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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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

 

 

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Actor Peter Davison Names Waugh Novel Among Favorites

Posted on December 30, 2016 by Jeffrey Manley

In the Daily Express, British actor Peter Davison lists Waugh’s first novel Decline and Fall among his favorite books:

It is the book that got me into reading. I didn’t really read at school but once I became an actor and reading wasn’t obligatory I read like a lunatic.This is about a student’s adventures in a rarefied world in the 1930s. It’s brilliantly written and very funny.

Davison, 65,  recently wrote his autobiography Is there Life Outside the Box? which will be published in the US next week. He is best known for his comic performances in TV series such as All Creatures Great and Small, A Very Peculiar Practice, At Home with the Braithwaites, and The Last Dectective. Among his other favorites, aside from several classics, are the contemporary comic novels Jonathan Franzen’s The Corrections and A Short History of a Small Place by T R Pearson.

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WSJ Traces Etymology of “Scoop”

Posted on December 29, 2016 by Jeffrey Manley

The Wall Street Journal has an article in which it traces the origin of the word “scoop” and its application to a journalistic coup where one reporter gets his story out ahead of the others who are (or should be) looking for it.  This meaning is first mentioned in 1874 when the OED recorded the usage by a reporter from the Chicago Inter-Ocean who

explained to  a congressional committee how a newspaper tries “to cover a scoop: We hear of a thing that is going round and fear that somebody else will have it and publish it first.”

Credit also goes to Evelyn Waugh for further popularizing the term in his 1938 novel when he used it as his title and told “of a hapless foreign correspondent who accidently breaks a big story.” Waugh used the term ironically in a book which satirized the journalistic profession rather ruthlessly. The WSJ story, written by Ben Zimmer, doesn’t mention a more recent application of the term when US screenwriter Woody Allen used it as the title of a 2006 film which he also acted in and directed. Like Waugh’s novel, the film involved an innocent who was attempting to become an investigative journalist, but the satire is much milder than Waugh’s and the comedy at a lower pitch.

Another recent story in The City Paper (Bogota) covers the lamentable record of drug enforcement against Colombia’s cartels and opens with a quote from Waugh’s novel: “News is what a chap who doesn’t care much about anything wants to read.” This is quoted in an excerpt from what is described as a new “blockbuster” from journalist Jimmy Weiskopf entitled My Part in the Narco-War. Whether it is fiction or nonfiction isn’t stated, but from the evidence in the excerpt, it is in written in the satiric tradition of Scoop.

 

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Author Richard Adams Dies at 96

Posted on December 28, 2016 by Jeffrey Manley

Richard Adams who is best known for his first novel, Watership Down, has died at the age of 96. The book is about rabbits and was derived from stories he had told his children, but it was also based on his own experience in WWII. Daniel Hannan writing in the International Business Times described it as a book about WWII in which the war itself does not appear, in much the same way that Waugh’s Vile Bodies was about WWI in which that war makes no appearance. A reviewer, writing in the Orlando Sentinel about Adams’ 1992 autobiography, The Day Gone By, compared Adams’ wartime experience with that of Evelyn Waugh:

”I am about to write about the bravest men who ever lived,” Adams says of the comrades with whom he served in the 1st British Airborne Division beginning in 1943. His admiration is unbounded and unabashed. In their company, ”I have never felt more proud, fulfilled or happy before or since.”Among those valiant men are the brave and self-effacing Maj. John Gifford and the swashbuckling Capt. Paddy Kavanagh – the models for Hazel and Bigwig in Watership Down…In the war years, the pace quickens, where action replaces introspection. Adams recalls those six years of cataclysmic upheaval with intense emotion – and some humor. In particular, his first encounters with the rough-tough Army regulars make for some amusing incidents. At the British equivalent of boot camp, life is very similar to Guy Crouchback’s in Evelyn Waugh’s Men at Arms, Adams notes – all barracks, ”square bashing” (drilling) and ”bumping” (polishing).

According to Adams’ obituary in the New York Times: 

He told The Times of London in 1974 that he disliked modern novels “dominated by the problems of their heroes or heroines, who are constantly questioning their values.”

Although Adams’ fiction appears to bear little resemblance to that of Evelyn Waugh, when asked by the Daily Telegraph in 2014 who were his favorite writers, Adams pleaded a failing memory but did provide an answer:

I ask him his favourite contemporary author. “Mary Renault,” he offers. She died in 1983. The greatest English novelist? “Evelyn Waugh has had a long and successful career, hasn’t he? This blithering Catholicism is a bit annoying.”

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Waugh and the New American Racists

Posted on December 27, 2016 by Jeffrey Manley

An article in the Mexican newspaper El Economista addresses the deveopment of a new form of racism in the United. After years of melting together, as immigrants came in from the south to join those already there from Europe, Africa and Asia, the European group now finds itself rapidly approaching a minority after having previously dominated. A portion of that group is becoming ever more vociferous, as reflected in the recent natonal election. Evelyn Waugh is cited to help explain this phenomenon:

There is a large group that is considered the whitest of all and sees with disgust, and now with irritation, the growing number of people of another color. As explained by Londoner Evelyn Waugh in Remote People: “… the northern races, facing the danger of [domination or] infection by [a coloured race, tend to go a little mad on the subject.] The fear of Indians, [Negroes], Japanese or Chinese obsesses [one or other of all the branches of the Nordic race] … Anglo-Saxons are perhaps [worse than any].”

Waugh was at this point contrasting the attitudes of Northern Europeans with those of “Mediterranean peoples [who] have been at war with the infidel for so many generations that they have learned to accept race antagonism calmly as a normal thing and therefore seem often to be immune from it, as Turks are said at advanced age to become immune from syphilis.” Translation is by Google. The quoted material has been edited to conform to the original. (Remote People, Penguin, 2011, pp 234-35) 

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