Evelyn Waugh: A Life Revisited

by Philip Eade

Overview

Named a Best Book of the Year by The Guardian, The Sunday Times, and the Financial Times

A completely fresh view of one of the most gifted—and fascinating—writers of our time, the enigmatic author of Brideshead Revisited

Graham Greene hailed Evelyn Waugh as “the greatest novelist of my generation,” and in recent years Waugh’s reputation has only grown. Now, half a century after Waugh’s death in 1966, with Evelyn Waugh, Philip Eade has delivered a hugely entertaining biography that is both authoritative and full of new information, some of it sensational.

Drawing on extensive unseen primary sources, Eade’s book sheds new light on many of the key phases and themes of Waugh’s life: his difficult relationship with his embarrassingly sentimental father; his formative homosexual affairs at Oxford; his unrequited love for various Bright Young Things; his disastrous first marriage; his momentous conversion to Roman Catholicism; his unconventional yet successful second marriage; his checkered wartime career; and his shattering nervous breakdown. Along the way, we come to understand not only Waugh’s complex relationship with the aristocracy, but also the astonishing power of his wit, and the love, fear, and loathing that he variously inspired in others. Waugh was famously difficult, and Eade brilliantly captures the myriad facets of his character, even as he casts new light on the novels that have dazzled generations of readers.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781250143297
Publisher:	Picador
Publication date:	10/10/2017
Pages:	464
Product dimensions:	5.60(w) x 8.90(h) x 1.20(d)

About the Author

PHILIP EADE has worked as a criminal barrister, English teacher, and journalist. His first book, Sylvia, Queen of the Headhunters, was runner-up for the Biographers' Club Prize, and a New York Times' Editors' Pick; his second, Prince Philip, became a Sunday Times bestseller. He lives in London.

Table of Contents

CONTENTS

List of Illustrations xv
Family Tree
Preface xxv

1. Second Son 1
2. The Sadism of Youth 15
3. Serving Lord Kitchener 30
4. A Lesser Place than Eton 40
5. Watertight Compartments 53
6. All That One Dreams 66
7. His Poor Dead Heart 80
8. Pure as Driven Slush 90
9. Becoming a Man of Letters 103
10. Shevelyn 114
11. A Common Experience, I’m Told 125
12. Perversion to Rome 140
13. The Dutch Girl 150
14. Off to the Forest 170
15. I Can’t Advise You in My Favour 184
16. Goodness She is a Decent Girl 200
17. A War to End Waugh 215
18. Head Unbloodied but Bowed 238
19. A Book to Bring Tears 252
20. The Occupation 267
21. Off My Rocker 288
22. Suitably Sequestered 302
23. Decline and Fall 319

Epilogue 333

Notes 337
Select Bibliography 375
Index 383

Editorial Reviews

"Philip Eade has written a brisk, lively, and wonderfully entertaining account of the life of a strange, tormented, unique creature. Through page after page one finds oneself laughing aloud." —John Banville, New York Review of Books

"Although there have been several other excellent biographies of Evelyn Waugh, this is perhaps the most penetrating and insightful one to date.....For all the value of the newly available sources and the good use to which Mr. Eade has put them, in the end it is his biographical skills and crisp way with words and phrase that make this such a valuable tool for understanding the perplexing figure." —Martin Rubin, Washington Times

“Any biography of Waugh is entertaining because he was so witty a man, and Mr. Eade does not fail to entertain. He is not only fair to Waugh, moreover; he evidently likes him. It’s good to read an admiring rather than a debunking biography.” —Wall Street Journal

“This crowded, witty biography follows Waugh from the ancestral home in Somerset…to the jungles of Brazil…. Eade plunges into correspondence and unpublished family papers to explore the writer’s obsessions with social status and Catholicism, his jackknife turns from affection to contempt, and his torturous ambition.” —The New Yorker

"Eade recounts Waugh’s life in an admirably economic, straightforward manner, with a nice sense of measure and in a prose style free of jargon and cliché. He neither Freudianizes Waugh nor condemns his lapses into social savagery. Without a trace of tendentiousness, free of all doctrine, the biographer seeks to understand the strange behavior of his subject through telling the story of his life without commenting censoriously on it. The task is far from a simple one." —Joseph Epstein, The Claremont Review

"Entertaining and meticulously researched....Eade approaches his subject with empathy and an archaeologist’s determination to excavate the past…. [He] skillfully narrates the ups and downs of the writer’s life, from his conversion to Catholicism to his determined work on Brideshead Revisitedduring wartime. Waugh’s episodes of outrageous behavior, heavy drinking, and generosity to fellow writers are all examined with admirable evenhandedness." — Harvard Review

