1. «Face to Face» …. Himself (1 episode, 1960)    – Evelyn Waugh (1960) TV episode …. Himself

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1-      The Scarlet Woman: An Ecclesiastical Melodrama (1925) …. Dean of Balliol/Lord Borrowingto

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1. Brideshead Revisited (2008) (novel)
2. Mr. Loveday’s Little Outing (2006) (TV) (screenplay)
3. Bright Young Things (2003) (novel «Vile Bodies»)
4. Sword of Honour (2001) (TV) (novel)
5. A Handful of Dust (1988) (novel)
6. Scoop (1987) (TV) (novel)
7. «Brideshead Revisited» (11 episodes, 1981)
   – Brideshead Revisited (1981) TV episode (novel)
   – A Twitch Upon a Thread (1981) TV episode (novel)
   – Orphans of the Storm (1981) TV episode (novel)
   – Brideshead Deserted (1981) TV episode (novel)
   – The Unseen Hook (1981) TV episode (novel)
   (6 more)
8. «Scoop» (7 episodes, 1972)
   – A Surfeit of Boots (1972) TV episode (novel)
   – The Ubiquitous Mr. Baldwin (1972) TV episode (novel)
   – The Scoop (1972) TV episode (novel)
   – Stones £20 (1972) TV episode (novel)
   – The War Torn Ishmaelia (1972) TV episode (novel)
   (2 more)
9. Vile Bodies (1970) (TV) (novel)
10. «The Jazz Age» (1 episode, 1968)
    – Winner Take All (1968) TV episode (short story)
11. Decline and Fall… of a Birdwatcher (1968) (novel «Decline and Fall»)
    … aka Decline and Fall
12. «Theatre 625» (3 episodes, 1967)
    – Sword of Honour #3: Unconditional Surrender (1967) TV episode (novel)
    – Sword of Honour #2: Officers and Gentlemen (1967) TV episode (novel)
    – Sword of Honour #1: Men at Arms (1967) TV episode (novel)
13. «Sword of Honour» (1967) TV series (unknown episodes)
14. The Loved One (1965) (novel «The Loved One»)
15. «On Trial» (1 episode, 1959)
    … aka «The Joseph Cotten Show» (USA: rerun title)
    … aka «The Joseph Cotten Show: On Trial» (USA: new title)
    – High Green Wall (1959) TV episode (story)
16. «On Camera» (1 episode, 1957)
    – The Man Who Liked Dickens (1957) TV episode (novel)
17. «Robert Montgomery Presents» (1 episode, 1955)
    … aka «Lucky Strike Theater»
    … aka «Montgomery’s Summer Stock»
    … aka «The Robert Montgomery Summer Theater»
    – Bella Fleace Gave a Party (1955) TV episode (story)
18. «General Electric Theater» (1 episode, 1954)
    … aka «G.E. Theater» (USA: informal short title)
    … aka «G.E. True Theater» (USA: new title)
    – The High Green Wall (1954) TV episode (short story «The Man Who Liked Dickens»)
19. «Medallion Theatre» (1 episode, 1953)
    – The Man Who Liked Dickens (1953) TV episode (writer)
20. «Eye Witness» (1 episode, 1953)
    – Mr. Loveday’s Little Outing (1953) TV episode (story)
21. Table d’Hote (1939) (TV) (novel «Doubting Hall»)
22. The Scarlet Woman: An Ecclesiastical Melodrama (1925) (writer)

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The Sacred & Profane Memories of Captain Charles Ryder is a novel by the English writer Evelyn Waugh, first published in 1945. Waugh wrote that the novel «deals with what is theologically termed ‘the operation of Grace’, that is to say, the unmerited and unilateral act of love by which God continually calls souls to Himself». This is achieved by an examination of the Catholic aristocratic Marchmain family, as seen by the narrator, Charles Ryder.

Time Magazine included Brideshead Revisited in its list of «All-time 100 Novels». In various letters, Waugh himself refers to the novel a number of times as his magnum opus; however, in 1950 he wrote to Graham Greene saying «I re-read Brideshead Revisited and was appalled.» In Waugh’s preface to the 1959 revised edition of Brideshead the author explains the circumstances in which the novel was written, in the six months between December 1943 and June 1944 following a minor parachute accident. He is mildly disparaging of the novel, saying; «It was a bleak period of present privation and threatening disaster — the period of soya beans and Basic English — and in consequence the book is infused with a kind of gluttony, for food and wine, for the splendours of the recent past, and for rhetorical and ornamental language which now, with a full stomach, I find distasteful.»

Brideshead Revisited was brought to the screen in 1981 in the ITV drama serialisation, produced by Granada Television. A film adaptation of the book was released in July 2008.

Plot

1923: After an unpleasant chance first encounter, protagonist and narrator Charles Ryder, a student at Hertford College, Oxford University, and Lord Sebastian Flyte, the younger son of an aristocratic family and himself an undergraduate at Christ Church, become friends. Sebastian takes Charles to his family’s palatial home, Brideshead, where Charles eventually meets the rest of Sebastian’s family, including his sister Julia.

During the holiday Charles returns home, where he lives with his widower father. Scenes between Charles and his father Ned (Edward) provide some of the best-known comic scenes in the novel. He is called back to Brideshead after Sebastian incurs a minor injury. Sebastian and Charles spend the remainder of the summer together. They form something between a friendship and a romance. Waugh writes that Charles had been «in search of love in those days» when he first met Sebastian, finding «that low door in the wall… which opened on an enclosed and enchanted garden», a metaphor that informs the work on a number of levels.

