Reading: Decline and Fall

Host: MGleason

1. CoHostIrvSnod - April 25, 1997

The reading this time around is "Decline and Fall" by Evelyn Waugh. Join us now as Maria Gleason leads us in a discussion of this novel. I trust you've all had a sufficient opportunity to find and read the book by now.

you know, until a week or so ago I thought Evelyn was female.

Wrong, wrong, wrong.

When in 1928, at the age of twenty-five, Arthur Evelyn St. John Waugh thrust DECLINE AND FALL into the arms of an unsuspecting British public, he gave us one of the cruelest, most devastatingly funny satires of the aristocratic society so gently and affectionately mocked by P. G. Wodehouse. A devout admirer of Wodehouse, Waugh professed to having "grown up in the light of his genius," and his novels serve as the perfect complement to Wodehouse; in this case, a little savoury after the sweet. Graham Greene called Waugh "the greatest writer of my generation." This assertion is, of course, up for debate, but not in this thread, however!

DECLINE AND FALL (hereafter D & F) takes us on a satirical sightseeing tour of a crumbling civilization where only the appearances of Victorian morality remain. The protagonist, (if such a tabula rasa can be called one), is Paul Pennyfeather, unjustly expelled from Divinity school for allegedly indecent behavior. In the first part of the novel, upon his dismissal, Paul sets out to be a teacher at Llanabba Castle in North Wales, run by Dr. Augustus Fagan, whose Ph.D. is as bogus as the M.D. he later adds to his name. But Dr. Fagan is far from the most infamous character at Llanabba; Captain Grimes, a fellow teacher of Paul's, is a pederast who has bounced from school to school, his career hastily advanced as soon as his proclivities are discovered by headmasters loath to admit they've been duped. Another intriguing inmate of Llanabba is

Mr. Prendergast, a clergyman who has abandoned Holy Orders because of a lack of belief that the universe makes any sense. Unbelievably enough, Dr. Fagan and Captain Grimes, as well as the rest of the major characters, are caricatures of real persons in Waugh's world, though denied by Waugh in the Author's Note to the 1928 edition.

The second part sees Paul becomes embroiled in the dolce vita of England's decaying aristocracy, as personified in Lady Margot Beste-Chetwynde, who has maintained her fortune by clandestinely engaging in white slavery. Paul becomes engaged to Lady Margot, and while the ensuing comic disasters that befall him defy any rational explanation, the absurdly illogical sequence of events has the internal consistency found in a mirror-image world like that of Lewis Carroll's Alice. Carroll was a major influence on Waugh.

The end of D & F finds Paul returned to his proper path, strangely unscathed by all that has happened to him. It is a roller-coaster ride that never lets up and we are breathless with anticipation as Paul falls into one scrape after another, very much in the mold of Voltaire's Candide, adrift in an absurd and meaningless universe.

Duckworth's, the publishers of Waugh's first non-fiction book, turned down D & F "on the odd grounds of its indelicacy," as Waugh noted in his preface to the 1962 edition. He then took the manuscript "down the street" to his father's firm, Chapman and Hall. Waugh, Sr., on holiday abroad, was "spared the embarrassment of a decision," and the firm decided to publishD & F. In an effort to allay any misgivings on the part of Chapman and Hall, (not to mention avoid possible libel suits by some of the people caricatured in the novel), Waugh wrote the following Author's Note to the 1928 edition:

'I hope thatmy publishers are wrong when they say that this is a shocking novelette. I did not mean it to be when I wrote it, and I do not believe that anyone with a sense of humor will find it so. Still less is it a book with a purpose. I hope that somewhere a school like Llanabba may exist, and a staff like Dr. Fagan's, but it has never been my good fortune to come across them?. Please bear in mind throughout that IT IS MEANT TO BE FUNNY.'

It could not be stated an

...It could not be stated any better than that last sentence.

A note about the society of the times is in order to understand the mindless gaiety of the twenties which is an essential part of D & F. The following description comes from another one of Waugh's novels, VILE BODIES, where one character notes to another:

What a lot of parties. Masked parties, Savage Parties, Victorian parties, Greek parties, Wild West Parties, Russian Parties, Circus parties where one had to dress as somebody else, almost naked parties in St. John's Wood, parties in flats and studios and houses and ships and hotels and nightclubs,parties at Oxford where one drank brown sherry and smoked Turkish cigarettes, dull dances in London and comic dances in Scotland and disgusting dances in Paris all that succession and repetition of massed humanity. Those vile bodies.

It was a time of excess, of haphazard existence in reaction to the

horror that had been the First World War. It was the Roaring Twenties, when the aristocratic Bright Young Things had their day in the sun, and if, as the war had shown, nothing was to be permanent, they would grab onto their moment and hold it as long as they could. This is the society of D & F, ripe for satire in the hands of Evelyn Waugh.

res,

Evelyn Waugh's first wife was also named Evelyn (Gardner). They were referred to by their friends as "He-Evelyn" and "She-Evelyn." The initial E is a long vowel, not "eh" as in the standard American pronunciationof the woman's name.

Maria,

Greate summary. Off we go.

THE MARIA GLEASON STORY

Maria Luisa Veronica Ardines Mallo was born in Cuba on a September night in 1956 on a windswept hill overlooking Bajia de Tiburon. She escaped to the United States at an early age and grew up in New York City, where she developed her unique accent ("Hey, youse guys, pipe down already!"). Maria attended university in New York, graduating with a degree in Philosophy with a minor in Gymnastics. She earned her Master's in English Lit with the thesis "Profile of a Poet, Alfred, Lord Neuman," resurrecting in a stroke one of the most deservedly forgotten heroes of mid-18th century English letters. At the time, Maria, an unrepentant and slavish Anglophile, first visited the British Isles, when, after collectingfour thousand Prince Charles polo cards, she won an all-expenses-paid, two-day tour of Manchester and Liverpool. Not long thereafter, Maria met and married Ed Gleason, a part-time tax accountant and Mafia wannabe. Today Ed and Maria reside in Sarasota, Florida with their cats, where Maria lectures on the works of EF Benson to anyone who will listen, spends inordinant amounts of time in the Fray and Yahoo chat, and is working on the great American novel.

I cannot bear that two important incidents are not detailed in this summary. The first is the reason for Paul's expulsion from Oxford. It happened that he was crossing the quad one night when a group of roaring aristocratic undergraduates of a type stillcommon at that time (whose principal occupation in college was drinking) were on a rampage, breaking the glass in the windows of one of the colleges. As Paul comes by, the brutish aristocs depants him, and he is expelled for inecency after being forced to return naked to his rooms. Waugh, due to an overly romanticized view of Brideshead Revisited, is often represented as a sort of upper-class apologist, a pseudo-aristocrat himself, and for all that he found friends among the gentry and used them as the models for his fiction, and was a certain kind of snob, his hatred for the philistinism of the upper classes is here made bluntly clear, and in the very beginning of the novel. Paul's expulsion tells us Waugh's intention to make fun of all forms of absurdity, bureaucracy, cant, pomposity, etc. The second thing I miss is the death of little Lord Tangent, and event cruel enough to mark Waugh forever as about as heartless a novelist who has ever walked. But there is more at work than heartlessness...