"Unlike some of Waugh’s biographers, Eade does not start from the premise that the twentieth century’s great master of English prose was a fiend in human form: a wise decision that allows him to see, and portray, a complex personality in full." —George Weigel, First Things

"One gets the sense throughout his work that Eade has set his hounds to sniff out the documents and interviews that give the truth, even if unsensational, rather than the racy or amusing anecdote; yet in the end his evenhandedness serves to sharpen rather than blur the likeness he has crafted. In sum, Eade succeeds in giving a convincing picture of a complex man—one more interesting, in human terms, than the portrait the artist gave us of himself." —Paul V. Mankowski, First Things

"[Eade’s] new biography deconstructs the monster and reattaches the man to the human race." —David Pryce-Jones, National Review

"For even more laughs, Philip Eade's Evelyn Waugh: A Life Revisited demonstrates that Waugh's life, already done by divers hands, really is worth another visit." —John Banville, GUARDIAN Best Books of 2016

"Eade's new biography draws on unpublished letters, diaries and memoirs to explore the eccentric larger-than-life story of one of the most acclaimed novelists of the 20th century. Will send readers back to the novels in droves." —FINANCIAL TIMES Books of the Year

"Anyone with the slightest interest in Evelyn Waugh - and who has not been intrigued by his steady return to favour? - should buy, and keep, Philip Eade's Evelyn Waugh: A Life Revisited. Why? Because it is packed with brand new, fascinating information about Waugh, his family, his friends and lovers. As well, it “rebalances” a number of entrenched, skewed perceptions of man and soldier. And it is irresistibly readable." —Donat Gallagher, editor of THE ESSAYS, ARTICLES AND REVIEWS OF EVELYN WAUGH

"Essential . . . compelling . . . Eade's pacey new biography delivers the raw material of Waugh's life. . . . Treat the Waugh aficionado in your life." —SUNDAY TIMES Books of the Year

“Eade is a gifted narrator and a master at providing the right quote at the right time at just the right length.” —The Washington Free Beacon

"Thoughtful and intimate.... Drawing on previously unavailable letters, manuscripts and diaries, Eade illuminates connections between Waugh's much-lauded fiction and the author’s concealed emotional life.... A convincing portrait of a flawed but gifted artist.” —Booklist (starred review)

"Well crafted.... Eade focuses on Waugh's colorful personal life and exploits with the 'smart set' of his time.... Eade's treatment reveals a man of astonishing awareness of his gifts and failings, great sincerity, and wit." —Publishers Weekly

"If you like your Waugh fast, furious, and funny, there is much to enjoy in Philip Eade's sparkling Evelyn Waugh: A Life Revisited.... Waugh's letters are a joy to read, and Eade's coup is his access to a hitherto unpublished cache of them." —The Times (London)

"[Eade] is an assiduous researcher with a considerable narrative gift. He also, crucially, likes his subject. Waugh never much cared what anyone thought of him, but Eade does, and time and again he finds justification for what previous biographers have considered questionable behavior.... This is an exemplary piece of work." —The Daily Mail (London)

"Brisk and entertaining.... intelligent and illuminating.... the best single-volume life of the author available. To read [this book] is to experience a reckoning with a man whose life, like his work, is both a solace and a stimulus." —Irish Times

"A bright, breezy, and sympathetic portrait." —The Mail on Sunday (London)

"Read this book.... Eade is excellent on tracing the sources of Waugh's delights and horrors, from his life to his work and back again: the failures, the successes, the disappointments, the endless grist to the authorial mill." —Literary Review (U.K.)

"There isn't a single dull page in the whole book, and it could easily be twice as long without overstaying its welcome." – The Irish Independent (Dublin)

"It is the force of Waugh's energy— – creative, sexual and social— – that crackles through the pages of Philip Eade's meticulous and wildly entertaining biography…. . . . Eade supplies an astonishing wealth of detail… . . . and is sympathetic to Waugh's many failings without being sycophantic." ­– Daily Express

"A splendid treat. Eade's exploration of the most significant episodes in the life of this fearless, deeply melancholic comedian is a most worthwhile addition to the bowing shelf of Waughiana." – iNews

From the Publisher

The year 2016 marked the fiftieth anniversary of the death of Evelyn Waugh, one of the greatest English writers of the twentieth century and, according to quite a few contemporaries, the most disagreeable man they ever met. Waugh has already been the subject of three important full-scale biographies and countless critical studies, and has played a signal role in a number of histories and memoirs, including Philip Eade's Evelyn Waugh: A Life Revisited. Aside from having been suggested by Evelyn Waugh's grandson, Alexander, as an anniversary commemoration, the ostensible reason for the book's existence is that its author has been able to draw on material not previously seen by earlier biographers, chiefly Waugh's letters to Teresa "Baby" Jungman — for whom he entertained an unrequited passion — and a brief, unpublished memoir written by his first wife, Evelyn, or "She-Evelyn," as people liked to say.