Sebastian’s family is Catholic, which influences the Marchmains'[clarification needed] lives as well as the content of their conversations, all of which surprises Charles, who had always assumed Christianity to be «without substance or merit.» Lord Marchmain had converted from Anglicanism to Catholicism in order to marry his wife but soon escaped both his marriage and religion to Italy. Left alone, Lady Marchmain focused even more on her faith, which is also very much espoused by her eldest son, Bridey, and her youngest daughter, Cordelia. Sebastian, a troubled young man, seems to find greater solace in alcohol than in religion, and descends into alcoholism, drifting away from the family over a two-year period. He flees to Morocco, where the disease ruins his health. He eventually finds some solace as an under-porter/charity case at a Tunisian monastery.

Sebastian’s drifting leads to Charles’s own estrangement from the Marchmains, yet he is fated to re-encounter the family as the years pass. He marries and fathers two children, but his wife is unfaithful and he eventually forms a relationship with Sebastian’s younger sister Julia, who by that time has married but separated from the wealthy but coarse Canadian entrepreneur, Rex Mottram.

Charles and Julia plan to divorce their respective spouses so that they can marry. On the eve of World War II, the aging Lord Marchmain returns to Brideshead to die in his ancestral home. As he names Julia (and not his eldest son Bridey) heiress to the estate, this would give Charles marital ownership of the house. Lord Marchmain’s deathbed return to the faith changes the situation: Julia decides that she cannot enter a sinful marriage with Charles, who too has been moved by Lord Marchmain’s reception of the sacraments.

The plot concludes in the early spring of 1943 (or possibly 1944 – the date is disputed)[1]. Charles is «homeless, childless, middle-aged and loveless»[2]. He has become an army officer after establishing a career as an architectural artist, and finds himself unexpectedly billeted at Brideshead. Charles finds the house damaged by the military occupation but the private chapel, closed after Lady Marchmain’s death in 1926, has been reopened for the soldiers’ worship. It occurs to him that the chapel (and, by extension, the Church’s) builders’ efforts were not in vain, even when their purposes may appear, for a time, to be frustrated.

Motifs

Catholicism

Taking into account the background of the author, the most significant theme of the book is Catholicism. Evelyn Waugh was a convert to Catholicism and the book is considered to be an attempt to express the Catholic faith in secular literary form. Waugh wrote to his literary agent A. D. Peters, «I hope the last conversation with Cordelia gives the theological clue. The whole thing is steeped in theology, but I begin to agree that the theologians won’t recognise it.» Considering his readership, who were generally urbane and cosmopolitan, a sentimental or a didactic approach would not have worked. Sentimentalism would have cheapened the story while didacticism would have repelled a secular audience through excessive sermonising.

Instead, the book brings the reader, through the narration of the agnostic Charles Ryder, in contact with the severely flawed but deeply Catholic Marchmain family. While many novels of the same era portray Catholics as the flatfooted people put on the spot by brilliant non-believers, Brideshead Revisited turns the table on the agnostic Charles Ryder (and presumably the reader as well) and scrutinises his secular values, which are tacitly portrayed as falling short of the deeper humanity and spirituality of the Catholic faith.

The Catholic themes of divine grace and reconciliation are pervasive in the book. Most of the major characters undergo a conversion in some way or another. Lord Marchmain, a convert from Anglicanism to Catholicism, who lived as an adulterer, is reconciled with the Church on his deathbed. Julia, who is involved in an extramarital affair with Charles, comes to feel this relationship is immoral and decides to separate from Charles in spite of her great attachment to him. Sebastian, the charming and flamboyant homosexual alcoholic, ends up in service to a monastery while struggling against his alcoholism. Even Cordelia has some sort of conversion: from being the «worst» behaved schoolgirl her headmistress has ever seen, to serving in the hospital bunks of the Spanish Civil War.

Most significant is Charles’s apparent conversion, which is expressed very subtly at the end of the book, set more than 20 years after his first meeting Sebastian, Charles kneels down in front of the tabernacle of the Brideshead chapel and says a prayer, «an ancient, newly learned form of words» — implying recent instruction in the catechism. Waugh speaks of his belief in grace in a letter to Lady Mary Lygon: «I believe that everyone in his (or her) life has the moment when he is open to Divine Grace. It’s there, of course, for the asking all the time, but human lives are so planned that usually there’s a particular time — sometimes, like Hubert, on his deathbed — when all resistance is down and Grace can come flooding in.»

Waugh uses a quote from a short story by G. K. Chesterton to illustrate the nature of Grace. Cordelia, in conversation with Charles Ryder, quotes a passage from the Father Brown detective story «The Queer Feet:» «I caught him, with an unseen hook and an invisible line which is long enough to let him wander to the ends of the world, and still to bring him back with a twitch upon the thread.»[4] This illustrates how the hand of God works invisibly in each person’s life, allowing him his free will until he is ready to respond to Grace, at which point God will intervene in his life. Aside from Grace and Reconciliation, other Catholic themes in the book are the Communion of Saints, Faith and Vocation.

The same themes were criticised by Waugh’s contemporaries. Henry Green, a fellow novelist, wrote to Waugh, «The end was not for me. As you can imagine my heart was in my mouth all through the deathbed scene, hoping against hope that the old man would not give way, that is, take the course he eventually did.» And Edmund Wilson, who had praised Waugh as the hope of the English novel, wrote «The last scenes are extravagantly absurd, with an absurdity that would be worthy of Waugh at his best if it were not — painful to say — meant quite seriously.»

