"I was early drawn to panache," Evelyn Waugh proclaimed. Paula Byrne makes it clear in her entrancing study of Waugh and the inspirations for his novels that he was equally strongly repelled by anyone dull, boring and/or unattractive. From early on, Waugh found his biological family tedious and was on the constant lookout for spirited companions elsewhere. His quest could begin in earnest when he escaped from home to Lancing, a distinctly second-rate public school. It would be panache or nothing forever after.
At Oxford, Waugh fell in with the Hypocrites Club, where nobody was ever accused of being boring. The club was really an excuse for the aesthetic set to get drunk together, snuggle up and carry on camping. In that crowd, Waugh linked up with three serious boyfriends, two of whom he discussed in memoirs of his "acute homosexual phase." The third was Hugh Lygon, a tall, handsome, blond and charming product of Eton and the aristocracy. Hugh led a life of "idleness alleviated by pranks" during his Oxford years--he was panache personified. Waugh would base Sebastian Flyte, the most memorable character in Brideshead Revisited (1945), on Hugh.
Waugh's literary career was launched with two comic novels that remain hilarious to this day. Decline and Fall (1928) and Vile Bodies (1930) took his humdrum experiences, exaggerated them to gut-busting proportions and offered an astonishing parade of blustering nincompoops (the fools in charge) and the Bright Young Things who endured the fools, went to endless parties and flirted outrageously with whoever was handy. The languid Earl and the glamorous flapper became Waugh's stock in trade and made him famous. He also became divorced (fairly quickly) after marrying a prime example of the flappers he so adored.
As fate would have it, in 1931, after literary fame had arrived and his first wife ran off, Waugh was invited to Madresfield, the country estate owned by Hugh Lygon's father, Lord Beauchamp. Famous for its extravagant parties, Madresfield was heaven for Waugh. The love affair (there is no other way to describe it) that Waugh had with the whole family is recorded in Brideshead Revisited for all to see. Fans of the novel will devour every detail of the correspondences Byrne draws so expertly between the real people and events at Madresfield and their fictional counterparts, but heartbreaking is the only word for her descriptions of the effects of guilt over homosexuality (particularly destructive for Lord Beauchamp and Hugh) and the decline into severe alcoholism of the models for the most beloved characters in the novel. No matter how hard Waugh had tried, he couldn't save the ones he loved from themselves.--John McFarland
Shelf Talker: A dazzling tour of 1920s and 1930s Oxford and London and their magical transmutation into Evelyn Waugh's comic masterpieces.