Evelyn Waugh

Irish Jesuit Province

Evelyn WaughAuthor(s): Alexander BoyleSource: The Irish Monthly, Vol. 78, No. 920 (Feb., 1950), pp. 75-81Published by: Irish Jesuit ProvinceStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20516122 .

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CONTEMPORARY NOVELISTS?IV.

EVELYN WAUGH By ALEXANDER BOYLE

THE classification of writers is apt to be a dangerous business.

There are, however, some of whom we can say that they tell

us too much, just as there are others who, we feel, tell us too

little about themselves and what they think of life. If Thomas Wolfe

is an obvious example of the former, among the more reticent we

must place the name of Evelyn Waugh.

Although in his novels we find little or no direct statement of his

opinions, it is possible to deduce them from a consideration of the

characters and their actions. (This is apart altogether from his

religious convictions; for he is a convert to Catholicism and, as such, must share with other Catholics in a well-defined attitude to the

problems of conduct.) These characters are not selected merely at

random from any sphere of life, now a duke, so to speak, and now

a dustman. In a series of novels written at intervals over the last

twenty years, Waugh has occupied himself exclusively with the

English leisured class. The term is, perhaps, not very satisfactory, but, then, the same can be said about so many other epithets applied to-day to a class which we all unmistakably recognize but define

only with difficulty. It is called by various names. It is the Mayfair Set, but not all of its members live in Mayfair. It is the aristocracy, but has many of the traits of the bourgeoisie. It is the Idle Rich, but many of its members have little in the way of worldly goods.

One thing, however, they all have at least for the first, formative years of their lives, the habit of leisure; leisure to read, think and talk, to make up their minds, even in a limited degree, about their attitude to life, an attitude curiously similar in even the most divergent characters and one that is consistently portrayed in some seven or

eight novels by Evelyn Waugh. Of course, the mere fact that he seldom goes outside of this class

for the material of his stories is enough to damn him in many eyes. To the Left be is anathema, and even an otherwise competent critic like D. S. Savage is reduced to mere incoherence and rage in dealing

75



IRISH MONTHLY

with his work. It is well known that Waugh is merciless in his por

trayals of the members of the leisured class. Savage sinks to such a

level of critical fatuity as actually to impute to Waugh himself the

characteristics of some of the types he depicts. One is reminded of

the astonishing criticism of Andr? Malraux' Man*s Fate by Granville

Hicks, with Edmund Wilson the leading Left critic in America before

the last war. There were not, he complained, enough proletarians in it.

What such criticism seems to miss is that whether one deals with

the leisured class or what are often referred to as the toiling masses,

one is still dealing with human nature, the staple subject of the

novel in its many variations. In any case, Waugh had little choice.

These were the only people he knew at first hand. A product of

public school and Oxford, he moved among just that circle which he

was later to describe in his books. It is evident that his eye, if a

trifle malicious, is also a sharp one. It is doubtful if he would have

described navvies or dockers with the same skill or gusto. Indeed, it would appear that if the Left critics knew their job,

they would welcome his brilliant satires with open arms. For there

can be little doubt that if anyone emerges with credit from a novel

by Waugh it is not the members of the leisured class. What Graham

Greene has done for the lower social stratum Waugh has done for

the upper. Waugh, no less than Greene, makes it plain that he views

his characters with the eye of the naturalist. They are animals,

savage, unscrupulous and selfish: or they are unscrupulous, selfish

and weak. There are those who prey and those who are preyed upon. For both writers life is a jungle.

The difference, however, in the milieu which each depicts leads

to an important difference in treatment. There is a spontaneous humour of the poorer classes which Dickens, for example, for all his preoccupation with the horror of life, could faithfully portray. Similarly there is a type of educated humour, narrower and perhaps more pungent, of which Waugh is an acknowledged master. There is no humour in Greene, due perhaps, among other reasons, to this, that he is not a member of the class about which he so often writes

?the small tradesman, the office clerk, the typist, and the petty thief. He writes about these from the outside and achieves his effects by the

intensity of his vision. Waugh's vision is narrower, but, like Dickens, he is describing his own class. The sureness of touch which results

76



EVELYN WA??H

from this enables him to use not merely as an ornament but as an

integral part of his literary method a humour dry and astringent, at times macabre to the point of the grotesque, that is the very essence of wit.

