In Search of the Gothic City - from Modernity to Tradition in E.Waugh's
A Handful of Dust,
Asist. dr. Oana MACARI
Universitatea “Alexandru Ioan Cuza” Iaşi
In A Handful of Dust, as well as in most of his other novels, Evelyn Waugh ascertains a sharp
perception of the modern changing social context in which cynicism and indifference came to prevail. In
the foreword to Thomas Merton’s Elected Silence (1949) – fifteen years after the publication of A
Handful of Dust – the writer overtly asserts his opinion that there is an analogy between the modern
world and the Dark Ages and that the only way to find salvation is through ‘heroic prayer’.
In the natural order the modern world is rapidly being made uninhabitable by the scientists
and politicians. We are back in the age of Gregory, Augustine and Boniface, and in
compensation the Devil is being disarmed of many of his former enchantments. Power is
all he can offer now; the temptations of wealth and elegance no longer assail us. As in the
Dark Ages the cloister offers the sanest and most civilized way of life. And in the
supernatural order the times require more than a tepid and dutiful piety. Prayer must
become heroic. (Gallagher 1983:369)
He was often described as a writer who revived an essential comic tradition of the novel and notes himself
- in 1966 this time, after having finished a book on Jonathan Swift - that he found many affinities with the
temperament of the master. One of his essays, entitled ‘What to Do with the Upper Classes, A Modest
Proposal’ is not the only argument telling on his deep kinship with the Swiftian parodical vision.
At the time he wrote Black Mischief and A Handful of Dust, if, like Swift, he was no
lover of “that animal called man”, Waugh was also, like the master, able to love “John,
Peter, Thomas and so forth”. (…) At the time he produced these two novels he also was
master of an art of distance, detachment, and significant ironic motif. No longer need he, as
in the earlier novels, devise ways for minor characters to interpret events. He was master of
a deadly satiric tone, and of a subtle, complex, and mordant irony that eschewed
sentimental indulgence at the same time that it evoked in the reader emotions inextricable
from judgements of value (Carens 1987:7).
In this view, it is not surprising that the use of names is rarely neutral in his novels, since such a device is
indeed required by Waugh’s economical style in which the presentation of characters and situations is
accomplished mostly through dialogue and swift sketches.
The central character, Tony Last, may well illustrate this technique, as he is indeed the last of a
kind: the last of his family - for his only son dies and his wife divorces him, the last of his friends to prize
the values of the past, the last to search for order in a world suddenly bereft of order. He, the landlord of
Hetton Abbey, is opposed to the group of the "Bright Young Things" - which later in the novel is to be
joined by his wife Brenda - and who have chosen to deal with the new reality by means of cynicism and
self-destructiveness, denying any value to both past and present. And yet they all have one feature in
common: they all, without exception, remain paradoxically gracious and serene, even under
circumstances which more often than not convert into absurdity. Indeed, while reading the novel, for all
the sequence of sometimes tragic events, one feels trapped in a kind of eerie classical ballet, watching a
few light-headed characters evolving in a Brownian motion, unable to experience real sorrow nor real joy,
supervised by the uninvolved writer. Consequently, the first impulse of the reader is to shrug his (or her)
shoulders and ask ‘Why should I care, then?’ Yet, somehow, Tony Last manages to gain one’s sympathy,
partly because he ‘embodies the pathos of the wooden puppet that suddenly weeps real tears’ (Bergonzi
1972:125), partly because he is one of the few characters in Waugh' s work not only human, but also
humane.
He is representative for a type not present in the writer’s previous novels, and this is manifest in
the way the plot is constructed around him. It is true things do happen to him unjustly, and with similar
funny effects, in the same way they do to Paul Pennyfeather in Decline and Fall, to Adam FenwickSymes in Vile Bodies or to William Boot in Scoop, but, nonetheless, in A Handful of Dust – due to the
writer’s magnanimity in exposing at least some relation between cause and effect - one could perceive a
sort of balance, even if twisted and unstable, between the punishment he receives and his guilt.
