EVELYN WAUGH NEWSLETTER AND STUD

EVELYN WAUGH NEWSLETTER AND STUDIES
Vol. 37, No. 3
Winter 2007

Inventing Invention: Alan Munton, Sword of Honour and the Invention of Disillusion
by Donat Gallagher
James Cook University

     Alan Munton’s recent essay, “Evelyn Waugh’s Sword of Honour: The Invention of Disillusion,”[1] is the most protracted disparagement of Waugh since Conor Cruise O’Brien’s “The Pieties of Evelyn Waugh.”[2] The writers differ in that O’Brien was a polemical stunt man, aiming to dazzle and wound, whereas Dr Munton, like so many British academics and journalists who write about Waugh, is moralistic. But the effect is the same. Apart from a few grudging concessions about the personal themes in the trilogy, and a backhanded compliment on the “honesty” that drove Waugh to “provide the ammunition later used against himself” (241), Waugh is allowed no decent motive, no information, no intellectual integrity—not even the courage and flair needed to make a really unpopular point of view noticed.
     The essay begins with a complex survey of Waugh’s writings up to 1939, one theme of which is “continuous reinvention” (232). This means that Waugh invented “different principles” as each new topic arose—Abyssinia, Spain, Mexico. The same opportunism (we are told) skews Waugh’s approach to World War II and leads to “substantial historical distortions” in Sword of Honour (244). It follows that if the events that bring about Guy Crouchback’s “disillusion” never happened, then Guy’s disillusion must be “invented.”
     I enjoyed Dr Munton’s well-written essay and admire him for defending the values he believes Waugh subverts. But I must say that almost every statement in the essay relevant to the “invention” theme is (to use Dr Munton’s phrase) a “perverse interpretation” of Waugh’s words. Space permits discussion of only four “perverse interpretations” that relate directly to Sword of Honour and to Waugh’s fitness to write about World War II. Ironically, Dr Munton is so wrong about Waugh, and so muddled about history, that he emerges as inventing the “invention” he attributes to Waugh.

History
Dr Munton says accusingly that Waugh “describes the history of a war, but has no theory of history” (229). Like most readers, I would argue that Waugh had an unusually keen interest in the past and an awareness of the constructedness of period that anticipates the postmodern. But that argument must await a better opportunity. My interest at this point is to see how Dr Munton arrives at his conclusion. He writes: "In Robbery under Law [Waugh] specifically rejects ‘the historical theory of recurrent waves of civilization which lasted a few centuries, built massive cities and tombs and were literally buried in the sands.’ He cannot follow Gibbon . . . or accept the Spenglerian notion of a cyclic history . . . for all large questions are settled by belief in God . . ." (229). Now this is gob smacking. The bromide that Catholics can have no personal opinions about “large questions” is merely embarrassing; but the claim that Waugh “rejects ‘the historical theory of recurrent waves of civilization’” reverses Waugh’s plain meaning. The passage in Robbery under Law that Dr Munton refers to, far from “rejecting” the “historical theory of recurrent waves of civilization,” in fact endorses it in the very strongest way (as might be expected of a writer who took Spengler on his honeymoon). Waugh actually chides Western societies for not taking the fact of “recurrent waves of civilization” into “practical calculation” (RUL 276). He warns Western civilization—and he rode this hobby horse all his life—that Progress is not inevitable, and that if a civilization fails to make the “unremitting effort” needed to “keep [itself] going,” it, too, will decline and fall (RUL 278-9).
Dr Munton claims that Waugh’s “one consistent stand” was “to take history out of politics and to replace history with ideal terms” (233). But Waugh’s whole tendency of thought was to deal in specifics.[3] In Robbery under Law he roundly condemns politicians like “Mussolini, Hitler, Stalin and Lenin” precisely because they founded their “ideal” states on the repudiation of history (91).

War
Implying that Waugh was unequipped to write about World War II, Dr Munton writes: “Waugh had no large-scale theories of his own about the nature of war. Indeed he can have none, for the major questions are already settled by his membership of the Catholic Church” (229). This simply ignores the fact that during and after the 1939-1945 conflict, Waugh became convinced, and embedded the conviction in Sword of Honour, that a “just” war is limited to righting a wrong. In this he differed from many others who, often under Marxist inspiration, embraced World War II as a crusade against Fascism and an opportunity to advance a social program. What Dr Munton really means is, not that Waugh lacked a theory of war, but that Waugh’s theory differed from his own.
During the same period, Waugh came to regard war carried on by modern methods as immoral. “Area” bombing (against which Vera Brittain campaigned so courageously), the creation of fire storms in densely populated cities designed to break civilian morale and the atomic bomb convinced him that “War as waged by airmen and physicists against civilian populations is absolutely wrong in morals and fatuous as practical politics."[4] He also subscribed to the truism that, “In war opponents soon forget the cause of the quarrel [e.g. World War II began to preserve Poland’s independence but ended with Poland ceded to Russia], continue to fight for the sake of fighting and in the process assume a resemblance to what they abhorred” [in 1939 the Allies thought only Nazis capable of fire-storming a non-strategic city packed with refugees, but in 1945 they perpetrated Dresden].”[5] As early as 1937, in “The Soldiers Speak,”[6] Waugh was anti-militaristic and most emphatically opposed to Nazi glorification of war. He believed that war led to “the pollution of truth, the deterioration of human character, the emergence of the bully and the cad, the obliteration of chivalry . . . [to] muddle and futility.” Where he differed from the overwhelming pacifist sentiment of the time (it was the era of the Peace Ballot) was in admitting, “unenthusiastically,” that war was a “dirty job” that sometimes had to be “carried out.” Dr Munton may well disagree with Waugh, but he really cannot claim that he had “no” theory of war.

Finland
Waugh writes in Men at Arms:

The newspapers . . . were full of Finnish triumphs. Ghostly ski troops . . . swept through the sunless forests . . . Russian might had proved to be an illusion. Mannerheim held the place in English hearts won in 1914 by King Albert of the Belgians. Then quite suddenly it appeared the Finns were beaten. . . . For Guy the news quickened the sickening suspicion . . . that he was engaged in a war in which courage and a just cause were quite irrelevant to the issue. No one at Kut-al-Imara House seemed much put out by the disaster. (175)

Dr Munton alleges that this passage “exaggerates the likely success of the Finns,” represents “the British public [as more] interested in the war” than it was, “invents a popular feeling that did not exist” and thus “contrives a moment of disillusion” (235). But the accusations are meaningless because, on the evidence of what is in his essay, Dr Munton seems unaware of the see-saw nature of the Russo-Finnish war or of the world- wide jubilation that greeted Finnish victories. A glance at “the newspapers” rather than at Angus Calder’s “editor’s note” [7] would have revealed how neatly Sword of Honour encapsulates these events and the slightly surreal way in which the press covered them.
Following the Nazi-Soviet pact in 1939, Russia made demands on Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia and Finland. The first three countries reluctantly gave way. Finland refused. Russia then accused Finland of “aggression,” invaded on 30 November 1939, bombed its open cities and set up a puppet regime to “invite” Russia to help it effect regime change. To the surprise and delight of the non-communist world (only Germany, then Russia’s ally, remained politely silent), the Finns fought back successfully for two months and even the strongly pro-Soviet New Statesman reported that the Russians had been “severely repulsed” and were “surrendering in large numbers.”[8] Russia then regrouped and on 1 February 1940 attacked with overwhelming force. However, the “newspapers,” guided by a Ministry of Information averse to bad news, continued to laud Finnish resistance; and when Finland capitulated on 12 March, the defeat seemed “sudden.” Everyone (except the die-hard Communists who hailed the Russians as “liberators”) admired the Finns’ courage and military skill. But no one expected four million Finns to defeat 180 million Russians. As early as December 1939, Waugh wrote of the “Finns still resisting and raising unrealizable hopes.”[9] Dr Munton can claim that Waugh “exaggerates the likely success of the Finns” only because he fails to pick up the irony in “the newspapers” being “full of Finnish triumphs” one day and “suddenly” reporting the Finns “beaten” next day.
Nor did Waugh need to “invent popular feeling” about Finland. Russia’s claim to have been attacked by Finland drew derision from around the world, while the bombing of her open cities created outrage. The enthusiastically pro-Soviet-alliance New Statesman sharply recorded the extent of the feeling:

The immediate effects of Stalin’s aggression in Finland have been to bring about just that concentration of capitalist hatred all over the world . . . which M. Litvinov had been so successful in dissipating. . . . Stalin has abandoned the moral appeal of the USSR and has decided to rely on naked force; and now the force is not impressive.[10]

Despite Dr Munton’s flat denial, “admiration in Britain” for the military genius of Mannerheim (at that time the Finnish commander-in-chief, not “the President” as Dr Munton calls him) “did actually happen,” as a glance at the popular Picture Post will confirm.[11] “The newspapers” (not, of course, the Daily Worker) were “full of Finnish triumphs”; and newspapers, magazines and newsreels did relentlessly feature “ghostly ski troops” in white camouflage capes harassing Russians. Even the stuffy Economist gushed that the “gallantry of the Finns exceeds anything in living memory.”[12]
Now, the really curious thing about Waugh is that he placed little importance on what “the newspapers” said, believing rather that “a private, ironically called a ‘free’ press . . . is the worst possible guide to popular sympathies.”[13] So, instead of endorsing the newspaper hype and “contriving a moment of disillusion,” Waugh recorded the peculiar indifference the British show towards defeated friends, in this case the Finns: “No one,” Guy noted, “seemed much put out by the disaster.” Dr Munton quotes a civil servant who shrugs off the defeat of Finland with the words: “A black day, but there it is.” This is supposed to contradict Waugh, when in fact it reinforces the very point he is making.

Crete: “Explorations of Language”
     Dr Munton damns the behaviour of Laycock and Waugh during the evacuation of Crete as so “bad” that it created a “crisis of disillusion very close to home” (237), that is, that it caused Waugh himself to become disillusioned. To develop the theme, he places “particular emphasis” on “exploring the prose … and language” of the Layforce War Diary (written by Waugh), The Diaries of Evelyn Waugh and Sword of Honour. This exploration, he says, uncovers the “evasions,” “omissions” and “contradictions” Waugh used to conceal Laycock’s misdeeds (236-7). At the risk of giving offence, I have to say that Dr Munton does not know the basic grammar of the Crete campaign and that, as a result, his “explorations” discover nothing. Even the introductory information about the Crete campaign contains resounding clangers. It is amazing to read that “Crete was not a priority for Churchill” (237), when it was Churchill who insisted that Crete be defended over Field Marshal Wavell’s protests and when, after the defeat, he talked of “shooting generals.”
     Purely military matters—e.g. the crucial orders, the times at which troops moved and fighting ceased—are the subject of a fully documented forthcoming essay. This note prescinds from such issues. Instead, it examines five “explorations of language” within the context in which the language was used.
     “Fighting Troops”: On the night 31 May 1941, 9000-plus British and Empire troops, as well as many Greeks and Cretans, were gathered on a plateau high above the tiny evacuation beach of Sphakia. All were confident that the Navy would take them off. But this night would turn out to be the last on which the Navy could come, and of the 9000 men present the ships could lift only 4000. Creforce orders were that the 4000 to go must be “fighting troops.”
     “Fighting troops” was a straightforward administrative category. It meant units “still organized to fight.” Creforce staff used the term, without moral overtones, to assign priority for embarkation; and General Weston used it in his War Diary to designate the twelve units (including Layforce) that he was “bound by orders to get away.” Thus when Waugh says that he found the “approaches to the beach thronged with non-fighting troops” and that there were “no ‘fighting troops’ among the officers and few among the men” on the ship he boarded (Diaries 509), he was simply stating that the soldiers he saw in these two places did not belong to the organized units with orders to leave.
     Dr Munton, however, invents his own interpretation of “non-fighting” troops and saddles Waugh with it. He claims that Waugh saw the “non-fighting troops” outside Sphakia and on the ship as soldiers who had “thrown away their weapons” or were “not in a psychological state to fight” (239); and that Waugh used this demeaning description to “justify” his escape ahead of them. This is not a conclusion drawn from a study of “language”; it is a mistake arising from not understanding the historical situation.
     “The Rabble”: The 5000 “non-fighting” soldiers destined to be left behind at Sphakia were diverse. Some were disciplined specialists (e.g. Artillery and Engineers) or Infantry organized into ad hoc groups of 50. But many were “unattached.” These included base troops such as clerks, mechanics and labourers from Palestine and Cyprus, often deserted by their officers; stragglers from units broken up in battle; and demoralized evacuees from Greece who had never been rearmed and had been living in shocking conditions under no effective control. As well, there were the Greeks and Cretans. After the defeat of the Allies in the northwest of the island, these men had laboured towards Sphakia in blazing heat across a rugged mountain range. They provide the defining image of the Crete campaign and were, as Waugh feelingly put it, a “pitiful spectacle.” Moving away from their food and water, and under constant air attack, many reached Sphakia starving, parched, exhausted and panic stricken. Some were lawless and violent. Everyone called this disparate throng “the rabble.”
     Dr Munton, however, asserts that “rabble” is “Waugh’s own word” (241); and he argues, ingeniously, that by giving it to Ivor Claire in Sword of Honour (“It doesn’t make any sense, leaving behind the fighting troops and taking off the rabble”), Waugh exposes “his own guilt” (240-1). Nothing could be further from the truth. “Rabble” was not Waugh-speak. Troops who belonged to organized units, and even official documents, used the word freely. Two of many hundreds of possible examples must suffice. The impeccably correct British Narrator, Colonel E. E. Rich, explains that Layforce failed to get away because it could not “penetrate the rabble.” And the War Diary of 2/7 Australian Battalion, which was prevented from embarking despite its high priority, blamed its failure on the fact that “large numbers of rabble were taken off and no effective control was attempted or maintained.” Ivor Claire says “rabble,” not because Waugh invented it as a term of contempt and had an unconscious need to “leak his guilt” through it (241), but because all ranks on Crete used “rabble” as a matter of course.
     “Use Your Own Personality”: Only 2500 of the 4000 “fighting troops” ordered to leave Crete succeeded in embarking. Conversely, 1500 “rabble” were taken off. The anomaly has many explanations. The most obvious was the sheer difficulty of embarking 4000 “fighting troops” in the dark and in extremely difficult terrain while thousands of “unattached” troops were milling about desperate to leave. This problem was compounded by shocking staff work. The New Zealanders received the lion’s share (1600) of places on the ships. Determined to get away, they mounted two heavily armed cordons supported by machine-gun posts around Sphakia, lined up their troops on the path leading to the beach by 10.00 pm and began boarding the moment the Navy arrived at 11.30 pm. So far, so good. But as soon as their own men were safe, after midnight, the New Zealand cordons withdrew (no history records this) and handed over to an ill-prepared British Artillery unit, 64 Medium Regiment. While the Artillery unit was getting into position, “rabble” rushed down on them. The Maoris raced back with fixed bayonets and amid “scenes best forgotten” fiercely restored the line. But after that, access to the beach by the official route was severely impeded. Resentful “rabble,” who had often arrived at Sphakia much earlier than the “fighting troops,” sat down in the narrow, sunken track to stop them passing. Badly briefed “Movement Control Officers” mistakenly forbade some “fighting” units to move forward. And because every Creforce officer had decamped by seaplane before midnight, no one on the island had the knowledge or authority to settle disputes and keep troops moving.
     Dr Munton seems not to understand how difficult it became for the “fighting troops” to get through the crush in front of the beach. As a result, he misrepresents an order in the Layforce War Diary from Laycock to Lt Colonel Young, the officer commanding the Layforce battalions: “use own personality to obtain priority laid down in Div. orders.” If this order was actually given,[14] it did no more than instruct Layforce to exercise its right, as “fighting troops,” to make a way through the throng jamming the track and embark ahead of “non-fighting troops.” But in Dr Munton’s hands the order becomes an incitement to “force your way on board ship” (240).
     The absurdity of interpreting Waugh’s words in this way is apparent to anyone who recalls that the Navy controlled the loading of the ships, and of the boats going out to them, and that any “forcing” would have meant the immediate end of the evacuation.
     But do the words “use own personality to obtain priority” connote brutish disregard for the rights of other troops? A glance at the War Diary of 2/8 Australian Battalion is instructive. The battalion enjoyed high priority and actually embarked straight after the New Zealanders. And yet Major Keyes, its commanding officer, complained bitterly in his War Diary about the “necessity for the units concerned in the embarkation to take measures to secure a passage down to the beach.” What objective “explorer of language” faced with Waugh’s “use own personality to obtain priority” and Keyes’s “take measures to secure a passage” would find one expression morally superior to the other?
     In his “Introduction” to the Penguin Sword of Honour, Angus Calder reduces this matter to farce by picturing Laycock “barging a way through the rabble with some, though not all, of his commandos.”[15]The facts are that the bulk of Layforce reached Sphakia at 2.00 am, took no energetic measures to force a way through the crush and did not get near the beach. The only Commandos to embark were ten or so from HQ, who did “push their way through the crowds” (how else does anyone get through a
crowd?),[16] and 120 from “A” Battalion. This group of 120 Commandos had been guarding the perimeter in the west. They literally ran to Sphakia from that direction and did not encounter the crowded east. By “sheer luck” they caught the last boat to leave. This is attested not only by the “A” Battalion War Diary but by soldiers’ letters to parents.
     "By Pretending That a Betrayal Occurred, [Waugh] Projected Lost Illusions on a Lost Battle" (237): Waugh never “pretended” that Crete was “betrayed,” although some soldiers did imply as much. The Communist poet, John Manifold, wrote: “Say Crete, and there is little more to tell / Of muddle tall as treachery”; and New Zealand Intelligence reported that soldiers returning from Crete “considered that the Germans bought high officials on the British side as was the case with France.” Waugh was more in tune with the many soldiers who told Intelligence they "felt badly let down" and were “disgusted” by organization that was “either extremely bad or completely non-existent.” Like them, he felt he had taken part in a “military disgrace” and “remembered it with shame.” He also records several officers deserting, one being a young Hussar who Dan Davin thought could be the “model” for Ivor Claire. Crete was not a creditable feat of arms onto which Waugh “projected lost illusions,” as Dr Munton claims. It was a “lost” battle.
     Of course Waugh knew that most fighting units maintained cohesion and morale and that there had been individual bravery. He describes “D” Battalion of Layforce as being “in the steadiest condition” (like the Halberdiers in Sword of Honour) and praised the Maori Battalion and 1 Welch Regiment.[17] His opinion of the Crete campaign, though violent, was not simplistic; nor was it the projection of (imagined) “lost illusions.”
     The Layforce War Diary Was “Fiction”: Dr Munton says that the Layforce War Diary relating to the evacuation was written by Waugh with substantial input from Laycock (239); and that it was “fiction” designed to mask Laycock’s “bad behaviour” (239). This really is Beevorite non-sense. Of course the Layforce War Diary is unlike other War Diaries written on Crete. But that is only because it is more candid and more explicit than the others. Each substantive fact stated in it is supported by independent evidence.
     Laycock was an ambitious professional soldier, fully at home in the Army system. If he had acted badly at Sphakia (which, most emphatically, he did not), and if he wished to conceal the fact, and if he had a part in compiling the War Diary, he would have written a single true but anodyne sentence blanking out any hint of a problem and giving no details for critics to pick at: e.g. “Layforce covered the evacuation but was unable to embark owing to crowding at the entrance to the beach.”[18] But Laycock had nothing to hide and he allowed Waugh to write a frank and detailed account of proceedings. This included a full explanation that Laycock “on own authority” had issued an order to his troops to withdraw from their defensive positions—not to embark, as Dr Munton mistakenly states—after the Creforce staff, who should have given the order, had left the island. This was not the action of a dishonest recorder.

