The latest issue of the society’s journal Evelyn Waugh Studies has been posted. This is Volume 53.2 (Autumn 2022) and features a review of the recent book by David Fleming entitled Hellfire: Evelyn Waugh and the Hypocrites Club.  This is published by The History Press and is for sale in the UK. Amazon.co.uk will also ship the print version to North America. A link to this edition of the EWS is available here.
–The German-language paper Der Standart based in Austria has posted an article about Waugh’s book collecting. This is mostly devoted to a book previously discussed. Here is a translation of the text:
You may know the British novelist Evelyn Waugh (1903-1966) as the author of the novel Brideshead Revisited, Memoirs of Captain Charles Ryder ,  or through the 2008 film adaptation starring Emma Thompson. But Waugh was not only a novelist, he was also avid collector with a fondness for Victorian decorative objects and furniture. Glass showcases with fossils, butterflies stretched out with needles, even a stuffed monkey were part of the inventory of his domicile.
In later years he turned increasingly to collecting books, his estate comprised around 3,500 volumes. The books were taken over by the Harry Ransom Center in Austin, Texas after his death.
Upon perusing the collection, one book that was made entirely of oddly spooky collages immediately stood out. Entitled “Durenstein”, it contains 45 collages designed by John Bingley Garland. Because blood plays a major role in many of these illustrations, the book was soon dubbed the “Victorian Blood Book”.
John Bingley Garland (1791 to 1875) was a distinguished English merchant and politician. He spent a few years in Newfoundland and then returned to England, where he ran the family business – trading fish – until his death.
Owned by Evelyn Waugh and designed by Garland, the book is a stunning collection of collaged images that arguably grew out of the Victorian love of decoupage. Garland was thus a forerunner of Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso, who around 1910 invented the new art form of collage from newspaper clippings, wallpaper and other materials.
For his paintings, Garland used reproductions of European masterpieces, especially religious art, as well as colourful, cheaply produced prints of fruit, flowers, insects, snakes and birds, which he meticulously cut out and processed into these amazing, visionary collages. The space between the images is filled with tiny handwritten writing, the words seem like a choppy sermon:  “One! yet has larger bounties! to bestow! Joys! Powers! untasted! In a World like this, Powers!”   In addition, there are inscriptions of religious texts, Egyptian hieroglyphs, representations of ruins and of course the characteristic drops of blood.
The book’s reputation rests on these crimson drops in red ink hanging from many of the pictorial elements. Blood drips from grape plates and tree branches, statues and skeletons. Blood runs down from crosses, angels dangle from bloody sashes. A bouquet of white chrysanthemums is sprinkled. Today this orgy of red color is interpreted as the blood of Christ.
The Blood Book of Waugh bears an inscription by John Bingley Garland to his daughter Amy, dated September 1, 1854: “A legacy left in his lifetime for her future examination by her affectionate father.”). The album was probably intended as a wedding present.
A small reference to Austria is not missing either: the first page of the book contains a table of contents with the heading “Durenstein!”, a reference to DĂŒrnstein, the Lower Austrian castle where Richard the Lionheart, returning from the Third Crusade, was imprisoned. The subject of some panels is the struggles that Christians have to endure on the way to salvation.
The article is also illustrated with several pages from the book and is available at this link.
–Geoffrey Wheatcroft in the London Review of Books has an extended and detailed review of all three volumes of “Chips” Channon’s complete diaries. Here’s an excerpt in which Evelyn Waugh is quoted on Channon’s marital life:
…Two years after their wedding, the Channonsâ only child, Paul, was born, but eighteen months later âwe broke off conjugal relations, never in our case particularly successful.â By then Honor was increasingly absent on supposed skiing holidays â one of them in July â and Channon eventually realised that she was having an affair with a skiing instructor, then another with a Hungarian nobleman. Finally she left him, and went off with âa dark horse-coper named Woodmanâ. Evelyn Waugh heard a fictional echo â âLady Chatterley in every detailâ â although Channon thought it more Far from the Madding Crowd: âShe is Bathsheba, Sergeant Frank Troy, Mr Woodman.â…
Where the quote is taken from or in what context is not revealed. It seems to come from a letter to Randolph Churchill in September 1941: “Honor [Guinness] has left Chips [Channon] for the bailiff–like Lady Chatterley in every respect.” Letters, p. 154. Nor is it clear whether the credit for finding it goes to Mr Wheatcroft or Simon Heffer, the editor.
–An article entitled “The Game of Laughter” by Simon Evans appears in The Critic. This considers whether comedy (or at the least stand-up variety) should be considered an art form:
What, apart from its survival, is it that defines art? Art is that which is either âcollectedâ â financialised, by scoundrels â or requires a subsidy. Sometimes both. The artier it is, the heartier the portion of the publicâs largesse it demands â with, I imagine, Wagnerâs vision of Opera as the supreme art well endorsed by this reckoning.
Not comedy. Not stand-up. Among its proudest boasts, in my book, has been comedyâs refusal to attempt to pry a penny of the taxpayers hard-earned to fortify its precarious presence on the stage. No furlough for us.
