Portrait of John Evelyn by Sir Godfrey Kneller, 1687.

John Evelyn (31 October 1620 – 27 February 1706) was an English writer, gardener and diarist.

Evelyn's diaries or Memoirs are largely contemporaneous with those of the other noted diarist of the time, Samuel Pepys, and cast considerable light on the art, culture and politics of the time (he witnessed the deaths of Charles I and Oliver Cromwell, the last Great Plague of London, and the Great Fire of London in 1666). Over the years, Evelyn’s Diary has been over-shadowed by Pepys's chronicles of 17th-century life.^[1] Evelyn and Pepys corresponded frequently and much of this correspondence has been preserved.

Biography[link]

Detail of a Portrait of John Evelyn by Hendrik van der Borcht II, 1641.

Born into a family whose wealth was largely founded on gunpowder production, John Evelyn was born in Wotton, Surrey, and grew up in the Sussex town of Lewes. He was educated at Balliol College, Oxford and at the Middle Temple. While in London, he witnessed important events such as the execution of Thomas Wentworth, Earl of Strafford. Having briefly joined the Royalist army, he went abroad to avoid further involvement in the English Civil War. He travelled in Italy, attending anatomy lectures in Padua in 1646 and sending the Evelyn Tables back to London. In 1644, Evelyn visited the English College at Rome, where Catholic priests were trained for service in England. In the Veneto he renewed his acquaintance with the Collector Earl of Arundel and toured the art collections of Venice with Arundel's son and heir. He acquired an ancient Egyptian stela and sent a sketch back to Rome which was published by Athanasius Kircher in his Oedipus Aegyptiacus (1650), though to Evelyn's annoyance, without acknowledgement to him ^[2]

He married Mary Browne, daughter of Sir Richard Browne the English ambassador in Paris in 1647.^[3]

In 1652, Evelyn and his wife settled in Deptford (now in south-east London). Their house, Sayes Court (adjacent to the naval dockyard), was purchased by Evelyn from his father-in-law Sir Richard Browne in 1653 and Evelyn soon began to transform the gardens. In 1671, he encountered master wood-worker Grinling Gibbons (who was renting a cottage on the Sayes Court estate) and introduced him to Sir Christopher Wren. There is now an electoral ward called Evelyn in the Deptford area of the London Borough of Lewisham.

It was after the Restoration that Evelyn's career really took off. In 1660, Evelyn was a member of the group that founded the Royal Society. The following year, he wrote the Fumifugium (or The Inconveniencie of the Aer and Smoak of London Dissipated), the first book written on the growing air pollution problem in London.

The title page of the second edition of Sylva, dated 1670 though according to his Diary Evelyn presented the new edition in 1669.

Evelyn's motto written in a book he bought in Paris in 1651. Keep the Best

He was known for his knowledge of trees, and his treatise Sylva, or A Discourse of Forest Trees (1664) was written as an encouragement to landowners to plant trees to provide timber for England's burgeoning navy. Further editions appeared in his lifetime (1670 and 1679), with the fourth edition (1706) appearing just after his death and featuring the engraving of Evelyn shown on this page even though it had been made more than 50 years prior by Robert Nanteuil in 1651 in Paris. Various other editions appeared in the 18th and 19th centuries and feature an inaccurate portrait of Evelyn made by Francesco Bartolozzi.

During the Second Anglo-Dutch War, beginning 28 October 1664, Evelyn served as one of four Commissioners for taking Care of Sick and Wounded Seamen and for the Care and Treatment of Prisoners of War. (The others were Sir William D'Oyly, Sir Thomas Clifford and Col. Bullen Reymes.)

Following the Great Fire in 1666, closely described in his diaries, Evelyn presented one of several plans (Christopher Wren produced another) for the rebuilding of London, all of which were roundly ignored by Charles II. He took an interest in the rebuilding of St Paul's Cathedral by Wren (with Gibbons' artistry a notable addition). Evelyn's interest in gardens even led him to design pleasure gardens, such as those at Euston Hall.

Evelyn was a prolific author and produced books on subjects as diverse as theology, numismatics, politics, horticulture, architecture and vegetarianism, and he cultivated links with contemporaries across the spectrum of Stuart political and cultural life. In September 1671 he travelled with the Royal court of Charles II to Norwich where he called upon Sir Thomas Browne. Like Browne and Pepys, Evelyn was a lifelong bibliophile, and by his death his library is known to have comprised 3,859 books and 822 pamphlets. Many were uniformly bound in a French taste and bear his motto Omnia explorate; meliora retinete ("explore everything; keep the best") from I Thessalonians 5, 21.

His daughter Maria Evelyn (1665–1685) is sometimes acknowledged as the pseudonymous author of the book Mundus Muliebris of 1690. Mundus Muliebris: or, The Ladies Dressing Room Unlock'd and Her Toilette Spread. In Burlesque. Together with the Fop-Dictionary, Compiled for the Use of the Fair Sex is a satirical guide in verse to Francophile fashion and terminology, and its authorship is often jointly credited to John Evelyn, who seems to have edited the work for press after his daughter's death.

In 1694 Evelyn moved back to Wotton, Surrey because his elder brother George had no living sons available to inherit the estate. Evelyn inherited the estate and the family seat Wotton House on the death of his brother in 1699.^[4] Sayes Court was made available for rent. Its most notable tenant was Russian tsar Peter the Great who lived there for three months in 1698 (and did great damage to both house and grounds). The house no longer exists, but a public park of the same name can be found off Evelyn Street.

Evelyn died in 1706 at his house in Dover Street, London. Wotton House and estate were inherited by his grandson John (1682–1763) later Sir John Evelyn, bart.

Family[link]

John and Mary Evelyn had eight children: Richard (1652–1658), John Standsfield (1653–1654), John (the younger) (1655–1699), George (1657–1658), Richard ii (1664), Mary (1665–1685), Elizabeth (1667–1685) and Susanna (1669–1754). Only Susanna outlived her parents.

Mary died in 1709, three years after her husband. Both are buried in the Evelyn Chapel in St John's Church at Wotton.

Evelyn's epitaph (original spelling) reads:^{[citation needed]}

Here lies the Body of JOHN EVELYN Esq of this place, second son of RICHARD EVELYN Esq who having served the Publick in several employments of which that Commissioner of the Privy Seal in the reign of King James the 2nd was most Honourable: and perpetuated his fame by far more lasting Monuments than those of Stone, or Brass: his Learned and useful works, fell asleep the 27th day of February 1705/6 being the 86th Year of his age in full hope of a glorious resurrection thro faith in Jesus Christ. Living in an age of extraordinary events, and revolutions he learnt (as himself asserted) this truth which pursuant to his intention is here declared. That all is vanity which is not honest and that there's no solid Wisdom but in real piety. Of five Sons and three Daughters borne to him from his most vertuous and excellent Wife MARY sole daughter, and heiress of Sir RICHARD BROWNE of Sayes Court near Deptford in Kent onely one Daughter SUSANNA married to WILLIAM DRAPER Esq of Adscomb in this County survived him the two others dying in the flower of their age, and all the sons very young except one nam'd John who deceased 24 March 1698/9 in the 45th year of his age, leaving one son JOHN and one daughter ELIZABETH.

Wotton House and estate passed down to Evelyn's great-great-grandson Sir Frederick Evelyn, 3rd Bt (1733–1812). The baronetcy next passed to Frederick Evelyn's cousins, Sir John Evelyn, 4th Bt (1757–1833) and Sir Hugh Evelyn, 5th Bt (1769–1848). Both these two were of unsound mind and the estate was therefore left to a remote cousin descended from the diarist's grandfather's first marriage, in whose family it remains to this day though they no longer occupy the house. The title died out in 1848. However, there are many living descendants of John Evelyn the diarist via his daughter Susanna, Mrs William Draper, and his granddaughter Elizabeth, Mrs Simon Harcourt. There are also many living descendants of his great-grandson Charles Evelyn, who was the grandfather of the last baronet, Sir Hugh Evelyn, 5th Bt.^{[citation needed]}

In 1992 the skulls of John and Mary were stolen by persons unknown who hacked into the stone sarcophagi on the chapel floor and tore open the coffins. They have not been recovered.^{[citation needed]}

Works[link]

Engraved portrait of Evelyn by Robert Nanteuil, 1650

Evelyn's Diary remained unpublished as a manuscript until 1818. It is in a quarto volume containing 700 pages, covering the years between 1641 and 1697, and is continued in a smaller book-which brings the narrative down to within three weeks of its author's death. A selection from this was edited by William Bray, with the permission of the Evelyn family, in 1818, under the title of Memoirs illustrative of the Life and Writings of John Evelyn, comprising his Diary from 1641 to 1705/6, and a Selection of his Familiar Letters. Other editions followed, the most notable being those of H. B. Wheatley (1879) and Austin Dobson (3 vols., 1906).^[5]

