EVELYN WAUGH

EVELYN WAUGH NEWSLETTER
Volume 7 Number 1 - Spring 1973


David Lodge, "The Arrogance of Evelyn Waugh," The Critic, 30 (May-June, 1972), 62-70, also a defense and explanation of the man, will interest casual readers but not Waugh scholars. His sources are principally Mr. Pinfold and Frances Donaldson, and though one of these is critically acceptable it has been exploited previously. He retells the standoff at White's between Waugh and Alan Brien, courtesy of Randolph Churchill - who really should have known better than to introduce anyone suffering from boredom to Mr. Brien, of all people. He quotes Harold Acton's "prancing faun" flourish, explains that Wormwood Scrubs is a prison, and concludes that Waugh's public image was the mask of a bored but decent man who valued his privacy. There is nothing at all wrong with this essay, but there is nothing at all new in it either.

TWO NEW BIBLIOGRAPHICAL ITEMS

D.S. Gallagher of James Cook University of North Queensland, who is well-known to EWN readers for some brilliant bibliographic investigations, has discovered a hitherto unrecorded Waugh letter to the editor by following up a clue in Alan Brien's "Permission to Speak..."

Evelyn Waugh, "Self-denial," Truth, October 15, 1954, p. 1729. Response to anonymous Profile: "Waugh Among the Ruins," Truth, October 8, 1954, pp. 1242-1243.

Gallagher observes that the author of the anonymous "Profile" appears to have been Alan Brien. His "Permission to Speak, Captain?" Spectator, CCXVI (April 15, 1966), 463 contains the following sentence: "My mind was packed with information I had laid in for my profile."

Gallagher notes that Truth was a London journal of comment which ceased publication around 1957. In his letter Waugh asserts that, contrary to the statement made in the "Profile," his home is not open to visits by the paying public.