The world into which Evelyn Waugh was born was in turmoil. Born in 1903, he was a child during WWI. England after the war was changed markedly by the abandonment of God and replaced with materialism. Civilization had become bankrupt. His artistic sense compelled him to search for understanding, a deeper meaning. School, work, marriage, painting, writing were helps and distractions. His intellectual pursuit continued. In 1930 at the age of 26 he completed his intellectual search with the aid of a patient priest, and became a Catholic. He now could make sense of the world and write about it with clarity. Waugh wrote: “Civilization, and by this I do not mean talking cinemas and tinned food, nor even surgery and hygienic houses, but the whole moral and artistic organization of Europe has not in its self the power of survival. It came into being through Christianity and without it has no significance or power to command allegiance. It is no longer possible as it was in the time of Gibbon to accept the benefits of civilization, and at the same time to deny the supernatural basis on which it rests. Christianity is in greater need of combative strength than it has been for centuries.”
Whispering Glades is the mock cemetery created by Waugh to show how the make- believe world of Hollywood plays out in the business of death. It is a false religion in the business of making money. Death is treated as just another stage of life except without animation, without movement, and most importantly, without a soul. The corpses look alive. The dead are not dead, just peacefully resting. The property is more amusement park than cemetery. The subject of death is treated with such delicacy that one is not sure what they are talking about. Everything is upside down. The Loved One is a horrifying vision of fact that is shaped into a work that tells a great truth. This bizarre and macabre and unusual work of art with a profound religious point of view is a vision of what happens to a society that denies its God, attacks nature and forgets that death is the moment of agony when soul and body separate and a human being stands before a judge. That fact hovers behind this book from the first page to the last. Eternity stands before us.
Dr. White opens part one of his commentary by declaring his love for Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited as one of his three favorite literary works. He goes on to describe how he used it as an apologetic for God’s truth among young men seeking to learn more about the Catholic faith. But White sees potential disaster in the modern decline of the proper use of our language, and the movement away from words and toward images, particularly movies and what White regards as the demonic evils of television.
In part two of his introductory comments on Wagh’s Brideshead Revisited, Dr. White continues his criticism of the electronic media (including computers) characterizing it as a false god: an unreal image that falsely represents reality. White stresses how Jesus taught not in images but in stories –– in parables. And he emphasizes the importance of “plot” as the most essential element in literature, and defined by Aristotle as narrative with a beginning, middle, and end. An outstanding example of which, in Dr. White’s view, is Brideshead Revisited.
Dr. White begins his commentary, “The Life of Evelyn Waugh,” with an exploration of the author’s background. Drawn on varied aspects of Waugh’s life this background formed the inspiration for Brideshead Revisited. The novel reveals that Waugh was in fact an apologist for the Catholic faith, albeit well aware of his own human failings. And his experiences during his years at Oxford also seep through the pages of the book. White goes on to explore Waugh’s life during the Roaring 20s, a time when the author ran with what was known as “the smart set.”
The first part of the book takes place in 1864 when the antihero is 40 years old. He is a government worker with a pathetic lonely life filled with images of his own false superiority. It keeps him aloof from all human contact. Now, the story goes back to 1848 when he is 24 years old. The 1840’s fostered egoism and the dream world of universal idealism. It is the natural extension of romanticism, which created a happy world while ignoring basic moral obligations. It is a false vision. There is this overwhelming sense of love of all humanity. It is easier to love humanity in the abstract rather than do actual works to help. The antihero is filled with egoism. He has to look down on others, but he also needs their attention and approval. How can he know he is wonderful unless others tell him? He loathes them because he needs them. This vanity destroys capacity for social union because he is much better than them. He has the chance to open himself up possibly for the first time in his life to a prostitute, it frightens him, and re runs back to his insanity to remain safely there.
