Walking Tour of Mayfair’s Bright Young Things

Posted on September 5, 2017 by Jeffrey Manley

Footprints of London has announced a conducted walk through Mayfair which will highlight locations associated with the Bright-Young-Things era. The tour is scheduled for Saturday, 28 October, 1500-1700pm. Here’s a description:

A literary romp round Mayfair; the playground of the Bright Young Things in the 1920s. On this walk you will hear how their outrageous exploits were portrayed by writers including Michael Arlen, Anthony Powell and Evelyn Waugh and visit some of the locations depicted in novels of the era. The walk will last about two hours and starts on Piccadilly (north side) – Stratton Street exit from Green Park Station – and finishes close to Marble Arch.

The firm specializes in walking tours of London and October this year is their Literary Footprints Festival season. The Mayfair tour will be conducted by Jen Pedler and may be booked here.

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Alastair Graham, Steven Runciman and More Misfits

Posted on September 5, 2017 by Jeffrey Manley

A blogger named John (who lives in the Southern US) posted on his weblog Notes from a Common-place Book a report of his recent trip to England. This posting is dated 4 September 2017. He sought out gravesites of writers he considered “misfits” based to some extent on his reading of Duncan Fallowell’s recent book How to Disappear: A Memoir for Misfits. (Reviewed in EWS 43.3 Winter 2013, p. 29: “The Quest for Alastair Graham”.) The blogger starts with Dylan Thomas and describes his grave at Laugherne in South Wales. This leads him to mention Thomas’s acquaintance in New Quay with Alastair Graham (who was a model for Sebastian Flyte in Brideshead Revisited) and Fallowell’s description of Graham. More interesting (or less familiar) is his mention of Alastair’s affair with Steven Runciman in the 1930s. This was mentioned not in Fallowell’s book but in the recent biography of Runciman by Minoo Dinshaw (Outlandish Knight, now available in paperback) mentioned in earlier posts:

I first read of Graham in a passing reference (but extensive footnote) in the new biography of Steven Runciman.  The two met in Athens [sic] in the mid 1930s, both in low-level diplomatic positions:  Runciman in early phase of a long and varied career [sic], and Graham in the only real job he ever tackled.  They had some trysts but Runciman was too discreet for someone like Graham.  The footnote in the Runciman biography led me to Duncan Fallowell’s How to Disappear:  A Memoir for Misfits, one of the most weirdly satisfying books I have ever read.  He devotes a chapter to Graham.

The blogger also describes visits to churchyards in Mells, where he photographs the graves of Ronald Knox and Siegrfried Sassoon, and in Combe Florey, where Evelyn Waugh is buried after he:

…purchased the social accoutrements to the life to which he aspired, [but] was ill-fitted for the role; in short, a misfit.  And Waugh would probably admitted as much.  Nothing illustrates his outsider status better than his grave.  The back side of the park is hard up against the Sts. Peter and Paul churchyard.  But Waugh, his wife and daughter are not buried in the graveyard, as such, but just over the cemetery wall into the field.  One has to step over a wall and onto the private property to view it. The English gravestones do not seem to age well, and his is already almost unreadable.  In time, the estate became too expensive to maintain and Waugh’s grandchildren were forced to dump it.  Vanity of vanities.

He doesn’t mention the need for repair of the Waugh gravesites which was recently in the news. A photograph of the gravesite is included in the weblog, but it is taken from the top of the wall looking down into the churchyard so that any damage to the retaining wall is not noticeable.

UPDATE (11 September 2017): Based on information in the biography of Steven Runciman by Minoo Dinshaw, the above posting has been modified.  See later post. The spelling of Alastair’s name has also been corrected.

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The Other Decline and Fall

Posted on September 4, 2017 by Jeffrey Manley

The Guardian has reached No. 83 in its selection of the 100 greatest non-fiction books of all time. The selection by Robert McCrum is going backwards in time so it is nearing its final stretch. This week’s column is devoted to Edward Gibbon’s 1776-88 multivolume work The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. According to McCrum, Gibbon was an amateur who mastered his historical subject but his command of English prose style is also worth noting:

Next to his learning, there’s his style, whose later devotees include both Winston Churchill, (No 43 in this series), and Evelyn Waugh. “It has always been my practice,” wrote Gibbon, “to cast a long paragraph in a single mould, to try it by my ear, to deposit it in my memory; but to suspend the action of the pen till I had given the last polish to my work.” Decline and Fall is a cathedral of words and opinions: sonorous, awe-inspiring and shadowy, with odd and unexpected corners of wit and irony, concealed in well-judged footnotes. For example, in chapter VII on Gordian, he writes:

“Twenty-two acknowledged concubines, and a library of 62,000 volumes attested the variety of his inclinations, and from the productions which he left behind him, it appears that the former as well as the latter were designed for use rather than ostentation.”