Nostalgia for the age of English nobility

The Marchmain family, to some, is a symbol of a dying breed — the English nobility. One reads in the book that Brideshead has «the atmosphere of a better age,» and, referring to the deaths of Lady Marchmain’s brothers in the Great War, «these men must die to make a world for Hooper … so that things might be safe for the travelling salesman, with his polygonal pince-nez, his fat, wet handshake, his grinning dentures.» This is viewed by some as elitism. According to Martin Amis, the book «squarely identifies egalitarianism as its foe and proceeds to rubbish it accordingly.»[5]

Criticism of the Churchillians

The novel, while hardly pro-appeasement, is deeply cynical about the ‘Churchillian’ party inside the Conservatives. Rex Mottram, a deeply unsympathetic character, is portrayed as flirting with the ideas of Oswald Mosley before joining the anti-appeasement lobby (Winston Churchill admired Benito Mussolini before leading the anti-appeasement party). The impression is left that anti-appeasement is merely a tactical choice of charlatans and opportunists looking for a means of political advancement.

Charles and Sebastian’s relationship

The precise nature of Charles and Sebastian’s relationship remains a topic of considerable debate; are they simply close friends, or does Waugh hint at a physical relationship between the two characters?[6] Given that much of the first half of the novel focuses on the initial encounter, blossoming friendship and eventual estrangement of these central characters, this issue continues to pique the curiosity of readers.

A frequent interpretation is that Charles and Sebastian had a passionate yet platonic relationship, an immature albeit strongly felt attachment that prefigures future heterosexual relationships. Indeed Cara, Lord Marchmain’s mistress, says as much to Charles directly —that his relationship with Sebastian forms part of a process of emotional development «typical to the English and the Germans». Waugh himself said that «Charles’s romantic affection for Sebastian is part due to the glitter of the new world Sebastian represents, part to the protective feeling of a strong towards a weak character, and part a foreshadowing of the love for Julia which is to be the consuming passion of his mature years.»

Others draw an alternative conclusion from the line «naughtiness high on the catalogue of grave sins.» Reference is made at one point to Charles impatiently anticipating Sebastian’s letters in the manner of one who is love-smitten. Also, it is hinted in the book that one of the reasons why Charles is in love with Julia is because of the similarity between her and Sebastian. Indeed, when asked by Julia if he loved Sebastian, Charles replies; ‘Oh yes! He was the forerunner.’

Principal characters

* Charles Ryder – The protagonist and narrator of the story was raised primarily by his father after his mother died. Charles’s family background is financially comfortable but emotionally hollow. He is unsure about his desires or goals in life, and is dazzled by the charming, flamboyant and seemingly carefree young Lord Sebastian Flyte. Charles, though dissatisfied with what life seems to offer, has modest success both as a student and later as an painter; less so as an Army officer. His path repeatedly crosses those of various members of the Marchmain family, and each time they awaken something deep within him.

* Edward «Ned» Ryder – Charles’s father is a somewhat distant and eccentric figure, but possessed of a keen wit. He seems determined to teach Charles to stand on his own feet. When Charles is forced to spend his holidays with him because he has already spent his allowance for the term, Ned, in some of the funniest passages in the book, strives to make Charles as uncomfortable as possible, indirectly teaching him to mind his finances more carefully.

* Alexander Flyte, The Marquess of Marchmain – As a young man, Lord Marchmain fell in love with a Roman Catholic woman and converted in order to marry her. The marriage was unhappy and, after the First World War, he refused to return to England, settling in Venice with his French mistress, Cara.

* Teresa Flyte, The Marchioness of Marchmain – Abandoned by her husband, Lady Marchmain rules over her household, enforcing her Catholic morality on her children.

* Lord «Bridey» Brideshead – The elder son of Lord and Lady Marchmain who (as the Marquess’s heir) holds the courtesy title «Earl of Brideshead». He follows his mother’s strict Catholic beliefs, and once aspired to the priesthood. However, he is unable to connect in an emotional way with most people, who find him cold and distant.

* Lord Sebastian Flyte – The younger son of Lord and Lady Marchmain is haunted by a profound unhappiness brought on by the oppressiveness of his mother’s religion. An otherwise charming and attractive companion, he numbs himself with alcohol. He forms a deep friendship with Charles. Over time however, the numbness brought on by alcohol becomes his main desire.

* Lady Julia Flyte – The eldest daughter of Lord and Lady Marchmain, who comes out as a debutante in the beginning of the story, eventually marrying Rex Mottram. Charles loves her for much of their lives, due in part to her resemblance to her brother Sebastian. Julia refuses at first to be controlled by the conventions of Catholicism, but turns to it later in life.

* Lady Cordelia Flyte – The youngest of the siblings is the most devout and least conflicted in her beliefs. She aspires solely to serve God.

* Anthony Blanche – A friend of Charles and Sebastian’s from Oxford, and an overt homosexual. His background is unclear but there are hints that he may be of Italian or Hispanic extraction. Of all the characters, Anthony has the keenest insight into the self-deception of the people around him. Although he is witty, amiable and always an interesting companion, he manages to make Charles uncomfortable with his stark honesty, flamboyance and flirtatiousness.

* Viscount «Boy» Mulcaster – An acquaintance of Charles from Oxford. Brash, bumbling and thoughtless, he personifies the privileged hauteur of the British aristocracy.

* Lady Celia Ryder – Charles’s wife, «Boy» Mulcaster’s sister, and a former schoolmate of Julia. A vivacious and socially active beauty, Charles marries her largely for convenience, which is revealed by Celia’s infidelities. Charles feels freed by Celia’s betrayal and decides to pursue his personal love interest outside of their marriage.

* Rex Mottram – A Canadian of great ambition, Mottram wins a seat in the House of Commons. Through his marriage to Julia, he connects to the Marchmains as another step on the ladder to the top. He is disappointed with the results, and he and Julia agree to lead separate lives.

* «Sammy» Samgrass – A Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford, and Lady Marchmain’s «pet don». Lady Marchmain funds Samgrass’s projects and flatters his academic ego, while asking him to keep Sebastian in line and save him from expulsion. Samgrass uses his connections with the aristocracy to further his personal ambitions.