This humour, polished and urbane on the surface, is the sugar

coating on the pill. And what a bitter pill it is! There is hardly a character in these novels who is not unsympathetic to the last

degree. All are selfish, but in such a natural, well-bred way that

one is shocked to discover how despicable in reality are the char

acters which have amused us so much. They are mostly either fools

or knaves. The latter prey on the former in a good-humoured, gentle

manly sort of way, but with all the ruthless efficiency of a Chicago

gangster. When Basil Seal is hard-pressed for money, which is almost

always, he allows nothing to stand in his way. He billets the fright ful Connollies on an unoffending couple, the close neighbours of his

sister Barbara Lothill. He borrows from Angela Lyne whom he has

taken from her husband. When all else fails, he steals from his

mother. Basil, like Margot Metroland whom we first meet in

Waugh's earliest novel, Decline and Fall, is the beast of prey. He

is the tiger and she the leopardess of the Mayfair jungle. There

are, of course, no lions. But there are the lesser animals, the deer

and the gazelle, the stupid and the frightened, on whom such as

Basil and Margot live. These are distinguished from the carnivora

merely by weakness and folly. When Angela Lyne hears of her

husband Cedric's death, her first thought is that now she can marry Basil. When Prudence Courtenay in Black Mischief meets Basil on his visit to Azania, she drops William Bland without the slightest hesitation. These weaker brethren, if one may call them such, are

divided into two classes.1 There are the tragic fools whose punish ment is swift and severe. Tony Last, in A Handful of Dust, finishes

up in perpetual captivity to a madman. Prudence is eaten by can

nibals. Aim?e Thanatogenos, in The Loved One, commits suicide and is neatly cremated by her lover. Mr. Prendergast, that amiable

dodderer, is murdered in prison by a madman; and Cedric Lyne, the connoisseur of water grottoes, is killed in Norway.

Some of the foolish ones get off lightly. Sir Samson Courtenay, after mismanaging affairs in a fashion surely unparalleled in diplo matic circles, gets away safely by plane. Paul Pennyfeather, the 44

hero "

of Decline and Fall, starts life afresh, where we met him first, 77



IRI9H MONTHLY

as an undergraduate at Scone College. Scott-King, that "dim"

classics master, returns safely to the school breakfast table after

experiences he will not speak about in the underground of the New

Europe. These are, as it were, the exceptions to prove the rule?

the rule that in the jungle, to survive, one must not stray outside of

one's own circle. Inside, one may be as stupid as one pleases. Once

outside, one is at the mercy of the unforeseen.

Nearly all the "

tragic "

fools strayed and suffered for it In other

words, they had in them something that could appreciate a life other

than the one they were living. They committed the most deadly sin of the jungle: they were interested in someone other than them

selves. Mr. Prendergast was quite happy until he began to have

doubts about the existence of God. Being obviously more concerned

about God than about his own comfort, he resigned his post as a

clergyman. Tony Last could not live his ordinary life when his

wife broke up their marriage. Aim?e Thanatogenos could not go back to the slick, commercialized existence from which she had been

lured by the poetry of Dennis Barlow. It did not matter that it was

not his own poetry. It did not even matter that she could have

married Mr. Joyboy and reigned undisputed queen over her world of embalming and burial. She preferred to commit suicide.

All these are people who are not completely engrossed in them

selves. They have the possibility of salvation. It is on them that

the jungle is most merciless. They and their several fates are the

key to Waugh's philosophy. Under the veneer of wit, the charm of the prose style, lies a hard core of ideas, an attitude to the world

without Grace. We are told by the critics to look to Ronald Fir

bank, Saki and the early Huxley as writers who have influenced

Waugh. Whatever may be said for this literary ancestry as an

influence on style, such derivation misses the whole point. Waugh has a Catholic view of life, and it is this that has influenced his

novels more than anything else. The critics have either missed or

ignored it because, apart from Brideshead Revisited (which will be dealt with later), there are practically no references to Catholicism in his novels, and Waugh himself is the most impersonal of writers. But what he seems to be saying is that the people he is describing have the best chance in England of leading the good life. They have

leisure, breeding, knowledge and an inherited tradition possessed

by no other section of the community. If there is any alternative to

7?



EVELYN WAUGH

Christianity, these are the people who could prove its worth. If

there are any good pagans, here we ought to find them. But what

do we find? As we have just seen, those not completely sunk in

their own vices, the characters who try to escape from the deadly

preoccupation with self, are those who appear, at least by worldly

standards, to make the greatest shipwreck of their lives. Those who

avoid apparent disaster exhibit every kind of lust, folly and rapacity

coupled with a ruthless disregard for others. There you have it,

he seems to say. Draw your own conclusions. These are the facts.

Of course, the word "

facts "

is the crucial word. So far no one

has seriously challenged the truth of what Waugh has been saying for so many years. Taking advantage of his lack of personal com

ment and that fondness for the grotesque and the macabre which is,

perhaps, the chief fault in his work, the critics have tended to treat

his novels as mere jeux d'esprit, brilliant and amusing, but no more

than an entertainment for an idle hour. Yet there is a wry touch

about many of their commendations. He obviously disturbs his

readers. Perhaps some day we shall see a champion of Mayfair enter the lists to prove that Waugh is wrong. Until then, whether we agree with it or not, his indictment stands.