Message #9

Dave!! I swear I didn't forget them. Those incidents are enshrined in the chapter summaries that follow. I'm glad I didn't mention them now, because I got to read your description, which was wonderful.

Fellow readers, in my slavish devotion to all things Fagan, I shall follow in his footsteps as regards chapter summaries, interesting asides, quotes from letters and diaries, satirical ruminations, etc. I'll begin the chapter summaries later on tonight, so please feel free to post up a storm (PLEASE).

In the meantime, anyone care to discuss why such a hilarious book doesn't have a bigger audience here? (No favoritism at all on my part, you understand.)

I second Dave Roll's regret that the prelude was not summarized by the otherwise mean synopsist Maria Luisa Veronica Ardines y Mallo de Gleason.

My favorite part of the prelude is as follows: After the Bollinger club members descry Paul Pennyfeather's tie, which slightly resembles the official Boller tie, Waugh says of one of its illustrious members:

" The difference of a quarter of an inch in the width of the stripes was not one that Lumsden of Stathdrummond was likely to appreciate...'Here's an awful man wearing the Boller tie,' said the Laird. It is not for nothing that since pre-Christian times his family has exercised chieftainship over uncharted miles of barren moorland".

A subject I have already discussed at some length with Maria is the parallel of D & F with Voltaire's *Candide*. The casual expulsion of Candide from the paradisical castle of Thunder-ten-tronckh... mirrors Paul's expulsion from Scone College, Oxford - and the parallel continues. It is the casual absurdity of Paul's expulsion that sets the tone for the rest of the novel.

Recall how some of the ostensibly major events of the novel take place casually, or rather, reported by Waugh non-chalantly - the shooting of Tangent, the amputation of Tangent's leg, the death of Tangent, and the decapitation of Prendergast.

Another of my favorite moments in D & F is in Chapter 8 (the first section to do with the athletic events). The schoolmaster Fagan has been hoping for a fine panoply of vigourous English sportsmanship, and this scene intrudes:

"Ten men of revolting appearance were approaching from the drive. They were of low brow, crafty of eye and crooked of limb. They advanced huddled together with the loping tread of wolves, peering about them furtively as they came, as though in constant terror of ambush; they slavered at their mouths, which hung loosely over their receding chins, while each clutched under his ape-like arm a burden of unaccountable shape...."

The first time I read D & C, I was a student of 17 at an English public school. I was sitting out a cricket game, as I was wont to do because I hate competitive sports, and reading this very passage, when a swarm of Japanese tourists descended on the field. And they were very much "advancing huddled together with the loping tread of wolves, peering about them furtively as they came, as though in constant terror of ambush..." I couldn't stop Waughing. Since that time, I have been unable to dissociate Waugh from a sighting of a group of Japanese tourists.

you know, there's an Evelyn Waugh newsletter. The last issue primarily dealt with some play that Waugh saw and blasted as being horrible and sacreligious, of all things, in a private letter to his friend. (The play made a lot of comments on Catholicism,as I recall.) This didn't stop Waugh from pubicly defending the play when someone else attacked it... evidently Waugh objected to the fact that someone else out there thought they know more about being a Catholic than Waugh did. Great talent, but he sounds like a real prick from what I've read.

Sorry to interrupt.

Everyone knows that Evelyn Waugh was a real prick. Wouldn't have him any other way.

Dave Roll is right about Waugh's cruelty when he talks about Tangent's death. This is what the old bastard had to say:

"Society was less certain in its approval [of the marriage of Paul Pennyfeather and Lady Beste-Chetwynde], and Lady Circumference, for one, sighed for the early 'nineties, when Edward Prince of Wales, at the head of ton [= tone in French], might have given authoritative condemnation to this ostentatious second marriage....'It's maddenin' Tangent having died just at this time,' she said, 'people may think that's my reason for refusing. I can't imagine that any one will go."

Apart from Lady C.'s obvious lack of actual concern for Tangent (her son), the fact that the death is not reported by the narrator himself isimportant. It's more casual, this third-person reportage. Moreover, it's in sync with the amoral atmosphere of the whole book.

It is a truism that Waugh is a moralist, as most satirists tend to be, but I think a case can be made that Waugh believed that amorality, not immorality, is the foundation of decadence.

By the way, I think "Beste-Chetwynde" should be pronounced "Beast-Cheating".

Thanks to Maria, Daveroll et al for the very elegant introductions to D&F.

The only problem I have with this thread is that it's confined to D&F. I realize that a discussion of Waugh's entire oeuvre would overload the Internet, but still, it's important not to see D&F in isolation, but to read ALL the novels. They closely parallel the development of the mind of this remarkable man, wrongly labeled bastard, etc when what he really was was a man growing steadily more disillusioned withthe hypocrisy and moral decay of the world around him. (If we only read books by "nice" people, we wouldn't have much to read).

Anyway, waffling right along there, D&F reflects a frothy, still optimistic young man, and the knockabout humor continues in Vile Bodies, although already here the shadows are beginning to crowd in (see the remarkably prescient passage near the end (in a novel published in 1929!) portraying the next World War.

The cynicism deepens in "A Handful of Dust" and "Put Out More Flags." There's a note of hope in the first volume of the World War II trilogy, but here too, he soon becomes disillusioned, especially at the terrible betrayal by the officer class.

To my mind, Waugh'swork in its entirety is a sort of extended "Decline and Fall" of the society he chronicled.

Maria, maybe the reason Waugh isn't better known in the US is that he never got to appear on Oprah.

Comparisons and contrasts between Waugh and Wodehouse are fairly standard. Comparisons: the plots are farcically convoluted, the style is generally simple. One thing Wodehouse could never have written in D & F is:

"At the last dinner, three years ago, a fox had been brought in in a cage and had been stoned to death with champagne bottles. What an evening that had been!"

*****************

A few random observations.

1) It's always the economy of phrasing, the verisimilitude of outrageous detachment, that creates the explosive farce and burlesque of D & F.

2) Maria and I also discussed Lewis Carroll - and I now see the aptness of the comparison a lot more. I think the prison scenes especially illustrate how little applicability ordinary social norms have in D & F. But the wonderland is utterly moral here; over and over again, we witness dreadful and incongruous turns of events within the novel, yet no one even flinches at them.

3) Beste-Chetwynde's paramour, "Chokey", has a little rambling speech about "the coloured man's soul", which seems to parody Shylock's defense of his humanity.

4) Paul Pennyfeather's interview with Augustus Fagan recalls a similar incident in Nicholas Nickleby.

5) Professor Silenus, the chromium-and-glass architect who desires "the elimination of the human element from the consideration of form", and the prison warden, the psycho-blathering social engineering technocrat....are they not precisely the elements of modernity Waugh so despised?

6) A conventional element of institutional satire and farce in D&F is that the characters blithely and implausibly recur throughout the novel. [How often do we see this in, say, Candide.] Prendergast, a colleague of Paul's at Llanabba, is later a prison chaplain at Paul's prison. Philbrick, the shadowly butler at Llanaba, later suddenly turns up riding in a Rolls. etc.

Hey, allofuss, i was only kidding about the bastard comment!