* Cara – A French woman who lives with Lord Marchmain in Venice, as his mistress. She is very protective of Lord Marchmain and is forthright and insightful in her relationship with Charles.

* «Nanny» Hawkins – Beloved nanny to the four Marchmain children. She lives in retirement at Brideshead.

Minor characters

* Kurt Sebastian’s German friend. A deeply inadequate ex soldier with a permanently septic foot whom Sebastian meets in Tunisia, a man so inept that he needs Lord Sebastian to look after him.

* Mrs (Beryl) Muspratt The widow of an admiral, she meets and marries a smitten Bridey but never becomes mistress of the great house

Minor characters who are mentioned but never appear

* Melchior Cousin of Charles’s father In his youth he too squandered his money and talent. By referring to him Ned is able to remind Charles constantly of his own financial imprudence

* Aunt Phillipa Charles’s aunt and Ned’s sister who, when Charles’s mother died, came to live with them. Inclined to interfere, Ned eventually triumphs and she leaves England:

«I got her out in the end, he said with derision and triumph of that kindly lady, and he knew that I heard in those words a challenge to myself.»

Related works

A fragment about the young Charles Ryder entitled Charles Ryder’s Schooldays was found after Waugh’s death, and is available in collections of Waugh’s short works.

Adaptations

Further information: Brideshead Revisited (TV serial) and Brideshead Revisited (film)

References in other media

Brideshead Revisited has been referenced on television a few times, such as on Frasier. In the Family Guy episode «The Story on Page One,» Stewie compares Brown University to Brideshead Revisited. In the film Dear Wendy, the Dandies congratulate one another with what they refer to as a «Brideshead stutter.»

In scene 2 of Tom Stoppard’s 1993 play Arcadia, one character refers to another character who attends Oxford as «Brideshead Regurgitated.» Stoppard’s phrase may have been inspired by the 1980s BBC comedy series «Three of a Kind», starring Tracey Ullman, Lenny Henry and David Copperfield, which featured a recurring sketch entitled «Brideshead Regurgitated», with Lenny Henry in the role of Charles Ryder. Et in Arcadia ego, the Latin phrase which is the title of the first chapter of Brideshead Revisited, is also a central theme to Tom Stoppard’s play.

In the early 1980s, following the release of the television series, the Australian Broadcasting Commission (from 1983, Australian Broadcasting Corporation) produced a radio show called ‘Brunswick Heads Revisited’. Brunswick Heads is a coastal town in northern New South Wales. The series was a spoof, and made fun of the ‘Englishness’ of Brideshead and many amusing parallels could be drawn between the upper class characters from Brideshead and their opposite numbers from rural Australia.

From: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brideshead_Revisited

Wikipedia®

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• Evelyn Waugh: Portrait of a Country Neighbour by Frances Donaldson, 1967.

• Evelyn Waugh by Christopher Sykes, 1975.

• Evelyn Waugh: The Early Years 1903 – 1939 by Martin Stannard, 1987.

• Evelyn Waugh: The Later Years 1939 – 1966 by Martin Stannard, 1994.

• Evelyn Waugh: a Biography by Selina Hastings, 1994.

• The Life of Evelyn Waugh: A Critical Biography by Douglas Lane Patey, 1998.

• Fathers and Sons: The Autobiography of a Family by Alexander Waugh, 2007.

• The Same Man: George Orwell and Evelyn Waugh by David Lebedoff, 2008.

• Mad World: Evelyn Waugh and the Secrets of Brideshead by Paula Byrne, 2009

From: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evelyn_Waugh#Biographies_of_Waugh

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• A Little Learning (1964)

• The diaries of Evelyn Waugh (1976) – edited by Michael Davie.

• The Letters of Evelyn Waugh by Evelyn Waugh and Mark Amory (Editor), London, Weidenfeld & Nicolson; 1st edition (4-9-1980)

From: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evelyn_Waugh#Autobiography_and_memoirs

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Universitat de València Press

Brief biography of novelist Evelyn Waugh, a leading satirist of his time, and famous for his popular Catholic book Brideshead Revisited.

Many people think that the English writer Evelyn Waugh was the most brilliant satirist. He was a leading satirical novelist of his day, his novels include Decline and Fall, Vile Bodies, Brideshead Revisited, The Loved One, and a trilogy about World War II.

Early Life of Waugh

Evelyn (Arthur St John) Waugh was born in Hamstead on October 28, 1903, into a comfortable middle-class family. His father, Arthur Waugh, was a publisher.

He was educated at Lancing and Hertford College, Oxford, and began his career teaching in various private schools. He found the work frustrating and almost hated it. However, the experience gave him the material for his first novel, Decline and Fall, published when he was 25 years old. A blessing, it was an immediate success. Several more riotously funny books followed.

The Journalist

In 1936, aged 33, Waugh went to Ethiopia as a newspaper reporter to cover the Italian invasion. The following year, he married Laura Herbert, settling in the West Country. From this experience in Ethiopia he wrote Scoop, a story about a regular columnist of nature and serene country life who is confused with a hard-bitten novelist and sent to cover a similar war. Scoop is partly based on Waugh’s own experience as a journalist for Daily Mail.

The World War II Connection

Soon Waugh himself was involved in World War II. He served on a British military mission to aid the resistance movement in Yugoslavia. From his wartime experiences came a three-novel series – Men at Arms, Officers and Gentlemen, and Unconditional Surrender – in which he reflects on army life and the struggle between good and evil.

When he was 27, Waugh became a Roman Catholic, and his religion played a part in several of his books, in particular, his popular Brideshead Revisited, which is about a Roman Catholic family living in a large country house. He returned to his earlier satirical style with the novel The Loved One, which makes fun of the work of morticians in California.