His footnote provides a witty coda: “By each of his concubines, the younger Gordian left three or four children. His literary productions were by no means contemptible.”

Waugh’s first novel which borrowed its title as well as some of its style from Gibbon is not mentioned.

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Waugh and Jesuits in Guyana

Posted on September 2, 2017 by Jeffrey Manley

The Jesuits have published material from their archives relating to Waugh’s trip to British Guiana in 1932-33. Waugh visited the Jesuits twice at their mission station of St Ignatius in the central Rupununi region of south-west Guyana on his way to and from Boa Vista in Brazil. His visits are described in his travel book Ninety-Two Days published in 1934. What the Jesuits have published is a summary of Waugh’s passages about his visit as well as previously unpublished descriptions of the visits noted by the priests at their mission.

… Fr Mather’s 1933 diary (our ref: SJ/38/2/6) gives a few clues. In typically laconic style, Mather noted the arrival of ‘Mr Waugh’ in late January. During a week-long stay Waugh seems to have spent his time following and observing Fr Mather at work, and taking photographs. After Waugh had departed for Boa Vista, Mather made an interesting observation about an incident which is not recorded in any earlier entries: ‘Mended leg (made a new one) of longue-chair which had snapped under Mr Waugh.’

Waugh returned to St Ignatius on 22 February 1933; he ‘rode up on his weary horse’ according to Mather. In Ninety-Two Days it is apparent how very close Waugh came to becoming utterly lost when he mistook one mountain range for another. During Waugh’s second stay, many more photographs were taken of Rupununi life and Fr Mather gave the novelist a good haircut. It was during this second stay that Waugh began reading Fr Mather’s collection of Charles Dickens, and in so doing, temporarily re-discovered the joy of reading for pleasure.

Fr Mather made more arrangements for Waugh’s onward journey (and more walking sticks). On 5 March 1933 he wrote, in perhaps the most expressive diary entry in this period, of Waugh’s final departure: ‘Mr Waugh v. appreciative of his sojourn. Mutual regards & good wishes at his parting.’ Waugh joined Fr Keary for part of his return journey to Georgetown. From Georgetown he sailed, via Trinidad, back to England and resumed his literary career.

The article is posted on the website Jesuits.org.uk.  It also includes a narrative by archivist Sally Kent of the history of the mission which was founded by British Jesuits in 1909 and a brief account of the lives of the two priests Waugh met there.

 

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Decline & Fall DVD to be Released in USA

Posted on September 1, 2017 by Jeffrey Manley

Acorn TV will begin USA sales of the DVD of Waugh’s novel Decline and Fall later this month. This is the BBC’s adaptation that was broadcast in the UK earlier this year. Amazon.com has announced availability of the DVD effective 12 September. You can read a review of all three episodes in the latest issue of Evelyn Waugh Studies at this link (click on “Rising Returns” under Reviews). The DVD also includes 15 minutes of special features not available on the televised version. Here is the Amazon.com description of this additional material:

  • Satire (5 min.) – Cast and crew members discuss the intricacies and difficulties of adapting Evelyn Waugh’s tongue-in-cheek satire for the screen.
  • On Set (5 min.) – Cast and crew members discuss the locations and sets used for filming Decline & Fall.
  • Adaptation (5 min.) – Evelyn Waugh’s classic novel is beloved by many; cast and crew members discuss their desire to stay true to the source in their modern adaptation.
  • Photo Gallery

 

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Waugh in the Food Columns

Posted on August 31, 2017 by Jeffrey Manley

Lisa Hilton, biographer, novelist and now food critic for Standpoint magazine, was apparently assigned to write a review of a new Italian restaurant in Covent Garden called Margot. This establishment was downgraded by some other food critics such as Jay Rayner for being too formal for present Londoners. After offering a brief defense of Margot’s formality and praise for its food, Hilton launches into the topic she really wants to write about which is the Southern Italian region of Puglia. She gets there by quoting Evelyn Waugh in this introduction:

Puglia makes me think of Evelyn Waugh’s comment on the Sphinx: “As a piece of sculpture it is wholly inadequate to its fame. People . . . went out to see it by moonlight and returned very grave and awestruck; which only shows the mesmeric effect of publicity. It is about as enigmatic and inscrutable as Mr Aleister Crowley.” Poor, tatty, overcrowded Europe of course retains some places of genuine beauty, but why will no one admit that the French Riviera nowadays resembles at best the less-unpleasant areas of Los Angeles, or that Ibiza is no longer a “White Isle” in any sense but the narcotic one? English people love Puglia, because they think it’s the real Italy…

The quote is from Waugh’s 1930 travel book Labels (p. 102). Waugh later spent time in Puglia during WWII because its chief town Bari was the staging base for his outpost in Yugoslavia. The food served during that period was probably not worth mentioning, although may well have been better than what was on offer in the UK.

