The autobiography problem
As I've said earlier, one of the things that critics and ordinary readers have done with Brideshead is to use it as a stick to beat up Evelyn Waugh. They assume that Charles Ryder is Waugh's spokesperson in the book and then seize upon every flaw they find in Ryder as proof of Waugh's failings.
But Ryder is a creation of Waugh's. He is a fictional character and Waugh and Ryder's faults are only there because Waugh very consciously put them into his creation.
Now, one of the reasons people find it so easy to ignore this and read Ryder as Waugh's proxy is because there are undeniable similarities between Ryder's life and Waugh's life. Ryder goes to the college Waugh went to. Ryder has a love affair with a beautiful boy named Sebastian Flyte who comes from a family with a big ancestral pile with a Catholic Chapel done over in art nouveau and Sebastian later becomes an alcoholic. One of Waugh's own love affairs was with a beautiful boy named Hugh Lygon who came from a family with a big ancestral pile with a chapel done over in art nouveau and who later became an alcoholic and died in a car crash in 1936.
Keeping in mind that I have a huge BUT coming at the end of this, let me give you a couple more examples I saw while reading Waugh's letters last night. I'll quote a passage from Brideshead and then I'll quote the obvious parallel from the letters.
First example
Here is Charles Ryder describing a ball his college holds during eights week in 1923:
Second example
If we read on, we might further convince ourselves that Waugh is just using his characters as proxy spokespersons for his snobbish world view. A little later, in Brideshead we find this passage wherein Lunt, Ryder's servant (Scout), explains what has gone wrong with Oxford:
Except we should notice that Waugh gives what were his opinions to the Scout Lunt and Ryder comments on them saying "for Lunt, as for thousands of others, things could never be the same as they were in 1914." Yes, he using events from his own life but he is using them from a distance and we need to keep that same distance. Ryder says, "for Lunt" he does not say, "For me, Charles Ryder, the problem was the men who came back from the war." All of this stuff has been thought through from some distance and we can only see the story Waugh wrote of we also see it from that distance.
Let me give a final example to show just how much Waugh could transform his own experiences. In the book, Charles goes to Venice for the first time with Sebastian and he looks for Bellinis there. Also in the book there is an event coming where a character we have not yet met, a Don named Samgrass, makes a tour of the middle east with Sebastian. Sebastian misses a significant amount of the actual tour because of "illness". While in Constantinople, they meet Anthony Blanche.
In real life, Waugh himself made a tour of the Mediterranean and the middle east with his wife, also named Evelyn, in the spring of 1929. When preparing to visit Venice, he wrote to his friend Harold Acton for advice.
Now, as I say, maybe she really was ill but the main problem with that trip was that the marriage was breaking down. Waugh's wife was sexually pulled to another man the way alcoholics are to drink. They had a horrible time with her staying in the hotel saying she was sick and Waugh having to see most of the sights by himself exactly as Samgrass does on his tour with Sebastian.
Mantegna, mentioned above, was part of the Bellini school of painters. He was Jacopo Bellini's son in law. Again, this is still coming but notice how different Waugh is from Charles. He knows, what we will soon see Charles does not know, that the Bellini school is a family school and he knows enough to bow to the superior wisdom of Acton.
And then there is another element just two lines past the bit I have quoted:
The point here being that of course Waugh uses elements of his own life in writing his novel. But the elements are all shifted around a re-purposed in order to tell a story. We learn nothing, make ourselves stupid in fact, if we read this book as if Waugh was simply poaching his own life as a way of expressing his cantankerous views about the modern world.
(We might wonder, by the way, exactly what Waugh meant to signal to Acton by the expression "a characteristic excursion".)
In parting, let me note a final similarity that also indicates a difference, if that makes any sense. In the prologue, Waugh takes Hooper as a representative of all youth.
The problem with reading it that way is that it ignores Waugh's own history. In the 1920s people were also obsessed with youth and Waugh set out to market himself as the very sort of representative he here has Ryder take Hooper to be. Here he writes in early 1929 to a literary agent:
The first post in the Brideshead series is here.
