also subtly raises Leigh Fermor into the literary canon of 20c English literature by comparing his career with those of Waugh and Wodehouse:

How many English literary writers from the early 20th century remain genuinely popular? Wodehouse and Waugh, certainly. Maugham, though, is almost forgotten, and Conrad is more respected than read. Leigh Fermor produced six full-length books in his 96 years. … Though relatively small, this output suffices to confirm Leigh Fermor as the 20th century’s finest exponent of a genre that the English invented: travel writing. … When Wodehouse (born 1881) was confronted with the enormities of World War II, he persisted with his Edwardian fantasies and got himself into trouble accordingly. To Waugh (born 1903), the Nazi-Soviet Pact revealed the enemy “plain in view, huge and hateful, all disguise cast off . . . the Modern Age in arms.” When the Soviet Union changed from enemy to ally, Waugh knew that, one way or another, the Modern Age would win. Leigh Fermor was born in 1915. The precocious literary pedestrian was formed by a war that he did not expect to survive.

When Wodehouse was 23 years old, he wrote The Gold Bat (1904), a novel of boarding school pranks involving a miniature cricket bat. When Waugh was 23, he wrote “The Balance” (1926), an experimental story written as a film scenario. When Leigh Fermor was 25, in 1940, he trained as an Irish Guards officer, transferred to the Intelligence Corps, and sailed for Greece. “I had read somewhere that the average life of an infantry officer in the First World War was eight weeks, and I had no reason to think that the odds would be much better in the Second. So I thought I might as well die in a nice uniform.” By the time he was able to get out alive from the war, get out of uniform, and, his derring done, set out again from Britain and return to Greece, he was 31 years old.

Other points of contact between Waugh and Leigh Fermor include their marriages to women above their own class, their desire to be accepted by the upper classes through the exertion of their charm, and their choice of a writing venue in a small Chagford, Devon hotel. Some of these come together in this passage:

In 1944, when Leigh Fermor was in the Amari Valley, Evelyn Waugh, a veteran of the earlier Battle of Crete, retired to Chagford to write Brideshead Revisited. “I took you out to dinner to warn you of charm,” Waugh’s aesthete Anthony Blanche tells his social-climbing protagonist, Charles Ryder. “I warned you expressly and in great detail of the Flyte family. Charm is the great English blight. It does not exist outside of these damp islands. It spots and kills anything it touches. It kills love; it kills art; I greatly fear, my dear Charles, it has killed you.”

Green’s article goes on to explain that Leigh Fermor’s life and works have inspired the formation of the Patrick Leigh Fermor Society, and he files his report from their recent visit to Crete where they explored several sites of their namesake’s exploits during the war. He also discusses the publication of several posthumous works of Leigh Fermor including collected letters, memoirs and, not least, the final volume of the travel trilogy as well as a current exhibition at the British Museum featuring Leigh Fermor’s life in Greece and interaction there with two painters. The article concludes with this:

The further World War II recedes in time, the sharper the edges of its essential contours become. Patrick Leigh Fermor’s books and letters are strung across time’s abyss, skeins that still connect the English to themselves even as the rope runs out. He was one of the last Englishmen. This, and not his esoteric reworking of Greek Modernism, is what explains Leigh Fermor’s posthumous growth from popularity to eminence, from heroism to myth. …

Another unrelated report in the Powells Books weblog contains an interview of Christopher Buckley, novelist, essayist and son of William F Buckley. One of the questions evokes a passage just quoted by Green:

Offer a favorite sentence from another writer.
From memory, therefore perhaps not 100% accurate:

“I tried to warn you about English charm that night at Thame. It destroys everything. It destroys art. It destroys love. And now, my dear Charles, I g-greatly f-fear that it has destroyed you.” — Anthony Blanche to Charles Ryder in Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited

And this was followed by another:

My Top Five Books
Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited. I reread it at least once a year. Waugh himself said later in life that he thought it flawed (over-rich, over-ripe), but it never fails to pull me into its spell of golden, doomed youth. And the language is just caviar.