I can't agree that Waugh in D & F still reflects "a frothy, still optimistic" young man. I agree that D & F's humour is knockabout. But I think that's because the satire of D & F and VB is generically different from the later ones, especially A Handful of Dust, etc. D & F and VB are instances of institutional satire, like Candide and Gulliver's Travels, where the effort is to take potshots at a large number of people, situations and institutions, rather than build a deep characterization or make an extended moral commentary.

and of course waugh develops and matures as he goes on in his career - but D & F is interesting (and funny) all on its own, and I wish people would tend less to subordinate the consideration of the novel to the novelist's development.

In the last sentence of #20, I meant to express my distaste for discussions of novels (or poems or whatever) when they're seen *primarily* as extensions of the author's biography. It's one thing to use biographical data to illuminate the novel, but (forme, anyway) something altogether different when the novel is used as an exhibit in the illustration of the author's life. Nothing wrong with the latter, especially since the interest in the novelist rather than in the novel seems to be the common bias among typical literary folks, but they should keep in mind that the two interests can be separate. [I, for one, don't care about Evelyn Waugh's career and development and opinions.]

Having said that, I quote one of my favorite passages from Evelyn Waugh's Mediterranean travel book, Labels:

"I do not think I shall ever forget the sight of Etna at sunset; the mountain almost invisible in a slur of pastel grey, glowing on the top and then repeating its shape, as though reflected, in a wispof grey smoke, with the whole horizon behind radiant with pink light, fading gently into a grey pastel sky. Nothing I have ever seen in Art or Nature was quite so revolting."

[Sorry, this is probably my 5th citation of this passage in the Fray!]

Sorry for the delay in posting more; the nice people at my ISP are *not* Waugh fans, apparently.

pseudoerasmus, Daveroll, Allofus, and Res: your comments gladden my heart - here we go.

To start us off, a comment from Waugh to Nancy Mitford (letter of 27 September 1950) upon being photographed for the Sunday Times (Res' Message #14):

'I wish you had accepted the Sunday Times invitation to write the caption for their picture. I don't much mind the papers saying I am beastly, which is true, or that I write badly, which isn't. What enrages me is wrong facts. They always are wrong in these knowing 'profiles'. When they say I went to Cambridge or got the D.S.O. or was converted to Catholicism by the war, I eat the carpet.'

pseudoerasmus makes a statement in Message #11 which is the key to understanding Paul Pennyfeather, as well as the rest of D & F:

The casual expulsion of Candide from the paradisical castle of Thunder-ten-tronckh... mirrors Paul's expulsion fromScone College, Oxford - and the parallel continues. It is the casual absurdity of Paul's expulsion that sets the tone for the rest of the novel.

Paul is a passive figure, a device that Waugh uses to guide us through the absurdity and chaos that isthe social world of the twenties. It is his acceptance that this indeed the best of all possible worlds that furnishes the framework for the labrynth of disasters in which he is trapped.

Take the beginning of the story, Paul's clash with the Bollinger men. During the course of their debauch they have smashed, pillaged, and even stoned a fox to death with champagne bottles. The climax of the episode occurs when they attack Paul and remove his trousers, thus causing him to be punished by being sent down, his future career in shambles. What is his reaction? Shame at his outburst ('God damn and blast them all to hell'), and acceptance of his fate.

Paul's acceptance of this 'casual absurdity' is the signal that the scene is set for the ensuing mayhem (and hilarity).

Allofus, Message #17:

Thank you for your kind remarks and background.

You're perfectly right about the dangers in examining D & F in isolation from the rest of Waugh's work. As we progress, it is my plan to introduce references from his other books as well as quotes from his diaries and letters. In this fashion I hope to add the context that is needed if we are to enjoy D & F as a mirror of the cracked society of the times, and not just as a very funny story.

I can'tget the idea of Waugh on 'Oprah' out of my mind, Allofuss.

I don't want to make too much of the religious parallels in D & F, but it is impossible to analyze the casual cruelty that Dave and pseudoerasmus refer to without some reference to Waugh's view of the cause behind the crumbling civilization he skewers.

The Candidean Paul is a symbol of man's exile from Eden. In 1939 Waugh reflected that 'man is, by nature, an exile and will never be self-sufficient or complete on this earth.' As an exile, man can only disintegrate when the values that give meaning tohis existence disappear from society.

If we accept that in this fallen world random chaotic events are the basis of true reality, then it becomes easier to accept as hilarious what would otherwise be a cause for deep despair, like the amazingly senseless and cruel events mentioned by pseudoerasmus and Dave.

It's interesting to note that less than two years after D & F was published, Waugh formally converted to Catholicism.

The attitude of virtually every character in the novel to the improbable series of chance encounters, the absurd causes and effects and some quite beastly happenings can only be described as insouciance. Paul was detrousered by a bunch of aristocratic ruffians; then is sent down from college; is seconded to a 3rd rate public school as a teacher of subjects he knows little about; is picked up as a lover by one of his pupils' mother; gets involved in white slavery, quite by chance; is imprisoned yet manages to fake death. Etc. In the end, it is as though Paul hasn't changed at all. Nothing has had any effect on him.

Reactions of other characters are similar. They are never surprised at the surprising turns of events in their lives. All seem toaccept the fact, without observation, that life expresses itself in terms of such absurdities.

I think Waugh permits only two emotional reponses to the events in the novel. The first, to the gruesome fate of little Tangent, whose foot was injuredby Philbrick's "huge service revolver" during school sports. Beast-Cheating informs Paul of this with some relish.

The second is when the judge sentences Paul to penal servitude for white slavery. The judge bursts into some self-righteous rhetoric: "No one could be ignorant of the callous insolence with which, on the very eve of arrest for this most infamous of crimes, the accused had been preparing to join his name with one honoured in his country's history and to drag down to his own pitiable depths of depravity a lady of beauty, rank and stainless reputation....You are a human vampire."

This little speech really struck me as preposterously incongruous, what with the amorality that pervades the novel.

A few more random observations

Re casual cruelty - Waugh is probably the cruellest to Prendergast, who, though inept, is not exactly dishonourable or malevolent. In fact, Prendergast is made to seem absurd for some decent qualities - like his decision to resign from the church. He could have, despite his confessed unbelief, stayed on as a churchman and continued to draw the full salary.

Re King's Thursday - It is of course the old country house bought and then razed by Margot Beste-Chetwynde. In its place was erected the "clean and square" chrome ghastliness that Waugh so clearly hated. (Note: Waugh's "other" first book was a biography of Rossetti and the pre-Raphaelite painters.) This technique of using an old house (and its decay or destruction) as a metaphor for the loss of some older, sturdier values is a commonplace of literature, used in everything from Chekhov's Cherry Orchard to Forster's Howard's End.

A passionately anglophobe friend of mine once said that no matter how caustically the novels one reads mock the English establishment, the very fact of reading them is evidence of the reader's attraction to the very thing mocked. This is especially trueof Waugh (and his fans), whose love-hate relationship with the English aristocracy is patently the province of his own class, the upper-middles.

