Mad World: Evelyn Waugh and the Secrets of Brideshead (TEXT ONLY)

by Paula Byrne

  For Byron, the celebration was the embodiment of ‘a phase of civilisation either forgotten or derided’. Lord Beauchamp was always in control, only losing his cool at one point: ‘he reached such a pitch of exasperation that he took to ordering the girls about as if they were servants’. Byron thought that the organisation was marvellous. No detail was spared, down to the typewritten slips indicating who was to take whom in to dinner.

  For the servants’ ball, Lord Beauchamp wore the insignia of the Order of the Garter and ‘the frequenters of such functions who were there say there never has been a party on such a scale before’. A delegation consisting of the Mayor and the entire Corporation of the City of Worcester arrived in full civic regalia in order to present an address to Elmley. The family, looking rather glum, was photographed in their company in the great hall. Reporters and photographers from the Daily Sketch and the Tatler attended, though Byron had fun running away from them. He asked his mother to keep copies of the news articles. To his astonishment, ‘Elmley remained quite oblivious of everything.’

  There was also a part of Byron which recoiled against the extravagance and tedium of country-house living: ‘Really Madresfield was tiring. What a horrible existence it must be flitting from one house party to another, making meaningless conversation to vapid girls, who for all you know expect to be made love to, wandering aimlessly about, worried to death lest you have not got an invitation to the next.’ The homosexual Robert felt uncomfortable around the young female guests.

  He refused his next invitation to a Madresfield party in January: ‘if it’s going to be anything like the last I don’t think I shall face it. I cannot stand the smart guards officer with his loud voice and savoir-faire.’ Once one has turned down an invitation to a place such as Madresfield, one is not asked back. Robert did not attend Hugh’s coming-of-age party, even though he continued to idolise Beauchamp and to be good friends with the brothers. Lord Elmley helped him with his journalism by sending his credentials to Barbara Cartland, who passed his name on to Lord Beaverbrook. Barbara Cartland was in love with Elmley and desperate to marry him. Elmley did not reciprocate the affection, though he did take Miss Cartland’s virginity.

  It was clear to all the Eton and Oxford friends of the Lygon boys that their father’s devotion to his children was extraordinary. And they repaid him amply with warmth and loyalty.

  It is not hard to understand why Lord Beauchamp cast such a spell over Hugh’s friends, first Robert Byron and then Evelyn Waugh. William Lygon was the perfect aristocrat, not only tall, dark and handsome, but also intelligent, cultured and very artistic. He was an energetic and highly successful public servant, driven by a sense of noblesse oblige.

  His father, Frederick, the sixth earl, was pious and severe. Frederick was a second son who inherited the title after the death of his brother, Henry. The latter was a delicate and sensitive child who grew up to become a soldier and a passionate horseman. A family history records, in a tactful phrase, that Henry ‘never seems to have formed any long-term attachment’. He spent long periods abroad with a ‘friend’, Gerard Noël, and their two valets. Algiers and Egypt were favoured destinations, partly in the pursuit of better health but perhaps also because of the opportunities they offered for short-term attachments. He died a bachelor, brought low by consumption in his mid-thirties.

  Frederick, by contrast, was a scholar, bibliophile and music lover who was deeply interested in religion. He became closely involved with the Oxford Movement and there was real concern that he would cross over to Rome. He made a vow of celibacy in the hope that within his lifetime there might evolve a united church in which Canterbury would be in communion with Rome and that he might then become a priest. He converted two rooms at Madresfield into a private family chapel, as if in readiness for the day. But once he became earl, with the need to beget an heir, he extricated himself from his vow and married the beautiful and talented Lady Mary Stanhope.

  On becoming the Earl Beauchamp in 1866, Frederick threw himself into the life of the house and the county of Worcestershire (his Catholic sympathies meant that he was viewed with suspicion in royal and political circles, so he confined himself to the shires). He rebuilt large parts of Madresfield in the Gothic style. He beautified the gardens. And he began the tradition of an agricultural show for his tenants (in Brideshead Revisited Charles and Sebastian watch just such a show whilst sunbathing on the roof of the house).