The next post is here.
As I've said earlier, one of the things that critics and ordinary readers have done with Brideshead is to use it as a stick to beat up Evelyn Waugh. They assume that Charles Ryder is Waugh's spokesperson in the book and then seize upon every flaw they find in Ryder as proof of Waugh's failings.
But Ryder is a creation of Waugh's. He is a fictional character and Waugh and Ryder's faults are only there because Waugh very consciously put them into his creation.
Now, one of the reasons people find it so easy to ignore this and read Ryder as Waugh's proxy is because there are undeniable similarities between Ryder's life and Waugh's life. Ryder goes to the college Waugh went to. Ryder has a love affair with a beautiful boy named Sebastian Flyte who comes from a family with a big ancestral pile with a Catholic Chapel done over in art nouveau and Sebastian later becomes an alcoholic. One of Waugh's own love affairs was with a beautiful boy named Hugh Lygon who came from a family with a big ancestral pile with a chapel done over in art nouveau and who later became an alcoholic and died in a car crash in 1936.
Keeping in mind that I have a huge BUT coming at the end of this, let me give you a couple more examples I saw while reading Waugh's letters last night. I'll quote a passage from Brideshead and then I'll quote the obvious parallel from the letters.
First example
Here is Charles Ryder describing a ball his college holds during eights week in 1923:
Echoes of intruders penetrated every corner, and in my own college was no echo, but an original fount of grossest disturbance. We were giving a ball. The front quad, where I lives, was floored and tented; palms and azaleas were banked around the porter's lodge and worst of all, the don who lived above me ... had lent his rooms for a Ladies Cloakroom.And here is Waugh writing to his friend Dudley Carew describing eights week of 1922:
Eights week is just over. It was rather a bore. We had a College Ball which turned the whole place upside down for a weekend, exasperated the Scouts and ruined the cooking.And we might think, well this is just thinly disguised autobiography.
Second example
If we read on, we might further convince ourselves that Waugh is just using his characters as proxy spokespersons for his snobbish world view. A little later, in Brideshead we find this passage wherein Lunt, Ryder's servant (Scout), explains what has gone wrong with Oxford:
"If you ask me sir, it's all on account of the war. It couldn't have happened but for that." For this was 1923 and for Lunt, as for thousands of others, things could never be the same as they had been in 1914. .... "It all came back with the men from the war. They were too old and they didn't know and they wouldn't learn. That's the truth."And in the letters we find a similar viewpoint expressed to Dudley Carew by Waugh:
Oxford is not yet quite itself but the aged war-hero type is beginning to go down. It ought to be right again by the time you come up.And it all seems easy.
Except we should notice that Waugh gives what were his opinions to the Scout Lunt and Ryder comments on them saying "for Lunt, as for thousands of others, things could never be the same as they were in 1914." Yes, he using events from his own life but he is using them from a distance and we need to keep that same distance. Ryder says, "for Lunt" he does not say, "For me, Charles Ryder, the problem was the men who came back from the war." All of this stuff has been thought through from some distance and we can only see the story Waugh wrote of we also see it from that distance.
Let me give a final example to show just how much Waugh could transform his own experiences. In the book, Charles goes to Venice for the first time with Sebastian and he looks for Bellinis there. Also in the book there is an event coming where a character we have not yet met, a Don named Samgrass, makes a tour of the middle east with Sebastian. Sebastian misses a significant amount of the actual tour because of "illness". While in Constantinople, they meet Anthony Blanche.
In real life, Waugh himself made a tour of the Mediterranean and the middle east with his wife, also named Evelyn, in the spring of 1929. When preparing to visit Venice, he wrote to his friend Harold Acton for advice.