Not that all entertainment has such a short half-life of course, of course. Some entertainment survives its creator. Graham Greene notoriously divided his work into novels (art) and entertainments. No prize for guessing which now seem the most datedly â miserably contorted by Greeneâs sterile struggles with his faith â and which played more productively with the foibles of human nature and the quirks of fate. Much the same could be said of Evelyn Waughâs early, light-touch genius in Scoop and Vile Bodies not being much improved by the introduction of âbigger themesâ in the Sword of Honour trilogy.
–Paul Perry, in the Independent (Ireland), reviews a new biography of American novelist Norman Mailer to be issued later this month. This is entitled Tough Guy and is written by Richard Bradford. The review opens with this:
Evelyn Waugh has one of the most prescient summations of Norman Mailer in Richard Bradford’s compellingly readable and engrossing new biography of the US writer, which is due out this week in advance of the centenary of Mailer’s birth.
It is 1966 [sic], and Mailer has yet to win his two Pulitzer Prizes, for The Armies of the Night (1969) and for The Executioner’s Song (1980), but he has courted success and fame with his debut The Naked and The Dead (1948), a novel which recounts his experiences as a rifleman in World War II.
Mailer is in England with his latest lover, Jeanne Campbell, and they are at the Somerset country house of Janet Kidd for a ball. The ball is preceded by a gymkhana. Waugh describes the event in a letter to a friend. He reports how a horse “bit an American pornographer who tried to give it vodka”. Waugh goes on to describe Mailer as a “swarthy gangster straight out of a mad house where he had been sent after his attempt to cut his wife’s throat”.
It may seem like outrageous hyperbole, but Bradford own’s description of Mailer as a character straight out of a Hemingway novel is accurate. Mailer famously head butts Gore Vidal before one television appearance and is lucky to have got away with stabbing his wife.
Here’s a quote from the letter which was sent to Ann Fleming on 23 September [1961], not 1966, by which time Waugh would have been dead for several months:
He might have stepped straight from your salon–a swarthy gangster just out of a madhouse where he had been sent after the attempt to cut his wife’s throat. It is his first tour to England. His tour is Janet Kidd, Randolph, Ian Argyll. He will be able to write a revealing pornogram of English life. Letters (pp. 572-3)
From the context it appears that Jeanne Campbell brought Mailer to Combe Florey to visit Waugh. The editor of the Letters (Mark Amory) apparently gave Mailer a chance to respond. Mailer commented (n. 7). “The horse did bite me but I was not feeding him vodka, just patting his nose…I did not cut my wife’s throat…Jean Campbell asked me what I thought of him [Waugh] and I said ‘Lots of fun. Much sweeter than I expected.'” This would probably have been in the late 1970s.
Premium
–The American print media have finally discovered the news about the sale of Piers Court. A brief article appears in the New Yorker entitled “For Sale: Evelyn Waughâs Manor House, 8 BR/24 Acres/1 Waugh-Obsessed Tenant”. This begins with a summary of the reports on the auction of the house still occupied by uncooperative tenants. The reporter Parker Harvey was apparently sufficiently interested to make a post-auction recon of Dursley and the premises. The article concludes with the report of that effort:
Among residents of DursleyâJ. K. Rowling named Harry Potterâs odious adoptive family after the townâimpressions of the tenants are mixed. âThey are going through an absolute poo-fest,â a local shopkeeper said. âThey are absolutely lovely people. Helen is great for a good chat.â A waitress said that Lawton had asked her to work as staff at one of her parties: âShe told me sheâs a real party animal.â She added, âThey hang around with, like, rich people, not the likes of me.â
What of the tenants? Had they pulled a Harry and Meghan and left town? Or were they still defiantly partying? The gates to Piers Court, which are in mild decay, were open on a recent day. A long driveway led to a house of almost comic grandeur. Madi [one of the tenants] answered the door dressed all in gray. Lawton [the other tenant] remained upstairs. Boo [their dog] was nowhere to be seen. âWe are extremely private people and do not like the media attention,â Madi said. âWe are caught up in our friendâs problems. And it is a real bummer. The news makes it out like we only pay two hundred and fifty pounds per year. But the garden alone costs a hundred thousand pounds a year to maintain, which, believe me, we are paying!â He went on to complain about the plumbing.
Piers Courts is where Waugh lived when he wrote âBrideshead Revisited,â a novel about nostalgia for the golden age of the English aristocracy. [sic]Â Madi said he hadnât read it: âI am not a literary person.â
The house technically already had new ownersâan anonymous bidder had paid 3.1 million pounds. Madi vowed to stay. âAlthough theoretically the house has been auctioned, we think it is reversible,â he said. âIf the sale goes through, the new owners will get an order to evict us.â He gave a thumbs-up and smiled: âWeâre fighters!â
–Another Waugh venue also recently got some press coverage. CondĂ© Nast Traveller has an article entitled “5 secret, pretty places to visit in Somerset.” Here is the entry for number 2:
Combe Florey
Combe Florey, one of the most quintessentially pretty and bucolic places to visit in Somerset, had a brief period of infamy in the early 19th century due to the behaviour of the resident cleric Sydney Smith.