Evelyn Waugh’s Final Years

Waugh passed his late years living quietly in the country. He died at the age of 62, on April 10, 1966. In addition to his novels he wrote biographies and travel books (A Tourist in Africa, written in 1960, was his last travel book), and an incomplete autobiography, A Little Learning (1964).

Back to the index 1–2–3–4

Sources:

Biographical Dictionary, edited by Una McGovern, Chambers (2002)

Dictionary of Writers, edited by Rosemary Goring, Larousse (1994)

Guide to Literature in English, by Ian Ousby, Cambridge University Press (1993)

The copyright of the article Evelyn Waugh, Novelist in Great Writers is owned by Tel Asiado.

Permission to republish Evelyn Waugh, Novelist in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.

From: http://greatthinkers.suite101.com/article.cfm/evelyn_waugh_novelist

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The English author Evelyn Arthur St. John Waugh (1903-1966) ranks as one of the outstanding satiric novelists of the 20th century. Hilariously savage wit and complete command of the English language were hallmarks of his style.

Evelyn Waugh was born in London on Oct. 28, 1903. He was the son of Arthur Waugh, critic, author, and editor of many books, who was the influential chairman of the London publishing firm Chapman and Hall. Evelyn’s elder brother, Alec, became a novelist and writer of travel books. Evelyn was educated at Lancing and at Oxford University, where his deeply religious temperament and literary abilities, which had manifested themselves early, received encouragement. He became a convert to the Roman Catholic Church in 1930.

Waugh enlisted in the Royal Marines in 1939 at the outbreak of World War II. He later shifted to the commandos, with the rank of major, and served until 1945. He saw service in West Africa and Crete, and as a British liaison officer he parachuted into Yugoslavia, where he narrowly escaped death in the crash of a transport plane. After the war he settled in Gloucestershire, with his wife and their three sons and three daughters. In 1946 he wrote: «I live in a shabby stone house in the country, where nothing is under a hundred years old except the plumbing and that does not work. I collect old books in an inexpensive, desultory way. I have a fast-emptying cellar of wine and gardens fast reverting to the jungle. I am very contentedly married. I have numerous children whom I see once a day for ten, I hope, awe-inspiring minutes.»

In 1946 Waugh made a widely acclaimed lecture tour in the United States. One interviewer described him as looking «a little like a boyish Winston Churchill.» Another wrote of him: «Conservatively dressed, bland and cherubic in appearance, his manner sardonic, he brought to life the spirit of his work.» At this time Waugh announced that in his future work he had two primary concerns: «a preoccupation with style and the attempt to represent man more fully, which, to me, means only one thing, man in his relation to God.»

The English critic Philip Toynbee, in reviewing a biographical portrait of Waugh written by a country neighbor, Frances Donaldson, wrote in the Observer in 1968: «What does emerge with great freshness is that Waugh was a man who could charm the birds off a tree; that he could be the best possible company–witty, extravagant, ebullient; that his aggressiveness, exclusiveness, fear of boredom and fierce love of privacy were all far stronger emotions than his ‘soft-centred’ (Mrs. Donaldson’s good phrase) regard for the upper classes. What emerges, too, is that he was exceptionally kind and considerate to unknown writers–a great and rare quality in a successful author–and that he was capable of the most notable self-sacrifice.» Waugh died in Taunton, Somerset, on April 10, 1966.

Back to the index 1–2–3–4

From: http://www.bookrags.com/biography/evelyn-arthur-st-john-waugh/

Evelyn Arthur St. John Waugh from Encyclopedia of World Biography.

©2005-2006 Thomson Gale, a part of the Thomson Corporation.

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Early life

Born in London, Evelyn Waugh was the second son of noted editor and publisher Arthur Waugh. He was brought up in upper middle class circumstances, although his parents’ address in Golders Green embarrassed him. He attended Heath Mount School. His only sibling was his older brother Alec, who also became a writer. Both his father and his brother had been educated at Sherborne, an English public school, but Alec had been asked to leave during his final and he had then published a controversial novel, The Loom of Youth, which touched on the matter of homosexual relationships among students and which was otherwise deemed injurious to Sherborne’s reputation. The school therefore refused to take Evelyn, and his father sent him to Lancing College, an institution of lesser social prestige with a strong High Church Anglican character. This circumstance would rankle with the status-conscious Evelyn for the rest of his life but may have contributed to his interest in religion, even though at Lancing he lost his childhood faith and became an agnostic.

After Lancing, he attended Hertford College, Oxford as a history scholar. There, Waugh neglected academic work and was known as much for his artwork as for his writing. He also threw himself into a vigorous social scene populated by aesthetes such as Harold Acton, Brian Howard and David Talbot Rice, and members of the British aristocracy and the upper classes. His social life at Oxford would provide the background for some of his most characteristic later writing. Asked if he had competed in any sport for his college, Waugh famously replied «I drank for Hertford.»

It has been claimed through diary entries and letters that he had relationships with other men during his college years, but may have ultimately been bisexual. (In his diary Waugh refers in retrospect to «my first homosexual love».)[8] During what has been described as an «acute homosexual phase» between 1921 and 1924, at least three relationships have been suggested, with Richard Pares, Alistair Graham and Hugh Lygon. These may have helped shape his future Works.

Waugh’s final exam results qualified him only for a third-class degree. He was prevented from remaining in residence for the extra term that would have been required of him and he left Oxford in 1924 without taking his degree. In 1925 he taught at a private school in Wales. In his autobiography, Waugh claims that he attempted suicide at the time by swimming out to sea, only to turn back after being stung by jellyfish. He was later dismissed from another teaching post for attempting to seduce the matron, telling his father he had been dismissed for «inebriation».