Evelyn's active mind produced many other works, and although these have been overshadowed by the famous Diary they are of considerable interest. They include:^[5]

• Of Liberty and Servitude ... (1649), a translation from the French of François de la Mothe le Vayer, Evelyn's own copy of which contains a note that he was "like to be call'd in question by the Rebells for this booke";
• The States of France, as it stood in the IXth year of ... Louis XIII. (1652);
• An Essay on the First Book of T. Lucretius Carus de Rerum Natura. Interpreted and made English verse by J. Evelyn (1656);
• The Golden Book of St John Chrysostom, concerning the Education of Children. Translated out of the Greek by J. E. (printed 1658, dated 1659);
• The French Gardener: instructing how to cultivate all sorts of Fruit-trees (1658), translated from the French of N. de Bonnefons;
• A Character of England ... (1659), describing the customs of the country as they would appear to a foreign observer, reprinted in Somers' Tracts (ed. Scott, 1812), and in the Harleian Miscellany (ed. Park, 1813);
• The Late News from Brussels unmasked ... (1660), in answer to a libellous pamphlet on Charles I. by Marchmont Needham;
• Fumifugium, or the inconvenience of the Aer and Smoak of London dissipated (1661), in which he suggested that sweet-smelling trees should be planted in London to purify the air;
• Instructions concerning erecting of a Library ... (1661), from the French of Gabriel Naudé;
• Tyrannus or the Mode, in a Discourse of Sumptuary Laws (1661);
• Sculpture: or the History and Art of Chatcography and Engraving in Copper ... (1662);
• Sylva, or a Discourse of Forest Trees ... to which is annexed Pomona ... Also Kalendarium Hortense ... (1664);
• A Parallel of the Ancient Architecture with the Modern (1664), from the French of Roland Fréart;
• The History of the three late famous Imposters, viz. Padre Ottomano, Mahomed Bei, and Sabatei Sevi ... (1669);
• Navigation and Commerce, in which his Majesties title to the Dominion of the Sea is asserted against the Novel and later Pretenders (1674), which is a preface to a projected history of the Dutch wars undertaken at the request of Charles II., but countermanded on the conclusion of peace;
• A Philosophical Discourse of Earth ... (1676), a treatise on horticulture, better known by its later title of Terra; The Compleat Gardener (1693), from the French of J. de la Quintinie; Numismata ... (1697).

Some of these were reprinted in The Miscellaneous Writings of John Evelyn, edited (1825) by William Upcott.^[5]

Evelyn's friendship with Mary Blagge, afterwards Mrs Godolphin, is recorded in the diary, when he says he designed "to consecrate her worthy life to posterity". This he effectually did in a little masterpiece of religious biography which remained in manuscript in the possession of the Harcourt family until it was edited by Samuel Wilberforce, bishop of Oxford, as the Life of Mrs Godolphin (1847), reprinted in the "King's Classics" (1904). The picture of Mistress Blagge's saintly life at court is heightened in interest when read in connexion with the scandalous memoirs of the comte de Gramont, or contemporary political satires on the court.^[5]

Numerous other papers and letters of Evelyn on scientific subjects and matters of public interest are preserved, a collection of private and official letters and papers (1642–1712) by, or addressed to, Sir Richard Browne and his son-in-law being in the British Museum (Add. MSS. 15857 and 15858).^[5]

In the opinion of the author of his biography in the eleventh edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica, next to the Diary Evelyn's most valuable work is Sylva. By the glass factories and iron furnaces the country was being rapidly depleted of wood, while no attempt was being made to replace the damage by planting. Evelyn put in a plea for afforestation, and besides producing a valuable work on arboriculture, he was able to assert in his preface to the king that he had really induced landowners to plant many millions of trees.^[5]

Legacy[link]

Evelyn as painted by Robert Walker, 1648.

In 1977 and 1978 in eight auctions at Christie's, a major surviving portion of Evelyn's library was sold and dispersed.^[6] The British Library holds a large archive of Evelyn's personal papers including the manuscript of his Diary.^[7] The Victoria and Albert Museum has in its collection a cabinet owned by Evelyn which is thought to have housed his diaries.

In 2005 a new biography by Gillian Darley, based on full access to the archive, was published.^[8]

In 2011 a campaign was started to restore John Evelyn's garden in Deptford. See http://www.sayescourtgarden.org.uk/

Things named after John Evelyn after he died[link]

This unreferenced section requires citations to ensure verifiability.

• Evelyn, London, an electoral ward of the London Borough of Lewisham covering Deptford where John Evelyn lived.
• Evelyn College for Women, the short-lived coordinate college of Princeton University, USA
• A house at Addey and Stanhope School in London, England
• Crabtree & Evelyn, the skincare company
• Evelyn rose, a scented rose used in Crabtree & Evelyn products
• Evelyn, the gossip column of Oxford student newspaper Cherwell
• Evelyn Street, a road in Deptford
• John Evelyn Primary School on the corner of Rolt Street, Deptford.
• The John Evelyn public house on Evelyn Street in Deptford (as featured in the BBC Television's The Tower)
• Evelyn Community garden windlass place Deptford

References[link]

Sources[link]

• John Evelyn, ed. Guy de la Bédoyère (1997), Particular Friends: The Correspondence of Samuel Pepys and John Evelyn, Boydell and Brewer, ISBN 0-85115-697-5
• John Evelyn, ed. Guy de la Bédoyère (1995), The Writings of John Evelyn, Boydell and Brewer, ISBN 0-85115-631-2 (full annotated texts of several of Evelyn's books and tracts; the only modern collected edition produced.)
• John Evelyn, The Diary of John Evelyn (excerpts)
• John Evelyn, Diaries and Correspondence Volume 1, editor, William Bray (originally published in London: George Bell and Sons, 1882).
• John Evelyn, Diaries and Correspondence Volume 2
• John Evelyn, Diaries and Correspondence Volume 3
• John Evelyn, Diaries and Correspondence Volume 4
• Darley, Gillian (2006). John Evelyn: Living for Ingenuity. Yale: Yale University Press. ISBN 978-0-300-11227-6. 
• Works by or about John Evelyn at Internet Archive (scanned books original editions color illustrated)
• Works by John Evelyn at Project Gutenberg (plain text and HTML)

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: John Evelyn

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: John Evelyn

• The History of the Evelyn Family by Helen Evelyn, London 1915
• Evelyn family tree
• Archival material relating to John Evelyn listed at the UK National Register of Archives
• The John Evelyn archives at the British Library
• Who was John Evelyn? by Guy de la Bédoyère
• [1] Sayes Court Garden

Evelyn Keyes
Evelyn Keyes in 99 River Street (1953)
Born	Evelyn Louise Keyes (1916-11-20)November 20, 1916[1] Port Arthur, Texas, U.S.
Died	July 4, 2008(2008-07-04) (aged 91) Montecito, California, U.S.
Occupation	Actress
Years active	1938–93
Spouse	Barton Bainbridge (1938–1940) Charles Vidor (1943–1945) John Huston (1946–1950) Artie Shaw (1957–1985)
Partner	Michael Todd (1953–1956)

Evelyn Louise Keyes (November 20, 1916 – July 4, 2008) was an American film actress. She is best known for her role as Suellen O'Hara in the 1939 film Gone with the Wind.

Early life[link]

Evelyn Keyes was born on November 20, 1916, in Port Arthur, Texas,^[2] to Omar Dow Keyes and Maude Ollive Keyes, the daughter of a Methodist minister. After Omar Keyes died when she was three years old, she moved with her mother to Atlanta, Georgia, where they lived with her grandparents. As a teenager, Keyes took dancing lessons and performed for local clubs such as the Daughters of the Confederacy.

Film career[link]

A chorus girl by age 18, Keyes was put under contract by Cecil B. DeMille. After a handful of B movies at Paramount Pictures, she landed her most notable role, that of Scarlett O'Hara's sister Suellen in Gone with the Wind (1939).^[3]

Columbia Pictures signed her to a contract. In 1941, she played an ingenue role in Here Comes Mr. Jordan. She spent most of the early 1940s playing leads in many of Columbia's B dramas and mysteries. She appeared as the female lead opposite Larry Parks in Columbia's blockbuster hit The Jolson Story (1946). She appeared in 1949 role as Kathy Flannigan in Mrs. Mike.^[4] Keyes' last major film role was a small part as Tom Ewell's vacationing wife in The Seven Year Itch (1955), which starred Marilyn Monroe. Keyes officially retired in 1956, but continued to act.

Personal life[link]

She was married to Barton Oliver Bainbridge Sr. from 1938 until his death from suicide in 1940. Later, she married and divorced director Charles Vidor (1943–1945), actor/director John Huston (23 July 1946–February 1950),^[5][6][7] and bandleader Artie Shaw (1957–1985).^[8] Keyes said of her many relationships, "I was always interested in the man of the moment, and there were many such moments." While married to Huston, the couple adopted a Mexican child, Pablo, whom Huston had discovered while on the set of The Treasure of the Sierra Madre.