Known to be âthe greatest master of ridicule since Jonathan Swiftâ according to Thomas Babington Macaulay (author of the masterful History Of England From The Ascension of James II), Smith was a passionate social reformer and critic of slavery, poaching and even the Church itself; he referred to Anglican bishops as being ânot always the wisest of men; not always preferred for eminent virtues and talents, nor for any good reason known to the public.â
His majestic invective may have been a reason why Evelyn Waugh chose to live here though the Brideshead Revisited author may also have been attracted to the local pinkish-red sandstone from which almost every house in Combe Florey is constructed.
I don’t recall Waugh ever mentioning Sydney Smith’s connection to Combe Florey although it is noted on signage in the local Anglican church where Smith served. Given his religious preferences, Waugh is unlikely to have ever encountered that message.
–Alec Russell, editor of FT Weekend and former foreign correspondent for that paper, was recently interviewed by Oxford Blue. Here’s one of the Q&A’s:
What has been your biggest scoop?
âThe biggest story I covered was the siege of Dubrovnik in the Yugoslav wars of the early 90s. I was trapped in the coastal city for nearly a month when it was under bombardment. Apparently my front page stories were read out to the furious generals of the Yugoslav forces who were laying siege.
My biggest scoop at the FT was a story of how China was making a massive investment in South Africa. I stumbled on the story rather like the character William Boot in Evelyn Waughâs Scoop. I was reminded that even when times are quiet you should keep talking to people.â
—The Article prints a long review by literary biographer Jeffrey Meyers of the recent collected letters of John Le CarrĂ©. This mostly recounts his own correspondence with Le CarrĂ© over the years about Meyers’ proposal to write Le CarrĂ©’s biography. The on and off scheme went through several iterations which are amusingly recounted by Meyers. Graham Greene comes into the discussions and Waugh gets a brief mention in connection with Meyers’ biography pf George Orwell:
…I asked him what George Orwell meant to him as a writer and included his perceptive response in my biography, published in 2000. On September 27, 1998, [Le CarrĂ©] observed that Orwellâs life and works were fused into a noble ideal:
“Orwell meant and means a great deal to me. . . . Burmese Days still stands as a splendid cameo of colonial corruption. Orwellâs commitment to the hard life is a lesson to all of us. I taught at Eton. It always amused me that Blair-Orwell, who had been to Eton, took great pains to disown the place, while Evelyn Waugh, who hadnât been to Eton, took similar pains to pretend he had. Orwellâs hatred of greed, cant and the âmeâ society is as much needed today as it was in his own timeâprobably more so. He remains an ideal for meâof clarity, anger and perfectly aimed irony.”…
Le Carre’s remarks about Waugh’s school envy are somewhat ironic since it was Sherborne, not Eton that Waugh was most immediately sorry to have not attended. Le CarrĂ© himself was a student at Sherborne, and his biography by Adam Sisman recounts some of the adventures he had there when his father’s shady financial schemes sometimes interfered with his ability to pay the school fees.
—The Article also has a discussion by David Herman of the trend toward self publication of books that are well worth reading. Here’s one mentioned in previous postings:
Some of the best books I have read in the last couple of years have been self-published. Perhaps the most interesting thing about this is the range of subjects, from 1920s Oxford to Jewish refugees during the Second World War… David Fleming has just published his first book, Hellfire: Evelyn Waugh and the Hypocrites Club (The History Press, 2022), a fascinating and well-told account of an extraordinary group of figures in interwar Oxford, including Waugh, Anthony Powell and the political journalist Claud Cockburn.
The book will be reviewed in an upcoming issue of Evelyn Waugh Studies.
–Discussions of Waugh’s taste in clothing have appeared in two recent blogs. One relates to tweed suits, something Waugh obviously admired and inadvertently promoted. Here is an excerpt from the “Grey Fox” website:
The Italian word ‘sprezzatura’ perfectly describes that rather dishevelled but Oh-so-English look of a well-used tweed suit, as worn with such aplomb by so many men in the early half of the twentieth century. I came across the image … of author Evelyn Waugh which perfectly illustrates that casual, crumpled and unselfconscious English style. How can we emulate that comfortable tweedy appearance today?
Waugh [preferred] a heavyweight tweed (they would normally have been fairly robust cloth in those days) in a shepherd check. As is normal with a well-worn-in tweed, it looks as comfortable as an old jumper and pair of jeans might be to us today. Men were used to wearing tailoring in those days, and Waugh would have thought nothing of throwing himself down on the sofa for a post-prandial nap fully clothed in his three-piece.
It’s this slightly disordered but so natural and unforced look, the result of wearing a suit day in and day out, that’s often admired in the English (or more strictly British) man of that era. Sadly today’s man has largely abandoned tailoring in favour of casual wear or that mix of leisure and sports wear, ‘at leisure’, that, while possibly easy to wear, lacks elegance or style.
The art of wearing tailoring for relaxation has been lost and today it’s felt that sloppy and shapeless is necessary for easy wear. Evelyn Waugh shows us that this is a mistaken view. Tweed is a casual cloth, designed originally for easy movement outdoors, retaining its shape and protecting the wearer from the elements. A good quality cloth is soft, robust and lightweight, moulding readily to the body. Its forgiving nature means that it doesn’t need to be treated with care, like a flannel business suit.
Worn well the tweed suit combines effortless style with comfort. Let’s buy more tweed suits (I suggest some sources of new and vintage tweeds below).
