Another Mitford Book

Posted on September 12, 2016 by Jeffrey Manley

Another biography of the Mitford girls is reviewed in the New York Times Book Review. They seem to be competing with Evelyn Waugh for the number of biographies published, but they have an advantage since there are six of them. This latest is entitled The Six (in the UK it was Take Six Girls) and is by Laura Thompson, who previously published a biography of Nancy Mitford entitled Life in a Cold Climate (recently reissued). She has also written widely on horse and dog racing as well as on Agatha Christie and Lord Lucan.

The NYT review is by journalist Tina Brown, who opens with a groan: “Oh no! Not another book about the Mitfords!.” But she found it was riveting and was especially impressed with Thompson’s analysis of how the life of Diana affected the lives of the others: 

…the Mitfords’ rivalries were as intense as their loyalties. Thompson makes it clear that Diana is the still, chill touchstone for them all. The spiky, possessive Nancy was forever jealous when her own admirer Evelyn Waugh fell at Diana’s feet. After the war the Mosleys exiled themselves to Orsay in France. Nancy loyally visited Diana but never introduced her to her glittering circle of Paris friends. Competition with Diana also stoked Unity’s determination to outdo Diana’s fascism by following Hitler. A tinderbox dynamic played out through all their lives — Jessica, eloping with the radical Communist firebrand Romilly because Unity was a Nazi, Unity becoming a Nazi because Diana was a fascist… 

I’m not sure the chronology of Waugh’s admiration for Diana, which peaked in the early 1930s, supports Brown’s (or Thompson’s) theory about Nancy’s jealousy, since his admiration for Nancy really blossomed during and after the war, long after he fell out with Diana; but she may have a point.

UPDATE: The print version of Tina Brown’s review appeared in the New York Times Book Review dated 18 September 2016.

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Australian Journalist Cites Scoop

Posted on September 12, 2016 by Jeffrey Manley

Australian journalist Mark Baker has cited Waugh’s novel Scoop as one of the books that changed his life:

This peerless satire of the foibles and vanities of Fleet Street in the golden age of newspapers is as sharp and funny today as it was when it first appeared in the 1930s. I stumbled on to it early in my career in journalism and saw repeated echoes through many years as a foreign correspondent: the pompous, bumbling bosses, the big-noting and big-spending star reporters, the sycophantic editorial bureaucrats. It ought to be a standard text for journalism students of all ages.

The article appears in the Sydney Morning Herald and several other papers. Other life-changing books cited by Baker include Alan Moorehead’s Gallipoli, Little House on the Prairie by Laura Ingalls Wilder and The Narrow Road to the Deep North by Australian novelist Richard Flanagan.

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Philip Eade to Appear at Oldie Lunch and Bridport Festival

Posted on September 11, 2016 by Jeffrey Manley

Oldie magazine has announced the appearance of Waugh’s biographer Philip Eade as one of three authors at its 11th October literary lunch:

This new study reveals that from his strained relationships with family and lovers to his religious and drug-induced awakenings, Waugh’s life was one of drama and complexity.

The others to appear at the lunch are Tom Bower who recently wrote a biography of Tony Blair and Anne Sebba whose recent book is Les Parisiennes about the life of women during the German occupation. The Oldie was among the first publications to review Eade’s biography, Evelyn Waugh: A Life Revisited.  See earlier post. The lunches are held at Simpsons-in-the -Strand and may be booked here.

On Thursday, 10th November, Eade will appear at the Bridport Literary Festival in Dorset. There, he will be in conversation with Celia Brayfield at the Bull Hotel at 11am. Tickets may be booked here.

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Daphne Fielding, Writer

Posted on September 10, 2016 by Jeffrey Manley

A book blog called The Neglected Books Page has posted an article on the first book written by Waugh’s good friend and correspondent Daphne Fielding (1904-97). This is the first volume of her memoirs entitled Mercury Presides that was published in 1954. The article opens with a quote from Waugh: 

When Evelyn Waugh read Daphne Fielding’s memoir, Mercury Presides, he quipped that the book was “marred by discretion and good taste.” Considering that the author was one of the more sparkling of the Bright Young Things whose exploits and indulgences Waugh satirized in Vile Bodies and other early novels, one can understand his assessment…Waugh remarked that “the adult part [of the book] is rather as though Lord Montgomery were to write his life and omit to mention that he ever served in the army.”

Waugh’s comments are quoted from a letter he wrote to Nancy Mitford on 16 November 1954 (Letters, 433). Waugh had known Daphne since the days of the Bright Young People and became her mentor when she took up writing. Indeed, he can be said to have been the moving force behind her discovery of her writing talent. Daphne and her husband Henry Bath asked Waugh to write a brief history and description of their home at Longleat House to be used for a booklet to be sold to day trippers. Waugh declined on the basis that he couldn’t write about a family of Protestants that had unjustly (in his view) received their property from the Roman Catholic church during the Reformation. As a result Daphne completed the project herself and never stopped writing.