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Roundup: Eating with Waugh

Posted on May 11, 2018 by Jeffrey Manley

The Daily Telegraph has a profile of the London fish restaurant Wilton’s on Jermyn Street in St James’s. It is to fish what Rules is to meat, and Waugh is associated with both of them. According to the Telegraph:

The St James’s restaurant, one of the oldest in London, will mark recently turning 275 with a commemorative plaque unveiled by Sir Nicholas Soames on May 10. Like many politicians, Sir Nicholas has been coming to Wiltons for years – “it must be 50 now,” he says – and like many regulars, including the royal ones, it was a taste he inherited. It was a “natural home from home” for his grandfather, Sir Winston Churchill, “an oyster specialist and a huge fan of champagne.”… The private club feel was certainly appreciated by Princess Diana, who often lunched there, as did Lord Carrington, Henry Kissinger and Evelyn Waugh. … There’s nowhere else like it, says Sir Nicholas. “Claridges and the Connaught both got rid of wonderful restaurants over the years but Wiltons has resisted every idiot whim to change or allow the quality to slip, which is very reassuring for people like me who have been coming for years.”

Another London restaurant with a Waugh association is Bellamy’s in Mayfair. According to Architectural Digest this Mayfair restautant is one of 6 chosen by the Queen when she eats out:

In 2004, three Annabel’s alumni established this French brasserie (which was named for the club in Evelyn Waugh’s Sword of Honour books). The Queen discovered Bellamy’s in 2006—and she has, since, returned for the caviar and the smoked-eel mousse.

The Independent has an article about the Open Syllabus Project that accumulates data on assigned texts from college syllabuses throughout the English-speaking world. It was this data base which produced the recent gaffe in a Time magazine article misidentifying Evelyn Waugh as a female novelist. According to the Independent:

The Open Syllabus team point to Time magazine’s mistake in adding Evelyn Waugh to its list of the “100 Most-Read Female Writers in College Classes” as perhaps the result of the author of Decline and Fall being “one of the losers in literature canon change, and that as a result very few people under 40 have read him or, accordingly, been corrected on his gender during college”.

Finally, a reference to Waugh opens an article by John Broening in the New English Review about John Jeremiah Sullivan, described as a “gifted disciple” of novelist David Foster Wallace:

Can you create a work of art with little or no empathy? That’s easy. The answer is yes. The novels of Evelyn Waugh come to mind, in which there are few likeable or even vaguely sympathetic characters, in which death is a farce, filial love is an illusion, and romances are transactional unions between two dim, inattentive, and narcissistic people…To turn the question around, is there such a thing as an excess of empathy, and can it be a hindrance to the creation of a work of art? The writings of the journalist and essayist John Jeremiah Sullivan beg the question.

Most of the essay (entitled “The Empathist”) is devoted to Sullivan’s writings about Wallace as well as musicians Axl Rose and Michael Jackson.  
 
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Brideshead Published in Croatian

Posted on May 10, 2018 by Jeffrey Manley

Brideshead Revisited has been published in a Croatian translation. This is entitled Povratak u Brideshead and is issued by Mozaik Books. The book is translated by Petra MrduljaĆĄ, and the editor is Zoran Maljković. According to the publisher, this is the fifth of Waugh’s books to be published in Croatian, following each volume of the Sword of Honour trilogy and The Loved One. The book is reviewed in the Zagreb newspaper Večernji List (5 May 2018) as reposted on PressReader.com. The review is entitled: “Roman o bolnim socijalnim razlikama, nepravdi, ali i neispunjenim ljubavnim čeĆŸnjama” [A novel about painful social differences, injustices, but also unfulfilled love affairs].

The reposted review (which is unsigned and confusingly combined with an interview relating to the training of opera singers) mentions that Waugh is of more than average interest to Croatian readers because of his WWII experience in Yugoslavia. It also mentions in particular “Waugh’s visit to Tito’s staff with Randolph Churchill at the end of the Second World War, leaving behind interesting testimonials …” They might also have mentioned that Waugh made substantial changes to the text of Brideshead while stationed in Yugoslavia. Indeed, Winston Churchill intervened to facilitate the transport of the galley proofs to Waugh at his remote outpost in Topusko in late 1944.