Her autobiography, Scarlett O'Hara's Younger Sister: My Lively Life In and Out of Hollywood, was published in 1977.^[3] Keyes expressed her opinion that Mrs. Mike was her best film. She also wrote of the personal cost she paid by having an abortion just before Gone with the Wind was to begin filming.^[9] The experience left her unable to have children. Among the many Hollywood affairs she recounted were those with producer Michael Todd (who left Evelyn for Elizabeth Taylor), Anthony Quinn, David Niven and Kirk Douglas.

Evelyn Keyes in The Seven Year Itch (1955)

Death[link]

She died of uterine cancer on July 4, 2008, at the Peppers Estate Care Home in Montecito, California, near Santa Barbara.^[3] She had also suffered from Alzheimer's disease.^[10]

Filmography[link]

• The Buccaneer (1938) as Madeleine
• Dangerous to Know (1938) (uncredited)
• Men with Wings (1938) (uncredited) Nurse
• Sons of the Legion (1938) as Linda Lee
• Artists and Models Abroad (1938) aka Stranded in Paris (UK) (uncredited)
• Paris Honeymoon (1939) (uncredited) as Village Girl
• Sudden Money (1939) as Mary Patterson
• Gone with the Wind (1939) as Suellen O'Hara
• Slightly Honorable (1940) as Miss Vlissingen
• The Lady in Question (1940) as Francois Morestan
• Before I Hang (1940) as Martha Garth
• Beyond the Sacramento (1940) aka Power of Justice (UK) as Lynn Perry
• The Face Behind the Mask (1941) aka Behind the Mask (UK) as Helen Williams
• Here Comes Mr. Jordan (1941) as Bette Logan
• Ladies in Retirement (1941) as Lucy
• The Adventures of Martin Eden (1942) aka High Seas (US reissue title) as Ruth Morley
• Flight Lieutenant (1942) as Susie Thompson
• The Desperadoes (1943) as Allison McLeod
• Dangerous Blondes (1943) as Jane Craig
• There's Something About a Soldier (1943) as Carol Harkness
• Nine Girls (1944) as Mary O'Ryan
• Strange Affair (1944) as Jacqueline Harrison
• A Thousand and One Nights (1945) aka 1001 Nights as the Genie^[11]
• Renegades (1946) aka Kansan, as Hannah Brockway^[12]
• The Thrill of Brazil (1946) as Vicki Dean^[13]
• The Jolson Story (1946) as Julie Benson (a character based on Jolson's wife, Ruby Keeler)^[14]
• Johnny O'Clock (1947) as Nancy Hobson
• The Mating of Millie (1948) as Millie McGonigle
• Enchantment (1948) as Grizel Dane
• Mr. Soft Touch (1949) aka House of Settlement (UK), as Jenny Jones
• Mrs. Mike (1949) as Kathy Flannigan^[4]
• The Killer That Stalked New York (1950) aka Frightened City (UK) (US copyright title), as Sheila Bennet^[15]
• Smuggler's Island (1951) as Vivian Craig
• The Prowler (1951) as Susan Gilvray
• Iron Man (1951) as Rose Warren^[16]
• One Big Affair (1952) as Jean Harper
• C'est arrivé à Paris (1953) aka It Happened in Paris (US), as Patricia Moran
• Rough Shoot (1953) aka Shoot First (US), as Cecily Paine^[17]
• 99 River Street (1953) aka Crosstown, as Linda James^[18]
• Hell's Half Acre (1954) as Donna Williams^[19]
• The Seven Year Itch (1955) as Helen Sherman
• Top of the World (1955) as Virgie Rayne (Mrs. Gannon)
• Around the World in 80 Days (1956) as The Flirt
• Across 110th Street (1972) (cameo)
• A Return to Salem's Lot (1987) as Mrs. Axel
• The Making of a Legend: Gone with the Wind (1988) as herself (interview)
• Wicked Stepmother (1989) as Witch Instructor

References[link]

External links[link]

Biography portal

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Evelyn Keyes

• Evelyn Keyes, Actress in 'Gone with the Wind' dies at 91
• New York Times Biography
• Evelyn Keyes at the Internet Movie Database
• Evelyn Keyes at Find a Grave

John Billings, AM, KC*SG, FRCP, FRACP (5 March 1918 – 1 April 2007) was an Australian physician who pioneered the natural method of family planning known variously as the Billings Ovulation Method, the Ovulation Method, or the Billings Method.

Billings was born in Melbourne and was educated at Xavier College, and at the University of Melbourne where he received his Doctor of Medicine degree.^[1] He married Evelyn Livingston (b. 8 February 1918) in 1943, and they had nine children. He served as a medical doctor with the Australian Imperial Force in New Guinea during World War II.

In 1947, Billings was awarded a Nuffield Fellowship for postgraduate studies in London, where he specialised in neurology. On his return to Australia, he was made Head of the Department of Neurology at St Vincent's Hospital in Melbourne, and Dean of the Undergraduate Medical School within the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Melbourne.

In 1953, he and his wife, Evelyn Billings, began work on a method of natural family planning which involved observation of changes to cervical mucus. Together they founded the World Organisation of the Ovulation Method Billings (WOOMB) as the centre for teaching the method throughout the world.^[2] Although Billings maintained his career as consulting neurologist to St Vincent's Hospital, he and his wife also spent a large part of each year travelling to other countries, and training teachers in the Ovulation Method, lecturing to doctors and students, and establishing teaching centres.^[1]

The method pioneered by Billings and his wife was approved by the Catholic Church and used by the World Health Organization. It was the only natural method accepted by the Chinese Government.^[2]

In 1969, Billings was made a Knight Commander of the Order of St Gregory the Great (KCSG) by Pope Paul VI. In 2003, Pope John Paul II added a star to this papal knighthood (KC*SG).^[3]. That same year, his wife Evelyn was made a Dame of Malta.^[4] Billings was also made a member of the Order of Australia in 1991.^[2]

John Billings died, aged 89, on 1 April 2007, at a Richmond aged care centre, survived by his wife, children and large extended family.^[5]

References[link]

Evelyn Waugh
Evelyn Waugh, photographed in about 1940
Born	(1903-10-28)28 October 1903 London, England
Died	10 April 1966(1966-04-10) (aged 62) Combe Florey, Somerset, England
Occupation	Writer
Nationality	British
Education	Lancing College, Hertford College, Oxford
Genres	Novel, biography, short story, travel writing, autobiography, satire, humour
Spouse(s)	(1) 1929 Evelyn Gardner (divorced 1930, annulled 1936) (2) 1937 Laura Herbert
Children	Four daughters (one died in infancy); three sons
Signature

Arthur Evelyn St. John Waugh /ˈwɔː/ (28 October 1903 – 10 April 1966), known as Evelyn Waugh, was an English writer of novels, travel books and biographies. He was also a prolific journalist and reviewer. His best-known works include his early satires Decline and Fall (1928) and A Handful of Dust (1934), his novel Brideshead Revisited (1945) and his trilogy of Second World War novels collectively known as Sword of Honour (1952–61). Waugh is widely recognised as one of the great prose stylists of the 20th century.

The son of a publisher, Waugh was educated at Lancing and Hertford College, Oxford, and worked briefly as a schoolmaster before becoming a full-time writer. As a young man, he acquired many fashionable and aristocratic friends, and developed a taste for country house society that never left him. In the 1930s he travelled extensively, often as a special newspaper correspondent; he was reporting from Abyssinia at the time of the 1935 Italian invasion. He served in the British armed forces throughout the Second World War, first in the Royal Marines and later in the Royal Horse Guards. All these experiences, and the wide range of people he encountered, were used in Waugh's fiction, generally to humorous effect; even his own mental breakdown in the early 1950s, brought about by misuse of drugs, was fictionalised.

Waugh had converted to Roman Catholicism in 1930, after the failure of his first marriage. His traditionalist stance led him to oppose strongly all attempts to reform the Church; the changes brought about in the wake of the Second Vatican Council of 1962–65, particularly the introduction of the vernacular Mass, greatly disturbed him. This blow, together with a growing dislike for the welfare state culture of the postwar world and a decline in his health, saddened his final years, although he continued to write. To the public at large he generally displayed a mask of indifference, but he was capable of great kindness to those he considered his friends, many of whom remained devoted to him throughout his life. After his death in 1966, he acquired a new following through film and television versions of his work, such as Brideshead Revisited in 1982.