The problem of guilt and punishment should probably be examined in the light of the changes in
perspective Waugh must have experienced as a ‘fresh’ Catholic, since his most reputable biographer –
Martin Stannard – argues that after Vile Bodies its author always wrote as a Catholic, having in mind ‘an
aristocratic and romantic ideal’ (Robson 1979:142). It may be too much to consider Tony as Waugh’s
ideal of any kind – remembering the warning at the beginning of Brideshead Revisited I mention further
on -but one cannot oversee a clear liking of the author towards him, which is not very common in the
relation the writer usually has with his characters, and even with real persons for that matter.
In this line of thought, one might regard Brenda Last as fulfilling certain external expectations
when she becomes bored with Tony and country life, starts to hate Hetton Abbey, has an affair with John
Beaver and in the end marries Jock Grant-Menzies. And this, occurring in the modern ‘new world’ Tony
hated so much, sounds more or less like a compelling sentence which is to be fulfilled. There appears thus
a clear delineation of the narrator who positions himself beyond a visible line – the moral line all satirists
draw - conscious of being one of the elect. Only very few of his characters ever manage to step over it, yet
Brenda, the adulterous wife, stands surprisingly close to it, in spite of the outrageous decisions she makes.
Last, however boring he appears in the eyes of the group of ‘The Bright Young Things” through
his inborn decency, almost manages to cross the line, and, to a certain extent, the writer identifies with
him in his endeavour to relive the past and to preserve its values. What saves it all from becoming
idealising and melodramatic is Waugh’s irony directed at his characters as well as at his own attempt; the
entire plot of A Handful of Dust being a mixture of farce and seriousness, ‘a modern Gothic comitragedy’ (Bradbury 1994: 245). The novel shows from the very beginning the writer’s inclination to
parody, since its title is overtly inspired by T.S.Eliot’s The Waste Land’ whose line “I will show you fear
in a handful of dust” on the title page bears a strong omen for the whole plot.
The way the modern society is rendered, as a new ‘Dark Ages’, makes Edmund Wilson observe
that Evelyn Waugh
manages to convey from beginning to end, from the comfortable country house to the
clearing in the Brazilian jungle, the impression of a terror, of a feeling that the bottom is
just about to drop out of things, which is the whole motivation of the book but of which the
characters are not shown to be conscious and upon which one cannot put one’s finger in
any specific passage.( Carens 1987: 45)
In Stephen Fry’s opinion, this choice - which stands as a sign of Waugh' s modernity – is no accident
when about the title of his ‘toughest, most ruthless novel,’ A Handful of Dust (Fry 1999:8). Moreover,
the titles of the first and the penultimate chapters - I. Du Côté De Chez Beaver and VI. Du Côté De
Chez Todd - quizzically allude to Marcel Proust’ s A la recherche du temps perdu, at the same time
highlighting the ‘painful ironies’(Carens 1987:6) of the book. Mr. Todd springs from “The Man Who
Loved Dickens”, one of Waugh’ s (not very accomplished) short stories which, enriched with extravagant
irony, is turned into the conclusion of the present novel.
Three other chapters bear all the same title, the difference being that two are numbered, in a kind
of gradual reverted ascent, or, better put, descent that follows Tony’s life: II. English Gothic, IV.
English Gothic - II, VII. English Gothic - III. With Waugh, the adjective ”Gothic” usually qualifies
houses, thus being related to architecture; the second chapter, for example, opens with the “county Guide
Book” description of Hetton Abbey, and the most conspicuous feature is its Gothic aspect:
This, [i.e. Hetton Abbey] formerly one of the notable houses of the county, was entirely rebuilt in
1864 in the Gothic style and is now devoid of interest. (A Handful of Dust, p.14)
Due to his economical style, Waugh manages, in only five words, to outline the conflict between the ‘old’
and the ‘new’ world, a conflict which is central to this novel par excellence. The two opposing worlds
have, through their representatives – Tony and the author of the guide – different likes and dislikes; in this
way the two small fragments above and below are subtly and effectively anticipatory of the gap between
the master of Hetton Abbey and the group of Bright Young Things, as well as of the former’s false sense
of invulnerability (as he depreciates their capability to jeopardize him and his world), which eventually
ends up in his destruction.
