Milthorpe Article on Waugh Book Collection Published

Posted on January 4, 2017 by Jeffrey Manley

An article by Waugh scholar Dr Naomi Milthorpe is published in the latest issue of the academic journal The Space Between: Literature and Culture 1914-1945, v. 12 (2016). See earlier post. This is entitled: “A Secret House: Evelyn Waugh’s Book Collection.” Here’s an abstract taken from the journal:

This article examines Evelyn Waugh’s private library, reading his habits of book collection as a particular mode of late modernist practice. In private and public writing particularly during the Second World War, Waugh the book collector is simultaneously consumer, producer, and cultural combatant. Indeed, Waugh’s collection practices parallel his satiric practices: both satire and collection are guided by the impulse to discriminate, connoting both the pejorative and elitist senses of exclusion, but also selection, deliberation, and distinction. Waugh’s careful assemblage of a library at odds with mainstream literary culture proffers a striking case study of the contested cultural landscape of England in the space between, and after, the two world wars.

The full article is available online at the links above. If these do not open, a subscription may be needed. This will require registration on the journal’s website, but it is free of charge. Dr Milthorpe is among those scheduled to speak at the Evelyn Waugh Conference in May at the Huntington Library near Pasadena.

Share
Posted in Academia, Bibliophilia, Collections, Conferences | Tagged , | Comments Off on Milthorpe Article on Waugh Book Collection Published

Evelyn Waugh, Secret Agent?

Posted on January 4, 2017 by Jeffrey Manley

There have been two articles posted within the last month which suggest that Evelyn Waugh was, along with other writers of his generation, at some time during his career in the employ of the secret intelligence services. The first, written by Richard Lance Keeble, appeared as a post on the Orwell Society’s website last month. This deals primarily with the question of whether Orwell was at some point an intelligence agent through his connections with David Astor, publisher of The Observer which also employed Kim Philby after he left MI6 following the Burgess-Maclean affair. This note appears in that article:

Orwell would not have been alone in working for intelligence during the war: Other intellectuals/writers included A. P. Herbert, Arthur Koestler (who had previously served the Soviet Comintern while a journalist during the Spanish civil war), David Garnett, Elizabeth Bowen, novelist Muriel Spark, Alec Waugh and his brother Evelyn Waugh, and Graham Greene.  Tom Bower, The perfect English spy: Sir Dick White and the secret war 1935-1990, London: William Heinemann, 1995, p. 227.

More recently, the suggestion also surfaced in the UK socialist daily paper The Morning Star. This appears in a review by John Green of a recent book: Journalism in an Age of Terror: Covering and Uncovering the Secret State by John Lloyd. The reviewer conceives the book as an apology for the state intelligence services co-opting journalists in their efforts to combat terrorism as they had in the past to combat communism;

As the work offers ideal cover, secret services have always used journalists and writers as agents — from Evelyn Waugh, Malcolm Muggeridge, Graham Greene and Kim Philby to unnamed writers in the papers today.

Graham Greene’s and Malcolm Muggeridge’s work for the secret services is well documented (e.g., Norman Sherry, The Life of Graham Greene: Volume 2, 1939-1955, pp. 166-83).  However, none of Waugh’s biographers suggest that he was ever actively involved with the secret services, either as a journalist or in the military. He was assigned for a brief period to the SAS and trained as a parachutist with the SOE but never went on active service with those agencies. He acted as his Commando unit’s “intelligence” officer during the Battle of Crete, but this did not involve any covert espionage. He also prepared a report on Communist persecution of the Roman Catholic Church in Yugoslavia; but he undertook this report on his own initiative and it was largely ignored by the government of the time. I am not aware of any suggestions that he was working for the intelligence services when he was on assignments as a correspondent in Abyssinia.

The Orwell Society’s article is supported by a cite to a book by Tom Brower. Full access to that cite is unavailable on the internet, but from the snippet view on Google Books, it can be seen to include Graham Greene with Waugh but in what capacity cannot be determined and no supporting evidence is available. What Brower’s book have to say about the other writers mentioned in the book is also not available. The Morning Star offers no support for their claim and do not suggest that it is based on the book under review. Any readers having access to these or other sources that may relate to this issue are invited to comment below. The Brower book may well have more relevant information than what is available on the internet.

