W a n u y l g e h v E
“what’s that dear” “we’ve been invited to a party at Central Saint Martins, 11th June” “Sounds bogus to me, but lets go”
From the rapid Vile Bodies to the nostalgic Brideshead Revisited, the transformative writing of Evelyn Waugh. The Bright Young things are given the most conspicuous and vigilant account in Waugh’s satirical novel Vile Bodies (1930). However, Waugh also demonstrated he could create a tender and evocative novel full of abundant imagery in Brideshead Revisited (1945). In society indefatigable maiden ladies of Chelsea ad Mayfair, dyspeptic noblemen and bald old wits still caper in the pubic eye as ‘the Bright Young People’ - Too Young at Forty , published in the Daily Express, 22 Jan 1929
‘The consequence is a generation of whom nine hundred and fifty in every thousand are totally lacking in any sense of qualitative value’ -The War and the Younger Generation, The Spectator, 13 Apr 1929
‘I wrote Vile Bodies in which I attempted to summarise the chief features of those topsy-turvy years in which the younger generation succeeded in knocking the nonsense out of the attempts to sentimentalize’ - Women’s Journal , March 1932
‘there may yet be something done by this crazy and sterile generation’ -The War and the Younger Generation, The Spectator, 13 Apr 1929
Portrait of EvelynWaugh, painted by Henry Lamb, 1928.
Evelyn Waugh was known as somewhat of a misanthrope; across and within works he mixes bitter, hilarious satire with authentic human concern. Although he dismisses his years at Oxford, his masterful and contrasting use of language in both Brideshead Revisited and Vile Bodies, was informed by the varying personalities he met and later immortalised in both novels. Known for his cutting satire and irony used to describe the chaotic, contradictory state of the modern world, his figurative language is tender, poignant and transformative. Although He did not write easily or fluently, Waugh had the ability to illustrate precisely, a precision of meaning and a respect for the power of words that unquestionably sees him as one of the greatest writers of the twentieth century.
the Hypocrites’ are the most entertaining people in the university. They express their souls in terms of shirts and grey flannel trousers’ ISIS magazine, 1924. 1 1921, late autumn, a young prancing fawn, both wild and shy peers up at the peculiar grace of Oxford with its big mischievous eyes, and steps into the cool mist of centuries old youth. It’s here a determined Evelyn Waugh, gains a fondness for decadence, enjoys the aesthetic pleasures of being drunk, and is also introduced to a group of precociously sophisticated group of aesthetes, called the Hypocrites’ Club. Rejecting typical Oxford languor for cockney slang, and throwing extravagant luncheons, the wanton Etonians and Oxford students congregated at the Hypocrites’ Club, described by ISIS magazine in 1924 as ‘the most entertaining people in the university. They express Elizabeth Ponsonby and their souls in terms of shirts and grey flannel Brian Howard at the ‘Freak trousers’. Waugh noted that Members became Party’, 1929. ‘notorious not only for drunkenness but for flamboyance of dress and manner which was in some cases patently homosexual’. The Hypocrites’ club took inspiration from the Hellfire Club established in Britain and Ireland during the 18th century by Sir Francis Dashwood. These clubs were exclusive for high society gentlemen who savoured immorality and drunkenness and wished to take part in activities that were not acceptable in polite society. The most notorious member of the Hypocrites club was the unapologetic and flamboyant Harold Acton, Drawn by poet, Brian Howard, who was character basis of Antony Blanche in Waugh’s Waugh, with the megaphone through which he recited his novel, Brideshead revisited. poetry, From Isis.
Nikolas Grace as Anthony Blanche in the 1981 TV series of Bridehead Revisited.