In spite of the blows he is dealt, he is doubtlessly a gentleman – whatever this may mean; in fact,
Waugh is always concerned with the gentry in his novels, this being one of the reasons for the fame he
had of supreme snobbery. Tony Last, the central figure of A Handful of Dust, outlines Evelyn Waugh’s
myth - fully developed in Brideshead Revisited - of the English Christian gentleman trapped in and
destroyed by the cruel new world. Last stands for the writer’s response to the disturbed history, which
everybody has to cope with after the World War, and thus becomes a projection of the author's prejudices
and ways of viewing the world. In fact, as Stephen Spender argues, the group of novels starting with
Decline and Fall and ending with A Handful of Dust are essentially concerned with the opposition
between ‘an England still dreaming of its past greatness’ called forth by country mansions and the
countryside, and ‘an England of the 1920s and early 1930s in which people live their lives as though they
were part of another, and absurd, dream’. Outside the two dreams of the traditional England and the
Bright Young Things, the will awakens into a nightmarish reality beyond which ‘there lies yet another
dream: of the renewed greatness of England’ (Carens 1987: 59).
Nevertheless, even in this perspective, to the benefit of the artistic value of the novel and ever
consistent with its ironic tone, the author manages to preserve his detachment and does not bother to
impose his moral judgement on either characters or readers. Significantly enough, the author’s note on the
first edition of Brideshead Revisited reads like that: ‘I am not I, thou art not he or she, they are not
they’.This stands for a serious warning: the readers – and especially the critics - should be aware of the
convention of make-believe, by acknowledging the distinctions between author - narrator, characters actual persons. They are not to identify with the characters in the novel; they must not make assumptions
about the author via his work, pretending they come to understand him, and anyone who knows
something about Evelyn Waugh’s real life will agree that he meant every word of it.
The novel opens with a state of apparently everlasting balance in Tony's life, described by one
character as follows:
‘I often think Tony Last's one of the happiest men I know. He's got just enough money, loves the
place, one son he's crazy about, devoted wife, not a worry in the world’
‘Most enviable.’ (A Handful of Dust, p.12)
Ironically, the two actors speaking above are the ones to destroy Tony’s happiness, and they are going to
do that with the same detachment and lack of intention to wrong him with which they discuss about him
at the moment. Jock Grant-Menzies – who at the end of the novel becomes Brenda’s husband, and John
Beaver - who very soon will be her lover - mean no harm for Tony, they just let things happen with a
serene amorality specific to most of Waugh’ s characters.
The state of affairs is strikingly corresponding to what occurs in the writer’s real life. He marries
Evelyn Gardner in June 1928 and this is how Martin Stannard describes what follows:
The couple appeared to their friends to be enviably contented in each other’s company.
Then, quite suddenly, in the summer of 1929, she left him for another man. It was a blow
to his self-esteem from which he never fully recovered. Twelve months after filling a
petition against his wife, in September 1930, he was received into the Catholic Church, and
his ‘conversion’ generated considerable publicity. (Stannard 1987: xviii)
The same initial state of apparent happiness, followed by the same unexpected male-ego-hurting treachery
happens to Tony - perhaps (I may add here) not so surprisingly Waugh’s favorite among his characters.
Incongruity, with the meaning Paul Lewis gives to the term, between his expectations and their result
seems to have sublimated, in the course of the artistic process, in the treatment of the characters of the
novel. In this way, humour becomes the appropriate vehicle for the counter-reaction to actual events in
Waugh’s real life.
