Decline and Fall

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Decline and Fall Decline and Fall is a novel by the English author Evelyn Waugh, first published in 1928. It was Waugh's first published novel. Decline and Fall is based in part on Waugh's schooldays at Lancing College, undergraduate years at Hertford College, Oxford, and his experience as a teacher at Arnold House in north Wales.[1] It is a social satire that employs the author's characteristic black humour in lampooning various features of British society in the 1920s. The novel's title is a contraction of Edward Gibbon's The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. The title alludes also to the German philosopher Oswald Spengler's The Decline of the West (1918–1922), which first appeared in an English translation in 1926 and which argued, among other things, that the rise of nations and cultures is inevitably followed by their eclipse. Waugh read both Gibbon and Spengler while writing his first novel.[2] Waugh's satire is unambiguously hostile to much that was in vogue in the late 1920s, and "themes of cultural confusion, moral disorientation and social bedlam...both drive the novel forward and fuel its humour."[3] This "undertow of moral seriousness provides a crucial tension within [Waugh's novels], but it does not dominate them."[4] Waugh himself stated boldly in his 'Authors Note' to the first edition: 'Please bear in mind throughout that IT IS MEANT TO BE FUNNY.'

Plot summary Modest and unassuming theology student Paul Pennyfeather falls victim to the drunken antics of the Bollinger Club and is subsequently expelled from Oxford for running through the grounds of Scone College without his trousers. Having thereby defaulted on the conditions of his inheritance, he is forced to take a job teaching at an obscure public school in Wales called Llanabba, run by Dr Fagan. Attracted to the wealthy mother of one of his pupils, Pennyfeather becomes private tutor to her boy, Peter, and then engaged to be married to her—the Honourable Mrs Margot Beste-Chetwynde (who later becomes "Lady Metroland," and appears in Waugh's other novels).[5] Pennyfeather, however, is unaware that the source of her income is a number of high-class brothels in South America. Arrested on the morning of the wedding, after running an errand for Margot related to her business, Pennyfeather takes the fall to protect his fiancée's honour and is sentenced to seven years in prison for traffic in prostitution. Margot marries another man with government ties and he arranges for Paul to fake his own death and escape. In the end he returns to where he started at Scone. He studies under his own name, having convinced the college that he is the distant cousin of the Paul Pennyfeather who was sent down previously. The novel ends as it started, with Paul sitting in his room listening to the distant shouts of the Bollinger Club. This is Waugh's first book, and one of his finest. This is an absurd story of a young man, expelled (or "sent down") from Oxford for indecent behaviour, who obtains a job as a teacher at a less than salubrious third-rate public school in Wales and is then entrapped in a series of bizarre events that take him on a rollercoaster ride through upper-class circles. The central character, Paul Pennyfeather, is a naive soul, full of gusto and enthusiasm, but lacking in common sense. The use of the term "sent down from Oxford" to describe his "decline" is lightweight in comparison to his

subsequent "fall" (another type of being "sent down"); although I can't help feeling that in the world of the Oxbridge undergraduate, the expulsion from Oxford is the true fall in his life. I was a little disappointed by the latter half of the book, the rollercoaster speeds up, and it does feel rushed and a little too contrived by the final chapters. But this is Waugh's first novel, so a minor issue in the overall context of the amusing storylines and entertaining characters. Plot: I was so pleasantly surprised at my enjoyment of this book. I had not expected to find it as good or as easy to read as it ended up being. The plot follows the story of Paul Pennyweather who within the first 2 pages is forced to leave oxford university through no fault of his own. This leads him to starting a career in a boys school and ends up meeting a very important lady through this job. The plot was funny to say the lease. I love a school novel and this was an interesting one. It also gave a really clear idea on the life style of the 1920’s. There was a very similar tone to the great Gatsby but with less of a party lifestyle. The ending was brilliant I was so motivated to read those last few pages! Characters: Paul was a misfortunate character, things just kept happening to him. Like most of the characters in the book they had misfortune and the cards did not play out to them. Which felt lie to me a comment on the society at the time. Paul always had a really good humour to him and I enjoyed reading about him and his lack of complaining made me really idolize him. Favourite aspects: I liked the 3rd section mostly, it was a brilliant section to read. The writing of it was really descriptive and kept and easy tone to it. Making the whole novel a lot easier to read then I had anticipated. Themes: The main theme is the idea of society in the 1920’s, I love this era. So to read about it and to see how it effects different classes and views was really interesting. Structure: The 3 part structure was really nice, it showed clearly the significance of the 3 events in his life. The section where also more fun to read as you could see the shifts in class and how each time the event ended it was a significant point.

This was Waugh's first novel and was received with great acclaim, even by my old favourite Arnold Bennett. However I find it like eating whipped cream. It goes down easy, but doesn't fill me up. Clearly I lack the required level of sensibility to appreciate Waugh. Which is to say an addiction to the riotous upper classes. If you think there is nothing better than a snazzily dissolute aristocrat then this is the satire for you. It romps from Bullingdon Club style antics at Oxford via cut price private schools, white slavery, prison and back again. The hero learns nothing, but is simply spun round full circle on Fortune's wheel. What is earnest is for Waugh laughable and comes in for punishment or abuse whether that be the League of Nations or Prison reformers. But the rakish, so long as they are blue-blooded, will survive and thrive.