He was briefly apprenticed to a cabinet-maker and afterwards maintained an interest in marquetry, to which his novels have been compared in their intricate inlaid subplots. Waugh also provided the artwork for many of his books having been greatly inspired by a chance meeting with Pablo Picasso and Salvador Dali at the Slade School of Fine Art in Bloomsbury. According to Picasso, Waugh attempted to remove Dali’s trademark moustache, suspecting it a surrealist joke. Dali was furious and never spoke to Waugh again; Waugh took his revenge by caricaturing the artist in a later novel (Brideshead Revisited, where he portrayed him as Catelli, ‘a gauche Spanish artisan … with a less than attractive limp’.)[10]

Waugh also worked as a journalist before he published his first novel in 1928, Decline and Fall. The title is from Gibbon, but whereas the Georgian historian charted the bankruptcy and dissolution of the Roman Empire, Waugh’s was a witty account of quite a different sort of dissolution, following the career of the harmless Paul Pennyfeather, a student of divinity, as he is accidentally expelled from Oxford for indecency («I expect you’ll be becoming a schoolmaster, sir,» says the College porter to Paul, «That’s what most of the gentlemen does, sir, that gets sent down for indecent behaviour») and enters into the worlds of schoolmastering, high society, and the white slave trade. Other novels about England’s «bright young things» followed, and all were well received by both critics and the general public.

Waugh entered into a brief, unhappy marriage in 1928 to the Hon. Evelyn Florence Margaret Winifred Gardner, youngest daughter of Lord Burghclere and Lady Winifred Herbert. Their friends called them «He-Evelyn» and «She-Evelyn.» Gardner’s infidelity would provide the background for Waugh’s novel A Handful of Dust, but her husband had made little effort to make her happy, choosing to spend much time on his own. The marriage ended in divorce in 1930.

Waugh converted to Catholicism and, after his marriage was annulled by the Church, he married Laura Herbert, a Catholic, daughter of Aubrey Herbert, and a cousin of his first wife (they were both granddaughters of Henry Herbert, 4th Earl of Carnarvon). This marriage was successful, lasting the rest of his life, producing seven children, one of whom, Mary, died in infancy. His son Auberon, named after Laura’s brother, followed in his footsteps as a notable writer and journalist.

The 1930s

Waugh’s fame continued to grow between the wars, based on his satires of contemporary upper class English society, written in prose that was seductively simple and elegant. His style was often inventive (a chapter, for example, would be written entirely in the form of a dialogue of telephone calls). His conversion to Roman Catholicism in 1930 was a watershed in his life and his writing. It elevated Catholic themes in his work, and aspects of his deep and sincere faith, both implicit and explicit, can be found in all of his later work.

Waugh’s conversion to Catholicism was widely discussed in London society and newspapers in September 1930. In response to the gossip, Waugh made his own contribution in article entitled, «Converted to Rome: Why It Has Happened to Me.» It wasn’t about ritual, said Waugh, nor about submission to the views of others. The essential issue, he believed, was making a choice between Christianity or chaos. Waugh saw in Europe’s increasing materialism a major decline in what he felt created Western Civilization in the first place. «It is no longer possible … ,» he wrote, «to accept the benefits of civilization and at the same time deny the supernatural basis upon which it is based.» He added that Catholicism was the «most complete and vital form» of Christianity. His faith and his conviction persisted throughout all the chapters of his life.

At the same time (and perhaps because it integrated both his beliefs and his natural «dark humour»), Black Mischief and A Handful of Dust contain episodes of the most savage farce. In some of his fiction Waugh derives comedy from the cruelty of mischance; ingenuous characters are subject to bizarre calamities in a universe that seems to lack a shaping and protecting God, or any other source of order and comfort.[citation needed] The period between the wars also saw extensive travels around the Mediterranean and Red Sea, Spitsbergen, Africa (most famously Ethiopia) and South America. Sections of the numerous travel books which resulted are often cited as among the best writing in this genre. A compendium of Waugh’s favourite travel writing has been issued under the title When The Going Was Good.

Second World War

With the advent of the Second World War, Waugh used «friends in high places», such as Randolph Churchill — son of Winston — to find him a service commission. Though 36 years old with poor eyesight, he was commissioned in the Royal Marines in 1940. Few can have been less suited to command troops. He lacked the common touch. Though personally brave, he did not suffer fools gladly. There was some concern that the men under his command might shoot him instead of the enemy. Promoted to captain, Waugh found life in the Marines dull.

Waugh participated in the failed attempt to take Dakar from the Vichy French in late 1940. Following a joint exercise with No. 3 Commando (Army), he applied to join them and was accepted. Waugh took part in an ill-fated commando raid on the coast of Libya. As special assistant to the famed commando leader Robert Laycock, Waugh showed conspicuous bravery during the fighting in Crete in 1941, supervising the evacuation of troops while under attack by Stuka dive bombers.

Later, Waugh was placed on extended leave and later reassigned to the Royal Horse Guards. In the preface to the revised edition of Brideshead Revisited he writes,

«In December 1943 I had the good fortune when parachuting to incur a minor injury which afforded me a rest from military service. This was extended by a sympathetic commanding officer, who let me remain unemployed until June 1944 when the book was finished.

—Waugh, Preface to Brideshead Revisited, Combe Florey 1959

He was recalled for a military/diplomatic mission to Yugoslavia in 1944 at the request of his old friend Randolph Churchill. He and Churchill narrowly escaped capture or death when the Germans undertook Operation Rösselsprung, and paratroops and glider-borne storm troops attacked the partisans’ headquarters where they were staying. During his time in Yugoslavia Waugh produced a formidable report detailing Tito’s persecution of Catholics and the clergy. It was «buried» by Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden as being largely irrelevant.

