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

by Paula Byrne

  I only dare to say this because I was unhappy some years ago in rather the same way as you are now.

  All my love – don’t answer. Bo.

  Evelyn was planning his wedding. When asked what they wanted for a wedding present, he suggested a bed. He was very keen for his Lygon friends to meet Laura, but was conscious of her diffidence: ‘It would be nice to bring Miss H to see you for a night or two at yr Highclere. She is a shy lady and would be scared if a lot of grown up people were there. Is there ever a time, either week end or mid week when we could find you alone?’

  With regard to Laura, he showed his usual sharpness and unfailing honesty, writing to Alec: ‘She is thin and silent, long nose, no literary ambitions, temperate but not very industrious. I think she will suit me ok and I am very keen on her.’ But to Diana Cooper he wrote: ‘I find new depths of beauty and sweetness in L. Herbert daily.’ Nancy Mitford described her as an exquisite piece of Dresden china, so fragile that one felt she must snap in two.

  The wedding day was set. Evelyn was looking forward to being settled after so many years in the wilderness. But he continued to write and think about the theme he identified in one of his later essays: ‘Man, as an exile from Eden’.

  In March 1937 he spent Holy Week at Ampleforth, visiting Castle Howard on the way. One time on retreat at Ampleforth he took Hubert Duggan with him, sober, and in a state of ‘exalted gratitude’ for his rescue from the horrors of alcohol. It all went well, as with Duggan’s brother on the Adriatic cruise, until Hubert suddenly vanished and was discovered drunk in Scarborough.

  In April, Evelyn wrote to Maimie to tell her that Captain Hance had said yes to his wedding invitation but that all his other chums were abroad. ‘Do please all of you come without fail to the wedding and to the party the day before because I shall be very lonely among all Laura’s high born and [illegible] aunts. Mr Herbert sent the invitations with ½d stamps so all my friends thought they were bills and tore them up. G how s [God how sad]. So Laura is very pretty and well and it will be decent to be married to her and she sends her love.’ His best presents, he said, were silver from the Asquiths and a beautiful glass chandelier from the Coopers that arrived broken.

  The ceremony took place at the Church of the Assumption in Warwick Street, London, on 17 April 1937. Captain Hance and his family did not make it to the wedding. Maimie and Coote were there, to Evelyn’s delight. The bride was given away by her brother, Auberon (her father was dead). Henry Yorke was Evelyn’s best man. The guest list, which duly appeared in The Times, reveals that Evelyn had drifted away from the Bright Young Things into a new, more respectable milieu. John Sutro attended in addition to Henry Yorke, but otherwise there was not much of a showing from the old Oxford set.

  After arriving at their honeymoon destination of Portofino, where he had first seen ‘the white mouse’, he wrote in his diary: ‘Lovely day, lovely house, lovely wife, great happiness.’ He told Coote how moved he was that she had attended the wedding despite being ill at the time. ‘So it is very decent to be married, very decent indeed,’ he wrote, before adding: ‘A bas milady Sibell and ses jockeys’ – down with Lady Sibell, who was the only one of the three sisters who had not gone to the wedding.

  He asked ‘Darling Poll’ to come and stay after their return in June. Coote knew Laura’s elder sister from hunting circles, but did not know Laura, who did not ride. Coote’s recollection was that Mrs Herbert disapproved of Evelyn, the previously married man, and thought him most unsuitable for Laura: ‘They were a very enclosed circle, and it is another aspect of Evelyn’s courage that he took it on and won. It was a long, long fight.’ Coote liked Laura immensely, remembering that she was very quiet in company, that she was very loyal and that, although she never contradicted Evelyn over small things and gave him his way over nearly everything, if she felt strongly about something, she would put her foot down and he would accept it.

  In August the Waughs moved into their marital home, Piers Court, an elegant Georgian house that Evelyn found at Stinchcombe in the Cotswolds. Costing £4,000 – the money having been given by Laura’s grandmother as a wedding present – it immediately became known as Stinkers. From there they paid a visit to Mad, where it would seem they had an unexpected encounter.

  Lord Beauchamp heard that the warrant for his arrest had finally been revoked. On 19 July 1937, the Normandie docked at Southampton. This time the earl (accompanied by David Smyth) was able to step onto his native soil with no fear of there being a policeman waiting to welcome him. He was at last returning to his beloved home. The summer was spent at Mad. Though there is no mention of the fact in letters or reminiscences (and there are no Waugh diary entries for these months), it is probable that on his August visit Evelyn met Boom for a second time. If this is the case, it may be assumed that they would have reminisced about their previous encounter in the cramped surroundings of Lord Berners’s flat overlooking the Forum in Rome (Berners himself visited Boom at Mad in September).

