Early life
Born in London, Evelyn Waugh was the second son of noted editor and publisher Arthur Waugh. He was brought up in upper middle class circumstances, although his parents' address in Golders Green embarrassed him. He attended Heath Mount School. His only sibling was his older brother Alec, who also became a writer. Both his father and his brother had been educated at Sherborne, an English public school, but Alec had been asked to leave during his final year and had then published a controversial novel, The Loom of Youth, which touched on the matter of homosexual relationships among students and which was otherwise deemed injurious to Sherborne's reputation. The school therefore refused to take Evelyn, and his father sent him to Lancing College, an institution of lesser social prestige with a strong High Church Anglican character. This circumstance would rankle with the status-conscious Evelyn for the rest of his life but may have contributed to his interest in religion, even though at Lancing he lost his childhood faith and became an agnostic.
After Lancing, he attended Hertford College, Oxford as a history scholar. There, Waugh neglected academic work and was known as much for his artwork as for his writing. Though embarrassed by what he deemed the insufficient social cachet of Hertford in comparison with such colleges as Christ Church, he also threw himself into a vigorous social scene populated by aesthetes such as Harold Acton, Brian Howard and David Talbot Rice, and members of the British aristocracy and the upper classes. His social life at Oxford would provide the background for some of his most characteristic later writing. Asked if he had competed in any sport for his college, Waugh famously replied "I drank for Hertford."
Waugh had sexual relationships with other men during his college years, confirmed by his diary entries and letters, including a diary reflection on "my first homosexual love". Between 1921 and 1924, at least three homosexual relationships have been suggested, with Richard Pares, Alistair Graham and Hugh Patrick Lygon. These may have helped shape his future works.
Waugh's final exam results qualified him only for a third-class degree. He was prevented from remaining in residence for the extra term that would have been required of him and he left Oxford in 1924 without taking his degree. At Oxford, Waugh had contributed short stories to the Isis and Cherwell magazines, and had begun a novel, The Temple at Thatch, which he later destroyed. In 1925, he taught at a private school in Wales. In his autobiography, Waugh claims that he attempted suicide at the time by swimming out to sea, only to turn back after being stung by jellyfish. He was later dismissed from another teaching post for attempting to seduce the matron, telling his father he had been dismissed for "inebriation".
He was briefly apprenticed to a cabinet-maker and afterwards maintained an interest in marquetry, to which his novels have been compared in their intricate inlaid subplots. Waugh also provided the artwork for many of his books having been greatly inspired by a chance meeting with Pablo Picasso and Salvador Dalí at the Slade School of Fine Art in Bloomsbury. According to Picasso, Waugh attempted to remove Dalí's trademark moustache, suspecting it a surrealist joke. Dalí was furious and never spoke to Waugh again; Waugh took his revenge by caricaturing the artist in a later novel (Brideshead Revisited, where he portrayed him as Catelli, 'a gauche Spanish artisan ... with a less than attractive limp'.)
Waugh also worked as a journalist before he published his first novel in 1928, Decline and Fall. The title is from Gibbon, but whereas the Georgian historian charted the bankruptcy and dissolution of the Roman Empire, Waugh's was a witty account of quite a different sort of dissolution, following the career of the harmless Paul Pennyfeather, a student of divinity, as he is accidentally expelled from Oxford for indecency ("I expect you'll be becoming a schoolmaster, sir," says the College porter to Paul, "That's what most of the gentlemen does, sir, that gets sent down for indecent behaviour") and enters into the worlds of schoolmastering, high society, and the white slave trade. Other novels about England's "Bright Young People" followed, and all were well received by both critics and the general public.
Waugh entered into a brief, unhappy marriage in 1928 to the Hon. Evelyn Gardner, youngest daughter of Lord Burghclere and Lady Winifred Herbert. Their friends called them "He-Evelyn" and "She-Evelyn." Gardner's infidelity with the writer John Heygate would provide the background for Waugh's novel A Handful of Dust, but her husband had made little effort to make her happy, choosing to spend much time on his own. The marriage ended in divorce in 1930.