Some of Waugh’s best-loved and best-known novels come from this period. Brideshead Revisited (1945) is an evocation of a vanished pre-war England. It’s an extraordinary work which in many ways has come to define Waugh and his view of his world. It not only painted a rich picture of life in England and at Oxford University at a time (before World War II) which Waugh himself loved and embellished in the novel, but it allowed him to share his feelings about his Catholic faith, principally through the actions of his characters. The book was applauded by his friends, not just for an evocation of a time now — and then — long gone, but also for its examination of the manifold pressures within a traditional Catholic family. It was a huge success in Britain and in the United States. Decades later a television adaptation (1981) achieved popularity and acclaim in both countries, and around the world; a film adaptation has been released in 2008. Waugh revised the novel in the late 1950s, saying that he wrote the novel during the grey privations of the latter war years and later found parts of it «distasteful on a full stomach».

Much of Waugh’s war experience is reflected in the Sword of Honour trilogy. It consists of three novels, Men at Arms (1952), Officers and Gentlemen (1955) and Unconditional Surrender (1961), which loosely parallel his wartime experiences. His trilogy, along with his other work after the 1930s, became some of the best books written about the Second World War. Many of his portraits are unforgettable, and often show striking resemblances to noted real personalities. Waugh biographer Christopher Sykes, felt that the fire-eating officer in the Sword of Honour trilogy, Brigadier Ben Ritchie-Hook, «…bears a very strong resemblance to…» Lieutenant-General Sir Adrian Carton de Wiart VC, a friend of the author’s father-in-law. Waugh was familiar with Carton de Wiart through the club to which he belonged. The fictional commando leader, Tommy Blackhouse, is based on Major-General Sir Robert Laycock, a real-life commando leader and friend of Waugh’s, whom he greatly admired.

Later years

The period after the war saw Waugh living with his family in the West Country, first at Piers Court, and from 1956 onwards, at Combe Florey, Somerset, where he enjoyed the life of a country gentleman and continued to write. (Combe Florey was bought from his widow by their son Auberon.[11]) Waugh was highly critical of Vatican II’s 1960s changes to his beloved Tridentine liturgy, which he in part loved for what he saw as its timelessness. (Cf. Bitter Trial by Waugh and ed. by S. Reid)

For a base in London, he was a member of White’s and the St James’s Club in Piccadilly.[12]

The Ordeal of Gilbert Pinfold (1957) is a thinly-veiled fictionalisation of Waugh’s own real-life experience of alcoholic hallucinosis. This short but disturbing malady was almost certainly caused by alcoholism but Waugh preferred to blame the interaction between alcohol and sleeping medications. Unlike delirium tremens, this condition induces auditory hallucinations rather than visual ones, which in turn led Waugh to acute paranoia. The illness was remedied once medication had been stopped and alcohol intake ceased or became moderate.[13] During this period he wrote Helena (1953), a fictional account of the Empress Helena and the finding of the True Cross, which he regarded as his best work.[14]

Waugh’s health declined in later life. He put on weight, and the sleeping draughts he continued to take, combined with alcohol, cigars and little exercise, weakened his health. His productivity also declined, and his output was uneven. His last published work, Basil Seal Rides Again, revisiting the characters of his earliest satirical works, did not meet critical or popular approval, but is still read today. At the same time, he continued as a journalist and was well received.

He appeared in two television interviews with the BBC in the early 1960s, the only time his appearance was recorded publicly, during which the interviewers sought to corner him as an anachronistic figure. He overcame them, particularly in the second interview with novelist Elizabeth Jane Howard on the Monitor programme in 1964.[15] (The other interview was on John Freeman’s Face to Face series broadcast on 18 June 1960.) An earlier radio interview on the BBC Home Service in 1953 was somewhat less convivial.[16]

Waugh’s diaries, published in the 1970s, were widely acclaimed. His correspondence with lifelong friends, such as Nancy Mitford, is still published today. He is a fruitful source for biographers; three major works have been produced since Christopher Sykes’s friendly and familiar account of Waugh’s life was published in the 1970s.

Evelyn Waugh died, aged 62, on 10 April 1966, after attending a Latin Mass on Easter Sunday. He suffered a heart attack at his home, Combe Florey. His estate at probate was valued at £20,068. This did not include the value of his lucrative copyrights, which Waugh put in a trust (humorously named the ‘Save the Children Fund’) for his children. He is buried at Combe Florey, Somerset.

Critical reception

The American conservative commentator William F. Buckley, Jr. found in Waugh «the greatest English novelist of the century,»[17] (though Waugh was dismissive of Buckley) while Buckley’s liberal counterpart Gore Vidal called him «our time’s first satirist.»[18] Even the «overt racism» of his African writings has been forgiven by Ethiopian luminaries because his humour, satire, cruelty and wit were spread even-handedly, attacking the foibles of his own country at least as vigorously as those of foreigners.[19] In Cultural Amnesia, the critic Clive James called him «the supreme writer of English prose in the twentieth century, even though so many of the wrong people said so.»

Despite praise from many critics and commentators concerning Waugh’s abilities as a satirist, there is a visible strain of Waugh criticism which maintains that Waugh’s work is not satire at all. This idea is based on definitions of satire such as the following from J.A. Cuddon: «[the satirist] takes it upon himself to correct, censure, and ridicule the follies and vices of society and thus to bring contempt and derision upon aberrations from a desirable and civilised norm.»[20] Waugh’s ‘satirical’ writings have been said to hold no norm in sight with which to ridicule the follies of society. For an example, see Evelyn Waugh and the Problem of Evil by William Myers. Myers reads Decline and Fall as having conflicting values rather than a stable standard.[21]

If the beliefs of critics such as Myers are true (and there are many who think they are mistaken), then Waugh’s work might best be described as anarchic humour rather than satire. From this perspective, Waugh seems to skewer everything, not just those aspects of society that stray from his ideal.

