Virginia’s Little Problem

Posted on August 16, 2017 by Jeffrey Manley

An article on the anti-abortion website LifeSite News considers descriptions of abortions in literature and notes, not surprisingly, that most of them are rather down beat. This is written by Jonathan Van Maren and is entitled “There are no happy songs or literary works about the tragedy of abortion”. The first literary example cited is from Evelyn Waugh’s Unconditional Surrender:

When abortion does crop up in literature, it is often presented as the hurried solution to a problematic pregnancy in sheer panic. Evelyn Waugh, a conservative Catholic, presented one such situation with his trademark dry detachment in his World War II novel Unconditional Surrender, when his character Virginia Troy discovers that her rather wanton lifestyle has resulted in a child. “Dr. Puttock, you must do something about this,” she informs her physician. Dr. Puttock, understanding her, replies icily, “I don’t think I understand you.” Fortunately for the child, the address Puttock eventually gives her of a doctor who might be willing to perform such a surgery for a steep price turns out to have been leveled by German bombs, and Virginia ends up marrying instead.

Unfortunately, to prove his point Van Maren has been forced to edit out of the story Waugh’s humour even in dealing with such a somber subject. After finding the first abortionist’s office in Brook St, Mayfair, bombed (as described in the article), Virginia acquires the address of another from Kerstie Kilbannock’s charwoman. This turns out to be a Dr Akonanga, an African immigrant who lives at 14 Blight St, W1, just off the Edgeware Rd. When she finds his address in these less salubrious surroundings, it turns out he has temporarily discontinued his practice and has moved quarters to Brook Street, a few doors down from the first address she tried. Returning to that street, she finds a large house occupied by the military. She is directed to Dr Akonanga’s room and

…was greeted by a small, smiling, nattily dressed negro, not in his first youth; there was grey in his sparse little tangle of beard; he was wrinkled and simian and what would have been the whites of his eyes were the colour of … nicotine-stained fingers; from behind him came a faint air blended of spices and putrefaction. His smile revealed many gold capped teeth.

He mistakes her for the bearer of a shipment of scorpions he had ordered from Africa. This scheme went awry as explained a few pages later (p. 139). Virginia informs him in a roundabout way that she is seeking an abortion. He then explains:

“All that has changed. I am now in government service. General Whale would not like it if I resumed my private practice. Democracy is at stake…I am giving Herr von Ribbentrop the most terrible dreams.”

Thus ends Virginia’s search for an abortionist. After returning to the Kilbannock’s flat, she fell asleep:

She dreamed she was extended on a table, pinioned, headless and covered with blood-streaked feathers, while a voice within her, from the womb itself, kept singing “You, you, you.'”

The voice is Trimmer’s (the father of the unborn child) singing the Cole Porter song “Night and Day” (Unconditional Surrender, Book 2, Chapter iv, pp. 100-04).

The LifeSite article also oversimplifies how Virginia works out her problem. She remarries Guy Crouchback (who knows she is pregnant with another’s child), has the child who Guy claims as his own, and dies in an air raid while the child is being cared for in the country. Guy returns to marry the girl who had been taking care of the child. So, while the humour surrounding the abortion may be a little dark, Waugh, as usual, finds something to laugh about.

Other writers whose works are considered include Hemingway, Hardy, Eliot and Anne Sexton.

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Powell Lecture to be Given by Alexander Waugh

Posted on August 15, 2017 by Jeffrey Manley

The annual lecture of the Anthony Powell Society will be given this December by Alexander Waugh at the Travellers Club in Pall Mall, London. Here’s a copy of the AP Society’s announcement:

Anthony Powell Lecture

Wavian Reactions to Anthony Powell

to be given by Alexander Waugh

Wednesday 6 December 2017, 1830 for 1900 hrs

The Travellers Club, 106 Pall Mall, London SW1

Tickets: £13 are available via the Society’s online shop, at www.anthonypowell.org or from the Hon. Secretary, 76 Ennismore Avenue, Greenford, UB6 0JW, UK
The ticket price includes a glass of wine before the lecture, from 1830 hrs