Arthur Evelyn St John Waugh was the second son of a publisher, a man who preferred his firstborn son, Alec, over the younger Evelyn to a grotesque extent; and in time Waugh returned the favor by despising his father as a sentimental clown. His schooldays were more unhappy than otherwise, but he found joy at Oxford, where he came into one of his personas — that of the homosexual wit, high liver, wine bibber, friend to the great, and entertaining guest at grand country estates. Eade spends more time than previous biographers poring over questions of whom Waugh slept with, what he did in that regard with whom, when, and for how long. To this end, he includes a photograph of the nude person and nice bottom of Alastair Graham, Waugh's "friend of [his] heart" and one of the models for Sebastian Flyte of Brideshead Revisited.

Waugh left Oxford with a discreditable Third and a devotion to drink ("There is nothing like the aesthetic pleasure of being drunk . . . That is the greatest thing Oxford has to teach"). With no real plans for making a living, Waugh took a stab at becoming an artist but was finally forced by penury to take a position teaching at a ghastly boys' school in Wales (the model for Llanabba of Decline and Fall). After a year at the place, his future seemed so bleak that — he claimed — he swam out to sea intending to drown himself, but, encountering jellyfish, promptly swam back to shore. He then took up two further teaching posts, a stint of learning cabinetmaking and writing for a newspaper, Waugh published a well-received biography of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, married Evelyn Gardner, and emerged as England's most celebrated young novelist with the publication of Decline and Fall — one of the funniest novels ever written. His marriage lasted only a little over a year before his wife went off with another man. It was a shaming, scarring experience Waugh never got over, and it clearly contributed to his vision of the world as a place of the damned. Indeed, the betrayal occurred as he was writing Vile Bodies, and Eade notes, as others have, that the darker hue of the novel's second half reflects this. Its effect is even more directly evident in to A Handful of Dust, which some consider his greatest work.

As a young person, Waugh had shown a religious streak that faded in and out of sight through the years, but, after the breakup of his marriage, it concentrated itself in his decision to become a Roman Catholic in 1930. With regard to more earthly matters, he traveled as a newspaper correspondent to Abyssinia for the coronation of Haile Selassie (and later to cover Mussolini's invasion), to South America, to the Mediterranean, and to Norway for some unsuccessful glacier climbing, all of which eventually produced travel writing and elements of novels (Black Mischief, Scoop). Meanwhile he was pursuing Baby Jungman and besieging her with billets-doux. Though these letters have not been used by previous biographers, it must be said that they do not really add anything and, judging by the snippets included here, they are pretty dull, especially by Waugh's standards.

After securing an annulment of his first marriage, he married Laura Herbert, thirteen years his junior, with whom he eventually had seven — six surviving — children. Although he had, in his obnoxious way, supported Mussolini's invasion of Abyssinia, he gave up his Fascist sympathies with the declaration of war in 1939 and after much trouble and string-pulling managed to join a commando unit, taken on, it transpires, because he was entertainingly funny, and, according to his commanding officer, "could not fail to be an asset in the dreary business of war." The unit was part of the famous "Layforce," which, among other things, was forced to evacuate from Crete in 1941. This event has given rise to hot controversy over whether Waugh and his commanding officer, Robert Laycock, jumped the queue in escaping the island, reprehensibly leaving a good number of troops behind to be captured or killed by the Germans. Eade shines in his examination of the affair and convincingly exonerates Waugh and Laycock of dishonorable conduct. It is clear from this biography and from the others that while Waugh possessed many vices and failings — snobbery, spite, cruelty, ire, sloth, arrogance, gluttony, boozery, and pigheadedness, to mention only a few — he was no coward. Still, as Eade also notes, Waugh clearly felt a "sense of moral unease" over the whole thing, which unreconciled feelings found expression in his depiction of Ivor Claire's ignoble flight in Officers and Gentlemen.