Oxford Hypocrites Club fancy dress party, March 1924. Back row : Harold Acton, in cap and mask. Second row : Anthony Powell in helmet, with sword; Robert Byron, in top-hat, with stick
Antony Blanche represents the entire Hypocrites’ Club, he’s of Howards quirk, described as wearing ‘a smooth chocolate-brown suit with loud white stripes, suède shoes, a large bow-tie, wash leather gloves, part Gallic, part Yankee, perhaps Jew, wholly exotic’- as well as languidly addressing piers as ‘My dear’. In 1922 writer Harold Acton decided to renew the ‘vaguely artistic aesthetes’, with an authentic and mature taste for Victoriana. Blanche is also Acton, reciting from The Wasteland by megaphone from a window, and was also thrown into Christchurch’s fountain by the athletic hearties The club was terminated in May 1924, after an uproarious fancy dress party, where guests arrived dressed as courtesans out of the Mozart era, led to rumours of an orgy and the consumption of newborn babies. In between swigs of velvety beer, Waugh found fascination in his piers foolish habits and deliberate idleness, preserving their imprudence into his recount of the Bright Young Things, their precise portrayal shows them both as divine and Harold Acton and Evelyn Waugh at Oxford, Courvulgar. tesy of ‘Bright Young People, The Rise and Fall of a Generation 1918-1940’ by D J Taylor
“There was between the wars a society, cosmopolitan, sympathetic to the arts, well-mannered, above all ornamental even in rather bizarre ways, which for want of a better description the newspapers called “High Bohemia.”’ Dressed as each other, royalty, cowboys, or babies, the Bright Young Things seek entrance into a world of excess and narcissism. They dance in a haze of self indulgence and genuine ebullience, both beckoning the camera flash at their best and nervously avoiding its gaze at their worst. Evelyn Waugh, masked beneath warm tendrils of cigarette smoke, is perched on a gilded chair as he scornfully observes he Bright Young Things. His most memorable characters were birthed in this mix of debutantes, writers, artists and poets, most notably Brian Howard, Elizabeth Ponsonby, Teresa Jungman and Harold Acton. Although, the Bright Young Things painted their youth in gold and enduring charm, they shrouded their vulnerability with capricious escapades, and when in 1929 Evelyn Waugh sat down to write his novel Vile Bodies, he could see the paint cracking. The country was jaded, tired from four years of Warfare that had cast a threatening shadow over modern life. Society was first plagued by the ‘Spanish flu’ epidemic which killed more than two hundred thousand people in Britain and when soldiers returned from the war, they found themselves faced with the turmoil of unemployment, reaching 2.5 million in Britain. By 1924, the country was starting to recover and a new youth emerged, relishing in a new sense of freedom and progressive ideas. London was scandalised and entertained by the hedonistic antics of the Bright Young Things, who ran races in The Impersonation Party, 1927. Back row : Elizaperambulators around Mayfair. Young females where whisked beth Ponsonby, in wig as Iris Tree, Cecil Beaton on away in the sudden manipulation of the motorcars, much to their her right. Seated : Stephen Tennant, as Queen Maparent’s dismay, in the pursuit of the next party. Evelyn Waugh rie of Roumania, Georgia Sitwell, with false nose, gave a definitive definition “There was between the wars a society, Inez Holden, Harold Acton. cosmopolitan, sympathetic to the arts, well-mannered, above all ornamental even in rather bizarre ways, which for want of a better description the newspapers called “High Bohemia”. Not all the Bright Young People were all that bright, but their lifestyle was the new modernism. Women adopted male vices, along with acquiring the vote, they drank, smoked and danced the energetic Charleston to the life affirming music of jazz. ‘Jazz’ became the epitome of everything that worried society, a mix of race and rampant sexuality, it was deemed disruptive and chaotic. It gained intrigue by those who shuffled round negligible rooms in a close embrace to the blaring of a negro band and saw themselves as part of the “New Age”. Jazz came howling into London, first with the all black Southern Syncopated Orchestra in 1919 and later with Negro revue, Florence Mills and the Blackbirds, whom Waugh accompanied Olivia Plunket Greene to in 1926. In Brideshead Revisited Waugh allows Anthony Blanche to defend the Blackbirds to a suspicious Boy Mulcaster: ‘“No, they are not animals in a zoo, Mulcaster, They are great artists, my dear, very great artists, to be revered”. A true Twenties party, was likely to be given by a host or hostess with no personal distinction, who might not know half the guests who had wondered into their house. ‘Jazz was also in Paris, where Josephine Baker became an overnights sensation in her banana skirt, using every joint in her body to create hypnotising movements. It was at this time the night club established itself, the Bright Young Things milieu became a few square miles of central London, ranging from the Gargoyle Club in Dean Street and The Blue Lantern club in Ham Yard.