The Google translation of the article is in this instance of low quality but provides what appears to be an accurate summary of the plot and description of the characters. Here’s the somewhat ambitious explanation of what the book is about:

What does Waugh actually write about in “Return to Brideshead”? Well, about a British society that has seen numerous … changes between the First and Second World War. About the cracks that appear in imperial puritanism [sic]. About the position of the Catholic minority in Protestant England. Of course, the position of other minorities, including those of sexuality. About the final collapse of a semi-feudal social order before the onslaught of liberal capitalism. About democratization of art and aesthetics. About people who can not escape their own accident [“vlastite nesreće”], and then from their own identity. About the position of women in a society that at least at first glance is very patriarchal, but that patriarchality is … on fragile feet. About alcoholism and dizziness. About human fidelity and the beauty of friendship.

The translation of this passage by Google has been slightly edited.

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Piers Court for Sale

Posted on May 9, 2018 by Jeffrey Manley

Waugh’s country house in Gloucestershire has been listed for sale according to Country Life magazine. The listing agent is Knight, Frank and the asking price is £3 million. The article by Penny Churchill explains that the current owners, who have lived there since 2010, have substantially made over the house’s interior. Several detailed photos illustrate the results of these efforts. The one of a large bathroom is particularly over the top:

Certainly its present owners – who bought Piers Court in 2010 – have done much to enhance a house described by Pevsner as ‘dignified and elegant’, which, behind its classical 18th-century façade, caters for both formal entertaining and informal family living. The standard of fixtures and fittings is really something – as a picture of one of the bathrooms demonstrates. The genial, pleasantly rambling family house has some 8,400sq ft of accommodation, including five reception rooms. There is also a kitchen/breakfast room with a beautiful beamed ceiling, tiled floor and lovely rustic feel. Upstairs there are eight bedrooms and six bathrooms … plus extensive attics and a one-bedroom staff wing. Approached down a long drive lined with high beech hedges, Piers Court nestles in some 23 acres of gardens, parkland and pasture, with distant views over its land to the Welsh Hills and the Forest of Dean. Within the grounds are several outbuildings, including a mews and a Queen Anne coach house.

There are also several other photos accompanying the article including one of the library, hardly recognizable as such in its current incarnation. The article goes on to explain that Waugh wrote Brideshead Revisited as well as Men at Arms and Officers and Gentlemen while living in the house. It is not clear whether this information comes from the estate agents or the magazine, but it is incorrect as to Brideshead. The Waughs let the house to a convent school in October 1939 and returned only in September 1945. Brideshead was written in 1944 and published in May 1945. The books written while in residence at Piers Court would include Robbery Under Law, The Loved One, Helena, and The Ordeal of Gilbert Pinfold as well as the other two mentioned in the article. The book most closely associated with the house would be Pinfold since it describes a narrator who lived in such a house as well as hallucinations which took place there and involved some of the neighbors.

Another house associated with Evelyn Waugh is Plas Dulas in North Wales. This is located in Llanddulas where Waugh taught at the Arnold House school immortalized in Decline and Fall as Llanabba Castle. This is one of several historic buildings in North Wales described in the Daily Post  (Wales) that are threatened with destruction and for which restoration funds are being sought. This was the country home of Prof. R M Dawkins of Oxford, known to Waugh through the Hypocrites Club. In the unfinished second volume of his autobiography, A Little Hope, Waugh wrote:

…He had for a time provided an aegis for the Hypocrites Club. I had not known him well. Now, when he came home for the long vacation, he appeared as a rescuer sent to me in the desert from that green country. Professor Dawkins was a man of almost boundless tolerance but he did not take to Captain Grimes. To me and another young master he offered open-handed tolerance & companionship (CWEW, vol. 19, p. 487; see also Diaries, p. 213).

