Evelyn Waugh’s recipe for mulled claret

Posted on February 9, 2012 by Antony F. P. Vickery

The following item was published in the Evelyn Waugh Newsletter, Vol. 6, No. 3 (Winter 1972).

Waugh’s Mulled Claret

Francis O. Mattson

“It was shortly before midnight in early March; I had been entertaining the college intellectuals to mulled claret; the fire was roaring, the air of my room heavy with smoke and spice, and my mind weary with metaphysics.” So Charles Ryder describes the setting for his first meeting with Sebastian in Brideshead Revisited.

Ryder’s mulled claret was served to a party of five. In 1950 Waugh’s own recipe for “Mulled Claret (For Six Persons)” was printed in “As We Like It”; Cookery Recipes by Famous People, ed. Kenneth Downey (London: Arthur Barker), a collection of recipes solicited from 200 well-known people and published for the benefit of the Returned Prisoners of War Association. In accordance with post-war “regulations, restrictions, and rations,” contributors were asked to submit recipes that were “really simple and easy to follow” and to draw on ingredients currently available.

Apart from Waugh there were few creative writers among those replying: but there were contributions from Aldous Huxley (Gnocchi di patate), Christopher Fry (Melon sweet), and a characteristically dismissive “Opinion on recipes” from the vegetarian G. Bernard Shaw.

For those who might wish to try Waugh’s suggestion for a beverage “to be drunk during and after luncheon in February or after dinner on any winter evening,” we reprint the recipe here:

Take 6 bottles of red wine (it would be improper to use really fine Bordeaux, but the better the wine, the better the concoction). Any sound claret or burgundy will do. One cupful of water; 2 port glasses of brandy; 1 port glass of ginger wine; 1 orange stuffed with cloves; peel of 2 lemons; 3 sticks of cinnamon; 1 grated nutmeg.

Heat in covered cauldron. Do not allow to simmer. Serve hot and keep hot on the hob. Should be drunk at same temperature as tea.

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Evelyn Waugh Conference & Exhibit in Baltimore

Posted on February 8, 2012 by Antony F. P. Vickery

Loyola Notre Dame Library in Baltimore is hosting two events this year to commemorate Evelyn Waugh’s visits to the United States in the late 1940s.

  • Evelyn Waugh Exhibit (February 27th to April 7th): “An Englishman in Catholic America,” a display of artifacts, documents, first editions, letters, and photographs (Ferguson Gallery, Main Level).
  • Evelyn Waugh Conference (March 12th & 13th): Topics include Waugh’s U.S. travels, Waugh and U.S. writers, Waugh and film, Waugh’s Catholicism. Featured speaker will be Alexander Waugh, grandson of Evelyn Waugh, on Monday evening at 6 p.m. (Ridley Auditorium, Lower Level).

All are welcome, and registration is free. To register and to obtain more information about the events and local accommodations, email (click to email) or call (410) 617-6811.

Background reading: 2003 Notre Dame Magazine essay by Arthur Jones on Evelyn Waugh and his visits to Notre Dame and Loyola College.

Update (March 1st): Loyola has published on their university calendar detailed agendas for each day of the two-day conference, but strangely, the website is designed so that specific days on the calendar don’t have individual URLs and therefore linking to them is impossible. The most we can do is provide a link to Loyola’s events page. The conference takes place on March 12th and 13th.

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Posted in Alexander Waugh, Art, Photography & Sculpture, Bibliophilia, Catholicism, Chattels & Movables, Events, First Editions, Letters | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

A knighthood, on the other hand, may have gone down nicely

Posted on January 27, 2012 by Antony F. P. Vickery

Evelyn Waugh appears in the recently released list of people who have declined honours (as he would have spelt it). He refused the offer of a CBE in 1959. Allan Massie's blog post in The Telegraph provides some details and has a link to the complete list.

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Evelyn Waugh Forums now live

Posted on January 17, 2012 by Antony F. P. Vickery

A threaded discussion capability has been added to this website. Commonly known as an Internet forum or message board, this feature permits people to hold conversations in the form of posted messages about a subject of common interest.

The Evelyn Waugh forums can be read by all users, but to start a new discussion topic or reply to an existing one it is necessary to register with the site. Only a username and email address are required; a password will be emailed to you.