Most of her works, like Mercury Presides, are forgotten and out of print. These include a largely autobiographical novel (The Adonis Garden), which Waugh reviewed in The Spectator of 22 June 1961, as well as a second volume of memoirs. In his review of the novel, Waugh chided her for using up enough material for several books. Her book that enjoyed the greatest commercial success was Duchess of Jermyn Street. This was a biography of Rosa Lewis who ran the Cavendish Hotel with an imperious hand for many years. Waugh contributed an introduction to that book as well as suggestions for sources. Daphne also gave birth to Alexander Bath (Henry’s heir as the 7th Marquess) who became quite a celebrity in  his own right during the latter years of the 20th Century. See earlier post.

Thanks to David Lull for sending a link to this article.

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Waugh Appears in Student Reading List

Posted on September 10, 2016 by Jeffrey Manley

The iNews (an online UK newspaper) has published a list of books that all well grounded students should read (not necessarily as part of a course or degree syllabus). The list consists of both fiction and non-fiction. For example, two books (one in each category) are recommended by George Orwell: 1984 and Homage to Catalonia and by Aldous Huxley:  Brave New World and Doors of Perception. A single book by Waugh is among those recommended:

Scoop by Evelyn Waugh. William Boot seeks the ‘scoop’ on the beginning of a “very promising little war” in a fictional East-African country. Waugh’s satire on fleet street sensationalism is a must read for any budding journalists.

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Simon Leys on Evelyn Waugh

Posted on September 9, 2016 by Jeffrey Manley

This week’s issue of The Weekly Standard carries a review of a biography of Simon Leys (1935-2014). The review is entitled “Muddle Kingdon” and the reviewer is Stephen Miller. Leys was the pen name of Pierre Ryckmans, a Belgian who became an Australian and made a name for himself as a Sinologist who deconstructed the underpinnings of Maoism, much to the dismay of Western Maoists in the 1970s. The biography also mentions his articles and appreciations of writers such as George Orwell and Evelyn Waugh. Leys’ essay on Waugh, entitled “Terror of Babel” recently appeared in a collection of his essays issued by New York Review Books: The Hall of Uselessness (2013). It had first appeared as an article in the March 1993 issue of the Independent Monthly, a Australian cultural magazine, and was later included in an Australian collection of his works, The Angel and the Octopus (Sydney, 1999).

Waugh is also mentioned in another book review (unsigned) appearing in this week’s Economist. This is a biography of the Byzantinist, Steven Runciman (1903-2000), entitled Outlandish Knight: The Byzantine Life of Steven Runciman by Minoo Dinshaw. Waugh and Runciman were contemporaries but don’t seem to have known each other particularly well (Runciman studied at Eton and Cambridge). According to the review, the book frequently cites Waugh’s WWII trilogy (Sword of Honour) as well as those of Olivia Manning. Runciman was in the Balkans and the Middle East during WWII. He had posts in both Jerusalem and Cairo and may have contributed to one or more of the characters in Manning’s Balkan and Levant Trilogies. Waugh may have met him in Cairo. According to the review, during his student years Runciman also made “frequent trips to London to socialise with the ‘bright young people’ (and be photographed with his budgerigar by Cecil Beaton),” and he may well have met with Waugh in those days as well. Beaton’s photo is on the book’s dust wrapper. 

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Social Climbing Heroes

Posted on September 8, 2016 by Jeffrey Manley

In the current issue of the Anthony Powell Society Newsletter (Autumn 2016, No. 64) Simon Barnes has written the lead article in which he compares social climbers in three novels: Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited, Powell’s Dance to the Music of Time and Kingsley Amis’s Lucky Jim.  In each case, there is a malevolent climber (Rex Mottram, Kenneth Widmerpool and Bertrand Welch) as well as a benevolent one (Charles Ryder, Nick Jenkins and Jim Dixon). The reader is encouraged to despise the bad guys and identify with the goodies even though they are all striving toward the same goal–to better themselves socially. Waugh manages a few scenes where the climbing of Rex and Ryder clash–e.g., the dinner in Paris and the hand of Julia/possession of Brideshead Castle. Ryder tops Rex in both cases only to lose everything in the end (compensated perhaps by religious conversion). Similar themes are developed in the interplay between the climbers in the other novels. 

The APS Newsletter is available by subscription/membership. Apply here.  It will eventually find its way to the internet where copies are posted about a year after publication.

