The English Touring Theatre has posted on YouTube snippets from interviews of the cast and crew of the Brideshead Revisited stage adaptation. The play, scripted by Bryony Lavery, opened last night at the York Theatre Royal. Reviews are eagerly awaited.
Two recent magazine articles are devoted to Waughs. The current issue of the Tablet contains an article entitled “Scoop revisited.” This is by critic and novelist D.J. Taylor and relates to the 1960 BBC Face-to-Face TV interview that was recently rebroadcast on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of Evelyn Waugh’s death. Taylor concludes that Waugh got much the better of the interviewer John Freeman, considered rather aggressive at the time:
Nervous or not, Waugh offers a lesson in how to deal with the media so consummate that you wish he had survived to take on Sir Robin Day or Jeremy Paxman. Unwelcome questions are lobbed straight back (Q: “You have said that you were unhappy at Lancing [his public school]” A: “Have I? Whom to?”)…
Freeman, with whom you rather sympathise, receives his coup de grâce when wondering why Waugh has consented to appear on the programme in the first place. “Poverty,” his guest breezily returns. “We have been hired to talk in this deliriously happy way.”
As one who was recently rebuked by the “Evelyn Waugh Newsletter” for suggesting that the great man, had he lived, would have shied away from the modern media circus, I now realise that my critic was right. Waugh was a sharp operator, who would have contrived to project his personality – or sometimes only conceal it – in any age.
In the Australian conservative literary journal Quadrant, Mark McGinness has written an article entitled “Half a century in the wake of Waugh” (v. 60, n.4, April 2016). Although according to the abstract, this article begins with a description of Evelyn Waugh’s funeral, the subjects of the article are summarized as:
World War (1939-1945); English fiction; Waugh, Alec, 1898-1981; Detective and mystery stories
The article is behind a paywall and requires a subscription.
NOTE (24 April 2016): As it turns out, the brief description of the Quadrant article is misleading. It is NOT primarily about Alec Waugh but is instead a rather good summary of the life and work of his younger brother Evelyn. In effect, it is an Australian tribute to Evelyn Waugh on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of his death. Alec figures in it only as part of the description of Evelyn’s childhood during which their father favored his elder son.
McGinness’ article opens amusingly with an Australian reference:
Some years ago, a knock-about neighbour glanced at a book I was carrying, a recent biography, which had splashed in bold characters across its spine ‘EVELYN WAUGH’. “Ah,” he suggested, “Steve and Mark’s Mum?” It is now half a century since the writer’s death, and thirty-five years since, to general acclaim, the cameras lovingly panned the glories of Castle Howard and the spires of Oxford, catching the languid tones of their inhabitants in Brideshead Revisited. So perhaps Waugh had faded from popular consciousness?
Australians will know, as your correspondent was informed by Prof. Don Gallagher, that Steve and Mark Waugh are Antipodean cricket players. (For the record, Steve’s mum is named Beverley.) After an entertaining and accurate summary of Evelyn Waugh’s career, that demonstrates no fading from popular consciousness has occurred, McGinness concludes with a reference to another Aussie:
His life will surely continue to be a source of fascination. And his work? With his genius for narrative and his mastery of prose, his gift for comedy and his grasp of character, Evelyn Waugh could expect to be read for as long as fiction is prized. The great Clive James, in his review of the Letters, put it perfectly, “Waugh is in a direct line with Shakespeare and Dickens. …… consensus has been delayed because many critics were rightly proud of the Welfare State and regarded Waugh’s hatred of it as mean-minded. He was paid out for his rancour by his own unhappiness. For the happiness he can still give us it is difficult to know how to reward him, beyond saying that he has helped make tolerable the modern age he so abominated.”
James’ 1980 review, entitled “Waugh’s Last Stand,” first appeared in the New York Review of Books and was reprinted in his collected essays From the Land of the Shadows (London, 1982, p. 120).
NOTE (1 May 2016): The Quadrant article is now posted on the internet in full.
The BBC has posted a 3.25 minute video about the revival of interest in the English country house. Here’s a link (don’t be alarmed if it opens with an ad). Narrated by art historian Alistair Sooke, it begins with recognition of the dire state of country houses after WWII. At that time many, among them Evelyn Waugh, felt that these structures were doomed to decay and destruction. Sooke credits Waugh with helping to restore interest in country houses and their occupants with his 1945 novel Brideshead Revisited. He also notes the positive impact of the 1981 TV series based on the novel. But already by 1959 when Waugh wrote a new preface for his revised edition of the novel, it was obvious that the country house had survived. Sooke concludes by noting Waugh’s apology in the new preface for some of the gluttony in the 1945 version but says it was the glutinous prose of Waugh which helped to save what he feared would be lost. The video was filmed on the grounds of Castle Howard where both the TV and later theatrical versions were filmed and includes an interview with Nick Howard, the present owner. The video is part of a BBC promotional effort and will play worldwide.