This ambivalence is written into Margot Best-Chetwynde's character. This woman is by all accounts quite depraved, an administratively efficient madam of the international slave trade with only a facade of aristocratic respectability. There is rumour that she poisoned her first husband. Much more appalling a personage than Prendergast whom Waugh treats so cruelly. Yet Waugh is obviously enchanted by her, who is "like the first breath of spring in the Champs Elysées". Recall also, the place Waugh has reserved for Margot on Silenus's "wheel of life".

I think the headline in the thread title should be changed.

It's really quite misleading, I think, to call D & F "a tale of bright young people finding their way in the roaring twenties". This more properly characterizes Waugh's 2ndnovel, Vile Bodies. Most of the characters are not BYP, and the story isn't quite roaring in the sense the 20s are usually thought to be. The 20s decadence is briefly glimpsed, but the rest of the time, it's the 3rd-rate public school or the prison.

pseudoerasmus, Message #29:

Perhaps it's a lure for the unwary, to suck them into the thread.

How about a caustic Waughian headline from you?

pseudoerasmus (13)

"I was sitting out a cricket game, as I was wont to do because I hate competitive sports, and reading this very passage..."

Were you beat up often? Or is that just the way it is in books?

CHAPTER SUMMARY: Prelude (In which we are introduced to our protagonist)

Scone College, Oxford

Our story begins in the rooms of the Junior Dean, Mr Sniggs. He and Mr. Postlethwaite, the Domestic Bursar, are the only two senior members of the college on hand during the annual dinner of the Bollinger Club. Anticipation is awakened early, as we are told that the dinner is 'a difficult time for those in authority'. Messrs. Sniggs and Postlethwaite eagerly await the fines that this evening'sspree will bring to the coffers of the senior common room's drinks fund.

All we need to know about the Bollinger Club is vouchsafed us when we learn that the dinner is not quite an annual event; in fact the Club is usually suspended for various years after each meeting. At the last reunion three years ago, for example, a fox had been stoned to death with champagne bottles, as pseudoerasmus has already noted. Thus is immediately established the casual nature of the pervasive random cruelty in D & F.

Who are these Bollingers? The highest of the high, of course, counting reigning kings among past members of the Club. This is the second defining element of D & F, the complete amorality of the 'ruling' class. Witness this description:

For two days they had been pouring into Oxford; epileptic royalty from their villas in exile; uncouth peers from crumbling country seats; smooth young men of uncertain tastes from embassies and legations; illiterate lairds from wet granite hovels in the Highlands; ambitious young barristers and Conservative candidates torn from the London season and the indelicate advances of debutantes; all that was most sonorous of name and title was there for the beano.

The twin pillars of the decaying society of the times, meaninglessness and the crumbling aristocracy are now in evidence.

(continued)

re Message #26, and the lack of effect you describe in the first paragraph: this is a central device to much comedy, the indistructability and unchangeableness of a humorous character until they either come out of it all scott free or it all catches up with them at once.

CHAPTER SUMMARY: Prelude (continued)

And then the Bollingers go on the rampage. 'A shriller note could now be heard rising from Sir Alastair's rooms, any who have heard that sound will shrink at the recollection of it; it is the sound of the English county families baying for broken glass.' Messrs. Sniggs and Postlethwaite contemplate the coming debacle; who will be the sacrificial lamb they wonder, and will they break the bank and attack the Chapel? 'Oh, please God...'

A 'lovely evening' ensues. Pianos are broken, china is smashed, a Matisse is drowned. Is the evening over? No.

(continued)

CHAPTER SUMMARY: Prelude (continued)

Paul Pennyfeather arrives on the scene. (I've always thought his name rather indicative - little value, less weight.) He is in his third year of reading for the Church, after a blameless (if dull) career at a small, religious-leaning public school. We know that Paul is worthy because he'd been head boy there and had 'exerted a wholesome influence for good'. He is an orphan of steady habits who works hard at his studies, lives within his income, and has four friends. He has never heard of the Bollinger Club.

Oblivious to the seachange that he is about to undergo, Paul bicycles back to college from a challenging evening at the League of Nations Union, having heard a fascinating paper on Polish plebescites. As he makes his way across the quad, Paul fatefully crosses paths with the Bollingers and his slide down the rabbit hole begins. (More about ALICE IN WONDERLAND later.)

Behold! Paul's tie bears a striking resemblance to the Club tie. Who is this 'awful man' desecrating their tie, demands the drunken Lumsden of Strathdrummond, ancestral outrage suffusing his blood.

Sniggs and Postlethwaite are torn; should they intervene? 'No, no, no.' When the fury abates they breathe a sigh ofrelief - it's only Pennyfeather. 'But what a lot of clothes the young man appears to have lost!'

CHAPTER SUMMARY: Prelude (conclusion)

At the next day's College meeting, the good news is announced: two hundred and thirty pounds for the common room fund, not counting the damage!

As for the cause of the disturbance, that chap Pennyfeather, a firm stance is taken. Running the whole length of the quad without his trousers: flagrantly indecent. Of course fining him is no good, he probably couldn't pay; better to get rid of such a source of outrage.

Two hours later Paul has been given his marching papers; sent down from college for indecent exposure. He encounters Sniggs and Postlethwaite, the two senior members who would not interfere on his behalf, and they wish him godspeed. He is further reassured by the Chaplain of the College, who congratulates him on having discovered his essential unfitness for the priesthood. After all, 'if a person does that kind of thing, all the world knows.'

'God damn and blast them all to hell,' says Paul meekly to himself, ashamed at his own reaction, as he heads for the train station and his new life.

I've gone into more detail with the Prelude than I will with the succeeding chapters because I wanted to emphasize the satirical elements that Waugh introduces here. These are the basis for the rest of the events in D & F; the course of Paul's life has been charted.

Cara Maria in Message #23 writes of Paul as "a passive figure, a device that Waugh uses to guide us through the absurdity and chaos that is the social world of the twenties."

Let me be terribly pedantic. The genre which Waugh inherited and to which D & F squarely belongs is ingénue satire. (And, as has already been stated, is a favorite 18th century form; witness, in addition to Candide and Gulliver's Travels, Johnson's Rasselas and many many French "philosophical tales".)

The genre, in my opinion, has four salient features: 1) a simple, understated and sometimes even laconic or lapidary prose; 2) a subdued description of grotesquerie; 3) superficial character representation; and 4) some gnomic utterances at the end, in order to bring the tale to some "moral" or "philosophical" closure.

#3 is particularly important, because, as I said before, the object of this kind of satire is topical and institutional, rarely to build up plausible characters.

#4 -- Readers of Candide may recall the aphoristic closing line of the book: "Il faut cultiver notre jardin" [we must cultivate our garden.] This gnomic utterance is meant patently to tidy up the moral purpose of thebook, to supply a "conclusion". And, unsurprisingly, something similar happens at the end of D&F. Paul, when told he would have been better off had he never gotten mixed up with the society set, replies, "I know exactly what you mean. You're dynamic, and I'm static." The endings of both Candide and D & F overwhelmingly enact feelings of resignation, passivity and even withdrawal.

HCAULFIELD - Re: Message #31

Hahahahaha.

