English writer,
regarded by many as the leading satirical novelist of his day.
Among Waugh's most popular novels is BRIDESHEAD REVISITED
(1945), depicting the Oxford world of the late 1920s. He also
wrote travel books and biographies (Dante
Gabriel Rossetti, Edmund Campion, the Jesuit martyr, and
Ronald Knox).
Evelyn Waugh was born in London into a
comfortable middle-class family. His father was Arthur Waugh, a
publisher and literary critic, and brother Alec Waugh, the
popular novelist. He was educated at Lancing College, Sussex,
and at Hertford College, Oxford, where he read modern history
and he spent his time in drinking and in homosexual romance.
After studying in London at Heatherley's Art School and working
for a short time as a schoolmaster at Arnold House in North
Wales, Waugh devoted himself to writing.
"Aim
high" has been my motto,' said Sir Humphrey, 'all through
my life. You probably won't get what you want, but you may get
something; aim low, and you get nothing at all. It's like
throwing a stone at a cat. When I was a kid that used to be
great sport in our yard; I daresay you were throwing cricket-balls
when you were that age, but it's the same thing. If you throw
straight at it, you fall short; aim above, and with luck you
score. Every kid knows that. I'll tell you the story of my
life.' (from Decline and Fall)
Three years before starting his career as a
writer, Waugh attempted suicide. He walked out into the water
and began swimming but decided to return in the middle of a
school of jellyfish. Fuelled with admiration for Pre-Raphaelites,
Waugh wrote his first book, ROSSETTI, which appeared in 1928. In
the same year Waugh established his literary reputation with the
novel DECLINE AND FALL, an episodic story of Paul Pennyfeather
who is expelled from Oxford. Paul is caught in the web of London
Society, but in the end he escapes to a saner and happier life.
Waugh's next novel, VILE BODIES (1930), explored the world of
the Bright Young People. BLACK MISCHIEF (1932) was inspired by
the coronation of the Emperor Haile Selassie,and A HANDFUL OF
DUST was an embittered tragi-comedy of adultery.
'The Welsh,' said the Doctor, ' are the only
nation in the world that has produced no graphic or plastic
art, no architecture, no drama. They just sing,' he said with
disgust, 'sing and blow down wind instruments of plated silver...'
(from Decline and Fall)
After the collapse of his marriage with the
Hon. Evelyn Gardiner, Waugh travelled in Africa and South
America. In 1930 Waugh became Catholic and married Laura Herbert
in 1937; they had six children. He published several travel
books, and worked as a foreign correspondent, notably in
Abessinia to cover the Italian invasion in 1936.
"It was not everybody's nose; many
prefer one with greater body; it was not a nose to appeal to
painters, for it was too small and quite without shape, a mere
dab of putty without apparent bone structure; a nose which
made it impossible for its wearer to be haughty or imposing or
astute." (from 'On Guard' in Mr. Loveday's Little Outing,
1936)
From 1928 to 1937 he travelled widely in
Europa, Near East, Africa, and America. During the 1930s Waugh
moved in aristocratic and fashionable circles. His friends and
acquaintances provided him with materials for his fiction.
During World War II Waugh served in the Royal Maines and the
Royal Horse Guards. In 1944 he joined with his friend Randolp
Churchill in the British military mission to the Yugoslav
Partisans. Disenchantment with the war led to his taking leave
in order to write Brideshead Revisited (1945), which gained a
great popular success but was also criticized because of its
glorifying of the upper class. Subtitled 'The Sacred and Profane
Memories of Captain Charles Ryder' it depicts the story of the
wealthy Roman Catholic Marchmain family as told by Ryder, a
friend of the family. His acquaintance with them begins at
Oxford, where he meets Sebastian Flyte, the younger son of the
Marquis of Marchmain and his sister Julia. Sebastian flees to
North Africa and becomes a menial in an African monastery and
Julia marries a non-Catholic politician. By the end of the
novel, each has shown some sign of acceptance of the faith.
Waugh spent after the war a retired life in
the West of England in Somerset, sporting exaggeratedly in
Edwardian suits and writing his trilogy SWORD OF HONOUR
(1952-1961). Its central character Guy Crouchback enlists in the
Royal Corps of Halberdiers to establish his identity. He loses
his illusions of the army and departs for action in Alexandria.
In the last volume Guy volunteers for service in Italy. He
eventually goes to Yugoslavia as a liaison officer with the
partisans and rescues a group of Jewish refuges. In the Epilogue
Guy has remarried and he is surrounded with a family.
