The Fatal Gift by Alec Waugh: Brother of the more famous Evelyn

The Fatal Gift by Alec Waugh 

published 1974

 

Over-dressed at the party? Your call. See below

 

This is a very strange book, and may have seemed even stranger in the mid-70s. You might think of it as post-modern.

Alec Waugh is, yes, the brother of the more famous Evelyn. So first, some history.

He attended a public (US readers: this means posh, private) school – Sherborne - and was expelled for what we refer to on the blog as 'the usual thing’. He then wrote a lightly fictionalized novel about his schooldays, The Loom of Youth. Readers and critics were deeply shocked, and it was banned in some places (including his old school) and so naturally was a huge success. The controversial content is almost unnoticeable to modern eyes. Alec says himself that much later one of his friends was reading it and said ‘I’m a good way through, haven’t got to the hot stuff yet’. Waugh replied that he had passed it 50 pages ago.

He was expelled from the Old Boys’ Association of his school (what a fate!), but nowadays they have made peace. The old boys’ website gives a very helpful biography of Alec Waugh as well as a fair view of the controversy, with this description of The Loom of Youth: ‘a candid portrait of his four years at Sherborne School, complete with tales of boys cheating in exams, talking slang, and having crushes on other boys’. 

It is hard not to feel sorry for him, though not for any of that, which set him up for life. But - he must have seen the way ahead very clearly: successful writer, bestseller status, making his name with a stellar career.

– and then his younger brother started producing his own books, which were also highly praised, bestsellers. But Evelyn was on a different level from Alec, seen as one of the greatest writers of his generation. It wouldn’t be human not to be a bit put out…

(I will refer to each of them by their first names for purposes of clarity, though Evelyn at least would have grumbled at this informality)

Alec always was gracious and graceful, and said that Evelyn was a wonderful writer. He carried on producing books – novels, travel books, memoirs, having a lovely life as far as we can tell.

I have read a few of his books, and they are interesting enough. You get a strong impression of him: a privileged entitled Englishman of his time. Knew everyone, got about, didn’t seem to have money worries, successful with women.

So now this late book – he was 76 when it was published – which is hard to define. It purports to tell the story of Raymond Peronne, a contemporary of Alec (though he is fictitious) but it features many real people – including 1^st person narration by Alec. The book follows both of them from the 1920s through to the 1970s. work, war, affairs, marriages. Raymond has a great pull to the island of Dominica, and buys a house there.

His father is a Lord – he is a second son, so is not due to inherit. However the family line becomes very complicated. There is an odd development where a woman called Eileen (who at first seems like a minor character) has Raymond’s son – but also has a daughter by another man, who ultimately

 

SLIGHT SPOILER

 

marries Raymond’s nephew, the heir, and has a child by him. Her relation to the various others takes some working out: will the next Lord be her son or her grandson, but in separate inheritance lines? (drawing myself a family tree didn’t help much) It is quite mad. As is the section where she goes to live in the ancestral home with a different husband, who has not recovered from the war. This leads to the most unlikely line in the book, where she says “I don’t suppose I will ever watch Coronation Street again”. The return from the war to the big house is very much in the line of Lissa Evans’ highly recommended recent novel, Small Bomb at Dimperley – rave review on the blog here.

Anyway – on Raymond goes: he is very good-looking, very attractive, and doesn’t seem to need to do anything. I guess the Fatal Gift is that he is tremendously, effortlessly, attractive to women – and in parallel, doesn’t have to work to achieve anything else. So he never achieves anything. It’s a strange story, one that only just holds the attention. And then plonked in the middle of all this are a couple of very strong sex scenes (though ‘sex stories’ might be more accurate) and a sudden emergence of a supernatural theme. It is most odd.

And part of me was thinking ‘what a good thing these men and their privileges and money and thoughtlessness are – well, not disappeared, but not so important these days…’

Alec’s own comments are occasionally more interesting. I first read this book more than 30 years ago, but I still remembered this fascinating insight into his writing:

“Berta [Ruck] is one of my best friends. We help each other with our stories. She’ll tell me that her hero plays Rugby football; she’ll send me her MS and say ‘in chapter five, half a page about the football match in which he plays’.”

“How does she repay you?”

“I send a description of a party. ‘I want my heroine to feel over-dressed; what would make her feel that way in that kind of party?’”

 

Berta Ruck (1877-1978) has – of course – appeared on the blog as one of my Queens of Tosh candidates. (For clarity: I am the Queen of writing about Tosh). She wrote very popular books in her day – more than 90 of them -  but is now almost forgotten.

There is also a discussion of why war is not helpful to a novelist, which again stuck with me, and explained to me why I don’t like war novels very much – for example the central section in Anthony Powell’s A Dance to the Music of Time sequence.

His words of wisdom are too long to quote in full, but if you are interested you might be able to read in this photograph:

(if it’s too small to read, and you are VERY interested, email me and I will send you a bigger image)

The gentlemanly world of publishing is also considered here  - the Waugh boys’ father was a publisher of some esteem. Different days.

Not much in the way of clothes, although I liked Raymond in the late 1940s having ‘quite a number of new suits, ordered them during the phoney war [ie 1939-40], but I’m not wearing them yet awhile’. This is because it is not done to be too smart – people will suspect you of using the black market. ‘You ought to give your coupons to a female’.

[men in suits, NYPL]

So for the top pictures I considered the question of being over-dressed, which is not a concept I believe in much - and highly tangential to the book of course. Black and white dress is a Barbier illustration. The second picture, of a dance at a casino, is by the Spanish painter Carlos Saenz de Tejada – maybe it’s more that the woman on the right is under-dressed? You be the judge.

The mixture of memoir and novel I found quite annoying, but didn’t dislike it as much as I thought I would. It reminded me of some of William Boyd’s books, using the novel to look at the century as well as tell a story.

The sections in the West Indies reminded me of another Queen of Tosh, the mysterious Jane Duncan – summary post here, with links to many other entries.

Evelyn Waugh is all over the blog. I wrote about Brideshead Revisited for the Guardian, and I love his letters. (One of my desert island books would be the collected letters between him and Nancy Mitford).