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Waugh and Hemingway and “Beat-up Old Bastards”

Posted on September 7, 2016 by Jeffrey Manley

An article in The Huffington Post earlier this week discusses Ernest Hemingway’s claims to have killed 122 “Krauts” during WWII and compares that claim with those of Chris Kyle (subject of the autobiography and film American Sniper) to have killed 160 enemy combatants during his years as a sniper for the US Navy Seals. Kyle was a soldier whereas Hemingway was an unarmed war correspondent only intermittently present in the front lines following D-Day. The authors of the article (Mark Cirino and Robert K Elder) are highly skeptical of Hemingway’s claims. In the course of their discussion they mention a letter Hemingway wrote to Evelyn Waugh touching on this topic: 

In October 1950, in a letter to author Evelyn Waugh (Brideshead Revisited), [Hemingway] wrote that the figure wasn’t such an impressive total, “especially for anyone who had ever have [sic] to teach sniping.” Although Hemingway was an excellent and devoted hunter, there is no evidence that he ever instructed soldiers in the art of sniping. Hemingway’s self-perpetuated image was often at odds with the historical record, not to mention common sense. …

Hemingway viewed D-Day operations on June 5-6, 1944 and transferred to the 4th Infantry by the end of July. He travelled back and forth from the front, until leaving for Cuba in March 1945. Hemingway’s greatest exposure to combat would have been Rambouillet in August, Belgium in September, and the Battle of Hurtgen in November.

Hemingway’s only letter to Waugh, noted in an index of his outgoing correspondence, is dated 25 October 1950. It is not included in the Selected Letters edited by Carlos Baker and published in 1981 nor does it appear in the index of letters to Waugh archived at the British Library, but it seems to have been published somewhere, as The Huffington Post quotes from it. It is probably a letter of thanks to Waugh for his favorable review of Hemingway’s novel Across the River and into the Trees which appeared in the Tablet for 30 September 1950 and was quoted in a Time magazine article the following month. (“Winner Take Nothing,” Essays, Articles and Reviews, pp 361-3). Waugh was one of the few reviewers to defend the book, and he placed it in the context of Hemingway’s other work–not his best and possibly his worst but, even so, much better that the sort of book by lesser writers that many of the same reviewers routinely praised. The hero is a “beat-up old bastard,” a description Waugh later quoted in a letter to Diana Cooper as having been applied to link him with Hemingway but which Waugh considered to be “greatly to his own honour.” (Letter dated 8 September 1952, Mr Wu and Mrs Stitch, p. 143). 

Any reader having more information about Hemingway’s letter to Waugh or the whereabouts of its publication or achiving is invited to reply as provided below.

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Waugh Biographer to Appear at Oxford

Posted on September 6, 2016 by Jeffrey Manley

As part of Oxford Alumni Weekend (16-18 September), Waugh biographer Paula Byrne will appear with her husband Jonathan Bate in a program entitled “The Life of the Biographer.”  The discussion at Worcester College is described in the program:

The art and the challenges of writing a biography will be shared by distinguished biographers talking about recent works. Sir Jonathan Bate’s book about Ted Hughes was published to high acclaim, but also controversy, while in her latest biography Dr Paula Byrne uncovered the extraordinary story of John F Kennedy’s forgotten sister, Kick, the heir to Chatsworth.

Byrne’s earlier work Mad World: Evelyn Waugh and the Secrets of Brideshead was published in 2009. She spoke on her work about both Kathleen Kennedy and Waugh at last year’s conference “Evelyn Waugh and his Circle: Reading and Editing the Complete Works” at the University of Leicester. Byrne’s Alumni Weekend presentation will take place on Sunday, 18 September from 1145a-1300p in the Linbury Room at Worcester College. Booking information and entry fees for this and other Alumni Weekend events are available here.

 

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Negative Blog Post Prompts Internet Debate

Posted on September 4, 2016 by Jeffrey Manley

Earlier this week Prof Alan Jacobs of Baylor University in Waco, TX posted a brief article on his weblog in which he distilled most of the negative views of Evelyn Waugh into a few paragraphs. These include Waugh’s allegedly callous attitude toward his children, his war record and even challenges to the sincerity of his conversion to Roman Catholicism. (Oddly, Prof Jacobs left out snobbery.) These are all familiar views that have been stated elsewhere by others; for example, Prof Jacobs quotes Christopher Sykes on Waugh’s reputation as an officer. What is unusual is that there is no attempt at balance or objectivity.

An excerpt from the article dealing with religious beliefs was reposted a day later on oldlife.org, a Protestant religious blog. It is not clear who made that reposting. At least one commenter was prompted to take issue with Prof Jacobs’ article on his Twitter feed. This is journalist Matthew Walther who writes for the politically conservative internet newspaper the Washington Free Beacon. Walther has also written on Waugh, not always positively but with a degree of objectivity that is notably missing from Prof Jacobs’ post. See previous post. Walther’s Twitter feed and several responses can be viewed here. Thanks to David Lull for calling this debate to our attention. Anyone wishing to join in is free to do so either on Matthew Walther’s Twitter feed or oldlife.org, both linked above.

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