The Curmudgeonly Catholic: Three Life Lessons from Evelyn Waugh – Crisis Magazine
Today marks nearly one hundred years since English novelist, essayist, and humorist Evelyn Waugh converted to Catholicism. Waugh is perhaps best recognized in the United States for writing Brideshead Revisited a rich, elegiac chronicle of a fractured aristocratic family s struggles with the Catholic faith and a young man s hard-won discovery of the truth offered by the Church. But his work also includes classics like A Handful of Dust, Scoop, and the darkly farcical World War II trilogy Sword of Honour. Despite having died nearly sixty years ago, Waugh s Catholicism still stands as an admirable example of devotion to Holy Mother Church, especially in times of trial and tribulation.
Born in Hampstead, England, in 1903 and raised in the Anglican church, Waugh was an aggressive agnostic by the age of fifteen and a full-fledged hedonist by the time he started studying at the University of Oxford. His time there was spent predominantly in drunkenness and homosexual relationships. His studies suffered to the extent that he was forced to leave and take a position as a schoolteacher at a ramshackle school in Wales, which served as the inspiration for his first novel, Decline and Fall, a semi-autobiographical comedy published in 1928.
As a newly-successful writer, Waugh returned to the party scene in Oxford and London, focusing his romantic interests on women now, not on men. His first marriage fell apart when his wife had an affair, rebuffed Waugh s attempts at reconciliation, and eventually left him. Having attempted suicide once before, Waugh sought refuge this time in the pinnacle of order here on earth: the Catholic Church.
I like Waugh and consider his writing quite humorous. The old UK version of Brideshead with Jeremy Irons et al. is pretty good too, though it is a bit dated. Waugh was no saint and spends a lot of time trying to show that Catholics have a superior claim to high social status than Anglicans, which is a tough case to make, but still rather fun to indulge.