Biography[link]

Family background[link]

Arthur Evelyn St. John Waugh was born on 28 October 1903 to Arthur Waugh (1866–1943) and Catherine Charlotte Raban (1870–1954), into a family with English, Scottish, Welsh, Irish and Huguenot origins. Distinguished forbears include Lord Cockburn (1779–1854), a leading Scottish advocate and judge, William Morgan (1750–1833), a pioneer of actuarial science who served The Equitable Life Assurance Society for 56 years, and Philip Henry Gosse (1810–88), a natural scientist who became notorious through his depiction as a religious fanatic in his son Edmund's memoir Father and Son.^[1] Of those bearing the Waugh name, the Rev. Alexander Waugh (1754–1827) was a minister in the Secession Church of Scotland who helped found the London Missionary Society, and was one of the leading Nonconformist preachers of his day.^[2] His grandson Alexander Waugh (1840–1906) was a country medical practitioner who bullied his wife and children and became known in the Waugh family as "the Brute". The elder of his two sons, born in 1866, was Arthur Waugh.^[3]

After attending Sherborne School and New College, Oxford, Arthur Waugh began a career in publishing and as a literary critic. In 1902 he became managing director of Chapman and Hall, publishers of the works of Charles Dickens.^[4] He had married Catherine Raban (1870–1954)^[5] in 1893; their first son Alexander Raban Waugh (always known as Alec) was born on 8 July 1898. Alec Waugh later became a novelist of note. At the time of his birth the family were living in North London, at Hillfield Road, West Hampstead where, on 28 October 1903, the couple's second son was born, "in great haste before Dr Andrews could arrive", Catherine recorded.^[6] On 7 January 1904 the boy was christened Arthur Evelyn St John Waugh, but was known in the family and in the wider world as Evelyn.^{[7][n 1]}

Childhood[link]

Golders Green and Heath Mount[link]

In 1907 the family left Hillfield Road for "Underhill", a house which Arthur had had built in nearby Golders Green,^[8] then a semi-rural area of dairy farms, market gardens and bluebell woods.^[9] Evelyn received his first lessons at home from his mother, with whom he formed a particularly close relationship—Arthur Waugh was a more distant figure, whose bond with his elder son Alec was such that Evelyn often felt excluded.^[10][11] In September 1910 Evelyn began as a day pupil at Heath Mount preparatory school. He was by then a lively child of many interests, who had already written his first complete story, "The Curse of the Horse Race".^[12] Waugh spent six relatively contented years at Heath Mount; on his own assertion he was "quite a clever little boy", who was seldom distressed or overawed by his lessons.^[13] Physically pugnacious, he was inclined to bully weaker boys; among his victims was the future society photographer Cecil Beaton, who never forgot the experience.^[12][14]

Outside school, Waugh and other children in the neighbourhood performed dramatic works usually written by him.^[15] On the basis of a belief then being fostered in the press that the Germans were about to invade England, he organised his friends into a gang called "The Pistol Troop", which built a fort, went on manoeuvres and paraded in makeshift uniforms.^[16] After the First World War broke out in 1914, Waugh and other boys from Heath Mount's Boy Scout troop were sometimes employed at the War Office as messengers. He hung about in the corridors hoping to get a glimpse of Lord Kitchener, but never did.^[17] Family holidays were usually spent with the Waugh aunts at Midsomer Norton, in a house lit by oil lamps that Waugh recalled with delight many years later.^[18] At Midsomer Norton he became deeply interested in high Anglican church rituals—the first stirrings of the spiritual dimension that would later dominate his life—and served as an altar boy at the local Anglican church.^[19] During his last year at Heath Mount Waugh devised and edited a school magazine, The Cynic.^[12]

Lancing[link]

Lancing College, with its tall Gothic chapel (right of picture)

Alec Waugh, like his father, had gone to school at Sherborne, and it was assumed that Evelyn would follow. However, in 1915 Alec was asked to leave, after a homosexual relationship came to light. He departed for military training, and while waiting for his commission to be confirmed wrote a novel of school life, The Loom of Youth, which was published by Chapman and Hall. The novel, which alluded to homosexual friendships in what was recognisably Sherborne, caused a public sensation and offended the school sufficiently to make it impossible for Evelyn to go there. Much to his annoyance he was sent in May 1917 to Lancing, in his view a decidedly inferior establishment.^[17]

Waugh soon overcame his initial aversion to the school and settled down. He began to establish a reputation as an aesthete, and in November 1917 had an essay "In Defence of Cubism" accepted by the arts magazine Drawing and Design—his first published article.^[20] Within the school he became mildly subversive, mocking the school's cadet corps and founding the Corpse Club "for those who were weary of life".^[21] The end of the war saw the return to the school of younger masters such as J. F. Roxburgh, who encouraged Waugh to write and predicted a great future for him.^[22] A biography of Roxburgh (who went on to be first headmaster of Stowe School) was the last work given a literary review by Waugh, in The Observer on 17 October 1965.^[23] Another mentor, Francis Crease, taught Waugh the arts of calligraphy and decorative design; some of the boy's work was good enough to be used by Chapman and Hall on book jackets.^[24]

In his later years at Lancing, Waugh achieved conventional success, becoming a house-captain, editor of the school magazine, president of the debating society, and winning numerous art and literature prizes.^[21] He also shed most of his religious beliefs.^[25] He started a novel of school life, untitled, but after around 5,000 words the attempt was abandoned.^[26] He ended his schooldays by winning a scholarship to Hertford College, Oxford, and left Lancing in December 1921.^[27]

Oxford[link]

Hertford College, Oxford; Old Quadrangle

Waugh arrived in Oxford in January 1922. He was soon writing to old friends at Lancing about the pleasures of his new life; he informed Tom Driberg: "I do no work here and never go to Chapel".^[28] During his first two terms he generally followed convention; he smoked a pipe, bought a bicycle, chewed sweets, and gave his maiden speech at the Oxford Union, opposing the motion that "This House would welcome Prohibition".^[29] Waugh wrote reports on Union debates for both Oxford magazines, Cherwell and Isis, and acted as a film critic for Isis.^[30][31] He also became secretary of the Hertford College debating society, "an onerous but not honorific post", he told Driberg.^[32] Although Waugh tended to regard his scholarship as a reward rather than a stepping-stone to academic success, he did sufficient work in his first two terms to pass his "History Previous", or preliminary examinations.^[33]

The arrival in Oxford in October 1922 of the sophisticated Etonians Harold Acton and Brian Howard changed Waugh's Oxford life. Acton and Howard rapidly became the centre of an avant-garde circle known as the Hypocrites, whose artistic, social and homosexual values Waugh adopted enthusiastically;^[34] he later wrote: "It was the stamping ground of half my Oxford life".^[35] He began drinking heavily, and embarked on the first of several homosexual relationships, the most lasting of which were with Richard Pares and Alastair Graham.^[21][36] He continued to write reviews and short stories for the university journals, and developed a reputation as a talented graphic artist, but formal study largely ceased.^[21] This neglect led to a bitter feud between Waugh and his history tutor, C. R. M. F. Cruttwell, dean (and later principal) of Hertford College. When Cruttwell advised him to mend his ways, Waugh responded in a manner he admitted later was "fatuously haughty",^[37] from which point relations between the two descended into mutual hatred.^[38] Waugh continued the feud long after his Oxford days, by using Cruttwell's name in his early novels for a succession of ludicrous, ignominious or odious minor characters.^{[39][n 2]}

Waugh's dissipated lifestyle continued into his final Oxford year, 1924. A letter written that year to a Lancing friend, Dudley Carew, hints at severe emotional pressures: "I have been living very intensely these last three weeks. For the last fortnight I have been nearly insane ... I may perhaps one day in a later time tell you some of the things that have happened."^[40] He did just enough work to pass his final examinations in the summer of 1924 with a third class degree, a poor result which led to the loss of his scholarship. This effectively prevented him from returning to Oxford to complete the nine terms' residence that, under the University's statutes, were necessary before his degree could be awarded, so he left without one.^{[n 3]} Back at Underhill he began a novel, The Temple at Thatch, and worked with some of his fellow-Hypocrites on a film, The Scarlet Woman, which was shot partly in the gardens at Underhill. He spent much of the rest of the summer in the company of Alastair Graham; after Graham departed for Kenya, Waugh enrolled for the autumn at a London art school, Heatherley's.^[42]

Early career[link]

Schoolmaster and incipient writer[link]

Dante Gabriel Rossetti, the subject of Waugh's first full-length book (1927)

Waugh began at Heatherley's in late September 1924, but became bored with the routine and soon abandoned his course.^[43] He spent weeks partying in London and Oxford before the overriding need for money led him to apply through an agency for a teaching job. Almost at once he secured a post at Arnold House, a boys' preparatory school in North Wales, beginning in January 1925. He took with him the notes for his novel, The Temple at Thatch, intending to work on it in his spare time. Despite the gloomy ambience of the school, Waugh did his best to fulfil the requirements of his position, but a brief return to London and Oxford during the Easter vacation only exacerbated his sense of isolation.^[44]