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‘The twenties were futile, inglorious and vulgar’ The celebrated Cavendish Hotel (“Shepheard’s Hotel” in Vile Bodies) with its legendary proprietess Rosa Lewis, was immortalised by Evelyn Waugh as ‘Lottie Crump’. Waugh claimed that the last words she spoke to him were ‘Take your arse out of my chair’ – unimpressed by the grandest connections. The Bright Young Things sense of intrinsic superiority and reflective flippancy was manifested in their parties, where each guest could share a piece of the nonsensical universe. The pinnacle became The ‘Bath and Bottle Party’ of 1928. ‘Bathing costumes Digging up Piccadilly, April 1930. Among the revelers are Elizabeth Ponof the most dazzling kinds and colours were sonby (in necklace); Denis Pelly, her husband at the time (with cigarette); Cecil Beaton (with pneumatic drill); Cyril Connolly (with opera glasses); worn by guests. Dancing took place to the and Patrick Balfour (flanked by laborers). strains of a negro orchestra, and the hardy leaped into the baths, a special cocktail was invented for the occasion’ reported Tom Drieberg, for the Daily Express. The party was initiated by the fast, rackety and inwardly vulnerable, Elizabeth Ponsonby, who became the model for Agatha Runcible. The Bright Young People had become a display of flagrantly improper behaviour, and for Waugh, Ponsonby was the quintessential partygoer, whom he records ‘wasn’t thrilling to meet’. The Mozart party in Burlington galleries, perhaps the most lavish and sumptuous gathering with a cost of three thousand pounds, saw guests come in eighteenth-century white wigs, full skirts, flowered waistcoats, embroidered coats and buckled shoes. Harry Melville dressed as Beau Brummel in a plum-coloured suit and carrying Brummel’s original silver-topped cane. Never had the Bright Young Things world looked so loudly amusing in a hermetically sealed bubble, when during the night some guests came upon a gang of The Secound Childhood Party, 1926, courtesy of The Sketch workmen engaged in repairs and had a tableau photo next to them, showing Cecil Beaton with one hand on a pneumatic drill. In his 1929 article entitled ‘The War and the Younger Generation’ for The Spectator, Waugh speaks of his generation as “ineffectual” and “are totally lacking in any sense of qualitative value”. After gatecrashing the Impersonation Party in Brook Street, Waugh noted that ‘everyone was dressed up and for the most part looking rather ridiculous’, and thinking that Olivia Plunket Greene, in her Brenda Dean Paul costume, ‘seemed so unhappy’. Waugh immersed himself within the group, but managed to separate the satirist and what he was satirising. When he was invited to a Guinness party, Waugh told fellow novelist Henry York in July 1929: “I might go up for it if I thought there wouldn’t be anyone who wouldn’t be too much like the characters in my new book” Waugh capitalised on the frivolous generation, focussing on their disturbing behaviour and detachment from real emotions.
Illustration from Punch, July 20th 1927.
‘I find humorous articles an awful strain’ Waugh had a strong grasp of the comedic and the ability to view life in more vivid colours than it already holds. In mid-July, Waugh announced to Henry Yorke ‘I have written 25,000 words of a novel in ten days. It is rather like P.G Wodehouse all about the bright young people’. Given the nature of Decline and Fall (1928) l, it was inevitable that editors expected Waugh to be funny, but he complained to A.D. Peters ‘I find humorous articles an awful strain’ Waugh was asked to write satirical articles on the younger generation, but a sense of ennui is detectable in his writing, money was pressing and a new novel was needed. Vile Bodies was written ‘simply in the hope of selling copies’ Waugh wrote to Acton, he had no burning desire to write about the Bright Young Things and his resentment is expressed in the prefatory note of Vile Bodies: ‘Bright Young people and others kindly note that all characters are wholly imaginary (and you get far too much publicity already whoever you are)’ in Vile Bodies Waugh portrays a world fundamentally without order, Waugh describes the fractured and shallow Generation as “like a litter of pigs” as they bounce from one ridiculous situation to another. The phrase ‘vile body’ also appears in the Bible: “Who shall change our vile body, that it may be fashioned like unto his glorious body?” (Philippians 3:21, King James Version). There is a loss of sentimentality and emotion through language, Waugh ruthlessly expunges all interiority from his characters. Waugh’s peculiar protagonist, a young writer called Adam Symes, rarely dictates his own actions and finds himself just another one of Waugh’s flippant youths. His on and off engagement to his fiancée Nina Blount is dictated by Adams reckless attitude towards money. Her reaction is not forlorn when she states “oh Adam you’re such a bore” at another called off engagement, but frustration because his actions will harm her image, Waugh is showing the characters to be mechanical, they face obstructions with the same tepid mentality. Vile Bodies is riddled with outrageous failures to identify. Fanny Throbbing fails to recognize her own son; Lottie knows none of her guests’ names; scarcely anyone knows who the current prime-minister is. Agatha Runcible’s experience in the racing car as the metaphorical focus of the novel’s meaning, with her cries of “Faster, faster!” and her nightmare vision of a frenetic and competitive society.