The York Press carries a story in which Damian Cruden, director of the stage adaptation of Brideshead Revisited that opens tomorrow in York, explains his interpretation of the novel. In Cruden’s view:
“Above all it’s a family saga, with its fair share of whimsy and is definitely not to be taken entirely seriously, but it’s wonderful telling of a tale that does have something to do with defining the nature of Englishness, and undoubtedly it was one of the defining novels of the 20th century,” said Damian.
“Not that Waugh was completely happy with it, as he revised the book for the American publication in the 1950s because he had some issues with it. He was concerned it was too pastoral or over-saccharine, but I don’t agree with that. It might not be as cutting or as sharp as Vile Bodies, but what Waugh does is take a story that stretches a long way back in time and also looks a long way forward.
“He looks at how the Roman Catholic Church and the aristocracy sit in England, between the wars, as Charles Ryder recounts his memories of this aristocratic way of life and this family that seemed to have everything but in fact have nothing. The one thing the Flytes end up with is their faith, which is stronger than anything else. For Charles too, he wants to be able to believe; he wants faith.”
The U.K. edition of the novel was revised in 1960 for the reasons given by Cruden. Those revisions were not incorporated into the U.S. edition until 2012.
An interactive internet site called Ranker has produced a list of what it calls the best homosexual authors (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) and invites viewers to vote on the rankings. It’s not clear to your correspondent how the ranking system works, but at present Waugh is ranked #18. If you click on the entry, it will explain the ranking in terms of how people have voted. Here’s the explanation of the list, which is credited to KRon34:
List includes known gay authors, living or dead—can be novelists, short story or film writers, poets, etc. Vote on the merits of their work.
Who are the most famous gay writers in history? This list contains over 200 of the most notable gay writers ever, with photos where available. Some of the literary world’s best talent has come from gay writers. The best gay authors may or may not choose to speak openly about their sexuality and tackle it as a theme in their writing or in their books…Some on the list may not be considered “gay” by modern terms as cultures have changed throughout the centuries. Others were out and proud and used their unique experience to create some of the best gay literature of all time. That said, regardless of their era in antiquity, these gay authors have all expressed interest in same-sex relations.
Waugh does considerably better in this group of writers than he did when Time magazine erroneously placed him on a list of women writers, where he ranked #96. Other writers of Waugh’s generation ranking above him on this list are E.M. Forster (#4), Virginia Woolf (#5), T.S. Eliot (#9), D.H. Lawrence (#10), Christopher Isherwood (#12), and W.H. Auden (#15), of whom the eligibility of Woolf, Eliot and Lawrence seem somewhat questionable. Just below Waugh is openly gay poet Allen Ginsburg (#19) and further down are Noel Coward (who was pretty well “out”) and Somerset Maugham (who was somewhat less so). Waugh had homosexual affairs in his undergraduate days, as described in his Diaries, but later in life tended toward the homophobic. There were few openly gay characters in his books, although Ambrose Silk and Anthony Blanche would probably qualify, as well as, in the opinions of many, would Charles Ryder and Sebastian Flyte.
The Spanish-language online newspaper Aceprensa yesterday published an article marking the 50th anniversary of Evelyn Waugh’s death. The article, by Miguel Castellvi, makes several points:
–Despite charges of snobbery and elitism, Waugh’s reputation as one of the 20th century’s greatest writers of English prose has endured.
–His reputation is recognized by the project of the Oxford University Press and University of Leicester to publish his complete works in 43 volumes and the announcement of a new biography to be published in July.
–In Spanish, Carlos Villar Flor has translated five of his novels, including the three volumes of his war trilogy, Sword of Honour (La espada del honor).
–Villar Flor has also joined with Prof. Donat Gallagher to write In the Picture, which is a historical review of Waugh’s military career aimed at correcting many misconceptions of previous biographers and critics.
Villar Flor is also a member of the Evelyn Waugh Society and has lectured at several of its conferences. The foregoing is based on a Google Translate version of the article. Anyone wishing to correct or edit this summary is invited to file a comment as directed below.
The journals of literary critic and post-war editor of the TLS, Alan Pryce-Jones were published, largely unnoticed, late last year. These cover the years 1926-1939 and are entitled Devoid of Shyness. According to a recent notice in the New Criterion’s Critic’s Notebook column:
Alan Pryce-Jones was an aesthete straight out of Evelyn Waugh or Ronald Firbank, a man of immense literary promise but even greater powers of dispersion, which eventually swamped the promise…. This book is less a chronicle than a series of impressions, affidavits of temperament and sensibility, as AP-J made his way from being (in the words of the book’s editor, John Byrne) “a barely sufferable precocious and privileged teenager” to the intensely social bon vivant who knew everyone and went everywhere … Alan Pryce-Jones exhibits an astonishing self-absorption and, on political matters, a troubling naïveté, but this period piece reveals a rare species of cultivated sensibility that, although clearly a hothouse varietal, nonetheless betokened an achievement of culture that was, in its way, as glorious as it was unsustainable.