Further on the writer seems to have tried to show what is in store for one of the few likeable
characters in his fiction when thrown in the tumult of the modern world. In fact, Last ceases to be
insulated from ‘modernity’ the moment his wife - after seven years of marriage - realizes she is bored
with country life at Hetton Abbey and initiates an affair with John Beaver. The loss of his son in an
accident, of his wife by divorce, of his home by deception – this whole tangle of circumstances sends
Tony in search for the ideal city in the South American jungle. He becomes obsessed with it, even
managing to become
thoughtless about the events of the immediate past. His mind was occupied with the City, the
Shining, the Many Watered, the Bright Feathered, the Aromatic Jam. He had a clear picture of it in his
mind. It was Gothic in character, all waves and pinnacles, gargoyles battlements, groining and tracery,
pavilions and terraces, a transfigured Hetton, pennons and banners floating on the sweet breeze,
everything luminous and translucent; a coral citadel crowning a green hill-top sown with daisies, among
groves and streams; a tapestry landscape filled with heraldic and fabulous animals and symmetrical,
disproportionate blossom. (A Handful of Dust, p.160)
This idealistic search makes him end up as Mr. Todd’s prisoner, condemned ironically to forever read
Dickens aloud for the maniac.
At the beginning of the novel, the couple give a strange impression that they are perfectly
sufficient for one another, thus the child seems to have no place in their love relationship. Again, the
twisted idea of punishment in Waugh’s moral standpoint makes Tony lose his spouse, the centre of his
world, the most cherished element of his possessions. When, seeking a replacement, he turns to his son
for relief, it is too late, because the child dies in a stupid accident.
Quite early in the plot, Tony finds out he is no longer protected by his dearly preserved ‘Victorian
territory’ - made up of Victorian architecture, Victorian marriage and Victorian social relations - in which
the concept of duty is of primary importance. As he says in the beginning of the novel during a
conversation with his wife
we've always lived here and I hope John will be able to keep it on after me. One has a duty
towards one's employees, and towards the place too. It's a definite part of English life which would be a
serious loss if...(A Handful of Dust, p.18)
The course of the plot proves that this is no serious loss whatsoever, and even that nothing can be serious
or valuable in the age of chrome plating and amorality, yet Tony is stubborn enough to try and reverse the
trend. As much as he – and, implicitly, Waugh - may hate the industrialised society, having Mammon at
its centre, money still occupies a pivotal position in the development of the plot.
At a superficial look, Tony Last does embody the perfect image of a natural-born victim, whose
main guilt is that he takes too many things for granted, apparently unaware of what is going on around
him. He desperately clings to his old ways, merely assuming the part of the ostrich as a means of selfdefense, of resistance against evidence, as none is so blind as the one who would not see. This insensitive
attitude is due, according to Bergonzi, to his reverie about the ‘English Gothic for which Hetton is the
romanticized scene’ (Bergonzi 1970: 235).
This stage is followed by a prompt reaction the moment the last straw is added, and consequently
he ceases to be the gentleman the others expected him to be. He has previously consented to Brenda’s
appearing as the plaintiff though she was the unfaithful wife and, moreover, a certain weekend ‘was fixed
for Tony's infidelity’ (Waugh 1951: 129). But when the others, - in pursuit of ‘justice’ for Brenda - try to
make him admit that fabricated guilt, his only hope left is that she might not be part of this. Soon enough
though he has the confirmation of the fact that she is not at all childish, light-headed or misadvised, but,
instead, ruthless when it comes to money and ready to sacrifice his most beloved things - to make him
give up Hetton in order to buy Beaver for her. At that moment, he has a revelation:
His mind has suddenly become clearer on many points that had puzzled him. A whole Gothic
world had come to grief ... there was now no armour glittering through the forest glades, no embroidered
feet on the green sward; the cream and dappled unicorns had fled...(A Handful of Dust, p.151).