UPDATE (28 January 2017): An examination of the book by Tom Bower sheds very little light on any engagement by Waugh as an intelligence agent. In a section explaining the recruitment by Dick White of a number of intellectuals into the service this sentence appears (p. 47): “Also passing through White’s office were some of the great names of British literature, including Evelyn Waugh and Graham Greene.” There is no further explanation or footnote. In a later passage (p. 54), Waugh is said to have provided a  reference for Roger Hollis, brother of Waugh’s Oxford friend Christopher, who had applied for a job in the intelligence service. He got the job, and went on to become the Director General of MI5.

Share
Posted in Alec Waugh, Newspapers, World War II | Tagged , , , | Comments Off on Evelyn Waugh, Secret Agent?

Powell Society Visits Waugh’s Oxford

Posted on January 3, 2017 by Jeffrey Manley

The latest issue of the Anthony Powell Society Newsletter (No. 65, Winter 2016) is largely devoted to reports of a visit to Oxford made by its members last September. The theme was “Oxford Day Out: AP and His Chums,” and inevitably this involved visitation of sites relevant to Powell’s undergraduate friend Evelyn Waugh. These included the site of the Hypocrites Club at 31 St Aldate’s where both writers were members, nearby Christ Church where Sebastian Flyte was a student and Anthony Blanche recited The Waste Land through a megaphone, Balliol College where Powell was a student and Waugh once lewdly serenaded the Dean, and Wadham College where Maurice Bowra was Warden and Waugh was a frequent visitor.  The group ended up having tea at Hertford College where Waugh was a student.  This was much later also the undergraduate residence of the Powell Society’s Chairman (Robin Bynoe), who occupied the same rooms where Waugh lived during his second year. Hertford College was the site of the Waugh Society’s foundation meeting at the Waugh Centenary Conference in 2003.

There are several articles in the Newsletter mentioning Waugh’s Oxford connections, including that by Stephen Walker, its editor, from which the foregoing description was taken. Perhaps the most interesting to Waugh enthusiasts is that by Robin Bynoe: “Powell, Waugh, and Two Contrasting Role Models.” This recounts Waugh’s career as a student at the then rather socially dim Hertford College, and, in dealing with Waugh’s animosity toward his tutor, later Dean, CRMF Cruttwell, Bynoe provides what is to me some interesting new information about Cruttwell’s later descent into madness:

Here we enter the realm of gossip. It is High Table gossip, the best sort. The story is that after an evening spent necking the College port and insulting other members of the Senior Common Room he staggered out with the admirable intention of counting the railings that form a circle around the Radcliffe Camera. He failed however to mark the railing with which he started, and when his fellows emerged from their beds the next morning he was still at it. The tally was by then some thousands. He was dispatched to a place of safety.

One is inclined to feel sorry for him but for another bit of gossip. This involves the aftermath of a tiff with a colleague. This man was standing in the Quad when a large piece of masonry fell from the roof, narrowly missing him. Cruttwell’s face appeared in the space previously occupied by the masonry, “Awfully unsafe, these roofs,” he cackled.

The Newsletter is distributed to members of the Powell Society in a printed edition but will after about a year be posted on the internet here.

Share
Posted in Academia, Brideshead Revisited, Evelyn Waugh Society, Oxford | Tagged , , , | Comments Off on Powell Society Visits Waugh’s Oxford

Waugh in the Public Domain (More)

Posted on January 2, 2017 by Jeffrey Manley

The Center for the Study of the Public Domain at Duke University Law School has posted a more detailed analysis of how the entry of Waugh’s works into the public domain will affect those countries such as Canada where that occurred yesterday. See earlier post. The introduction to the article (which displays a copy of the cover of the current Little, Brown edition of Brideshead Revisited) summarizes matters as follows:

Public Domain Day is January 1st of every year. If you live in Canada, January 1st 2017 would be the day when the works of Evelyn Waugh, C.S. Forester, and André Breton enter the public domain. Canadians can revisit Brideshead Revisited by staging their own dramatizations, or add the full works of Forester and Breton to online archives, without asking permission or violating the law. In Europe, the works of Gertrude Stein, H.G. Wells, and John Maynard Keynes will emerge into the public domain. And, due to a quirk in French law, Public Domain Day for Maurice Ravel came in May 2016 for France, when many of his compositions, including the popular and hypnotic Bolero, entered the public domain. In the US, Bolero is still copyrighted, preventing community orchestras from performing it because the sheet music is “simply too expensive.” (Footnotes omitted.)

