Editing Evelyn Waugh (section)

== Novelist and journalist ==

=== Recognition ===

Waugh's first biographer, [[Christopher Sykes (author)|Christopher Sykes]], records that after the divorce friends "saw, or believed they saw, a new hardness and bitterness" in Waugh's outlook.<ref>Sykes, p. 96</ref> Nevertheless, despite a letter to Acton in which he wrote that he "did not know it was possible to be so miserable and live",<ref name= Amory39>Amory (ed.), p. 39</ref> he soon resumed his professional and social life. He finished his second novel, ''[[Vile Bodies]]'',<ref name= Patey33/> and wrote articles including (ironically, he thought) one for the ''[[Daily Mail]]'' on the meaning of the marriage ceremony.<ref name= Amory39/> During this period Waugh began the practice of staying at the various houses of his friends; he was to have no settled home for the next eight years.<ref name= Patey33/>

''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.<ref>Stannard, Vol. I pp. 203–204</ref> As a best-selling author Waugh could now command larger fees for his journalism.<ref name= Patey33>Patey, pp. 33–34</ref> Amid regular work for ''[[The Graphic]]'', ''[[Town and Country (magazine)|Town and Country]]'' and ''[[Harper's Bazaar]]'', he quickly wrote ''Labels'', a detached account of his honeymoon cruise with She-Evelyn.<ref name= Patey33/>

=== Conversion to Catholicism ===

On 29 September 1930, Waugh was received into the Catholic Church. This shocked his family and surprised some of his friends, but he had contemplated the step for some time.<ref name= Patey35>Patey, pp. 35–39</ref> He had lost his Anglicanism at Lancing and had led an irreligious life at Oxford, but there are references in his diaries from the mid-1920s to religious discussion and regular churchgoing. On 22 December 1925, Waugh wrote: "Claud and I took Audrey to supper and sat up until 7 in the morning arguing about the Roman Church".<ref>Waugh diaries, 22 December 1926: Davie (ed.), p. 237</ref> The entry for 20 February 1927 includes, "I am to visit a Father Underhill about being a parson".<ref>Waugh diaries, 20 February 1927: Davie (ed.), p. 281</ref> Throughout the period, Waugh was influenced by his friend Olivia Plunket-Greene, who had converted in 1925 and of whom Waugh later wrote, "She bullied me into the Church".<ref>Sykes, p. 107</ref> It was she who led him to Father [[Martin D'Arcy]], a [[Society of Jesus|Jesuit]], 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".<ref name= Gallagher366>"Come Inside", first published in ''The Road to Damascus'' (1949), ed. John O'Brien. London, W.H. Allen, reprinted in Gallagher (ed.). pp. 366–368</ref>

=== Writer and traveller ===

[[File:CropSelassie.jpg|thumb|upright|left|Emperor [[Haile Selassie]], whose coronation Waugh attended in 1930 on the first of his three trips to [[Ethiopian Empire|Abyssinia]]]]
On 10 October 1930, Waugh, representing several newspapers, departed for [[Ethiopian Empire|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 which concealed the fact that the emperor had achieved power through barbarous means.<ref>Patey, p. 91</ref> 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).<ref>Sykes, p. 109</ref> Waugh's next extended trip, in the winter of 1932–1933, was to [[Guyana|British Guiana]] (now Guyana) in South America, possibly taken to distract him from a long and unrequited passion for the socialite [[Teresa Jungman]].<ref>Stannard, Vol. I pp. 276, 310</ref> On arrival in [[Georgetown, Guyana|Georgetown]], Waugh arranged a river trip by steam launch into the interior. He travelled on via several staging-posts to [[Boa Vista, Roraima|Boa Vista]] in Brazil, and then took a convoluted overland journey back to Georgetown.<ref>Hastings, pp. 272–281</ref> 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.<ref>Hastings, pp. 296, 306</ref>

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]],<ref>Amory (ed.), pp. 72–78</ref> which remained unpublished until 1980. 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.<ref>Stannard, Vol. I pp. 367–374</ref> 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 by its forthright pro-Catholic, anti-[[Protestant]] stance but brought its writer the [[Hawthornden Prize]].<ref>Patey, p. 126</ref><ref>Hastings, pp. 324–325</ref> 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, [[Bill Deedes|William Deedes]].<ref>Deedes, p. 15</ref> Waugh saw little action and was not wholly serious in his role as a war correspondent.<ref>Davie, p. 391</ref> Deedes remarks on the older writer's snobbery: "None of us quite measured up to the company he liked to keep back at home".<ref>Deedes, pp. 35–36</ref> However, in the face of imminent Italian air attacks, Deedes found Waugh's courage "deeply reassuring".<ref>Deedes, pp. 62–63</ref> 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.<ref>Patey, p. 141</ref> A better-known account is his novel ''[[Scoop (novel)|Scoop]]'' (1938), in which the protagonist, William Boot, is loosely based on Deedes.<ref>Stannard, Vol. I p. 406</ref>

Among Waugh's growing circle of friends were [[Diana Mitford|Diana Guinness]] and [[Bryan Guinness, 2nd Baron Moyne|Bryan Guinness]] (dedicatees of ''Vile Bodies''), [[Lady Diana Cooper]] and her husband [[Duff Cooper]],<ref>Hastings, p. 263</ref> [[Nancy Mitford]] who was originally a friend of Evelyn Gardner's,<ref>Hastings, p. 191</ref> and the [[Earl Beauchamp|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.<ref>Byrne, p. 155</ref> 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 first met Gabriel's 17-year-old sister, Laura.<ref>Hastings pp. 284–287</ref>

=== Second marriage ===

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, he began proceedings for the [[Annulment (Catholic Church)|annulment]] of the marriage on the grounds of "lack of real consent". The case was heard by an [[Ecclesiastical court|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.<ref>Hastings, pp. 290–293</ref> In the meantime, following their initial encounter in Portofino, Waugh had fallen in love with Laura Herbert.<ref>Byrne, pp. 240–241</ref> He proposed marriage, by letter, in spring 1936.<ref>Amory (ed.), pp. 103–105</ref> There were initial misgivings from the [[Herbert family|Herberts]], an aristocratic Catholic family; as a further complication, Laura Herbert was a cousin of Evelyn Gardner.<ref name= StannardODNB/> Despite some family hostility the marriage took place on 17 April 1937 at the [[Church of Our Lady of the Assumption and St Gregory|Church of the Assumption]] in Warwick Street, London.<ref>Byrne, pp. 260–261</ref>

As a wedding present the bride's grandmother bought the couple [[Piers Court]], a country house near [[Stinchcombe]] in Gloucestershire.<ref>Hastings, pp. 358–359</ref> The couple had seven children, one of whom died in infancy. Their first child, a daughter, Maria Teresa, was born on 9 March 1938 and a son, [[Auberon Waugh|Auberon Alexander]], on 17 November 1939.<ref>Hastings, pp. 336, 392</ref> Between these events, ''Scoop'' was published in May 1938 to wide critical acclaim.<ref>Stannard, Vol. I pp. 470–471</ref> 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".<ref>Sykes, p. 184</ref>