The Mozart Party, April 1930. Courtesy of The Sketch.
The deadpan suicide of journalist Simon Balcain, fails to create any void within the society, and is looked upon as an inconvenience. The suicide is darkly humourised by Waugh, he is revealing the superficial and simplistic mentality of journalists who can’t comprehend writing beyond the Bright Young People. The satire is effectively rounded off with the final chapter Waugh ironically titled “Happy ending”, describing the onslaught of World War II. The characters are now firmly rooted in reality, the scene is detailed in a flat and drained monotone, the final image ends with Waugh’s vapid characters, equipped with no morals, in a state of despair. The rapid pace of the novel creates atmosphere, the reader is there experiencing their repetitive lives. Waugh skilfully prompts the feelings his characters seem to lack in the reader, shame, disgust, and satiric laughter. Although Waugh became involved with the Bright Young Things, he was not a reporter, he amplified the experience in Vile Bodies until it became a work that was simultaneously antagonistic, sympathetic, detached, bland, and a perfect execution of dark humour.
The Bright Young Things elebaorate parties were often detailed in the Bystander and The Sketch, seen here in 1927 and 1929.
Anthony Andrews as Sebastian Flyte in Brideshead Revisited , 1981, directed by Charles Sturridge.
Jeremy Irons as Charles Ryder in Brideshead Revisited , 1981, directed by Charles Sturridge.
A master of executing acid satire, Waugh can spin the dice and adapt to contrasting styles of writing, the language he used in the 1945 novel Brideshead Revisited was evocative, full of romantic indulgence and is softly atmospheric. Waugh utilises this ability and can create a stylised quality of a watercolour portrait through words. Waugh lyrically recalls the charms of youth and depicts the declining upper class as the novels protagonist, Charles Ryder, falls deeply for the decadent lifestyle lived by fellow student at Oxford, Sebastian Flyte. Oxford is described as ‘her autumnal mists, her grey springtime, and the rare glory of her summer days - such as that day - when the chestnut was in flower and the bells rang out high and clear over her gables and cupolas, exhaled the soft airs of centuries of youth. It was this cloistral hush which gave our laughter its resonance’ Waugh’s words are imbued with charm and splendours for the past, he captures the essence of Oxford through sensory imagery as if you can hear and see distant laughter cascade around the bells and feel the warm sun on cold skin. Charles seeks to make the present meaningful by referring to absent pleasures of the past ‘the blue-grey smoke rose, untroubled by any wind, to the blue-green shadows of foliage, and the sweet scent of the tobacco merged with the sweet summer scents around us and the fumes of the sweet, golden wine seemed to lift us a finger’s breadth above the turf and hold us suspended’ Waugh language is poetic and sensual, he creates a idealised moment infused with eternal beauty and exempt from the consequences of time. Sebastian possess a childlike demeanour, plagued by moral guilt, he attempts to escape the religious perspective and his family through drinking. Responding to what he understands as the negative psychological effects of Catholicism upon Sebastian, Ryder becomes an adamant agnostic. And yet, at the novel’s conclusion, Ryder, looking back the memories of his youth, says a prayer, an action which suggests a recent conversion to Catholicism.
Hugh Lygon, the model for Sebastian Flyte, inscribed to my kiddie sister coote’
It was in 1930 that Waugh fully joined the catholic church, deciding that the world was unintelligible on its own terms and to prevent the foolishness of ever remarrying. Charles is absorbed in the architectural mosaic of Brideshead, a connection that Waugh felt to Madresfield Court in Worcestershire, inhabited by the Lygon family during the 1930s. Waugh had an intense and enduring friendship with the son of Lord Beauchamp, Hugh Lygon, a struggling alcoholic who was described by Anthony Powell as a ‘Giotto angel living in a narcissistic dream’. Waugh drowned in the demure medievalism of Madresfield, savoured his encounters with aristocracy and effected nicknames to Hugh’s two younger sisters, Mary became Maime and Dorothy, Coote. The two girls found themselves transmuted fictionally into Julia and Cordelia Flyte, whilst Hugh became immortalised into Sebastian Flyte, a way for his gentle demeanour to become permanent after his premature death in 1936. In Brideshead revisited, Waugh’s figurative and expressive language conjures intoxicating colours in the mind and holds the reader in a dreamy atmosphere, showing his writers craft goes beyond satire.
Madresfield Court, near Malvern, Worcestershire, photo taken in 2017. Lady Mary Lygon in 1928 by William Bruce Ellis Ranken.
