Editing Evelyn Waugh (section)

=== 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>