Alexander Waugh, Fathers and Sons, Doubleday, 454 pp.
They didn't ask me to review this book for the Guardian, and I'm
sorry about that, because I would have liked to review it in the Waugh
style: "Here is the tale of a tribe of nasty corpulent little buggers
who've been a big deal in England over the course of the last hundred
years." I actually have nothing against corpulence, nastiness, small
stature, or buggery (either the real kind or the metaphorical kind),
but you can see what fun it is, issuing mocking and ad hominem slurs
about the way people look or their sexual proclivities. That's how the
Waughs made their living (at least Evelyn and Auberon), and Auberon's
son, Alexander, shows a talent in that direction, too, though it is
nested in a larger generosity and a sincere love of his father. Since
I am not reviewing it, though (and it is an absorbing and sometimes
amazing book, if only because you can't believe they actually talked
and wrote to one another as they did), I would like to make a few
observations about what I've learned from it.
1. Parents can really screw up. Evelyn Waugh's father was Arthur
Waugh, born in 1866. Himself tormented by his own father (who was
nicknamed "the Brute"), he proceeded to torment his sons, but in a
strange and creepy manner; he became deeply obsessed with Alec, born
in 1898, and was almost entirely indifferent to Evelyn, born in 1903.
From the time Alec was an infant, Arthur poured out his affections in
an undignified, self-abasing, and needy way, writing such things as
"But Billy, darling, your father is by your side. Lift up your eyes to
the hills. Fight the good fight. Faint not nor fear. We have gone all
the way together. We shall rest together in the glory that shall be
revealed. Ever your devoted friend, your true and loving father---"
According to Alexander, Arthur believed in telepathic
communication -- but only between himself and Alec. As anyone might have
suspected, after leaving school and university, Alec gradually
withdrew from his father, and eventually from family life altogether,
spending his days far from England and far from the overbearing
dependence of his father. In the meantime, Evelyn grew up as
"it" -- unloved and pretty much uncared for by either parent. At one
point, a family friend sent Evelyn a desirable toy. Arthur changed the
tag and gave it to Alec. Although Alexander Waugh is empathetic to
Arthur and his affections,clearly this is parental screwing up on an
ogreish, fairy-tale level. Of course, Evelyn turned out to be the
successful son, the family's gift to English letters (Arthur was the
publisher of Chatto and Windus, an English publishing house. Toward
the end of his career, the profits on Evelyn's books saved the house).
And of course, Evelyn also turned out to be an alcoholic depressive
with a sizable mean streak who married a woman who seems to have been
indifferent to him, who took refuge in religiosity, and who was as
mean to his own children as his father was to him.
2. The English literary world is not like the American literary world.
Once Arthur was installed in Chatto and Windus, the Waugh generations
lived in suffocating closeness to novels, novelists, journalists,
literary copyrights, fame, gossip, and high expectations. Alec wrote a
novel about his school when he was 19, as did Auberon. Evelyn
published his first novel (Decline and Fall) at 25, and would have
done so sooner if he were not so resistant to his father's desires.
All of their novels were closely based on whom they knew and the world
they lived in. When Alec's novel was published, he managed to offend
everyone at his old school, so that even his father, who had also been
to that school and loved it, had to resign from the alumni club (or
something to that effect). Evelyn persisted over the years in naming
ugly or disagreeable characters in his novels after a teacher who
disapproved of him, and the teacher knew him and hated him for it. The
lesson here is that novelists in America have a different journey to
make -- literally. We are born somewhere away from the literary world
(if only as far away as Newark, New Jersey or Shillington,
Pennsylvania) and we first encounter it in the works -- novels and
poems -- that seem to have something to do with us and our circumstances
even though they are set elsewhere. We experience literature from the
beginning as a general endeavor that talks to us but is larger than
particular human circumstances. Homer is followed by Melville is
followed by Waugh is followed by Shakespeare is followed by
Austen -- they are more alike than different, and one way in which they
are alike is that they are alien from our world, and therefore a
refuge. Not so for the Waughs. For the Waughs, literature and
journalism are personal and present, the scene of a battle that must
be fought, either willingly or reluctantly. Failure is not the same
for them as it is for us, and neither is success. For us, failure is a
return to obscurity, for them it is a public defeat among people who
know you and have strong opinions about you. Obscurity is not a real
option (though clearly Alec attempted a return to obscurity when he
left the scene and moved to America). I would suggest that this
experience of literature as a club works against literature as a form.
And guess what? Women aren't welcome in the club. Auberon Waugh was an
especially pugnacious member of the club during his life as a
journalist, but when Polly Toynbee, in her obituary, criticized him
and the culture he stood for, the other members of the club, all male,
attacked her without mercy all over the English press, more or less
proving her main point -- that the culture of the club was more
important than Waugh's actual sentiments.
3. In the end, parental screw-ups aren't that important. Alexander
Waugh seems like a kind and generous person who is interested in
music, God, and his own family. He has the grace to apologize for
hardly mentioning the women in his family, so we can't really
criticize him on that score. He seems to love his wife and children.
The important thing is that he has a way of portraying the lives of
Arthur, Alec, Evelyn, and Auberon as idiosyncratic and all of a piece.
Even while I am deploring their eccentricities as parents, I am
thinking that they could not have been any other way -- counseling,
say, would not have improved them and, given their snobbishness, would
only have offended them. So they drank, so they were depressed and
unhappy and created depression and unhappiness all around themselves.
Still, they were lively and, more important, they were themselves.
This is not necessarily TRUE as a way of looking at people and their
potential, but it is the gift of Alexander and his larger sense of
acceptance and forgiveness. That is the remarkable thing about this
book, and why it has gotten so many good reviews. He offers the reader
a way of looking at humans, or getting perspective on them and their
unhappiness. I think it is a peculiarly English vision. When strong
personalities are crowded together, vying with one another and
consorting with one another, they do come to distinguish themselves
and the ways they distinguish themselves become fixed social
qualities. Obscurity is not an option, and so you must persist in who
you are even if it is destroying you. Evelyn and Auberon both died
young (early sixties). Nasty, corpulent, never abstemious, they earned
their short lives honestly, by drinking and smoking to excess, by
raging and arousing rage. Is it good? Is it bad? Alexander Waugh makes
it, at least, compellingly interesting.