  Frederick and Mary’s first child was a daughter, named after her mother. She was the one who became a very close friend of Edward Elgar. In 1872, when little Mary was three, a brother, William, was born to great jubilation. Madresfield had an heir. Church bells were rung in celebration all across the three counties of Worcestershire, Gloucestershire and Herefordshire. When William was only five his father took him to the House of Lords and sat him on the steps of the throne, as was a peer’s privilege with his heir.

  Despite all his wealth and privilege, William never got over the loss of his mother. She died in childbirth when he was three years old. Queen Victoria, still mourning her beloved Albert, wrote to Frederick to commiserate, telling him that ‘having gone through the same terrible trial, she is able to understand his present suffering and feel deeply for him’. Little William was devoted to his father, but, like many pious people, Frederick lacked warmth. He was described by his peers as bigoted, pompous and disagreeable. William would grow up to marry a woman with some of the same characteristics as his father.

  From Eton he went on to Christ Church, Oxford, as was the custom for the family. He was styled Viscount Elmley until he succeeded to his father’s earldom in 1891. At Oxford he was popular, a clever and articulate man, cultured and studious. He was President of the Union. He was following in his father’s footsteps as an ardent Anglo-Catholic, but he also had a strong Evangelistic streak and became president of the Oxford Mission, which was dedicated to bringing poorer men to Oxford. It was rumoured that he was seen preaching for the Salvation Army in the open air in the East End of London.

  His glittering academic career was halted after he attended a twenty-first birthday party at Blenheim Palace, a few miles from Oxford, without having a proper exeat for absence from college. Refusing to apologise, William was sent down. The dean had been waiting for an opportunity to get rid of him. The young earl had already attracted the unwelcome attention of the college authorities when he had put up notices criticising the expulsion from the university of certain members of the Bullingdon Club after one of their riotous evenings of debauchery and window-smashing.

  Beauchamp’s rancorous relationship with the Dean of Christ Church, curiously akin to Evelyn’s feud with Dean Cruttwell, stemmed from a deception that had been practised on him over the news of his father’s death. In late February 1891, William had travelled home to Madresfield from Oxford in order to celebrate his nineteenth birthday with the family. On his return to college, he was met by the dean who told him that his father was ill and that he must return home at once. On arrival at Worcester station he saw a newspaper billboard announcing in the headlines ‘Death of Lord Beauchamp’. He bought a paper and later cut the article out and pasted it into his scrapbook. Next to it was a handwritten note that said ‘this was the first intimation I had of my father’s death’. He never forgave the dean for what he considered to be a gross act of cowardice in keeping news of the death from him.

  None of this is enough to amount to sufficient cause for the expulsion of an earl from the university. One senses that there may have been some grosser misdemeanour that was never publicly acknowledged. After Beauchamp was sent down, he was said to have suffered a mental breakdown. He was sent on a cruise to recuperate, spending many months in the Mediterranean, with a stay at Madeira. When he returned, he began to take his place in public life.

  In 1895 he was elected Mayor of Worcester, the first peer in England ever to be chosen for a civic office of this kind. His commitment to the betterment of the working classes also led him to become a me
mber of the London Board of Education. He gave a garden party for the National Union of Teachers in the gardens at Madresfield. The Christian Review described him as ‘tinged with Christian Socialism’.

  He was beginning to look like a dangerously progressive radical. This may have been one of the reasons why at the remarkably youthful age of twenty-seven he was appointed Governor and Commander in Chief of New South Wales. Some saw it as Secretary of State Joseph Chamberlain’s ruse to remove a potentially awkward young man from the Upper House, whilst the Daily Mail considered the posting to be ‘experimental, interesting and original’. Further afield, where the newspapers were less deferential, the story went that he was shipped out to the colonies because he had formed an indiscreet attachment to his mother’s maid; thus claimed the Boston Globe and various other American papers. There may well be a grain of truth in the story – save that the servant in question was almost certainly not a maid.

  Letters and telegrams poured in to congratulate him on his new position. He took his sister Lady Mary with him as his hostess. She was a much-loved lady-in-waiting to Queen Victoria. Not amused to lose her, the aged Queen commented drily: ‘Well, I suppose he must take his nanny with him.’

  Beauchamp was a keen sportsman (as his son Hugh would be), being especially fond of swimming and boxing. A photograph of him at the time shows him resplendent with tricorn hat and plumes, sword and sash. He cuts an equally striking figure wearing morning dress in a caricature by ‘Spy’ published in Vanity Fair. He had something of the dandy about him. To Robert Byron and Evelyn Waugh, he was the quintessential Englishman: dashing and at ease with himself.

  His radical opinions and tactless comments made him both friends and enemies. In Australia he earned the nickname ‘Big Chump’, a pun on the name Beauchamp, for his occasional gaffes, such as when he made a reference to the country’s criminal past. He was frequently outspoken. At Cobar in 1899 he enraged French colonists when he condemned the controversial Dreyfus trial, in which the framing of a Jewish army officer revealed the anti-Semitism of the French establishment. Beauchamp publicly thanked God that he was an Englishman and not a Frenchman.

  He travelled around the country, going deep into the outback in order to meet the real people of Australia. He insisted on stopping at every small settlement. In one of his speeches, he said that the lessons of true Christianity could be learned from the natives. Imperialism, he protested, could lead to ‘a policy of force and repression and war’. He advocated ‘not only the gospel of trade, but the Gospel of love and Christianity’. These were not the orthodox views of a Victorian imperial proconsul.

  Though he travelled throughout Australia, he loved Sydney. It would become a second home to him in his lonely later years. He felt free there, responding to the city’s energy and excitement, its lack of class distinctions, the absence of that rigidity of views which was so much part of his life in England. The wood-blocked roadways were crammed with steam trams, omnibuses, hansoms and carriages. The brightly lit streets remained thronged until midnight and there were hundreds of bars and clubs full of young people. He frequented a thriving scene of arty bohemian private clubs, such as ‘The Dawn and Dusk Club’. Artists and writers, rather than politicians and petty officials, were his friends.

  Sydney was synonymous with youth and vitality. The weather was bright and sunny and the beaches a huge draw. Later, Beauchamp would write ‘the men are splendid athletes, like Greek statues. Their skins are tanned by sun and wind, and I doubt whether anywhere in the world are finer specimens of manhood than in Sydney. The lifesavers at the bathing beaches are wonderful.’

  In October 1900, after just a year and a half in his new post, he returned to England on half-pay. He held the governorship for another year, but did not return to Australia. It is not clear whether injudicious words or deeds were the reason for his being called home so soon.

  When he returned to Malvern in 1901, there was a cheering crowd three miles long to greet him. He was thirty and beginning to feel the pressure to produce a son and heir. A year later he married Lady Lettice Grosvenor, sister of the Duke of Westminster. It was the society wedding of the year. She had the right credentials and character to become a great society hostess.

  Lord Beauchamp was known for his love of formality, but he was interested in people of all classes. This was a trait that his children inherited. An American tourist visiting the Madresfield Agricultural Society was amazed to see the earl bareheaded in a grey summer suit, speaking warmly to the agricultural workers, shaking them by the hand and stopping to chat.

  He was soon immersed in politics as a member of the Liberal Party in the House of Lords, setting himself against his father’s Conservatism, particularly over the question of free trade. His Belgravia home became a meeting place for party grandees. When the Liberals came into government under Henry Campbell-Bannerman in 1905, Beauchamp had great expectations. ‘We shall ’ave Hindia or Hireland, but we don’t know which,’ his valet was said to have declared with eager anticipation. But there must have been some black mark against his name, because rather than becoming a viceroy he only accumulated an assortment of minor appointments: Member of the Privy Council, Captain of the Corps of Gentlemen-at-Arms, Lord Steward to the Royal Household, eventually Lord President of the Council. Honours were showered upon him: he was created KCMG in 1899 and a Knight of the Garter in 1914. At King George V’s coronation in 1911, it was Beauchamp who carried the sword of state. That same year he was appointed Lord Lieutenant of Gloucestershire and in 1913 Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports. In August 1914, he represented the government at Buckingham Palace when the King signed the declaration of war.

  Like many children who lose a parent at a very young age, Beauchamp idolised his late mother and the memory of her devotion to the underprivileged. She had undertaken welfare work in the Newcastle slums and had opened a school for orphaned girls. He followed in her footsteps, undertaking charity work in the East End and becoming Chairman of the Church of England Liberal and Progressive Movement. He spoke in the Lords on a wide range of subjects from free trade and tariff reform, to juvenile smoking, vivisection, and the employment of women. He was active in pushing through a bill that set up juvenile courts and abolished prison sentences for children. He was described as having ‘an impish spirit of mischief which has caused him to be described as the Lloyd George of the House of Lords’.

  He also supported home rule in Ireland. The Irish took to him, but they were aware of his foibles. A miner told an English newspaper that ‘he’s a decent man and he’ll shake hands with anybody’. To which another remarked: ‘Though he always looks first to see if your hand’s been properly washed.’

  In May 1918, he introduced a Sexual Offences Bill which included a provision that the transgressions of both sexes should be dealt with on a basis of equality. In June he moved all the stages of a bill enabling women to become Justices of the Peace. In 1924, just two weeks after Elmley’s coming-of-age party, an opportunity arose for Beauchamp to gain a position of genuine political eminence. Earl Grey resigned for personal reasons from his position as Leader of the Liberal Party in the House of Lords. Beauchamp positioned himself for the succession and was duly elected by his peers in the autumn. ‘No better choice could be found than in Lord Beauchamp,’ remarked one commentator; he ‘is known to possess those qualities of tact and personal charm, which, equally with his stock of personal acumen and his alertness in debate, are essential to every successful leader’. His first task was to position his party on the opposition front bench in the chamber: he was bitterly disappointed when Lord Curzon, Tory Leader of the House, ruled that the new Labour Party should take precedence. The Liberals were a fading cause.

  Another of his positions was as Chancellor of London University. In his installation speech, he contrasted London with the ancient universities (Oxford and Cambridge) that were not accessible to ‘all comers’. London was the first university to ‘open its doors to women’ and also made it easier for th
ose from poorer backgrounds to benefit from a university education. He honoured those students who worked in employment all day and then spent their evenings preparing for examinations: ‘At a time when universities were becoming more and more the playground of the rich, London University came into existence as an intellectual treasure house for the poor.’ Beauchamp must have felt frustrated by his sons and their contemporaries, who viewed Oxford as their playground. It is easy to see why Lord Elmley used a pseudonym when he appeared in Terence Greenidge’s frivolous amateur films.

  Lord Beauchamp was also an artist and craftsman. He had his own studio at Madresfield Court, mainly devoted to sculpture. It was there that he produced his finest piece, The Golfer, which was displayed in the Paris Exhibition of 1920. It depicts a naked golfer, raising his club as he concentrates on his shot. It is still in the smoking room, though the club is missing. The piece was widely acclaimed for the perfection of detail ‘in the portrayal of an exceptionally difficult pose’. In the library at Madresfield there is another fine sculpture of a naked youth. Beauchamp was also keenly interested in embroidery. There seemed to be no end to his talents.

  CHAPTER 7

  Untoward Incidents

  The nearer you get to the hub of the wheel … the easier it is to stay on.

  (Evelyn Waugh, Decline and Fall)

  The broken ankle sustained while escaping from an Oxford bar was something of a turning point in Evelyn’s life. He was forced to return to the family home, sit still and read quietly. Enforced absence from the party scene made him think seriously about becoming a writer.