Editing Evelyn Waugh (section)

== Postwar ==

=== Fame and fortune ===

''Brideshead Revisited'' was published in London in May 1945.<ref name= Hastings494>Hastings, pp. 494–495</ref> Waugh had been convinced of the book's qualities, "my first novel rather than my last".<ref>Patey, p. 224</ref> It was a tremendous success, bringing its author fame, fortune and literary status.<ref name= Hastings494/> 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".<ref>Gallagher (ed.), pp. 289–290</ref> Although he took momentary pleasure from the defeat of [[Winston Churchill]] and his [[Conservative Party (UK)|Conservatives]] in the [[1945 United Kingdom general election|1945 general election]], he saw the accession to power of the [[Labour Party (UK)|Labour Party]] as a triumph of barbarism and the onset of a new "Dark Age".<ref name= Hastings494/>
[[File:Helena of Constantinople (Cima da Conegliano).jpg|thumb|upright|[[Helena (Empress)|St. Helena]], the subject of Waugh's 1950 novel]]

In September 1945, after he was released by the army, he returned to Piers Court with his family (another daughter, Harriet, had been born at Pixton in 1944)<ref>Hastings, pp. 462, 494–497</ref> 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 Vitoria]], said to be the founder of [[international law]].<ref>Stannard, Vol. II p. 168</ref> Waugh wrote up his experiences of the frustrations of postwar European travel in a novella, ''[[Scott-King's Modern Europe]]''.<ref name= Patey251>Patey, p. 251</ref> In February 1947, he made the first of several trips to the United States, in the first instance to discuss filming of ''Brideshead''. The project collapsed, but Waugh used his time in Hollywood to visit the [[Forest Lawn Memorial Park (Hollywood Hills)|Forest Lawn cemetery]], which provided the basis for his satire of American perspectives on death, ''[[The Loved One (book)|The Loved One]]'' (1948).<ref name= StannardODNB/> In 1951 he visited the [[Holy Land]] with his future biographer, Christopher Sykes,<ref>Sykes, pp. 338–342</ref> and in 1953, he travelled to [[Goa]] to witness the final exhibition before burial of the remains of the 16th-century Jesuit missionary-priest [[Francis Xavier]].<ref name= Hastings554>Hastings, p. 554</ref><ref>Waugh's article on the Goa visit, "Goa, the Home of a Saint", is reprinted in Gallager (ed.), pp. 448–456</ref>

In between his journeys, Waugh worked intermittently on ''[[Helena (Waugh novel)|Helena]]'', a long-planned novel about the discoverer of the [[True Cross]] that was by "far the best book I have ever written or ever will write". Its success with the public was limited, but it was, his daughter Harriet later said, "the only one of his books that he ever cared to read aloud".<ref>Patey, p. 289</ref>

In 1952 Waugh published ''[[Men at Arms (Evelyn Waugh)|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.<ref>Stannard, Vol. II, pp. 5, 82, 340</ref> Other books published during this period included ''[[When The Going Was Good]]'' (1946),<ref name= Patey251/> an anthology of his pre-war travel writing, ''The Holy Places'' (published by the [[Ian Fleming]]-managed [[Queen Anne Press]], 1952) and ''[[Love Among the Ruins. A Romance of the Near Future|Love Among the Ruins]]'' (1953), a [[dystopia]]n tale in which Waugh displays his contempt for the modern world.<ref>Hastings, p. 553</ref> Nearing 50, Waugh was old for his years, "selectively deaf, rheumatic, irascible" and increasingly dependent on alcohol and on drugs to relieve his insomnia and depression.<ref name= StannardODNB/> Two more children, James (born 1946) and Septimus (born 1950), completed his family.<ref>Hastings, pp. 531, 537</ref>

From 1945 onwards, Waugh became an avid collector, particularly of Victorian paintings and furniture. He filled Piers Court with his acquisitions, often from London's [[Portobello Market]] and from house clearance sales.<ref name= P153/> 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&nbsp;... a charming Chinese painting £10, a Regency easel £7".<ref>Davie (ed.), p. 658</ref> 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.{{refn|His collection of Victorian furniture, in particular works by [[William Burges]], became similarly valuable. The pieces, some bought and some received as gifts, were considered almost worthless when Waugh acquired them, but later made large sums for his heirs. An example is the [[Zodiac settle]], given to Waugh by [[John Betjeman]] and sold by Waugh's grandchildren in 2011 for £800,000.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.artscouncil.org.uk/sites/default/files/download-file/burgeszodiac_casehearing.pdf|title=A Zodiac Settle designed by William Burges|publisher=[[Arts Council England]]|date=2 June 2010|access-date=12 August 2024}}</ref>|group= n}} Waugh also began, from 1949, to write knowledgeable reviews and articles on the subject of painting.<ref name= P153>Patey, pp. 153–154</ref>{{refn|See, for example, "Rossetti Revisited", 1949 (Gallagher (ed.)), pp. 377–379; "Age of Unrest", 1954 (Gallagher (ed.)), pp. 459–460; "The Death of Painting", 1956 (Gallagher (ed.)), pp. 503–507|group= n}}