  For Boom, Mad was haunted by ghosts and painful memories. He could not settle. Accustomed to a wandering life, in October he returned to Venice with David. He wrote to Coote from the Grand Hotel: ‘Energetically I have already been to the Accademia and now David is at High Mass at St Mark.’ That David was a practising Catholic makes one wonder whether, late in life, Boom ever contemplated conversion – Lord Marchmain’s road. Once again writing of Smyth as if he were a member of the family rather than a paid employee, he also observed that David had enjoyed riding on the autostrada, though they had a puncture and needed to purchase a new tyre.

  In December he was back at Madresfield and writing to Coote about her debts: ‘Is it gradual or did something big and bad happen suddenly?’ He didn’t want her to run into the kind of money trouble that had been so damaging to his lost Hugh. That same month, he and his daughters hosted a coming-of-age dinner-dance at Halkers for young Dickie. The surviving members of the family were together again – in company with David – and entertaining lavishly. Lord Beauchamp wore black, white and pink studs in his shirt front and spent the night at the Ritz to save his household staff any fuss and bother.

  But he was in no position to re-enter London society. In January 1938 he and David were aboard the Europa, heading across the Atlantic. He wrote to Coote from Cuba: ‘We are both much better since we got here.’ They lunched out at Sloppy Joe’s bar and drank mint juleps made with Spanish brandy. A month later, they were to be found half way across the Pacific. The Stella Polaris landed in the Fiji Islands and the earl, with David as his fellow guest, dined with the Governor of Suva.

  Lord Beauchamp had now taken up knitting as well as embroidery. He wrote to Coote of his shipboard routine: ‘Shave at 8. Embroider and orange juice with a visit from David till 10.30. Then deck. Cocktails at 12.45. Luncheon and coffee.’ A month later another letter followed, this time from the Hotel Suisse in Kandy in the hills of Ceylon (Sri Lanka). Beauchamp had by this time received a letter from his daughter with the news that she had been travelling on the continent: ‘I imagine you escaped before Hitler arrived,’ he wrote. ‘What a surprise it was!’ (‘it’ being the Anschluss).

  Another round-the-world voyage completed, Beauchamp returned to Mad. During the summer of 1938 a cinefilm was made of the family. The reel is in colour and shows the earl in the gardens of Madresfield. The film begins with a panning shot of the house, and then Lord Beauchamp’s Packard drives through a clump of golden yews. Lord Beauchamp features in white trousers, smoking a cigarette. He is surrounded by his adoring girls, Sibell in a blue dress and holding a black chow. The handsome butler Bradford appears. Then the camera shows His Lordship sitting in the moat garden pouring tea. Other shots show people swimming in the outdoor pool and walking in the maze. Looking at the film, one would never imagine the tragedies that had befallen the family – nor that Lord Beauchamp had already been diagnosed with the cancer that would kill him just a few months later.

  The family planned a trip to New York together. Be
auchamp insisted on going, against the advice of his doctors. For the second time, he had agreed to host a reunion dinner for an association of Americans with the surname Lygon. Travelling with him were Coote, Maimie and Richard – though fully grown now, Dickie was shorter than his brothers at five feet eight inches with blond hair and green eyes. They checked into the Waldorf Astoria. Boom stayed on after the children set sail back to England. A few days later, he was taken ill. A telegram summoned Elmley and his wife, who took the first available ship and arrived a couple of days before he died. They then brought his body home.

  The seventh Earl Beauchamp was buried at Madresfield on Friday 25 November 1938. Cars were laid on to meet the Paddington train when it arrived at Malvern Link. All the family attended. Evelyn was not present, but some of his Oxford friends were there to support the girls – Sutro, de Trafford and Duggan. Boom was laid to rest in a grave beside Hugh’s. According to Sibell, he was buried in a cardinal’s robe, a purple garment made of watered silk. If this is so, it suggests that he had, indeed, been having Romish thoughts. But he died in the High Anglican faith in which he had lived. There was a memorial service at St Paul’s, Knightsbridge, on the same day, attended by an eclectic mix of Liberal Party grandees and Bright Young Things from the circle of the Lygon daughters, including Robert Byron, Patrick Balfour, Jessel’s boy, Christopher Sykes and Henry Yorke.

  Aware that his cancer would probably prove fatal, Lord Beauchamp had signed a will at Mad in the summer. Elmley and Maimie were named as executors. Each of the three unmarried girls – Sibell, Maimie and Coote – was given an income sufficient to yield £1,000 a year. The residue of the estate – and thus Madresfield itself – was bequeathed to Elmley. There was really no choice about this, unlikely as Mona was to produce an heir. Neither Lettice – who ever since her marriage had kept away from family affairs – nor Dickie, were mentioned in the will. David Smyth was tasked with going through ‘all my letters and personal effects’. He also received a legacy: ‘I GIVE and BEQUEATH all my Australian property of whatsoever nature to the said David Smyth for his own use and benefit absolutely.’

  Evelyn, ensconced in his new home, Piers Court, heard the news when he read the morning newspaper. He wrote immediately to Maimie about the ‘very sad news’ and how he had feared the worst when reading press reports of Boom’s illness. ‘My thoughts have been with you during this anxious time,’ he wrote; ‘I know how much your father has meant to you, and how much you meant to him, and I send you all my love and sympathy. Will you please tell Coote and Sib and El and Dicky? … I am having a Mass said for your father. I am afraid he would not have approved in his life time, but I think you will.’ His affection for Maimie was as strong as ever: ‘Please remember that I still love you all just as much as in the old days when I saw you more often, and that it would always be a delight to see you here if you could face the discomfort.’

  Evelyn finished Scoop at the start of 1938, and his first child, Maria Teresa, was born in March of that year. His last recorded visit to Madresfield took place towards the end of April, a couple of weeks before Scoop was published. Now Evelyn had a family and a substantial country house of his own, albeit on nothing like the scale of Mad. He had found a home but lost his freedom. He was happy and settled. His correspondence with Maimie and Coote would continue for the rest of his life, but he was no longer a true inhabitant of Mad World. His absence from Boom’s funeral that November – whatever the reason – is symptomatic of the change.

  He was, however, still a traveller. Straight after Scoop was published, to high acclaim for its comic brilliance, Evelyn was on a train bound for a Catholic convention in Hungary, the Eucharistic Congress. He was upset that the Nazis had prevented thousands of Catholic Austrians from attending: ‘near neighbours abruptly and cruelly deprived of their primary human right of association in worship’. After this he went to Mexico with Laura to write about the political situation there. His account was published in a book called Robbery Under Law, which was more a political treatise than a travel book, and for that reason his least funny and least successful work.

  The immediate consequence of Boom’s death for the Lygon sisters was that they lost their family home. Elmley wasted no time in initiating the formalities to assume the title of the eighth Earl Beauchamp, take his seat in the House of Lords and move to Madresfield from the disused lighthouse where he had lived in his parliamentary constituency in Norfolk. Madresfield had a chatelaine again: middle-class Mona, now the Countess Beauchamp. It was Mad World no longer. By this time the sisters cordially loathed Elmley and Mona. Sibell only returned to Mad once during the reign of Mona, which lasted for fifty years.

  The best hope for the sisters would be a sequence of good marriages, but there was little prospect of that. As his condolence letter suggests, Evelyn was concerned about them. Throughout his long friendship with Maimie, Sibell and Coote he made jokes about possible suitors, but not even his wild imagination could have predicted that they would make such disastrous matches. Apart from Lettice, who had married her country baronet before the scandal, none of the Lygons married into the aristocracy or even the gentry. Perhaps this more than anything shows the legacy of their father’s disgrace.

  Of the three sisters, Sibell was the first to marry. She had had many affairs with prominent men such as Lord Beaverbrook. And she had some repute as a journalist. Though most of the pieces that appeared under her name in the Daily Express were actually by Beaverbrook, her column in Harper’s Bazaar was her own. She was very attractive, extremely tall, over six feet, and many were surprised that at the age of thirty-two she was still unmarried. It was said that like the big horses she rode, she was too headstrong to control. Ominously, she had a history of small confrontations with the wrong side of the law. On one occasion a policeman called at Madresfield, believing that she did not have a licence for her dogs. He was told that it was inconvenient for Lady Sibell to receive him. When he called again, he discovered that the new licence had been taken out just a few hours after his first call. The matter went to court and she was fined thirty shillings.