In the summer of 1925 Waugh's outlook briefly improved, with the prospect of a job in Pisa as secretary to the Scottish writer Charles Scott Moncrieff who was engaged on the English translations of Proust's works. Believing that the job was his, Waugh resigned his position at Arnold House. He had meantime sent the early chapters of his novel to Acton for assessment and criticism. Acton's reply was coolly dismissive, so that Waugh immediately burnt his manuscript; shortly afterwards, before he had left North Wales, he received the news that the Moncrieff job had fallen through.^[45] These twin blows were sufficient for him to consider suicide. He records that he went down to a nearby beach and, leaving a note with his clothes, walked out to sea. An attack by jellyfish changed his mind, and he returned quickly to the shore.^[46]

During the following two years Waugh taught at schools in Aston Clinton (from which he was dismissed for the attempted drunken seduction of a school matron) and Notting Hill in London.^[47] He considered alternative careers in printing or cabinet-making, and attended evening classes in carpentry at Holborn Polytechnic while continuing to write.^[48] A short story, "The Balance", written in an experimental modernist style, became his first commercially published fiction when it was included by Chapman and Hall in a 1926 anthology, Georgian Stories.^[49] An extended essay on the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood was printed privately by Alastair Graham, using by agreement the press of the Shakespeare Head Press, Stratford-upon-Avon where he was undergoing training as a printer.^[50][51] This led to a contract from the publishers Duckworth for a full-length biography of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, which Waugh wrote during 1927.^[52] He also began working on a comic novel; after several temporary working titles this became Decline and Fall.^[53][54] Having given up teaching, he had no regular employment except for a short, unsuccessful stint as a reporter on the Daily Express in April–May 1927.^[55] That year he met (possibly through brother Alec) and fell in love with Evelyn Gardner, the daughter of Lord and Lady Burghclere.^[56]

"He-Evelyn" and "She-Evelyn"[link]

Canonbury Square, where Waugh and Evelyn Gardner lived during their brief marriage

In December 1927 Waugh and Evelyn Gardner became engaged, despite the opposition of Lady Burghclere who felt that Waugh lacked moral fibre and kept unsuitable company.^[57] Among their friends they quickly became known as "He-Evelyn" and "She-Evelyn".^[21] Waugh was at this time dependent on a £4-a-week allowance from his father, and the small sums he could earn from book reviewing and journalism.^[58] The Rossetti biography was published to a generally favourable reception in April 1928: J. C. Squire in The Observer praised the book's elegance and wit; Acton gave cautious approval, and the novelist Rebecca West wrote saying how much she had enjoyed the book. Less pleasing to Waugh was the Times Literary Supplement's references to him as "Miss Waugh".^[54]

When Decline and Fall was completed, Duckworth objected to its "obscenity", but Chapman and Hall agreed to publish it.^[59] This was sufficient for Waugh and Evelyn Gardner to bring forward their wedding plans. They were married in St Paul's Church, Portman Square, on 27 June 1928, with only Acton, Alec Waugh and the bride's friend Pansy Pakenham present.^[60] The couple made their home in a small flat in Canonbury Square, Islington.^[61] The first months of the marriage were overshadowed by a lack of money, and by She-Evelyn's poor health, which persisted into the autumn.^[62]

In September 1928 Decline and Fall was published to almost unanimous praise. By December the book was into its third printing, and the American publishing rights had been sold for $500.^[63] In the afterglow of this success Waugh was commissioned to write travel articles in return for a free Mediterranean cruise, which he and She-Evelyn began in February 1929 as an extended delayed honeymoon. The trip was disrupted when She-Evelyn contracted severe pneumonia and was carried ashore to the British hospital in Port Said. She recovered, and the couple were home in June. In July, without warning, She-Evelyn revealed that their mutual friend, John Heygate, had become her lover, an admission that shocked and dismayed Waugh. After an attempted reconciliation failed, Waugh filed for divorce on 3 September 1929. The couple apparently met again only once, during the process for the annulment of the marriage a few years later.^[64]

Years of celebrity[link]

Recognition[link]

Waugh's biographer, Christopher Sykes, records that after the divorce friends "saw, or believed they saw, a new hardness and bitterness" in Waugh's outlook.^[65] Nevertheless, despite a letter to Acton in which he wrote that he "did not know it was possible to be so miserable and live",^[66] Waugh soon resumed his professional and social life. He finished his second novel, Vile Bodies,^[67] and wrote articles including (ironically he thought) one for the Daily Mail on the meaning of the marriage ceremony.^[66] Between September and January 1930, when the novel was published, Waugh moved between the various houses of his friends, a practice he was to continue as he was to have no settled home for the next eight years.^[67]

Vile Bodies, a satire on the Bright Young People of the 1920s, was published on 19 January 1930 and was Waugh's first major commercial success. Despite its quasi-biblical title, the book is dark, bitter, "a manifesto of disillusionment", according to biographer Martin Stannard.^[68] As a best-selling author Waugh could now command larger fees for his journalism.^[67] Amid regular work for The Graphic, Town and Country and Harper's Bazaar, he quickly wrote Labels, a detached account of his honeymoon cruise with She-Evelyn.^[67]

Conversion to Catholicism[link]

On 29 September 1930 Waugh was received into the Roman Catholic Church. This shocked his family and surprised some of his friends, but the step had been contemplated for some time.^[69] Although he had lost his Anglicanism at Lancing and had led an irreligious life at Oxford, from the mid-1920s there are references in his diaries to religious discussion and regular church-going. On 22 December 1925 Waugh writes: "Claud and I took Audrey to supper and sat up until 7 in the morning arguing about the Roman Church".^[70] The entry for 20 February 1927 includes "I am to visit a Father Underhill about being a parson".^[71] Throughout this period Waugh was influenced by his friend Olivia Plunket-Greene, who had converted in 1925 and of whom Waugh wrote later: "She bullied me into the Church".^[72] It was she who led him to Father Martin D'Arcy, who persuaded Waugh "on firm intellectual convictions but little emotion" that "the Christian revelation was genuine". In 1949 Waugh explained that his conversion followed his realisation that life was "unintelligible and unendurable without God".^[73]

Writer and traveller[link]

Emperor Haile Selassie, whose coronation Waugh attended in 1930 on the first of his three trips to Abyssinia

On 10 October 1930 Waugh, representing several newspapers, departed for Abyssinia to cover the coronation of Haile Selassie. He reported the event as "an elaborate propaganda effort" to convince the world that Abyssinia was a civilised nation, concealing the truth that the emperor had achieved power through barbarous means.^[74] A subsequent journey through the British East Africa colonies and the Belgian Congo formed the basis of two books; the travelogue Remote People (1931) and the comic novel Black Mischief (1932).^[75] Waugh's next extended trip, in the winter of 1932–33, was to British Guiana (now Guyana) in South America, possibly taken to distract him from a long and unrequited passion for the socialite Teresa Jungman.^[76] On arrival in Georgetown, Waugh arranged a river trip by steam launch into the interior. He travelled on via several staging-posts to Boa Vista in Brazil, then took a convoluted overland journey back to Georgetown.^[77] His various adventures and encounters found their way into two further books: his travel account Ninety-two days, and the novel A Handful of Dust, both published in 1934.^[78]

Back from South America, Waugh faced accusations of obscenity and blasphemy from the Catholic journal The Tablet, which objected to passages in Black Mischief. He defended himself in an open letter to the Archbishop of Westminster, Cardinal Francis Bourne.^[79] In the summer of 1934 he went on an expedition to Spitsbergen in the Arctic, an experience he did not enjoy and of which he made minimal literary use.^[80] On his return, determined to write a major Catholic biography, he selected the Jesuit martyr Edmund Campion as his subject. The book, published in 1935, caused controversy through its forthright pro-Catholic, anti-Protestant stance but brought its writer the Hawthornden Prize.^[81][82] He returned to Abyssinia in August 1935, to report the opening stages of the Second Italo-Abyssinian War for the Daily Mail. Waugh, on the basis of his earlier visit, considered Abyssinia "a savage place which Mussolini was doing well to tame", according to his fellow-reporter William Deedes.^[83] Waugh saw little action, and was not wholly serious in his role as a war correspondent.^[84] Deedes remarks on the older writer's snobbery: "None of us quite measured up to the company he liked to keep back at home".^[85] However, in the face of imminent Italian air attacks, Deedes found Waugh's courage "deeply reassuring".^[86] Waugh wrote up his Abyssinian experiences in a book, Waugh in Abyssinia (1936), which Rose Macaulay dismissed as a "fascist tract" on account of its pro-Italian tone.^[87] A better-known account is his novel Scoop (1938), in which the protagonist, William Boot, is loosely based on Deedes.^[88]