There is one novel of Waugh's about which most of what has been said does not seem to apply. This is Brideshead Revisited,

published in 1945. It is a study of an old Catholic territorial family, the Marchmains of Brideshead. The father, Lord Marchmain, has

left his family and lives on the Continent with an actress. The mother is pious, managing and possessive. There are four children; the

charming Sebastian who takes to drink and dies in a monastery in

Morocco; the elder son "

Bridey ", unimaginative and literal, with a

solid and often surprisingly acute grasp of reality; the two daughters, Julia and Cordelia. The story is told in retrospect by Captain

Charles Ryder, who had fallen in love with Julia, who had been

already married outside the Church to Rex Mottram, a stockbroker.

They had arranged to divorce their respective spouses and marry, when the deathbed repentance of Lord Marchmain so affected Julia that she broke with Ryder and returned to the Faith which she had

neglected for so long. Such is the story. Withdraw one or two

"strong" passages and it could serve as the plot for the average Catholic fireside book. An obvious title would be Back to the Fold, or The World Well Lost. A plot more divergent from its caustic

79



IRISH MONTHLY

and somewhat aloof predecessors can scarcely be imagined. Of

course, as was only to be expected, the treatment was excellent.

The narrative style held one by its finished economy of words. The

transitions were smooth, the psychology convincing. The average

reader, settling down to enjoy a typically Waughian expos? of those

outrageous anachronisms, the English "

Old "

Catholics, was rudely

jolted out of his complacency. These people were made by Waugh to live in terms of the modern world and assume a status as personal ities inferior to none of the characters in the contemporary novel.

Certainly, for the first time, Waugh had created solid characters.

Even the style was changed. The brilliant wit (especially in dia

logue) of the early novels had gone, and in its place was to be found

a dignified, rhythmic prose that carried the tragic burden of the plot to its memorable ending.

The critics were mostly unhappy about Brideshead Revisited.

While praising its technical excellence, they did so in hurt tones

which implied that for a frequenter of the best society Waugh had

perpetrated a frightful gaffe in writing a novel about Catholicism,

It was evident that they preferred his former books. People shook

their heads sadly and began to talk about "the early Waugh".

Only one or two, like John Betjeman, thought it the best thing he

had done. Edmund Wilson was furious, and administered what he

evidently intended to be a critical trouncing that might have been more

effective, if it had not conveyed to more than one reader a sugges tion of axes to grind.

Yes, after eighteen years Waugh had come out into the open with

Brideshead Revisited. It is obvious to the narrator, Captain Ryder, that something exists in the lives of the Marchmains more powerful and important than any of them. Whoever has it, even the dull

Bridey and his provincial wife, carries the unmistakable look of success. Whoever lacks it or throws it away, like the brilliant

Sebastian and his4 charming sister, tends to succumb in the battle of life. It is Catholicism, and he hates it: for has it not broken up the Marchmain family and robbed him of the woman he loves? But

it is the key to the riddle of Ufe, and finally he has to accept it and become himself a Catholic.

It is a fine novel, and it is with understanding that we read Waugh's words in Life.

"In my future works there will be two things to make them 80



EVELYN WAUGH

unpopular, a preoccupation with style and the attempt to represent man more fully, which to me means only one thing, man in his rela tion to God."

And yet, even at the time, one was not convinced. One felt that Brideshead Revisited was in the nature of a freak. Like Beethoven's

fugues, it confounded the critics, who certainly never thought it could be done, and done so well, by the satirist of Mayfair. But what guarantee is there that it will be done so well again? Waugh is an artist and will not produce mere propaganda as stich. Fox

many years his hand has been subdued to working in a totally differ ent medium?that of the satirical novel. This can hardly have been an accident. The method must have been natural to him. The other, that of Brideshead Revisited, however successful, is in the last

analysis something foreign to his genius. Certainly, since then, we have had a return to his early manner in Scott-King's Europe and The Loved One. Perhaps he is merely marking time until he is free to devote himself to another Brideshead Revisited. Perhaps, on the other hand, he has realized that there are more ways than one of depicting

" man in his relation to God ", and that among them

the art of satire holds a noble place.

VIATICUM

Tremble not, hands, with age but strain

Eyes with sweat blind, not life-sick tears; Wield arm in might, yield not in pain, Strife burst my heart, not years.

One in my heart I fare,?and I

Weary, to sigh not soul away, Harnessed, no rust nor dust, to die? Food for the road each day.

J.LM. 81



Evelyn Waugh

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