There are two photos of Waugh in full tweed kit posted with the article at this link. The print of a drawing by Neale Osborne of Waugh in a tweed suit is available at this site and is worth a look in any event.
–The other fashion note relates to the “black turtleneck” and appears in the weblog “Brooklyn Muse.”
Fashion, Fabric, and Culture have impacted societies across the globe. The simple Black Turtleneck sweater has been a staple in American closets since the late 19th century. It was initially developed for British polo players (polo neck) and worn by sailors, laborers and soldiers.
Many iconic individuals have been closely connected with this ebony sweater of distinction. [,,,] During his so-called â Electric Periodâ of 1965-1966 Bob Dylan was rarely seen without this iconic fashion piece. In that same decade, Andy Warhol adopted The Black Turtleneck as his personal signature piece. He paired it with funky shades and a wild floppy wig. This was known to be quite an effective artistic makeover as Warhol previously was known to don preppy suits and ties.
[…]
By the 20th century, European Bohemians were seeing the garment’s elegance and took it to a new functional, everyday wear design. British playwright Noel Coward wore one regularly through the 1920s. It became known as his trademark piece and he attributed that element to comfort alone and a disdain for the conventional shirt and tie. This trend caught on quickly. The garment took on a sort of rebellious nature for the naked bodies it covered. Writer Evelyn Waugh commented that The Black Turtleneck was believed to be âmost convenient for lechery because it dispenses with all unromantic gadgets like studs and ties.â
–The Daily Telegraph in an article reviewing the various turbocharged cars produced by the Bentley motorcar company describes the 2005 launch of the Flying Spur model
…in Venice of all places. As Evelyn Waugh once telegraphed ‘Streets full of water, please advise.’
No source is given, but its sounds as if it might come from Scoop. I can’t recall whether William Boot passed through Venice to or from Africa. Or it may be some one’s version of what Boot would have written had he passed thru Venice.
–The Hong Kong paper South China Morning Post has an article about how the city-state has modernized its funeral observations. Here is the opening:
Happy Valleyâs historic Colonial Cemetery chapel, built in 1845 â Hong Kongâs oldest surviving British-era structure â contains a little-noticed relic that recalls the buildingâs original function.
An anteroom where the coffin was kept overnight, before early morning committal ceremonies, has heavy metal mesh ventilation grates set into the walls below the windows. Constant cross-draughts through the room â even when otherwise closed up â helped slow the corpseâs decay in hot weather; a practical reminder of earlier times.
The American funeral industryâs consumerist excesses â in particular, elaborate embalming techniques â all wonderfully eviscerated in Evelyn Waughâs novel The Loved One (1948) and Jessica Mitfordâs satirical, journalistic exposĂ©Â The American Way of Death (1963), did not reach Hong Kong until recent decades.
–Simon May writing in the Catholic Herald considers the representation of religious themes in the works of PG Wodehouse. Here’s the opening:
A charming 1930 short story by PG Wodehouse, âJeeves and the Yuletide Spiritâ, contains much traditional English Christmas atmosphere. âIt being Christmas Eve,â says Bertie Wooster, âthere was, as I had foreseen, a good deal of revelry and what not: first the village choir surged round and sang carols outside the front door, and then somebody suggested a dance.â There is the usual Wodehouse imbroglio and Jeeves ends up getting his trip to Monte Carlo â but nobody goes to church.
You will look in vain in the index of any of the standard lives of Wodehouse for the words âChurchâ or â Christianityâ (though he did profess an interest in Spiritualism) and critics down the years have attempted to address this. In the envoi to her 1982 biography, Frances Donaldson says that Wodehouse âhad many of the qualities of a saint. Kind, modest and simple, he was without malice or aggression.â Evelyn Waugh made a very grand excuse for the eirenic, indeed paradisal world of Wodehouse: âFor Mr Wodehouse there has been no fall of Man, no âaboriginal calamityâ⊠He has made a world for us to live in and delight in.â
–In The Times newspaper AN Wilson has written a seasonal essay entitled “How I stopped being a Christmas snob.” He begins with an explanation how he had become one:
When a young man in my twenties, I devoured a biography of Evelyn Waugh by his friend Christopher Sykes. One of the details that caught my fancy was Waughâs acceptance of a Christmas lunch â sorry, luncheon â chez Sykes in which he specified that there should be no Christmassy food, no tree, no holly, no streamers. This âsophisticatedâ attitude to all the paraphernalia of Christmas was one which I maintained for much of my adult life. Well, tried to. Of course, I did not, like Waugh, actually force my family and friends to eschew mistletoe, Christmas cards covering every shelf and surface, mince pies and the like. But as the Christmas lights went up, seemingly earlier and earlier each year, and as the Bing Crosby jingles blared from every loudspeaker, I cringed and longed â simply ached â for January.