Waugh's social circle in the 1930s expanded and he relied on aristocratic friends for places to stay when he returned from his travels. Amongst his acquaintances were Diana Guinness and Bryan Guinness (dedicatees of Vile Bodies), Lady Diana Cooper and her husband Duff Cooper,^[89] Nancy Mitford who was originally a friend of Evelyn Gardner's,^[90] and the Lygon sisters. Waugh had known Hugh Patrick Lygon at Oxford; now he was introduced to the girls and their country house, Madresfield Court, which became the closest that he had to a home during his years of wandering.^[91] In 1933, on a Greek islands cruise, he was introduced by Father D'Arcy to Gabriel Herbert, eldest daughter of the late explorer Aubrey Herbert. When the cruise ended Waugh was invited to stay at the Herbert family's villa in Portofino, where he was introduced to Gabriel's 17-year-old sister, Laura Herbert.^[92]

Second marriage[link]

On his conversion, Waugh had accepted that he would be unable to remarry while Evelyn Gardner was alive. However, he wanted a wife and children, and in October 1933 began proceedings for the annulment of the marriage on the grounds of "lack of real consent". The case was heard by an ecclesiastical tribunal in London, but a delay in the submission of the papers to Rome meant that the annulment was not granted until 4 July 1936.^[93] In the meantime, following their initial encounter in Portofino, Waugh had fallen in love with Laura Herbert.^[94] He proposed marriage, by letter, in Spring 1936.^[95] There were initial misgivings from the Herberts, an aristocratic Catholic family; as a further complication, Laura Herbert was a cousin of Evelyn Gardner.^[21] Despite some family hostility the marriage took place on 17 April 1937.^[96]

As a wedding present the bride's grandmother bought the couple Piers Court, a country house near Stinchcombe in Gloucestershire.^[97] Their first child, a daughter, Maria Teresa, was born on 9 March 1938 and a son, Auberon Alexander, on 17 November 1939.^[98] Between these events, Scoop was published in May 1938 to wide critical acclaim.^[99] In August 1938 Waugh, with Laura, made a three-month trip to Mexico after which he wrote Robbery under Law, based on his experiences there. In the book he spelled out clearly his conservative credo; he later described the book as dealing "little with travel and much with political questions".^[100]

World War II[link]

Royal Marine and commando[link]

At the outbreak of the war in September 1939, Waugh left Piers Court and moved his young family to Pixton Park in Somerset, the Herbert family's country seat, while he sought military employment.^[101] He also began a novel, in a new style using first-person narration.^[102] Work on this project ceased when in December Waugh was commissioned into the Royal Marines and began training at Chatham naval base.^[103] The novel was never completed; fragments were eventually published under the title Work Suspended.^[104]

Waugh was soon involved in a daily training routine that left him with "so stiff a spine that he found it painful even to pick up a pen".^[105] In April he was promoted temporarily to captain and given command of a company,^[106] but even after the German invasion of the Low Countries his battalion was not called into action.^[107] Waugh's inability to adapt to regimental life meant that he soon lost his command and became the battalion's Intelligence Officer. In this role he finally saw action, as part of the force sent in August 1940 to Dakar in Western Africa to support an attempt by Free French troops to install General de Gaulle as leader there. Hampered by fog, and misinformed about the extent of the town's defences, the mission was a failure, and on 26 September the British forces withdrew. Waugh commented that "Bloodshed has been avoided at the cost of honour."^[108][109]

In November 1940 Waugh was posted to a commando unit and after further training became a member of "Layforce" under Brigadier Robert Laycock.^[108] In February 1941 the unit sailed to the Mediterranean, where it participated in an unsuccessful attempt to recapture Bardia, on the Libyan coast.^[110] In May the force was required to assist in the evacuation of Crete; Waugh was shocked by the disorder, loss of discipline and, as he saw it, cowardice of the departing troops.^[111] On the roundabout journey home in July by troopship Waugh wrote Put Out More Flags, a novel of the early months of the war written in his familiar 1930s style.^[112] Back in England, more training and waiting followed, until in May 1942 Waugh was transferred, on Laycock's recommendation, to the Royal Horse Guards.^[113] On 10 June 1942 Laura gave birth to a fourth child, Margaret.^{[114][n 4]}

[edit] Frustration, Brideshead and Yugoslavia

Waugh's elation at his transfer soon descended into disillusion as he failed to find opportunities for active service. The death of his father on 26 June 1943, and the need to deal with family affairs, prevented Waugh from departing with his brigade for North Africa, as part of Operation Husky.^[116] Despite his undoubted courage, his unmilitary and insubordinate character was making him effectively unemployable.^[117] After spells of idleness at the regimental depot in Windsor, Waugh began parachute training at Tatton Park, landed awkwardly and fractured a fibula. Recovering at Windsor, he applied for three months' unpaid leave to write the novel that was forming in his mind. His request was granted, and on 31 January 1944 he departed for Chagford in Devon, where he could work in seclusion. The result of his labours was Brideshead Revisited,^[118] the first of Waugh's explicitly "Catholic" novels and, biographer Douglas Lane Patey observes, "the book that seemed to confirm his new sense of his writerly vocation".^[119]

Waugh managed to extend his leave until June 1944. Soon after his return to duty he was recruited by Randolph Churchill to serve in a military mission to Yugoslavia, and early in July flew with Churchill to the Croatian island of Vis. Here they were introduced to Marshal Tito, leader of the Partisans who, with Allied support, were leading the fight against the occupying Axis forces.^[120] Waugh and Churchill returned to Bari in Italy before flying back to Yugoslavia to begin their mission, but their plane crashed on landing, injuring both and delaying them for a month.^[121]

Eventually the mission arrived at Topusko, where they established themselves in a deserted farmhouse. The group's duties—liaising between the British army and the Partisans—were light; in any event, Waugh had little sympathy with the communist-led Partisans and despised Tito. His chief interest became the welfare of the Catholic Church in Croatia, which he believed had suffered at the hands of the Serbian Orthodox Church and would fare worse when the communists took control.^[122] He expressed these thoughts in a long report, "Church and State in Liberated Croatia". After spells in Dubrovnik and Rome, Waugh returned to London on 15 March 1945 to present his report, which was suppressed by the Foreign Office who were anxious to maintain good relations with Tito.^[123]

Postwar years[link]

Fame and fortune[link]

Brideshead Revisited was published in London in May 1945.^[124] Waugh had been convinced of the book's qualities, "my first novel rather than my last".^[125] It was a tremendous success, bringing its author fame, fortune and literary status.^[124] Happy though he was with this outcome, Waugh's principal concern as the war ended was the fate of the large populations of Eastern European Catholics, betrayed (as he saw it) into the hands of Stalin's Soviet Union by the Allies. He now saw little difference in morality between the war's combatants, and later described it as "a sweaty tug-of-war between teams of indistinguishable louts".^[126] Although he took momentary pleasure from the defeat of Churchill and the Conservatives in the July 1945 Election, he saw the accession to power of the Labour Party as a triumph of barbarism and the onset of a "Dark Age".^[124]

St. Helena, the subject of Waugh's 1950 novel

In September 1945, after release by the army, he returned to Piers Court with his family (another daughter, Harriet, had been born at Pixton in 1944),^[127] but spent much of the next seven years either in London, or travelling. In March 1946 he visited the Nuremberg Trials, and later that year he was in Spain for a celebration of the 400th anniversary of the death of Francisco de Vittoria, said to be the founder of International Law.^[128] Waugh wrote up his experiences of the frustrations of post-war European travel in a novella, Scott-King's Modern Europe.^[129] In February 1947 he made the first of several trips to the United States, in the first instance to discuss filming of Brideshead. This project collapsed, but Waugh used his time in Hollywood to visit the Forest Lawn cemetery, which provided the basis for his satire of American perspectives on death, The Loved One.^[21] In 1951 he visited the Holy Land with his future biographer, Christopher Sykes,^[130] and in 1953 he travelled to Goa to witness the final exhibition before burial of the remains of the 16th century Jesuit missionary-priest St Francis Xavier.^[131][132]

In between his journeys Waugh worked intermittently on Helena, a long-planned novel about the discoverer of the True Cross, "far the best book I have ever written or ever will write". Its success with the public was limited, although it was, his daughter Harriet later said, "the only one of his books that he ever cared to read aloud".^[133] In 1952 Waugh published Men at Arms, the first of his semi-autobiographical war trilogy, in which he depicted many of his personal experiences and encounters from the early stages of the war.^[134] Other books published during this period included When The Going Was Good (1946),^[129] an anthology of his pre-war travel writing, and Love Among the Ruins (1953), a dystopian tale in which Waugh displays his contempt for the modern world,^[135] At 50, Waugh was old for his years, "selectively deaf, rheumatic, irascible", increasingly dependent on alcohol and on drugs to relieve his insomnia and depression.^[21] Two more children, James (born 1946) and Septimus (born 1950), completed his family.^[136]