UPDATE (11 May 2018): The Times has a story about the sale of Piers Court in today’s edition. This in the “House of the Week” column by Anna Temkin. It adds some interesting details but also gets it wrong about the venue for composition of Brideshead:

Some of Evelyn Waugh’s most famous works, including Brideshead Revisited, were written in Piers Court. The Georgian mansion near Stinchcombe, Gloucestershire, was given to Waugh in 1937 by the family of his second wife, Laura, and the couple lived there until 1956. Their son, Auberon, later recalled in his book, Will This Do?, how he and his siblings knew “the front of the house belonged strictly to my father . . . one detected his presence as soon as we walked into the pretty hall, with its white and black stone floor and glass chandelier”.      [… ] Nikolaus Pevsner’s description of Piers Court as “a dignified and elegant house” still holds true. It has been grade II* listed since 1952. According to its Historic England citation, it dates primarily from the 18th century, but incorporates an earlier house that was on the site in the 16th century. Its present owners, who have lived there for the past ten years, have restored the 18th-century façade and updated its interiors. The grounds extend to 23 acres; the gardens, created by Waugh, feature gravelled walkways and ornamental fountains, along with a croquet lawn and tennis court.

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U and Non-U (more)

Posted on May 7, 2018 by Jeffrey Manley

The U and Non-U debate continues in the pages of the TLS. The latest batch of comments centers on the proper salutation before having a drink. A letter takes issue with the Non-U status imposed on “Cheers” by Nancy Mitford, which may be acceptable in U circles if pronounced “Chars.” Similarly, in the N.B. column, “Bottoms up” and “Chin-chin” may be U-ish “if accompanied by an ironic smile.” The discussion concluded (for this week at least) with this:

Martin Murphy cites Men at Arms by Evelyn Waugh: “‘Here’s how,’ said Major Tickeridge, downing his pink gin…’Here’s how,’ said Mr Crouchback with complete serenity. But Guy could only manage an embarrassed grunt”.

There’s always “Here’s to you” or–again with a familiar wink–“Here’s lookin’ at you. Another reader suggests “Good health”. On which none can improve.

Thanks to Peggy Troupin for keeping us updated.

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Put Out More Flags Reconsidered

Posted on May 4, 2018 by Jeffrey Manley

John Rossi, Professor of History at La Salle University cites Put Out More Flags as underrated, while nevertheless being considered by some as the best novel of WWII. This is in the latest issue of the American Conservative Magazine. Rossi describes the novel as:

 …a seminal work in the transformation of Waugh from the author of savage satires about the “Bright Young Things” of the late 1920s and early 30s like Decline and Fall, Vile Bodies, Black Mischief, and Scoop, to the more sober novelist of the postwar crisis of faith. It’s filled with the characters who once trotted mindlessly through those books, the “wealthy ill-mannered louts whose action left havoc in their wake,” men like Basil Seal, Peter Pastmaster, Alastair Digby Vane Trumpington, “Bright Young Things” all. It is also the novel that foreshadows the more serious postwar world of Charles Ryder in Brideshead Revisited and Guy Crouchback in Sword of Honor. As such, Put OutMore Flags is worth a second look.

He goes on to discuss in greater detail the development of many of the characters from the  the early novels into more mature individuals in the early days of the war. He focuses particularly on the women in the novel;

Basil’s batty sister Barbara; his lover Angela Lyne; and Sonia Trumpington, Alaistair’s wife, all in Waugh’s phrase part of the “wreckage of the roaring twenties.” They all are sketched affectionately and with warmth; no longer the brainless females of his earlier novels, they are key figures whom Basil’s, Peter’s, and Alastair’s lives revolve around.

He also discusses the novel’s context and its publication at a crucial point of the war. There are discussions about the major characters and how they evolved from the earlier novels. And he notes Waugh’s references to other literary figures of the day in characters such as Parsnip and Pimpernell. The essay is well written and contains several original insights. It has already been cited and recommended in the Prufrock column of the Weekly Standard magazine.

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