Decline and Fall, by Evelyn Waugh

Decline and Fall is Evelyn Waugh’s first novel. I’m reading it right now. I had so much fun last year reading Scoop, his hilarious spoof on foreign journalism, particularly war journalists – that I am moving on to his other stuff. I’ve mentioned before that, like Graham Greene, Evelyn Waugh was just someone I “missed” in my education. Never read him before. I remember the Brideshead Revisited PBS mini-series VERY well, but never read any Waugh. It was Christopher Hitchens’ book review of Scoop in The Atlantic that made me pick it up. I mean, when the book review makes you laugh out loud – you know the book will be funny.

Decline and Fall takes the same absurdist manic tone as Scoop, skewering everything in sight. Everyone in the book is absolutely RIDICULOUS. Their names are preposterous. There is a character named “Sir Alastair Digby-Vaine-Trumpington”, for example. In Scoop, it was the foreign press – in Decline and Fall Waugh takes aim at education (and, indirectly, class issues in England – public school vs. private, accents, all that complicated hierarchical stuff). First we meet Paul Pennyfeather, who is studying at Oxford, and is basically expelled for “indecent behavior” – but it’s totally not fair because it was only the appearance of indecent behavior. He truly was an innocent victim of circumstances! He wasn’t running across the Quad “without his trousers on” as a prank- he truly had lost his pants! But no matter. Off he goes with a blemish on his record. He gets a job teaching German and music at a Welsh boarding school (despite the fact that he cannot speak German and he cannot play music) and finds himself immersed in the manic ridiculous life of an all-boys boarding school. The other teachers are all insane in one way or another, fallen priests and compulsive womanizers – the headmaster is a lunatic with enormous prejudices against the Welsh – and Paul, surprisingly enough, finds that he doesn’t need to know German or music in order to teach those subjects. Waugh, as always, with all of his humor, is quite a social critic – some of his observations come close to the anger of Swift, although Waugh always seems to take a more absurd tone, making everyone in the world (except for Paul Pennyfeather) seem on the verge of some sort of hilarious mental collapse, but it’s okay, because the world keeps on turning! Don’t worry so much, chaps!

Waugh has a “what’s the use” fatalism to much of his work – very typical, I suppose, to his generation at that time and the crowd he ran with – so beneath Paul Pennyfeather’s experiences is a vaguely sad and baffled attitude … like: what on earth is the use? What on earth can the use of ANY of this be?

To repeat what Cecil Beaton said of Evelyn Waugh: “His abiding complex and the source of much of his misery was that he was not a 6 foot tall, extremely handsome and rich duke.” Waugh’s books are so funny that people will look at you strangely if you read them in public because you will be unable to control your laughter. But they are not in any way, shape, or form – “light”, or “shallow”. There is this undercurrent of unease in them … I suppose that’s much of what an “absurdist” sensibility is all about (at least that is true in the theatre, and I imagine so in literature). Waugh sees things.

Here is a description of Paul Pennyfeather’s first day teaching class at the boarding school:

Dumb with terror, he went into his own class room.

Ten boys sat before him, their hands folded, their eyes bright with expectation.

“Good morning, sir,” said the one nearest him.

“Good morning,” said Paul.

“Good morning, sir,” said the next.

“Good morning,” said Paul.

“Good morning, sir,” said the next.

“Oh, shut up,” said Paul.

At this the boy took out a handkerchief and began to cry quietly.

“Oh, sir,” came a chorus of reproach, “you’ve hurt his feelings. He’s very sensitive; it’s his Welsh blood, you know; it makes people very emotional. Say ‘Good morning’ to him, sir, or he won’t be happy all day. After all, it is a good morning, isn’t it, sir?”

“Silence!” shouted Paul above the uproar, and for a few moments things were quieter.

“Please, sir,” said a small voice – Paul turned and saw a grave-looking youth holding up his hand – “please, sir, perhaps he’s been smoking cigars and doesn’t feel well.”

“Silence!” said Paul again.

The ten boys stopped talking and sat perfectly still, staring at him. He felt himself get hot and red under this scrutiny.