Fortunately, I escaped the ritual savage beatings endemic in *some* English public schools. But that was probably because I wrote cheeky compositions about revered Roman heroes and verses on prurient subject matter.

pseudoerasmus --Is it possiple to prevent you from being

"terribly pedantic?" Little buggy things, Patsy

pseudoerasmus, you're right - D&F isn't really knockabout. I guess I wrote that post somewhat hastily, with two things in mind: 1. that newcomers to Waugh shouldn't get the idea that D&F is representative of the entire body of work. 2. to head off these comparisons with Wodehouse, whom I can't see as even approaching Waugh in range and passion. Like Charlie Chaplin, Wodehouse is someone I loved in my teens but grew to detest.

I think the judge's speech is also a parody. Waugh must have had in mind those ridiculous bewigged judges who pass sentence in growling voices with an eye on the tabloid headlines, sending some poor demented pervert down for eight years with words like "You, sir, are a rotter and a menace to society and I have no compunction in ordering that you be taken from this place and caged till you ROT!"... blah blah blah...

John Gielgud does D&F on tape. It was put out by Argo, EMI Records, 1/3 Uxbridge Rd., Hayes, Middlesex UB4 OSY, England.

Mine's dated 1992 but they may still stock them.

Gielgud does it to perfection - but that shouldn't surprise anyone.

Message #41, Allofuss:

I think we all agree that Waugh and Wodehouse share little besides the "W" in their names as regards style. (Imagine Bertie Wooster in Waugh's hands!)

I like your image of the judge, that's how I picture him as well.

The opening passage of "Officers and Gentlemen" is typical of Waugh's delicious perverseness.

"The sky over London was glorious, ochre and madder, as though a dozen tropic suns were simultaneously setting round the horizon; everywhere the searchlights clustered and hovered, then swept apart; here and there pitchy clouds drifted and billowed; now and then a huge flash momentarily froze the serene fireside glow. Everywhere the shells sparkled like Christmas baubles.

`Pure Turner,' said Guy Crouchback, enthusiastically; he came fresh to these delights.

`John Martin, surely?' said Ian Kilbannock.

`No,' said Guy firmly. He would not accept correction on matters of art from this former sporting-journalist. `Not Martin. The sky-line is too low. The scale is less than Babylonian.'

They stood at the top of St. James's Street. Halfway down Turtle's Club was burning briskly. ... A group of progressive novelists in firemen's uniform were squirting a little jet of water into the morning-room."

And from there it only gets funnier. To open with this kind of treatment of the bombing of London must have taken guts, considering the novel was published in 1955, when the blitz was still fresh in British memory.

dearest Allofuss!

I *agreed* with you that the humour of Decline and Fall is knockabout! That was rather my point: Waugh's early novels and his later novels are different at the very lesat in that quality.

the judge's speech may be a parody, but nothing in the text *indicates* a serious parodic intent. In my opinion, it makes far more sense that the little speech is meant to insert a sudden, absurd incongruity in the amoral atmosphere of the novel. After all, the judge's justifiable moral indignation is nonetheless absurd, given that Paul was only covering up for Beast-Cheating.

pseudoerasmus,

# 38

This is off topic, but the "culitvate our garden" line at the end of Candide left me with a different impression. I understand how it conjurs up withdrawal,passivity and resignation. But I thought of it as a call to action; to step in and pull out the weeds in order that something better may be planted. That was Voltaire's modus operandi, was it not?

PHILLIP DAVID (46)

G. K. Chesterton remarked that satirists usually end their lives in despair, and I think Voltaire quintessentially ends Candide in despair - at least in despair about the possibility of improving the world through reason and intellect. Flaubert commented that the lesson of Candide is "Working without reasoning is the only way of marking life endurable" [Travaillons sans raisonner; c'est le seul moyen de rendre la vie supportable.]

So, yes, inasmuch as there is hope, it lies in withdrawl from the world and resignation to its unchangingly arbitrary and cruel ways. You might recall that the Turk at the end of Candide pithily remarked: "Work alienates from us three evils: boredom, vice and want" [Le travil éloigne de nous trois maux: l'ennui, le vice et le besoin]. One imagines this almost a Calvinist infection in Voltaire.

Both Candide and D & F parade us through a succession of absurd incidents and extraordinary characters, but after that, at the end, there is an element of deliberate let-down and anti-climax. And it's consonant with Paul Pennyfeather's complacently enlightened awareness of why he's better off back at Oxford, rather than involved in the bright-lights hurly-burly of the smart set.

I mentioned to Allofuss that the humour of D & F (as well as Vile Bodies) is fairly knockabout. I called it a series of potshots, typical of institutional satire. The opposite kind (not necessarily better) is of course character-based. This is characteristic of Waugh's later novels, but paramountly of Flaubert's novels like Madame Bovary and Sentimental Education.

Come to think of it, Sentimental Education is one of my favorite novels. How about that for the next reading? Hahahaha.

CHAPTER SUMMARY: Chapter I - Vocation

Sent down from Scone, Paul has an interview with his guardian, and continues to pay for his gross misconduct. In a dispassionate manner (as we are learning to expect) Paul's guardian casually gives him the news that his allowance is being cut off immediately and that he must now find his own accommodations. Paul is advised to seek 'work, good healthy toil,' and his guardian cheerfully sends him on his way.

Following the suggestion of Scone's porter (the only one from whom he has received any practical advice, randomly), Paul repairs to Church and Gargoyle, scholastic agents, to seek work as a schoolmaster. He is advised to amend his reason for leaving university from 'indecent behaviour' to 'Education discontinued for personal reasons.'

An open post at Llanabba Castle, a school in Wales is located, and Paul is urged to apply. Paul protests that he's had no teaching experience, no knowledge of German, nor can he play cricket (as specified in the description), but is assured that Llanabba is hardly a first-class institution, and as there are only two other candidates for the position (one of whom is deaf), he is entirely suitable.

The next day Paul has his interview with Augustus Fagan, Esquire, Ph.D., and headmaster of Llanabba, who has already interviewed the other candidates. Dr. Fagan is 'very tall and well dressed; he had sunken eyes and rather long hair and swayed lightly as he spoke; his voice had a thousand modulations, as though at some remote time he had taken lessons in elocution; the backs of his hands were hairy, and his fingers were crooked like claws.' (As this is the longest and most vivid description yet given of anyone but Paul (whose description, though comprehensive, was in no way vivid), we know that this is a fateful meeting.)

(Continued)

CHAPTER SUMMARY: Chapter I - Vocation (conclusion)

Dr. Fagan waves aside Paul's lack of experience, saying that 'vision' is the quality he most prizes, but senses an opportunity to reduce the niggardly salary of one hundred and twenty pounds per annum that he is offering. What, he asks is the reason behind Paul's sudden departure from university? True to his head-boy background, Paul promptly responds with the 'truth' (!): he was sent down for indecent behaviour. Dr. Fagan eagerly reduces the salary to ninety pounds, and as a favor, engages Paul on the spot.

In the haphazard manner to which we are becoming accustomed, it is assumed that Paul will arrive at Llanabba by the following evening. Again, this is another indication of the nature of Paul's role: that of the passive Candide, pawn of chance. Observe the use of the word 'vocation' as a chapter heading. In Paul's new mirror-maze world a vocation (teaching) is something one falls into. This can be compared with Paul's supposed original vocation, the priesthood, which he seems not to grieve over at all, another indication of acceptance and passivity, as pseudoerasmus has also noted.