Funny thing, growing older. I have found, as I enter what must surely be the final furlong, my attitude to Christmas has changed fundamentally…
–The Financial Times has an article entitled “The mysteries of Christmas shine in the National Gallery’s paintings.” This is written by Jackie WullschlĂ€ger and begins with a quotation from Evelyn Waugh:
âBut, my dear Sebastian, you canât seriously believe it all?â.â.â.âI mean about Christmas and the star and the three kings and the ox and the ass.â âOh yes, I believe that. Itâs a lovely idea.â âBut you canât believe things because theyâre a lovely idea.â âBut I do. Thatâs how I believe.â Evelyn Waugh, Brideshead Revisited
About a third of the paintings in the National Gallery depict Christian subjects, and most need unpacking for todayâs audiences. But the âlovely ideaâ of the Nativity and Adoration is instantly comprehensible â indeed, it is through paintings that the narrative was codified and its details became familiar. The Gospels do not mention how many Magi visited or describe Joseph; it is painters who lastingly formulated the trio of kings, made one of them black and cast Joseph as old, bearded, awkward and impotent â the comic turn. Whatever you believe, how this iconography unfolded is a wonderful story in itself, and the National Gallery through centuries of wildly imaginative Christmas paintings is beautifully able to tell it…
—The New European posts an article by Will Self that is headed with a drawing of Scrooge to give it a “Dickensian Christmas” flavor. The article is entitled “Jacob Rees-Mogg, the fake” and is inspired by a recollection of Self’s nearly coming to blows with Rees-Mogg several years ago after they had appeared on an episode of BBC Newsnight. Physical contact was avoided when Rees-Mogg fled the studio. As Self catalogues Rees-Mogg’s social misdemaenors, Waugh comes into the discussion:
…Jacob Rees-Moggâs own fervent Catholicism â a religious faith that, with its conservative ethics, amplifies his own stentorian moral position â only derives from his grandmother, Beatrice, an Irish-American actress. Having myself at one time been married into a posh Catholic family with Somerset links (my first wifeâs great-aunt is Jacob Rees-Moggâs godmother), I know a little bit about not only the subtleties of upper-class status, but also that curious Catholic subset of them.
My ex-wifeâs family owe their Catholicism not to being Reformation recusants â but are rather so-called Farm Street Catholics: posh Anglicans who converted in the first few decades of the 20th century. The ultimate parvenu associated with this group is Evelyn Waugh, whose Brideshead Revisited depicts the starry aristocratic Catholic realm he â in common with Rees-Mogg â would have liked as his birthright. (Waugh, who was a publisherâs son from north London, was such a precocious snob that in childhood he used to walk up the road from the family home in Golders Green, so that his letters would receive the tonier Hampstead postmark.)
Itâs this aspect of Catholicism: a sort of upper-middle-class bypass operation, whereby the patient is sutured directly to the likes of the Duke of Norfolk and other aristocratic recusant families, that so shapes Jacob Rees-Moggâs imposture…
–Finally, Frank McNally writing in the Irish Times is reminded by the recent sale of Piers Court that Waugh once seriously searched for a house in Ireland. This was shortly after the war when he feared the suburbanization of Dursley threatened his tranquility at Piers Court. Here’s an excerpt:
…like other rich English conservatives after the second World War, Waugh found the new Labour-ruled Britain, and the modern world in general, uncongenial.
He had in 1930 converted to Catholicism. He was now flush with funds thanks to Brideshead. And romanticising Irelandâs beauty and tradition â an infatuation from which he would soon recover â he decided to move here, subject to finding accommodation of the grandeur to which he was accustomed.
Waugh came close to buying Gormanston Castle in Meath: a âfine, solid, grimâ property as he called it. He was undeterred by its âcountless bedrooms, many uninhabitableâ. And when expressing unease at the thought of being a ânouveau riche invaderâ of a home that had been in the same family for centuries, he was reassured about that too. Referring to one of the many Viscount Gormanstons who had owned the castle, a local member of staff commented: âAch, his lordship never came to this place but to kill somebody.â But a desire for privacy was one of Waughâs priorities in fleeing England. Combined with natural snobbery, this ensured that when, on a ship home, he read an evening newspaper report about plans for a Butlins Holiday Camp at Gormanston, he promptly lost any desire to live there. The castle became a religious-run boarding school instead. Waugh continued his search elsewhere.
He considered a place in Carlow too. But eventually, neither Irelandâs big houses nor its brand of Catholicism met the standard required. Indeed, if a 1952 letter Nancy Mitford is accurate, his narrow escape from Irish property ownership only strengthened his faith.
âAmong the countless blessings I thank God for,â he wrote, âmy failure to find a house in Ireland comes first. Unless one is mad or fox-hunting there is nothing to draw one. The houses, except for half-a-dozen famous ones, are very shoddy [and] none of them have servantsâ bedrooms because at the time they were built Irish servants slept on the bedroom floor. The peasants are malevolent. All their smiles are false as Hell. Their priests are very suitable for them but not for foreigners. No coal at all. Awful incompetence everywhere. No native capable of doing the simplest job properly.â
Another reason Waugh gave up on the move here was because he didnât want it thought that he was fleeing his Labour enemies. But if he returned to face that fight, he was soon forced to flee intrusions on his privacy….
McNally goes on to describe the familiar story of the invasion of Piers Court by Daily Express reporters.
Best wishes to our readers for the holidays.
