Devil's Whore, Part II: still disappointingly predictable and full of bodice ripper stereotypes. Though I will say the leading actress has a great period look. Still, given all the talent involved, I expected so much more, and I'm sulking at not getting it. (And considering rewatching Charles II - The Power and the Passion, which does a great job in delivering the ensueing epoch, its religious and political strife and its main characters in a complex and still compelling fashion.)

Brideshead Revisited, film version: I agree with yahtzee63's review here, which is beautifully phrased and to which I can add little. Except that any version of Brideshead Revisited, book, tv or film, makes me snap out of idyllic homoerotic Oxford scenes by thinking: "That's nice, boys, but who pays for the strawberries and the champagne, huh? Not you, so quit the whining later!" Which robs me of sympathy for Sebastian the poor little rich boy and Charles the social climber both.

Mind you: this might be caused not so much by my own social conscience than by the awareness of Evelyn Waugh as one of the most spectacularly unpleasant people and snobs on the planet. Which didn't stop him from being a witty writer, of course. Here are some choice excerpts from his correspondance with Nancy Mitford, which I might as well start with quotes about Brideshead Revisited:

NM: Darling Evelyn, Brideshead has come (...) - there are one or 2 things I long to know. Are you, or not, on Lady Marchmain's side? I couldn't make out. I suppose Charles ends by being more in love than ever before with Cordelia - so true to life being in love with a whole family (it has happened in mine tho' not lately). (...) I think Charles might have had a little more glamour - I can't explain why but he seemed to me a tiny bit dim & that is the only criticsim have to make because I'm literally dazzled with admiration.

EW: Dearest Nancy, Yes I know what you mean; he is dim, but then he is telling the story and it is not his story. It is all right for Benevunto Cellini to be undim but he is telling his own story and no one else's. I think the crucial question is: does Julia's love for him seem real or is he so dim that it falls flat; if the latter the book fails plainly. (...) Lady Marchmain, no I m not on her side; but God is, who suffers fools gladly; and the book is about God. Does that answer it?

NM: I quite see how the person who tells it is dim but then would Julia and her brother and her sister all be in love with him if he was? Well lov eis like that & one never can tell. What I can't understand is about God. Now I believe in God & I talk to him a very great deal & often tell him jokes but the God I believe in simply hates fools more than anything & he also likes people to be happy & people who love each other to live together - so long as nobody else's life is upset (& then he's not sure).

EW: There is no doubt that God does like dunces repugnant as it is. I think it is like the lower classes - everyone loves the simple gaffer until he starts telling us what he heard on The Brains Trust the evening before. We are all very lower class to God and our cleverness & second-hand scholarship bore him hideously.

Nancy Mitford tried to avoid theological subjects - but that was hard to do with Evelyn Waugh, who had all the fervour of a convert and seems to have regarded tolerance is one of the lethal sins. Occasionally they came up, which led to exchanges such as this:

EW: My dear Nancy, Would it not be best always to avoid any references of the Church or to your Creator? Your intrusions into this strange world are always fatuous.

NM: Don't start My Dear Nancy I don't like it. I can't agree that I must be debarred from ever mentioning anything to do with your creator. Try & remember that he also created me.

Their exchanges were quite often in this Punch and Judy style. See also:

NM: I hear your daughter Teresa is beautiful & fascinating how lucky for you.

EW: My daughter Teresa is squat, pasty-faced, slatternly with a most disagreeable voice - but it is true that she talks quite brightly. She has cost me the best part of 1500 pounds in the last year & afforded no corresponding pleasure.

He must have been horrid as a father; these kind of remarks about his children are quite the rule. Though as he grew older, he democratically disliked everybody. With the French (Nancy lived in France) getting special bile and Americans special condescension:

EW: You see Americans have discovered about homosexuality from a book called Kinsey Report (unreadable) & they take it very seriously. All popular plays in New York are about buggers but they all commit suicide. The idea of a happy pansy is inconceivable to them.