Summary
     World War II, and novels about it, mean radically different things to observers who start from different political standpoints, and it is fair to say that the quarrel (as distinct from the squabbling over detail) that exists between Alan Munton and Evelyn Waugh relates to opposed conceptions of the conflict. For Dr Munton it was a victory over Fascism, and a People’s War which led to the founding, by “argument and persuasion” (242), of People’s Democracies all over Eastern Europe and to the “National Health Service and the widely-welcomed nationalisation of public services” in Britain (244). Even today, when “everyone” deprecates the Stasi and the other atrocities of the People’s Democracies, a case can still be made, following A. J. P. Taylor, for not regretting Yalta.
     For Waugh, on the other hand, the war was a welcome victory over Hitler severely compromised by one of its unfortunate consequences, the violent imposition of Stalinist regimes on Eastern Europe and the systematic persecution of large Christian populations that followed. Sword of Honour set out this point of view at a time when the English literary establishment—still in what Dr Munton calls a mood of “post war optimism” (229)—insisted that Eastern Europe had been “liberated” and that “Generalissimo Stalin,” in Churchill’s words, was a “truly great man, the father of his country, the ruler of its destinies in times of peace and . . . and war.”[19] Deeply troubled by the Stalinist hegemony and the cruel cover-up of its crimes in the mainstream English press (as were Christians of all political persuasions),[20] Waugh counterattacked in the trilogy.
     I venture to suggest that if Dr Munton—and the many British academics and journalists like him—were to disagree with almost any writer other than Waugh about World War II, they would set one view against the other and argue the case. (Were the People’s Democracies of Eastern Europe established by “persuasion”? Did they persecute Christians?) But for reasons mystifying to the wider world, Waugh has got under the skin of these normally rational academics and journalists. And when disagreeing with Waugh, they simply assume their own point of view to be correct—and morally superior—and sneer at his information, intelligence, honesty and decency. They twist his words into parodies of his real opinions and milk the parodies for every drop of discredit they will yield. At the same time (and I mean no disrespect for their distinguished work in other areas), they show themselves astonishingly unfamiliar with what Waugh wrote and what he wrote about.
     In this case, Dr Munton seeks to show that Waugh evolved a “perverse interpretation of public events” (244) that led to his “inventing” Guy Crouchback’s “disillusion.” His essay does not present an alternative view of these “public events,” nor does it give the slightest hint that Dr Munton attempted to understand the view Waugh espoused, or why that view, though abhorrent to himself, could be honestly held by intelligent observers with a different political perspective. Instead, the essay tries to show up Waugh as shifty in argument, untruthful about facts and “comically ignorant” in opinion (244).  The attempt fails, not because Dr Munton’s analytical skills are ever less than impressive, but because he does not understand the context that gave rise to Waugh’s words about civilization, war, Finland, Crete and the myriad other matters discussed in the essay.
     George Bernard Shaw praised the acumen of a Prussian Crown Prince who walked out of one of his plays because he “so well understood its meaning,” while the British Imperialists at whom the play was really directed smiled at the jokes. It is to Dr Munton’s credit that he “so well understands” the point of Sword of Honour and responds to it. Would there were more Alan Muntons and fewer readers fixated on the Thunderbox. On the other hand, the nature of the response is dismaying. Far from proving that Waugh “invents” Guy’s “disillusion,” Dr Munton’s interesting essay repeatedly attributes to Waugh opinions that he did not hold and motives he would have scorned. Who is the inventor?

