The Complete Stories of Evelyn Waugh

Source of book: Borrowed from the library. (The last of the ones I borrowed just before the Covid-19 shutdown.) 

  

I haven’t read that much Evelyn Waugh - just Brideshead Revisited, one of his more serious later works. I still haven’t read an early comedy - although I definitely want to. My original intention was to grab a copy of Scoop, but someone beat me to it. The library did have this book, however, so I grabbed it. It contains all of Waugh’s short fiction, including stories written when he was a kid - complete with misspellings and the like. I’ll confess I only skimmed these. They were pretty repetitive, with lots of gambling and guns and justice-served-in-the-end. His college stories were pretty good, however. He was already finding his voice. 

I believe the main body of the book (his published stories) was organized in chronological order. With the exception of the last story, the hilarious “Basil Seal Rides Again,” they show a general progression from humorous and lighter to increasingly dark and disturbingly reactionary in tone. A few of the last ones seem to be as much propaganda against modernity - he has become the old man shaking his cane at anything remotely progressive. (In real life, he was vehemently opposed to the Vernacular Mass - only Latin was good enough for him.) This isn’t to say that the later stories are all bad. “Scott-King’s Modern Europe” is darkly humorous and rather spot-on satire of post-war Yugoslavia and tin-horn leftist dictatorships in general. 

The stories rather run the gambit. There are humorous vignettes, dark farces, serious tales, and so on. Also included is the two existing chapters of an unfinished novel. That one is particularly intriguing, as it involves the hack-writer son of an obscure artist, a love triangle, and some outstanding scenes. I am rather disappointed it was never finished. 

There are also two stories which are related to Waugh’s novel, A Handful of Dust. “The Man Who Liked Dickens” is about a man lost in the Brazilian jungle who is rescued by a crazy man who insists that he read him Charles Dickens. This would become the last portion of the novel. Waugh later wrote “By Special Request,” an alternate ending to the novel in which the protagonist escapes and reconciles with his estranged wife. 

At their best, these stories are sparklingly witty, and deliciously satirical. Waugh’s dark humor can be really good, and it is in many of the stories. In others, particularly late in life, he lost his ability to balance the darkness with the humor, and the jokes start to feel mean and reactionary. 

There are some great lines, of course. From the story “Love in the Slump,” a tale of an ill-advised marriage and an awkward wartime honeymoon in locked-down England, the wife is described thus:

Angela was twenty-five, pretty, good-natured, lively, intelligent and popular--just the sort of girl, in fact, who, for some mysterious cause deep-rooted in Anglo-Saxon psychology, finds it most difficult to get satisfactorily married. During the last seven years she had done everything which it is customary for girls of her sort to do. In London she had danced on an average four evenings a week, for the first three years at private houses, for the last four at restaurants and night clubs; in the country she had been slightly patronizing to the neighbors and had taken parties to the hunt ball which she hoped would shock them; she had worked in a slum and a hat shop, had published a novel, been bridesmaid eleven times and godmother once; been in love, unsuitably, twice; had sold her photograph for fifty guineas to the advertising department of a firm of beauty specialists; had got into trouble when her name was mentioned in gossip columns; had acted in five or six charity matinees and two pageants, had canvassed for the Conservative candidate at two General Elections, and, like every girl in the British Isles, was unhappy at home. 

Another one comes from “Incident in Azania,” about a colonial outpost and the stir caused when the beautiful and marriageable daughter of one of the colonial characters shows up. She is kidnapped and held for ransom...or maybe not. Anyway, the story is hilarious, and this like is classic:

The first demand for ransom came through the agency of Mr. Youkoumian. The little Armenian was already well known and, on the whole, well liked by the English community; it did them good to find a foreigner who so completely fulfilled their ideal of all that a foreigner should be. 

Another delightful comedic story is “Out of Depth.” Two dense youngish aristocratic sorts (think Bertie Wooster) meet the nutty and mildly sinister charlatan Dr. Kakophilos, and despite their best intentions, end up at his apartment after the evening. Already drunk out of their skulls, they are informed they will be used in an experiment in time travel. 