CHAPTER SUMMARY: Chapter II - Llanabba Castle

Paul arrives at Llanabba, a large country house of mock feudal aspect converted into a school, and is conducted into the masters' Common Room by the butler. The smallish chamber is deserted, and Paul sits disconsolately to wait, hoping that the quarters won't prove too cramped.

A knock sounds at the door, and Paul is confronted by a small boy looking for Captain Grimes, followed by a procession of other boys, all coming to giggle and stare at Paul, whom they perceive is the new master. Suddenly a bell rings and during the ensuing commotion a short, youngish man with an artificial leg comes into the room. 'I'm Captain Grimes', he says. Grimes has a short altercation with a rather cheeky boy, bemoans the lack of discipline at Llanabba, and leaves. Paul wonders about the possibilities of enjoying his new vocation.

Presently, another, older man, introducing himself as Prendergrast walks in. Prendergrast, a ten year veteran of Llanabba, tells Paul that Grimes, a recent arrival, 'isn't a gentleman', and the butler arrives to conduct Paul to Dr. Fagan.

Dr. Fagan's part of the Castle proves to be much more luxurious than the Common Room, and Paul finds his velvet dinner jacket-clad employer accompanied by his daughter, 'a brightly dressed woman in early middle age'. After some bewildering verbal interplay between the Fagans, another daughter arrives, rattling off a laundry list of domestic details that Paul is supposed to know.

(Continued)

CHAPTER SUMMARY: Chapter II - Llanabba Castle (conclusion)

Dr. Fagan informs Paul that he is to be in charge of the fifth form, the games, the carpentring class, and the fire drill. In addition he is to give one particular student organ lessons, although he does not teach music. As the dinner bell sounds, Dr. Fagan's parting words of advice are to never mention his reasons for leaving Oxford to the boys, as 'schoolmasters must temper discretion with deceit'. (The old saying turned upside down, a signal to us of the value system in this new world of Paul's.)

Note the withdrawal, the resignation, and the non-participation by Paul. This is a continuation of the pattern established in the Prelude, Paul caught like driftwood in the ocean's tide, a passive spectator to his own life.

re Message #49 and Scone's porter's advice: would that be a tip of the hat to Wodehouse on Evelyn's part? (perhaps H'Evelyn, to distinguish him from his wife)

Message #53, Dvepivoprosim:

Hahahahahahaha! Never thought of that.

Hello, all --

I will be getting the book tomorrow, so this post is necessarily uninformed. I know it will be ok. [smirk]

pseudoerasmus

Regardless of what G.K. said (he rather tried too hard to be epigramatic, I've always thought) Voltaire certainly did not end his life in despair. And work as an anodyne to boredom, vice and want is hardly a Calvinist sentiment.

To all

The comment was made earlier that there is a random-event motif in D&F, and this was related particularly to theevents surrounding the Bollinger club. Ok. BUT ...is it not also true that rampaging young sons of privilege were, and had been for a long while, a real problem?

From our distant perspective, might we not be exaggerating some of the ironic intent of Waugh? Should we temper our judgement of Waugh's intent by considering the actual circumstances that obtained?

Is Paul extraordinarily passive, or just realistic? What other options did he have? What alternatives were there?

FAGAN (55)

I didn't say Voltaire ended his life in despair and he certainly didn't - he died a very celebrated man. I said rather that Candide ends in a certain kind of despaire, and in resignation. Read Candide and then reread my post.

Question about the young men in Waugh and Wodehouse...These men are the ruling class in Britain..How do the most useless and clueless become the best and the brightest????

It's fiction, BevCrusher.

I know, but satire always contains more than a bit of truth. Or it wouldn't be funny....And certainly Charles, Andy et. al. bear out the truth of it...

BTW-pseudoerasmus, I know it's difficult for you, but could you attempt to be less of an ass?

Message #57, Bev:

One of my favorite passages in D & F is the following:

'Besides, you see, I'm a public school man. That means everything. There's a blessed equity in the English social system', said Grimes, 'that ensures the public school man against starvation. One goes through four or five years of perfect hell, anyway, and after that the social system never lets us down'.

Connections, connections, connections. And the sentiment above is uttered by Captain Grimes, a black sheep if there ever was one. So if even black sheep are guaranteed a place in the pecking order, you can see what Waugh is telling us about the rest of the available positions on the list.

True,

And like Jeeves in Wodehouse, a few intelligent bureacrats could keep their "betters" in line. *smile*

Message #56, Ned:

I believe Paul to be an extraordinarily passive figure. In the next chapter summary we see the other face of his resigned attitude when he tacitly accepts Dr Fagan's advice that 'discretion is the better part of deceit', and immediately puts it to good use by lying.

This is the kind of passive resignation that comes from having no strong convictions of any sort, so the chaos and turmoil that surround him sweep Paul along impassively throught the worst follies, deception, and fraud, a victim, but curiously unscathed.

I'll try to be less of an ass, but I sometimes lack free will in my responses.....a deterministic process decides my responses.

It's clear that England was ruled by very capable, if occasinally misguided, men. Many dumb aristocrats became politicians certainly, but usually the dumber sons were sent off to the army and the church. The smarter ones got into Parliament. So we have a procession of some very capable aristocratic people in government thoughout modern English history.

But, also, since the 18th century, members of the gentry and the merchant class always participated in running the government. Let me see, the Pitts, Gladstone, Disraeli, the Chamberlains....all non-aristocratic people.

well, one who places no real value on anything can't be hurt much by scandal maria...and he also can be very adaptable!

Bev: Think of the legendary British Civil Service too!

Sideline, Waugh on Wodehouse:

He (Wodehouse) inhabits a world as timeless as that of A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM, and ALICE IN WONDERLAND; a world inhabited by strange transmogrifications.

message 66,

Of course, maria!! interesting note about the Civil Service. In India, they trained an Indian Civil Service to take their place when independence started to look inevitable.. It was a sound foundation for the beginnings of democratic government. It is interesting, though, how it has adapted to the caste system in India..You are born a civil servant, engineer, etc. just like you are born to any other occupation. When I mention my brother in law's name to another person from India, they can tell me exactly what he does.

pseudoerasmus,

I agree. Perhaps the good sense of the British people outweighs the aristocracy. All of the men mentioned were, of course, elected by the people. They had a hard course governing, though. They always had to watch for people in the army, the House of Lords or high in government positions simply ignoring the PM, because the troublemakers assumed they were better educated and knew more of the world.

BevCrusher, #68,

But there were many extremely competent aristocratic statesmen, among the most capable being Salisbury, Castlereagh and Palmerston. I don't agree with anything you say in the rest of your post, but this is the Waugh thread.....the history thread is gone.

that was Bev Crusher's #69, not #68, referenced in #70.

hey, aristocracy probably doesn't automatically guarantee stupidity. That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying that, at least in the '20's, people must have recognized a high level of it among their aristocrats.Thus the success of the books by W&W. And I have read my history. What I'm saying is true. A Prime Minister in England can exercise more control than, say, an American president, but he still needs cooperation and sometimes things can be delayed interminably by a general or high official not in agreement with policy. Of course the best of British PMs never let anyone stop them for long and were good at finding the truly best and brightest to deal with.