Travellers Club members should book through the Club

All orders will be acknowledged and tickets will be mailed out in early November

Alexander Waugh has worked as an opera critic and written books on classical music and opera as well as co-writing a musical (Bon Voyage!) with his brother Nathaniel.  His other publications include Fathers and Sons (2004), an inter-generational portrait of his own family, which formed the basis of a BBC4 documentary in 2005.  He is General Editor of his grandfather Evelyn Waugh’s Complete Works, a scholarly collaboration between the University of Leicester and Oxford University Press currently expected to run to 43 volumes.  In his talk he will trace the relationship of Anthony Powell with Evelyn Waugh, Waugh’s brother-in-law Alick Dru and Waugh’s heirs and assigns, particularly Auberon Waugh.

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New Novels with Wavian Undercurrents

Posted on August 15, 2017 by Jeffrey Manley

Two new novels have been credited in reviews with having been influenced by the writings of Evelyn Waugh. In the Spectator, Elizabeth Day’s fourth novel The Party is described in a review by Helen Brown as beginning with the hero’s

Arriving at boarding school with the wrong shoes and a teddy bear in his suitcase… Elizabeth Day’s fourth novel is the latest in a long literary line of suburban lost boys sucked into the intoxicating orbit of a wealthy friend. Scott Fitzgerald, Evelyn Waugh, Patricia Highsmith, Ian McEwan, Alan Hollinghurst and Gillian Flynn have all done it before and we know the story never ends well. Day drops references to them all into her book, like olives into an increasingly dirty martini.

After describing the plot and comparing the narrative structure to Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl, Brown’s review concludes:

…As readers, we’re as vulnerable as [Day’s characters] to the narcotic narcissism of the super-rich. It’s a guilty pleasure to sneak into Ben’s party, past the supermodels in their backless, sequinned gowns and the floating silver trays of ironic cocktails. We settle in, hoover up lines of Day’s wicked prose at an increasingly giddy pace and wait for the whole sickly scene to curdle into crime.

The i News reviews the latest novel by Anthony Quinn. This is what is described as the third novel in a 20th Century trilogy that began with Curtain Call. This latest novel is entitled Eureka and is takes place in the late 1960s milieu of “swinging London.” It relates to the making of a film in and of that period, and the text of the screenplay is woven into the narrative. As described by the i News reviewer (Simon O’Hagan):

…if the plot of Eureka is a little meandering, the human comedy more than makes up for it. There is something Evelyn Waugh-like about Eureka, not just in its depiction of the escapades that privilege can afford, but in the ease and seeming effortlessness of Quinn’s prose.

According to an interview of Quinn, this novel’s claim to be part of a trilogy is a bit tenuous. The three novels are linked by the appearance of a character named Freya in each of them. She appears briefly as a child in the 1920-30s of the first, is the heroine of the post-war second novel, entitled Freya, and has a supporting role as a journalist in this third one. In addition, the protagonist of this last novel, screenwriter Nat Fane, had a supporting role in Freya. Otherwise, the stories and characters are independent of each other.

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Alan Hollinghurst on Henry Green (and Evelyn Waugh)

Posted on August 14, 2017 by Jeffrey Manley

Novelist Alan Hollinghurst has reviewed several of Henry Green’s novels (the first six, I believe) in New York Review of Books. This is in connection with the republication of Green’s books by the NYRB’s book subsidiary. In addition to the first six, two more will be released later this year (Nothing and Doting) leaving only Concluding and his autobiography Pack My Bag (which are being republished separately by New Directions) to complete the set.

Hollinghurst notes that Waugh and Green were friends at Oxford and that Waugh was an early booster of Green’s work with his review of Living (1929) in The Graphic. See earlier post. He compares Green’s work with his those of his Oxford friends Waugh and Anthony Powell, who would

make their names as novelists of raffishly upper-class life, their social experience broadened in their thirties by their experience in the army. Green was quite different, in part because of what he did next.

That was to work in his father’s factory after Oxford, eventually becoming managing director, and to serve in the Auxiliary Fire Service in London during the war.