Waugh managed to take some time off from military service to devote himself to writing Brideshead Revisited, the novel he considered his masterpiece at the time, a view he later discarded, though it made him a pile of money, dollars especially. After the war, Waugh's physical and mental condition began to decline badly, propelled by alcohol, bromides, and barbiturates, one result of which was the wildly funny novel, The Ordeal of Gilbert Pinfold. Somehow, during these years of despair and disintegration, he also managed to come up with what many, myself included, consider his masterpiece, The Sword of Honor trilogy. Evelyn Waugh died at home after Mass on Easter Sunday, 1966.

How does this biography stack up against the previous ones? It is far less tactful than Waugh's friend Christopher Sykes's and necessarily less detailed than Martin Stannard's rather plodding 1,000-plus-page, two-volume behemoth. It is not written with the pitch-perfect tone, alertness to irony, and all-around panache of Selina Hastings's 1994 Evelyn Waugh: A Biography, but that book, like Sykes's, is out of print. So, this one will have to do. There's nothing really wrong with it except that, with the exception of Eade's straightening-out of the Crete affair, there is nothing new. The best parts are, as in every biography of Waugh, the quotations from the letters of the great man himself.

Thus I shall conclude with a famous passage from one of them, quoted by Eade, that perfectly conveys Waugh's sense of the black comedy of life in this vale of tears. Waugh, now with the Royal Horse Guards in 1942, was stationed in Scotland under the command of Col. Dornford-Slater ("Col. D.S. D.S.O.") with his unit near the estate of Lord Glasgow, whose favor the colonel wished to curry by having his men blow up an old tree stump. Lord Glasgow said he'd be grateful but begged that they not "spoil the plantation of young trees near it because that is the apple of my eye." They reassured him.

Then they all went out to see the explosion and Col. D.S. D.S.O. said you will see the tree fall flat at just that angle where it will hurt no young trees and Lord Glasgow said goodness you are clever.

So soon they lit the fuse and waited for the explosion and presently the tree, instead of falling quietly sideways, rose 50 feet in the air taking with it ½ acre of soil and the whole of the young plantation.

And the subaltern said Sir I made a mistake, it should have been 7 ½ lbs not 75.

Lord Glasgow was so upset he walked in dead silence back to his castle and when they came to the turn in the drive in sight of his castle what should they find but that every piece of glass in the building was broken.

So Lord Glasgow gave a little cry & ran to hide his emotion in the lavatory and there when he pulled the plug the entire ceiling, loosed by the explosion, fell on his head.

Katherine A. Powers reviews books widely and has been a finalist for the Nona Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing from the National Book Critics Circle. She is the editor of Suitable Accommodations: An Autobiographical Story of Family Life: The Letters of J. F. Powers, 1942–1963.

Reviewer: Katherine A. Powers

The Barnes & Noble Review

2016-08-03
A softer, kinder, gentler Evelyn Waugh (1903-1966).Since there are already numerous biographies of Waugh, is there need for another? Englishman Eade (Sylvia, Queen of the Headhunters, 2014, etc.) thinks so. For one thing, it’s the 50th anniversary of Waugh’s death; for another, Eade accessed some previously unavailable key primary resources. One is an unpublished memoir by Eade’s first wife, Evelyn (friends called her “Shevelyn”). After knowing her for a few months, Waugh proposed with the line: “Let’s get married and see how it goes.” The other was a large cache of letters from a young woman, Teresa, with whom Waugh had an affair in the 1930s. Waugh was a prolific writer of stories, novels, and travel books. Though he is better known in England than in the United States, two of his novels—Brideshead Revisited, which he called his “magnum opus,” and The Loved One, which he described as a “study of the Anglo-American cultural impasse with the mortuary as a jolly setting”—have earned him a readership in America. Early on, writes Eade, Waugh developed a “cruel streak.” His father was bad-tempered, and Waugh hated his older brother—though he said his early years were “happy enough.” When his novel Vile Bodies (1930) established him “as one of the country’s most celebrated young novelists,” his father complained about his son’s “vulgar self-publicising”—even though he ran the press that published it. Eade eschews discussing Waugh’s writings in any depth, preferring to focus on how they relate to the people in his life. The book is brimming with society-page stuff: tales of dalliances and social dinners; quotes commenting on who’s smitten with whom; who is/isn’t a homosexual; etc.—all of which grows tedious eventually. The author admits Waugh was probably something of a snob, but charges of his being a bully may be a stretch. Eade offers up a softer portrait of Waugh that might help bring him some new readers, which he deserves.

Kirkus Review