Waugh converted to Catholicism in 1930, receiving instruction from the Jesuit Martin D'Arcy. After his marriage was annulled by the Church, he married Laura Herbert, a Catholic, daughter of Aubrey Herbert, and a cousin of his first wife (they were both granddaughters of Henry Herbert, 4th Earl of Carnarvon). This marriage was successful, lasting the rest of his life, producing seven children, one of whom, Mary, died in infancy. His son Auberon, named after Laura's brother, followed in his footsteps as a writer and journalist.
The 1930s
Waugh's fame continued to grow between the world wars, based on his satires of contemporary upper class English society, written in prose that was seductively simple and elegant. His style was often inventive (a chapter, for example, would be written entirely in the form of a dialogue of telephone calls). His conversion to Roman Catholicism in 1930 was a watershed in his life and his writing. It elevated Catholic themes in his work, and aspects of his deep and sincere faith, both implicit and explicit, can be found in all of his later work.
Waugh's conversion to Catholicism was widely discussed in London society and newspapers in September 1930. In response to the gossip, Waugh made his own contribution in article entitled, "Converted to Rome: Why It Has Happened to Me." It wasn't about ritual, said Waugh, nor about submission to the views of others. The essential issue, he believed, was making a choice between Christianity or chaos. Waugh saw in Europe's increasing materialism a major decline in what he felt created Western Civilization in the first place. "It is no longer possible ... ," he wrote, "to accept the benefits of civilization and at the same time deny the supernatural basis upon which it is based." He added that Catholicism was the "most complete and vital form" of Christianity. His faith and his conviction persisted throughout all the chapters of his life.
At the same time (and perhaps because it integrated both his beliefs and his natural "dark humour"), Black Mischief and A Handful of Dust contain episodes of the most savage farce. In some of his fiction Waugh derives comedy from the cruelty of mischance; ingenuous characters are subject to bizarre calamities in a universe that seems to lack a shaping and protecting God, or any other source of order and comfort. The period between the wars also saw extensive travels around the Mediterranean and Red Sea, Spitsbergen, Africa (most famously Ethiopia) and South America. Sections of the numerous travel books which resulted are often cited as among the best writing in this genre. A compendium of Waugh's favourite travel writing has been issued under the title When The Going Was Good.
World War II
During the second world war, Waugh participated in the failed attempt to take Dakar from the Vichy French in late 1940. Following a joint exercise with No. 3 Commando (Army), he applied to join them and was accepted. Waugh took part in the ill-fated Bardia raid on the coast of Libya. As special assistant to the famed commando leader Robert Laycock, Waugh showed conspicuous bravery during the fighting in Crete in 1941, supervising the evacuation of troops while under attack by Stuka dive bombers.
Later, Waugh was placed on extended leave and later reassigned to the Royal Horse Guards. In the preface to the revised edition of Brideshead Revisited he writes, "In December 1943 I had the good fortune when parachuting to incur a minor injury which afforded me a rest from military service. This was extended by a sympathetic commanding officer, who let me remain unemployed until June 1944 when the book was finished."
He was recalled for a military/diplomatic mission to Yugoslavia in 1944 at the request of his old friend Randolph Churchill. He and Churchill narrowly escaped capture or death when the Germans undertook Operation Rösselsprung, and paratroops and glider-borne storm troops attacked the partisans' headquarters where they were staying. During his time in Yugoslavia Waugh produced a formidable report detailing Tito's persecution of Catholics and the clergy. It was "buried" by Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden as being largely irrelevant.