The Sunday Times has posted a Q&A format story in its “Hot Topics” column headed “Everything you need to know about sitting tenants: These occupants are a landlordâs nightmare â as the recent case of Evelyn Waughâs mansion shows.” It begins by explaining the difference between tenants under the Housing Act 1988 and common law tenants and then continues:
…If a limited company rents out a property â usually for its employees â then they are also common law tenancies, as is the case with Waughâs house, which is owned by a company called Winstonâs House.
A rental agreement is also a common law tenancy if the annual rent is less than ÂŁ250 (or ÂŁ1,000 in London), or it is more than ÂŁ100,000.
Are these tenancies rare?
âItâs not the most common form of tenancy obviously because of the rental incomes involved,â says Adam Colenso, property litigation partner at legal firm Wedlake Bell. âBut the rent in very high-value properties in central London are not uncommonly over ÂŁ100,000 a year. At the really low amount [of rent], it tends to be in situations where special arrangements have been put in place for the tenants. The tenant has got some connection to the landlord, such that they are content for it to be at a very low rent for whatever reason.âSo what are the main differences?
A common law tenancy is essentially a private agreement drawn up between the tenant and the landlord. Much depends on the literal wording of that agreement â and so the generosity of the landlord, or the savvy nature of the tenant depending on how you look at it.In some ways the tenant is less protected than they would be with a modern agreement. The landlord does not have to put the deposit into an approved deposit protection scheme under a common law tenancy and they do not have to prove grounds for eviction in court under section 8 of the Housing Act or serve a section 21 âno faultâ eviction notice.
Under a common law tenancy the landlord simply serves a ânotice to quitâ if the tenant has breached one of the terms of the agreement or when the lease term comes to an end. However, if the tenant doesnât want to leave â as in the case of Waughâs house â then the landlord has to get a court order and call in the bailiffs. […]
What the Q&A does not explain is how, if at all, the sale of the house by a lender to a new owner/lessor affects the tenant’s rights or what the rights of eviction or repossession of the new owner/lessor may be. You would probably need to know the terms of the loan and the lease, as well as the purchase agreement, to answer that.
–This letter appeared in a recent issue of The Times newspaper:
DECLARATION OF WAUGH
Sir, The late Duchess of Devonshire showed me a book given to her by the Roman Catholic Evelyn Waugh, having an inscription by him along the lines of ânothing in this volume should disturb your Protestant sensibilities.â (Letters, passim) The lettering on the spine gave the name of the novel. I think it was Brideshead Revisited. It was not till quite a lot later the Duchess discovered that all the pages were completely blank.
Barry Joyce
Wirksworth, Derbyshire
Your editor sent the following email to Mr Barry Joyce in Derbyshire:
Dear Mr Joyce. You may be interested to know that the blank book sent to Deborah Mitford was bound and labelled as “The Life of the Right Reverend Ronald Knox” (1959). This is described in a contemporaneous letter from Deborah to her sister Nancy reproduced in “The Mitfords: Letters Between Sisters” (Ed. Charlotte Mosley, p. 319). If you would like to see her letter please let me know and I will make a copy and send it.
Waugh did in fact send a copy of the first edition of “Brideshead Revisited “to Deborah and her husband. This was the specially bound page proof sent to 50 friends as Christmas presents in December 1944. When she died in 2016, that copy was sold at auction for ÂŁ52,500.
Sincerely, Jeff Manley
I was unable to find the blank-page Knox biography in Sotheby’s 2016 auction sale catalogue.
–An article in the Daily Telegraph is entitled “Britain is turning twee–and is the worse for it” and is written by Madeline Grant. After describing several examples of excess tweeism, the article concludes:
Perhaps the biggest canary in the coal mine was the dominance of The Great British Bake Off, awash with tea-and-bunting kitsch. I knew the twee epidemic was real when an acquaintance, a music journalist, who no doubt spent the Noughties snorting God-knows-what off God-knows-where at the Groucho Club, raved about rushing home to watch Bake Off. If the ex-rockers are packing it all in for a Viennese Whirl, there really is no hope. Worship at the altar of cake, lay your sacrificial cream puffs at the hallowed feet of the Virgin Mary Berry. All must surrender to the twee! Blessed is he who cometh in the name of the Lard! Thereâs even a Bake Off: The Musical in the offing. To paraphrase Orwell, if you want a picture of the future, imagine a line of Cath Kidston bunting throttling the human neck â forever.
The slow march of cultural cringe is turning jokey self-deprecation into self-parody. Irony, savage wit and darkness have always been key to the British sensibility; from the novels of Evelyn Waugh to the impotent rage of Basil Fawlty. Yet these edges are increasingly being sanded down in favour of a Disneyfied version of national identity. Sadly, the twee-ification of Britain looks unstoppable.
—The Spectator has a review of the recent (and recently mentioned here) book Hellfire by David Fleming. The review is by the editor of Waugh’s letters, Mark Amory. After a discussion of the Oxford chapters, in which he focuses on how Harold Acton was responsible for organizing the Hypocrites Club into something more interesting than a rowdy drinking venue, the review concludes:
After this, Hellfire becomes a little more serious â and more about Waugh. Families, and the second world war, feature, while drink and ill-health catch up with some of the group. But Fleming writes just as adroitly as the gaiety recedes. He is fortunate to have such a subtle observer as Anthony Powell popping up and recording shrewd comments in a stream of novels and diaries. Indeed, the whole book reads rather like a Powell novel, with unexpected meetings and reversals. If the centre cannot quite hold, it is a constant pleasure.
