The good old Brits: Orwell, Waugh, Greene
by Joe Palmer
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David Lebedoff in his new book The Same Man believes that we need both George Orwell and Evelyn Waugh now more than ever. I can make the case that we also need Graham Greene for the same reasons.
The writings of Eric Arthur Blair (1903-50), who used the pseudonym George Orwell, are marked by a profound consciousness of social injustice, an intense dislike of tyrants, and a passion for clarity in language. Evelyn Waugh (1903-66) wrote wickedly hilarious yet fundamentally religious stories, droll attacks on a century that, in his opinion, had cut itself off from tradition and caused to perish all the dear things of the world. Orwell and Waugh were almost alone among their peers in seeing what the future - our time - would bring, and they dedicated their lives to warning us against what was coming: a world of material wealth but few values, an existence without tradition or community or common purpose, where lives are measured in dollars. They explained why, despite general prosperity, so many people feel that our way of life is a Frankenstein's creation.
Graham Greene (1904-91) was best known as a novelist. His works explore the ambivalent moral and political issues of the modern world. Greene enjoyed literary acclaim and wide popularity, returning constantly to the persistent problem of grace in his fiction because he saw so much suffering in his personal life. Because of Greene's focus on God's favour and inward harmony, in his review of Graham Greene's novel The Heart of the Matter George Orwell attacked Greene's concept of "the sanctified sinner": Greene appeared to share the idea, which had been floating around ever since Baudelaire, that there was something rather special and distinguished in being damned; Hell is a sort of high-class country club, membership in which is reserved for Catholics only. The human mind is inspired enough when it comes to inventing the horrors of Hell, but when it tries to invent a Heaven, it shows a profound lack of imagination. On the other hand, it does not have to go far to find examples of what Hell is like.
For example, George Orwell was shot through the throat and nearly killed by a fascist sniper in the Spanish Civil War when he casually stood up in the trenches to light a cigarette.
Evelyn Waugh showed similar sang-froid in the Second World War when he calmly strolled through Luftwaffe machinegun fire wearing a bright white duffle coat that presented the perfect target.
"You bloody little swine, take off that coat!" yelled his friend and fellow officer Randolph Churchill. To which the unruffled Waugh replied, "I'll tell you what I think of your repulsive manners when the bombardment is over." German Stuka dive bombers were attacking British troops, including Churchill and Waugh, on Crete during the evacuation of the island, and Waugh was herding Tommies and captured Jerries into the old ship that was to take them from Heraklion out of reach of the German Luftwaffe's bombers flying over Mt Ida. Randolph Churchill (1911-68), Winston's son, was educated at Eton and Oxford, becoming a journalist. He was a Conservative Member of Parliament from 1940 to 1945, and he was Waugh's best friend.
Waugh and Orwell met each other only one time, when Orwell was dying of tuberculosis. However, The Same Man brilliantly shows that in their life and work, both writers rebelled against a modern world run by a privileged and often brutal few people, by the oligarchs who are in it only for the money, and of course corrupting power.
During an audience with the Pope, Randolph Churchill said to him, "I expect you know my friend Evelyn Waugh, who, like you, your Holiness, is a Roman Catholic."
"One cannot really be a Catholic and grown up," George Orwell maintained. That's the point. Who in his right mind wants to be grown up? Who wants to take responsibility, suffer disappointment, pay the bills, and act like a grown up? Why must we believe that being fully grown up is a good thing? We know most people are never going to be more than dull normal in their intellectual and emotional capacities. Why should we expect grownup, adult, moral behavior from them? That's why we have laws, courts, policemen, prosecutors, and religion - to keep the mob in their place, to make public life as safe as possible.
"Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven? Jesus called a little child unto him, and set him in the midst of them. And said, Verily I say unto you, Except ye be changed, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven. Take heed that ye despise not one of these little ones; for I say unto you, That in heaven their angels do always behold the face of my Father which is in heaven." Matthew 18:2
According to Sir Angus Wilson, "God knows how you Protestants can be expected to have any sense of direction... It's different with us. I haven't been to mass for years, I've got every mortal sin on my conscience, but I know when I'm doing wrong. I'm still a Catholic."
"All this fuss about sleeping together. For physical pleasure I'd sooner go to my dentist any day," said Evelyn Waugh. He should have been a monk, except that he had seven acknowledged children.
In 1929 the tormented Evelyn (He-Eve) Waugh was cuckolded and abandoned by his first wife Evelyn (She-Eve) Gardner. The writer desperately needed something to cling to. Something unshakeable. He-Eve found it in the unchanging Roman Catholic Church. This yearning for something constant was mirrored in Waugh's reactionary political views. He called himself an "Old Tory". That phrase meant the Tory orthodoxy of George III - reforms based only on practical expediency; not too much emphasis on democracy; a leading role for the monarchy; society ordered by the existing social system, and social change discouraged. Waugh never voted because he despised Britain's Conservative Party, and he loathed its Labour Party ("like the occupying German soldiers of WWII, the grey lice"), and the "Attlee Terror" of socialism in Welfaria, Zooville, Rapetown, Dirtburg, or Lazyopolis, as London was affectionately known.
At the end of World War II and the rise of socialism in Britain, the posh reactionaries said hello to the brave and revolting new world, to the end of Western civilization, and goodbye to everything nice forever.
Before the Crusades against the modern world, against the old and original Christians, Jews, and Moslems, the priests of the Roman Church did exactly as they had opportunity to do, just like everyone else. Their vocation was to make the most of their jobs as community organizers and counselors, gaining whatever property rights and family members they could acquire along the way, the richer the better. They were earthy, and possessive of the world of food, land, people, and power. The bishop was the one with the most houses, like John McCain. But then, and it was not until the Albigensian Crusades, which the pope carried out against the proto-Protestant Cathars in France in the 13th century, that the holy ones, the priests, learned that they should not keep mistresses and have children, that the father-centered family and an autocrat's property rights were not the same as theirs. All men lived and worked as slaves or servants then in the system we call feudalism, and they kept slaves and servants, and their families were composed of slaves and servants. Their wives were their personal property as were all their children and retainers and hangers-on, and hired and contracted workers. The terms of ownership were different from today's. Everything was different. People who could afford good clothing were the gentry. A gentleman got special treatment from everybody else. He was better than they were because he was better dressed as befitted his station in life.
These days, the no-longer so "sinful" and often-celibate Roman Catholic priests are the purer ones, the Cathari, the ones who are not supposed to fornicate or to bring children into this Hell of existence.
"Let them die in childbirth, that's why they are there," Martin Luther wrote. A moderately prosperous man could have as many (serial) wives as he needed, just like today. Throughout history everywhere, but up until the 19th Century in the West, four, five, or six wives, one after the other, died under each husband. That's why women took their husbands' names.
This is what the old Bogomils knew - that the flesh is evil, carrying the curse of suffering, and so they allowed the old ones, when their randy days were over, to lie down in all comfort to pass away, honoured and loved. The parfaits, as the old ones, both men and women, were called, also served as their priests, sanctifying their rites and sacraments, the holy steps of life, just as the Holy Eunuchs, the priests, do today. Mortification, fasting, prayer, death, and final peace are the rewards. This is what devout Catholics know today.
The Second Vatican Council (1962-65) shook Waugh's Catholic foundations. He was blistering in his ridicule of "hootenanny liturgies," anxious as he saw slip away much he'd depended on in Catholicism. In 1964 he wrote, "When I first came into the Church I was drawn, not by the splendid ceremonies but the spectacle of the priest as a craftsman. He had an important job to do which none but he was qualified for. A kind of anti-clericalism is abroad which seeks to reduce the priest's unique sacramental position. Pray God I will never apostatise but I can only now go to church as an act of duty and obedience. Protests avail nothing." Waugh was highly critical ofVatican II's 1960s changes to his beloved Tridentine Liturgy, which he loved for its timelessness.
See his letters on the subject: Bitter Trial, edited by S Reid.
O, the 60s! I found the change from tradition and mystery to cowboy church Sunday school disgusting. I shall never forget a young Roman Catholic priest in Ann Arbor tearing a supermarket-broiled chicken to pieces and handing the schmaltzy, greasy morsels of the Host to those students taking communion, shouting "Make it last!"
The priest has no business facing the congregation. The congregation is not there for a lesson in manners. The priest is there to perform miracles. I believe in magic.
Before and after his 1937 successful marriage Waugh traveled and wrote - to British Guyana, Africa, North Africa, Abyssinia, Mexico. His fiction included A Handful of Dust in 1934, which many consider his best novel, and Scoop (1938), his send-up of war correspondents. Slowly taking shape, however, was Brideshead (1944), written and produced under circumstances to perplex the modern imagination. A serving officer with the Royal Marines, Waugh was given time off during World War II to finish it. He had been decorated for conspicuous bravery under German air attack on Crete. He was back in uniform in Tito's Yugoslavia, invited to help his buddy Randolph on a military and diplomatic mission. He and Churchill narrowly escaped capture or death when the Germans undertook Operation Rösselsprung. Paratroops and glider-borne storm troops attacked the partisans' headquarters where they were staying. The galleys of Brideshead Revisited were parachute-dropped to him so he could do final revisions. The galleys returned to London in a diplomatic pouch.
There'll always be an England, thank God.