Most of Hollinghurst’s review is devoted to Green’s three novels written during and about WWII: Caught, Loving and Back. These are not technically a trilogy because they have different characters and the plots are unconnected except by their settings (wartime England and Ireland). Most of his discussion of Caught relates to the new version in which it is printed for the first time. Green was required by his publisher to make several substantive changes in the original. Loving (1945) is contrasted with Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited; they were written about the same time and both stories are set in country houses. But Green’s novel is “downstairs-upstairs…the wealth of his interest lies with the servants.” Their world is threatened just as was that of the Flytes in Waugh’s novel but for different reasons. Waugh thought the book “obscene”, even though he earlier told Green that “I never tire of hearing you talk about women.” Hollinghurst refers to this and concludes the discussion of that book: “…a delicate mix of fondness and farce … quite unlike the heady nostalgia of Brideshead.” Back (1946) is about the return of an injured soldier. Waugh wrote Green a letter (14 November 1946) that is effectively a review of the book, also quoted by Hollinghurst. There were bits he liked and others he thought did not work. That is his last published letter to Green. Hollinghurst does not mention that, in his subsequent correspondence with others, Waugh described Green’s later books (e.g., Nothing) as evidence of Green’s decline into madness.

Hollinghurst concludes with a discussion of the writers whose work influenced Green, most prominently Ronald Firbank whose importance as an innovator is credited by Hollinghurst with having been discovered by Waugh in a 1929 essay–the same year Waugh wrote his review in praise of Living. Both Green and Firbank are now largely forgotten as modernist innovators and have also suffered from unavailability of their works. In Green’s case, Hollinghurst believes this neglect will be overcome by the NYRB’s republication of his books.

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Leigh Fermor Novel Reprinted

Posted on August 13, 2017 by Jeffrey Manley

New York Review Books has republished the only novel of Patrick Leigh Fermor. This was originally published in 1953 and was entitled The Violins of Saint Jacques. It is about a fictional Caribbean island where a volcano erupts and disrupts the melodramatic plot of a family feud and potential duel. It is dedicated to Waugh’s close friend Diana Cooper. This dedication is mentioned in the recent TLS review by Roderick Beaton:

…as a reminder that the Fermor’s world was not so distant from that of Evelyn Waugh–the Waugh of Black Mischief crossed with the Waugh of Helena. There is more than a hint of mischief, and indeed humour, about Paddy’s nostalgia for a lost world and its ethereal afterglow that lives on in the violins of the title.

Waugh did not review this book, although he did review its predecessor A Time to Keep Silence published earlier that year and also reprinted by NYRB. Diana Cooper found it pretentious and and asked for Waugh’s opinion (MWMS, p. 163). He said much the same thing but more politely in his Time and Tide review. The TLS reviewer also detects some pretension in Violins, noting examples of “lush” language–  “(‘orgulous’ and ‘impavid’ appear in the same sentence, both redundant).” Thanks to Peggy Troupin for a copy of the review.

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Another Waugh Writer

Posted on August 13, 2017 by Jeffrey Manley

Another member of the Waugh family has turned to writing. This is Nathaniel Waugh, Evelyn’s grandson and second son of Auberon. According to a 2003 story in the Guardian by Alexander Chancellor, Nathaniel had recently moved to France from Shepherd’s Bush with his family to set up as a shopkeeper in a small town north of Bordeaux:

Nat’s shop, although proudly English, is in this great French tradition. It is bang in the middle of the town’s medieval quarter, only a few yards from the Arcus Germanicus, a perfectly preserved triumphal arch dating from the town’s most glorious period as a provincial capital of the Roman Empire. For what it costs to buy a wretched flat in Hammersmith, Nat is now the owner of a fine, spacious medieval stone building surrounding a courtyard entered from the main street by a broad arch, above which sways a shop sign displaying representations of two quintessentially English products – a pot of Marmite and a bottle of Worcestershire sauce – and the name of the shop, La Perfide Albion.