Waugh, Forester and Breton all died in 1966; the others (except Ravel), in 1946. The article goes on to describe the legal quagmire in the United States created by successful efforts led by those such as the Disney lobby to extend copyright. Under this legislation, it appears from the article that Waugh’s works will not enter the public domain in the US until starting in 2024 for Rossetti–95 years following US publication in 1928. (This assumes compliance with all US filing and renewal requirements. Anyone with a better understanding of the law who believes this is incorrect is invited to comment below.) The saddest effect of this law is, as noted in the article, to prevent libraries and archives from preserving and disseminating even those works for which no copyright holder has been known to seek an extension. These are the so-called orphan works. 

Share
Posted in Academia, Brideshead Revisited, Rossetti: His Life and Works | Tagged , , | Comments Off on Waugh in the Public Domain (More)

Party Time: Vile Bodies and Bruno Hat

Posted on January 1, 2017 by Jeffrey Manley

The anticipation of New Year’s Eve parties inspired media references to Vile Bodies. In an entertainment news blog (Salon.com), several memorable party scenes from films were recalled. The opening scene from Stephen Fry’s film adaptation of the novel (retitled as Bright Young Things) was among them:

The fast-paced opening sequence of Stephen Fry’s fabulous adaptation of Evelyn Waugh’s “Vile Bodies” features a divinely decadent costume party titled “Inferno.” Miles (Michael Sheen) confides to his dancing friend Nina (Emily Mortimer) that the party is “too dull,” to which she responds, “I’ve never been so bored in my life!” It’s “vile,” but a typical, absinthe-fueled party for the Bright Young Things, who host “masked parties, savage parties, Victorian parties, Greek parties, Wild West parties, Circus parties,” and more in 1930s London. Of course, the war soon breaks out and the party crashes once and for all. All these frivolous high society partygoers are faced with the “nausea, terror and shame” that awaits them. Fry’s film is a sly satire that still resonates today.

Several German-language newspapers in Switzerland also carried a listing of items to be considered in planning seasonal parties. This quote is from the version that appeared in the Tages-Anzeiger in Zurich:

Celebrate like the Bright Young Things. The English upper-class kids, who called themselves “The Bright Young Things”, celebrated a different way in the 20s and 30s. They actually celebrated throughout [?] and created creative mottoes for their parties. For example, there was a party called «The Second Childhood Party». There was the circus party, the Watteau party and wild treasure hunts in the city. Sometimes they disguised themselves as someone from the circle of friends. Makeup for men and androgyne fashion for women were the order of the day. Among the bright young things were, for example, the author Evelyn Waugh, whose novel “Vile Bodies” is a kind of portrait of the time, and the photographer Cecil Beaton, who began his career with photographing his party friends.

The story is accompanied by a Cecil Beaton photograph of costumed BYPs dressed as infants in prams, no doubt taken at the “Second Childhood Party” mentioned in the article. The translation is by Google.

Two postings from earlier this week provide background for another party prank in which Waugh took part. This was the Bruno Hat exhibition in 1929 where art was on display from a bogus modern artist. Waugh wrote the catalogue and Brian Howard did most of the paintings. The postings appear on Jot101.com (an eclectic website that urges readers to submit items of interest based on recent findings or researches). The postings are dated 26 December and 27 December 2016 and are based on the blogger’s discovery of a book by Patrick Balfour (Society Racket: A Critical Survey of Modern Social Life (London, 1933) in which he provides backgound information about the hoax exhibition. Balfour’s role in Vile Bodies is also explained in the introduction to the blog post:

At the time of this book [Balfour] was ‘Mr Gossip’ at the Daily Express and the character Adam in Waugh’s Vile Bodies was probably partly based on him (Adam becomes ‘Mr Chatterbox’ at the ‘Daily Excess’.) Balfour covers the 1929 hoax surrealist exhibition at the Guinness’s house in Buckingham Gate SW1.

There is also a quote in the second posting from Waugh’s hoax catalogue (“Approach to Hat”), which he wrote under the name “A.R. de T.” Here’s a sample:

The painting of Bruno Hat presents a problem of very real importance. He is no Cezanne agonisedly tussling to reconcile the visual appearance of form with his own intuitional perception of it… Bruno Hat’s work definitely accredit him with a similar power [to Picasso], developed, because of his youth only, to a less degree. The significance of this cannot be sufficiently stressed. It means, among other things, that Bruno Hat may lead the way in this century’s European painting from Discovery to Tradition. Uninfluenced, virtually untaught, he is the first natural, lonely, spontaneous flower of the one considerable movement in painting to-day.

The quote comes from an earlier Leicester Gallery catalogue where one of Bruno Hat’s paintings was for sale. This is also available online here.