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From: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evelyn_Waugh#Biography

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© a.r.e.a./Dr.Vicente Forés López
© Jéssica Gimeno Fortuny
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Universitat de València Press

·  Name: Evelyn Waugh

·  Birthname: Arthur St. John Waugh

·  Born: 28 October 1903

·  Place of birth: London, England, UK

·  Died: 10 April 1966

·  Place of death: Combe Florey, Somerset, England, UK

Evelyn Arthur St. John Waugh was born in a suburb of London in 1903, the son of a busy man-of-letters. Waugh’s origins were gentlemanly but in no way aristocratic, a point he seems to have been inordinately touchy about even as a boy. He was sent to Lancing, one of England’s less fashionable public schools; and from there he won a scholarship to one of Oxford’s decidedly less fashionable colleges. At Oxford, however, his wit, good looks, and resolute preference for the elite carried him into the company to which he aspired. There is a striking portrait of him at this time in Harold Acton’s Memoirs of an Aesthete:

«I still see him as a prancing faun, thinly disguised by conventional apparel. His wide apart eyes, always ready to be startled under raised eyebrows, the curved sensual lips, the hyacinthine locks of hair, I had seen in marble and bronze at Naples …»

Other Oxford contemporaries have spoken of him in a harsher vein: «A bitter little man» — «A social climber.»

After two years, Waugh voluntarily left Oxford without a degree, and, like Paul Pennyfeather of Decline and Fall, took a job in a school for backward boys. Later, he worked for sixteen days on Lord Beaverbrook’s Daily Express. His ambition was to be a painter, but a stint at art school left him dissatisfied with his talent. At this time, he has said, he was a pagan and «wanted to be a man of the world» — a well-rounded English gentleman in the eighteenth-century tradition. He joined in the whirl of Michael Arlen’s Mayfair. He «gadded among savages and people of fashion and politicians and crazy generals … because I enjoyed them.» But he was a worldling who could relish all this and still find it wanting. In 1930, after instruction from the celebrated Father D’Arcy, Waugh entered the Catholic Church.

A few months earlier, his marriage to the Honorable Evelyn Gardner had ended in divorce. In 1937, he married again. His second wife was a Catholic: Laura, daughter of Lieutenant-Colonel The Honorable Aubrey Nigel Henry Molyneux Herbert, second son of the Earl of Carnarvon.

For nine years, Waugh had traveled often and widely, by preference to wild places. The best parts of the four travel books written during this period were later reprinted in When the Going Was Good, and they are still lively reading. One is periodically reminded, however, that Waugh’s touch is surer and more sparkling when he is using these same materials in his comic novels.

With the advent of World War II, Waugh entreated ‘friends in high places’, such as Randolph Churchill – son of Winston, to find him a service commission. Though in his late thirties and of poor eyesight, he was commissioned into the Royal Marines and found more suited for intelligence duties than that of a line officer. He was promoted to Captain but found life in the Marines dull. Following a joint exercise with No.8 Commando (Army), he applied to join them and was accepted earning credit during the evacuation of Crete. Following he was placed on extended leave for three years and reassigned to the Royal Horse Guards as a result of an anti-Catholic purge in the Commandos by Lord Lovat. During this period he wrote ‘Brideshead Revisited’. He was recalled for a military/diplomatic mission to Yugoslavia at the request of his old friend Randolph Churchill. An outcome was a formidable report detailing Tito’s persecution of the clergy which was ‘buried’ by Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden (who also attempted to discredit Waugh) to save diplomatic embarrassment as Tito was then a required ally of Britain and official ‘friend’.

In 1947 Waugh visited Hollywood as a guest of MGM to discuss a possible film version of Brideshead Revisited.

«We drove for a long time down autobahns and boulevards full of vacant lots and filling stations and nondescript buildings and palm trees with a warm hazy light. It was more like Egypt – the suburbs of Cairo or Alexandria – than anything in Europe. We arrived at the Bel Air Hotel – very Egyptian with a hint of Addis Ababa in the smell of the blue gums.»

Hollywood saw Brideshead purely as a love story. Waugh refused to accept proposed changes and confessed in his diary that he was relieved when the project failed.

After the war, Waugh settled for many years at Piers Court in a secluded part of Gloucestershire, from which he occasionally made sorties to his London clubs. «I live in a shabby stone house,» he wrote in Life, «in which nothing is under a hundred years old except the plumbing, and that does not work. I collect old books in an inexpensive, desultory way. [His major avocation was the study of theology.] I have a fast emptying cellar of wine and gardens fast reverting to jungle. I have numerous children [three girls and two boys] whom I see once a day for ten, I hope, awe-inspiring minutes.»

A few years previous Randolph Churchill said of Waugh:

«He grows more old-fashioned every day. He seeks to live in an oasis.»

Waugh himself affirmed with pride that he was «two hundred years» behind the times, and that there is no political party in existence which he finds sufficiently (in the strictly literal sense of the word) reactionary. He refused to learn to drive a car. He wrote with a pen which had to be continually dipped in the inkwell. And he preferred to communicate even with his neighbors by written message rather than resort to the telephone. A literary friend of Waugh’s once delivered a summation which neatly reflects the tenor of the anecdotes about him. It went:

» Oh, I adore Evelyn. He’s so frightfully witty and so fearfully rude. Terribly conceited, of course — and, poor sweet, rather ridiculous. But such a good writer!»

Waugh died in 1966.

In 2001, three of his books were named as part of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century by the editorial board of the           American Modern Library.

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