|
A Note on British Titles of Rank
With Special Reference to the Works of Evelyn Waugh
by Donald Greene[1]
Late of the University of Southern California
Most Americans and nowadays some Britons are vague about the use of British
titles. Since an untitled man may be referred to as either “Mr. Smith”
or “Mr. John Smith,” and his wife as “Mrs. Smith,” “Mrs. John Smith,” or
“Mrs. Mary Smith,” it is assumed that “Lord” and “Lady” may be used in the
same indiscriminate way. This is not so: their use is clearly
defined. “Lord Smith” may be anything from a marquess to a baron; “Lord
John Smith” can only be the younger son of a duke or marquess. “Lady
Smith” may be anything from a marchioness to the wife of a knight; “Lady Mary
Smith” is the daughter of a duke, marquess, or earl; “Lady John Smith” is the
wife of a younger son of a duke or marquess. Waugh, like other English
novelists before him—Fielding, Jane Austen, Dickens, Thackeray, Trollope—is
perfectly familiar with these usages and never makes a mistake with them;
they provide useful clues to the social position of his characters. He
would have been shocked by references in recent criticism and biography to
“Lady Teresa Marchmain” and “Lady Diana Mosley,” designations which those
ladies could never have borne. A recent biography promotes Waugh’s
mother-in-law, the Honourable Mrs. Aubrey Herbert, to “Lady Herbert,” and
demotes Waugh’s schoolfellow, Lord Molson, to “Lord Hugh Molson,” thus
depriving him of his seat in the House of Lords; as the younger son of a duke
or marquess, “Lord Hugh” could only have been a commoner.
It is true that these matters of nomenclature can be
complex. Yet after centuries of use, it is not likely that they will be
abandoned in Britain. Serious readers of Waugh may find the following
notes useful. A study of the relevant pages in the annual Whitaker’s
Almanack, listing the current holders of peerages, baronetcies, and
knighthoods, would be useful, as would Simon Winchester’s Their Noble
Lordships (London: Faber & Faber, 1981; New York: Random House, 1982)
and Cyril Hankinson, My Forty Years with Debrett (London: Robert Hale,
1963).
1.) All peerages are created by the sovereign
(nowadays on advice of the prime minister). There are five grades of
peers: in descending order of rank, duke, marquess (the spelling now
preferred to the French “marquis”), earl, viscount, baron.
Historically, there are five different peerages: those of England and of
Scotland, creations before the union of those two kingdoms by the Act of
Union of 1707, after which Englishmen and Scots raised to the peerage were
peers of Great Britain; peers of Ireland, created before Ireland was united
with Great Britain by the Act of Union of 1801. After that date, most
new creations were peers of the United Kingdom, though a few creations of
peers of Ireland still took place.
2.) Dukes and duchesses are “of” some territorial
designation; viscounts and barons are not. Marquesses and earls may or
may not be “of”; if the “of” is not used, the family name may be taken as the
title of the peerage, though by no means always; similarly, viscounts and
barons often choose their family names as their peerage title. If a
title is already in use, an “of” with some other designation may be added to
it. The numbering of holders of a hereditary peerage begins anew each
time a peerage is created. Thus after the Earldom of Oxford became
extinct in 1703 with the death of the twentieth earl of the De Vere family,
the title was revived in 1711 for Robert Harley, who became the first Earl of
Oxford of the second creation. Likewise, after the title became extinct
in the Harley family in the nineteenth century, Herbert Henry Asquith was
created, in 1925, first Earl of Oxford of the third creation. The “of”
does not necessarily indicate important possessions or influence in the
region indicated. It was said that the Dukes of Devonshire, whose most
important seat, Chatsworth, is in Derbyshire, owned property in every county
of England but Devonshire. Conversely, the principal seat and
sphere of influence of the Earls of Derby is in Lancashire. The Dukes
of Norfolk live in Sussex, and so on. There are historical reasons for
these seeming anomalies.
3.) Most peerages descend by male primogeniture, but
a few, mostly Scottish, together with ancient English baronies, may, in
absence of a male heir, be inherited by a woman. These ladies are
“peeresses in their own right.” By the Peerage Act, 1963, for the first
time peeresses in their own right were permitted to sit and vote in the House
of Lords, the upper house of Parliament.