Nathaniel has now returned to England after 15 years and has written about his experiences in France in The Oldie. In his recent article (“Mon dieu, where is your dignity?”) he explains why the British are so often misunderstood when they travel in France:

…I now find myself marvelling at the exoticism of the English on my return to my native West Country. How is it that the mores and codes found throughout continental Europe appear to have eluded the British? It used to break my heart to see well-meaning British holidaymakers causing offence at every turn, through simple ignorance of the French attachment to form.

Even such mundane matters as how the British dress on holiday and how they walk and talk in public give offence to the French. The full article is available to read on the internet. Nathaniel previously collaborated with his brother Alexander in the script for a musical play Bon Voyage!.

UPDATE (28 November 2017): Dave Lull has kindly sent a link to another article from The Oldie by Nathaniel Waugh describing his life in France (“My life selling Marmite to the French is over”). This is dated 1 May 2017 and has been reprinted in Press Reader where it may now be read.

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Alec Waugh Remembered

Posted on August 12, 2017 by Jeffrey Manley

The current issue of The Oldie has a memoir by Alexander Waugh of his Uncle Alec. He was known in the family as “Uncle Sex” and the memoir is written on the 100th anniversary of the publication of his novel Loom of Youth which discussed homosexuality among public schoolboys. In 19i7 this was quite scandalous. He was rarely a visitor at the Waugh home in Somerset, and Alexander learned of his death in 1983 from a friend in Taunton who heard about it on the radio. An excerpt is available on the internet but a subscription is required to read the full article.

The previous issue of The Oldie made an allusion to Evelyn Waugh on its cover, referring to an article by Rachel Johnson (sister of Boris) as “Love Among the Ruins”, the title of Waugh’s 1953 dystopian novella. In the article (entitled “Alms and the woman”), Johnson imagines future life in an almshouse and opens with a reference to Waugh’s novel Brideshead Revisited (“If you were driving up the Clerkenwell Road, you will have passed it: London’s version of the ‘low door in the wall that opened on an enclosed and enchanted garden’, that so enraptured the young Charles Ryder when he popped along to Brideshead.”) Thanks to Milena Borden for letting us know about this.

UPDATE (18 August 2017): Alexander Waugh’s Oldie article seems to be the source of an item in the Daily Mail’s gossip column by Ephraim Hardcastle. This relates to Evelyn Waugh’s 1957 libel suit against the rival Daily Express:

Under oath Alec gamely conceded that Evelyn was the much greater novelist. Evelyn got £5,000 in damages–£50,000 now. Recalls Alexander: ‘Alec, wearing a foulard scarf and a stripy blazer, left the court before the verdict was announced, cheerfully returning to his busy sex-life in Tangier.’

Since the reported incident occurred several years before Alexander’s birth, he must be recalling some one else’s recollection, not his own.

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In Search of Arcadia

Posted on August 10, 2017 by Jeffrey Manley

In several recent posts we have considered the concept of “Arcadia” and its contribution to Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited, and vice versa. BBC Four earlier this week transmitted a documentary entitled “In Search of Arcadia” presented by Dr Janina Ramirez and John Bailey. It considered a 12 mile stretch of the Thames from Hampton Court to Chiswick House and explained how landscape gardening developed there and how this was intended to incorporate the more natural and wilder Arcadian concept into the English garden that was previously more formal in construct. Dr Ramirez begins with a look at the 1638 painting of Nicholas Poussin usually referred to as “Et in Arcadia Ego” after the inscription on the tomb depicted. She shows the painting on her iPad rather than in its museum setting, so one assumes she is looking at the one in the Louvre and not its predecessor at Chatsworth House which would be of an earlier date.  See previous post.

Most of the program is taken up by consideration of the gardens and houses at Hampton Court, Twickenham, Marble Hill, Chiswick House and Syon House. These are used to illustrate the progression from Baroque formality at Hampton Court’s gardens to Arcadian naturalism of those at Syon House. Most of the literary discussion relates to Isaak Walton who wrote The Complete Angler and Alexander Pope who built a house and garden at Twickenham. All that remains of that is an underground grotto he built to connect the house with the garden. Pope is considered more as a gardener than a a poet. Waugh’s citation of the inscription from Poussin’s painting doesn’t get a mention nor does Brideshead Castle as an Arcadian concept, but one can’t have everything. To be fair, Waugh was more interested in describing the architecture of the house than the design of the garden.