Share
Posted in Adaptations, Art, Photography & Sculpture, Film, Newspapers, Vile Bodies | Tagged , , , , | Comments Off on Party Time: Vile Bodies and Bruno Hat

El Mundo Writes of Sybille Bedford’s Debt to Waugh

Posted on December 31, 2016 by Jeffrey Manley

A Spanish-language article in the daily newspaper El Mundo published in Madrid relates the story of author Sybille Bedford’s struggle to start her writing career.  This did not begin until she was in her 40s. She was born in Germany into a half Jewish family and, following her parents’ early deaths, she studied in England. She met Aldous and Mary Huxley in the south of France and, when she lost her German citizenship, they helped her arrange a marriage of convenience to an Englishman named Bedford. She moved to England with the Huxleys and accompanied them to America when they left. She may be best known for her biography of Huxley (1974) and her first novel, The Legacy (1956). The novel was written after the war and after she had published a travel book. This is where Waugh enters the story. According to El Mundo:

The Legacy is today considered a masterpiece, but its start was not easy. The editorial rejection of her three previous attempts to publish novels weighed down on Bedford. She said that her manuscript did not excite one of her best friends, American journalist and writer Martha Gellhorn, Ernest Hemingway’s third wife. The first criticisms of The Legacy were negative. But it turns out that Nancy Mitford was enthusiastic about the book and inevitably sent it to Evelyn Waugh with a warm recommendation. The consecrated [consagrado ?] author of Brideshead Revisited (1945) was amazed and published a highly complimentary critique [elogiosisimo commentario critico ?]. From there, The Legacy was a success.

Waugh and Mitford corresponded about the book for several months after she sent it to him in March 1956. His first response after reading it anticipates his review in The Spectator (13 April 1956) to which the El Mundo article refers. Letters of Nancy Mitford and Evelyn Waugh, pp,  387-95. Waugh’s review is reprinted in Essays, Articles and Reviews, pp. 510-11. After pointing out some largely technical and structural problems, he describes the novel as 

…a book of entirely delicious quality. The plot is intricate and admirably controlled. The theme is not superficially original; two families vastly dissimilar, the one Jewish, inartistic millionaires, the other slightly decadent Catholic aristocrats, become joined in marriage…There is no hint of (odious, cant word) nostalgia in the book. The lovable, civilized  hero is ruthlessly stripped and exposed. Only Gottlieb, the butler, maintains his ascendancy uncompromised. The rest are ‘all, all of a piece throughout’; frauds and failures and each event in the elaborate structure has a direct causal connection with the revelation of them. We know nothing of the author’s age, nationality or religion. But we gratefully salute a new artist.

Bedford went on to write several other books, including three more novels, and died in 2006. The translation of the text from El Mundo is by Google with some edits. Any thoughts on improving it are welcome and can be submitted by commenting below.

Share
Posted in Articles, Brideshead Revisited, Essays, Articles & Reviews, Letters, Newspapers | Tagged , , | Comments Off on El Mundo Writes of Sybille Bedford’s Debt to Waugh

Letter to Times Cites Waugh Defense of Wodehouse

Posted on December 31, 2016 by Jeffrey Manley

In a letter to The Times (headed “Wodehouse’s World”) arising from reports of the archiving of the papers of P G Wodehouse at the British Library (see earlier post), a reader has added Evelyn Waugh to the list of those who rose to Wodehouse’s defense when it was a less popular act to do so:

Sir, George Orwell was not the only British literary figure to rally to the defence of PG Wodehouse (News, Dec 28, and letter, Dec 29). Evelyn Waugh observed in 1961 that Wodehouse’s world “can never stale” and that he would “release future generations from captivity that may be more irksome than our own”.

When held in literal captivity, Wodehouse’s naivety certainly caused him to misjudge the timbre of his wartime broadcasts. However that same quality was the origin of written works that have continued to give successive generations such unalloyed delight. In Wodehouse’s exquisite descriptions of worlds that never really existed, the reader escapes beyond the often bleaker nature of those that do.

Edward Turner
Worcester

The quote comes from a broadcast on the BBC Home Service on 15 July 1961 that was reprinted in the Sunday Times the next day. It is collected in Essays, Articles and Reviews, pp. 561-68.