–The Financial Times has a story by Ella Risbridger, author of fiction, cookery books and poetry anthologies, and entitled “Our eternal obsession with literary property.” This opens with the example of the recent auction of Waugh’s home Piers Court. Here’s an excerpt:
There are many reasons why a person might want to hang on to a stately home for the everlasting rent of ÂŁ5 a week. But it takes a certain kind of person to explain that â far from being just about the money â itâs about the art. The current residents of Evelyn Waughâs former home Piers Court, paying ÂŁ250 a year, claim to be the authorâs âsuperfansâ, friends of the family and, in some senses, curators of his legacy. That Piers Court âtakes a lot of living up toâ, as Waugh wrote in his diary, seems undeniable: eight bedrooms, six bathrooms and a ÂŁ3.16mn price tag. Prospective buyers had to bid sight unseen, since the sitting tenants paying their peppercorn rent refused any viewings before the auction. And yet itâs hard to ignore that the tenants have a point. If it was all about the money, the rest of us wouldnât care. Bankruptcies, sitting tenancies and disputes are always part of the real estate equation. But we care about the Piers Court sale because Waugh lived there. Literary houses are a hot ticket. The Financial Times listed five notable properties this summer, including Hogarth House â home of Virginia Woolfâs Hogarth Press â and a 1920s mansion, complete with pool house, on the site of Mark Twainâs country pile. Even the childhood homes of authors such as Dorothy Sayers are of interest, selling for a genteel ÂŁ2.35mn…
–A recent issue of the Evening Standard carried a story entitled “Pemba: the secret island the It-crowd don’t want to know about.” After a discussion of the attractions of Pemba that make it preferable to neighboring Zanzibar, the article closes with this:
Woven into the islandâs cultural tapestry, along with an abhorrent slave trade history and spice trade, are certain traditions. Both Pemba and Zanzibar have long been centres for so-called voodoo rituals and continue to draw in those seeking alternative healing for physical or mental affliction, or a transcendent form of enlightenment that Western culture is unable to offer. On visiting the island in the 1930s, British writer Evelyn Waugh affirmed the islandâs role as the centre of this practice, detailing in his travel book Remote People (1931) that Pemba drew in budding âwitch doctorsâ from as far as the Great Lakes of central Africa and even Haiti to finesse their skills. Today, many islanders still seek the advice of both medics and more alternative doctors when they are unwell or faced with a threat, though tourists are rarely offered a window into this world.
These traditions, along with the signature waft of cloves, Sultan lore, ethereal pools of light dotting ancient forests and boulder-strewn beaches lends Pemba its air of mystery and enchantment. A land of mangrove swamps, deserted beaches and magic.
According to the auctioneers and several press reports, Piers Court sold yesterday for ÂŁ3,160,000. Whether and how the new owners will take possession has not yet been fully explained. According to yesterday’s Evening Standard “the eight-bedroom house has sold online today for ÂŁ660,000 over its reserve price of ÂŁ2.5 million. The auction was contested by four people, who collectively placed 49 bids for the property.”
Here are excerpts from the report in the Guardian relating to the reactions of the current occupants:
…Bechara Madi [one of the current occupants] said this week: âItâs our home, for the short term and for the long term. We will be putting our Christmas tree and decorations up in the next few days. We are going nowhere.
âWe have spent a lot of our own money on the upkeep of the house, itâs our home and we have no plans to move,â he told MailOnline, adding that they had put a share of their money into the company that bought the house. âWe are not tenants, we have a major share in the house and have put in hundreds of thousands of pounds of our own money.â
Helen Lawton [Mr Madi’s partner and the other occupant] claims to be friends with Waughâs family, and told the Evelyn Waugh Society that she was planning a party to bring together many of his relatives at the house. Duncan McLaren, of the Evelyn Waugh Society, writing of a chance meeting with Lawton in 2019 while walking along a public footpath through the grounds of the house, said: âIn recent weeks she has been very excited to learn about the Evelyn Waugh associations of her new home.â
Duncan McLaren kindly sent me a link to the Guardian article and noted in his email message: “If you recall, I spoke to Helen Lawton shortly after sheâd âboughtâ Piers Court.” A link to Duncan’s description on his website of that 2019 meeting with Ms Lawton is provided above. I am not myself personally aware of any other contacts she may have had with members of the Evelyn Waugh Society.
The Daily Mail article written by Tom Bedford, which was posted in the MailOnline and cited in the Guardian, concluded with this:
…Ms Lawton, who describes herself as ‘eccentric’, even bought herself a Georgian horse-drawn carriage to go with the house of her dreams. The couple say they had a ÂŁ10,000 survey carried out on the property when they first moved in and had started restoration work when the Covid pandemic struck.
Ms Lawton said Waugh’s son Septimus, the writer’s seventh child, who lived in the house when he was young and died of cancer last year, was backing their plans. She said: ‘I had lovely conversations with Septimus about his time at Piers Court. He could remember the staircases and the chandeliers. ‘I had hoped that whatever time I had left I would be doing my utmost to restore the house and the grounds.’
