A little like the set-up in 1928 then, when the Evelyns and Pansy were writing in rural Dorset and Henry Lamb was painting nearby. Henry and Diana, the non-writers in their respective foursomes. But cultured, indeed formidable, figures in their own right. And of course, Diana would become a journalist after the war and a writer of vivid memoirs in her later years. Which is true enough as she dies in between chapters 12 and 13, Adam informing Nina that he had been 'rather tight' at her ill-attended funeral. So rich with wit and humor. so full of characters that one would love to share a bottle (or 40) of fizz with. Again, Diana kept the note. No doubt it will be in volume 32 of The Complete Works of Evelyn Waugh when it comes out. That's the volume of Personal Writings, edited by Alexander Waugh and Alan Bell, covering the years 1930-1935. Evelyn told Diana that he wrote two long letters and tore them up. All he was trying to say was that he must have seemed unfriendly lately and for that he was sorry. In the surviving note he asks her to understand that it's only because he's puzzled and ill at ease with himself. He assures her that much later everything will be fine. In the same flat, while pregnant Diana rested and read, Bryan was writing his first novel Singing Out of Tune (partly based on the Evelyns' split); Nancy was writing her first novel Highland Fling (elements were so like Vile Bodies that they had to be revised); and Evelyn himself was supposedly writing (possibly correcting proofs of Vile Bodies).

In 1928 he married Evelyn Gardiner. She proved unfaithful, and the marriage ended in divorce in 1930. Waugh would derive parts of “A Handful of Dust” from this unhappy time. His second marriage to Audrey Herbert lasted the rest of his life and begat seven children. It was during this time that he converted to Catholicism.Chapter thirteen presents the third and final visit to Colonel Blount. The newly wed couple, Nina and Ginger, are to spend Christmas with her father. Only Ginger has been called up to his regiment, and so it's fair-haired Adam that's presented to Colonel Blount as 'Ginger'. Together they enjoy a surreal Christmas that ends with the local vicar informing the household that War has been declared. I wonder if Adam's Christmas card to Nina's father was anything like the Christmas card that Evelyn sent out a month or two after writing this scene. The day before, Evelyn had asked Olivia Plunkett Green if she could find him a Jesuit to instruct him. Possibly Evelyn had raised the subject of his proposed conversion with Diana (or with Nancy who he'd seen that very day) and got a negative response.

After all, in 1930, when inscribing copies of Vile Bodies , Waugh would write: 'That to which you refer as your Vile Body, our Lord Jesus Christ died for.' Peter Travers of Rolling Stone felt Fry was "clever" for adapting Waugh's novel "into a movie that would make Paris Hilton feel at home", although "By the time [he] lets darkness encroach on these bright young things…the fizz is gone, and so is any reason to make us give a damn". [11]Around June 20, 1929, Evelyn wrote to Henry Yorke (Henry Green, author of Living ) from the Abingdon Arms wondering if Henry was going to Bryan and Diana's party. That was the 1860 party which took place on June 25, possibly to celebrate Diana's nineteenth birthday of 17 June. The Victorian party was significant because, even though he-Evelyn didn't go, she-Evelyn went with Nancy Mitford and was photographed in a dress that she then appeared in at another party on the Friendship later that night. In the fateful company of John Heygate. On Thursday, Evelyn noted in his diary what he called a very good example of the difference between Guinness and Mitford minds. A woman was very drunk at a dance. The father of Nancy and Diana (the Mitford mind) didn’t believe that women got drunk. And if a woman did get drunk, no-one would mention it. Whereas Bryan’s father (the Guinness mind) wondered how often she got drunk and what on. In other words, the Guinness mind was open, the Mitford closed. Actually, strictly speaking it was Adam's pal, Archie Schwertz, who gave you the fiver and bought everyone champagne." Meyer, Carla (10 September 2004). "Rich prewar snots gossip and snort coke in witty Waugh adaptation". SFGATE . Retrieved 18 May 2021.

This charming volume is filled with every kind of debauchery you could partake of during the 20's, 30's and 40's.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. 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. A month later, this same building was the location of the Bruno Hat art hoax, the opening for which was July 23. Tom Mitford (Diana's brother) dressed up as the non-existent German artist, Brian Howard did the 'paintings' on cork mats, and Evelyn Waugh provided the essay. I wonder if the set of paintings was displayed in the ball room. Or whether there was an art gallery or a white cube elsewhere in Diana's 'little house'. Anyway, here is a paragraph from Evelyn's essay:

In Vile Bodies , a tannoy announces that car 13 has disappeared from the course at Church Corner, turning left instead of right there, and was last seen proceeding south on the bye road. This can be made sense of by referring to a map of the circuit, as below. The road that goes south from St Mary's Church in Comber (bottom edge of map) goes straight south for many a mile. Picture poor Agatha at the wheel, trying to keep control of the beast of a car that she's voluntarily taken the wheel of.Waugh said it was the first novel in which much of the dialogue takes place on the telephone. The book shifts in tone from light-hearted romp to bleak desolation (Waugh himself later attributed it to the breakdown of his first marriage halfway through the book's composition). [6] Some have defended the novel's downbeat ending as a poetically just reversal of the conventions of comic romance. [7] [8] Influence [ edit ] What I have in front of me, resting on triangles of foam, fresh out of its protective case, is the leather-bound manuscript of Vile Bodies . It's the only manuscript of an Evelyn Waugh novel not to have been bought for a pittance from his widow by a robber called Harry Ransom (only joking, America) and taken to Austin in Texas. Where am I again? I'm in the Brotherton Library at the University of Leeds. What have I got in front of me? Well, let's turn to the beginning of chapter two and see: Decades later, Waugh explained to Diana that he'd resented no longer being her exclusive companion, as he had more or less been when she'd been pregnant. As she'd embraced society again, Evelyn felt that he couldn't compete with the social and intellectual charms of Harold Acton and Robert Byron. But these two had been amongst the chosen few to be at the Evelyns' wedding. They respected Evelyn's gifts and could have been vital members of Vile Bodies. In Vile Bodies, Adam wakes in his room to find rain beating on his windows. He looks out on a canal from which rise islands of scrap iron and bottles and a pram. Well, here he's looking out on where the River Torridge meets the River Taw. That's Lundy Island, in the middle distance, where Evelyn had been on holiday, in the spring of 1925, with the Plunket Greenes. Without Evelyn, the rest of those people kind of lost their way. Henry Yorke didn't publish another book for ten years, despite the Brummy factory being at the disposal of his muse. Singing Out of Tune didn't do well, and though Bryan Guinness followed this up with two more novels they weren't thought highly of, and didn't sell. Pansy Lamb stopped publishing books after a follow-up to The Old Expedient called August , also published in 1928. Instead, she and the other Henry - who could have been official portrait painter of the Waughsbury Group - raised two children.