Tony’s awakening is sudden and surprisingly tough, as it appears from the decision he makes clear for his
brother-in-law:
'Brenda is not going to get her divorce. The evidence I provided at Brighton [i.e. of his infidelity]
isn't worth anything. There happens to have been a child there all the time. She slept both nights in the
room I am supposed to have occupied. If you care to bring the case I shall defend it and win, but I think
when you have seen my evidence you will drop it. I am going away for six months or so. When I come
back, if she wishes it, I shall divorce Brenda without settlements of any kind. Is that clear?' (A Handful of
Dust, p.152)
What really makes him a tragic hero is that he knows he is doomed (as a representative of the ‘things of
the past’), yet has the courage to stand up in front of his destiny. It almost does not matter he apparently
has no chance to escape his imprisoner and return - though in an American serialisation the novel ends
differently, with Tony returning to London, saving Brenda from poverty and replacing her in her flat
there. Through him, Waugh ironically infers that there still is a chance for the salvation of the world,
especially since Hetton Abbey is inherited by Tony’s poor relatives, who, while being less idealistic than
he, are nevertheless equally different from "The Bright Young Things".
Tony Last is placed at the centre of his small world which is embodied in the domain of Hetton
Abbey, where he tries hard to preserve Victorian values as opposed to the non-values of the modern
world. Nevertheless, when this realm begins to shatter, he attempts to move its centre to a margin where
to reconstruct it in a Gothic environment.
Through the punishment he receives - that of reading aloud, for a half-breed, the novels of the most
representative Victorian writer - Waugh suggests that the values of the past are in fact sham values and
that the past is no better than the present. Again, the reason for that punishment seems to be the change
produced in the author’s perspective by the newly acquired religious orientation. Richard Wasson argues
that
Tony’s road to hell is paved with the literature of the Victorian era, which in its attempt to
preserve the picturesque trappings and the ethical values of Christianity sacrificed the
essence of faith. Tony’s imagination, commited to the Victorian values represented by his
Victorian Gothic ancestral home, can find no way out of the dilemma of modern life except
to go on a quest which is conceived in terms of Tennysonian romance and Dickensian
melodrama and finally leads him to spiritual and physical death. (Carens 1987: 134)
By deciding to leave for the Amazonian jungle in search of a Gothic city Tony Last undertakes the guilt
of his contemporaries, in spite of the lack of sentiment and ideals he shares with them. The uncertainty all
of Waugh’s heroes experience is a human universal, and it manages to destroy the comfortable sense of
smugness society builds around the modern man. The central characters in his comic novels try to find the
way out by a process of trial and error and, even if they do not succeed in their attempt, it is the reader
who benefits from their ordeal. The implicit solution offered by the writer is salvation through a profound
redemption that can be attained only by the faithful.
Select Bibliography
Bergonzi, Bernard, (ed.), 1970, Sphere History of Literature in the English Language, vol. 7, The
Twentieth Century, Sphere Books Ltd., London
Bergonzi, Bernard, 1972, The Situation of the Novel, Penguin BooksBradbury, Malcolm, (ed.), 1990, The
Novel Today, Contemporary Writers on Modern Fiction, Fontana Press
Bradbury, Malcolm, 1992, The Social Context of Modern English Literature, London
Carens, James F., 1966, The Satiric Art of Evelyn Waugh, University of Washington Press
Carens, James F., 1987, Critical Essays on Evelyn Waugh, G. K. Hall & Co., Boston, Massachusetts
Frye, Northrop, 1967, Anatomy of criticism, Four Essays, Atheneum, New York
Fry, Stephen, 1999, ‘My Problem with Evelyn’, in The Daily Telegraph, 10 July 1999
Gallagher, Donat, (ed.), 1983, The Essays, Articles and Reviews of Evelyn Waugh, London
Robson, W. W., 1979, Modern English Literature, Oxford University Press
Stannard, Martin, 1987, Evelyn Waugh, Norton & Company, Inc., New York
Waugh, Evelyn,
A Handful of Dust, 1951, Penguin Books