=== Breakdown ===

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.<ref name= Hastings554/> 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.<ref>Patey, p. 324</ref> Shortage of cash led him to agree in November 1953 to be interviewed on BBC radio, where the panel took an aggressive line: "they tried to make a fool of me, and I don't think they entirely succeeded", Waugh wrote to Nancy Mitford.<ref>Amory (ed.), p. 415</ref> [[Peter Fleming (writer)|Peter Fleming]] in ''[[The Spectator]]'' likened the interview to "the goading of a bull by matadors".<ref>{{cite news|last= Brown|first= Mark|title= Waugh at the BBC: 'the most ill-natured interview ever' on CD after 55 years|url= https://www.theguardian.com/books/2008/apr/15/bbc.radio|journal= The Guardian|date= 15 April 2008|access-date=10 November 2010}}</ref>

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 [[Sri Lanka|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 (linguistics)|interlocutor]], Stephen Black. He left the ship in [[Egypt]] and flew on to [[Colombo]], but, he wrote to Laura, the voices followed him.<ref>Patey, p. 325</ref> 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, now believing that he was suffering from [[demonic possession]]. A brief medical examination indicated that Waugh was suffering from [[bromism|bromide poisoning]] from his drugs regimen. When his medication was changed, the voices and the other hallucinations quickly disappeared.<ref>Donaldson, pp. 56–61</ref> Waugh was delighted, informing all of his friends that he had been mad: "Clean off my onion!". The experience was fictionalised a few years later, in ''[[The Ordeal of Gilbert Pinfold]]'' (1957).<ref>Patey, pp. 326, 338–341</ref>{{refn|Another piece of Burges furniture gifted by John Betjeman to Waugh, the [[Narcissus washstand]], was central to his breakdown and later featured in the novel. Waugh become convinced that the carriers who transported the washstand to Piers Court had lost an important element of it, and engaged them in violent correspondence threatening legal action. He was unconvinced by Betjeman's assurance that the supposedly missing piece had never existed; "Oh no, old boy. There never was a pipe from the tap to the basin such as you envisaged".<ref>Green, p. 47</ref>|group= n}}

In 1956, [[Edwin Newman]] made a short film about Waugh. In the course of it, Newman learned that Waugh hated the modern world and wished that he had been born two or three centuries sooner. Waugh disliked modern methods of transportation or communication, refused to drive or use the telephone, and wrote with an old-fashioned [[dip pen]]. He also expressed the views that American news reporters could not function without frequent infusions of [[whisky]], and that every American had been divorced at least once.<ref>{{cite book |first=Edwin |last=Newman |author-link=Edwin Newman |title=Strictly Speaking: will America be the death of English? |url=https://archive.org/details/strictlyspeakin00newm |url-access=registration |location=Indianapolis |publisher=Bobbs-Merrill |year=1974 |page=[https://archive.org/details/strictlyspeakin00newm/page/134 134] |isbn=978-0672519901 }}</ref>

=== Late works ===

[[File:Combe Florey - near the Old Manor House - geograph.org.uk - 904793.jpg|thumb|left|[[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'',<ref>"Awake, My Soul, It Is a Lord", published in ''The Spectator'', 8 July 1955, reprinted in Gallagher, (ed.), pp. 468–470</ref> but he was troubled by the incident and decided to sell Piers Court: "I felt it was polluted", he told Nancy Mitford.<ref>Amory (ed.), p. 636</ref> Late in 1956, the family moved to [[Combe Florey House]] in the Somerset village of [[Combe Florey]].<ref>Stannard, Vol. II pp. 385–386</ref> 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 that suggested that the sales of Waugh's books were much lower than they were and that his worth, as a journalist, was low.<ref>Stannard, pp. 382–383</ref>

''Gilbert Pinfold'' was published in the summer of 1957, "my barmy book", Waugh called it.<ref>Amory (ed.), p. 477</ref> The extent to which the story is self-mockery, rather than true autobiography, became a subject of critical debate.<ref name= Patey339>Patey, pp. 339–341</ref> Waugh's next major book was a biography of his longtime friend [[Ronald Knox]], the Catholic writer and theologian who had died in August 1957. Research and writing extended over two years during which 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 neither went to Cyprus nor immediately visited Auberon on the latter's return to Britain. The critic and [[biography in literature|literary biographer]] David Wykes called Waugh's sang-froid "astonishing" and the family's apparent acceptance of his behaviour even more so.<ref>Wykes, p. 194</ref>

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.<ref name= H591/> 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 [[Save the Children|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.<ref>Stannard, Vol II, pp. 254–255</ref> He was able to augment his personal finances by charging household items to the trust or selling his own possessions to it.<ref name= StannardODNB/> Nonetheless, by 1960, shortage of money led him to agree to an interview on BBC Television, in the ''[[Face to Face (British TV series)|Face to Face]]'' series conducted by [[John Freeman (British politician)|John Freeman]]. The interview was broadcast on 26 June 1960; according to his biographer [[Selina Hastings (writer)|Selina Hastings]], Waugh restrained his instinctive hostility and coolly answered the questions put to him by Freeman, assuming what she describes as a "pose of world-weary boredom".<ref name= H591>Hastings, pp. 591–592</ref>