D & F is a good example of how it isn't necessary to tell a story according to what Waugh called 'the chain of cause and effect'. Events take place seemingly haphazardly, and appear to have been selected at his whim. Only gradually does their function in the story become apparent, and it is from this gradual unveiling of the scheme that much of the humor is derived.

Why does Waugh pick on the Welsh?

Message #74, HC:

I don't think too many people missed being picked on by Waugh, not even his friends.

I agree that there is a clear parallel to Candide, but all the same Waugh has a tone of his own. Pennyfeather himself is the main parallel--an innocent whose innocence is actually indestructible. But that innocence is in contrast to a world where nearly everyone is either incompetent or corrpt or both. Lumsden of Straathdrummond can't recognize his own club tie; the dean and master of Scone decide against fining Paul because he has no money; his uncle and guardian is only too happy to cheat him out of his inheritance, mouthing hypocritical bromides. And while it is true Waugh's vision darkens as time goes on, I'm struck as I read D & F this time by the sheer evil of the people who surround Paul at the beginning of the book. Waugh's reaction isn't cynicism or disillusion, or at least that is not all: he is overcome by disgust. "See things steadily and see them whole indeed!" His education is "discontinued for personal reasons." Orwell could not have done better, and yet here it is,almost seventy years later, and when an executive is given his pink slip a memo is emailed around the office: "X is leaving to pursue personal interests."

The theme that sounds unceasingly through all of Waugh's work is the offense to the esthetic sense that much of the world affords. He presents it with irony or with grim relish--as in the mock-Keynsian description of the fortifications of Llanabba Castle, built to provide out-of-work laborers with meaningless work. Late in life, whenone of his friends said he was a nasty man, he replied that she had no idea how awful he would be if he were not a Catholic. Waugh is criticized by the moralistic for his estheticism, as if it were a kind of superficial snobbery, but it was really an attempt to build a structure of beauty within which to protect an excessively sensitive mind. Don't imagine I's saying he wasn't a moralist, but the morality is first of all an offended sense of beauty.

Waugh's morality as an offended sense of beauty - an excellent point, Dave Roll, something for which I could only grope when I mentioned the significance of Beast-Cheating's and Silenus's chrome ghastliness.

Message #76, Dave:

I echo pseudoerasmus, what a wonderful comment. The sense of outrage just streams through Waugh's prose.

To me Pennyfeather is an ordinary person crushed by huge forces he barely understands, but has probably been conditioned to accept unquestioningly, in keeping with the mantras that underpin British society at every level: "Can't be helped", "Mustn't grumble," "Let's not make a fuss." To rise up against your oppressors is to risk being labeled "a bore," and a true Englishman would rather suffer a sprained upper lip than be called "a bore."

Pennyfeather is rather like William Boot in "Scoop," or even Tony Last in "A Handful of Dust" - pawns, stooges, straight men to keep the comedy and bile running freely. Waugh sees no need to explain their passivity. He presents it as a given. In "Handful of Dust," it was only at the insistence of the American magazine that serialized the novel that he wrote an alternative ending in which Tony finally achieves a measure of revenge. On the surface it's a much more satisfying ending, but it's somehow out of keeping with Waugh's original intent.

Bevcrusher's question _ how do idiots like these get to run an empire _ is very pertinent. I live in a corner of empire and ask myself that question often. That's why this thread is so much fun. It has made me read D&F for the zillionth time, and still find new things to relish.

I apologize for not having read the book... it's rather hard to find over here (my attempt at an excuse). I will, however, add my two cents to the discussion.

Bev:

Is your brother-in-law a Parsee? It's the only group I know of in India where names indicate professions. And the British created a monster there: Indians are the world's greatest bureaucrats... just look at any office of the United Nations anywhere in the world... the mid-level functionaries are invariably Indians or Egyptians.

Maria Message #67

What a wonderful, perceptive quote! Btw, this is a very nice thread you're hosting here. Well done!

His family name is Mukesh, Irv, and I promise you that it indicates to those I've spoken to an engineer, immediately....His father was an engineer in the Army and it seems they were engineers in the Army for a few generations at least. Perhaps they've gained some measure of fame. All I know is that Mukesh says he's here so his kids don't HAVE to be blinking engineers.*smile*

Is a "chokey" a British term for a jail? (I gathered that from something in Bertie Wooster and I think a passage in D&F.)

I'm assuming that Chokey is less of a comment on racism in England (and perhaps Margot's psuedo-openmindedness) than a mockery of the aristocracy's fashionable keeping of pets, proteges and artists. Mrs. Beste-Chetwynde finds two "artists," Chokey and the architect, and supports them, blind to how mediocre they are. The aristocracy's dominance over high culture is a sham. Like BevCrusher mentioned about them governing, how about the perception that they are better guardians of the fine arts?

Message #82, Anneliese:

Welcome, Anneliese. I believe that chokey is the term used for the punishment block in a prison.

pseudoerasmus -- #56

As usual, you ask that others read your posts carefully, but fail to do the same. I have read Candide, and your post.

"G. K. Chesterton remarked that satirists usually end their lives in despair, and I think Voltaire quintessentially ends Candide in despair"

It was YOU who offered the G.K. quote, presumably for some reason. I Message #55 disagreed with G.K., pointing out the obvious, that Voltaire was an un-despairing fellow.

" "Workalienates from us three evils: boredom, vice and want" "...(french translation ommitted)... "One imagines this almost a Calvinist infection in Voltaire."

And I disagreed with your Calvinist spin on Voltaire. He being no more susceptible to Calvinism than to despair.

The problem is not that I fail to read what you write, but that you fail to read what you write. I acknowledge that it is not always an easy task.

Well it's just wrong that Voltaire was not susceptible to despair or Calvinism. He was rather susceptible to both in some respects. But Voltaire just didn't end his life bitter and desperate.

But there *is* a kind of despair at the end of Candide, just as there is in D & F, - a kind of despair about rationality and making sense of the world through reason, which is a BIG deal in the Enlightenment. It makes Voltaire, in essence, a dissenter in the Enlightenment culture.

By the way, careful reading is a quality you once ascribed to me!

CHAPTER SUMMARY: Chapter III - Captain Grimes

In the dining hall at Llanabba, Paul encounters the small boy who'd been looking for Captain Grimes. He turns out to be Beste-Chetwynde, to whom Paul will be giving organ lessons. 'Do you play terribly well?' asks Beste-Chetwynde. Paul obligingly 'tempers discretion with deceit'; and announces that he plays so well that he has given lessons to the Master of Scone, and is rewarded by discovering that his new pupil has no interest in organ music, andis not likely to discover his dodge. (Lesson for Paul: behave honourably - disaster ensues; lie - triumph.) Paul discovers that he likes chatting with the boys at his table, and Beste-Chetwynde confirms Prendergrast's opinion of Grimes as common. Hebonds with Beste-Chetwynde by promptly lying to protect him when the boy makes a rude noise at Prendergrast.