“I bought a grey bowler, wore a stock and let my side-whiskers flourish. Instead of tight trousers affected by the dandies, I wore jackets and broad lapels and broad pleated trousers’ eventually they were referred to as “Oxford bags”, - Harold Acton
Vile bodies was completed in the autumn of 1929 and published in January 1930. The novel was an instant success and praised in the spectator by V.S. Pritchett, who stated ‘I laughed until I was driven out of the room’. The public consumed by the absurd antics, soon started replicating their language, ‘Bogus’ became an established word. The emancipation of women was stimulated by the War, it gave liberty to the young girl barely out of her teens as she tasted economic freedom. The flapper of 1919 was free and she dictated fashion for the next decade. The style of the corset changed, related to the phenomena of the emancipated women trying to look like the man, hair was cut as short as boys and became known as the ‘Eton crop’. A new kind of corset came in designed to put pressure on the breasts, to flatten so they appeared as little conspicuous as possible.
Diana Quick as Julia Flyte wearing a cloche hat in the Tv series of Brideshead Revisited, 1981, directed by
afternoon tea outfit from Maison Ross, 1981. Image credit, Georgina Howell In Vogue: Six Decades of fashion.
Harold Acton in the costume he devised for himself as an undergraduate, from Isis, 1925.
Evening dress of Printed silk voile embroidered with sequins and glass bugle beads, and trimmed with lace, worn by by a British aristocrat, Winifred, Duchess of Portland. Callot Soeurs, 1922.
Casanova evening silk coat,Callot Soeurs,1925.
To compliment the ‘bob’ style of 1924, the first signs of cloche hat began to appear, made from velvet or folded felt, created by the Parisian milliner, Caroline Reboux, in 1908. In Brideshead Revisited, ‘Julia, wore a green hat pulled down to her eyes with a diamond arrow in it’, Julia is shown to wear a cloche hat. The 1981 TV series, directed by Charles Sturridge, shows a realistic and accurate representation of the clothes described in the book and period. The uniformity of all women’s dress at this period consisted of a cloche hat, a simple, straight-lined dress with very short skirts and an extremely low waist, long silk stockings, and low shoes, also known as the Garconne silhouette. The dance frocks of the period were made from chiffon worn over crepe de shine, with with the floating handkerchief panels on skirt allowing maximum movement. They could be purchased at Maison Ross or Selfridges. Julia is also described as wearing an ‘embroidered Chinese robe, neck rose exquisitely from the plain gold circle at her throat; her hands lay still among the dragons in her lap’. The Callot Soeurs was one of the leading fashion houses of the 1920s, operated by the the four Callot sisters: Marie Callot Gerber, Marthe Callot Bertrand, Regina Callot Tennyson-Chantrell and Joséphine Callot Crimont. Celebrated for their perfection of detail and incorporating far corners of the world into their designs, the Callot Soeurs presented oriental offerings for the Bright Young Things. The Oxford bags, were originally worn by Harold Acton ‘I bought a grey bowler, wore a stock and let my side-whiskers flourish. Instead of tight trousers affected by the dandies, I wore jackets and broad lapels and broad pleated trousers’ eventually they were referred to as “Oxford bags”, imitations soon started to appear, and a fashion began. Cousin Jasper advises Charles to ‘never wear a tweed coat and flannel trousers- always a suit’ the early twenties’ suit jackets were paired with slender “daddy long-leg” trousers. Single breasted suits were prevalent, double breasted suits were also worn, often with a matching waistcoat.
By 1930 the Bright Young Things unreachable world of radiance and gluttony, suspended above ordinary society like a twinkling chandelier, abruptly dropped and shattered into fragments that held the faintest murmur of the Bright Young Things recent antics, but the golden years were gone. The Red and White Party of 1931 was criticised by The Bystander on the grounds of bad taste and excess, whilst London suffered a rise in unemployment. Waugh satirical encapsulation of the Bright Young Things antic youth is brilliantly cruel, he used the technique of highlighting and exaggerating to the extent that real people became fictional characters. But whilst Waugh can have you howling with laughter, he can produce something as ardent and vivid as Brideshead Revisited. The novel is a stream of rhapsodic memories, its both ripe and devastating as Waugh’s profound language can leave tears lingering on eyelashes. Waugh was a complicated figure, but his words are so assured of the images they create, as Waugh states, with a small smile, in a 1961 interview with the BBC, “you must allow the novelists imagination to roam free”. Waugh’s novels are timeless and if another novelist emerges with the same cruelty and vulnerability in their words, I’ll eat my green hat.