From 1945 onwards Waugh became an avid collector of objects, particularly Victorian paintings and furniture. He filled Piers Court with his acquisitions, often from London's Portobello Market and from house clearance sales.^[137] His diary entry for 30 August 1946 records a visit to Gloucester where he bought "a lion of wood, finely carved for £25, also a bookcase £35 ... a charming Chinese painting £10, a Regency easel £7".^[138] Some of his buying was shrewd and prescient; he paid £10 for Rossetti's "Spirit of the Rainbow" to begin a collection of Victorian paintings that eventually acquired great value. Waugh also began, from 1949, to write knowledgeable reviews and articles on the subject of painting.^{[137][n 5]}

Breakdown[link]

By 1953 Waugh's popularity as a writer was declining. He was perceived as out of step with the Zeitgeist, and the large fees he demanded were no longer easily available.^[131] His money was running out, and progress on the second book of his war trilogy, Officers and Gentlemen, had stalled. Partly because of his dependency on drugs, his health was steadily deteriorating.^[139] Shortage of cash led him to agree in November 1953 to be interviewed on BBC radio, where the panel took an aggressive line. "[T]hey tried to make a fool of me, and I don't think they entirely succeeded", Waugh wrote to Nancy Mitford.^[140] Peter Fleming in The Spectator likened the interview to "the goading of a bull by matadors".^[141]

Early in 1954 Waugh's doctors, concerned by his physical deterioration, advised a change of scene. On 29 January he took a ship bound for Ceylon, hoping that he would be able to finish his novel. Within a few days he was writing home complaining of "other passengers whispering about me" and of hearing voices, including that of his recent BBC interlocutor Stephen Black. He left the ship in Egypt and flew on to Colombo but, he wrote to Laura, the voices followed him.^[142] Alarmed, Laura sought help from her friend Frances Donaldson, whose husband agreed to fly out to Ceylon and bring Waugh home. In fact Waugh made his own way back, by now believing that he was being possessed by devils. A brief medical examination indicated that Waugh was suffering from bromide poisoning from his drugs regime. When his medication was changed the voices and other hallucinations quickly disappeared.^[143] Waugh was delighted, informing all of his friends that he had been mad: "Clean off my onion!". The experience was semi-fictionalised a few years later in The Ordeal of Gilbert Pinfold (1957).^[144]

Late works[link]

Combe Florey, the village in Somerset to which Waugh and his family moved in 1956

Restored to health, Waugh returned to work and finished Officers and Gentlemen. In June 1955 the Daily Express journalist and reviewer Nancy Spain, accompanied by her friend Lord Noel-Buxton, arrived uninvited at Piers Court and demanded an interview. Waugh saw the pair off, and wrote a wry account for The Spectator,^[145] but was troubled by the incident, and decided to sell Piers Court; "I felt it was polluted", he told Nancy Mitford.^[146] Late in 1956 the family moved to the manor house in the Somerset village of Combe Florey.^[147] In January 1957 Waugh avenged the Spain–Noel-Buxton intrusion by winning libel damages from the Express and Spain. The paper had printed an article by Spain, suggesting that the sales of Waugh's books were much lower than they were and that his worth as a journalist was low.^[148]

Pinfold was published in the summer of 1957, "my barmy book", Waugh called it.^[149] The extent to which the story is self-mockery rather than true autobiography became a subject of critical debate.^[150] Waugh's next major book was a biography of his long-time friend, the Catholic writer and theologian Fr. Ronald Knox, who had died in August 1957. Research and writing extended over two years, during which time Waugh did little other work, delaying the third volume of his war trilogy. In June 1958 his son Auberon was severely wounded in a shooting accident while serving with the army in Cyprus. Waugh remained detached; he did not go to Cyprus, nor did he immediately visit Auberon on the latter's return to England. Critic and literary biographer David Wykes calls Waugh's sang-froid "astonishing", and the family's apparent acceptance of his behaviour even more so.^[151]

Although most of Waugh's books had sold well, and he had been well-rewarded for his journalism, his levels of expenditure meant that money problems and tax bills were a recurrent feature in his life.^[152] In 1950, as a means of tax avoidance, he had set up a trust fund for his children (he termed it the "Save the Children Fund", after the well-established charity of that name) into which he placed the initial advance and all future royalties from the Penguin (paperback) editions of his books.^[153] He was able to augment his personal finances by charging household items to the trust, or by selling his own possessions to it.^[21] Nonetheless, by 1960 shortage of money led him to agree to an interview on BBC Television, in the Face to Face series conducted by John Freeman. The interview was broadcast on 26 June 1960; according to his biographer Selena Hastings, Waugh restrained his instinctive hostility and coolly answered the questions put to him by Freeman, assuming what she calls a "pose of world-weary boredom".^[152]

In 1960 Waugh was offered the honour of a CBE but declined, believing that he should have been given the superior status of a knighthood.^[154] In September he produced his final travel book, A Tourist in Africa, based on a visit made in January–March 1959. He enjoyed the trip, but "despised" the book. Critic Cyril Connolly called it "the thinnest piece of book-making that Mr Waugh has undertaken".^[155] This book done, he worked on the last of the war novels, which was published in 1961 as Unconditional Surrender.^[156]

Decline and death[link]

Waugh's Grave in Combe Florey. Adjacent to, but not within, the Anglican church cemetery

As he approached his sixties, Waugh was in poor health, prematurely aged, "fat, deaf, short of breath" according to Patey.^[157] Biographer Martin Stannard likened his appearance around this time to that of "an exhausted rogue jollied up by drink".^[158] In 1962 Waugh began work on his autobiography, and that same year wrote his final fiction, the long short story Basil Seal Rides Again. This revival of the main protagonist of Put Out More Flags was published in 1963; the Times Literary Supplement called it a "nasty little book".^[159] When the first volume of autobiography, A Little Learning, was published in 1964 its often oblique tone and discreet name-changes ensured that friends avoided the embarrassments that some had feared.^[160]

Waugh had welcomed the accession in 1958 of Pope John XXIII,^[161] and wrote an appreciative tribute on the pope's death in 1963.^[162] However, he became increasingly concerned by the decisions emerging from the Second Vatican Council, which was convened by Pope John in October 1962 and continued under his successor until 1965. Waugh, a staunch opponent of Church reform, was particularly distressed by the replacement of the universal Latin Mass with the vernacular.^[163] In a Spectator article of 23 November 1962 he argued the case against change in a manner described by a later commentator as "sharp-edged reasonableness".^[164][165] He wrote to Nancy Mitford that "the buggering up of the Church is a deep sorrow to me... We write letters to the paper. A fat lot of good that does."^[166]

In 1965 a new financial crisis arose from an apparent flaw in the terms of the "Save the Children" trust, whereby a large sum of back tax was being demanded. Waugh's agent, AD Peters, negotiated a settlement with the tax authorities for a manageable amount,^[167] but in his concern to generate funds Waugh signed contracts to write several books, including a history of the papacy, an illustrated book on the crusades and a second volume of autobiography. Waugh's physical and mental deterioration prevented any work on these projects, and the contracts were cancelled.^[168] He described himself as "toothless, deaf, melancholic, shaky on my pins, unable to eat, full of dope, quite idle",^[169] and expressed the belief that "all fates were worse than death".^[170] His only significant literary activity in 1965 was the editing of the three war novels into a single volume, published as Sword of Honour.^[171]

On Easter Day, 10 April 1966, after attending a Latin Mass in a neighbouring village with members of his family, Waugh died suddenly of heart failure at his Combe Florey home. He was buried, by special arrangement, in a consecrated plot outside the Anglican churchyard in Combe Florey. A Requiem Mass, in Latin, was celebrated in Westminster Cathedral on 21 April 1966.^[172]

Character and opinions[link]

In the course of his lifetime Waugh made enemies, and offended many people; writer James Lees-Milne asserted that he was "the nastiest-tempered man in England".^[173] He had been a bully at school, and retained an intimidating presence throughout his life; his son Auberon remarked that the force of his father's personality was such that, despite his lack of height, "generals and chancellors of the exchequer, six foot six and exuding self-importance from every pore, quail[ed] in front of him."^[174]

However, according to Paula Byrne, whose partial biography Mad World was published in 2009, the common view of Waugh as a "snobbish misanthrope" is a caricature; she asks: "Why would a man who was so unpleasant be so beloved by such a wide circle of friends?"^[175] His generosity to individuals and causes, particularly Catholic causes,^[176] extended to small gestures; after his libel court victory over Nancy Spain he sent her a bottle of champagne.^[177] Hastings suggests that his outward belligerence to strangers was not entirely serious but, rather, an attempt at "finding a sparring partner worthy of his own wit and ingenuity".^[178] He mocked himself as well as others; Byrne believes that the elderly buffer, "crusty colonel" image he presented in his later life was a comic impersonation, rather than his real self.^[179][180]

