BIOGRAPHY: Mad World: Evelyn Waugh and the Secrets of Brideshead, By Paula Byrne, Harper Press, 368pp. £25
IT WAS THE 19th-century French critic Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve who first advocated the theory that in order to understand an author's work it is necessary to be familiar with his life. Quite rightly, what has been described as the biographical explanation of literary phenomena was soon refuted, not least by Marcel Proust in his posthumously published essay Contre Sainte-Beuve. And yet so seductive is the notion of literary life and work being inextricably intertwined that it remains popular amongst biographers, with the added twist that members of the confraternity often try to connect people known to an author with his fictional characters; ironically one of the best-known proponents of that practice was George Painter in his two-volume life of Proust.
And now Paula Byrne has adopted the same tack for her consideration of Evelyn Waugh's most popular novel, Brideshead Revisited. Her argument is that the book's principal characters and in particular various members of the Marchmain family were directly drawn from William, 7th Earl Beauchamp and his Lygon offspring, just as Bridesheaditself should be regarded as a portrait of the latter's ancestral home, Madresfield Court in Worcestershire. To outside observers the Lygons – wealthy, good-looking, wonderfully well-connected – enjoyed inordinate privilege and no apparent misfortune. Yet behind this gorgeous painted veil, their lives were blighted by the shame of Lord Beauchamp's expulsion from England in 1931 after his brother-in-law, the still wealthier Duke of Westminster, had threatened to expose him to prosecution as an active homosexual at a time when such activity was illegal. There is no doubt that Beauchamp was reckless; the footmen at Madresfield were renowned for their good looks and the quantities of diamonds they sported. But his seven children, the majority of whom adored him, were prepared to overlook their father's proclivities. Not so Westminster, who, following Beauchamp's flight, wrote tersely, "Dear Bugger-in-law, You got what you deserve". After which the family gradually fell apart, with more than one sibling destroyed by drink and others retreating into dismal unhappiness.
The proposition that the Lygons provided Waugh with raw copy for Bridesheadis not new, thereby making the intimation of secrets in Byrne's title somewhat misleading. After all, scarcely had the novel been published in 1945 than comparisons were drawn between its fictional protagonists and the Lygons. As early as April of that year, the politician and socialite Henry "Chips" Channon was noting in his diary, "I am reading an advance copy of Evelyn Waugh's new novel, Brideshead Revisited. It is obvious that the mise-en-scèneis Madresfield, and the hero Hugh Lygon. In fact, all the Beauchamp family figure in it". Likewise, Waugh's friend and fellow novelist Nancy Mitford, writing to give him the feedback from within their circle, reported, "General view: It is the Lygon family. Too much Catholic stuff".
In other words, from the beginning there was an assumption that Bridesheadwas less fiction than reportage. Well, as Mr Salter regularly remarks in Scoop, up to a point, Lord Copper. The danger with such an approach is that it disregards the possibility of imagination on the part of an author and assumes Waugh was not able to create his own characters, preferring to assemble them from amongst friends and acquaintances. More importantly, this focus on real and invented scandals among the beau monde has the effect of overlooking the true centre of the novel which, as Mitford noted and Byrne acknowledges, is concerned with the redemptive power, as perceived by the convert Waugh, of the Roman Catholic church. Since the potential power of religious faith is a far less overtly appealing subject than the activities of a wealthy elite it comes as no surprise that Byrne, like so many before her, prefers to dwell on the more entertaining aspects of Brideshead.
The pity is that she proves so clumsy in fulfilling what should be an easy task. At no point, for example, does she provide a clear outline of the novel's narrative, presumptuously assuming her readers will be familiar enough with the text not to require this. And there is a tendency to go into great details on some aspects of the Lygons' story while brushing over others: the history of Lord Beauchamp's exile is extensively covered but she offers absolutely no explanation for why, in July 1937, he was once more permitted to return to England without fear of arrest. After all, his brother-in-law, who had led the persecution, only died in 1953. Nor would Waugh, a stickler for accuracy, have tolerated such errors as declaring Noël Coward a Roman Catholic or placing Pakenham Hall, now Tullynally, in County Meath rather than Westmeath. And he would certainly not have cared for the solecism of prefacing Albany, the 18th-century apartment complex on London's Piccadilly, with a definite article. To paraphrase Agatha Runcible's friends in Vile Bodies, "Well! How too, too shaming, darling. How devastating, how goat-like, how sick-making, how too, too awful".
Robert O'Byrne is a writer and journalist. His latest publication, Romantic Irish Homes, is published by Cico Books