4.) Peers of England, Scotland, Great Britain, and the
United Kingdom, not being minors, were entitled to membership in the House of
Lords. After 1707, Scottish peers, who had hitherto sat in the Scottish
Parliament in Edinburgh, then abolished, elected sixteen of their number to
sit in the House of Lords in Westminster as “representative peers.”
Similarly, peers of Ireland sat in the Irish House of Lords in Dublin; after
its abolition in 1801, they too elected representative peers to sit in the
Westminster House of Lords. Since the Peerage Act of 1963, Scottish
peers may now sit in the Westminster House of Lords. Peers of Ireland
may not (unless, as many of them do, they have a subsidiary British or United
Kingdom peerage), but they may be elected to the House of Commons, as other
peers may not. The most famous such Irish peer was Queen Victoria’s
prime minister, Viscount Palmerston, who sat in the House of Commons.[2]
5.) Only the head of a peerage family is legally a
peer, with the right (except for peers of Ireland) of membership in the House
of Lords (of which the Archbishops of Canterbury and York, and the
twenty-four senior bishops of the Church of England, are also members).
A peer’s wife (though referred to as a “peeress”) and children, unless they
have acquired peerages in their own right, are legally commoners. Thus
the first woman to sit in Parliament, the American-born Viscountess Astor,
wife of the second Viscount, was elected to the House of Commons in an
English constituency.
6.) Courtesy titles. Nearly all dukes,
marquesses, and earls hold other peerages of a lower grade, and their oldest
surviving sons are “by courtesy” addressed by the title of the second-ranking
peerage (which may not necessarily be the grade immediately below that of the
head of the family). If there is more than one such subordinate
peerage, the oldest son of the oldest son is addressed by the next senior
title: thus the oldest son of the Duke of Devonshire is “by courtesy”
Marquess of Hartington, and his oldest son is Earl of Burlington. The
younger sons of dukes and marquesses are “Lord” with their given and family
names. Nevertheless they remain commoners, and the actual peerage
indicated by the courtesy title continues to be held by the head of the
family. Many holders of courtesy titles have had successful careers in
the House of Commons: for instance, the Marquess of Hartington, heir to the
seventh Duke of Devonshire, who declined three offers of the prime ministry,
normally held by a member of the House of Commons, and Lord John Russell,
younger son of the sixth Duke of Bedford, who in later life accepted an
earldom, and moved to the House of Lords; from having been Lord John Russell,
he became Lord Russell.
7.) In 1958, for the first time, life (non-hereditary)
peerages, in the grade of baron or baroness, were permitted to be
created. Since 1963 peers have been permitted to renounce their titles,
for themselves though not for their heirs. The first two to do so were
Anthony Wedgwood-Benn, Viscount Stansgate, who, as Tony Benn, pursued a
lively career in the House of Commons as a left-wing firebrand, and Quintin
Hogg, Viscount Hailsham, who after a time as a commoner, was again raised to
the peerage, this time as a life peer, Baron Hailsham, on being appointed
Lord Chancellor, a post which, as Speaker of the House of Lords, requires a
peerage. Likewise, the fourteenth Earl of Home, in order to become
prime minister, disclaimed his earldom (though retaining knighthood),
becoming Sir Alec Douglas-Home. After his tenure as prime minister, he
too accepted a life peerage as Baron Home, and returned to the House of
Lords.
8.) Daughters of dukes, marquesses, and earls are
“Lady” with their given and family names. If they marry a commoner,
they substitute their husband’s family name for their own, but retain the
“Lady Mary” or whatever it is. On marrying a peer, they take the normal
designation of a peer’s wife. Thus Waugh’s friend Lady Diana Manners,
daughter of the Duke of Rutland, on marrying Mr. Alfred Duff Cooper, became
Lady Diana Cooper. When her husband was raised to the peerage as
Viscount Norwich, she became Viscountess Norwich (thus, as Waugh twitted her,
dropping a notch or two in the official table of precedence). Although
the wife of a peer takes the female equivalent of her husband’s title, the
marriage of a titled lady does not confer any title on her husband (a nice
instance of reverse sexual discrimination).
9.) Dukes and duchesses are formally referred to as
“Your Grace” (as are the Archbishops of Canterbury and York).