In 1947 Waugh visited Hollywood as a guest
of MGM to discuss a possible film version of Brideshead
Revisited. "We drove for a long time down autobahns and
boulevards full of vacant lots and filling stations and
nondescript buildings and palm trees with a warm hazy light. It
was more like Egypt - the suburbs of Cairo or Alexandria - than
anything in Europe. We arrived at the Bel Air Hotel - very
Egyptian with a hint of Addis Ababa in the smell of the blue
gums." Waugh refused to accept proposed changes and
confessed in his diary that he was relieved when the project
failed. Next year he made fun of the work of morticians in
California in THE LOVED ONE (1948)
THE ORDEAL OF GILBERT PINFOLD (1957) was
based on the author's bout of hallucinations caused by his use
of both alcohol and sleeping potions. The first volume of
Waugh's unfinished autobiography, A LITTLE LEARNING, appeared in
1964, and his letters were published in 1980. Waugh died on
April 10, 1966, in Combe Florey, Somerset. The posthumously
published DIARIES OF EVELYN WAUGH (1976) have been described by
Auberon Waugh as showing "that the world of Evelyn Waugh
did, in fact exist." According to an literary anecdote the
author Nancy Mitford had asked the him how he could behave so
abominably and yet still consider himself a practicing Catholic.
"You have no idea," had Waugh replied, "how much
nastier I would be if I was not a Catholic. Without supernatural
aid I would hardly be a human being."
For further reading: Roman
Holiday by A.A. DeVitis (1956); Evelyn Waugh by M. Bradbury
(1964); The Satiric Art of Evelyn Waugh by J.F. Carens (1966);
My Brother Evelyn, and Other Profiles by A. Waugh (1967);
Evelyn Waugh by D. Lodge (1971); Evelyn Waugh by Christopher
Sykes (1975, rev. 1977); Evelyn Waugh by C.W. Lane (1981); The
Picturesque Prison by J. Heath (1982); Evelyn Waugh by Martin
Stannard (1986); Evelyn Waugh by Selina Hastings (1994) - Note
1: The Finnish writer Anja Kauranen used Brideshead Revisited
as a basis for her novel Arabian Lauri (1997). The structure
of story and characterizations of central persons are similar.
Kauranen set the events in the 1980s Helsinki. She
acknowledged the source when the question of plagiarism arose.
- "Evelyn Waugh concealed - beneath a camp façade of
tweediness, snobbery, literary argumentantiveness, downright
insulting behaviour - a tenacious insecurity, social, sexual,
and aesthetic, which never left him." - From Camp: The
Lie That Tells the Truth by Philip Core (1984) - Note 2:
Evelyn Waugh's father was head of the publishers, Chapman and
Hall, and had contributed to The Yellow Book. - Alec Waugh
(1898-1891), his brother, was also a writer. His works include
The Loom of Youth (1917), Island in the Sun (1956), The Mule
on the Minaret (1965), My Brother Evelyn and Other Profiles
(1967), A Spy in the Family (1970), A Year to Remember (1975).
- Waugh's eldest son Auberon Waugh published his first book,
The Foxglove Saga, in 1960. Among his other works are Country
Topics (1974), The Diaries of Auberon Waugh: A Turbulent
Decade 1976-85 (1985), Another Voices (1986)
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY:
- DECLINE AND FALL, 1928 - film 1965, dir.
bu John Krish
- VILE BODIES, 1930
- LABELS, 1930
- REMOTE PEOPLE, 1930
- BLACK MISCHIEF, 1932 - suom. Pimeitä
voimia
- A HANDFUL OF DUST, 1934 - suom.
Kourallinen tomua
- NINETY-TWO DAYS, 1934
- EDMUND CAMPION, 1935 - Hawthornden Prize
in 1936
- WAUGH IN ABYSSINIA, 1936
- MR LOVEDAY'S LITTLE OUTING AND OTHER SAD
STORIES, 1936
- SCOOP, 1938
- ROBBERY UNDER LAW, 1939
- PUT OUT MORE FLAGS, 1942
- WORK SUSPENDED, 1942
- BRIDESHEAD REVISITED, 1945 - suom.
Mennyt maailma - television drama 1981, 13 parts, starring
Jeremy Irons and Anthony Andrews; the production was five
million pounds more expensive than counted, but gained
critical success. More homosexual oriented than the novel.
- WHEN THE GOING WAS GOOD, 1946
- SCOTT KING'S MODERN EUROPA, 1947
- WINE AND PIECE IN WAR
- THE LOVED ONE, 1948 - Rakkaamme - film
1965, dir. by Tony Richardson, script by Terry Southern and Christopher
Isherwood
- HELENA, 1950
- MEN AT ARMS (SWORD OF HONOUR -trilogy
1952-1961; television drama in three parts in 1967), 1952
- LOVE AMONG THE RUINS, 1953
- OFFICERS AND GENTLEMEN (SWORD OF HONOUR
-trilogy 1952-1961), 1955
- THE ORDEAL OF GILBERT PINFOLD, 1957
- THE LIFE OF THE RIGHT REVEREND RONALD
KNOX, 1959
- UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER (SWORD OF HONOUR
-trilogy 1952-1961), 1961
- A TOURIST IN AFRICA, 1960
- BASIL SEAL RIDES AGAIN, 1963
- A LITTLE LEARNING, 1964
- THE DIARIES OF EVELYN WAUGH, 1976
- A LITTLE ORDER, 1977
- THE LETTERS OF EVELYN WAUGH, 1980
- THE ESSAYS, ARTICLES AND REVIEWS OF
EVELY WAUGH, 1984
- MR WU AND MRS STICH: THE LETTERS OF
EVELYN WAUGH AND LADY DIANA COOPER, 1991
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