Vile Bodies (Penguin Modern Classics)

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Nancy: "Praying. Don't be absurd. Evelyn simply doesn't pray. And even if he did no-one would mention it."

Evelyn Waugh's father Arthur was a noted editor and publisher. His only sibling Alec also became a writer of note. In fact, his book “The Loom of Youth” (1917) a novel about his old boarding school Sherborne caused Evelyn to be expelled from there and placed at Lancing College. He said of his time there, “…the whole of English education when I was brought up was to produce prose writers; it was all we were taught, really.” He went on to Hertford College, Oxford, where he read History. When asked if he took up any sports there he quipped, “I drank for Hertford.” I will always be a Decline and Fall man, though I'm impressed by the attempt made in Vile Bodies to transform experience (failure in marriage) into art ( 'Good-bye... I'm sorry, Adam. ') Michael Wilmington of the Chicago Tribune described it as "a brilliant, giddy satiric romp with a discreetly moralistic viewpoint beneath its high-style wit", "a ball to watch", and "an incredibly entertaining film with a magnificent cast", and called Fry "a splendid director capable of visual dazzle and superb ensemble work". [12] Awards and nominations [ edit ] Masked parties, Savage parties, Victorian parties, Greek parties, Wild West parties, Russian parties, Circus parties, 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 night clubs, in windmills and swimming-baths, tea parties at school where one ate muffins and meringues and tinned crab, 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 …I love Waugh's use of -making, as in, "This cab ride is terribly sober-making." Totally gonna start using that. I am afraid that this will never be of the smallest value but I thought that, as it is your book, you might be amused to have it (as a very much belated Christmas present). I just finished reading the gorgeous 1930 novel, Vile Bodies by the old genius of a boy, Evelyn Waugh.

What's particularly useful about the above table is that it tells us that the number of the car that Evelyn and his party were supporting on the day of the race was 38. Wouldn't it be grand if the press had taken a photo of the car in its pit that day, given that - though most of the action takes place in the refreshment tent (really Adam Symes, Archie Schwertz, Miles Malpractice and Agatha Runcible have the most boozy of days) - they are also in and out of the pit a fair bit? The picture below, focussing on car 27 and giving a glimpse of the pits from 27 to 30 takes us tantalisingly close. The second curiosity is the abrupt shift in tone – from frivolous satire to an almost apocalyptic vision of battleground Europe – largely constructed of images derived from the trench warfare of 1914-1918. It has often been remarked that Evelyn Waugh’s rather painful divorce from his first wife (who was also called Evelyn) occurred during the composition of Vile Bodies. This may be a reasonable biographical explanation for the sudden change of mood, but it does not repair the damage done to the novel’s structural coherence.I'll take you out in my car sometime," says Sarah to Blore-Smith at one point in Agents and Patients . Be scared, Blore-Smith. Be very, very scared... In 1936, Anthony Powell wrote a novel called Agents and Patients . Two of the main characters are the Maltravers, and this is known to be a portrait of She-Evelyn and John Heygate. Moreover, it's a portrait of their relationship when, married, they lived together in the Canonbury Square flat that had once been the home of the Evelyns. I go into this in more detail in Evelyn! Rhapsody for an Obsessive Love . Suffice to say here, that directions given in the novel take one to the Heygates' home in Canonbury Square, and Anthony Powell admits the connection in his autobiography, To keep the Ball Rolling . In the novel, Sarah Maltravers (She-Evelyn, once removed) is described as a motoring correspondent for Mode . When she is asked by another character whether she is interested in cars, she admits that she goes down on her knees to them. John Heygate's son, Richard, has told me that She-Evelyn had a penchant for motor mechanics, so the sexual undertones of that last Powell sentence are probably no accident. Is that quote from the Bible? I'm not sure. But according to Google this is: 'Who shall change our vile body, that it may be fashioned like unto his glorious body?' Bright Young Things is a 2003 British drama film written and directed by Stephen Fry. The screenplay, based on the 1930 novel Vile Bodies by Evelyn Waugh, provides satirical social commentary about the Bright Young People—young and carefree London aristocrats and bohemians—as well as society in general, in the interwar era.

Once the Eveyns had split, Evelyn was homeless. Only he wasn't exactly that, not with the number and quality of the homes that Diana had the keys to. The map below shows the London town house, the castle near Dublin, the flat in Paris and the 'ugly little' house on the south coast of Sussex. Of course what Diana means by 'ugly little house' gets one's juices flowing, does it not?. Even the names are so obvious that instead of completing the characters' portraits, become the characters: a heavily smoking priest is called Bishop Philpotts, a silly but valiant lesbian is called Agatha Runcible, calling a journalist – even a homosexual one – Malpractice isn’t enough if his first name is not Miles and what better name for a prime minister other than Outrageous? The real reason why Evelyn ditched these talented humanist friends, was that he could not come to terms with the loss of she-Evelyn. And he'd come to the conclusion that the only entity who could help him was God. The character has had to be 'brought on' by Waugh, so perhaps that was the reasoning behind the name. Though Richard Jacobs, in the notes to the Penguin I have in front of me, suggests that it's a 'not very sly hint at sexual excitability'. In any case, Waugh was obviously not happy with the name, as he immediately deleted the line, and had another go at introducing Adam's rival. Here is a close-up of the relevant paragraph. I'll transcribe and/or paraphrase below: He puts the money on a horse racing bet with a ‘Major’ who promptly disappears with the money. Adam goes to a fancy dress party where he meets Nina. They ‘go on’ afterwards to continue their revelries, staying with a girl who turns out to be the Prime Minister’s youngest daughter. The party-goers at Number 10 Downing Street are all reported in the morning newspapers.

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Vile Bodies is the second novel by Evelyn Waugh, published in 1930. It satirises the bright young things, the rich young people partying in London after World War I, and the press which fed on their doings. Masked parties, Savage parties, Victorian parties, Greek parties, Wild West parties, Russian parties, Circus parties, 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 night clubs, in windmills and swimming-baths, tea parties at school where one ate muffins and meringues and tinned crab, 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 the succession and repetition of massed humanity…those vile bodies…)

Yes, Evelyn singing to himself - and the next day, pen in hand, singing to posterity - in a bid to keep his spirits up. At a motor race, Adam encounters the major to whom he gave a thousand pounds to bet on a horse. The major assures him that his winnings are safe, borrows five pounds, and disappears. Agatha Runcible crashes her car and dies in a cottage hospital. Completely without funds, Adam promises Ginger Littlejohn that the latter can marry Nina Blount if he pays Adam's hotel bill. Littlejohn marries Nina but is immediately called up for military service. The result? Absurd scenes scroll in front of our eyes, presenting a gathering of characters – inspired by those “bright young things” who made the gossip columns' delight of interwar London – caught in a frenetic attempt to fill their boring lives with outrageous actions. David Lodge said that Waugh creates comedy simply by using indiscriminately logic and surprise, familiar and incongruous and you certainly can see how, chapter after chapter, party after party, any possible rising action is replaced by rising laughable absurdity. Look at the following scene, in the first chapter of the book:Waugh’s second novel is a rather bleak comic satire on the “Bright Young Things” of the 1920s. It is a witty series of anecdotes, often rather disjointed. The title is from the funeral service and the style mimics Eliot and modernism. The pace is breathless and there is a line in a Disney song which runs “busy going nowhere”. Indeed there is an inscription from Carroll at the beginning “it takes all the running you can do to keep in the same place”. The one below too, I think. The woman (actually, it's not a woman) in the image is so strong, so cool, so in control, so - in embittered He-Evelyn's view - asking to be brought crashing down to earth. Vile Bodies is full of such memorable scenes: a customs officer who finds a book on Economics subversive and Purgatorio objectionable, a judge who has a prostitute swinging on a chandelier in a hotel room and sees that police cover her accidental death, a journalist who commits suicide after being banned from high society, a charlatan drunken major who becomes general when war is declared, and so on, and so forth. Adam goes off to see Colonel Blount again. A cheap historical film is being shot at the house. Blount deliberately misunderstands Adam again, and thereby avoids giving him any money. Adam is fired from his job on the paper. The second of these homes that Evelyn got to know was the large house or castle near Dublin. Over in Ireland with Alastair Graham and Richard Plunkett Green to see the TT race near Belfast in mid-August, 1929 (which would inspire the longest chapter in Vile Bodies ) Waugh went on to Dublin to stay with the Guinnesses. Again, there are very few pictures (if any) of this castle which is now demolished. When I get a suitable one I'll insert it below. At the moment, I don't know who else was of the party. This could be significant, as when a party was being arranged for August 1930, Evelyn Waugh was again asked. In 1930 the other guests were to include the Lambs, the Yorkes, Nancy Mitford and Lytton Strachey. More about that particular 'group' later in this essay.