Notes
[1] Alan Munton, “Evelyn Waugh’s Sword of Honour: The Invention of Disillusion” in Carlos Villar Flor and Robert Murray Davis, eds., Waugh without End: New Trends in Evelyn Waugh Studies (Bern: Peter Lang, 2005), 225-46.
[2] Conor Cruise O’Brien, “The Pieties of Evelyn Waugh” in Maria Cross: Imaginative Patterns in a Group of Modern Catholic Writers (London: Burns and Oates, 1963), 109-23.
[3] Waugh argues that “The whole of thought and taste consists in distinguishing between similars.” See “More Barren Leaves,” rev. of Ends and Means by Aldous Huxley in Donat Gallagher, ed., The Essays, Articles and Reviews of Evelyn Waugh (London: Methuen, 1983), 213-14. Subsequently EAR.
[4] Randolph Churchill, comp. “Evelyn Waugh: Letters (and Postcards) to Randolph Churchill,” Encounter, 31 July 1968: 7.
[5] Evelyn Waugh, “Commentary” in The Private Man, by T. A. McInerny (New York: Ivan Obolensky, 1962); EAR 580.
[6] Evelyn Waugh, “The Soldiers Speak,” rev. of Vain Glory by Guy Chapman (Night and Day, 29 July 1937); EAR 199-201.
[7] Angus Calder, Editor’s Note 2, in Evelyn Waugh, Sword of Honour (London: Penguin Classics, 2001), 672. Calder’s treatment is more balanced than Munton’s, but his own “prejudice” is stronger than that he attributes to Waugh.
[8] “The Frozen War,” New Statesman and Nation, 30 December 1939: 945-6.
[9] Evelyn Waugh, The Dairies of Evelyn Waugh, ed. Michael Davie (London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 1976), 460.
[10] “The Frozen War,” New Statesman and Nation, 30 December 1939: 945-6.
[11] “Finland: Nation Fighting for Its Life,” Picture Post, 24 Feb. 1940: 17-29.
[12] Economist, 137 (9 December 1939): 361-2.
[13] Evelyn Waugh, “Through European Eyes,” EAR 192.
[14] Ralph Tanner, who carried the verbal withdrawal order from Laycock to Young—“If they could get away they were to get away”—does not mention any such instruction. See Touch and Go: The Battle for Crete 1941, ed. David Smurthwaite (London: National Army Museum, 1991), 53. Thus “use own personality” may not be Laycock’s words but Waugh’s spelling out of what he thought Laycock’s words implied. Similarly, Waugh’s words in the Diaries--"Bob then took the responsibility of ordering Layforce to fight their way through the rabble and embark" (509)--are probably Waugh’s and open to misinterpretation. They must be read in the light of Tanner’s account and of what actually happened.
[15] Calder, “Introduction” in Waugh, Sword of Honour, xi.
[16] Waugh, Diaries, 509.
[17] Waugh, Diaries, 505; I. McD. G. Stewart, Struggle for Crete: 20 May-1 June 1941: A Story of Lost Opportunity (London: Oxford UP, 1966), 469.
[18] In his long memorandum on Crete, Lt Col. Young, who commanded the Layforce battalions, devoted only one sentence to the evacuation: “Layforce took up positions covering Sphakia, which were held till the evacuation was completed.” Young did not belong to the Laycock set and, though on the beach during the evacuation, went into captivity with his men. Until Antony Beevor gave currency to suggestions that Laycock left Crete improperly, Young’s summary would have been regarded as all that was needed. Again, 64 Med Rgt took over picketing at midnight, a fact no history records. Its War Diary buries the fact in a single clause in one sentence.
[19] Hansard, 7 Nov. 1945.
[20] Waugh’s view was not confined to upper-class Catholics. My stepfather (if I may intrude a personal note) was in every respect the opposite of the self-serving Waugh-the-soldier that Calder and others have popularized. A member of the Seamen’s Union, he was twice jailed for defying Emergency Regulations imposed on strikers. Despite losing the sight of one eye and suffering internal injuries in World War I, he appeared in uniform, as a private, on the day World War II was declared (a feat that still puzzles me). Later, when few were willing to risk the danger, he sailed unprotected supply ships into the Pacific war zone. He gave full credit to Churchill for acknowledging that it was Russia, not Britain or the USA, that “tore the heart out of the German war machine.” And yet he expressed his disgust at the way Churchill handled the Russian Alliance far more vehemently than did Waugh (which embarrassed me as a boy). Graham Greene agreed with Waugh on only one political point, opposition to Stalinist persecution of Catholics. I can assure Dr Munton that Waugh’s post-war “pessimism,” to which he takes such exception, was not confined to Waugh. Many Catholics, conscious of the extent and severity of the terror inflicted on Christian populations by Communist regimes in Europe and Asia, felt as Jews would today if the United States, in pursuit of its national interest, were to allow Syria to annexe Israel.

Editor's note: Dr Alan Munton does not believe that his views are at all represented in Donat Gallagher's essay. If anyone would like to read Dr Munton's essay, he is willing to provide copies. Contact him at amunton@plymouth.ac.uk or Dr Alan Munton, Editor, Wyndham Lewis Annual, Room 304, Library, University of Plymouth, Drake Circus, Plymouth, Devon PL4 8AA, UK.

A Supplemental Bibliography of Evelyn Waugh, Part III
by Robert Murray Davis
University of Oklahoma

This is the third of three installments that supplement A Bibliography of Evelyn Waugh (1986), by Robert Murray Davis, Paul A. Doyle, Donat Gallagher, Charles E. Linck, and Winnifred M. Bogaards. For the first two installments, see the Newsletter 37.1 and the Newsletter 37.2. If anyone has more information about these or other publications, please contact the editor, jwilson3@lhup.edu.

1986

Bangert, Kurt, and Jürgen Kamm. Die Darstellung des Zweiten Weltkrieges im englischen roman. Summary in English and American Studies in German 1986: Summaries of Theses and Monographs, ed. Horst Weinstock. Tübingen: Max Niemeyer, 1988. Pp. 105‑107.

Davis, Robert Murray, Paul A. Doyle, Donat Gallagher, Charles E. Linck, Jr., and Winnifred M. Bogaards. A Bibliography of Evelyn Waugh. Troy, NY: Whitston.

Reviews:

Blayac, Alain. Etudes Anglaises, 41, 1 (1988), p. 103.

Miller, W. Choice, June 1987.

Review of F. Donaldson, Evelyn Waugh: Portrait of a Country Neighbour (1967). New Statesman, 110 (18 October 1986), p. 26.

Gorra, Michael Edward. "The English Novel at Mid‑Century: Evelyn Waugh, Henry Green, Anthony Powell, and Graham Greene." Unpubl. diss., Stanford University. Dissertation Abstracts International, 47 (August 1986), 536A.

Longford, Elizabeth. The Pebbled Shore: The Memoirs of Elizabeth Longford. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.

Newaliya, N. N. "'Experience Totally Transformed': Three Travel‑Inspired Novels of Evelyn Waugh." M. Phil. diss., Poona University, India.

Pritchett, V. S. "Evelyn Waugh." In A Man of Letters: Selected Essays. New York: Random House. Pp. 123‑132.

Rutland, Blake Scheryl. "Evolving Moral Stance in the Novels of Aldous Huxley and Evelyn Waugh." Unpubl. diss., Florida State University. See Dissertation Abstracts International, 47 (1987), 2599A.

Stannard, Martin. Evelyn Waugh: The Early Years 1903‑1939. London: Dent, 1986. New York: W. W. Norton, 1987

Reviews:

Doyle, Paul A. Evelyn Waugh Newsletter, 21, 3 (1987), pp. 6-7.

Dubby, Dennis. "Satire, failure and flaw." Toronto Globe and Mail, 3 January 1987.

Furbank, P. N. Times Literary Supplement, no. 4362, 1986, p. 1237.

Morris, Edmund. "A Better Kind of Dust." New York Times Book Review, 30 August 1987, pp. 1, 30‑31.

O'Brien, Conor Cruise. "Nobs and Snobs." New York Review of Books, 4 February 1988, pp. 3‑4, 6.

O'Donoghue, Bernard. Essays in Criticism, 37 (1987), pp. 338‑345.

Commonweal, 114 (23 October 1987), p. 602+.

Wall Street Journal, 26 September 1987, p. 20 (W), p. 24 (E).

Library Journal, 112 (1 April 1987), p. 160+.

Publishers Weekly, 231 (6 March 1987), p. 98.

Wilson Library Bulletin, 62 (January 1988), p. 90+.

Stevenson, Randall. The British Novel since the Thirties: An Introduction. London: B. T. Batsford. Pp. 51‑56.

Wilson, Edmund. The Fifties: From Notebooks and Diaries of the Period. Ed. Leon Edel. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Pp. 219 (reference to Holy Places), 261 (responses to Wilson's review of Campion), 371 (anecdote of Waugh meeting Maugham's brother).

Davis, Robert Murray. "Grace Beyond the Reach of Sullen Art." Journal of Modern Literature, 13 (March 1986), pp. 163‑166. Combined with R. M. Davis, “How Waugh Cut Merton,” B2143, and additional material in R. M. Davis, Evelyn Waugh and the Forms of His Time (1989).

Richardson, W. J. "Psychoanalysis and the God‑question." Thought, 61 (March 1986), pp. 68‑89.

Davis, Robert Murray. "The Rhetoric of Mexican Travel: Greene and Waugh." Renascence, 38 (Spring 1986), pp. 160‑169. Reprinted in R. M. Davis, Evelyn Waugh and the Forms of His Time (1989).

Davis, Robert Murray. "Subdividing the Wilderness: Guides to Waugh Criticism." Papers on Language and Literature, 22 (Spring 1986), pp. 216‑220. Discusses M. Morris and D. J. Dooley, Evelyn Waugh: A Reference Guide (1984) and M. Stannard, ed., Evelyn Waugh: The Critical Heritage (1984).

Davis, Robert Murray. "Bloomsbury‑‑And After?" South Central Review, 3 (Summer 1986), pp. 69‑77. Waugh and other writers of the 1930's. Adapted for R. M. Davis, Evelyn Waugh and the Forms of His Time (1989).

Kloss, Robert J. "The Origins of Waugh's 'Victim as Hero.'" Journal of Evolutionary Psychology, 7 (August 1986), pp. 285‑297.

Review of A Tourist in Africa. New York Times Book Review, 26 October 1986, p. 54.

Lynch, James. "Evelyn Waugh during the Pinfold Years." Modern Fiction Studies, 32 (Winter 1986), pp. 543‑559.

Lynch, James. "Tennyson's 'Tithonus,' Huxley's After Many a Summer, and Waugh's The Loved One." South Atlantic Review, 51, 4 (November 1986), pp. 31‑47.

Cherfas, T. "Evelyn Waugh and Peace Revisited: Russian Readers, Western Writers." Encounter, 66, 1, pp. 64‑68.

Lasky, M. J. "Waugh and the Dream of Azania." Encounter, 67, 3, p. 66.

Chevalier, Jean‑Louis. "La Subjectivite du narrateur imporsonnel dans A Handful of Dust." Cycnos, 3 (Winter 1986‑87), pp. 51‑74.

1987

Bold, Alan, and Robert Giddings. Who Was Really Who in Fiction. London: Longman. Identifies originals of John Beaver (John Heygate), Anthony Blanche (Harold Acton), Lady Circumference (Jessie Graham), Lottie Crump (Rosa Lewis), Julia Flyte (Olivia Plunkett‑Greene), Sebastian Flyte (Hugh Lygon), Captain Grimes (Captain Young), Brigadier Ritchie‑Hook (Albert St. Clair Morford), Lord Marchmain (William Lygon, 7th Earl Beauchamp), Rex Mottram (Brendan Bracken), Agatha Runcible (Elizabeth Ponsonby), Mr. Samgrass (Maurice Bowra), Basil Seal (Hon. Peter Rodd), Ambrose Silk (Brian Howard), Everard Spruce (Cyril Connolly), Mrs. Algernon Stitch (Lady Diana Cooper).

Carens, James F., ed. Critical Essays on Evelyn Waugh. Boston: G. K. Hall.

Gilmore, Thomas B. Equivocal Spirits: Alcoholism and Drinking in Twentieth‑Century Literature. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.

McCartney, George. Confused Roaring: Evelyn Waugh and the Modernist Tradition. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Reviews:

Robert Murray Davis, Evelyn Waugh Newsletter, 22, 1 (1988), pp. 6-7.

Blayac, Alain. "L'intertextualite de A Handful of Dust." Bulletin de Stylistique (Paris X, Nanterre), January 1987, pp. 1‑15.

Les Annees Trente, No. 5 (Fevrier). Special issue on Waugh.
Blayac, Alain. "Structure et message dans A Handful of Dust." Pp. 1‑15.
Davis, Robert Murray. "Evelyn Waugh on Fiction." Pp. 17‑41.
Siarnowski, Renee. "La femme dans les romans d'Evelyn Waugh." Pp. 43‑88.
Tosser, Yvon. "The Absurd in the Early Novels of Evelyn Waugh." Pp. 89‑113.
Tosser, Yvon. “Le delire de Tony Last et le fonctionnement de la metaphore dans A Handful of Dust.” Pp. 115‑122.

Decap, Robert. "A Handful of Dust: Des souris et des hommes." Caliban, 24 (1987), pp. 109‑123.

Tosser, Yvon. "Repetition et difference dans A Handful of Dust." Etudes Anglaises, 40 (January‑March 1987), pp. 39‑50.

Bradbury, Malcolm. "The Comic Bad Man of English Letters." New York Times Book Review, 22 March 1987, p. 15. Comparison of Waugh and Kingsley Amis.

Chase, Kathleen. "Legend and Legacy: Some Bloomsbury Diaries." World Literature Today, 61 (Spring 1987), pp. 230‑233.

Meckier, Jerome. "Juvenile Waugh." Studies in the Novel, 19 (Spring 1987), pp. 91‑97. Review of R. M. Davis, Evelyn Waugh, Apprentice (1985), and J. McDonnell, Waugh on Women (1985).

Bell, Alan. "Waugh Drops the Pilot." Spectator, 7 March 1987, pp. 27, 30‑31. Quotes and discusses Waugh marginalia in Cyril Connolly's The Unquiet Grave.

Broyard, Anatole. "Having Minimalist Time, Wish You Were Here." New York Times Book Review, 22 March 1987, p. 13. Recent travel books in context of Waugh and others.

Gallagher, Donat. "Slender Banjoes and Mighty Brooms: Oxford Magazines in the Twenties." London Magazine, April/May 1987, pp. 87‑101.

Going, William T. "Pre‑Raphaelitism in Brideshead Revisited." Journal of Pre‑Raphaelite and Aesthetic Studies, 7 (May 1987), pp. 90‑93.

Aslet, Clive. "Architectural Badinage: Evelyn Waugh's Eye for Buildings." Country Life, 21 May 1987, pp. 120‑123.

Devereux, James A., S. J. "Catholic Matters in the Correspondence of Evelyn Waugh and Graham Greene." Journal of Modern Literature, 14 (Summer 1987), pp. 111‑126.

Hynes, Joseph. "Two Affairs Revisited." Twentieth Century Literature, 33 (Summer 1987), pp. 234‑253. On Brideshead and Graham Greene, The End of the Affair.

Mitgang, Herbert. "Sometimes Waugh Was Nice to Nuns." New York Times Book Review, 30 August 1987, p. 30.

Jones, D. A. N. "Scoring off Waugh." Grand Street, 7 (Autumn 1987), pp. 158‑174.

Kramer, Larry, and Kathrin Perutz. "Evelyn Waugh's Life." New York Times Book Review, 20 September 1987, p. 37. Letter replying to Morris review of Stannard biography.

Ruddick, Bill. "Titles and Self‑Torment: Another Look at Evelyn Waugh." Critical Quarterly, 29 (1987), pp. 78‑83.

1988

Crabbe, Katharyn W. Evelyn Waugh. New York: Ungar.

Cunningham, Valentine. British Writers of the Thirties. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press.

Doyle, Paul. "Evelyn Arthur St. John Waugh, 1903‑1966," in Book of Days 1988. Ann Arbor: Pierian Press. Pp. 577‑580.

McDonnell, Thomas P. "Why Evelyn Waugh Worried about Merton's Prose." In Toward an Integrated Humanity: Thomas Merton's Journey, ed. M. Basil Pennington, O.C.S.O. Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Publications, 1988. Pp. 25‑31.

Galvan, Delia V. "Las heroinas de Elena Garro." La Palabra y el Hombre: Revista de La Universidad Veracruzana, 65 (January‑March 1988), pp. 145‑153.

Les Annees Trente, No. 6 (Fevrier). Special issue on Waugh.
Blayac, Alain. "Text et paratexte dans A Handful of Dust: Un aspect de la Memoire Litteraire d'Evelyn Waugh." Pp. 1‑12.
Chevalier, Jean‑Louis. "L'Illusion dans A Handful of Dust.” Pp. 13‑28.
Gauthier, Dominique. "De Beaver a Trimmer: Constantes et Evolution de la satire dans 2 Romans d'E. Waugh." Pp. 29‑51.
Jacquin, Bernard. "Brideshead Revisited et The Go‑Between, romans de la memoire: postures nostalgiques et procedures narratives." Pp. 53‑66.
Jolicoeur, Claude. "Les Enfants dans A Handful of Dust." Pp. 67‑88.

Adcock, Patrick. "Helena: Waugh's Englishwoman on the Frontier of Faith." Publications of the Arkansas Philological Association, 14 (Spring 1988), pp. 61‑67.

MacSween, R. J. "Helena: Waugh's Failure." Antigonish Review, 73 (Spring 1988), pp. 27‑31.

Watson, George. "Orwell and Waugh." Partisan Review 55 (Spring 1988), pp. 264‑275.

Gallagher, Donat. "Nullity, Duplicity and Catholicity in Martin Stannard's Evelyn Waugh: The Early Years." Month, 259, 1444 [2nd NS 21, 4] (April 1988), pp. 633‑641. Detailed and very critical examination of Stannard's treatment of evidence about the annulment of Waugh's marriage to Evelyn Gardner.

Walia, Shelley. "Sense of an Ending: Evelyn Waugh's Decline and Fall." Panjab University Research Bulletin (Arts), 19 (April 1988), pp. 23‑40.

Gorra, Michael. "Through Comedy toward Catholicism: A Reading of Evelyn Waugh's Early Novels." Contemporary Literature, 29 (Summer 1988), pp. 201‑220.

Blow, Robert. "Sword of Honour: A Novel with a Hero." Durham University Journal, 80 (June 1988), pp. 305‑311.

Kauffmann, Stanley. "Danse Macabre." New Republic, 198 (27 June 1988), pp. 24‑25. Review of film of Handful of Dust.

Waugh, Auberon. "A Handful of Dad." Vanity Fair, July 1988, pp. 28, 30‑31. Reprise of familiar material on background to and movie version of Handful of Dust.

Rafferty, Terrence. Review of film of Handful of Dust. New Yorker, 64 (11 July 1988), pp. 74‑75.

Korn, Eric. "Remainders." Times Literary Supplement, 22‑28 July 1988, p. 803. Corrects Philip French: the source of Mr. Todd's name in Handful of Dust is less the German Tod than Beatrix Potter's The Tale of Mr. Tod.

Yakir, Dan. "Patrician looks bring period roles for Wilby." Toronto Globe and Mail, 29 July 1988. On James Wilby, who played lead role in film of Handful of Dust.

1989

Morris, Mary Josephine Ann. "Evelyn Waugh: The Novel and Its Relation to Other Media." Dissertation Abstracts International, 50 (July 1989), 149A.

Beaty, Frederick L. "Evelyn Waugh and Lance Sieveking: New Light on Waugh's Relations with the BBC." Papers on Language and Literature, 25 (Spring 1989), pp. 186‑200.

Greene, Donald. "A Partiality for Lords: Evelyn Waugh and Snobbery." American Scholar, 558 (Summer 1989), pp. 444‑459.

Kloss, Robert J. "Waugh's A Handful of Dust as Autobiography." Journal of Evolutionary Psychology, 10 (August 1989), pp. 372‑382.

Meyers, Jeffrey. "Evelyn Waugh: Brilliant and Loathsome." Contemporary Literature, 30 (Winter 1989), pp. 589‑591.

Editor's note: The Newsletter has not had a Bibliographical Editor since 1998. If anyone is willing to undertake this task, please contact the editor: jwilson3@lhup.edu

Book Reviews

"All Gentlemen Are Now Very Old" ("Except Us!" --Alain Blayac)
Waugh without End: New Trends in Evelyn Waugh Studies, ed. Carlos Villar Flor and Robert Murray Davis. Bern: Peter Lang, 2005. $60.95 (paper). Reviewed by Douglas Lane Patey, Smith College.

     In his introduction to this collection of papers originally delivered at the centenary conference held 15-17 May 2003 at La Rioja University (Spain), Robert Davis suggests that at a time when Waugh studies sometimes look to be near "exhaustion [and] repetition" (and simple extinction outside North America), it can seem that all the important work was done by the giant race before the Flood: by senior scholars such as Davis himself, Paul Doyle, Donat Gallagher, George McCartney, and Alain Blayac. But in this international collection Davis finds Waugh studies alive and well, especially in the hands of a theoretically sophisticated younger generation. I wish I could be so sanguine. With only one exception, the best essays in the volume are by the senior scholars named (minus Doyle). And among younger contributors, theoretical sophistication (read: jargon) and literary insight too often appear in inverse proportion.
     Worst things first: for so expensive a book, this one is appallingly edited, with errors of spelling, grammar, punctuation, and formatting on nearly every page--as well as scores of failures to turn prose that began in another language into English idiom. (We all sometimes sin in these ways, but I stopped counting typos at 300.) And matters of presentation aside, some of the essays are downright stinkers. Elsewhere in this issue Donat Gallagher explores far better than I could the difficulties with Alan Munton's effort to turn Evelyn Waugh's bad war (as reflected in Sword of Honour) into something even worse. Equally, though less ingeniously, tendentious is Dan Kostopulos's argument that Robbery Under Law fully lives up to Martin Stannard's description as full of "the cheapest kind of polemic" (plus false consciousness and simple dishonesty). To Kostopulos, Waugh worries over "smaller issues such as religion, 'civilization,' and 'barbarism,'" which are "mere distractions" from and "mystifications" of what "really mattered": "the realities of colonialism and imperialism." Yet he presents no actual historical information to rebut Waugh's claims such as that European influence improved the lives of ordinary Mexicans, or that in the 1930s no real "nationalism" united Mexico's diverse races and classes. Instead Kostopulos simply assumes the kneejerk equations of marxisant theory: colonialism--bad; capitalism--exploitation; religion--phony; Waugh--racist imperialist. QED.
     Most troubling of the discussions of Waugh's fiction is Roberto Valdeón-García on "The Homosexual Theme in E. M. Forster and Evelyn Waugh," which finds in both Maurice and Brideshead a central opposition of "personal freedom" and socially "established rules." Maurice and Sebastian have the courage to be themselves--to be gay; Clive Durham and Charles Ryder haven't. To Valdeón-García it is Ryder's pulling away from him that drives Sebastian to drink and exile, a refusal to embrace homosexuality that is "tame and a result of pretence" on the part of both character and author. In giving up Sebastian for Julia and again in embracing Catholicism, Ryder betrays freedom and himself "for respectability, social position, tradition, joining the establishment." Along the way are other surprises, such as an account of Lady Marchmain as a "distant mother unable to express her feelings." Where begin responding to such a reading? I've argued elsewhere that an important principle guiding Brideshead is Waugh's view that the kind of "freedom" Valdeón-García celebrates does not exist. And perhaps only a Spaniard could construe a mid-twentieth-century Englishman's conversion to Catholicism as a turn to the "'socially acceptable"--"joining the establishment."
     Let other pens dwell on guilt and misprision; Waugh without End contains fine discussions as well. Donat Gallagher writes well on Waugh's "very personal" belief in particular acts of service to which each of us is called, and speculates convincingly about the psychological roots of such a belief as helping in the face of a Church that could sometimes seem a mere formulary of rules to give a sense of "transcend[ing] the merely dutiful," and in giving meaning to life in the face of Waugh's periodic attacks of black melancholy. In an essay peppered with useful insights, George McCartney illuminates deep parallels between Waugh and Orwell in their common dislike of what Waugh calls "bogus," Orwell "streamlined," and at a deeper level, in their shared distrust of modernist "relativism" (which McCartney amusingly exemplifies in the later literary/cultural movement both writers would've deplored, deconstruction). Another contributor who knows his subject so well that he can dispense wisdom in asides that others might expand into free-standing essays is Robert Davis, who traces Waugh's developing sense of audience (and so of himself as writer), in the process offering remarkable insights into Waugh's stylistic development. (With Black Mischief, for instance, Waugh frees himself from an early dependence on cliché--cliché used with the protective irony of tacit scare quotes, but cliché nonetheless.)
     These senior scholars develop and extend arguments they have already made, well, elsewhere. Arguably the most original contribution to our knowledge of Waugh comes from John Howard Wilson, this journal's editor, who assembles the evidence about Waugh's negative attitudes to Winston Churchill and uses it to outline a new reading of the war trilogy as, in part, a systematic rewriting (complete with verbal parallels and allusions) of Churchill's history of The Second World War. Churchill turns out a signal maker of misguidedly "quantitative judgments," and Guy Crouchback, in his final confession to Mme Kanyi, finally recognizes and renounces the Churchillian in himself. Wilson develops his argument cautiously, careful not to claim too much. But his excellent discussion is not by itself enough to justify Robert Davis's hopeful introductory remarks to this book--to dissuade from the view that the best Wavians are now old.