Share
Posted in Articles, Newspapers, Radio Programs, World War II | Tagged , | Comments Off on Letter to Times Cites Waugh Defense of Wodehouse

New Year Greetings via Evelyn Waugh in GQ

Posted on December 31, 2016 by Jeffrey Manley

GQ magazine includes a quote from Evelyn Waugh in its New Year’s greeting article by Scott Meslow (“Champagne is an Anytime Drink”):

Here is the best time to drink Champagne: whenever. Throwing a dinner party? Keep a nice bottle of Champagne on ice. Having a quiet night in alone? Skip the tea or whiskey, pour yourself a crisp glass of Champagne, and settle into a cozy chair with some bubbly and a good book. Spending an intimate night chatting with a friend, partner, and spouse? Follow the advice of the late writer (and Champagne enthusiast) Evelyn Waugh: “For two intimates, lovers or comrades, to spend a quiet evening with a magnum, drinking no aperitif before, nothing but a glass of Cognac after—that is the ideal.”

For the background of this quote from a Vogue magazine article see earlier post.

Share
Posted in Articles, Essays, Articles & Reviews, Newspapers | Tagged , , , | Comments Off on New Year Greetings via Evelyn Waugh in GQ

Waugh Dramatization Slotted for Spring Transmission

Posted on December 30, 2016 by Jeffrey Manley

The Times has announced a list of outstanding TV dramas scheduled to air in the New Year. Among them is the adaptation of Waugh’s first novel Decline and Fall to be broadcast in the Spring. (See earlier posts.) Here’s The Times’ description:

It seems incredible, but this three-part comedy satire represents the television debut for Evelyn Waugh’s comic masterpiece. Jack Whitehall takes the lead as the hapless Paul Pennyfeather, who, after a mishap at Oxford involving the Bollinger Club (sound familiar?), ends up having to teach at an obscure public school in Wales. David Suchet is the headmaster of Llanabba School, while Eva Longoria will play the exotic Mrs Margot Beste-Chetwynde. James Wood, who wrote Rev, is the adapter, so expect something very lovely. 

The Times’ article on the internet is headed by a photograph from the film. Other adaptations from novels include SS-GB by Len Deighton on BBC One in February and, later in the year, a four-part animated dramatization of Watership Down co-produced by BBC and Netflix and a 10-part dramatization of stories of Philip K. Dick on Channel 4 to be entitled Electric Dreams.

Share
Posted in Adaptations, Decline and Fall, Newspapers, Television, Television Programs | Tagged , | Comments Off on Waugh Dramatization Slotted for Spring Transmission

More Waughs Than One

Posted on December 30, 2016 by Jeffrey Manley

Daisy Waugh, novelist and journalist, is interviewed on the writers’ website Litopia. She is the daughter of Auberon and grand daughter of Evelyn and has written several books, both fiction and nonfiction. In the interview she discusses her latest offerings in both genres, which were published in 2014:

… she promoted her last book, “a feminist diatribe on modern motherhood” by “lying on a giant, polystyrene cut-out of my own name. In a tight red satin skirt which didn’t belong to me, and some magnificent shoes covered in velvet and jewels, on loan from Manolo Blahnik.”

To promote her latest novel— she sits down with us! But before we get to Honeyville— the pet name of the only town in Colorado where prostitution was legal in 1913— she gripes about trying to make it as a Hollywood screenwriter. She also opens up about being a Waugh, an atheist who loves the Tarot and the personal repercussions of her successful and divisive I don’t know why she bothers: Guilt-free Motherhood for Thoroughly Modern Women. By the time we reach whether it was better to be a whore than a wife in the Wild West— as proclaimed by Honeyville’s protagonist— the gloves are well and truly off. This Daisy is no shrinking wallflower!

The book about motherhood was published in the US under the title The Kids Will be Fine.  According to Amazon postings, the novel Honeyville is about Hollywood.

In the latest issue of The Week magazine, the autobiography of Daisy’s father, Auberon Waugh, (Will This Do?) is selected by the magazine staff as one of their best books read in 2016: 

Auberon Waugh’s memoirs, published in 1991, were new to me this year. In extremely witty prose, Waugh recalls the trials and indignities of being the son of the famous English Catholic novelist Evelyn Waugh. He also shares what it was to be a Fleet Street veteran in London’s never-ending media war. Waugh knows what to do with a poison pen, whether he is aiming it at his teachers, his journalistic rivals, or socialist politicians. The many libel trials in which he was a defendant are entertaining in themselves. But the book is also a tender affair in parts. There is a rueful war remembrance of what it was to be an activist journalist on behalf of starving Biafrans in Nigeria. Or observations on the early career of media maven Tina Brown. The book is good gossipy fun, especially for Anglophiles of a certain age. —Michael Brendan Dougherty, senior correspondent

 

 

Share
Posted in Auberon Waugh, Newspapers, Waugh Family | Tagged , , | Comments Off on More Waughs Than One