And then there is Evelyn Waugh's list of how to deal with fanmail. If you think Aaron Sorkin or Tim Kring or Russell T. Davies were rude...

a) Humble expressions of admiration. To these a post-card saying: I am delighted to learn that you enjoyed my book. E.W.
b) Impudent criticism. No answer.
c) Bores who wish to tell me about themselves. Post-card saying: Thank you for interesting letter. E.W.
d) Technical criticism. Post-card: Many thanks for your valuable suggestion. E.W.
e) Humble aspirations of would-be writers. If attractive a letter of discouragement. If unattractive a post-card.
f) Requests from University Clubs for a lecture. Printed refusal.
g) Requests from Catholic Clubs for lecture. Acceptance.
h) American students of 'Creative Writing' who are writing theses about one & want one, virtually, to write their theses for them. Printed refusal.
i) Tourists who invite themselves to one's house. Printed refusal.
j) Manuscript sent for advice. Return without comment. I also have some post-cards with my photograph on them which I send to nuns. In case of very impudent letters from married women I write to the husband warning him that his wife is attempting to enter into correspondance with strange men. Oh and of course
k) Autograph collectors: no answer
l) Indians & Germans asking for free copies of one's books:no answer.
m) Very rich Americans: polite letter. They are capable of buying 100 copies for Christmas presents.

****

Another recently read book: England's Mistress, by Kate Williams, which is a good and vividly written biography of Emma, Lady Hamilton. It occurs to me that after The Duchess brought back the Georgian age on the screen, we might be due for another take on Emma, with her improbable yet true life starting out in poverty, then going from exploited child servant to teenage prostitute to courtesan to wife of an ambassador to Nelson's mistress to dying in debts and poverty. Two of the most memorable screen portraits so far were Vivien Leigh back in the day in Churchill's favourite film, That Hamilton Woman (the Romantic version) versus Glenda Jackson in A Legacy to the Nation (the character eviscerating version - this is the Emma the vulgar drunk versus Fanny the noble wife story). Surely it's time for something balanced in between extremes? Novel-wise, there has been Susan Sontag's The Volcano Lover which is actually about Sir William Hamilton, Emma's husband, but the irrespressible Emma managed to kidnap the story and made herself the most memorable character anyway. Williams' biography is written with sympathy for Emma but without attempting to overlook her flaws. Or Nelson's, for that matter. It also does a great job bringing Georgian society to life, from the brothels to upper class parties, and, I thought, managed a more vivid portrait of Sir William and his relationship with Emma, both before and after Nelson, than most other renderings of this story. (Sir William Hamilton must be the character most baffling to contemparies and ensuing biographers until the present day, because he refuses to fit into clichés, being neither the "cold" husband - he married his nephew's cast-off mistress for love, after all - nor a jealous old man; he genuinenly liked Nelson and when Nelson threw a jealous fit imagining the Prince Regent might take Emma away from him wrote him a stern letter about being sensible and not upsetting Emma.)

The only complaint I have is a minor, minor nitpick. Quoth the author: "By the spring of 1787, she felt ready to show Goethe, travelling Europe to enjoy some of the celebrity of his smash-hit Sorrows of Young Werther and relax after a punishing schedule of work." Err, no. This was a decade after Werther (about whom Goethe at this point already felt like Arthur Conan Doyle about Sherlock Holmes), and Goethe didn't travel Europe, he lived in Italy for two years, enjoying not celebrity but a break from same (he travelled under a pseudonym). Also a chance to rediscover himself as a poet because he had tried to be a statesman after the young duke of Weimar had given him the job, for years; it was in Italy that Goethe decided he was a writer first and foremost and if he returned to Weimar, it would be on that condition.

(There seems to be a curse on writers about Emma Hamilton re: Goethe. Susan Sontag in The Volcano Lover presents him as a stiff humorless caricature, which owes more to both Thomas Mann's characterisation of the old Goethe in Lotte in Weimar - Sontag was a big TM fan - and Thomas Mann himself (he tended to write Goethe as a self portrait) as it did to JWG, who was at his best in Italy and absolutely enthusiastic about meeting Sir William - a fellow naturalist and lover of antiques! - and Emma, whom he described with much admiration in The Italian Journey.)