Late and Getting Later
"Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisited and Other Late Novels," by Bernard Schweizer. A Companion to the British and Irish Novel: 1945-2000. Ed. Brian W. Shaffer. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2005. 608 pp. $149.95. Reviewed by Jonathan Pitcher, Bennington College

     Following my review of his Radicals on the Road: The Politics of English Travel Writing in the 1930s (see Newsletter 36.1), Bernard Schweizer was kind enough to strike up a correspondence and to send me his contribution to Blackwell’s A Companion to the British and Irish Novel: 1945-2000, “Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited and Other Late Novels” (254-65).
     Of the three subdivisions, the first is a lengthy and perhaps necessary caveat on Waugh’s classism, misogyny, and racism. The latter is given a more intricate airing in the lengthier Radicals, where Schweizer reads internal barbarism through the metropoles of Remote People and A Handful of Dust, in lieu of which the Companion’s brief, more acerbic introduction asks “So, why is Waugh still admired, read, and studied today?” (254). Recent biographies are dismissed as too anodyne on politics, an apparent oversight here given Waugh’s escalating dependence on his own life as literary material. Such dependence receives much the same treatment as his aforementioned character flaws, with Schweizer suggesting that it “raises basic questions of creativity and literary merit’ (258), as if we were reading in the wake of a unilateral, a priori decision regarding the constitution of lesser and more serious literature.
     Having instigated a rhetorical structure in miniature that I perceive as an increasing trend in the broader field of Waughian studies, that of condemnation succeeded by apologia, in the second subdivision the predictable rehabilitation begins through the Sword of Honour trilogy, with Schweizer rescuing his subject as both a satirist and a war writer, only to be outdone by the final, glowing mini-chapter, almost entirely devoted to Brideshead. This section includes one of the piece’s finer moments: “Ironically, Waugh’s imagination (and hence, his income) thrived on the universal decline he lamented. Brideshead contains a shrewd meditation on that very paradox” (264). In the absence of modernity’s barbarism, Waugh’s counter-cultural critique would have lost its marginal bite. Although it would surely be hazardous to predict how his work would have changed without a prevailing atmosphere of decline, and for many society was following a logical, positivist line of sophisticated advancement as opposed to descending into anarchy, Schweizer is on the brink of revealing Waugh’s present appeal through a marginality that is evermore marginalized and thus evermore mordant. On the brink, since instead of such revelation, we regress to the same terminology as before. Charles Ryder is reinscribed as a suitably modern, openly self-reflective character, “a credible anti-Catholic” (263), more “likeable” (265) before his conversion, and Julia’s mettle salvages Waugh’s misogyny, albeit through religion. Given Ryder’s supposed post-conversion woodenness and all those prickly Flytes, Schweizer concludes that “it is not a strategy likely to convert many to the tenets of Catholicism. But this could very well be the ultimate triumph of Brideshead – its refusal to yield to any doctrinaire religious complacency and instead to elevate the ‘fierce little human tragedy in which [Ryder] played’ (Penguin, 1998, 331) to the level of great secular art” (265). While this may be a laudable attempt to reassert the relevance of the past in the face of the present, to offer the book up to a more inclusive audience, unsuspecting readers may be rather taken aback when the second half of Brideshead proceeds to bash them over the head with its series of monolithic, overt, and indeed overriding moral exempla. Schweizer gains a pyrrhic victory, over-manipulating the book’s context in an act of cultural leveling that elides rather than accentuates difference. It may be that Waugh is still read and studied, despite some of his uglier baggage, precisely because of his lack of contemporaneity.

Waugh's View of Irish Priests Justified?
Evelyn Waugh: Brief History of a Genius, by Patrick J. Twohig. Ballincollig, County Cork: Tower Books, 2006. 58 pp. €9.95. Reviewed by Robert Murray Davis, University of Oklahoma.

     Over almost forty years Paul Doyle and I have to my knowledge disagreed on only two occasions: once when I maintained, to Paul’s lasting irritation, that Ian Littlewood’s The Writings of Evelyn Waugh not entirely worthless, and once when, in our only physical meeting, he said that I looked like a tight end. All I could say was that standards in the east were somewhat lower than those at the University of Oklahoma.
     Therefore, it is with great reluctance that I must maintain, in the face of Paul’s review in the last Newsletter (see 37.2) that Patrick J. Twohig’s Evelyn Waugh: Brief History of a Genius, is, if not wholly worthless, almost entirely pernicious.
     Leaving aside the incoherent structure and intrusion of irrelevant personal history, I will concentrate on what must, for lack of a better word, be called Twohig’s critical approach which is well the other side of idolatry. He maintains—I cannot force myself through the book again, so I rely on paraphrase—that Waugh was a genius, that every word he wrote was the product of genius, and therefore that every work is a work of genius. He also challenges the credentials of anyone who has not, as he has, read every word of Waugh and later denigrates as useless all commentary on Waugh, hostile or not.
     If one is to be that self-important, one had better guard against error. Twohig is guilty of two errors by omission about Hemingway in one paragraph. First, it is clear, despite Twohig’s agnosticism on the issue, that Waugh had read Hemingway’s Fiesta (The Sun Also Rises). Second, not only did Waugh not dislike Hemingway but he publicly defended Across the River and into the Trees against its denigrators. Waugh did not add a different ending to A Handful of Dust because “The Yanks couldn’t take” the bleakness of the original—I assume that Twohig speaks of the serial version, not the U.S. edition of the novel, which is unchanged—but because he had already sold the magazine rights to “The Man Who Liked Dickens.” Not only did Waugh not deny the effect of his divorce on the second half of Vile Bodies, he explicitly comments on it in his preface to the New Uniform Edition—where he also says, pace Twohig, that the book was not one for which he had great affection.
     Where Twohig is not wrong, he is irrelevant or superficial or both. To his credit, Paul Doyle is far more charitable than I, but I am surprised that he glosses over condemnation or dismissal of work that he, I, and many others have done over the years.
     One further question. Is the William Boyd work that Paul says condemns Waugh the same as that which Jeffrey Manley reviews immediately below Paul’s piece? According to Manley, Boyd speaks more highly of Waugh as writer than as man. I am curious about his account of Cyril Connolly’s reading Waugh’s annotations of An Unquiet Grave at the University of Texas since I am the only witness, living or dead, to that unfortunate incident.

Waugh's the Matter, Bobby?
by Patrick Joseph Twohig

     Mr. Robert Murray Davis, to my utter consternation, spilled his guts over my minuscule biography of Evelyn Waugh.
     In Maynooth I learned to recognize the fallacy then known as 'Argumentum ad Personam'. It meant that personal abuse of an opponent is bad form. With regard to literary matters it is simply bad writing. To quote P. G. Wodehouse: 'He has probably by now been eaten by bears, like the children who made mock of the prophet Elisha!'
     Mr. Davis seems to have missed the point that this was just a little thing I got together in a hurry for the fortieth anniversary of Evelyn's death--an epitaph with a purpose, no more, no less.
     I have now changed my mind with regard to a pilgrimage of honour to Combe Florey. It seems, instead, that the University of Oklahoma should be the objective. Tom Hanks asked his young son, in Sleepless in Seattle, 'Where is Oklahoma?', and the reply--'Somewhere in the middle!' Should be easy to find.
     When I get there, as a priest of the Church of Rome, I hope to be in a position to administer to one Robert Murray Davis a Conditional Absolution, with the Penance--READ IT AGAIN!

Robert Murray Davis responds:
In Evelyn Waugh's last communication with his brother, he congratulated Alec on his appointment as writer in residence at what was then Central State University in Edmond, Oklahoma. He added (I quote from memory) "All I know of Oklahoma is the musical. They seem an uncritical people." Fr. Twohig might feel at home there. As for his injunction that I re-read his book in order to obtain conditional absolution, I will do so if in return he will read my work on Waugh.