But in August Ms Lawton and her partner were served with an eviction notice when the bank they borrowed ÂŁ2.1 million from called in the loan. A firm of receivers was brought in after their business partner Jason Blain was sued over an alleged unpaid hotel bill of ÂŁ740,000. […]
The shareholders said they had proof of funds to redeem the mortgage but they were ignored and the property was put on the market even though Ms Lawton and her partner refused viewings to prospective buyers. […]
London auctioneers Allsop declined to name the new owner who had been warned: ‘The property is occupied under a Common Law Tenancy at a rate of ÂŁ250 per annum.’ The buyer paid ÂŁ660,000 over the guide price but, according to Ms Lawton and Mr Bechara, they still have a bargain. They believe the mansion is worth in excess of ÂŁ4 million.
The couple, who own a multi-million pound flat in London, have accused the bank and receivers of acting ‘aggressively and in an underhand way’. Financier Mr Madi, 60, said: ‘Until contracts are exchanged there is no formal sale – we need to speak to Jason (Blain) about this to assess our position. We will have internal talks to see what our next move will be.’
Waugh was gifted the country estate by his wife Laura Herbertâs grandmother in 1937. He, Herbert and their children lived there for 19 years â except during the second world war, when the mansion was let to a convent school.
He wrote many of his novels in the houseâs library, including Helena, The Loved One, Men at Arms and Officers and Gentleman.
Brideshead Revisited, Waughâs most famous novel, was written in a hotel in Devon in 1944, during the houseâs convent school years.
And The Times printed this letter:
HOTEL BRIDESHEAD
Sir, You report (Dec 14) that Evelyn Waugh wrote Brideshead Revisited at Piers Court in Gloucestershire. In fact he wrote it at Easton Court hotel in Chagford, Devon, while on leave from military training after a parachute fall; although he was living at Piers Court at the time he regularly used hotels to write, to avoid the distractions of home. The Devonshire tranquillity, âuniquely agreeable for both work and restâ, allowed him to recover from his injury while writing his fine novel.
Alexandre Guilloteau
London W9
The letter, apparently inadvertently, suggests that Waugh was “living” at Piers Court “at the time” he wrote Brideshead in Devon. For avoidance of doubt, he and his family did not in fact reoccupy the house until 10 September 1945, according to the chronology in published volumes of the Complete Works of Evelyn Waugh. Prior to that, during 1944 when he wrote Brideshead he was living in Army or other temporary accommodations such as the hotel in Devon, when not with his family who were at Pixton Park, the Herbert family residence.
The Times in a story entitled “Spoiler Alert: Evelyn Waugh fan could stymie mansion sale” has provided more details of the upcoming auction of Piers Court scheduled to take place tomorrow. Here’s an excerpt:
It is a story worthy of a book by Evelyn Waugh himself. A Waugh superfan could thwart the auction of the writerâs Cotswold mansion after setting herself up as a sitting tenant. Helen Lawton, 64, fulfilled her dream of living in Piers Court, a grade II listed eight-bedroom Georgian manor in Gloucestershire where the author wrote Brideshead Revisited.
The house is due to be auctioned tomorrow at a guide price of ÂŁ2.5 million. As well as a library, topiary garden, cellar and dovecote, the house comes with two live-in tenants: Lawton and her partner Bechara Madi, who have a Common Law tenancy of ÂŁ250 a year. Such tenancies fall outside the 1998 Housing Act and tend to be reserved for properties with exceptional high or low yearly rent under a private contract between the tenant and the landlord. The couple are said to be refusing access to prospective buyers…
Several other papers and internet media have reprinted the story, including the Daily Mail and the Daily Express. It is also noted that it was the trespass on Waugh’s property by reporters from the Daily Express that turned him against the house and motivated him to sell it. The article in the Express explains this in more detail:
…Waugh’s feelings towards Piers Court seemed to sour in 1955 after two Daily Express reporters gate-crashed in a bungled attempt to meet their “favourite idol”. The disturbance on 21 June is said to have affected Waugh who is reported to have told the reporters, Nancy Spain and Lord Noel-Buxton, to “Go away”. He is said to have told the pair in a rage: “Go away! You read the notice didnât you? No admittance on business.”
In his diary entry for the day Waugh penned: “I sent them away and remained tremulous with rage all the evening.” On 22 June his diary simply adds: “And all next day.” He is reported to have told estate agent Knight Frank of his wish to sell the property with the words “I felt as if the house had been polluted”.
The Daily Mail has also posted a background story in its “FEMAIL” column placing his ownership of Piers Court within the context of a brief description of Waugh’s life. This is based to some extent on the writings of Alexander Waugh and Paula Byrne and includes several photographs which are worth a look. Most of the stories unhelpfully repeat the incorrect assertion that Waugh wrote the novel Brideshead Revisited while living in Piers Court. As explained in previous posts, he was the owner of the house when the novel was written, but it was occupied by an evacuated convent school while he was writing it in a Devon hotel on leave from the Army. Hopefully, all of this press interest will result in further reports of the results of tomorrow’s auction.
–The national quality press has finally picked up the story of the upcoming auction of Piers Court. The Guardian has posted an article by Rupert Neate which explains how the sale came about:
