EVELYN WAUGH NEWSLETTER AND STUDIES

Vol. 42, No. 1

Spring 2011

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1066 And All That? 
History in Evelyn Waugh’s Edmund Campion [1]
by Donat Gallagher
James Cook University

     Reviewing the American Edition of Edmund Campion for the New Yorker in 1946, Edmund Wilson, the eminent novelist and critic, wrote: “Waugh’s version of history is in its main lines more or less in the vein of 1066 And All That. Catholicism was a Good Thing and Protestantism was a Bad Thing, and that is all that needs to be said about it.”[2] Strangely, Wilson went on to accuse Edmund Campion of making “no attempt to create historical atmosphere”; and this of a biography that offends, where it offends, by locating its central biographical narrative within a boldly tendentious—and atmospheric—version of Elizabethan history. Despite this opening, which seems to promise a discussion of Waugh’s history in the broad, the following modest essay will concern itself mainly with slips and blunders, primarily because one noted Campion scholar virtually defines Waugh's Edmund Campion by its “irritating historical errors.”[3] But it is fair to ask how numerous, and how significant, such errors really are, and why they have been given such notoriety. Is Waugh’s history really “in the vein of 1066 And All That”?

     At the outset it must be said that Waugh went to extraordinary lengths to disclaim any pretensions to scholarship for his “short, popular life.” He emphasized his heavy dependence on Richard Simpson’s biography of Campion,[4] and in the Preface to the Second [British] Edition declares: “All I have done is select the incidents which struck a novelist as important, and relate them in a single narrative.” But Waugh was being modest, for close reading shows that he drew extensively on the scholarly works listed in his bibliography and that he used a collection of “notes and documents” made available to him by Father Leo Hicks, S.J., an historian of note. Waugh writes like a student of his subject, and he cannot, and should not, be excused for making mistakes on the ground that he has merely written “a short, popular life.”    

     To the best of this writer’s knowledge, the core account of Campion’s life in the biography is widely accepted to be reliable. Excellent recent studies, such as J. V. Holleran’s A Jesuit Challenge: Edmund Campion’s Debates at the Tower of London in 1581,[5] Gerard Kilroy’s Edmund Campion: Memory and Transcription[6] and Father Thomas McCoog’s collection of essays, The Reckoned Expense: Edmund Campion and the Early English Jesuits: Essays in celebration of the first centenary of Campion Hall,[7] greatly expand knowledge of Campion’s activities and writings, and of the environments in which he operated. But these newer studies do not call into question Waugh’s basic narrative.

     On the other hand, as indicated earlier, Waugh surrounds the biographical narrative with a highly controversial “Bellocian” or “revisionist” historical framework. In the early1930s, Catholics on one side and most conventionally educated Britons on the other were still deeply divided about Tudor religious history. No one then imagined the flood of objective studies of the transition from a Catholic to a Protestant England (and even re-evaluations of Bloody Mary) that would be respectfully reviewed in the press around the turn of the century.[8] Drawing on historical research reaching back to Dr. John Lingard (1771-1851), Catholic scholars argued, with varying modulations of stridency, that the true history of the period (in the words of Waugh’s mentor, Father Hicks) lay “buried deep in many layers of falsehood.”[9] Catholic historians rejected the popular belief that the Reformation was a spontaneous revolt by a “free people” against a tyrannous Papacy (the “Whore of Babylon”). They argued, and some mainstream historians agreed, that the Reformation in England was an “act of State.”[10] The more combative Catholics, some of whom strongly influenced Waugh, went further. They described the Reformation as a “revolution” purposefully directed by William Cecil (Lord Burlegh), Sir Francis Walsingham and others (who they believed duped the Queen) to advance Protestantism and keep in power the “gang” of rich men who had profited from confiscated Church property.[11] Waugh’s mentors ridiculed the widely credited notion—recently re-stated by Gerard Kilroy—that “the persecution [of Catholics under Elizabeth] was less a religious persecution than the response of a state which feared subversion from within and invasion from without.”[12] They believed that that the intention to extirpate Catholicism existed “from the beginning” of Elizabeth’s reign.[13] Moreover, they questioned the Gloriana mythology and adopted a sour view of England’s widely lauded achievements in empire and commerce.

     The Lytton Strachey-like description of the last days of Queen Elizabeth which opens Edmund Campion flamboyantly announces that this book will debunk the “received” or conventional version of Tudor history which then dominated textbooks and popular opinion; that it will place its hero within the political and religious world envisioned by the more colourful Catholic “revisionists” previously outlined. It is a simple fact that, as Peter Quennell put it, “The Catholic point of view underlies every paragraph.”[14] But that is not to agree with Charles Rolo and others of his mind who maintain that Waugh’s “biography of … Edmund Campion … is marred by a partisanship which flagrantly distorts Elizabethan history.”[15] The point must be made that Waugh’s history of the Elizabethan period, while consciously, even provocatively, “partisan,” does not mistakenly “distort” that history. Rather it reflects an arguable conspectus of the period put forward by mainly Catholic historians who, although outside mainstream opinion, were, to some extent at least, groundbreaking scholars determined to bring to light long ignored, or suppressed, documentary evidence.

     Inevitably Edmund Campion aroused criticism, almost all of it directed at its history. A few critics denounced its “Catholic” historical conspectus; many were less direct, using allegations of incompetence and bias as proxies for wider disagreements; some corrected detail. An essay in Connotations (20.1) discusses several of the substantive criticisms launched against the history enshrined in Edmund Campion.[16] I shall very briefly touch on two of the matters discussed there, because readers should understand that Waugh’s history, despite much criticism, is in fact generally sound; that the slips and blunders are not evidence of a general “1066 And All That” malaise, but blemishes in an otherwise competent (albeit controversial) sketch of the Elizabethan period.  

     When Edmund Campion was favourably reviewed on the BBC in 1935, the United Protestant Council of Great Britain protested to the Director that recently discovered evidence proved Edmund Campion guilty of conspiracy to take the life of the Queen and to bring in foreign armies, and that he had, therefore, been justly executed. They demanded that the reviewer, who in their mind had proved incompetent by praising a flawed work of history, should never be allowed to review an historical work on the BBC again. Because many responsible people still believe that Campion was justly convicted of treason (the sophisticated version of the argument is that a broad-minded Elizabeth charged priests with treason only when they were guilty of treason, whereas her bigoted sister Mary convicted Protestants on points of conscience), a word of explanation is needed. In the first place it is essential to give due weight to fact that there were many Catholic conspiracies at the time, English and European, directed at Elizabeth. On the other hand, the prosecution of Campion for conspiracy was “as unfair . . . as any perhaps that can be found in our books.”[17] The English Government could have prosecuted Campion under its penal legislation against Catholicism which, inter alia, made it treason to say Mass or to reconcile an English subject to Catholicism. Any conviction under those penal laws would have been plausible. Instead, as documentary evidence demonstrates, the Government dishonestly chose to arraign Campion and about fourteen others (the number kept changing), most of whom had never met, on charges of conspiring to kill the Queen and to bring in foreign armies. The hope was to avoid the odium of persecuting religion and to incite hatred against Catholicism and the priests. Arnold Meyer, the Lutheran authority on the religious history, writes: “the injustice of the charge is now [as distinct from earlier eras] universally admitted … the endeavour to prove the plot failed completely, and was bound to fail because there was no plot.”  Meyer labels many executions of priests “judicial murders.”[18] The article in Connotations referred to above cites five modern historians, all non-Catholic specialists in the Elizabethan period, who declare Campion not guilty as charged and innocent of any political activity. That is Waugh’s point.

     But while individual missionaries might be innocent of politics, the enterprise in which they are engaged could have a political motive. In the climate of competition between Catholic and Protestant power blocs, no large-scale religious activity—such as the English Catholic “mission to England” of which Campion was part—could be without political significance. The motivation of the missionaries was purely religious, and their instructions were to confine their attention to existing Catholics, but sending wave after wave of young priests to a Protestant country was open to political interpretation, even if the priests had to give witness through their patience under torture and martyrdom. 

     By far the most influential criticism of Edmund Campion comes from Rose Macaulay, the noted English critic, in a famous article in Horizon.[19] Because Macaulay’s criticisms have been endorsed by authorities as diverse as Hugh Trevor Roper and Malcolm Bradbury, it is necessary to examine them. Macaulay attacks Edmund Campion as lacking in “objectiveness and truth to fact” and Waugh for being ignorant of vital matters. For example, she claims that “Waugh shows no signs throughout his book … of familiarity with the unceasing plots … that went on.” In fact Edmund Campion makes frequent reference to Catholic plots; one of its major themes is that, in a Catholic community where anti-government plotting was rife, Campion rejected conspiracy. So non-conspiratorial were Campion and his superior, Robert Parsons, S.J., that they brought a Papal directive to England prohibiting the long-standing practice of Catholics outwardly conforming to the Anglican Church by attending Morning Prayer. Non-attendance meant declaring themselves Catholic and following "holiness though it led them through bitter ways to poverty, disgrace, exile, imprisonment and death" (Waugh 105).

     Again, Macaulay claims that Waugh did not know that “English Catholics were absolved from their allegiance [to the Queen] by a [Papal] Bull.” In fact, Waugh devotes four pages to the publication of Regnans in Excelsis (39-42) and three pages to its re-interpretation under Gregory XIII in 1580 (80-82). It is difficult to understand how anyone who had read Edmund Campion could have missed the seven pages devoted exclusively to this topic, let alone the many shorter references to it throughout the book. Macaulay also blames Waugh for calling the Anglican Church “crazy fashionable Calvinism” and for relegating it to the “outer darkness of the Protestant left wing.” In fact, Waugh continually refers to Protestant “extremists,” for whom Elizabeth and Cecil “had no more taste … than they had for the Catholics” (16, 170); he several times emphasizes Elizabeth’s “personal inclination … towards … cross and candles … ministers celibate and suitably vested” (16). Ceremony, celibacy and vestments were anathema to the “Protestant left wing,” and many of them suffered severely at Elizabeth’s hands for refusing the surplice. Thus Macaulay’s criticisms of Waugh are negated by what he actually wrote.

     Turning now to slips and blunders: as mentioned above, Father Thomas McCoog, S.J., the current Historiographer of the English Jesuit Province, without specifying problems, writes “Although [Waugh] received assistance from Father Leo Hicks, S.J., there are still a number of irritating historical errors [in Edmund Campion].” As this is the only comment offered on Edmund Campion, except to say that it is "well written," one can infer that the writer thinks the number of errors in the book unacceptably high. The reviewer for the Times Literary Supplement, who made clear that he held the conventional English Protestant viewpoint on the Elizabethan period, said that Edmund Campion was “weakest where it travels beyond the scope of a short biography.”[20] He alleged four historical errors. (1) The Hussite turmoil and related wars that set the scene for Campion’s work in Bohemia and Prague. Waugh: “the monarchy [of Bohemia] finally, in 1526, passed into the hands of Charles V, who absorbed it into the [Holy Roman] Empire” (66). TLS: “[Bohemia] really went to [the Emperor’s] brother Ferdinand.” DG: The reviewer is, of course, correct; Waugh blundered. But the situation is slightly fuzzy in that Ferdinand deputized for Charles V in administering the Empire, and finally became Emperor, so that Waugh’s “absorbed into the Empire” telescopes real events. (2) Waugh drew into the biography an obiter dictum from a militant Catholic source. Waugh: “Under [Gregory XIII] the new Calendar was introduced, which, denounced at first in all Protestant countries as an invention of anti-Christ, was gradually accepted in the subsequent two hundred years by each of them in turn” (59-60). TLS: “[This is] too sweeping: [the Gregorian Calendar] was adopted in Holland and Denmark before it was adopted by German or Swiss Catholics.” DG: “Too sweeping” is fair, because the Protestant Netherlands adopted the new Calendar in December 1582, the year in which Pope Gregory promulgated it. But England typified the Protestant response. Elizabeth wished to adopt the new Calendar in 1582, but the Puritan parliamentarians refused to agree to anything proposed by the Pope (“anti-Christ”), with the result that England stayed on the Julian Calendar (ten days behind the Gregorian) until 1752.

     (3) After leaving Ireland, Campion is thought to have witnessed and been influenced by the trial of Dr John Storey (also “Story”). Storey had been active in persecuting Protestants in Mary’s time, and with the advent of Elizabeth he fled to the Continent and became a Spanish citizen. Cecil’s agents lured him to Antwerp, where he was kidnapped, brought back to England and charged with treason for alleged connection with the Northern Rebellion and for inciting the Duke of Alva to invade England. Storey was executed with exceptional cruelty (to the applause of Cecil and other Council members who attended). Waugh: Storey was “brought home to suffer in old age under an insupportable charge of treason for the prominent part he had taken against the Protestants in Queen Mary’s reign” (45). TLS: “the real charge was that [Storey] had incited Alva to invade England and been privy to the Northern Rebellion of 1569.” DG: Waugh’s wording is elliptical and ambiguous and TLS mistook him to mean that the “charge of treason” against Storey was that he had persecuted Protestants during Mary’s reign. I have always understood Waugh to mean that, while Cecil brought Storey back to England ostensibly to face charges of treason re Alva and the Northern Rebellion, his real reason for the kidnapping and the treason charge was revenge for Storey’s persecution of Protestants. Many historians accept that this was Cecil’s motive.

     (4) As Campion and his party were approaching England, a Papal force of Spanish and Italian troops led by Dr Nicholas Sander (or Sanders) acting as Papal Nuncio landed in Ireland to assist the Second Desmond Rebellion. The ultimate aim was to topple Elizabeth. The English quickly vanquished the invaders and massacred all five hundred soldiers involved. Waugh: “Ireland stood in a very different relation to the Holy See from that of England and Wales…. Ireland was, in feudal law, unquestionably a Papal fief, and had always been recognized as such by the English monarchy…. The Pope had a legal right of interference such as Elizabeth never enjoyed in the Netherlands” (89-90). TLS disagrees at length and in detail. DG: So much academic and nationalist passion has been poured into debates about Ireland’s status as a Papal fief, about when the Pope granted Ireland to the Kings of England, to which Kings or Queens he granted it, and whether the Pope, having freely made the grant, could freely withdraw what he had granted, that no brief comment can be useful. Suffice to note the irony that Edmund Campion’s Historie of Ireland, which virulently abuses the Irish (and which Waugh extravagantly praises), lists “nine separate claims”[21] in support of England’s sovereignty over Ireland. Waugh, by contrast, negates Tudor claims to Ireland by asserting the Pope’s “legal right of interference.”   

     Whether or not the Pope had a “legal right” to invade Ireland, the political reality was that England had no effective control over what Campion calls “simple Ireland”; and in a world divided into Protestant and Catholic power blocs—very similar in their operation to the “Communist” and “Free World” power blocs recently engaged in the Cold War—the Pope was at least as entitled to help the Irish Catholics against Protestant England as Elizabeth was to send large armies to the Protestant Netherlands to assist their struggle against Catholic Spain. 

     In another substantive review, Father H. Chadwick, S.J., who shares Waugh’s "Catholic" perspective (he is also very perceptive about the “art” of Edmund Campion), nevertheless points out “minor inaccuracies here and there, though they seldom jump to the eye” (1).[22] Waugh: “The last thing [Philip] wanted was to go to war … with the English, whose formidable spirit he knew from the days when he had been their king” (96). Chadwick: “Philip II, though married to Mary, was never actually ‘king’ of England, much as he wished and tried to become so.” DG: True, but a fine point. The marriage treaty gave Mary’s titles to Philip; Acts of Parliament carried both names and coins both heads to express the fact that Mary and Philip were joint rulers, and Philip, as King of Naples, was a king in his own right. Waugh perhaps should have circumvented the difficulty of finding a title for Philip by writing, “from the days when he had ruled England with Mary.” (2) Waugh: “Dr Richard Smith of Merton was made [first Chancellor of the university at Douai]” (49). Chadwick: “Mr Waugh can at least plead the authority of T. F. Knox … when he makes an Englishman, Dr Richard Smith, the first Chancellor of Douai University (1st Ed. 53) – an honour which belongs rather to M. Wallerand Hangouart.” DG: In this case Waugh appears to be right and Father Chadwick wrong. According to the Catholic Encyclopedia, Dr Richard Smith was the first Chancellor of the University at Douai; while according to Timothy Chesters, M. Wallerand Hangouart was its first Rector.[23] (3) Waugh: “[Father Robert Persons] composed the Spiritual Directory, which has proved a text book of sturdy piety to thousands of Catholics up to the present day” (79). Chadwick: “[Father Persons was the] author of the ‘Christian Directory’ – a classic inadvertently styled by Mr Waugh (1st Ed. 85) the Spiritual Directory.” DG: An obvious slip.  

     No doubt there are more errors in Edmund Campion than those identified by the two reviewers cited above. Waugh himself amended the American Edition (1946), the Second [British] Edition (1947), Penguin (1953) and finally the Third [British] Edition (1961): he also progressively removed the end-of-chapter “Notes”--of which he said he had "long been greatly ashamed" because he had "scamped them at the time"[24]--and the “List of Works Consulted” that feature in the First Edition (1935); he rewrote an ambiguous sentence regarding Catholic priests distributing consecrated hosts to non-Catholics, made some deletions and additions, corrected a few spellings, changed “Salesian” (a member of  the Salesian religious order) to “Silesian” (a resident of Silesia), brought a few details up to date in the light of new information and removed a typically “indiscreet” sentence that reveals that  Father Persons S.J. was reputed the son of his parish priest. The changes to various editions are fully set out in a forthcoming issue of The Book Collector. Surprisingly, however, Waugh corrected none of the historical slips discussed above. 

     How, then, evaluate the level of error and the significance of the errors found in Edmund Campion? Readily conceding that an historian of the period might discover more weaknesses than those identified here, to this writer the mistakes and slips discussed above are neither numerous enough nor obtrusive enough to become a characterizing feature. As Father Chadwick says, “they seldom jump to the eye.” On the other hand, the TLS reviewer might have noted that each of the errors he identified betrayed a Catholic perspective. As the discussion of each mistake indicates, all are peripheral, none is simply crass, none vitiates an important point being made. Some errors oversimplify a complex situation, as in the case of the adoption of the Gregorian Calendar; some enter into very controversial territory, as in the case of the Pope’s rights in Ireland; some are trivial, as in the case of the Chancellor/Rector of the university in Douai; almost all blur rather than blatantly falsify an event.

But the seven errors are a fact. Do they indicate an unfortunate level of ignorance, or a failure to take care, on Waugh’s part? Not writing as an advocate, but seeking to be fair, I incline to balance the shortcomings that have been pointed out against the praise accorded by his most knowledgeable and exacting critics. The TLS reviewer of Edmund Campion, who not only pointed out errors but also carefully emphasized that he did “not enjoy … the same Weltanschauung” as Waugh, nevertheless wrote: “Mr Waugh is pretty well read in the proper authorities [and] better versed than most writers on the period in its religious dialectic.” Father Chadwick, while conscious of errors, was equally generous about Waugh’s level of knowledge: he praises Edmund Campion for holding “a wealth of sifted learning.” The words are well chosen. Waugh made no claim to “scholarship” or original research. He took the structure of his biography from Richard Simpson’s Edmund Campion and made full use of a range of specific authorities on the background of each aspect of Campion’s life. He wrote a vivid and moving “short, popular life” by carefully “sifting” the nuggets from the mass of information available, for the most part reliably.

Notes
[1] Edmund Campion appeared in five significant editions in Waugh’s lifetime. First Edition: Edmund Campion: A Biography (London: Longmans, Green, 1935); American Edition: Edmund Campion (Boston: Little, Brown, 1946); Second [British] Edition: Edmund Campion (London: Hollis and Carter, 1947); Penguin: Edmund Campion (London: Penguin, 1953); Third Edition: Edmund Campion (London: Longmans, Green, 1961). Waugh made changes to each new edition. (Page references will be made parenthetically to Third Edition because it incorporates the changes made to earlier editions and makes several new changes. References to other editions will be specified.)
[2] Edmund Wilson, “Books: Lesser Books by Brilliant Writers,” rev. of Edmund Campion by Evelyn Waugh and The Condemned Playground by Cyril Connolly, New Yorker 22 (13 July 1946): 81. Wilson refers to a very funny spoof of English history, W. C. Sellar and R. J. Yeatman, 1066 and All That: A memorable history of England comprising all the parts you can remember, including 103 Good Things, 5 Bad Kings and 2 Genuine Dates (London: Methuen, 1930).
[3] Thomas M. McCoog, S.J., ed., The Reckoned Expense: Edmund Campion and the Early English Jesuits: Essays in celebration of the first centenary of Campion Hall, Oxford (1896-1996) (Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 1996), xiv. Without specifying errors, Father McCoog writes: “Although [Waugh] received assistance from Father Leo Hicks, S.J. [a noted scholar], there are still a number of irritating historical errors [in Edmund Campion].”
[4] Richard Simpson, Edmund Campion: Jesuit Protomartyr of England, 1866 (London: Burns and Oates, 1907). 
[5] James V. Holleran, A Jesuit Challenge: Edmund Campion’s Debates at the Tower of London in 1581 (New York: Fordham University Press, 1999). Holleran adopts an historical viewpoint close to that of Professor J. E. Neale, who was strongly sympathetic to the Elizabethan settlement.
[6] Gerard Kilroy, Edmund Campion: Memory and Transcription (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005).
[7] McCoog, Reckoned Expense, 155-56, 141.
[8] E.g., Eamon Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England c.1400-c.1580 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992), The Voices of Morebath: Reformation and Rebellion in an English Village (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001), and Fires of Faith: Catholic England under Mary Tudor (London: Yale University Press, 2009); Judith M. Richards, Mary Tudor (London: Routledge, 2008); Anna Whitelock, Mary Tudor: England’s First Queen (London: Bloomsbury, 2009); Linda Porter, Mary Tudor: The First Queen (London: Piatkus, 2007).
[9] Leo Hicks, S.J., “Wanted: A New and True History of Queen Elizabeth,” The Month, March 1930: 212-17.  The scholarly Father Hicks was Waugh’s principal mentor in writing Edmund Campion.
[10] G. R. Elton, “1555: A Political Retrospect,” in The Reformation Crisis, ed. Joel Hurstfield (London: Edward Arnold, 1965), 72-78. While allowing that the English Reformation “owed something to the spiritual needs of the people,” Elton insists that it originated “in a political revolution,” a fact that “only the wilfully blind would deny.” F. M. Powicke, The Reformation in England (London: Oxford University Press, 1941), 1: “The one definite thing that can be said about the Reformation in England is that it was an act of State.”
[11] E.g., Alan Gordon Smith, William Cecil: The Power behind Elizabeth (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner and Co., 1934); Hilaire Belloc, How the Reformation Happened (London: Jonathan Cape, 1928), Chap. 4, “The English Accident,” 90-120.
[12] Kilroy, Memory and Transcription, 3.
[13] Hicks, “New and True History,” 215.
[14] Peter Quennell, “Emperors, Heroes, Saints,” New Statesman and Nation, 28 Sept. 1935: 422.
[15] Charles J. Rolo, “Evelyn Waugh: The Best and the Worst,” Atlantic 194 (Oct. 1954), 84. See also Nicholas Griffin, “Ethical Responsibility and Historical Biography,” Journal of Applied Philosophy 6.1 (1989): 26: “Of course it is easy to find examples of extreme bias in biographies. I dislike singling out a particular author, but Evelyn Waugh’s biography of Edmund Campion … springs readily to mind, even though Waugh was not distinguished as a dispassionate biographer. But his zealous Catholic viewpoint no doubt encouraged Waugh to press Campion into posthumous support for a proselytising and rhetorical treatment of his own life” (sic).
[16] Donat Gallagher, “Evelyn Waugh's Edmund Campion and ‘Lady Southwell's Letter,’” Connotations 20.1 (2010/2011): 80-107.
[17] Henry Hallam, The Constitutional History of England from the Accession of Henry VII to the Death of George II (London: Harper and Brothers, 1854), Vol. I, 143.
[18] Arnold Oskar Meyer, England and the Catholic Church under Queen Elizabeth (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner, 1916), 151-53.
[19] Rose Macaulay, “Evelyn Waugh” in the Best and Worst series, Horizon 14 (Dec. 1946): 368-70.
[20] “Edmund Campion,” rev. of Edmund Campion, by Evelyn Waugh, Times Literary Supplement, 3 Oct. 1935: 606.
[21] Colm Lennon, “Edmund Campion’s Historie of Ireland and Reform in Tudor Ireland,” in Reckoned Expense, 81.
[22] Father H. Chadwick, S.J., rev. of Edmund Campion, by Evelyn Waugh, Archivum Historicum Societatis Iesu 6 (1937): 331-33.
[23] Timothy Chesters, “Demonology on the Margins: Robert Du Triez’s Les Ruses, finesses and impostures des espritz malins (1563),” Renaissance Studies 21.3 (June 2007): 395-410.
[24] Evelyn Waugh, letter to A. S. B. Glover of Penguin Books, 4 February 1953.

Pensees from Scoop
by James Morris

Cross Stitch

Before taking his leave,
Before he left,
Algernon--
His right hand in his left sleeve,
His left hand at his right breast.

Crossword

Mrs Stitch
Signing cheques,
Translating Latin text,

'Terracotta' she suggests,
Talking to the man up the ladder,
Viola Chasm on the phone?

It was a puzzle.

Lord Copper/Robert Maxwell

Copper-bottomed,
The pension fund wasn't,
Only a few coppers left in the coffers.

I could tell he was a bully--
So litigious;
Everyone Copper-bound.

The after-dinner speaker,
At his own dinner!
Pure Copper.

Exhorting the assembled company--
To support his limited company!
Pure, unalloyed Copper.

The British worker should work harder,
Buy British,
So Copperish.

Singing the praises of European dictators,
So Coppery.
(Rothermere).

Copper plaited;
Covered over with copper,
His face in his own newspapers.

One huge cop out--
Everyone turning a blind eye,
The Labour Party coppering it.

A fair cop
It wasn't,
Falling off the yacht.

He got away with it,
Scot free,
Just before the coppers came.

Local Colour

Waugh liked to soak up the local colour--
'Two brown thumbs in the mayonnaise'
Bathed.

Cleft Sticks

WHY WOULD WILLIAM WANT FLASH FACTS

BLACK HAND UNTOUCHED BY TRANSFERRING TELEGRAM UNNATURAL

Rumour of a Scoop

The French journalists in a flurry, Corker in a hurry,
Shumble, Pigge, Whelper all a-worry.

Outside the rain turning the mud to slurry,
Vermin scurry.

Infinite Compassion

At Shumble,Whelper, Pigge's discomfort,
Erik Olafsen, the heavy Swede,
FEELS their need,

With heart bleeding, eyes pleading,
He stares at the horizon (clouds receding)
Into the infinite.

William's Baggage

Along with his kit--
He wearily dragged it through the Second World War.

Then into the Cabinet--
Adding to the weight of responsibility.

When the Sixties came--
More ‘emotional baggage’ added.

The Telegraph years …
Weary of its burden his aged frame.

Finally--
The ‘Dear Bill’ letters were added to Boot.

Hardcastle’s Malleable Morris Cowley

by Robert Murray Davis 
University of Oklahoma

     A recent television ad shows a young man looking sadly from his two-door car to his pregnant wife and then resolutely pulling at the back of the car until it turns into a sedan.

     Something like this seems to have happened to Hardcastle’s car in Brideshead Revisited. It first apears as “an open, two-seater Morris-Cowley” (Little, Brown, 1946, 23). Later, having received an invitation to dinner at Rex Mottram’s, Sebastian, Ryder, and Boy Mulcaster, “having got leave for the nght from our colleges … drove off on the London road in Hardcastle’s car” (112). We now have three people in a two-seater.

     Later the three drive to the Old Hundredth in “the car” (114), presumably the same one. Later, having acquired three women from the club, the six drive away: “Sebastian took the wheel and the two women sat one on the other beside him, to show him the way. Effie and Mulcaster and I sat in the back” (116). As Mark Twain said in “Fenimore Cooper’s Literary Offenses,” we cannot too much admire this miracle of six people in a two-seater.

Donat Gallagher suggested that the car has a dickey or what Americans call a rumble seat, something that folds upward from the rear of the main compartment to provide additional if not very comfortable seating. A glance at the photograph in this link, http://gallery.mudpuddle.co.nz/v/speterso/MorrisFinal.png.html, refutes this speculation.

     Clearly Waugh had forgotten about the specifications of the original car. Probably he was drawing on his memory of the incident on which this last scene was based: his arrest with Matthew Ponsonby in the "Ponsonby family Ford" in 1925 (Diaries 206). The car may have been similar to the one in this photo: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:1925.ford.model.t.arp.750pix.jpg. In this case, fact overrode internal consistency.

Additional Waugh Bibliography: Reviews of Brideshead Revisited
by Alexander Waugh

     The following items are press cuttings sent to Evelyn Waugh at the time of publication with newspaper title and date. With three exceptions (noted below), they do not appear in A Bibliography of Evelyn Waugh.

Barber, Frank D. "Picture of the Nobility." Yorkshire Evening News (City Edition), 28 May 1945.
"B. D." [The Rev. B. Dickinson, MA]. "Total Waugh." Beda Review [n.d.]: 23-24.
Betjeman, John. "Here's One Novelist I Can Read Again." Daily Herald, 6 June 1945.
Bowen, Elizabeth. "With Silent Friends." Tatler and Bystander, 13 June 1945: 342.
Brady, Charles A. "‘Brideshead’ Nominated for Literary Immortality." Buffalo Evening News, 5 Jan. 1946.
Brogan, Colm. "Reflections on Truth and Fiction." Glasgow Observer, 3 Aug. 1945.
Butcher, Fanny. "Publisher of a Waugh Novel Gets a Wider Readership." Chicago Tribune, 30 Dec. 1945.
"Challenge to Paganism." Universe, 6 July 1945.
Chamberlain, John. "The New Books." Harpers, Feb. 1946.
Church, Richard. "The Roman View." John O' London's Weekly, 15 June 1945.
“C. M.” "Evelyn Waugh Offers Novel of Modern Decay." Milwaukee Journal, 6 Jan. 1946.
DeJong, David Cornel. "Brideshead Revisited." Providence [RI] Journal, 6 Jan 1946.
Dickens, Monica. "Mr Waugh revisits his pagans." Sunday Chronicle, 2 May 1945.
Donahue, Robert Joyce. "Religious and Satirical." Boston Globe, 2 Jan. 1946.
"Evelyn Waugh's Shadow Play." Chicago Daily News, 2 Jan. 1946.
Gold, Mike. "A More Human Moral Code." Daily Worker [NY], 13 Oct. 1946.
Hartley, L. P. "The Literary Lounger." Sketch, 13 June 1945: 330.
“H. P. E.” “Paterna domus, mira infelicitas.” Punch, 27 June 1945.
Igoe, W. J. “Catholic Fiction and Six Catholic Novels.” Catholic Herald, 20 July 1945. [Bibliography includes this item as
     B572: “Igoe, W. J.  R. of BR.  Catholic Herald, 20 July, p. 3].
Igoe, W. J. "The Catholic Novelist has an Answer." Glasgow Observer, 15 June 1945.
Igoe, W. J. "More Notes on the Catholic Novel." Glasgow Herald, 10 May 1945.
Jackson, Joseph Henry. "Disintegration of a Family and the World That Made It." San Francisco Chronicle, 30 Dec. 1945.
Jaques, Florence Page. Saturday Review of Literature, 18 May 1946.
Lawrie, Jean. "British Marine Hailed as Genius among Writers.” Catholic Herald Citizen [Milwaukee], 2 March 1946: 11.
"Life, Religion and Neurosis." Truth, 6 July 1945: 12.
North, Sterling. "Sterling North Reviews Evelyn Waugh's Finest Novel." New York Post, 3 Jan. 1946.
Quennell, Peter. "Waugh and peace." Overseas Daily Mail, 9 June 1945. [B561 has 2 June].
Robinson, Ted. "Evelyn Waugh's First in Three Years." Cleveland Plain Dealer Pictorial Magazine, 6 Jan. 1946: 12.
Shackleton, Edith. "A Memorable Novel." The Lady, 21 June 1945: 376.
Spring, Howard. “The Best Evelyn Waugh Novel I’ve Read: Howard Spring on Books.” Sunday Graphic, 24 June 1945.
     [Bibliography B569 is “Spring, Howard. R of BR. Evening Standard, 24 June.] 
Spring, Howard. "Mr Waugh's New Novel." Country Life, 15 June 1945.
“Why must it end like this?” Evening Standard, 15 June 1945.
Woods, Mary Thomas. "Book-of-the-Month." San Francisco Argonaut, 19 Jan. 1946. 

Spanish Translations of Works by Evelyn Waugh: 1943-2011
by Carlos Villar Flor
University of La Rioja

     If no translator appears in a later edition, it is assumed that the translation is the same, even though the publisher may have changed. As a rule, a different translator implies a different version, but one version may have different subsequent titles, or different versions may have same title. In the case of Black Mischief, for instance, the version is always the same although the title was modified in later editions.

        Decline and Fall: Decadencia y caída. Trans. Floreal Mazía. Buenos Aires: Editorial Sudamericana, 1955, 1982. Madrid: Aguilar, 1966. Barcelona: Anagrama, 1984, 1986.
        Vile Bodies: Cuerpos viles. Trans. Floreal Mazía. Buenos Aires: Editorial Sudamericana, 1955. Barcelona: Anagrama, 1990. Barcelona: Círculo de lectores, 2003.
        Black Mischief: Fechoría Negra. Trans. Rosa S. de Naveira. Barcelona: José Janés, 1950. Barrabasada  negra. Trans. Juan García Puente. Madrid: Aguilar, 1966. Merienda de negros. Trans. Juan García Puente. Barcelona: Anagrama, 1985, 1990, 2008. Barcelona: Cahoba: 2006.
        A Handful of Dust: Un puñado de polvo. Trans. P. J. Eastaway. Barcelona: Aymá, 1943. Trans. Josefina Gaínza. Buenos Aires: Editorial Sudamericana, 1957. Trans. Juan Gómez Casas. Madrid: Aguilar, 1966. Trans. Josefina Gaínza. Madrid: Alianza, 1972, 1985. Trans. Carlos Manzano de Frutos. Madrid: Espasa Calpe, 1995, 1998. Barcelona: RBA, 2009.
        Scoop: Primicia. Trans. Horacio Laurora. Buenos Aires: Editorial Sudamericana, 1947. Madrid: Aguilar, 1966. ¡Noticia bomba! Una novela de periodistas. Trans. Antonio Mauri. Barcelona: Anagrama, 1985, 1988, 1990, 1997. Barcelona: Círculo de Lectores, 2002. Madrid: El País, 2003.
        Put Out More Flags: Más Banderas. Trans. Horacio Laurora. Buenos Aires: Editorial Sudamericana, 1947. Madrid: Alianza, 1974.
        Work Suspended: Obra suspendida y otros cuentos. Trans. Guillermo Whitelow. Buenos Aires: Emecé, 1952. Obra suspendida. Trans. María Maestro Cuadrado. Treviana ediciones, 2009.
        Work Suspended and Other Stories: Incidente en Azania. Trans. Jaime Zulaika. Barcelona: Argos Vergara, 1983. En guardia; El amor en tiempos de crisis; El segundón. Trans. Jaime Zulaika. Barcelona: Debolsillo, 2000.
        Brideshead Revisited: Retorno a Brideshead. Trans. Clara Diament. Buenos Aires: Editorial Sudamericana, 1948. Madrid: Aguilar, 1966. Trans. Caroline Phipps. Barcelona: Argos Vergara, 1982; Círculo de lectores, 1983. Barcelona: Tusquets, 1987, 1990, 1993, 1994, 1996, 1998, 2008, 2010. Barcelona: RBA, 1992, 1995.
        Scott-King's Modern Europe: La nueva Neutralia. Trans. J. R. Wilcock. Buenos Aires: Ediciones Criterio, 1953. Neutralia. Trans. Carlos Villar Flor. Palencia: Menoscuarto, 2009.
        The Loved One: Los seres queridos. Trans. Pedro Lecuona. Buenos Aires: Editorial Sudamericana, 1964. Trans. Helena Valenti. Barcelona: Argos Vergara, 1983. Barcelona: Seix Barral, 1986. Barcelona: Anagrama, 1990. Barcelona: Círculo de Lectores, 1999.
        Helena: Elena. Trans. Pedro Lecuona. Buenos Aires: Editorial Sudamericana, 1954, 1990. Barcelona: Edhasa, 1990, 2006. Barcelona; Altaya, 1996, 1997. Barcelona: Salvat, 1998. Barcelona: Planeta-De Agostini, 2003. Madrid: El País, 2005.
        Love Among the Ruins: Amor entre ruinas. Trans. Julieta Mendes Gonçalves. Buenos Aires: Emecé, 1954.
        Men at Arms: Hombres en armas. Trans. Miguel Alfredo Olivera. Buenos Aires: Emecé, 1954. Trans. Carlos Villar Flor. Madrid: Cátedra, 2003.
        The Ordeal of Gilbert Pinfold: La odisea de Gilbert Pinfold. Trans. María Inés Oyela de Estrada. Buenos Aires: Emecé, 1959. La prueba de fuego de Gilbert Pinfold. Trans. Miguel Martínez-Lage. Madrid: Homo Legens, 2007.
        Officers and Gentlemen: Oficiales y caballeros. Trans. Carlos Villar Flor. Madrid: Cátedra, 2010.
        Unconditional Surrender: Rendición incondicional. Trans. Carlos Villar Flor and Gabriel Insausti. Madrid: Cátedra, 2011.

        Labels, A Mediterranean Journal: Etiquetas, Viaje por el Mediterráneo. Trans. Jordi Fibla. Barcelona: Península, 2002.
        Remote People: Gente remota. Trans. Paula García Manchón. La Coruña: Ediciones del viento, 2003. Barcelona: Debolsillo, 2009.
        Ninety-Two Days: Noventa y dos días. Trans. Manuel Piñón and Paula Pascual. La Coruña: Ediciones del Viento, 2005.
        Robbery Under Law: Robo al amparo de la ley. Trans. F. José Mampara. Madrid: Homo Legens, 2008.
        A Tourist in Africa: Un turista en Africa. Trans. J. Ferrer Aleu. Barcelona: Plaza & Janés, 1964, 1966, 1970, 1976.

        Edmund Campion: El jesuita y la reina. Trans. Estela Lorca de Rojo. Santiago de Chile: Nuevo Extremo, 1960. Edmund Campion. Trans. Ignacio Peyró. Madrid: Homo Legens, 2009.
        Ronald Knox: Ronald Knox. Trans. Gloria Esteban Villar. Madrid: Palabra: 2005.
        A Little Learning: Una educación incompleta. Trans. Miguel Martínez-Lage. Barcelona: Libros del Asteroide, 2007; Debolsillo, 2009.

Abstracts of Japanese Essays on Evelyn Waugh, 1998-2010
by Yoshiharu Usui

        Usui, Yoshiharu. “Chichi eno nagai michinori－Eyurin Wo Meiyonoken sanbusaku kenkyu [A Long Way to Fatherhood－A Study of Evelyn Waugh’s Sword of Honour trilogy].”　Seikei Jinbun Kenkyu [Seikei Journal of the Graduate School of Humanities] 7 (1998): 71-87.
        Abstract: Evelyn Waugh’s ideal image of a man was a gentleman father. Waugh’s horror was not to become a gentleman father. When his first marriage broke up, Waugh thought the cause was his immaturity, and he traveled to British colonial frontiers as penance. Waugh remarried and became a father at last. Waugh could not find the ideal world of a gentleman even in the countryside. Waugh joined the army to seek the ideal. However, Waugh could not find it there either. In the end, Waugh found the image of the ideal gentleman in Catholics who achieve their mission through personal love. By depicting Guy Crouchback as the protagonist, Waugh makes his trilogy into a confession of his wandering soul’s attempt to reach the solution.

        Usui, Yoshiharu. “Evelyn Waugh no shosetsu niokeru Don Kihote teki yoso –shokishousetsu wo chushin ni [Influences of Don Quixote on Evelyn Waugh’s Novels–Mainly Early Novels].”　Seikei Jinbun Kenkyu [Seikei Journal of the Graduate School of Humanities] 7 (1999): 65-76.

        Abstract: Evelyn Waugh’s novels are influenced by Cervantes’s Don Quixote. Cervantes wrote Don Quixote during the decline of the Spanish Empire and depicted its corruption. Waugh also depicts corruption of the world after World War I. Don Quixote read too many chivalry stories and went mad. He took himself to be a knight and wandered about, fighting for justice. He finally came back to sanity and died as a good Christian gentleman. The journey of Don Quixote is an important motif of Waugh’s novels from Decline and Fall to the war trilogy. The most important influence of Cervantes is the description of reality. Cervantes depicted life as it is without explanation. Waugh inherited this detachment from Cervantes.

          Usui, Yoshiharu. “Evelyn Waugh no Shousetsu ni Okeru Ford Madox Ford no Parade’s End no Eikyou” [“The Influence of Ford Madox Ford’s Parade’s End Tetralogy on Evelyn Waugh’s Novels”]. Seikei Humanities Research Journal 8 (2000): 39-56.
          Abstract:According to letters to Diana Cooper, Evelyn Waugh was reading Parade’s End while he was writing Sword of Honour. In both novels the battle scenes are few. Both authors describe protagonists’ private lives during war. Ford did not appeal to readers on behalf of his ideas and principles. But in this tetralogy, he suggests that war is not desirable. He assumes an attitude of detachment from battle. It seems that he influenced Waugh to describe war with the same attitude.  Parade’s End may mean the end of the good old world of order. Commercialism and the rising middle class invade the upper class. This theme is common in Waugh’s novels. Their wives’ lies and betrayal also ruin the protagonists’ careers and lives. Graham Greene, who highly praised Ford, said that the novel is an unlimited form that avoids purification. Ford’s novels have simplicity, roughness, and vitality. Waugh’s novels are consistently farcical and anti-Bildungsroman. 

          Sai, Takanori. “Evurin Wo saku Yori ookuno kokki wo ni tsuite” [“About Put Out More Flags by Evelyn Waugh”]. Hanazono Gakuen Daigaku Kenkyu Kiyo [Bulletin of Hanazono University] 4 (2001): 247-56.
          Abstract: Since Evelyn Waugh published Put Out More Flags during the war, it had currency. Waugh wove suggestive description into this novel, so it stays close to fact. Waugh also used the form of picaresque novels to make POMF more lustrous. Picaresque novels allow readers to enjoy picaros’ bad behavior. The form is suitable for a writer like Waugh: he thinks that everyone has defects and does not punish people of high status. He concludes that Basil’s and Ambrose’s follies are common to all of us. The author and his readers are not exceptions.  This is the difference from satirical novels, which criticize particular individuals. Moreover, through the form of picaresque novels, Waugh described people’s way of living in the war.  Some are active in the crisis while others are passive. Waugh suggests that even people who were foolish in the past are better than atheists who only argue in the present. 

          Usui, Yoshiharu. “Evelyn Waugh no Brideshead Revisited Kenkyu--Naze Charles wa Genki wo Torimodoshitanoka?  ‘Seishinbunsekiteki Aprochi.’” [“A Study of Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited.”] Seikei Humanities Research Journal 9 (2001): 55-70.
          Abstract: Charles Ryder ended up ‘looking unusually cheerful.’ Why? This novel can be interpreted through Freud’s theory of “Fort” and “Da” (“gone” and “there”) in Beyond the Pleasure Principle (1920). His grandson took a wooden reel attached to a piece of string, and threw it over the edge of his cot, so that it disappeared. After saying “o-o-o-o,” he would pull it back to himself and say “da.” Freud theorized that this game allowed the boy to manage anxiety about the absence of his mother. By controlling the actual presence and absence of an object, he was able to manage the virtual presence of his mother. The Fort/Da game was the child’s invention of symbolism. In human psychological development, symbolism coincides with the emergence of language, or the child’s entry into the field of culturally symbolic sounds and words. The relationship between Charles and Brideshead is like the Fort/Da game seeking his mother. The substitutes for his mother have come and gone there. In other words, he was in the Oedipal phase. Finally he opens his eyes to the Christian faith. It represents the principle of fatherhood. He finally passes the Oedipal phase and becomes spiritually mature. 

          Yamasaki, Mayumi. “Evelyn Waugh no sakuhin ni mirareru Dickens no eikyo [Influences of Dickens on Evelyn Waugh’s works].”　Kobe Tokiwa Tanki Daigaku Kiyo [Bulletin of Kobe Tokiwa College] 24 (2002): 135.
          Abstract: Evelyn Waugh loved Dickens’s works from childhood, and Waugh’s works show the influence of Dickens. Especially Waugh’s first novel, Decline and Fall, shows many Dickens influences. Decline and Fall owes plot and characters to Nicholas Nickleby.  Comparison of both novels reveals the influence. Both novels can be categorized as Bildungsroman. In common are descriptions of characters, names that express characters, exaggerations of bodily characteristics, and characters that cause laughter. However, though Nicholas Nickleby is a success story, Decline and Fall is literally about the protagonist falling. The cynicism comes from the difference in the times. After World War I, people could not believe in a happy story in the Victorian age. An important value of the nineteenth century, gentlemanliness, collapses in Waugh’s works. Nicholas persists in the pride of a gentleman, but Paul throws it away easily. This leads to the absence of model fatherhood and the collapse of the patriarchy in the twentieth century.  

         Usui, Yoshiharu. “Evelyn Waugh no The Ordeal of Gilbert Pinfold Kenkyu―‘Ido’ E no Tabi” [“A Study of Evelyn Waugh’s The Ordeal of Gilbert Pinfold”]. Seikei Humanities Research Journal 10 (2002): 31-45.
         Abstract: This essay analyzes The Ordeal of Gilbert Pinfold psychoanalytically. Because of ill health, insomnia and instability of mind, Mr. Pinfold is advised to go to the tropics. He takes a passenger liner, the Caliban. In Shakespeare’s Tempest, Caliban is the son of a witch and a manifestation of wildness. Boarding the Caliban suggests that Pinfold’s unconscious will be revealed. From the postcolonial view, Britain, an old ruler, is a father to its colonies. Going from Britain to Rangoon is metaphorical regression from father to son. The construction of this ship resembles the functions of consciousness in Freud’s psychoanalysis. Mr. Pinfold’s cabin is the ego. The place under his cabin is unconscious desire, the id. The dining room is the superego. Mr. Pinfold’s voyage was his own psychoanalysis. His oppressed desire intrudes upon consciousness. A ship stands for the female from the psychoanalytic point of view.  Leaving the ship means leaving motherhood and compromising with the Name-of-the-Father.  Men acquired language through this process. The symptoms of neurosis would be expected to appear again. However, this achievement is growth to a middle-aged writer.

          Usui, Yoshiharu. “Evelyn Waugh no The Loved One Kenkyu” [“A Study of Evelyn Waugh’s The Loved One”]. Seikei Humanities Research Journal 11 (2003): 37-46.
          Abstract: This essay analyzes Waugh’s The Loved One with Jacques Lacan’s psychoanalytic theory. The protagonist, Dennis Barlow, unexpectedly succeeded as a poet during World War II. At first he wants to be a successful poet, which means he tries to identify with the image people have of a poet, as a child in Lacan’s ‘the Mirror Stage’ tries to identify with the image in the mirror. Dennis is, in Lacan’s terms, ‘the imaginary order.’ Thanks to his success, he is invited to Hollywood. Hollywood is ruled by powerful producers, in Lacan’s terms, the Name-of-the-Father, the fundamental element in the structure of symbolic order. In other words, Hollywood is the symbolic order. To spiritually mature in Lacan’s terms, one needs the real father, the subject’s biological father. At the time of the Oedipus complex, he intervenes as the one who castrates the child. This intervention saves the child from ensuing anxiety. Without it, the child requires a phobic object as a symbolic substitution for the real father. Dennis easily throws away his mirror image as a poet and becomes a pets’ mortician.  Not only Dennis but also other characters lack a real father and cannot mature.

          Kurahashi, Yumiko. “Henai Bungakukan 3 Pinfold no Shiren Evurin Wo [Partial Library 3 The Ordeal of Gilbert Pinfold by Evelyn Waugh].” Gunzo [Gunzo Monthly] (Tokyo) 59.9 (2004): 322-28.
 Abstract: Gilbert Pinfold has auditory hallucinations on the ship to Ceylon. The hallucinations are based on real events, and each episode is like a piece of the novel. What sort of mischief will the villains make next? How will they abuse Pinfold? One finds Waugh’s superior critical spirit in the backbiting. Pinfold never appeals and entreats someone, nor is he distressed as a pitiable victim. The villains are in Pinfold’s head, so he has to fight them alone.  This hardship is his ‘ordeal.’ Pinfold’s strong spirit is related to Catholicism. However, his faith is a center of gravity, a source of stability, rather than the thing he clings to. Waugh casually writes that Pinfold went to mass on Sunday when he reached Colombo. Both Waugh and Pinfold get on with the world through peculiar methods. Neither nurses a grievance in misfortune, nor do they become uneasy in isolation.

          Usui, Yoshiharu. “Evelyn Waugh no A Handful of Dust Kenkyu [A Study of Evelyn Waugh’s A Handful of Dust].”　Seikei Jinbun Kenkyu [Seikei Journal of the Graduate School of Humanities] 12 (2004): 47-56.
          Abstract: Evelyn Waugh’s A Handful of Dust is a tragedy wherein a man cannot subjectify himself by obeying the symbolism of the Law. Tony Last does not believe in Christianity. He goes to church only as a custom. From a psychoanalytical point of view, a child must obey the Name-of-the-Father and enter the symbolic to become an adult. Tony does not obey the Name-of-the-Father in the Christian world. He is held captive by Mr. Todd and forced to read Dickens’s novels. In the end, Tony obeys Mr. Todd’s orders, the Name-of-the Father in the Amazon. Ironically Tony subjectifies himself in captivity. A Handful of Dust shows not only fear but also hope. In an alternative version in Harper’s Bazaar, Tony reunites with his wife, Brenda.

          Tomiyama, Takao. “Futekusarete―Ivurin Wo no sensou bungaku” [“To Be Sulky―Evelyn Waugh’s War Literature”]. Tekusuto no chihei: Mori Haruhide Kyojyu koki kinen ronbunshu [Horizon of Text: Treatises for Professor Haruhide Mori’s Seventieth Birthday]. Ed. Takao Tomiyama, et al. Tokyo: Eihousha, 2005. 422-38.
Abstract: Waugh’s works have overwhelming force: readers cannot decide whether to be angry, to laugh, to criticize Waugh, or to be astonished at Waugh’s skill. Waugh did not write chaotic novels like Graham Greene. Most of Waugh’s novels treat wars, and they do not divide justice from vice, life from death. Even his genuine war novel, Sword of Honour, is filled with black humor that confuses readers. Another trait of Waugh’s novels is preeminent conceptual skill. He can ridicule any situation and parody it. Waugh’s targets are mainly the English middle and upper classes, especially their attitudes toward religion, money, and sex. The literature and art of Waugh’s times are also his targets. He is a unique, isolated writer. Waugh’s uniqueness comes from his sulky spirit. He refused to mature as a writer. This spirit is consistent with burlesque reciprocation. Faith exists calmly but resolutely, and it does not need to be proclaimed loudly. We can always return to it, like Sebastian and Julia in Brideshead Revisited.

          Yamasaki, Mayumi. “Rysouno Wagaya o Motomete: A Handful of Dust ni Okeru Tony Last no Sekai” [“In Search of a Transfigured Hetton Abbey: The World of Tony Last in A Handful of Dust”]. Bulletin of Kobe Tokiwa College 27 (2006): 9-18.
Abstract (by the author): Tony Last in A Handful of Dust is a happy man who has got enough money and loves his estate. He is kind to his beautiful wife and proud of his son and heir. Hetton Abbey is where he has grown up, and he hopes that in his son’s day his house will recover its fame. We gradually get to know that Tony loves Hetton alone and he is playing the role of Victorian patriarch. His wife Brenda leaves him soon after their only son died in an unfortunate accident. She understands that to Tony, Hetton comes first, and he needs all other things, including her, to make Hetton prosper. After his son’s death, the world seems to be against Tony. He sails for Brazil in search of a city, which he pictures as a transfigured Hetton.  Instead of arriving in the city, Tony is captured by the illiterate Mr Todd, who loves Dickens.  Every day Tony has to read Dickens’s works aloud, and he has no hope to go back to Hetton. It is a kind of punishment for his selfish love for Hetton and himself. However, his dream of shutting out the outside world has been realized.

        Yamasaki, Mayumi. "Decline and Fall to Nicholas Nickleby: Charles Dickens kara Yomitoku Evelyn Waugh [A Comparative Study of Decline and Fall and Nicholas Nickleby]." Bulletin of Kobe Tokiwa College 28 (2007): 1-9.
Abstract (by the author): Decline and Fall owes Nicholas Nickleby in plot and characters. Both are picaresque novels where young protagonists have various kinds of experiences. By comparing and contrasting Decline and Fall with Nicholas Nickleby, we can see clearly what differentiates the two protagonists and what the differences meant to Waugh. Paul Pennyfeather, a theological student at Oxford, enjoys a Victorian ordered life achieved by industry. Innocent as he is, he is sent down and plunged into an anarchic world, where he encounters a lot of eccentric people. The world has no ethical order, and men are ridiculously eager to appear to be gentlemen. Nicholas is also a poor orphan, but he meets good and reliable substitute fathers who lead him up into a better world, while all the men Paul meets are irresponsible. After he has been tossed back and forth in a series of bizarre adventures, Paul just returns where he started. The fruitless circularity of his experiences leaves Paul unaffected. Paul is happy with an unchanged life, for he restores his old Victorian habits. His Victorian middle-class faith reflects Waugh’s.

          Arai, Toshiko. "An Observation of the Religious Structure in Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh." Kagoshima Junshin Joshi Daigaku Kokusai Ningengakubu Kiyo [Faculty of International Human Studies of Kagoshima Immaculate Heart University] 14 (2008): 15-40.
          Abstract: In Evelyn Waugh’s conception of Brideshead Revisited as ‘a religious fable,’ the tragic story of the house of Marchmain ends on the note of unchanging hope. Apart from technical details and arguments about theological or moral themes, Waugh succeeded in making his protagonists appear to be pilgrims on their way to find the ‘defined purpose’ of their existence in the maze of God’s design, with the hope of also getting a full view of the garden at the end of their journey. Waugh tried this method not only on one central character but also on other characters in complex relationships in contemporary British society. Critics will never be unanimous in their evaluation of this work, but still this novel will be read and discussed as one of the experiments in the twentieth-century English novel.

        Notani, Keiji. “Chusei shugisha toshiteno Evurin Wo－Meiyo no ken ni mirareru Katorikku shinkou” [“Evelyn Waugh as a medieval ideologist－Catholicism in Sword of Honour ”]. Kiristo kyo bungaku kenkyu [Christian Literature Studies] 27 (2010): 123-36.
        Abstract: The protagonist of Waugh’s Sword of Honour is Guy Crouchback. His principle is chivalry of the Middle Ages tied to Catholicism. He belongs to a recusant family. Knowing of the German-Soviet Nonaggression Pact, Guy decides to fight for the King. This is chivalrous. However, Guy’s war ends with Quixotic farce, just as Sir Roger of Waybroke lost his life in an unholy battle. Guy’s unconditional surrender is to the plan and providence of God. Guy loses a fight with modern times and changes a sword of honour to a plow and a hoe. This recalls the back-to-the-land movement led by Catholics. One of the characteristics of Catholic literature is anti-modernism. Waugh is not an exception. Waugh’s faith is to believe in the provision of God, which is medieval.

     See also Yoshiharu Usui, “Abstracts of Essays on Waugh in Eigo Seinen/Rising Generation,” EWNS 39.1 (Spring 2008), for abstracts of eight Japanese essays that appeared in November 2003.

Reviews

Decline and Fall, by Evelyn Waugh. The Old Red Lion Theatre, Islington. Reviewed by Mick Dempsey.

     With great anticipation I boarded the train from Metroland to central London on a bitterly cold December evening. I was on my way to see Evelyn Waugh’s funniest and finest comic novel, Decline and Fall, transferred to the stage for the first time. I travelled with a fellow admirer of Waugh’s work and over a pre-show dinner we discussed the hurdles to be overcome to satisfy the appetite of someone who had relished the novel at least ten times. Would such a small cast do justice to the lunacy and chaos of the story? How faithfully would the script adhere to Waugh’s exquisite comic dialogue and marvellous plot? What kind of Captain Grimes would Sylvester McCoy make? Would Professor Otto Silenus make an appearance? What would the venue be like? We were going to be demanding and critical members of the audience.    

     The Old Red Lion was built in 1415 and is nestled in St John Street, Islington. The theatre itself is housed in the upstairs of the pub. To those who are familiar with London culture, suffice to say that the Old Red Lion is a typical central London hostelry: a bit beaten and battered but brimful of character and characters. At the back of the saloon bar stands a quaint ticket booth aside a winding staircase that leads up to the small and cosy 60-seat studio theatre. The theatre was apparently converted from a function room in the late 1970s. The seating consisted of several tiers of what looked like church pews set at right angles to each other covering two of the four sides of the room. As we took our seats in the front row, we were struck by the intimate atmosphere, and we felt we could almost be participants in the play. Many of the audience relaxed with pints of ale or glasses of wine, which added to the intimacy of the occasion.

     The stage was set as a classroom with blackboards and doors on the walls and several desks on the bare wooden floorboards. One of the blackboards bore the graffito “Nil Satis Nisi Optimum”, which coincidentally is the motto of my football team, Everton, and roughly translates to “nothing but the best is good enough”. My expectations rose accordingly. Emily Murphy, who was to play an excellent Florence Fagan and Lady Circumference, stood alone on stage and chided members of the audience as they took their seats, adding to the feeling of participation.

     The real action began with the entrance of Dr Augustus Fagan, played by an enthusiastic and imperious Jonathan Hansler. Younger and more dashing than the Dr Fagan of the novel, he became the pivotal character throughout the drama, strutting, challenging and looking the audience in the eye as he delivered some of Waugh’s finest comic soliloquies. A notable example is Dr Fagan’s rapturous vision of the forthcoming Llanabba school games:

“It is rarely that the scholarly calm of Llanabba gives place to festival, but when it does taste and dignity shall go unhampered.”

I found myself hungrily anticipating each approaching line:

     “There must be a band.”
     “I never heard of such a thing.” said Dingy. “A band indeed. You’ll be having fireworks next.”
     “And fireworks.”

I was grinning like a Cheshire cat. At times I wanted to stand up and join in the fun.  

     Michael Lindall was superbly cast as Paul Pennyfeather. Mr Lindall was the epitome of the young English gentleman and displayed the right balance of breeding and naiveté attached to Pennyfeather. He was not the essence of the play nor did he dictate the action. As Waugh stated in the novel, Pennyfeather was not made to be the hero. At times Pennyfeather really did seem to be the unwitting and bewildered witness of the fantastic events unfolding around him. There was barely a second to take stock: one scene transmuted into another as doors were flung open and slammed shut; desks and people came and went; a profusion of tweed jackets, elbow patches and brogues capered about the set, and always it seemed the superiority and omniscience of Dr Fagan brought a semblance of order and discipline to the chaos and comedy.

     The chronology was faithful to the novel, although there were some notable omissions and some small alterations which jarred on me. A drunken Grimes and not Prendy shot Tangent in the foot, although it did seem reasonable at the time. I also thought Beste-Chetwynde was pronounced “beast chained”, not “beast cheating”, as it was pronounced by the cast. Similarly, Sir Wilfred Lucas-Dockery became Lucas-Doherty. Philbrick’s four-funnel, turbine-driven liner became The Queen of Hounslow (or some such place) rather than the anticipated The Queen of Arcady. These were examples of many small but nonetheless annoying and unnecessary deviations from the original which didn’t add anything and disturbed my rapture. I realised afterwards that I had approached this event rather like I used to attend rock concerts: with the hope of hearing all my old favourites and familiar sounds rendered loud, live and note-perfect. There were a few bum notes, but overall many familiar classics were given a new vibrancy with some virtuoso performances. 

     And so to one of English literature’s great comic characters and anti-heroes: Captain Edgar Grimes. Portrayed by no less than a former Doctor Who, Sylvester McCoy, he was a marvellously dishevelled and dissolute, peg-legged imbecile. He seemed to be wearing one of Waugh’s dog-tooth suits although it was in a state of atrocious disrepair. There was something rather lightweight though nonetheless charming about McCoy’s Grimes. Somehow his moral seediness and desperation didn’t come across (or was not intended to). This incarnation of Grimes didn’t strike me as “singularly in harmony with the primitive promptings of humanity”. The end of part 1 concluded with a monologue which could be described as Grimes’ agony. This was quite moving for members of the audience (although I realised I was still grinning) and for McCoy, who appeared to be weeping genuine tears of despair before setting off to “drown himself”. McCoy also played a peculiarly obsequious and creepy Lucas-Dockery. There was no trace of the visionary social scientist about him; rather he came across as a simpering and fawning crank. I came away thinking that an opportunity had been missed and that Hansler would have made a masterly Sir Wilfred Lucas-Dockery.

     Morgan Thomas portrayed a marvellously bewildered and dithering Prendergast. Again, some of Waugh’s funniest scenes and cleverest dialogue involve Prendy. In this version of events, he was denied the privilege of shooting Tangent in the foot. Thomas, I thought, would have made an excellent Otto Silenus, one character that failed to make an appearance, much to my disappointment. Silenus is one of my favourites in Decline and Fall: a minor player but one with huge comic potential. I suppose some things had to be sacrificed, and the seven cast members were certainly working at full stretch. Margot Beste-Chetwynde was played by the attractive Fay Downie. She did an excellent if predictable job. Miss Downie’s Margot was more overtly vampish than the Margot of the book. Philbrick was well portrayed by a sinister Owen Roberts. Philbrick’s stories are possibly the greatest treasures of the novel, vehicles for Waugh’s brilliant and precise comic language, particularly when he’s lampooning “the lower orders”.  Roberts’ and Lindall’s portrayal of the conversation between Philbrick and Jimmy Drage about “nobbling a toff” was exquisite.

     The sparse props and scenery were well chosen and the cast used the stage very well. However, at times the play seemed like an hour and 40 minutes of a compendium of sketches. I’m not sure what any “non-Wavians” present would have thought of it all. I suspect they’d have come out rather confused about exactly what had happened to whom and why. To those of us who know the book inside out, it was a more than worthy celebration of Waugh’s comic and linguistic genius played out quite brilliantly at times. Certainly, audience and players alike seemed to enjoy themselves. The show was produced by Henry Filloux-Bennett, the Old Red Lion's artistic director, with assistance from Stephen Makin, Kellie Spooner and Nick Rogers. The excellent set was designed by Richard Kent, and the director was Tom King. They did an excellent job in sending a staunch Wavian home happy although still quite peckish for the greater substance, precision and cohesion of the novel. 

Unnecessary Confusion
The Cambridge Companion to English Novelists, ed. Adrian Poole. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009. 464 pp. £19.99/$29.99 paperback. Reviewed by Jeffrey Manley.

     This collection of essays provides an introduction to the works of those novelists “who have seemed the most important to their novelist peers, the richest and most fertile models against whom contemporary and subsequent writers have sought to measure themselves, from whom to draw strength: the most valuable to emulate.” A rather tall order. What they have come up with are twenty-seven novelists from Daniel Defoe to William Golding. They were drawn from a list of those who were already dead; the last seven experienced the Second World War. Each novelist is assigned to an essayist who has written about the subject or others of the same period. Each essay is about fifteen pages in length, and they are arranged by the novelists’ dates of birth.

     The most interesting selections to readers of this journal will be those for the twentieth century. These include few surprises: Joseph Conrad, D. H. Lawrence, E. M. Forster, James Joyce and Virginia Woolf at one end; Elizabeth Bowen, Henry Green, Evelyn Waugh, Graham Greene and William Golding at the other. It seems strange to include Green, Bowen and Golding, however, at the expense of Ford Madox Ford, Aldous Huxley, Anthony Powell, George Orwell and Iris Murdoch. Huxley and Orwell are dismissed as one-hit wonders, but the others wrote a sustained body of work that would seem to qualify them for inclusion under the criteria quoted above. Moreover, several writers might be better qualified for appearances in the Cambridge Companion volumes devoted to Scottish, Irish or American novelists (if such volumes are in the works), rather than this one. Their relegation would have left more room for truly English writers shoved aside by page limitations.

     While the essayists are mostly scholars with academic qualifications, the author of the Waugh entry, Anthony Lane, is a literary journalist whose specialty is film reviewing. Waugh may have been fortunate, because the essay devoted to him is well-written, accessible and entertaining, and it covers most of his novels. Other essays relating to twentieth-century novelists (Bowen, Greene and Golding) tend to concentrate on one or two themes or novels in considerable detail and to ignore or short-change broad swathes of their subject’s works.

     The Waugh essay begins with a two-page summary of why Lane believes him to be important. He considers Waugh’s place in the “canon” to be “unstable.” The way he wrote rather than what he wrote distinguishes Waugh, and writing about such a narrow spectrum of society brought him into disfavor with some critics. His prose style, however, “marks him out—in its exactitude, in the curtness of its controlled irony, and in a fanatical pursuit of the mot juste—as what might be termed the last of the Augustans.” Although he eschewed modernism, his work reflects modernist elements such as staccato dialogue and frequent references to the works of other modernists, such as T.S. Eliot and Ronald Firbank. 

     Several pages devoted to Waugh’s first two novels illustrate his mastery of English prose and his latent modernist tendencies, as well as his practice of making secondary characters more interesting than his heroes: “A Waugh hero does not make his mark in the world; he waits, not with any masochistic thrill but in a near trance of resignation, to see what damage the world will choose to inflict upon him.” 

     Because so much space is devoted to the first two novels, the next three (Black Mischief, A Handful of Dust and Scoop) are lumped together and covered in two paragraphs, together with Waugh’s travel books. More attention might have been paid at least to HD, which many commentators consider his masterpiece, and Scoop, probably his funniest book. Since Waugh is one of the funniest serious writers of the twentieth century, it seems appropriate to explain how his humor worked and why most of it has not dated. From Lane’s essay, you would not even realize that much of Waugh’s work is worth reading for comedy as well as style and narrative.

     Put Out More Flags is mentioned briefly, but the opportunity to refer to Waugh’s comedic skills is lost. There is a good short discussion of Brideshead Revisited, with several references to assessments of the book by other critics. Lane falls into the trap of describing the Flytes as an “old Catholic family, rich in land, possessions, servants and internal strife.” This is misleading, since Lord Marchmain (who brought wealth, land and possessions--not to mention a peerage) was a reluctant convert through marriage into his wife’s “old Catholic” family. “Internal strife” in the Flyte family seems to come from her side; Lord Marchmain exiled himself to Italy to escape it. Lane seems to see faith expressed in deathbed gestures, but Lord Marchmain’s immediate forebears were not Catholics, and he was not religious during his life. Lane’s grasp of Roman Catholicism in Waugh’s works is tenuous: he asserts that “the majority of Waugh’s heroes from Tony Last onward” are Roman Catholic. Tony Last, William Boot, Basil Seal, Dennis Barlow, John Plant, Scott-King, and Miles Plastic do not seem to be Roman Catholics, and even Charles Ryder is ambiguous, with conversion only hinted at in BR. For most of the novel, Ryder is overtly skeptical about Roman Catholicism; most commentators agree that he converted, but conversion took place outside the story. That leaves only Guy Crouchback, St Helena and Gilbert Pinfold with clear claims to be Roman-Catholic heroes, and those three (or four, if including Charles Ryder) hardly constitute a “majority” in ten novels and four long stories from HD until Waugh’s death. Lane also says that Waugh’s “divorce was not finalized until 1935.”  He seems to confuse the Church’s annulment, not approved until July 1936, with Waugh’s civil divorce. The decree nisi was issued in January 1930 (Diaries 306).[1]

     Lane concludes with a good summary of Sword of Honour, describing it as the “summit of Waugh’s achievement” and offering several interpretations in support. One interpretation, however, goes horribly wrong. In SH, Guy gives Julia Stitch the envelope containing the ID tag from the dead British soldier in Crete, and Julia drops it into a wastepaper basket after Guy’s departure. Lane describes her as a “brilliant, well-connected woman [who] feels nothing for the unknown soldier. Her mind is elsewhere, all at sea.” He has, however, missed the tragic irony of Julia Stitch’s action. She thinks the envelope contains Guy’s notes from Crete documenting Ivor Claire’s desertion. Guy has already burned these papers without telling Julia. Nor does he tell her that the envelope contains the dead soldier’s ID tag: he has no reason to think she will do anything but give it to her husband to be forwarded to the proper authorities. Her motivation in discarding the envelope is not indifference (as Lane would have it) but a desire to protect Ivor’s reputation because she still considers him her friend. Waugh takes great pains to set up this Hardyesque misunderstanding. In case the point is missed, Waugh adds another twist. When Julia learns of Ritchie-Hook’s impending arrival, she fears Guy will turn the evidence over to him. Tommy Blackhouse has told her how Ritchie-Hook hounded soldiers he found wanting in the previous war. She arranges Guy’s early departure for England to put him out of reach when Ritchie-Hook arrives. Lane misses all these clues and makes a meal of his misinterpretation of Julia’s actions, an example of what he obviously considers an important point—namely, Waugh’s ability “to transform a comic ruthlessness into a modulated despair.” 

     Each essay is followed by a “Note on Editions” to guide potential readers to the most reliable editions of a novelist’s work. Lane notes difficulties arising from Waugh’s practice of making changes in later editions of his books. He mentions particular problems arising from substantial revisions in BR as well as the war novels. He notes changes in the ending of Unconditional Surrender: “the hero is described … as the father of twins and in [SH] as childless.”[2] In answer to a 1961 letter from Anthony Powell questioning an apparently “happy ending,” Waugh explained:

This was far from my intention. The mistake was allowing Guy legitimate offspring. They shall be deleted in any subsequent edition. I thought it was more ironical that there should be real heirs of the Blessed Gervase Crouchback dispossessed by Trimmer, but I plainly failed to make that clear. So no nippers for Guy & Domenica in Penguin.[3]

Lane could have spared himself and the reader several lines criticizing changes that Waugh explained.

     A final point will resonate more favorably with Waugh scholars. Penguin editions of Waugh’s fiction are the “most readily and cheaply available,” but Lane warns readers of variations. Since “the case for a scholarly edition of Waugh’s works … is overwhelming,” Lane should be heartened by the commissioning of such an edition by Oxford University Press. The OUP edition will clarify matters such as variant endings of SH, which caused unnecessary confusion in his essay. Guy handing Julia Stitch the envelope with the dead soldier’s ID tag could be annotated to ensure that future readers apprehend her motives, but that might spoil the subtlety of Waugh’s construction.

Notes
[1] In an uncontested divorce such as Waugh’s, a decree absolute should follow the decree nisi within a few weeks. No divorced marriage partner may enter into a second civil marriage until a decree absolute has been issued. It may be that practices were different in the 1930s, but it seems unlikely that a decree absolute would have been delayed until 1935, especially since Waugh’s first wife had already married John Heygate, and their marriage was on the rocks. See Michael Barber, Anthony Powell: A Life (London and New York, 2004), 188.
[2] Waugh never indicates that the two boys are twins, as Lane describes them.
[3] Letters, 579. There are in fact three variants of this ending. See Winnifred  Bogaards, “The Conclusions of Waugh’s Trilogy: Three Variants,” EWNS 4.2 (Autumn 1970). While Waugh managed to insert the change in the second printing of the hardback edition, the Penguin paperback failed to reflect it. He made the change for the rescension in SH. In both of those variants, Guy and Dominica have no children of their own. In the Everyman version of the trilogy used by Lane, they have two of their own, as they do in the first printing. 

Collector’s Item
The Evelyn Waugh Collection of Sam Radin. New York: Glenn Horowitz Bookseller, 2006.  63 pp. $75.00. Reviewed by John Howard Wilson, Lock Haven University.

     The Evelyn Waugh Collection of Sam Radin is a handsome volume, befitting its subject: oversized format (8½ in. x 11½ in.) in burnt-orange cloth with EVELYN WAUGH stamped in gilt on the cover and spine, printed on Strathmore paper. The Waugh Collection includes fourteen illustrations, the first a seldom-seen portrait of Waugh in 1956, with mustache, checked suit, and two-tone shoes; most of the rest are Waugh’s inscriptions in books; one shows a rare pamphlet and two autograph postcards. The catalog of the collection is itself a collector’s item, and Evelyn Waugh would have been pleased to add it to his library or even inscribe it as a present for a friend.

     Sam Radin earned a bachelor’s degree in comparative literature at Columbia College and a law degree at Boston University. He is the president and founder of the National Madison Group, an insurance company that specializes in planning for writers. Twenty years of acquisition and possession were enough, Mr. Radin writes in his preface to The Waugh Collection: “the pursuit of items and the knowledge that each confers is of greater interest than merely owning the collection. I decided that it would be better to allow others to enjoy these materials as much as I and to integrate my holdings into their different collections” (5). Collectors, scholars, and fans can only be grateful. Mr. Radin seems to have plenty of other interests: he is vice chair of the advisory council at the Harry Ransom Center in Austin, trustee of the Norman Mailer Estate, and adjunct professor at New York University, where he has taught a freshman honors seminar on the legal system.

     The Waugh Collection consists of seventy-one items extending from P.R.B. (1926), Waugh’s privately printed essay on the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, to the proof copy of Sword of Honour (1965), his rescension of the war trilogy. The World to Come (1916), Waugh’s juvenile poem about the soul after death, is said to be “unprocurable” (9), but all of Waugh’s books are represented, many in multiple copies and various editions. There are, for instance, three copies of Black Mischief (1932): two are first editions of the trade issue, one inscribed to Graham Greene (priced at $35,000), the other to Robert Laycock ($7500); the third is the dedication copy inscribed to Dorothy Lygon ($27,500), one of 250 deluxe copies hand-numbered, illustrated, and signed by Waugh. As a scholar, I tend to focus on the meaning of the text, but The Waugh Collection reminds us that the author invested a great deal of care in the production of rare and attractive volumes. These books were, moreover, given away; unlike most gifts, they retained value until friends and relatives, or their heirs, decided to sell.

     The Waugh Collection comes with a price list, and it is interesting to contrast scholars’ valuations of Waugh’s works with those assigned by collectors. How many of us would guess the most valuable item, priced at $75,000?  It is not a book at all, but a printed copy of Waugh’s “Open Letter to His Eminence the Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster” (1933), protesting The Tablet’s review of Black Mischief. In The Letters of Evelyn Waugh, the “Open Letter” extends over seven pages (72-78), but it is still “truncated” (18), as The Waugh Collection points out.  Perhaps half a dozen copies were printed, and only two are known to survive; obviously rarity is important in pricing.

     Second place goes to the corrected proof copy of A Handful of Dust ($50,000); third is a tie between the private edition of Brideshead Revsited (1944) inscribed to Robert Laycock and four versions of Love Among the Ruins (1953), all inscribed to Laycock’s wife Angela and for sale as a set at $45,000. Waugh consistently came up with appropriate messages for friends and relatives, but these four inscriptions, reproduced in photographs, are especially funny. Many items are inscribed to one or both of the Laycocks; the supply of first editions helps to explain Laycock’s patience with Waugh, a difficult subordinate in the army.

Most items are considerably less expensive, between $2500 and $25,000, down to $750 for the Danish edition of Put Out More Flags (Flere Flag, 1946), inscribed to Ivan (Waugh Collection has “Ivor”) Davson, who helped Waugh in British Guiana in the early 1930s. (Waugh describes Davson as a “linguist,” perhaps the reason for the Danish version.) The same price fetches a two-page biography of Waugh prepared for the press in 1946. I understand that Glenn Horowitz still has items in the Radin Collection for sale. Many are beyond the means of most professors, but it is nevertheless agreeable to read about them.

     The Waugh Collection is based on research by the booksellers, and they include a list of “Works Consulted.” I detected some errors in the text, and I find some speculations dubious, but The Waugh Collection is not supposed to be scholarship. It is intended to interest buyers in rare books by Evelyn Waugh, and in that respect the catalog succeeds admirably. The Waugh Collection is also of interest to scholars, since it includes excerpts from unpublished letters and postcards, details of deluxe editions, and other information unavailable elsewhere. It is a book to be savored and revisited. I highly recommend it for aficionados of Evelyn Waugh and libraries that maintain collections of Waugh’s work. Only 750 copies of The Waugh Collection were published, but some are still available from Glenn Horowitz: http://www.glennhorowitz.com/catalogues/the_evelyn_waugh_collection_of_sam_radin

Return of the Bright Young People
Glamour’s Golden Years: Episode 2, “Beautiful and Damned.” Dir. Colin Lennox. BBC4 TV. October 2009; repeated December 2010. Reviewed by Jeffrey Manley.

     This episode appeared as part of a series of three devoted to the cultural revolution that occurred in Britain in the years between the wars. The first dealt with architecture and design, with a focus on Art Deco and modernism, the third with the influence of Hollywood films on British culture. The second was devoted to the so-called Bright Young People of the 1920s. Presenters included Philip Hoare (biographer of Stephen Tennant), Selina Hastings (biographer of Evelyn Waugh and Nancy Mitford), Lucy Moore (author of Anything Goes: A Biography of the Roaring Twenties) and D. J. Taylor (author of a cultural survey entitled The Bright Young People). Indeed, Taylor’s book (reviewed in EWNS 41.2 and 39.1) seems to have been the basis for the program’s script, which follows his description and interpretation of participants in the BYP and their cultural/historical importance. No scriptwriter is mentioned in the credits. 

     The program follows the careers of three participants in the BYP (Stephen Tennant, Elizabeth Ponsonby and Brenda Dean Paul) and two observers and chroniclers of that movement (Evelyn Waugh and Cecil Beaton). The three examples of BYPs were all from well-established upper-class families. Philip Hoare provides most of the narrative on Stephan Tennant, whose primary talent seems to have been drawing attention to himself as a thing of beauty. Nancy Mitford drew heavily on Tennant for her character Cedric Hampton in Love in a Cold Climate and The Pursuit of Love, and Caroline Blackwood compared him to David Bowie (unfair because Bowie can sing). Taylor provides much of the narrative on Ponsonby (a prime party-giver and goer) and Dean Paul, who like Tennant managed to draw attention to herself but in a more flamboyant manner that attracted not only newspapers but also police. Ponsonby is said to have been the model for Agatha Runcible in Vile Bodies. All of these BYP are seen as precursors of today’s celebrities, famous for being famous, and cleverly manipulating the media to promote themselves. 

     Waugh and Beaton despised each other in childhood and would probably resent their linkage. They were both middle-class boys who worked their ways into the fringes of the BYP. They were not leaders or participants but observers. Each used what he observed to produce records of the BYP which remain among the most valuable cultural legacies of the movement. Philip Hoare is shown browsing the photo archives left by Beaton and housed for some unexplained reason at Sotheby’s. He selects and explicates numerous photographs, many of which also appeared in Taylor’s book. Waugh’s first two novels, particularly Vile Bodies, are cited as primary sources for insights into the life of the BYP. Stephen Fry’s 2003 film Bright Young Things, based on Vile Bodies, is mined for clips illustrating parties, language and attitudes of the BYP. There are also quotes from the book itself, one read by BYP Diana Mosley. 

     The BYP movement is said to have ended in 1931 as a result of the Red and White Ball. The BYP had lost control of the press, which became highly critical of the continuing parties, described as “imbecile extravagances.” These took place while others went on hunger marches. The BYP became boring when attention shifted to political and economic issues of the 1930s, away from self-absorbed children of the aristocracy. Tennant, Ponsonby and Dean Paul all came to sad ends. Hoare describes visiting Tennant in 1986 while researching his biography. Once he stopped attracting attention, Tennant lived in virtual seclusion, dying unknown in 1988. Ponsonby tried to continue partying to the end. Taylor is filmed going through archives of Ponsonby's upper-class family home (still apparently occupied by her relatives), and he recounts her death in 1941, a result of alcoholism. Dean Paul became a drug addict for the thrill of it in the 1920s but never managed to shake it off, and she also died in obscurity. “Beautiful and Damned” gives Waugh credit for having predicted the fate of the BYP, though the program could have mentioned his portrayal of the BYP as middle-aged burnouts in later fiction. 

     Waugh and Beaton, both adept at self-promotion, went on to success in their chosen fields. Rather than squander their talents in the relentless quest for press coverage, they focused on what they did best and promoted themselves through their works. Both left diaries dealing with the BYP, good reading even today. Waugh is said to have abandoned the BYP after he published VB in 1930, when he embarked upon more selective social climbing among the upper classes who had avoided excess and publicity. Beaton followed the same pattern of social climbing, with perhaps even greater success. Waugh left novels that continue to be read and dramatized, and he is often cited as one of the greatest prose stylists of the English language in the twentieth century. Beaton became one of the most skillful and innovative photographers and designers of the century, and his photos still have immediacy and originality that has not dated. 

     “Beautiful and Damned” is worth watching, though anyone familiar with the period is unlikely to learn much. Beaton’s photographs and quotations from literature are carefully woven into the narrative. The talking heads are all well versed in the matters under consideration, and they are articulate enough to hold the viewer’s attention over sixty minutes. 

Period Piece
Last Dance with Valentino, by Daisy Waugh. London: HarperCollins, 2011. £12.99. Reviewed by Robert Murray Davis, University of Oklahoma.

     After ventures into several genres, notably chick-lit fiction, Daisy Waugh says, “I was bored of it…. It was time to move forward. Actually, I think people have got bored with reading it. There comes a point where your thinking is a bit more developed” (http://www.darlingtonandstocktontimes.co.uk/leisure/8877632.A_Daisy_by_any_other_name_would_still_write/).

     One development, apparently, was to abandon the humor praised in blurbs for earlier novels. Last Dance with Valentino tells the story of the heated and mostly frustrated romance of Lola Nightingale, née Jennifer Doyle, with obscure dancer Rudolfo Gugliemi. They are separated for ten years while he becomes Rudolph Valentino and she endures various misfortunes before being reunited with him ten days before his death.

     The story, entirely in the first person, is framed within those ten days. Jennifer/Lola not only reacts to events of 1926 but also narrates the back-story in a different typeface. That story reads rather as if Jane Eyre had been supplanted as narrator by Catherine in the film Jules and Jim, accurately described by one viewer as “a train wreck.” Several times the narrator is called, not without some justice, a “crazy bitch.”

     Through all of this, in 1926 and from 1916 on, Jennifer/Lola encounters various supporters—colleagues from her time in service who reappear opportunely, striking twins who move up the Hollywood ladder from extras to starlets, at least, and a fairy godmother in Frances Marion, a real Hollywood figure, who encourages her scriptwriting and brings her back into contact with Rudy through a script based on his early days in the USA. There are also formidable obstacles: an awful mistress of the house in which the narrator serves as governess, mis-sent or concealed letters, an abusive drug-dealing boyfriend in Hollywood by whom she is impregnated (not clear whether there is a miscarriage or an abortion), a decent man who leaves her when she recognizes Rudy in The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse and gives loud and immediate vent to her passion for him.

     That last phrase is a cliché, but it seems appropriate for much of the narrator’s style. She trembles, bursts into speech wildly inappropriate for ordinary social situations, and swoons—well, collapses. Some of the language comes not from chick-lit but from an older type of romance novel, in which emotions run high.

     Last Dance is also, obviously, an historical novel, with obligatory cameos from figures like Theda Bara, Anita Loos, Mary Pickford, and Valentino’s second wife, Natacha Rambova (née Winifred Shaughnessy from Salt Lake City), who is compared to the cold-hearted murderess for whom Jennifer worked and is equally disliked by Lola and, in the “Author’s Notes,” by Daisy Waugh. (In fact, Rambova had an interesting career as costume and set designer—see her work in the astonishing, over-the-top Salome if possible—and later as an amateur Egyptologist.)

     Of course, Valentino is the central figure, but he is seen through a mist of the narrator’s passion and thwarted desire. His power of attraction is for the most part presented insistently rather than dramatically. Jennifer/Lola takes comfort even after his death, calling herself “the luckiest woman alive.”

     In the Postscript, a memo from one studio executive to another accompanying her papers preserved by her granddaughter (an Oscar-winning performer who resembles Valentino), Lola is praised as a major scriptwriter. In fact, Lola’s passion for writing holds her and ultimately the novel together. A few days before Valentino’s death, she experiences a flash about the weakness of a script: “why should [the hero] rescue the girl from her hopeless, inert little life when the silly girl can’t even be bothered to rescue herself?” The solution is that “she must first become her own saviour and transform herself.” But for Lola that transformation occurs off-screen, since the reader learns of it only in the Postscript.

     On the whole, Last Dance with Valentino can probably best be seen as a transitional work. Daisy Waugh has expanded her range in subject matter and perhaps in style. It will be interesting to see what she does to explore and develop this new territory.

Utopian Hopes
Intermodernism: Literary Culture in Mid-Twentieth-Century Britain, ed. Kristin Bluemel. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2009 (paperback, 2011). 254 pp. $95.00 hardcover, $35.00 paperback. Reviewed by Laura Mooneyham White, University of Nebraska.

     The idea of “intermodernism” as a name for the period including the years between the two world wars, the second world war itself, and the years of its immediate aftermath, that is, roughly 1920-1950, has burbled about since at least 2004, when Kristin Bluemel, editor of the collection of essays under consideration, published George Orwell and the Radical Eccentrics: Intermodernism in Literary London (Palgrave). Seconded by Nick Hubble in two essays (one on Ford Madox Ford in 2008, the other on Orwell and William Empson in 2009) which also hailed “intermodernism” as a literary period, Bluemel now attempts to solidify these gains for her term in an edited volume with an introduction that shares its rhetoric and scope of mission with those of many (plain old) modernist manifestos. As its first sentence pronounces, “[t]his collection of critical essays on intermodernism challenges readers to accept a new term, new critical category and new literary history for twentieth-century British literary culture” (1). Can we rise to the challenge? Ought we to do so? 

     “Intermodernism” arises out of the recent expansion of modernist studies, as Bluemel notes early on: “the apparent colonisation of virtually all areas of study of twentieth-century literary cultural activity by the ‘New Modernism Studies’ has ensured that whatever is not modernism will function as modernism’s other” (2). With the modesty the introduction evinces throughout, Bluemel continues, “The modernism/intermodernism binary, which I did not invent but rather discovered, ready and waiting for me, functions as a call to deconstruction” (2). We are taken into deep waters quickly with her explanation of her coinage: “‘Inter-’ means ‘between’ so a modernism that is between should be regarded as something more than a simple binary term” (2). The logical problem is that “inter-” means between one thing and another, and Bluemel does not want particularly to argue that the works of intermodernist authors led directly to the full expressivist displays we find in post-modernist texts. Rather, the idea of intermodernism is itself a “postmodern invention,” she claims, made possible only through “a contemporary attention to popular culture, legitimized through institutionalization of cultural studies” (9). The tools of postmodern inquiry thus bring to light the particular markers of intermodernism as Bluemel constructs it: first, it is chiefly populated by working-class and middle-class authors and subjects; second, its figures often hold radical or at least eccentric political views; and third, its works were published through mass or middlebrow venues more often than in elite bastions. Bluemel notes that the high/low distinction of literary authors, markets, and readers is not the only binary intermodernism helps to undo: “it has the potential to be the concept or space that inserts itself between modernism and its many structuring oppositions, reshaping the ways we think about relations between elite and common, experimental and popular, urban and rural, masculine and feminine, abstract and realistic, colonial and colonized” (3). So many binaries, so little time. Bluemel concludes this view of the many blessings intermodernism may confer with a simple hope: “Within an institutional context, this is one of the good things that it could make happen in the world” (3). To make sense, the sentence requires that one pay little attention to its introductory phrase.

Late modernism certainly poses interpretive problems for literary history. But need the solution be, as here, proposed as a full ideology? While acknowledging and even celebrating the fact that intermodernism as a term meant nothing to the writers who lived in the thirties and forties, Bluemel argues that its value comes from its suggestions for a “reorganization of values”: “this means that intermodernism, like any other movement category such as romanticism or modernism or Futurism, is blatantly, self-consciously, ideological” (5). And its ideological commitments, we infer, are to mass observation, the documentary impulse, the lived experience of ordinary work, a refusal to withdraw, especially to withdraw above, and a general sympathy with the ideas of the left and the working classes. 

     Since the whole impulse behind this enterprise of naming and exploring the works of this period is putatively to enlarge boundaries, to undo limiting ideas of what can or cannot be taken seriously within literary culture, the presence of Evelyn Waugh poses just one troubling counter-example. The volume usefully includes an appendix of brief autobiographies entitled “Who Are the Intermodernists?” Bluemel explains that the list does not include the more famous members of the Auden Generation (Auden himself is absent, for instance), but does run to “figures of Auden’s generation who are not typically recognized as such and have not attracted significant treatment from scholars, or those whose chosen literary styles, institutional and personal commitments and networks, correspond more closely to the intermodernism described in this book” (208).  Herein lies the chief problem with “intermodernism”—is it a period or an ideology, and if the latter, to what degree do the usual constrictions of ideological categories hamper our understanding? The appendix lists figures well out of sympathy with left-leaning concerns about war, or documentary montages of working-class experience. Angela Thirkell is there (she is admittedly middlebrow, but all her works more than sympathize with county interests). Waugh is there as well, and perhaps his work as a journalist and travel writer and his experiments with documentary reportage in his fiction ally him with the intermodernism “described in this book.” The appendix is properly generous and capacious—for instance, it includes Noël Coward. 

     Bluemel is aware of the problems her new category creates, for her introduction concludes with a discussion of two “quintessential intermodernists,” Orwell and Richard Hillary (RAF fighter pilot and author of The Last Enemy [1942]). There is much in both Orwell and Hillary to fit with the general outlines of intermodernism as Bluemel presents them, but here she focuses on their shared interest in the idea of “the last man”; in fact, she argues that “the status Orwell and Hillary achieved even before their deaths suggests the mythical power of the image of the last man, an image that guided their interpretations of their own lives and won them astonishingly huge readerships” (10). But the figure of the last man is indeed mythic and iconic, not demotic, and the theme of the end of civilization was not the theme of working-class or middle-class leftists, who were far more interested in re-making civilization than calling it off altogether. A (very) partial proof of the conservative underpinnings of the idea of the last man lies in its evident appeal to Waugh, for Sebastian Ryder and Guy Crouchback are certainly figurations of this type.

     The whole of the collection is less confusing than Bluemel’s introduction. We are directed to read the essays along the axes of work, community, war, and documents (there are three or so essays for each category), and to record the synthetic possibilities among them. It is churlish to expect too much continuity from an edited volume, but with the exception of an otherwise fine essay on the medieval imagination of T. H. White and Sylvia Townsend Warner (by Janet Montefiore), the selections do serve Bluemel’s intermodernist imperative. Elizabeth Maslen explores Storm Jameson’s warnings about the possibility European fascism could invade the English provinces, and Phyllis Lassner is on similar ground in finding clear political warnings in the detective spy fiction of Margery Allingham and Helen MacInnes. John Fordham and Faye Hammill explore the intricate relations between setting and class in the works of Harold Heslop and Stella Gibbons, respectively. (Hammill falls prey, however, to the problem of intermodernism’s pre-determined character by consistently claiming that Gibbons balanced progressive and conservative views, whereas any serious reader of Gibbons knows she was always strongly on the side of tradition--cultural, political, and religious). Throughout the volume, Waugh is mentioned tangentially a few times, but one should expect this, given his mismatch with intermodernism’s character. Nonetheless, Lisa Colletta’s essay on J. B. Priestley’s travel writing may well be of interest to those who would like to draw contrasts with Waugh’s, especially as Priestley’s concerns were often more in line with those of Charles Madge and the Mass Observation Movement. 

     The two most successful essays deal with subjects who fit Bluemel’s strictures in particularly suggestive ways. Debra Rae Cohen’s treatment of Rebecca West shows that Cohen is keenly aware of the problems with literary historiography as ideology, but she nonetheless nimbly assesses West as an evocative intermodernist subject. West is perhaps the model intermodernist—with generally leftist sympathies, she wrote for middlebrow audiences, manipulating genre and form for political and documentary purposes. As Cohen notes about West’s travel writing, “Like Auden and MacNeice’s pastiche in Letters from Iceland, but with far less playful aim, West’s display of generic mash-up in Black Lamb [and Grey Falcon] is strategic—clearly stylized, purposive, and overt” (152). Interpreters of intermodernism would be well advised to explore complexity as ably as Cohen does; speaking of West’s propagandistic treatment of Nuremberg, she notes: “it’s exactly this quality of tension with West’s own writing, the way the fervency of her judgements, the slash of her condemnations, often emerge in strained relation to their complexly crafted palimpsestic surroundings, that makes her writing so difficult to describe and leads so often to its miscategorisation; if one responds only to the surface barrage one is likely to miss the sappers, tunneling beneath” (157).

     The other particularly interesting essay comes from Nick Hubble, the co-founder, if there is one, of intermodernism. (He is helping to institutionalize the term as the leading light of the May 2011 “Inaugural London Intermodernism Seminar” at Brunel University [West London] at which one may hear papers on figures such as Empson, Christopher Isherwood, Elizabeth Bowen, and [more oddly] Malcolm Lowry and Zora Neale Hurston). Relying in large part upon the social theorist Slavoj Žižek who holds that dominant cultural ideologies wholly structure the individual’s sense of reality, Hubble explores the relationship between Madge’s Mass Observation Project and Empson’s popular poetry, especially Empson’s famous idea that proletarian literature operates by the “trick of thought” common to the pastoral tradition. Thus the reader of proletarian literature is guided to construct a double view of himself as both superior and inferior to others, an aesthetic technique in the complex service of political ends that is common to the intermodernism Hubble and Bluemel put forward more generally. The end of the essay seems to voice the political and cultural hopes of the intermodernist project, especially as a self-described ideological project of the twenty-first century: “It is this fundamental core of non-identity … which underwrites the intermodern capacity to satisfy apparently opposed impulses simultaneously and thereby hold open the promise of full human agency—by showing, variously, how being a Mass-Observer can lead to the pleasure of being observed by the mass; how everyday routine can become the possibility of performative transformation; and how the limits of social class can leave infinite space in which to live freely” (186). Among Waugh’s works, Decline and Fall perhaps most fully explodes the utopian hopes expressed in this passage, but readers of Waugh may have their own nominees.

A Wedding Present
Andrew Brown, a collector in the United Kingdom, has acquired copy no. 2 of the limited edition of Love Among the Ruins (1953). Evelyn Waugh inscribed it to "Tina" in January 1963. "Tina" was Lady Christina McDonnell, daughter of Randal ("Ran"), 8th Earl of Antrim. She married Joseph Hoare of the banking family on 23 January 1963. The book is larger than the standard first edition and housed in a dark-green Morocco-leather slipcase, finished with original Queen Elizabeth II 2-1/2-pence postage stamps, apparently in honor of her coronation in 1953. The book has a similar finish. It is one of fifty copies of the deluxe edition printed on hand-made paper and distributed to friends of Evelyn Waugh.

Limited Editions
A list of limited editions of fiction by Evelyn Waugh is available at Bookseller World.

New Penguin Edition of Evelyn Waugh
Penguin Books is bringing out a new edition of Evelyn Waugh's works. Eight titles will be published on 26 May 2011, with eight more published on 4 August 2011. The titles appear below.

26 May 2011	4 August 2011
Rossetti	Edmund Campion
Decline and Fall	Waugh in Abysssinia
Labels	Scoop
Vile Bodies	Mr Loveday's Little Outing & Other Early Stories
Remote People	Robbery Under Law
Black Mischief	Put Out More Flags
Ninety-Two Days	Brideshead Revisited
A Handful of Dust	When the Going Was Good

Two Photographs and a Letter
Two photographs of Evelyn Waugh and one of his unpublished letters were offered for sale as part of the Roy Davids Collection at Bonhams in London on 29 March 2011. Details are available at http://www.bonhams.com/eur/sale/19386/. Search for lots 245-247. The first photo, by Mark Gerson, and the letter sold for £840 each.

Another Sale
According to an article in The Telegraph on 16 February 2011, "a rare example of 19th-century, painted Gothic revival furniture that was once owned by John Betjeman and Evelyn Waugh has been sold by the Waugh family for £850,000. The Zodiac Settle, or bench, was designed by the cultish, opium-smoking architect William Burges in 1865." Betjeman acquired the settle in 1961 and gave it to Waugh. A high-resolution photograph of the settle is available at http://tinyurl.com/4rjmdx3.

Sale of Evill/Frost Collection
On 15 June 2011, Sotheby's London will launch the sale of the "greatest collection of 20th-Century British Art ever to come to the market." The Evill/Frost Collection was assembled by Evelyn Waugh's solicitor, Wilfred Evill, between 1925 and 1960 and then maintained by Honor Frost. The collection includes a number of paintings by Stanely Spencer, R.A. (1891-1959), whom Waugh admired (see Diaries 743 and Letters 541). For details of the collection, please visit http://www.artdaily.org/index.asp?int_sec=2&int_new=45526

Audio Recordings of Waugh Novels
Unabridged readings of ten of Evelyn Waugh's novels are available on CDs and as downloads. Recordings range from four hours, forty-six minutes (Decline and Fall) to eleven hours, thirty-two minutes (Brideshead Revisited), and the price of each recording is about £20. For details, please visit AudioGo. 

Googling "Evelyn Waugh"
The Google Books NGram Viewer indicates how often a given phrase occurs in a corpus of books over a number of years.  "Evelyn Waugh" seems to have peaked in English in the early 1980s. In the USA, the peak came in the late 1970s; since then, the number of references has gradually dropped back to the level of the mid 1960s. In the UK, the peak came in the late 1980s, followed by a steeper drop back to the level of the mid 1960s. The NGram Viewer is available at http://ngrams.googlelabs.com

Evelyn Waugh's Birthday
True Knowledge, the "internet answer engine," identifies eleven writers who share the same birthday as Evelyn Waugh (Oct. 28th). They include Bill Gates and Auguste Escoffier. For the rest, please visit
http://www.trueknowledge.com/q/which_writers_share_a_birthday_with_evelyn_waugh

The Fraught Matter of Pronunciation
A correspondent in the Netherlands discovered the following links, which provide guidance in pronouncing Evelyn Waugh's name: http://www.oxfordadvancedlearnersdictionary.com/dictionary/evelyn-waugh
The following is a podcast, with the matter of pronunciation raised at the end:
http://bh101.wordpress.com/2008/07/28/evelyn-waugh/

The Waugh Dynasty
As part of a series on "Great dynasties of the world," The Guardian published an article on the Waughs on 5 February 2011. The article, by Ian Sansom, focuses mainly on Evelyn Waugh.

Better and Better
In "The best boring books," an entry in "Books Blog" for the Guardian on 4 January 2011, Robert McCrum wrote that "The Great War is simply just richer from a literary point of view. Owen, Sassoon, Rosenberg, Graves: the rollcall from France trumps anything the 1940s can produce, with the possible exception of Evelyn Waugh. The arrival of 2011 permits me to say that his Sword of Honour trilogy grows in stature with every passing decade." (Waugh did not make the list of the best boring books.)

Bang Right (Again)
In The Atlantic and its Enemies: A Personal History of the Cold War (London: Allen Lane, 2010), Norman Stone argues that Evelyn Waugh's Sword of Honour is the "best guide to the grimness and red tape of postwar Britain." The quotation is from a review by David Priestland in History Today 60.6 (June 2010): 65.  

The Best Descriptions of Seasickness
In "Ten of the best: cases of seasickness," published in the Guardian on 12 February 2011, John Mullan included the scene on the liner in Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh.

The Best Quest Narratives
In "Robert Irwin's top 10 quest narratives," published in the Guardian on 21 April 2011, the author listed Brideshead Revisited as one of the best "literary journeys toward enlightenment."

Another Homage?
In "Brideshead Redecorated,"a review of Naomi Alderman's second novel, Philip Womack claims that The Lessons has "strong echoes of Evelyn Waugh's classic." See the Financial Times, 24 April 2010: 18.

No Idle Threat
In an interview, Major John Majendie, who served in the Commandos during the Second World War, claims that Evelyn Waugh threatened to portray his fellow soldiers in his next book. Major Majendie won the Times/Sternberg Active Life Award. The interview is available on YouTube. 

The Best Journalists in Literature
In "Ten of the best: journalists in literature," published in the Guardian on 9 April 2011, John Mullan included William Boot from Scoop.

Scoop among the Best Books on Journalism
In an interview in The Browser: Writing Worth Reading, Robert Cottrell, former foreign correspondent, named Evelyn Waugh's Scoop as one of the best books on journalism.

Scoop and Somalia
Scoop has been invoked to explain the situation in Somalia. In "What I Learned from the Somali Pirates," published in the Spectator in December 2008, Aidan Hartley claimed that the "ceaseless piracy off Somalia's shores . . . is giving rise to a modern, real-life version of the novel Scoop. Somalia today is a bit like Laku," the nonexistent place reported to be significant. "Editors are begging for stories about the pirates' latest catch," but "if they were honest," the "press corps would  simply confess 'I don't know'. There are too many laptop bombardiers writing acres of colour and analysis from the safety of London and Nairobi." The article has been republished as "The International Community Cannot Ignore Piracy in Somalia" in At Issue: Piracy on the High Seas, ed. Noah Berlatsky (Detroit: Greenhaven, 2010), a book aimed at young adults.  

Waugh and the African Dictator
In "Mad dog of the Middle East," a story in The Australian for 23 February 2011, Greg Sheridan noted that Muammar Gaddafi is "a buffoon, a preening, ludicrous, Evelyn Waugh caricature of an African dictator." Incidentally, Donald Macintyre of The Independent compared living in Tripoli to a Graham Greene novel.

The First Member of an African Jazz Club?
According to "Jazz Legend Randy Weston at Artists Collective Saturday," an article by Owen McNally published in the Hartford Courant on 5 May 2011, Weston was the "longtime proprietor of the internationally famous jazz club African Rhythms in Tangier, Morocco's northernmost port," and the "very first patrons to sign up in the 1960s were British novelist Evelyn Waugh ('Brideshead Revisited') and his older brother, novelist Alec Waugh ('Island in the Sun')." The article is available here. Anyone who has more information about this surprising connection is encouraged to contact the editor, jwilson3@lhup.edu.

The Critical Heritage
Evelyn Waugh: The Critical Heritage, edited by Martin Stannard, can be downloaded for free from Wiredshelf.com.

New Books on Evelyn Waugh
Duncan McLaren's Evelyn!: Rhapsody for an Obsessive Love will be published by Beautiful Books in London in September 2011.

A Handful of Mischief: New Essays on Evelyn Waugh, coedited by Donat Gallagher, Ann Pasternak Slater, and John Howard Wilson, has been published by Fairleigh Dickinson University Press.  These essays were originally presented at the Evelyn Waugh Centenary Conference in Oxford in 2003.

Six Scholarly Essays
Six substantial scholarly essays on Evelyn Waugh have been published in the last year.

Curtin, Mary Elizabeth. "'Ghastly Good Taste': The Interior Decorator and the Ethics of Design in Evelyn Waugh and Elizabeth Bowen." Home Cultures 7.1 (2010): 5-23.

DeCoste, Damon Marcel. "Temptations of the Craftsman in Middle Age: Diabolical Art and Christian Vocation in The Ordeal of Gilbert Pinfold." Renascence 63.3 (Spring 2011): 189-209.

Gallagher, Donat. "Evelyn Waugh's Edmund Campion and 'Lady Southwell's Letter.'" Connotations 20.1 (2010/2011): 80-107.

MacLeod, Lewis. "'They Just Won't Do, You Know': Postcolonial Discourse and Evelyn Waugh's Sword of Honour." LIT: Literature Interpretation Theory 21.2 (2010): 61-80.

In a note, Professor MacLeod observes that

Evelyn Waugh Newsletter and Studies clearly testifies to the author's status and it continues to publish interesting articles on Waugh's work, yet the problem (as I see it) is that the gulf between Waugh's conservative reputation and contemporary critical practice is so wide that the newsletter often needs to act as a kind of 'private space' for arguments (and modes of argumentation) that are not obviously consistent with dominant discursive norms. Under such conditions 'Waugh criticism' and 'Waugh enthusiasm' are easily conflated, and the former may be dismissed as the latter on the grounds that Waugh's politics (as opposed to his novels) ought to have no place in a pluralist, contemporary academy.

Milthorpe, Naomi. "'Death is at the Elbow': The Loved One and Love Among the Ruins." Renascence 62.3 (Spring 2010): 201-17.

Wilson, John Howard. "Brideshead Revisited in Nineteen Eighty-Four: Evelyn Waugh's Influence on George Orwell." Papers in Language & Literature 47.1 (Winter 2011): 3-25.

The End of Llanabba?
According to "Builder bids to continue Plas Dulas demolition," an article by Darren Devine posted on Wales Online on 3 February 2011, an outbuilding at the school where Evelyn Waugh taught in the 1920s has been "part-bulldozed," and the builder wants demolish the rest of the "dilapidated folly" to make room for fifteen "detached properties." Conservationists described the demolition as a "desecration" of Welsh heritage. Plas Dulas, known as Arnold House in Waugh's time and Llanabba in Decline and Fall, was once owned by Oxford scientist Richard Dawkins, who cites Waugh (inappropriately) in The God Delusion (2006). See "Waugh and the Atheist," EWNS 40.2 (Autumn 2009).

Hungarian Waugh?
A letter in the Times Literary Supplement for 5 January 2011 compares Evelyn Waugh with the Hungarian writer Antal Szerb (1901-1945). Associate Editor Robert Murray Davis elicited the following comments from a Hungarian expert in British literature:

Szerb's English was excellent. The Pendragon Legend (1934) uses, with much fun and verve, some of the conventions of the 1920s British satirical or comic novel as exemplified in the early Huxley or, if you like, Waugh, though grounds for further comparison end here. His other novel that has been making the rounds in a recent English translation, Journey by Moonlight (1937), is even more un-Waugh-like.

Black Mischief and A Handful of Dust were published in Hungarian translation in 1942 and 1935, respectively (in reverse of their original publication). The next Waugh novel translated was Brideshead Revisited in 1948, three years after Szerb's death. Szerb may have read some of Waugh's novels (in fact, he read everything), and he didn't need translations. He doesn't seem to have written anything about Waugh.

Evelyn Waugh in the Gay News
In a letter from Tangier to John Montgomery dated 15 January 1974, Alec Waugh wrote: "I missed your piece about Evelyn in the Gay News. That is one of the disadvantages of living abroad. I don't see many magazines and there's no TV. I never saw the A. G. Macdonald cricket match. I wonder when Christopher Sykes will get down to the biography of E.W. He is very dilatory. I won't say that he is in danger of missing the bus, but he has been preceded." If anyone can find a copy of the article in the Gay News, please contact the editor, jwilson3@lhup.edu.  

Evelyn Waugh's "Beau Brummells"
On 5 March 2011, a website called styleforum posted a copy of Evelyn Waugh's article "Beau Brummells on £60 a Year," originally published in the Daily Express on 13 February 1929.

Images of Evelyn Waugh
Hundreds of photographs of Evelyn Waugh and his works are available at http://connect.in.com/evelyn-waugh/images.html

Sketch of Evelyn Waugh
A sketch of Evelyn Waugh can be viewed at http://www.colinspencer.org/galleries/drawings/slides/Evelyn%20Waugh%204%20%28pen%20&%20ink,%201959%29.html

Evelyn Waugh Greeting Cards
A company called Encore Editions offers a photograph of Evelyn Waugh by Carl Van Vechten in various formats, including greeting cards and postcards. For more information, please visit http://www.encore-editions.com/portrait-of-evelyn-waugh

Another Fan
In "They're Reading," an article in The Times on 27 March 2010, English comedienne, actress, and writer Laura Solon said that her favorite author is Evelyn Waugh.

John Fothergill and the Spread Eagle Hotel
On his blog, An Open Book, on 14 December 2010, Brooks Peters published "Architect of the Moon," an article about John Fothergill, proprietor of the Spread Eagle Hotel at Thame, one of Evelyn Waugh's haunts in the 1920s. The Spread Eagle inspired the hotel where Anthony Blanche takes Charles Ryder to dinner in Brideshead Revisited. The article is available at http://www.brookspeters.com/2010/12/architect-of-the-moon/

Evelyn Waugh Conference
The third Evelyn Waugh Conference will be held at Downside School and Abbey in Somerset, England, 16-19 August 2011. To register, contact John Wilson, jwilson3@lhup.edu.  To propose a paper, contact J. V. Long, jlong@pdx.edu.

Anthony Powell Conference
The Sixth Biennial Anthony Powell Conference will be held at the Naval & Military Club, 4 St James's Square, London, 2-4 September 2011. The theme is "Anthony Powell's Literary London." To inquire or register, please contact the Conference Office, Anthony Powell Society, 76 Ennismore Avenue, Greenford, Middlesex, UB6 0JW, England.  Phone: +44 (0)20 8864 4095. Fax: +44 (0)20 8020 1483. E-mail: conference@anthonypowell.org

Evelyn Waugh Society
The Evelyn Waugh Society has 105 members.  To join, please visit http://evelynwaughsociety.org/. The Evelyn Waugh Discussion List has 85 members. To join, please visit http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Evelyn_Waugh. 

Evelyn Waugh Undergraduate Essay Contest
Entries in the Seventh Annual Evelyn Waugh Undergraduate Essay Contest should be submitted to Dr. John H. Wilson, Department of English, Lock Haven University, Lock Haven PA 17745, USA, or jwilson3@lhup.edu, by 31 December 2011. 

Evelyn Waugh Lecture at Lancing
The Evelyn Waugh Lecture and Annual Foundation Dinner took place at Lancing College on 21 March 2011. The lecturer was playwright, screenwriter, and film director Christopher Hampton. Tom Waugh unveiled a bust of his grandfather, to be placed in the Sanderson Room, the old library, where Waugh spent much of his time at Lancing.

Inspired by Waugh?
The Urban Dictionary defines "Cruttwell" as "someone who is very faggish and looks like Elmo. They often pretend to be emo and can't play guitar for shit." Example: "Look at that guy, he's so like Cruttwell." The dictionary sells mugs, t-shirts, and magnets displaying "Cruttwell" and its definition.  

Previewing Brideshead
Two-minute previews of each episode of the Brideshead Revisited television series are available at Amazon.com.

Brideshead Revisited at Cambridge
In "Brideshead Regurgitated," an article published in the Cambridge Student on 23 March 2011, Daniel Janes considers whether the "cult of Brideshead among Cantabridgians" is "harmless fun" or perhaps the sign of a "regressive social agenda." The article focuses on the television series rather than the novel.

Lost in the Amazon
On 20 April 2011, PBS Television broadcast "Lost in the Amazon," an episode in the series Secrets of the Dead. The episode focused on Col. Percy Fawcett, who disappeared in the Amazon in 1925 and probably contributed to Evelyn Waugh's A Handful of Dust. More information is available at http://www.pbs.org/wnet/secrets/episodes/lost-in-the-amazon/829/

End of Evelyn Waugh Newsletter and Studies, Vol. 42, No. 1

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