Waugh Again
Waugh's letters are a long read. Lots of witty, bright stuff; melancholy toward the end.
Roman Catholicism: Waugh really goes after John Betjeman, who becomes committed to High Anglicanism or Anglo Catholicism--the kind of Anglicanism that most resembles (at least superficially) Roman Catholicism. Waugh says this is worse than outright Protestantism--the belief that lots of people can be good Catholics in different ways, no need for Rome, etc. Waugh probably helped influence Betjeman's wife to convert, but not Betjeman himself. (There's a last Dutch joke about Betjeman, which I will look up). UPDATE: to Lady Diana Cooper, 28 Nov 64: "Betjeman's son has become a Mormon. Ghastly but B is Dutch."
The Ladies he loved. Everyone has commented that he was attracted to spirited, charming women who could handle themselves--bright, but not necessarily with a lot of formal education. Some of them he kept writing to, with no real attempt to convert them to Christianity or Roman Catholicism. He treats Nancy Mitford, very affectionately, as a hopeless heathen. He even urges her not even to mention the Church or the Creator--like the Albert Brooks line, "Don't say nest, don't say egg."
Family. Some of the famous rudeness to his children is here. (Auberon Waugh's memoirs have the worst stuff). Yet he ended up being friends with them all, and visiting the grandchildren.
Churchills. He saw a lot of Randolph Churchill, son of the famour man, over the years. There were periods when Waugh was intensely irritated with him, other periods when they were great friends in a drinking buddy sense, still others when Waugh deeply pitied him--probably for his loneliness and his inability to get his life in order. When the famous Churchill died, Waugh was asked by many media outlets to give a tribute of some kind, but he refused. His rather nasty summary (to Ann Fleming, Ian Fleming's widow): "He is not a man for whom I ever had esteem. Always in the wrong, always surrounded by crooks, a most unsuccessful father--simply a 'Radio Personality' who outlived his prime. 'Rallied the nation' indeed! I was a serving soldier in 1940. How we despised his orations."
I don't know--my father always cried at any reminder of one of Churchill's speeches. Churchill is one of the few Brits for whom a lot of Americans feel unqualified respect. Which brings up:
Americans. In all fairness, Waugh didn't want to be known as a supporter of anti-Americanism. At one point he refused to allow The Loved One to be published in a Communist country, for example, for just this reason. (Perhaps his book would have subverted Communism, as Lucky Jim did in Czechoslovakia). His oldest daughter married an American professor, and he still made jokes like "that grandchild doesn't count--he's an American." When Waugh's older brother Alec became writer-in-residence at Oklahoma, Waugh wrote: "We shall end teaching the Yanks. I think I once saw a play about Oklahoma. They did not seem a very critical people. But I understand that American undergraduates are in a perpetual state of mutinous ferment."
UPDATE: It amused me, again, that Waugh writes to Ann Fleming about her husband's James Bond books. 13 March 63: "I am surprised that old Kaspar thinks James Bond highly sexed. In the film you took me to I saw no evidence of this--rather the reverse. Gaming & homicide seemed his weaknesses." 28 March: "Bond's passions....I thought he looked very temperate....The real satyromaniac doesn't care what women look like--old, young, deformed, all are the same. That wish to be seen about with notably pretty girls suggests Beaton and Kaetchen Kommer." I think this is very funny: a many who wants a woman to dress up, do her hair, put on some nice jewelry, and go with him to the casino for all to see, is probably not actually making love to her. Clinton may be an example of what Waugh means.
Another re-discovery: to William F. Buckley, 4 April 1960: "[Senator Joseph] McCarthy is certainly regarded by most Englishmen as a regrettable figure and your McCarthy and his Enemies, being written before his later extravagances, will not go far to clear his reputation. I have no doubt that we were sent a lot of prejudiced information six years ago. Your book makes plain that there was a need for investigation ten years ago. It does not, I am afraid, supply the information that would convince me that McCarthy was a suitable man to undertake it."
I read the Buckley/Bozell book once--the newer edition in the 70s. Even the idea that "an investigation was necessary" rests on the presupposition that Truman was soft on Communism. That's preposterous.
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