“I suppose the first thing I ought to do is to get your names clear. What is your name?” he asked, turning to the first boy.

“Tangent, sir.”

“And yours?”

“Tangent, sir,” said the next boy. Paul’s heart sank.

“But you can’t both be called Tangent.”

“No, sir, I’m Tangent. He’s just trying to be funny.”

“I like that. Me trying to be funny! Please, sir, I’m Tangent, sir; really I am.”

“If it comes to that,” said Clutterbuck from the back of the room, “there is only one Tangent here, and that is me. Any one else can jolly well go to blazes.”

Paul felt desperate.

“Well, is there any one who isn’t a Tangent?”

Four or five voices instantly arose.

“I’m not, sir; I’m not Tangent. I wouldn’t be called Tangent, not on the edge of a barge pole.”

In a few seconds the room had become divided into two parties: those who were Tangent and those who were not. Blows were already being exchanged, when the door opened and Grimes came in. There was a slight hush.

“I thought you might want this,” he said, handing Paul a walking stick. “And if you take my advice, you’ll set them something to do.”

He went out; and Paul, firmly grasping the walking stick, faced his form.

“Listen,” he said. “I don’t care a damn what any of you are called, but if there’s another word from any one I shall keep you all in this afternoon.”

“You can’t keep me in,” said Clutterbuck; “I’m going for a walk with Captain Grimes.”

“Then I shall very nearly kill you with this stick. Meanwhile you will all write an essay on ‘Self-indulgence.’ There will be a prize of half a crown for the longest essay, irrespective of any possible merit.”

From then onward all was silence until break. Paul, still holding the stick, gazed despondently out of the window. Now and then there rose from below the shrill of the servants scolding each other in Welsh. By the time the bell rang Clutterbuck had covered sixteen pages, and was awarded the half crown.

To me, Evelyn Waugh has perfect pitch.

And then there is the aforementioned monologue by Dr. Fagan, headmaster of the Welsh boarding school. I just think it’s so hysterical that he harbors such contempt for the Welsh people despite his surroundings – and he is unashamed yet a part of him must realize how inappropriate it is because he wanted to publish “a little monograph” on his feelings about the Welsh but he was afraid it might make him “unpopular in the village”. hahahaha Yeah – ya think?? Anyway, listen to Dr. Fagan go on and on and on to poor Paul Pennyfeather who cannot get awy.

“I often think,” he continued, “that we can trace almost all the disasters of English history to the influence of Wales. Think of Edward of Carnarvon, the first Prince of Wales, a perverse life, Pennyfeather, and an unseemly death, then the Tudors and the dissolution of the Church, then Lloyd George, the temperance movement, Non-conformity and lust stalking hand in hand through the country, wasting and ravaging. But perhaps you think I exaggerate? I have a certain rhetorical tendency, I admit.”

“No, no,” said Paul.

“The Welsh,” said the Doctor, “are the only nation in the world that has produced no graphic or plastic art, no architecture, no drama. They just sing,” he said with disgust,” sing and blow down wind instruments of plated silver. They are deceitful because they cannot discern truth from falsehood, depraved because they cannot discern the consequences of their indulgence. Let us consider,” he continued, “the etymological derivations of the Welsh language….”

But here he was interrupted by a breathless little boy who panted down the drive to meet them. “Please, sir, Lord and Lady Circumference have arrived, sir. They’re in the library with Miss Florence. She asked me to tell you.”

“The sports will start in ten minutes,” said the Doctor. “Run and tell the other boys to change and go at once to the playing fields. I will talk to you about the Welsh again. It is a matter to which I have given some thought, and I can see that you are sincerely interested. Come in with me and see the Circumferences.”

What??

The poor Doctor. This is the man who, in a moment of joy and hopefulness, goes off on a huge monologue about how he “doesn’t understand his own emotions”. Like – hope enters his heart, anticipation of something pleasant, sheer simple enjoyment of the sunshine and the grass and being alive, and he literally cannot understand what the feeling actually is.

I am in love with Evelyn Waugh. So glad I’m playing catch-up now.

And this is a first novel? Damn him.