Waugh surfaces in another food story, this one about obesity. This is posted on the weblog ConservativeHome.com by MEP Daniel Hannan who thinks that the UK government’s campaign against obesity has gone too far and is at risk of becoming yet another example of unnecessary and annoying interference in private lives. He closes his article with this quote from Waugh:

By what right, though, do we presume to tell people what to eat? “There are,” wrote Evelyn Waugh, “no respectable reasons for wanting not to be fat”. To reject the good things in life from no higher motive than vanity was, as he saw it, a tragically modern form of decadence. All right, Waugh was not exactly a good example of a contented fat man. Although he was the soul of elegance on the page, he was selfish, irritable and sadistic in person. So let me instead give the last word, as I gave the first, to Shakespeare, and through him to the amplest, merriest and wittiest fatty to have graced our literature, John Falstaff: “If sack and sugar be a fault, God help the wicked!”

The source of this quote has proved elusive, although Mr Hannan has cited it previously in a 2008 article where he attacked the then Labour government and the EU for the same anti-obesity policies. It does sound a bit like Waugh but would he have used a double negative? I wonder if this may be a paraphrase rather than a quote?

Finally, and unrelated to food, the V&A Museum has mounted an exhibit of the artworks from the books of the Folio Society to mark the society’s 70th anniversary. This is called “The Artful Book” and will be on display from 5 September until 28 January. Among the works on display are illustrations by Kate Baylay for the Folio Society’s 2015  edition of Vile Bodies. Some of these are reproduced in the announcement appearing in digitalartsonline.

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Waugh Item Included in Vivien Leigh Sale

Posted on August 30, 2017 by Jeffrey Manley

The Guardian has reported the sale of several items (including many books) from the estate of actress Vivien Leigh. The sale at Sotheby’s London on 26 September is occasioned by the recent death of her daughter, Suzanne Farrington. Leigh herself died in 1967. Lot 215 consists of one of the 50 large print copies of The Ordeal of Gilbert Pinfold (1957) signed: “For Vivien, this sad little chapter from my life, from Evelyn.” Although the Guardian explains that she died of tuberculosis (from which she suffered chronically), she also suffered from bipolar disorder (referred to in her time as manic-depression). Whether Waugh was aware of this when he sent her this particular book is not mentioned. Estimated sale price is £2000-3000. No other books by Waugh are listed.

The collection also includes several volumes of plays by Tennessee Williams (which are not apparently signed), including A Streetcar Named Desire. Leigh played Blanche DuBois in both stage and screen productions of that play. There is also a signed copy of Gone With the Wind, including a poem by author Margaret Mitchell dedicated to Leigh, as well as a script from the 1939 film in which she played Scarlet O’Hara. Also listed in the sale are three signed biographies by Christopher Sykes. Not among these is his biography of Waugh which was published in 1975 after her death.

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Evelyn Waugh, Stylist

Posted on August 29, 2017 by Jeffrey Manley

One of our readers has sent an excerpt from a 2014 book by literary critic Terry Eagleton (How to Read Literature) that compares the writing style of Evelyn Waugh to that of John Updike. In both cases samples are taken from their fiction–Waugh’s from his 1947 short story “Tactical Exercise” and Updike’s from his novel Rabbit at Rest. The excerpt appears on the website Marxist Update in which Waugh’s prose is described by Eagleton as having:

…none of the self-conscious sculpturedness of the Updike piece, and is surely all the better for it. Waugh’s prose is crisp, pure and economical. It is reticent and unshowy, as though unaware of the skill with which, for example, it manages to steer a single sentence from ‘They reached the village’ to ‘the serene arc of the horizon’ through so many sub-clauses with no sense of strain or artifice. This sense of expansiveness, of both syntax and landscape, is counterpointed by the terse ‘Here was the house’, which signals a halt both in the story and in the way it is being delivered. ‘A train journey of normal discomfort’ is a pleasantly sardonic touch. ‘Archaic’ might be an adjective too far, but the rhythmic balance of the lines is deeply admirable. There is an air of quiet efficiency about the whole extract. The landscape is portrayed in a set of quick, deft strokes which brings it alive without cluttering the text with too much detail. Waugh’s prose has an honesty and hard-edged realism about it which show up well in contrast to Updike.