In 1960, Waugh was offered the honour of a [[Order of the British Empire|CBE]] but declined, believing that he should have been given the superior status of a [[Knight Bachelor|knighthood]].<ref>Stannard, Vol II pp. 415–416</ref> 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. The critic [[Cyril Connolly]] called it "the thinnest piece of book-making that Mr Waugh has undertaken".<ref>Patey, pp. 346–347</ref> The book done, he worked on the last of the war trilogy, which was published in 1961 as ''Unconditional Surrender''.<ref>Hastings, pp. 594–598</ref>

===Decline and death===
[[File:Evelyn Waugh Grave.jpg|thumb|upright|Waugh's grave in Combe Florey, adjacent to but not within the Anglican churchyard.]]
As he approached his sixties, Waugh was in poor health, prematurely aged, "fat, deaf, short of breath", according to Patey.<ref>Patey, p. 359</ref> His biographer Martin Stannard likened his appearance around this time to that of "an exhausted rogue jollied up by drink".<ref>Stannard, Vol. II p. 477</ref> 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 protagonist of ''Black Mischief'' and ''Put Out More Flags'' was published in 1963; the ''Times Literary Supplement'' called it a "nasty little book".<ref>{{cite journal| last= Willett|first= John|title= A Rake Raked Up| journal= The Times Literary Supplement| date= 14 November 1963| page = 921}}</ref> However, that same year, he was awarded with the title [[Companion of Literature]] by the [[Royal Society of Literature]] (its highest honour).<ref>{{cite web|url=https://rsliterature.org/award/companions-of-literature/|title=Companions of Literature|date=2 September 2023 |publisher=Royal Society of Literature}}</ref> When the first volume of autobiography, ''A Little Learning'', was published in 1964, Waugh's often oblique tone and discreet name changes ensured that friends avoided the embarrassments that some had feared.<ref>Stannard, Vol. II p. 480</ref>

Waugh had welcomed the accession in 1958 of [[Pope John XXIII]]<ref>Amory (ed.), pp. 514–515</ref> and wrote an appreciative tribute on the pope's death in 1963.<ref>"An Appreciation of Pope John" first published in the ''[[Saturday Evening Post]]'', 27 July 1963, reprinted in Gallagher (ed.), pp. 614–618</ref> 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, [[Pope Paul VI]], until 1965. Waugh, a staunch opponent of Church reform, was particularly distressed by the replacement of the universal [[Tridentine Mass|Latin Mass]] with the [[vernacular]].<ref>Hastings, pp. 616–620.</ref> 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".<ref>{{cite journal| last= Stinson| first= John J | title = Evelyn Waugh and Anthony Burgess: Some Parallels as Catholic Writers | journal= Evelyn Waugh Newsletter and Studies|volume= 38|issue= 2| date = September 2008 |url=http://connection.ebscohost.com/c/articles/34366316/evelyn-waugh-anthony-burgess-some-parallels-as-catholic-writers |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160609182128/http://connection.ebscohost.com/c/articles/34366316/evelyn-waugh-anthony-burgess-some-parallels-as-catholic-writers |url-status=dead |archive-date=9 June 2016 | access-date= 12 May 2016}}</ref><ref>"More of the same, Please", first published in ''The Spectator'' 23 November 1962, reprinted in Gallagher (ed.), pp. 602–609.</ref> He wrote to Nancy Mitford that "the buggering up of the Church is a deep sorrow to me&nbsp;.... We write letters to the paper. A fat lot of good that does."<ref>Amory (ed.), p. 633</ref>

In 1965, a new financial crisis arose from an apparent flaw in the terms of the "Save the Children" trust, and a large sum of back tax was being demanded. Waugh's agent, A. D. Peters, negotiated a settlement with the tax authorities for a manageable amount,<ref>Stannard, Vol. II p. 485</ref> 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.<ref>Hastings, pp. 620–624.</ref> He described himself as "toothless, deaf, melancholic, shaky on my pins, unable to eat, full of dope, quite idle"<ref>Unpublished letter to John McDougall, 7 June 1965, quoted in Hastings, p. 622</ref> and expressed the belief that "all fates were worse than death".<ref name= Wykes209>Wykes, pp. 209–211</ref> His only significant literary activity in 1965 was the editing of the three war novels into a single volume, published as ''Sword of Honour''.<ref>Stannard, Vol. II p. 487</ref>

On Easter Day, 10 April 1966, after attending a Latin Mass in a neighbouring village with members of his family, Waugh died of heart failure at his Combe Florey home, aged 62. He was buried, by special arrangement, in a consecrated plot outside the Anglican churchyard of the [[Church of St Peter & St Paul, Combe Florey]].<ref>Wilson, Scott. ''Resting Places: The Burial Sites of More Than 14,000 Famous Persons'', 3d ed.: 2 (Kindle Location 49889). McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers. Kindle Edition</ref> A [[Requiem Mass]], in Latin, was celebrated in [[Westminster Cathedral]] on 21 April 1966.<ref>Hastings, pp. 625–626</ref>