As an instinctive conservative, Waugh believed that class divisions, with inequalities of wealth and position, were natural, and that "no form of government [was] ordained by God as being better than any other".^[181] In the postwar "Age of the Common Man" he attacked socialism (the "Cripps–Attlee terror")^[182] and complained, after Churchill's return to power in 1951, that "the Conservative Party have never put the clock back a single second".^[183] He never voted in elections; in 1959 he expressed a hope that the Conservatives would win the General Election, but would not vote for them since "I should feel I was morally inculpated in their follies". He added: "I do not aspire to advise my sovereign in her choice of servants."^[184]

Waugh's Catholicism was fundamental: "The Church... is the normal state of man from which men have disastrously exiled themselves."^[185] He believed the Church was the last great defence against the encroachment of the Dark Age being ushered in by the welfare state and the spread of working-class culture.^[186] Strictly observant, he admitted to Diana Cooper that his most difficult task was how to square the obligations of his faith with his indifference to his fellow men.^[187] When asked by Nancy Mitford how he reconciled his often objectionable conduct with being a Christian, he replied that "were he not a Christian he would be even more horrible".^[188]

Waugh's conservatism was aesthetic as well as political and religious. Although he praised younger writers such as Angus Wilson, Muriel Spark and V.S. Naipaul, he was scornful of the 1950s writers' group known as "The Movement". He expressed a belief that the literary world was "sinking into black disaster", and that literature itself might die within 30 years.^[189] Waugh, who as a schoolboy had praised Cubism, soon abandoned his interest in artistic modernism.^[190] In 1945 he was writing that Picasso's standing was the result of a "mesmeric trick"; his paintings "could not be intelligently discussed in the terms used of the civilised masters".^[191] In his 1953 radio interview he named Augustus Egg (1816–63) as a painter for whom he had particular esteem.^{[n 6]} He came to admire George Orwell because of their shared patriotism and sense of morality.^[192]

Waugh's racial and antisemitic prejudices are freely expressed in his works, particularly in those written before the war. The writer V.S. Pritchett observes that Waugh's antisemitism, "like Mount Everest, is there, nonviolent but undeniable";^[193] Wykes calls it Waugh's "most persistent nastiness". The events of the Second World War may, Wykes observes, have modified Waugh's attitudes, though not to an extent discernible in his social behaviour. Waugh's racism, Wykes further asserts, was "an illogical extension of his views on the naturalness and rightness of hierarchy as the [main] principle of social organisation".^[194] Orwell, an admirer of Waugh's writing, concluded that Waugh was "almost as good a novelist as it is possible to be ... while holding untenable opinions".^[195]

Writing[link]

For a listing of Waugh's works, see Evelyn Waugh bibliography

Themes and style[link]

Wykes observes that Waugh's novels reprise and fictionalise the main events of his life,^[170] although in an early essay Waugh declares that "Nothing is more insulting to a novelist than to assume that he is incapable of anything but the mere transcription of what he observes". Nor, Waugh emphasises, should it be taken that the author agreed with the opinions expressed by his characters.^[196] Nevertheless, according to Ann Pasternak Slater in her introduction to Waugh's Complete Short Stories, "[the] delineation of social prejudices and the language in which they are expressed is part of Waugh's meticulous observation of his contemporary world".^[197]

Waugh is widely regarded as a master of style. In the view of critic Clive James, "Nobody ever wrote a more unaffectedly elegant English ... its hundreds of years of steady development culminate in him".^[198] As his talent developed and matured he maintained what literary critic Andrew Michael Roberts calls "an exquisite sense of the ludicrous, and a fine aptitude for exposing false attitudes".^[199] In the first stages of his 40-year writing career, before his conversion to Catholicism in 1930, Waugh was the novelist of the Bright Young People generation. His first two novels, Decline and Fall and Vile Bodies, comically reflect a society of utter futility, peopled by two-dimensional, basically unbelievable characters in circumstances too fantastic to evoke the reader's emotions.^[200] Much use is made of what Slater describes as a typical Waugh trademark: rapid, unattributed dialogue in which the participants can still be easily identified.^[197] Alongside these works Waugh mixed into his journalism a few serious essays, such as "The War and the Younger Generation", in which he castigates his own "crazy and sterile" generation.^[201] Waugh's conversion did not significantly change the nature of his next two novels, Black Mischief and A Handful of Dust although, in the latter at least, the farcical elements are muted and its protagonist, Tony Last, is recognisably a person rather than a comic cipher.^[200] Waugh's first fiction on a Catholic theme was the 1933 short story "Out of Depth", about the immutability of the Mass.^[202] From the mid-1930s onwards his journalism and non-fiction writings were increasingly concerned with Catholicism and conservative politics,^[203] before he reverted to his former manner with Scoop, published in 1938.^[204]

In the 1939 fragment Work Suspended, Waugh's style changes to a form which, with "real" characters and a first-person narrator, presages Brideshead Revisited five years later.^[205] Brideshead, which questions the meaning of human existence without God, is the first of Waugh's novels in which his political and religious views come clearly into view.^[21] In his 1946 article in Life magazine, "Fan Fare", Waugh writes that "you can only leave God out [of fiction] by making your characters pure abstractions", and in the same article declares his future novelistic intentions as "the attempt to represent man more fully which, to me, means only one thing, man in his relation to God."^[206] His next novel was Helena, the most uncompromisingly Christian of his books.^[207]

In Brideshead, through the person of the proletarian junior officer Hooper, Waugh introduces a further theme that persists in his post-war fiction: the rise of mediocrity in the Age of the Common Man.^[21] In the Sword of Honour trilogy this process is depicted through the semi-comical figure of Trimmer, a sloven and fraud who through contrivance emerges triumphant.^[208] Waugh's pessimistic view of the future is summarised in the 1947 story "Scott-King's Modern Europe", by the schoolmaster's admonition: "I think it would be very wicked indeed to do anything to fit a boy for the modern world".^[209] This cynicism pervades the short novel Love Among the Ruins (1952), set in a world so disagreeable that euthanasia is the most sought-after social service.^[210] Of the post-war novels, Pinfold stands apart as, in Patey's description, "a kind of mock-novel, a sly invitation to a game".^[150] Waugh's last fiction, "Basil Seal Rides Again", in which several characters from the prewar novels are resurrected, was "[a] senile attempt to recapture the manner of my youth".^[211] Slater notes that this last story begins in identical fashion to Waugh's first, "The Balance", with a "fusillade of unattributed dialogue".^[197]

Reception[link]

Of Waugh's early books, Decline and Fall was hailed by Arnold Bennett in the Evening Standard as "an uncompromising and brilliantly malicious satire".^[212] The critical reception of Vile Bodies two years later was even more enthusiastic, with Rebecca West predicting that Waugh was "destined to be the dazzling figure of his age".^[67] However, A Handful of Dust, later widely regarded as Waugh's masterpiece, received a more muted welcome from critics, despite Waugh's own high estimation of the work.^[213] The book's ending, with Tony Last condemned forever to read Dickens to his mad jungle captor, was thought by author and critic Henry Yorke to reduce an otherwise believable book to "phantasy". Cyril Connolly's first reaction to the book was that Waugh's powers were failing, an opinion he later revised.^[214]

In the latter 1930s Waugh's inclination to Catholic and conservative polemics affected his standing with the general reading public.^[21] The Campion biography is said by David Wykes to be "so rigidly biased that it has no claims to make as history".^[215] The pro-fascist tone in parts of Waugh in Abyssinia offended readers and critics, and prevented its publication in America.^[216] There was general relief among critics when Scoop, in 1938, indicated a return to Waugh's earlier comic style; critics had begun to think that his wit had been displaced by partisanship and propaganda.^[204]

Waugh maintained his reputation in 1942 with Put Out More Flags, which sold well, despite wartime restrictions on paper and printing.^[217] Its public reception, however, did not compare with that accorded to Brideshead Revisited three years later, on both sides of the Atlantic. Brideshead's selection as the American Book of the Month swelled its US sales to an extent that dwarfed those in Britain, which was affected by paper shortages.^[218] Despite the public's enthusiasm, critical opinion was split. Brideshead's Catholic standpoint offended some critics who had greeted Waugh’s earlier novels with warm praise.^[219] Its perceived snobbery and its deference to the aristocracy were attacked by, among others, Conor Cruise O'Brien who, in the Irish literary magazine The Bell, wrote of Waugh's "almost mystical veneration" for the upper classes.^[220][221] Fellow-writer Rose Macaulay believed that Waugh's genius had been adversely affected by the intrusion of his right-wing partisan alter ego, and that he had lost his detachment: "In art so naturally ironic and detached as his, this is a serious loss".^[222][223] Conversely, the book was praised by Yorke, Graham Greene, and in glowing terms by Harold Acton, who was particularly impressed by its evocation of 1920s Oxford.^[224] In 1959, at the request of publishers Chapman and Hall and in some deference to his critics, Waugh revised the book and wrote in a preface: "I have modified the grosser passages but not obliterated them because they are an essential part of the book".^[225]