In his 1987 autobiography The Bonus of Laughter and his brief memoir in Evelyn Waugh and His World (1973), edited by his son David, Alan Pryce-Jones does not claim friendship or even close acquaintance with Waugh. But the two moved in the same literary world and met on several occasions. On one occasion, however, a meeting was avoided. This is described in the memoirs of Violet Powell, wife of Anthony Powell. The aborted meeting occurred (or not, in this case) in the mid 1950s when Ronnie Knox was living at Mells Manor, near the Powells, as the guest of Katharine Asquith. Pryce-Jones was scheduled to visit the Powells and was escorted by novelist L.P. Hartley, who also lived nearby. They had scheduled a stop on the way at Mells Manor at a time when Waugh was also there on a visit. According to Violet Powell:
It was subsequently leaked that Monsignor Knox and Katharine had been apprehensive that Evelyn Waugh would be impolite to Alan Pryce-Jones for a number of absurd reasons. To avert a social disaster, Ronnie had firmly taken Evelyn out for a walk, and kept him looking at the pigsties till the coast was clear. The Departure Platform (1996, p. 96).
There is nothing in Waugh’s biographies, diaries or letters to suggest any enmity between them. There is a brief mention in Waugh’s Diaries (p. 782) that Graham Greene had expressed a dislike of Pryce-Jones and wished to avoid a possible encounter, to which Waugh replied “he always accepts all invitations and then decides on the most attractive at the last moment.” He advised Greene not to worry because Pryce-Jones would likely chuck the occasion where Greene feared a confrontation. Although Pryce-Jones did show up, Greene told Waugh the next day that he “sat up till 4 drinking whisky” with him. Pryce-Jones had written a thoughtful, thorough, and much-cited review of Put Out More Flags in the New Statesman (reprinted in The Critical Heritage: Evelyn Waugh, p. 214) and was a convert to Roman Catholicism, so it’s not obvious why Ronnie Knox and Katharine Asquith went to such lengths to avoid a meeting between him and Waugh. Perhaps Pryce-Jones’ journals will shed some light on the matter.
Only 500 copies of the journals were printed by a small press in York, and they are not available from Amazon. They may, however, be bought through Stone Trough Books in York (which is also the publisher)–Phone: 01904-670323; email: (click to email).
Waugh biographer Selina Hastings will deliver the annual Evelyn Waugh Lecture at Lancing College on Thursday. The lecture is not open to the public, but anyone interested in attending should contact Claire Welling at Lancing re making special arrangements: (click to email); o2173-465708. Cost to OLs and parents is £45. The college usually posts a summary of the lecture after the event.
Rare book seller Peter Harrington lists as new arrivals several presentation copies of books given to Robert and Angela Laycock. Robert was one of Waugh’s commanding officers in WWII. The first is a series of four copies of books sent to Angela (including three of Love Among the Ruins (1953)), with ever increasing frustration expressed by Waugh at not receiving a thank you note. These are described as follows:
A sequence of presentation copies chronicling Waugh’s humorous attack on Angie Laycock’s unresponsiveness when sent an inscribed copy of the book. The first book Waugh sent was number 29 of the deluxe issue of 350 large paper copies, inscribed by him on the limitation leaf, “For Darling Angie the Beardless Beauty, with love from Evelyn”. Laycock failed to respond to this presentation, and so Waugh sent her a copy of the first edition, trade issue. On the front free endpaper, he drew a snake in red and black ink and wrote in capitals, “I am a very austere snake. I don’t like editions de luxe. Give me the people’s edition & maybe I shall thank you”. When this was ignored, Waugh subjected another copy of the trade edition to violence, removing the front board and large portions of the dust jacket and soiling and tearing the contents. A snake in black ink graces the verso of the title page, where Waugh has written, “I’m a rough tough kind of snake. This is how I like books to be”. Finally, when no response was forthcoming, Waugh sent Laycock a blank book bound in red cloth. On the first leaf he drew an elaborately detailed snake and wrote “This edition is limited to one copy numbered, and signed by the author. No One” with “Anon” as the signature. In the blank spaces between the snakes coils he inscribed, “I am a simple little serpent. This is the only kind of book I can read”.
The “beardless beauty” in the inscription refers to the heroine in the novella. Photos of the inscriptions and drawings can be viewed at the link above the quote. The price for all four is £17,500.
Also on offer is a presentation copy of Basil Seal Rides Again (1963), inscribed “for Bob with love to Angie, Evelyn.” There were no subsequent copies, so either Bob must have sent a thank you note for this one, or, perhaps, Waugh did not expect one from him. The price is £3,750.
A website called erenow (describing itself as a “large online library”) has posted portions of Mary Beard’s book The Parthenon (2010, revised). In the “Further Reading” section of her book, Professor Beard recommends Evelyn Waugh’s early travel book Labels. This is under Chapter 1, entitled “Why the Parthenon might make you cry”:
Walker Percy’s boredom is described in his Lost in the Cosmos: the last self-help book (London, 1984), while Evelyn Waugh came up with ‘Stilton’ in Labels: a Mediterranean journal (London, 1930).
In his book (p. 150) , Waugh offers no extended description of the well-known structure but remarks briefly that:
it is not ‘snow-white’ as I have seen it described by quite responsible observers, but a singularly beautiful tone in very pale pinkish brown; the nearest parallel to it of Nature that I can think of is that of the milder parts of a Stilton cheese into which port has been poured.