Some of Waugh's best-loved and best-known novels come from this period. Brideshead Revisited (1945) is an evocation of a vanished pre-war England. It's an extraordinary work which in many ways has come to define Waugh and his view of his world. It not only painted a rich picture of life in England and at Oxford University at a time (before World War II) which Waugh himself loved and embellished in the novel, but it allowed him to share his feelings about his Catholic faith, principally through the actions of his characters. The book was applauded by his friends, not just for an evocation of a time now ... and then ... long gone, but also for its examination of the manifold pressures within a traditional Catholic family. It was a huge success in Britain and in the United States. Decades later a television adaptation (1981) achieved popularity and acclaim in both countries, and around the world; a film adaptation was released in 2008. Waugh revised the novel in the late 1950s, saying that he wrote the novel during the grey privations of the latter war years and later found parts of it "distasteful on a full stomach".
Much of Waugh's wartime experience is reflected in the Sword of Honour trilogy. It consists of three novels, Men at Arms (1952), Officers and Gentlemen (1955) and Unconditional Surrender (1961), which loosely parallel his wartime experiences. Critics felt that these were some of the best books written about the war. Many of his portraits are unforgettable, and often show striking resemblances to noted real personalities. Waugh biographer Christopher Sykes, for instance, felt that the officer in the Sword of Honour trilogy, Brigadier Ben Ritchie-Hook, "bears a very strong resemblance to" Lieutenant-General Sir Adrian Carton de Wiart VC, a friend of the author's father-in-law. Waugh was familiar with Carton de Wiart through the club to which he belonged. The fictional commando leader, Tommy Blackhouse, is based on Major-General Sir Robert Laycock, a real-life commando leader and friend of Waugh's.
Later years
The period after the war saw Waugh living with his family in the West Country, first at Piers Court, and from 1956 onwards, at Combe Florey, Somerset, where he enjoyed the life of a country gentleman and continued to write. (Combe Florey was bought from his widow by their son Auberon.) Waugh was highly critical of Vatican II's 1960s changes to his beloved Tridentine liturgy, which he in part loved for what he saw as its timelessness. (Cf. Bitter Trial by Waugh and ed. by S. Reid)
For a base in London, he was a member of White's and the St James's Club in Piccadilly.
The Ordeal of Gilbert Pinfold (1957) is a thinly-veiled fictionalisation of Waugh's own real-life experience of hallucinations while on a cruise ship. This short but disturbing malady was caused by the interaction between alcohol and chloral sleeping medication. Unlike delirium tremens, the condition induces auditory hallucinations rather than visual ones, which in turn led Waugh to acute paranoia. The illness was remedied once medication had been changed. During this period he wrote Helena (1953), a fictional account of the Empress Helena and the finding of the True Cross, which he regarded as his best work.
Waugh's health declined in later life. He put on weight, and the sleeping draughts he continued to take, combined with alcohol, cigars and little exercise, weakened his health. His productivity also declined, and his output was uneven. His last published work, Basil Seal Rides Again, revisiting the characters of his earliest satirical works, did not meet critical or popular approval, but is still read today. At the same time, he continued as a journalist and was well received.
He appeared in two television interviews with the BBC in the early 1960s, the only time his appearance was recorded publicly, during which the interviewers sought to corner him as an anachronistic figure. He overcame them, particularly in the second interview with novelist Elizabeth Jane Howard on the Monitor programme in 1964. (The other interview was on John Freeman's Face to Face series broadcast on 18 June 1960.) An earlier radio interview on the BBC Home Service in 1953 was somewhat less convivial.
Waugh's diaries, published in the 1970s, were widely acclaimed. His correspondence with lifelong friends, such as Nancy Mitford, is still published today. He is a fruitful source for biographers; three major works have been produced since Christopher Sykes's friendly and familiar account of Waugh's life was published in the 1970s.
Evelyn Waugh died, aged 62, on 10 April 1966, after attending a Latin Mass on Easter Sunday. He suffered a heart attack in the lavatory of his home, Combe Florey. His estate at probate was valued at Ł20,068. This did not include the value of his lucrative copyrights, which Waugh put in a trust (humorously named the 'Save the Children Fund') for his children. He is buried at Combe Florey, Somerset.