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Paul Johnson: Novelists at Arms

Posted on December 23, 2011 by Antony F. P. Vickery

Paul Johnson in Standpoint magazine surveys novels and novelists of the Second World War, including James Jones, Norman Mailer, Olivia Manning, Anthony Powell, and Evelyn Waugh:

It is a mistake, in my view, to hold a popularity contest between A Dance to the Music of Time and Sword of Honour. They are wonderfully complementary. We are lucky to have both. Waugh did not cover so long a spectrum. But we should see Brideshead Revisited as his verdict on the pre-war period, which in Uncle Tony's account requires six novels. And Put Out More Flags is a knockabout farce, a comic curtain-raiser to the actual war beginning with Men at Arms, continuing with Officers and Gentlemen, and ending with Unconditional Surrender. All these titles are savagely ironic, the last signalling Waugh's despairing acceptance that there is nothing he, and any other honourable souls left, can do about the appalling state of the world which has emerged from what began as a just war.

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Evelyn Waugh His Book

Posted on December 21, 2011 by Antony F. P. Vickery

An essay by Naomi Milthorpe in the most recent edition of Script & Print: Bulletin of the Bibliographical Society of Australia & New Zealand discusses the provenance and dating of Evelyn Waugh's bookplates.

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Never seen a copy of Cyril Connolly’s Horizon magazine?

Posted on December 19, 2011 by Antony F. P. Vickery

Unz.org provides free access to its online archive of periodicals, books, videos and films, including full runs of Horizon (1940-1949), Encounter (1953-1991), and many others.

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LibraryThing completes online catalog of Evelyn Waugh’s library

Posted on December 14, 2011 by Antony F. P. Vickery

The book-centered social website LibraryThing has announced that its project to make available online a catalog of Evelyn Waugh's library has been completed.

LibraryThing states that 2,752 books are in the finished catalog, but this number is considerably less than the 3,500 books said to exist in the Evelyn Waugh collection at the Harry Ransom Center of the University of Texas at Austin. Comments are solicited from LibraryThing explaining how their EW cataloging team arrived at the number they did.

Update (Dec. 16): jburlinson, the person chiefly responsible for building the Evelyn Waugh library catalog, has responded to a question posed at LibraryThing about the book counts:

The 2,752 number represents the number of separate, individual titles. A number of Waugh's titles are multi-volume works, including "collected works" for many authors, such as Alexander Pope (9 volumes), Thomas Browne (6 volumes), Jonathan Swift (19 volumes), John Ruskin (11 volumes), many more.

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Guardian interview with Alec Waugh’s son Peter

Posted on December 14, 2011 by Antony F. P. Vickery

The Guardian interview (Nov. 25, 2011) with Alec Waugh's son, Peter, paints a less than flattering picture of Evelyn Waugh as an uncle:

When he was nine, Peter was introduced to Evelyn. It is a vivid memory. His uncle sat behind an enormous desk in his library. "Bring him in," Evelyn called, and Peter was ushered into the room by Evelyn's wife, Laura. "Turn him round." Peter was spun round. "Take him away," Evelyn barked.

"Can you imagine an uncle saying that to you?" says Peter. "Talk about intimidation."

The terrified boy fell in love with his Aunt Laura. "I thought Evelyn Waugh was an ogre and I was going to rescue her," he says. "I did see him being very funny, but Evelyn was cruel. My sister once asked about the pre-Raphaelites and he said, 'Do you know anything about painting?' and she was only a young girl and didn't, and he said, 'Well, I won't bother then.'"

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Plas Dulas to be demolished

Posted on December 14, 2011 by Antony F. P. Vickery

From the North Wales Weekly News (Nov. 10, 2011):

Plas Dulas, which dates back to the 1780s, will make way for a housing development following a unanimous decision by Conwy County Council planners yesterday.

Developer Alex Davies was granted permission to build 15 detached two storey buildings and a children’s play area on the site.

The demolition of Plas Dulas had been threatened for many months, but this decision appears to be final and to signal the end of the effort by some heritage organizations to preserve the property.

Plas Dulas (known as Arnold House when Evelyn Waugh taught there in the 1920s) inspired Llanabba Castle in Decline and Fall.

A photographic tour of the property taken in Feb. 2011 can be viewed here.

Update (Dec. 14th): Commenter Duncan McLaren offers the following correction: "Evelyn Waugh did have a connection with Plas Dulas in 1925. But Arnold House, the much more significant building in his biography, where Waugh taught and lodged, is located further up the hill of Llanddulas."

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Posted in Decline and Fall, Locations, Wales | 1 Comment