Eagleton goes on to compare Waugh’s prose to that of William Faulkner in a passage from his novel Absalom, Absalom. Faulkner’s prose is overwritten but in a different way from that of Updike.

A blogger on the website of the John Updike Society has taken issue with Eagleton:

We won’t take Prof. Eagleton to task for that rambling and redundant unpolished paragraph, for if we did, it would betray a bias against spontaneous and unpolished writing, as opposed to Eagleton’s bias against the polished. As for methodology, Eagleton contrasts Updike’s paragraphs with those of Evelyn Waugh’s, comparing apples and oranges in various ways (poet-writer vs. writer alone, American vs. British, etc.) and praising her [sic] “honesty and hard-edged realism about it which show up well in contrast to Updike.” Faulkner receives similar praise…

Eagleton has been outspoken in his leftist political views which sometimes influence his critical opinions. That influence seems to surface more in response to the social or political content of the work he is discussing than when he deals with more technical matters such as style.

The texts of all three writers under discussion are available in original posting linked above. The full text of Waugh’s short story “Tactical Exercise” is available in his Complete Stories. Thanks to Dave Lull for sending us these postings.

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Evelyn Waugh at the National Trust, Edinburgh Festival and Houston,TX

Posted on August 28, 2017 by Jeffrey Manley

Evelyn Waugh is appearing all over the place in today’s media reports:

In the internet newspaper iNews, there is a story about problems being rained upon the National Trust, one of Britain’s once most beloved institutions. The Trust are the stewards of many of the country houses that Waugh feared would be lost when he wrote Brideshead Revisited in 1944. The article quotes Waugh’s remark in the 1959 introduction he wrote for the revised edition that “it was impossible to foresee, in the spring of 1944, the present cult of the English country house.” It was the National Trust that fostered that cult and is now struggling.

At the Edinburgh Festival, Letters Live sponsored a reading of Waugh’s 1942 letter to his wife about the disastrous Commando removal of Lord Glasgow’s tree (Letters, 160-61). This time the reading was by comedian Al Murray. The previous and more restrained reading by actor Geoffrey Palmer is far superior. See previous post.

Finally, in a chat on The American Conservative’s weblog relating to the “God is Dead” debate, a commenter noted:

Evelyn Waugh would have made much of the fact that years ago, a Houston megachurch had a restaurant called, “The Garden of Eatin’.” I presume this was birthed by that church’s advertising/PR consultants.

Houston is also noted for a major street called Waugh Drive which carries traffic across the Buffalo Bayou. The Waugh Drive Bridge over the bayou is famous for housing a large bat colony which is a well-known tourist attraction. The bayou is currently flooded by hurricane Harvey, and Waugh Drive is closed to traffic. What has become of the bat colony that lived underneath the bridge can only be imagined. One also wonders how Houstonians pronounce “Waugh Drive.” Since most Brits mispronounce their city as “Hooston,” the residents may have devised some outlandish pronunciation of the street and bridge to get their own back.

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Eating People is Still Wrong

Posted on August 27, 2017 by Jeffrey Manley

Andrew Donaldson writing in his column in the South African newspaper The Weekend Argus discusses the current status of cannibalism. This article, written with tongue firmly in cheek, was inspired by recent expressions of concern among South African politicians about the possible return of the practice in remote and deprived parts of South Africa. Among the sources discussed in the article is Evelyn Waugh:

Also to be avoided… is perhaps reading too much into literary works on Africa such as Evelyn Waugh’s landmark Black Mischief (London, 1932). That novel concerns the Oxford-educated Emperor Seth’s attempts to modernise Azania, his fictional island homeland off the east coast of Africa. To assist him in this endeavour, he recruits one Basil Seal, a shiftless college friend and heir to an English political dynasty…Before long, Seth is deposed in a coup d’état and dies while in hiding. At his funeral feast, Basil discovers, to his horror, that he has been eating the stewed remains of his girlfriend, Prudence. He returns to England where he becomes “serious”, which disturbs his layabout friends in London. In this regard, the persistent rumours surrounding the gustatory habits of such tyrants as Uganda’s Idi Amin, Equatorial Guinea’s Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo and Central African Republic’s Jean-Bedél Bokassa seem to suggest that Seth’s Azania is still very much with us.

Other comments on the practice are sourced from writings of Edgar Allan Poe and JP Donleavy and collected songs of British sailors.

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