Evelyn Waugh's historical perspective and philosophical presuppositions

Although Evelyn Waugh was born into a literary family (1903), he resisted turning to writing until he felt he had no choice. It was like the tradesman who hated his trade but who in the end turned back to it because there was no other way of earning money. This forced entry into writing to earn his daily crust produced the first of a string of satires that dazzled the literary world with their virtuosity of style and daring ultramodern stories. Decline and Fall, with its chaotic world, thought by some to be a reflection of a morally neutral or sceptical outlook, was that groundbreaking first title.

Looking back it is curious to observe that one of the main characters of Decline and Fall, Captain Grimes, was a pederast who not only could not control his inclinations but had no appreciation of their moral quality. Whenever he was caught it was being "in the soup" all over again.

It appears that there were few people at the time who understood what was behind Waugh's satires. As Douglas Patey points out in his excellent critical biography, The Life of Evelyn Waugh, satire depends much for its effect on the reader understanding what standards were being transgressed. The pederasty of Grimes, for example, can only be appreciated by the reader having a view of child molesting starkly contrary to that of Grimes. The comedic aspect of Grimes's antics was what made the satire so biting.

Waugh gave more than a hint of the philosophical presuppositions and historical perspective of his satire in 1930, the same year as the publication of Vile Bodies and two years after Decline and Fall. His conversion to Catholicism that year caused a sensation. The ultramodern writer turning ultramontane was surely a sign that he had lost his marbles, it was declared. I refer the reader to an article by Joseph Pearce for an account of the controversy at the time.

But it was no case of a genius showing typical signs of mental imbalance. Waugh responded to the controversy with an explanation in The Express, entitled "Converted to Rome". I draw two paragraphs from that piece to illustrate what Waugh's motivations were and how shocked some of his admirers must have been at the time. I also refer the reader to Patey's biography for a full discussion of Waugh's religious and political beliefs.

It seems to me that in the present phase of European history the essential issue is no longer between Catholicism, on one side, and Protestantism, on the other, but between Christianity and Chaos. It is much the same situation as existed in the early Middle Ages. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries conflicting social and political forces rendered irreconcilable the division between two great groups of Christian thought. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries the choice before any educated European was between Christianity, in whatever form it was presented to him in the circumstances of his upbringing, and, on the other side, a polite and highly attractive scepticism. So great, indeed, was the inherited subconscious power of Christianity that it was nearly two centuries before the real nature of this loss of faith became apparent.

Today we see it on all sides as the active negation of all that western culture has stood for. Civilization - and by this I do not mean talking cinemas and tinned food, not even surgery and hygienic houses, but the whole moral and artistic organization of Europe - has not in itself the power of survival. It came into being through Christianity, and without it has no significance or power to command allegiance. The loss of faith in Christianity and the consequential lack of confidence in moral and social standards have become embodied in the ideal of a materialistic, mechanical state, already existent in Russia and rapidly spreading south and west. It is no longer possible, as it was in the time of Gibbon, to accept the benefits of civilization and at the same time deny the supernatural basis upon which it rests.

Comment: gerard@gerardcharleswilson.com