Marquesses and marchionesses are “Most Honourable”; other peers and peeresses
are “Right Honourable.” “Lord” and “Lady” may be used informally for
peers of the rank of marquess and below (dukes and duchesses are never “Lord”
or “Lady” So-and-so). Of course, among intimate friends, even these
honorifics are dropped, and the Earl of Brideshead becomes merely
“Brideshead” or “Bridey” (we are never told his first name), and Lady Julia
Flyte “Julia.” Waugh wrote an amusing letter to the eight-year-old
Viscount Asquith, heir to the Earldom of Oxford, adjuring him to insist that
his younger siblings address him by his courtesy title “Asquith” rather than
by his baptismal name, “Raymond.” Only recently, says Waugh, has this
custom “deplorably crept in.”
10.) Signatures and regalia. Peers,
“courtesy” peers, and peeresses in their own right merely sign with their
titles—e.g., “Marchmain,” “Brideshead.” Peeresses by marriage sign with
their title preceded by their given name or initial—“Teresa Marchmain.”
(She could never have been “Lady Teresa Marchmain.” Before her
marriage, as the daughter of a high-ranking peerage family, she may have been
“Lady Teresa Blank,” but on her marriage to the marquess she became “Lady
Marchmain.”) “Courtesy” lords and ladies omit those titles from their
signatures—“Sebastian Flyte,” “Celia Ryder”—as do ennobled actors and writers
in playbills and on title pages of books: “Laurence Olivier,” not “Lord
Olivier”; “Elizabeth Longford,” not “the Countess of Longford.”
Archbishops and bishops of the older English dioceses use abbreviations of
the Latin names of those dioceses: e.g. “Robert Cantuar” (= Cantuarensis,
Robert Runcie, former Archbishop of Canterbury), “John Ebor” (= Eboracensis,
John Habgood, former Archbishop of York, now Baron Habgood). Paul
Pennyfeather’s friend Stubbs displays undergraduate humor by signing the
visitor’s book at a tea-room “Randall Cantuar” (Randall Davison, Archbishop
of Canterbury from 1903 to 1930) (Decline and Fall 3:7).
At the coronation of a sovereign, at the moment the
crown is placed on his or her head, the peers and peeresses don their
coronets. That of a duke is a gold circlet surmounted by stylized
strawberry leaves; of marquesses by strawberry leaves alternating with balls;
of earls, strawberry leaves alternating with balls raised on “points”; of
viscounts, sixteen balls; of barons, eight balls. Waugh makes a slight
slip when the villagers in Brideshead have to change the earl’s coronets on the
bunting erected to celebrate Lord Brideshead’s marriage to a marquess’s, to
celebrate Lord Marchmain’s homecoming, “obliterating the Earl’s points and
stenciling balls and strawberry leaves” (Brideshead 2:5). The
coronation robes of peers are scarlet, trimmed with, for dukes, four rows of
ermine; for marquesses, three and a half; for earls, three; for viscounts and
barons, two. At the opening of Parliament each year, they wear their
parliamentary robes, somewhat less elaborate than the coronation robes, but
bearing the same number of white bands. There are good illustrations of
all these in the Encyclopedia Britannica, 11th edition,
under “Crown” and “Robes.”
11.) “Royals.” A special category of
titles is that connected with the royal family. The sons and daughters
of the sovereign (“Her Majesty”), and the sons and daughters of sons (but not
of daughters) of the sovereign are, from birth, designated “Prince” or
“Princess” with the given name, and are referred to as “His” or “Her Royal
Highness.” (Children of daughters of the sovereign take their titles,
if any, from their fathers; thus the children of Princess Anne, the Princess
Royal, formerly married to Mr. Mark Phillips, are Mr. Peter and Miss Zara
Phillips.) These honorifics do not, however, make their holders legally
members of the peerage. When they reach an appropriate age, the
sovereign may confer other titles on them; on the oldest son, that of Prince
of Wales; on the oldest daughter (unless the title is already held by an older
member of the family), that of Princess Royal. The other sons may be
created “royal dukes.” Certain regional designations are by tradition
reserved for them; those in use as this is written are Cornwall (which the
future Prince of Wales inherits at birth), York (traditionally the title of
the second son), Gloucester, Kent, and Edinburgh (the dukedom specifically
created for the queen’s husband). Others used in the past have been
Albany, Cambridge, Clarence, Connaught, Cumberland, and Sussex. Their
holders may, if of age, sit in the House of Lords and take part in debate and
voting, and in the past sometimes have, but now seldom do, in order that the
Crown may be insulated from political controversy. They sign themselves
simply by their given names; thus the famous Instrument of Abdication of
Edward VIII bears the signatures of his brothers as witnesses, “Albert,”
“Henry,” “George,” respectively the Dukes of York, Gloucester, and
Kent. If the father has a territorial title, it is added to that of his
children: thus the sons of the present Prince of Wales are Prince William of
Wales and Prince Henry of Wales.
There were, at the time of writing, five royal dukes
(including the Prince of Wales as Duke of Cornwall), 26 dukes, 36 marquesses,
190 earls, 121 viscounts, around 450 hereditary barons, and around 350 life
barons and baronesses. Some 4000 commoners (baronets and knights) were
“Sir”; there were some 200 “Dames” (the female equivalent of “Sir”).
12.) Administrative and judicial titles.
As well as the peers, the prefix “Lord” is attached to numerous official
appointments. It is not a personal designation (except for Scottish
judges): a Mr. Smith who is appointed, say, Lord Privy Seal remains Mr. Smith
and does not become “Lord Smith.” Among these appointments are those of
the Lords Commissioners of the Treasury (members of the five-person
commission for executing the archaic office of Lord High Treasurer).
The Prime Minister is normally the First Lord of the Treasury, although the
day-to-day business of government finance is now conducted by the
second-ranking commissioner, the Chancellor of the Exchequer.
Similarly, the Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty (First Lord, First Sea
Lord, etc.) execute the office of Lord High Admiral. Other such offices
are those of the Lord High Chancellor (head of the legal system), Lord
President of the (Privy) Council, Lord (keeper of the) Privy Seal (normally
members of the Cabinet, with various duties); the Lord Chief Justice of
England, the Lord Chamberlain (in charge of court ceremonial), the Lord
Advocate (attorney-general for Scotland), and the Lords Lieutenant of the
various counties (mainly a ceremonial office). Judges of the Scottish
Court of Session are designated “Lord” with either their family name or that
of some family estate. Thus James Boswell’s father, Alexander Boswell,
was “Lord Auchinleck,” though this did not make him a peer, nor could James
inherit the title or be designated “the Honourable.” The chief
executives of the larger cities are “Lord Mayor,” and in Scotland “Lord
Provost.” The appellation “Lord” continues to be applied to women
holding such appointments: thus (at the time of writing) the First Lord of
the Treasury was Mrs. Margaret Thatcher (simultaneously Prime Minister,
1979-1990, now Baroness Thatcher), and there are women Lord Mayors, Lord
Provosts, and Lords Lieutenant. Diocesan (not suffragan) bishops of the
Church of England are “Lord Bishop” and are formally addressed as “My
Lord.” So (in court) are the judges of the High Court of Justice and
the Lords Justices of (the court of) Appeal, although they do not usually
hold the peerage title of “Lord.” “Lord of the manor” no longer carries
any official status. Nowadays it means only the owner of an extensive
piece of property which in feudal times was granted by the Crown the status
of “manor” and whose tenants were subject to the jurisdiction of a manorial
court of justice, headed by the “lord of the manor.”
Titled Characters in Waugh
Royal Dukes. There is a cameo appearance
by Their Royal Highnesses the Duke and Duchess of Clarence, who have been
prevailed on to lend their patronage to the exhibition of Charles Ryder’s
paintings (Brideshead 2:2). Lady Celia Ryder curtsies to them,
as women are expected to do. The Duke’s reaction to Charles’s tropical
paintings is “Pretty hot out there I should think…. Makes me feel quite
uncomfortable in my great-coat.” HRH may have been modeled on the late
Duke of Gloucester (1900-1974), who was not noted for his intellect. He
and his brothers the Prince of Wales (later King Edward VIII) and the Duke of
Kent are the unmarried “young princes” whom Lady Julia Flyte seems to regret
that her Catholicism prevents her from marrying (Brideshead
1:7). The Act of Settlement, 1701, provides that the sovereign and the
sovereign’s consort must be Protestants, and any prospective heir who is or
marries a Roman Catholic forfeits his or her claim to the throne. Mr.
Bentley, the publisher, maintains that he is descended (illegitimately) from
a real Duke of Clarence (1765-1837; third son of George III, later King
William IV, who indeed had a large family of illegitimate children) (POMF
1:7). The godfather of Lady Elizabeth Albright, mother of the
shirt-stealer Charles, was the Duke of Connaught (1850-1942), Queen
Victoria’s third son (Basil Seal 4). The unpleasant Mrs.
Kent-Cumberland (“Winner Takes All”) is given the names of two royal
dukedoms. The two army transports whose confusion adds to the woes of
Cedric Lyne are the Duchess of Clarence and the Duchess of
Cumberland (POMF 3:4). Waugh actually wrote much of the novel
aboard the Duchess of Richmond en route from the Middle East to
Britain; “Richmond” was a title of the future King Henry VII, as readers will
recall from Shakespeare’s Richard III, and was later conferred on
illegitimate scions of the royal family.
Dukes. The chief representatives are
the Duke and Duchess of Stayle (significant name), who appear in a number of
Waugh’s stories, first when the Duchess bullies her oldest daughter Lady
Ursula (the family name is not given) into marriage with Edward, Earl of
Throbbing (Vile Bodies 8). A younger daughter, Lady Elizabeth,
marries Clarence Albright (Basil Seal 4). In Black Mischief,
Waugh makes fun of the British peerage by conferring titles on barbaric
Azanians, whose military leader, the adventurer General Connolly, is created
Duke of Ukaka, and signs himself, correctly, “Ukaka C-in-C” (i.e.,
“Commander-in-Chief”; a peer who holds some high military or government
appointment adds an abbreviation of that appointment to his signature—thus
“Montgomery FM” (Viscount Montgomery, Field Marshal). On Connolly’s
luggage, after his expulsion from Azania, one can see, in Waugh’s
illustration, the strawberry leaves of a duke’s coronet. Lottie Crump
“is true to the sound old snobbery of pounds sterling and strawberry leaves”
(Vile Bodies 3).
Marquesses. The best known, of course,
is the Marquess of Marchmain in Brideshead Revisited, whose family
provides a great deal of the novel’s plot. His oldest son and heir
bears the courtesy title of Earl of Brideshead (we are never told his
Christian name); after his father’s death he succeeds as Marquess. The
other children, Lord Sebastian, Lady Julia, and Lady Cordelia, figure prominently
in the novel. After her marriage to Mr. Rex Mottram, Lady Julia Flyte
becomes Lady Julia Mottram, but after their divorce resumes her name of Lady
Julia Flyte. Waugh apparently first planned to make the head of the
family an earl, in which case the younger son would have been not “Lord” but
“the Honourable” Sebastian Flyte, although Ladies Julia and Cordelia would
retain those honorifics. Waugh may have been influenced by the Marquess
of Steyne (stain?) in Thackeray’s Vanity Fair, whose family circumstances
closely resemble those of Lord Marchmain’s: the Marquess a cynical, worldly,
amoral man, estranged from his devoutly Catholic Marchioness, with two sons,
the elder, the Earl of Gaunt, detesting and detested by his father, the
younger, Lord George Gaunt, eventually becoming insane.
On his deathbed, Lord Marchmain reflects on the
history of the peerages in his family. Speaking of the ancient family
tombs, he remarks, “We were knights then, barons since [the battle of]
Agincourt [1415]; the larger honours came with the [Protestant King]
Georges. They came the last and they’ll go the first; the barony
descends in the female line; when Brideshead is buried—he married late [1st
edition; the 2nd substitutes, more accurately, “when all of you are dead”]—Julia’s
son will be called by the name his fathers bore before the fat days” (Brideshead
2:5). An interesting point of peerage law: the Marquessate and Earldom,
descending in the male line, will become extinct. If Julia and Cordelia
survive the childless Brideshead, the ancient Barony will fall into abeyance
between the two daughters; if Julia should survive Cordelia, she would become
the Baroness Flyte (or whatever the title is) in her own right, and her son
(by whom, one wonders) would inherit the Barony after her death.
Fun is provided in Vile Bodies when a gossip
columnist is given the title Marquess of Vanburgh and a host of other
hereditary titles. In the 1920s, London newspapers liked to engage
titled persons as columnists: Lord Kilbannock (another significant title; a
“bannock” is a plebeian Scottish form of bread) in Sword of Honour may
be based on Waugh’s friend Patrick Balfour, later Lord Kinross, who once
acted in that capacity, as did the Marquess of Donegall.
The head of the Rex family in A Handful of Dust,
Lord St Cloud, maybe either a marquess or an earl (but not a duke; his mother
is referred to as Lady St Cloud): his sister is Lady Brenda Last (née Rex).
Earls. There are a fair number in
Waugh’s writings. They include the fatuous Earl of Circumference and
his overbearing Countess (the title no doubt refers to her physique), with
their unfortunate little heir, Lord Tangent (more brilliant nomenclature) in Decline
and Fall; the Earl of Balcairn, like his rival Lord Vanburgh a gossip
columnist, who commits suicide after being detected in disguise at Lady
Metroland’s revival party (his mother, now Mrs. Panrast, is a notorious
Lesbian) in Vile Bodies; Peter, Earl of Pastmaster (né
Beste-Chetwynde), son of Lady Metroland by her first marriage, who succeeds
his uncle, the previous Earl, and who appears in Decline and Fall, Put
Out More Flags, and Basil Seal Rides Again; his wife, formerly
Lady Molly Meadowes, the daughter of Lord Granchester, who might be either a
marquess or an earl (but not a duke; his wife is Lady Granchester), becomes
the Countess of Pastmaster. Lady Betty, daughter of the Duke and
Duchess of Stayle, another candidate for Peter’s hand, reappears as Lady
Elizabeth Albright in Basil Seals Rides Again. In Vile Bodies,
we have Edward, Earl of Throbbing, a dull and respectable diplomat, unlike
his mother, the Dowager Countess (demoted by one critic to “Lady Fanny
Throbbing”), a superannuated promiscuous beauty from Edward VII’s day; his
father the late Earl, who died of drug addiction (if he was Edward’s
father: when Lady Throbbing confesses her sins at Mrs. Ape’s revival meeting,
the editor receiving Lord Balcairn’s fictional report instructs an underling
to look up photographs of all three candidates); his brother, the Honourable
Miles Malpractice, a well-known homosexual-about-town; his sister, formerly
one of Lady Metroland’s employees in her South American chain of
brothels. If the charge against Waugh of snobbery implies admiration
for the upper levels of society, a glance at the Malpractice family should
cause one to rethink it. “What a set!” as Matthew Arnold said of the
Shelley circle.
Perhaps unexpectedly, a historical Earl has a tiny
cameo role in Brideshead. Lord Marchmain, on his deathbed,
having the daily newspaper read to him in 1939 and reminiscing, remarks
“Irwin … I knew him—a mediocre fellow” (2:5). The reference is to
Edward Wood (1881-1959), Earl of Halifax, foreign secretary in the Cabinet of
Neville Chamberlain and a supporter of “appeasement,” Winston Churchill’s
chief rival for the prime ministry in 1940, and later ambassador to the
United States. Lord Marchmain contemptuously refers to him by his
earlier title, Lord Irwin, conferred when he was appointed viceroy of India
and through his actions created much controversy.
Viscounts. They tend to be upwardly
mobile plebeians on the make: Lord Metroland, Margot’s second husband, an
enterprising politician, and the Press Lords Copper and Monomark (more
significant nomenclature: “Metroland” was an advertising gimmick coined by
the Metropolitan Railway Company to persuade potential customers to settle in
the outer suburbs of London and make use of their commuter services;
“Monomark” was another advertising gimmick coined by a company which, for a
fee, would provide a unique number for customers to engrave on their
valuables, so as to facilitate retrieval in case of burglary). When A.
J. P. Taylor, biographer of Lord Beaverbrook, owner of the Daily Express,
for which Waugh once worked, asked Waugh whether Lord Copper was based on
Beaverbrook, Waugh denied it. Nevertheless, Taylor points out,
Beaverbrook was familiar with the expression “Up to a point,” meaning
“No.” “Boy,” Viscount Mulcaster, and his sister Lady Celia, who marries
Charles Ryder (their family name is not disclosed), are probably children of
an earl (or conceivably duke or marquess). Mulcaster’s Viscountcy must
be a courtesy title; if it were a substantive one and he were head of the
family, his sister would not be “Lady Celia” but merely “the Honourable
Celia.”
Baronets. Sir Alastair
Digby-Vane-Trumpington appears in Decline and Fall, Black Mischief,
Put Out More Flags, and Basil Seal Rides Again. Students
have sometimes asked what so frivolous a youth of twenty-one could have done
to deserve being made a “Sir.” The answer is of course “Nothing,”
except having inherited the title from his late father. Another baronet
is Sir James Brown, alternating Prime Minister with Mr. Walter Outrage (the
joke is probably on the alternating regimes of Stanley Baldwin and Ramsay
MacDonald in the late 1920s and early 1930s) in Vile Bodies. The
idea of creating hereditary “Sirs” occurred to King James I in the early
seventeenth century, to enable him to raise a considerable sum of money by
selling them to aspirants to higher social rank.
Knights. Two Hollywood knights appear
in The Loved One, Sir Ambrose Abercrombie and Sir Francis
Hinsley. Sir Ambrose looks down on Sir Francis as a “Lloyd George
creation”—that Prime Minister was notorious for recommending titles for
contributors to his private campaign chest. (They are said to have been
inspired by Sir C. Aubrey Smith, a British pioneer of the studios.) Sir
Christopher Seal, father of Basil, was rewarded for his services as Chief
Whip of the Conservative Party (POMF 1:6); Sir Samson Courteney is British
envoy extraordinary to Azania in Black Mischief; Sir John Courteney
Boot, by mistake, is made a KCB (Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath)
instead of William Boot (Scoop 3:1:4); Sir Ralph Brompton, the
left-wing diplomat in Unconditional Surrender (1:1), is supposedly
modeled on Sir Harold Nicolson, who once stood as a Socialist candidate in a
British election (in the hope, he freely admitted in his diaries, of being
promoted to a peerage by the Labour Government), but was defeated and
disappointed of his peerage. The female equivalent of knighthood is the
award of the title “Dame” instead of “Sir,” borne by Dame Mildred Porch of
the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals in Black Mischief
(6).
“Honourables.” The Hon. Agatha Runcible
is the daughter of Lord (Viscount or Baron) Chasm in Vile Bodies; the
Hon. William Bland is the honorary (i.e., unpaid) attaché to the British
legation in Azania in Black Mischief. When the mother of Waugh’s
off-and-on friend, Randolph Churchill, was given a life peerage as Baroness
Spencer-Churchill, Waugh twitted that he would now have to call him “the
Honourable Randolph.” Paradoxically, “Right Honourable” is a less
prestigious epithet than merely “Honourable.” “Right Honourable” is the
designation (apart from peers) of members of the Queen’s Privy Council, a
huge and ancient body, now with very few governmental functions, to which any
successful politician who reaches Cabinet rank is automatically
appointed. It is the designation of Sir Humphrey Maltravers, Minister
of Transportation and later Home Secretary and Viscount Metroland in Decline
and Fall, and of Walter Outrage, occasional Prime Minister in Vile
Bodies. To be an “Honourable,” you have to be born the child of a
peer.
Other Distinctions. The highest honour
awarded by the Crown is the Victoria Cross for gallantry in military, naval,
or air action, for which Brigadier Ritchie-Hook was recommended (Men at
Arms 1:2). The mysterious Mr. Baldwin recommended his batman in
World War I, Cuthbert, now his valet and bodyguard, for the VC (Scoop
1:3:7). It takes precedence even over the highest knighthood, that of
the Garter, usually awarded only to high-ranking noblemen and royalty.
At first Waugh had Mr. Outrage “fingering his Order of the Garter” (Vile
Bodies 8), but realizing that this would make him “Sir Walter,” demoted
him to the Order of Merit. The OM, restricted to a membership of 24,
carries with it no title but a great deal of prestige. The opening of Basil
Seal Rides Again describes a celebration for its attainment by Ambrose
Silk.
Notes
[1] Donald Greene (1914-1997)
was a distinguished scholar of eighteenth-century literature and Samuel Johnson
in particular. In the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s, he published several
essays in the Waugh Newsletter. The above essay, written in the
1980s, has never before been published, though a few of its observations also
appear in Professor Greene’s “A Partiality for Lords: Evelyn Waugh and
Snobbery,” American Scholar 58.3 (Summer 1989): 444-59, and “Titles of
Rank in Waugh,” Evelyn Waugh Newsletter 24.1 (1990): 1-3. The
text is based on an uncorrected typescript Professor Greene sent to Robert
Murray Davis, Associate Editor of the Newsletter.
[2] The House of Lords Act of 1999 expelled
all but 92 hereditary peers. Most of the members, some 600, are now
life peers.
|