Evelyn Waugh Conference
The Evelyn Waugh Conference is scheduled for 21 through 24 May 2008 at the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, the University of Texas at Austin. The theme is "Waugh in His World." The Ransom Center will host a reception on the evening of 21 May and provide tours of Waugh's library. To register, please go to Registration. If you are interested in presenting a paper, please send a 250-word abstract to Professor Joseph V. Long, Portland State University, UNST, P. O. Box 751, Portland OR 97207, USA, or jlong@pdx.edu.

The Scarlet Woman on DVD
Bill Wendt and Charles Linck have produced DVD's of The Scarlet Woman (1925), the film by Evelyn Waugh and Terence Greenidge. DVD's have been copied directly from Charles's 35-mm film at the correct speed. The jumpiness of silent films has been eliminated, and the viewing is vastly improved over that of VHS copies available in the past.
If you would like to obtain a DVD, please send a check for US $20.00 to Charles Linck, P. O. Box 3002 TAMU-C, Commerce TX 75429, USA. Phone: 903-886-6473. E-mail: linck@tamu-commerce.edu. Charles adds that he can process foreign checks.

Evelyn Waugh Society
The Evelyn Waugh Society now has 52 members. The Evelyn Waugh Discussion List, available at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Evelyn_Waugh/, now has 36 members.

Brideshead Film Gets Green Light
     According to "Brideshead to be Revisited for the Big Screen," an article by Chris Hastings in the Sunday Telegraph for 21 January 2007, a film version of Brideshead Revisited (1945) has "finally secured financing and will go into production this summer." The budget is £10 million.
     Cast and locations are still undecided. The screenplay is by Andrew Davies and Jeremy Brock. The director is Julian Jarrold.
     According to executive producer Douglas Rae, the film focuses on "Charles Ryder's passion and love for Julia rather than his relationship with Sebastian." Rae adds that "it's exciting to grasp a holy cow like this and introduce it to a whole new audience."
     The article is available at the Telegraph.

Table d'Hote (1939)
According to the Internet Movie Database, Table d'Hote, a revue based partly on Vile Bodies (1930), was broadcast on 31 July 1939. It was, however, also broadcast on 26 June 1939 at 10:45 p.m. on London Television. The Times included a brief description of Table d'Hote: "words by V. C. Clinton-Baddeley, Herbert Farjeon, George Farquhar, A. P. Herbert, A. J. Talbot and Evelyn Waugh; music by Vivian Ellis, Walter Leigh and Alfred Reynolds; dances arranged by Andrée Howard." The producer was Stephen Thomas. For the second broadcast, Waugh was not listed as a writer, probably because of space. The Radio Times also published a brief description of the broadcast on 28 July 1939.

The Loved One on the Radio
Jonathan Holloway's one-hour adaptation of The Loved One (1948) was broadcast on BBC Radio 4 on 17 February 2007.

Sword of Honour on DVD in North America
Sword of Honour (2001), the British television production based on Evelyn Waugh's trilogy, was released on DVD in North America on 10 October 2006. The production is 200 minutes in length, and the DVD is available from Amazon.com for $31.99.

Two Essays on Waugh in Connotations
The most recent issue of Connotations: A Journal for Critical Debate, 14.1-3 (2004/2005), includes two essays on Evelyn Waugh. The first, by Martin Stannard, is entitled "In Search of a City: Civilization, Humanism and English Gothic in A Handful of Dust" (182-204). The second, by John Howard Wilson, is entitled "A Question of Influence and Experience: A Response to Edward Lobb" (205-12). Both essays react to Edward Lobb's "Waugh Among the Modernists: Allusion and Theme in A Handful of Dust" in Connotations 13.1-2 (2003/2004). The web site of Connotations is http://www.connotations.de.

Waugh Resources on the Web
     Thanks to Simon Whitechapel, four sources for Evelyn Waugh studies are now available on the internet.
     Waugh's illustrations of Black Mischief (1932) are available at http://www.gwywyr.com/essays/waugh/mischief.html.
     Waugh's introduction to the 1958 edition of Ronald Knox's A Spiritual Aeneid (1918) is available at http://www.gwywyr.com/essays/waugh/aeneid.html.
     What Harold Acton wrote about Waugh in More Memoirs of an Aesthete (1970) is available at http://www.gwywyr.com/essays/waugh/acton.html.
     John St John's memoir, To the War with Waugh (1974), is available at http://www.gwywyr.com/essays/waugh/war.html.
     Simon has also written "Work Defended," a response to Sebastian Perry's review of Flesh Inferno (2003), available in Newsletter 34.2 (Autumn 2003).

A Visit to Piers Court
Duncan McLaren reports that he stayed at a bed and breakfast named Nibley House, two miles from Evelyn Waugh's former home at Piers Court. His hosts, the Eleys, showed him a letter written by Waugh, dated 23 February 1953:

Dear Mr Wood,
     I must write to thank you again for your great kindness this morning in searching for my little boy, Septimus, and for bringing him back to us in safety.
     It was a most neighbourly action and my wife and I shall always be most grateful to you.
     Yours sincerely,
     Evelyn Waugh

Septimus was two and a half years old. The letter is for sale, and the Eleys can be reached at http://www.nibleyhouse.co.uk. Duncan learned that a Mr Wood, now in his nineties, lives in The Street, Stinchcombe. Mr Wood knew Waugh, but it is unclear whether or not he is the same person addressed in the letter.
Duncan also met Jocelyn Dehnert, who now lives in Piers Court with her husband and family. An ionic column dating from Waugh's time has disappeared from Piers Court, and she is trying to have it returned.
Duncan spoke with the Stinchcombe churchwarden, whose father disliked Waugh. Waugh made appointments with people from the village, but if the villagers were late, he refused to see them.

Evelyn Waugh Undergraduate Essay Contest
Emily Shreve of Bowling Green State University won the second annual Evelyn Waugh Undergraduate Essay Contest, sponsored by an anonymous patron. Emily's essay is entitled "From Vile Bodies to Bright Young Things: Waugh and Adaptation." An edited version will appear in a forthcoming issue of the Newsletter. Emily graduated in December 2006 with an English major and a Film Studies minor, and she plans to pursue graduate studies.

"A Schoolboy Fling"
In the September 2006 issue of Hertfordshire Countryside, Heather Vincent published an article entitled "A Schoolboy Fling," based on Evelyn Waugh's A Little Learning (1964). Though only two pages long, the article includes several photographs of locations in Berkhamsted, where Waugh and his brother Alec visited Barbara and Luned Jacobs. For fans of Scoop (1938), a different article includes a photograph of a water vole. Hertfordshire Countryside can be reached via e-mail at martin_small@btconnect.com.

Eric Newby, 1919-2006
     Eric Newby passed away on 20 October 2006. He was 86 years old.
     Eric Newby wrote A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush (London: Secker & Warburg, 1958). The American publishers Doubleday were interested in the book, but they wanted a well-known writer to provide a preface. Newby approached Evelyn Waugh, who judged A Short Walk "an excellent book" (Letters of Evelyn Waugh, 511) and agreed to write the preface, which appeared in the American edition in 1959.
     Eric Newby was almost unknown as a writer, and, according to The Times, the preface by Waugh was "a huge coup." Waugh later said that he agreed only because he had confused Eric Newby with the novelist and critic P. H. Newby (1918-1997).
     Eric Newby went on to write many other books. His obituary is available at The Times. He is survived by his wife Wanda, their son, and their daughter.

Borrowing from Brideshead
In a recent letter to the Chicago Tribune, Thomas Jemielity, Professor Emeritus of English at the University of Notre Dame, pointed out that the television show Will and Grace used music from the television production of Brideshead Revisited as the recessional after Grace's wedding. The music was used "without change, without acknowledgment, and still under copyright." Professor Jemielity provided other examples of borrowing from Beethoven and Jane Austen.

One Out of One Hundred
On 3 February 2007, the Daily Telegraph released a list of the top one hundred books, based on a poll of the public. The only book by Evelyn Waugh on the list is Brideshead Revisited (1945), in 26th place. For the entire list, go to the Telegraph and search for "The Top 100 Books."

End of Evelyn Waugh Newsletter and Studies, Vol. 37, No. 3
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