Evelyn Waugh
Sis.--If I were an effective writer there is one task I would like to undertake: that of refuting the popular impression of Evelyn Waugh having been an idolater of the aristocracy, a hater of the 'com- mon' man and a social opportunist. Each of these things differently means the same thing: that he was a snob and a fully rejectable one.
For one thing, and from a purely personal view, he couldn't have been a snob because he always an- swered by letters to him about his books promptly and properly and ordinarily and I am obscure. 'com- mon' and working-class and he could easily tell I ^ Was. I could count on his replying by return of Post. showing in his letters that he had really read what I myself had written. There was nothing curt.. or condescending about his replies. In one letter of nine I said I was unable to get a copy of Labels and by return came an autographed copy of While the Going was Good which contained, he said, all that he wished to preserve of Labels—now out of print. Even when I sent him some of my poems he Only gently suggested I should go to Spender ce Lehmann as he regretted being 'unable to under- stand anything later than Tennyson.' What about that for humaneness and non-popular-conception-of- Waughness?
On another occasion I said that Sebastian Flyte was terrifyingly complete as a selfiSh egotist, to which. he replied in disagreenient, averring that Sebastiaa'
was more likely a 'contemplative without the gift of fortitude.' You might be interested, sir, to know that Evelyn Waugh also thought that the SPECTATOR was 'the best weekly.' In another letter Cyril Con- MI!, collected one : 'poor Cyril Connolly knows nothing about the Church.'
I mention all these things to show that to one ungifted, obscure. penniless prole (i.e., to one of a class he is supposed most to have despised and shunned) at least Evelyn Waugh behaved—how shall I put it?—ordinarily, sociably, kindly. From his letters I had an impression that he was, in a restrained sort of way, even eager to write to me. How would this square with the nuance of Alan Brien's article heading, 'Permission to Speak, Captain?'
On the day Evelyn Waugh died I was travelling to North Devon, and just before reaching Wivelis- combe (where he had been to church that morning) something made me think of him .out of the blue. so to speak, and I wondered how he was going on and when we should be having another story from him. The next day read that he had died. It was with some poignancy that I remembered a letter from him which he had dated simply: Easter Day.
THOMAS W. GADD
C/o 37 Stourbridge Road. Hagley, Worcestershire
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