“And so,” Dr. Kakophilos was saying, “you must breathe the fire and call upon Omraz the spirit of release and journey back through the centuries and recover the garnered wisdom which the ages of reason have wasted. I chose you because you are the two most ignorant men I ever met. I have too much knowledge to risk my safety. If you never come back, nothing will be lost.” 

Whether the time travel that ensues is real, or if it was just a drunken dream after a traffic accident is never clear to either the reader or the characters. 

“An Englishman’s Home” is a particularly good bit of satire. Mr. Metcalfe, a nouveau riche industrialist buys a house in the English countryside, and does his best to be the perfect country gentleman. However, he declines to purchase a bit of land used for grazing that traditionally went with the house, and becomes embroiled in small-town politics when an unscrupulous blackmailer threatens to build a factory on the site. The opening paragraph is comedy gold. 

Mr. Beverly Metcalfe tapped the barometer in the back hall and noted with satisfaction that it had fallen several points during the night. He was by nature a sun-loving man, but he believed it was one of the marks of a true countryman to be eternally in need of rain. He had made a study and noted the points of true countrymen. Had he been of literary habit and of an earlier generation, his observations might have formed a little book of aphorisms. The true countryman wore a dark suit on Sundays unlike the flannelled tripper from the cities; he loved a bargain and would go to any expense to do his marketing by private treaty instead of through the normal channels of retail trade; while ostensibly sceptical and conservative he was readily fascinated by mechanical gadgets; he was genial but inhospitable, willing to gossip for hours across a fence with any passing stranger, but reluctant to allow his closest friends into his house…..These and a hundred other characteristics Mr. Metcalfe noted for emulation. 

Murder plays a role in a number of the stories - particularly murderous madmen. While some of the stories are dark and bitter, more of them are whimsical farces, such as “The Sympathetic Passenger.” Mr. James and his wife have retired to country, where he can be alone and quiet. His wife doesn’t share this love of solitude, and they end up at odds over the use of the radio. 

The wireless, for Mrs. James, was a link with the clean pavements and bright shop windows, a communion with millions of fellow beings. 

Mr. James saw it in just that light too. It was what he minded most--the violation of his privacy. He brooded with growing resentment on the vulgarity of womankind.

Things take a turn when he, getting out of the house, picks up a hitchhiker who shares his hatred of the radio. And is also a homicidal maniac on the run, just incidentally. 

I mentioned “Basil Seal Rides Again” as one of my favorites. The old rake and scoundrel Basil Seal finds his daughter wants to marry a young man he regards (perhaps correctly) as being rather worthless. His scheme to get them to break off is too good to spoil, but the ending is fabulous. The opening of the story is hilarious too, with Basil and his friend Peter are stuck at a tedious banquet in honor of a poet who was a friend of theirs years ago. The encomium is so delightful, I had to quote it. 

“I hear the cry of ‘silence,’” he said with sharp spontaneity. “It is apt, for surely?, the object of our homage tonight is epitomized in that golden word. The voice which once clearly spoke the message of what I for one, and many of us here, will always regard as the most glorious decade of English letters, the nineteen-thirties,” (growls of dissent from the youthful critic) “that voice tardily perhaps, but at long last so illustriously honoured by official recognition, has been silent for a quarter of a century. Silent in Ireland, silent in Tangier, in Tel Aviv and Ischia and Portugal, now silent in his native London, our guest of honour has stood for us a stern rebuke, a recall to artistic reticence and integrity. The books roll out from the presses, none by Ambrose Silk. Not for Ambrose Silk the rostrum, the television screen; for him the enigmatic and monumental silence of genius…” 

It’s pretty hard to beat that, I must say. 

In any case, I did rather enjoy this collection. It feels unfair to complain that it is a bit uneven, when it is clearly intended to be the “complete” rather than “the best of.” I definitely need to read some more Waugh. I know my wife has a few books, but I need to figure out the best order to read the related books, and locate them in our collection. Oh, and I really want to go back and get Scoop when the library reopens.