We leave hear on the 12th & go to Malta where I hear there are fine churches & then to Constantinople for alas only two days. Then via Ragusa to Venice for another two days. I wish it were for longer. Do please send advice as to what to see in Venice in so short a time. Remember I know nothing of Venetian painting except from what I have seen in London & the Louvre. Where are the best Mantegnas or are they in Florence? I scarcely saw anything of Naples as I was so worried about Evelyn and so pestered by pimps whenever I set foot on shore.There is a lot here so let me fill in a bit of background. Waugh was worried about Evelyn because she had been "ill" for much of the trip. And maybe she really was but there is more to the story than this. She had also confessed to Waugh that she had fallen in love with another man and that she'd been having an affair with this other man. The Waughs had not had a honeymoon when first married and this trip was intended as chance to make up for that and to rekindle the romance between them. It did not go well and in August 1929, Waugh is writing to Acton to tell him that Evelyn has left him for this other man.
Now, as I say, maybe she really was ill but the main problem with that trip was that the marriage was breaking down. Waugh's wife was sexually pulled to another man the way alcoholics are to drink. They had a horrible time with her staying in the hotel saying she was sick and Waugh having to see most of the sights by himself exactly as Samgrass does on his tour with Sebastian.
Mantegna, mentioned above, was part of the Bellini school of painters. He was Jacopo Bellini's son in law. Again, this is still coming but notice how different Waugh is from Charles. He knows, what we will soon see Charles does not know, that the Bellini school is a family school and he knows enough to bow to the superior wisdom of Acton.
And then there is another element just two lines past the bit I have quoted:
Alastair visited us for two days at Port Said—a characteristic excursion.Alastair Graham is another of Waughs lovers from Oxford and may have contributed some of his characteristics to the portrait of Sebastian. Then again, given this reference, he might have contributed some of his characteristics to the portrait of Anthony Blanche. But the point is, it's easy to see parallels between this trip and the one Waugh later describes where Samgrass and Sebastian make a tour and run into Anthony Blanche. Only in the real-life version, Waugh himself is in the role of Samgrass and his unfaithful wife is in the role of Sebastian and his ex-lover Alastair.
The point here being that of course Waugh uses elements of his own life in writing his novel. But the elements are all shifted around a re-purposed in order to tell a story. We learn nothing, make ourselves stupid in fact, if we read this book as if Waugh was simply poaching his own life as a way of expressing his cantankerous views about the modern world.
(We might wonder, by the way, exactly what Waugh meant to signal to Acton by the expression "a characteristic excursion".)
In parting, let me note a final similarity that also indicates a difference, if that makes any sense. In the prologue, Waugh takes Hooper as a representative of all youth.
In the weeks that we were together Hooper became a symbol to me of Young England, so that whenever I read some public utterance proclaiming what Youth demanded in the future and what the world owed to Youth, I would test these general statements by substituting 'Hooper' and seeing if they still seemed as plausible. Thus in the dark hour before reveille I sometimes pondered: 'Hooper Rallies', 'Hooper Hostels', 'International Hooper Cooperation', and 'the religion of Hooper'. He was teh acid test of all these alloys.'The conventional reading of Hooper takes Waugh to be doing what Ryder does. It says, Waugh hates the new world and is merely using Hooper as an excuse to mock the century of the common man by mocking Hooper.
The problem with reading it that way is that it ignores Waugh's own history. In the 1920s people were also obsessed with youth and Waugh set out to market himself as the very sort of representative he here has Ryder take Hooper to be. Here he writes in early 1929 to a literary agent:
Could you get the Express to take an article on the Youngest Generation's view of Religion?—very serious & Churchy. I see where they are doing a series of the sort. It seems to me that it would be nice to persuade them that I personify the English youth movement.Given that sort of history, we simply cannot glibly take what Ryder says above as being what Waugh thought. Yes, Waugh has a jaundiced view of the youth movement of the 1940s but it's a view with some depth based on his own experiences as one of the prominent voices of the youth movement of the 1920s.
The first post in the Brideshead series is here.
The next post is here.
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