  She found herself a handsome pilot eight years her junior, named Michael Rowley. His mother had married (and would later divorce) Bendor, Duke of Westminster, the architect of the Lygons’ misery. She had owned a hairdressing salon on Bond Street, and briefly employed Sibell there.

  The wedding was announced at the beginning of 1939. It would be a quiet affair, ‘due to mourning’. The ceremony was then postponed three times. A date in early January at Caxton Hall was scratched when the groom’s father claimed never to have heard of Lady Sibell. The second date at the Oratory was cancelled. A third plan for a wedding at Marlow was also aborted. The ceremony finally took place at the Brompton Oratory in February 1939, in the presence of close family and friends.

  Two weeks later, apparently thinking it a great joke, Rowley told his new wife that he had been married to someone else the previous July. Something to do with a German girl while on holiday in Mexico – ‘But he didn’t think it was legal,’ Sibell later recalled. Unfortunately, the first wife, living in Bavaria, found out. She told of the passionate letters that Michael had written to her professing his love: ‘It is almost unbearable to be away from you’; ‘I adore you and will never give you up for one day’; ‘Nothing shall separate us.’ Her name was Eleonore, and they had been secretly engaged, but initially had no intention of marrying. After a drunken lunch while on holiday in Mexico, they had spotted a sign outside an office saying ‘Get Married Here’. When they went in they saw a young American couple in the process of marrying. The couple agreed to act as witnesses, and so they got married too. It was on his return to England that Rowley met and fell in love with Lady Sibell. The couple went over to Germany to see the first Mrs Rowley, and she appeared to accept the situation. Things came to a head later.

  Meanwhile, things had not been going well for Maimie. Some time before the war, Evelyn had written to her from Chagford commiserating with her fo
r having contracted a sexual disease: ‘Decent to hear your voice on telephone. V. sorry about your ear and crabs. Odd we should both have crabs together. It is worse for me to have no bush than it is for you. But it will grow again I hope. Perhaps we should get wigs to wear.’ ‘I expect there will soon be a war,’ he added, to pile general misery onto local difficulty.

  All her love affairs had ended in tears. Her beauty would not last for ever. Maimie had no choice but to make the best match she could. She too married in 1939. The girl who had consorted with Prince George and been spoken of as a possible royal bride had to make do with a Romanov instead of a Windsor. She married an exiled Russian prince, called Vsevolode Ivanovitch. The nephew of the last Tsar and second in line to the dissolved imperial throne, he was three at the time of the Bolshevik revolution. His English governess smuggled him out of Russia and he went to Eton and Oxford. He partly survived by selling off such family silver as had been brought out of Russia, but he could not get by without working. At one time he set himself up in business selling lubricants in north London, where he became known as Mr Romanoff.

  Maimie called him Vsev. Photographs show him as an earnest bespectacled man with black slicked-back hair. He does not look at all glamorous, unlike her other lovers such as Hubert Duggan and Prince George. Nevertheless, it gave a certain pleasure to place an announcement in The Times on 1 February 1939 to the effect that Lady Mary Lygon had become engaged to ‘Prince Vsevolode of Russia, son of the late Prince John Constantinovitch and of Princess Héléne of Serbia’.

  Evelyn wrote to Maimie to congratulate her on her engagement and she told him that she had a ‘v. decent engagement ring’ and joked that she wanted the title Princess Grainger but that Vsevolode said ‘no, she is the Princess Pavlosk’. Maimie told Evelyn that she was receiving instruction in the Orthodox Church from a nice beast. As with Evelyn, love led her to religious conversion. She also told Bo that she was very popular with Vsev’s family as ‘Boom jiggered some Patriarchs some time ago so they think I’m wonderful.’ She asked: ‘Can we come and sponge one weekend?’ In the same letter she also asked with concern about the appendix operation that Laura had just undergone. This led her to remember her own operation at the time of her mother’s funeral: ‘I wonder if her scar is bigger than mine which is one and a half inches. There is a lot of snobbery over that.’ She told Evelyn that Coote had bought a house in Upton upon Severn, and that Grainger was ill. Apart from her concern for Grainger, she seemed happy and ebullient: ‘V and I are going to be quite rich and you must come often to our luxurious Highclere – I am longing to see you.’ The expectation of riches was either a joke or seriously over-optimistic. The reality was that Vsev lived from hand to mouth. He, not George, was the genuine ‘pauper prince’.