After the meal, Paul meets up with Grimes who invites him to the local pub. In a spirit of bonhomie, Grimes confesses that his false legwas not, in fact, acquired during the war, but in an accident when he was rather the worse for drink. Believing that Paul is a kindred spirit, Grimes also relates that he is engaged to be married to 'Flossie', the elder of the Misses Fagan. This is to be his ace in the hole, he confides, when he lands in 'the soup' again, as is his wont. Inside the pub, as they spot Philbrick, the Llanabba butler talking to a shady character, Grimes ruminates that this looks like being the first end of term he's seenin a couple of years, his usual limit staying out of the soup being six weeks. 'Temperament', said Grimes, with a far-away look in his eyes - that's been my trouble, temperament and sex.'

When asked by Paul whether a habit of landing in the soup made it difficult to find another job, Grimes gives Paul his delightful theory on the wonders of having attended a public school - lifetime protection against starvation by the members of your class.

(Cont.)

CHAPTER SUMMARY: Chapter III - Captain Grimes (Conclusion)

In fact, Grimes tells Paul, he feels such a debt of gratitude to his old school, that he even contributed a guinea to the school's War Memorial Fund, and is only sorry that the check bounced. Captain Grimes himself had been in the war, he relates, never sober for more than a few hours at a time. Having gotten into the soup in a big way, he'd been asked to 'behave like a gentleman' by officers who preferred not to court-martial him, and left in room with a loaded revolver. Fortunately thoughts of the old school made him see the way; 'Public school men don't end like this' he said to himself.

Celebrating this astute revelation by drinking most of a decanter of whisky, Grimes had surprised the other officers by still being alive. 'The man's a cad', said the Colonel, but even then I couldn't stop laughing, so they put me under arrest and called a court-martial', he recounts to Paul. Feeling 'pretty low' the next day, Grimes was surprised to find that the Major brought in to try his case is a fellow old-boy. 'What's all this nonsense about a court-martial?' the major asks, ... it's out of the question to shoot an old Harrovian.' The next day Grimes was sent to Ireland on a 'pretty cushy' job, where he finished out the war, finding that it was impossible to land in the soup in Ireland.

Paul is encouraged by Grimes' resilience in the face of disaster, and is affronted when Philbrick the butler appears offering to effect an introduction to 'a young lady'. 'Women are an enigma as far as Grimes is concerned', notes the Captain.

To me the funniest part of this chapter is the way that Waugh treats the old adage 'Virtue is its own reward'. (It better be, because no one in the world of D & F is going to reward it.) Captain Grimes, an out-and-out villain if there ever was one,always lands on his feet; Paul, the innocent dupe, reaps all available punishments. 'When you've been in the soup as often as I have,' Grimes later reflects, 'it gives you the feeling that everything's for the best, really.' (As pseudoerasmus has mentioned to me, Grimes can be seen as a sort of Pangloss to Paul's Candide.)

Paul really is the blank slate to which I referred earlier in this thread. We recognized him as "good" at the beginning of D & F, and now we come to see that it was goodness in a vacuum; Paul is good for lack of any knowledge of evil.

A note about names: Waugh had a habit of distributing to his characters the names of people he had met. Philbrick, conferred on Llanabba's butler, was the name of an Oxford contemporary of Waugh's whom he had named 'Philbrick the Flagellant'.

As has been pointed out to me, Grimes is not meant to be a villain in the classic sense of being evil. I meant villain in the sense of being a cad, a rotter.

pseudoerasmus --

"Well it's just wrong that Voltaire was not susceptible to despair or Calvinism."

-- pseudoerasmus, 04/28/97, The Fray

I am going to have this nicely laser-printed on fake parchment, and put it in one of those attractiveK-Mart type frames, and hang it next to my desk. It will provide months of pleasure. Thank you.

Now, I am going to return to reading Waugh; you have distracted me too much. I look forward to discussing Waugh, tomorrow.

Look out folks! I have managed to get ahold of the one copy of "Decline and Fall" in town. Give me a little time to actually read it, and you will be subjected to *my* semi-literate postings on the subject.

evening Irv beloved...

Well, now that the Fagan and the Schnottgras have begun to read / finished reading Waugh, it's time to check out!!! Hahahahaha.

The Fagan: Innocence and Experience. I suppose it is your lot in life to have Acquaintance with K-Mart and Wal-Mart and other Marts which mottle the overdeveloped American landscape outside NYC. I happened accidentally to stumble into a Wal-Mart the other day, and my Waughian morality (offended sense of beauty) was shot to hell.

Chapter 3 -- I thought things started to get a little slow here. Maybe that's because of the breakneck beginning. Waugh slips in some jabs in these next few rounds, but little damage is done, and the judges score them even.

Irv! Glad to have you aboard. Speed read.

HC: Chapters 4 and 5 coming up.

pseudoerasmus: Check out?! Yikes! (tm)

morning maria,

I apologize for checking out suddenly last night...

Hi, Bev. No heavy breathing over Irv, please, we're British!

heavy breathing? Oh perish the thought!Besides it's the minds that mingle. I don't think they breathe*wink*

About Grimes and Philbrick (and to a degree Prendergast): these characters are running jokes, a narrative device of which Waugh was fond. I sometimes think excessively fond! But Grimes is really the engine that drives the plot of this little book, until Margot Beste-Chetwynde's awful power is summoned in Part II. I think he is a villain, as Maria says; but he is a likable one a good part of the time, cheerful and self-confident, in touch with the primitive side of his nature, until he falls into the hands of Dr. Fagan (whom no one has mentioned so far out of respect, I assume, for Ned). Now there is a true villain (Dr. Fagan I mean). Dr. Fagan pretends he is a gentleman and that he and his class are the true backbone of England. Neither Grimes nor his more exaggerated counterpart, Philbrick, are hypocrites. They are cads, bounders, liars, lunatics, self-deluded but not hypocrites. Grimes may have the best speech in the book: "the hearth glows with the fire of home, while upstairs, above our heads, are enacted again the awful accidents of adolescence. There's a home and family waiting for every one of us."

As to Paul: Waugh provides the key explicitly: "The whole of this book," he says, "is really an account of the mysterious disappearance of Paul Pennyfeather, so that readers must not complain if the shadow which took his name does not amply fill the important part of hero for which he was originally cast." One of Paul's problems is that from the night of the Bollinger riot he is pushed relentlessly by blind fate into situations for which his background, breeding, and education have prepared him not at all. The trials to which he is subjected have no purpose and no reward.

Again, the Catholicism of the later Waugh becomes more intelligible if we take seriously the darkness of his world view at the time he wrote this novel and VILE BODIES. England was ruined; the Pastmasters are hopelessly in the past, and Margot is the implacable force of modernity, or in terms appropriate to the morality play of D & F, the goddess Fortuna.

This nihilism was somewhat the fashionable nihilism of the generation too young to have been in the war, like the Sex Pistols in the 1970s. But Waugh's accidie was terribly deep, for he did not even care for the world that was lost, whether it was William Morris's world or that of the Pastmasters; they are all masters of the past, and nothing more. Waugh was neither of the past nor of the future. To us he may seem cynical, but that is not the case. Dr. Fagan is the embodiment of cynicism. Paul's question, midway through, is surely Waugh's: why did God create the world at all? He was almost unnaturally aware of radical evil, and none of his contemporaries can touch him on it.

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