The program can be viewed on the internet on BBC iPlayer for about the next four weeks. A UK internet connection is required.

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Huntington Waugh Conference Reviewed

Posted on August 10, 2017 by Jeffrey Manley

Veteran Waugh scholar Robert Murray Davis has written an assessment of the recent Evelyn Waugh Conference at the Huntington Library in Pasadena, California. This is posted on the University of Leicester’s internet site:

The symposium can’t be compared to previous Waugh gatherings in Oxford, Austin, Downside, or Leicester because the sponsorship and focus of each were quite different. This was the most luxurious (if you don’t count the dinners in Oxford and Austin hosted by Bill Wendt), with quarters at the Cal Tech Athenaeum and dining at the Athenaeum and at the Huntington.

One sign of the efficiency of the service was the omelet I ordered on Friday morning, which not only arrived hot but stayed hot until I finished it. And at Rothenberg Hall at the Huntington, the paper towel dispenser was designed so well that single towels  could be picked up without dampening five others in the stack. This may seem minor– acting Huntington president Steve Hindle said that I was the only person who noticed the towels or for that matter the omelet–but it testifies to the care with which the institutions are designed and maintained.

Once problems with the sound system were overcome–sometimes by turning on the microphone switches–the papers were well received and the responses were varied, often lively, and sometimes carried on outside the sessions, even beyond the boundaries of the symposium.

What had earlier seemed a division between those who have studied Waugh for years and those brought in to work on the Complete Works of Evelyn Waugh because of their expertise in textual editing turned out in practice to be illusory or readily bridged. Several people of ages ranging from the twenties to the eighties mentioned that they were discouraged from working on Waugh, and this led, indirectly, to brief discussions of how to counter this disparagement of Waugh’s importance as a writer and increasing the number of people studying Waugh and his work. No conclusions were reached.

 

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Telegraph Names Brideshead Among Top TV Costume Dramas

Posted on August 9, 2017 by Jeffrey Manley

On the occasion of ITV’s announcement of a new TV adaptation of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, the Daily Telegraph has produced an album from what its fashion editors consider the most sumptuous costume dramas of all time. Granada’s 1981 production of Brideshead Revisited is the earliest drama on the list. The Telegraph in this case is focused on costume over drama and includes a still of Diana Quick (who played Julia Flyte) wearing what it describes as “a cloche hat with a cream dropped waist dress.” Others included in the album of 20 range from three earlier adaptations of Jane Austen novels to the more recent Jackie, Mad Men and Game of Thrones.

In the National Geographic magazine, another chapter in the round-the-world walk of Paul Salopek (“Out of Eden Walk: Into Eden”) focuses on the plant life of Kyrgyzstan.  As he describes various wild flowers, Salopek is reminded of a passage from Evelyn Waugh:

As I hike out of Kyrgyzstan, traversing the lush valleys of the Alai Mountains bound for the neighboring state of Tajikistan, I rack my brain to recall the names of the constellations of flowers that, mile upon mile, I wade through: Poppies. Vetches. Bedstraws. St. John’s wort. Naturally I lifted these delightful names from the British press.

It is reassuring to know—in these anarchic, shark-pool, digital media days—that English newspapers still not only employ “gardening correspondents” but also send them on far-flung assignment to remotest Kyrgyzstan to botanize, on horseback, for readers. (“Under hot sun we trot ever higher past wild white roses and rocks crammed with saxifrage and campanulas.”) It is no accident that Evelyn Waugh chose a mild-mannered nature writer as his foil in the novel Scoop, his classic satire of war correspondence. (“Feather-footed through the plashy fen passes the questing vole,” writes his garden-columnist hero, who is shipped off to an African war zone by mistake.)

Finally, an unnamed Twitter user has set up a page for posting favorite quotations from the works of Evelyn Waugh. Here’s a link provided by one of our readers: Evelyn Waugh (@waughquotes) | Twitter

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