Being of a tragically earnest disposition myself Waugh sharpens my appreciation for Madame Guillotine as an agent for social improvement. But it would be a sad world if we all thought alike. According to the introduction to the Penguin edition, referring to his own work Waugh said ‘I regard writing not as investigation of character but as an exercise in the use of language, and with this I am obsessed. I have no technical psychological interest. It is drama, speech and events that interest me.’ Yet he is very precise in his depiction of English class conscious society. Witty, funny, and piercingly critical, it portrays in Paul Pennyfeather the stereotypical, quintessential English gentleman who sails effortless through life's up and downs (in this respect, the passing of Lord Tangent with no consequences for those involved is also a gem). The "cover story" is itself hilarious, with Paul's almost perfect composure providing a comedic counterpoint to the innumerable catastrophes befalling him and those around him. I can imagine how contemporaries must have loved and laughed at the myriad of clever references to the contemporary political and cultural elites. At the same time, society is severely reprimanded: from the justice system, to the press, to conventions and privilege, which I read all as different manifestations of the same "ill", the English class system. There are further reflections of what it all means - there are several references to suicide here and there, but also to some form of renewal, as in the many lives of Grimes, Philbrick and Fagan, not to mention Paul himself and Margot. And then there is Otto Silenus' simile between a Paris Luna Park ride and people notion of life ‘People don’t see that when they say “life” they mean two different things. They can mean simply existence, with its physiological implications of growth and organic change. They can’t escape that – even by death, but because that’s inevitable they think the other idea of life is too – the scrambling and excitement and bumps and the effort to get to the middle. And when we do get to the middle, it’s just as if we never started. It’s so odd. And is it different lives, or different identities? Paul's return to Scone as an unrecognised, new Mr Pennyfeather and his last conversation with Peter seem to come down for the latter. The writing is also beautiful throughout, carrying the reader effortlessly along, though at points Waugh seems to want to remind somewhat more explicitly how good he is at this Surely he had followed in the Bacchic train of distant Arcady, and played on the reeds of myth by forgotten streams, and taught the childish satyrs the art of love? Had he not suffered unscathed the fearful dooms of all the offended gods of all the histories – fire, brimstone and yawning earthquakes, plague and pestilence? Had he not stood, like the Pompeian sentry, while the Citadels of the Plain fell to ruin about his ears? Had he not, like some grease-caked Channel-swimmer, breasted the waves of the Deluge? Had he not moved unseen when darkness covered the waters?

Evelyn Waugh's first novel, Decline and Fall, is a delightful satiric comedy. It is based in part on Waugh's undergraduate years at Hertford College, Oxford, and his experience as a teacher in Wales. He is sent down from Oxford and as a result takes a position at the Llanabba school in Wales. The school itself is dingy, depressing, and seems always on the verge of coming apart at the seams. The masters, Captain Grimes, Mr. Prendergast, and Paul, are all unqualified for their positions, the students are frightfully undisciplined, and little or no learning ever takes place within Llanabba Castle's walls. In this episode and others I encountered the author's not so subtle satire and characteristic black humor in lampooning various features of British schools and society in the 1920s. The novel's title is a contraction of Edward Gibbon's The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. But it also alludes to the German philosopher Oswald Spengler's The Decline of the West (1918–1922), which first appeared in an English translation in 1926 and which argued, among other things, that the rise of nations and cultures is inevitably followed by their eclipse. Waugh read both Gibbon and Spengler while writing his first novel. I tremendously enjoyed the picaresque adventures of its hero, Paul Pennyfeather, as he encountered barely believable difficulties in "getting along". Waugh's characterization is superb while his satire is unambiguously hostile to much that was in vogue in the late 1920s, and themes of cultural change and confusion, moral disintegration and social decay all drive the novel forward and fuel its humor. This book was a joy to read even if you do not participate in all of Mr. Waugh's inside references. It is a worthy introduction to the novels of one of the finest authors of our century. (less)

Decline And Fall is Waugh at his most piercing, polemical and disturbing. The cast of irredeemable characters behaving outrageously and voicing opinions of such venom and prejudice makes for unsettling - yet hilarious - reading. Unlike lesser haters, Waugh doesn't secretly love or admire them, he hates them all. It's difficult to unpick the authorial voice from the ridiculous views of some of the most preposterous protagonists, and this is the charm of the work - you won't read it and feel uplifted, in fact you'll be lucky if you don't feel a bit sullied. It's the outbursts that are the best, such as the vicar commenting that an interest in liturgical matters in the laity is usually a sign of the onset of madness, or Dr Fagan's rant about the Welsh - "we can trace almost all of the disasters of English history or the influence of Wales. Think of Edward of Caernarvon, the first Prince of Wales, a perverse life...and an unseemly death, then the Tudors and the dissolution of the Church, then Lloyd George, the temperance movement, Nonconformity and lust stalking hand in hand through the country, wasting and ravaging." Can't argue really.... If you think of Waugh as Brideshead, repressed sexuality and country house psychosexual drama, Decline And Fall will disabuse you. One of the most caustic, difficult and unloveable of authors he fathered the decline in deference by portraying the upper classes as demented, sexually dysfunctional, avaricious, stupid and morally bankrupt. It's probably best he's not around to see the celebrity obsessed, Hello/Heat culture of the times, or George Osborne as chancellor.... (less)

I have been re-visiting books which I read in my youth. This is an interesting activity. I began reading Tess of the D'Urbervilles in this vein, only to find that I had never read it in the first place. More

about that later. Reading 'Decline and Fall' which I probably read while I was at Oxford, and generally a fan of Waugh's use of language I was preparing myself for a treat. I was ready to luxuriate back into a bubble-bath of wit. I recalled the opening scenes of the Bollinger Club (so opportunely recalled in that our new Prime Minister was a member of the Bullingdon Club whose practices are most likely those satirised here). The Dons crouch at the window rubbing their hands in glee at the fines to be collected from the youthful vandalism and Waugh emits the immortal descrpition ..'it is the sound of English county families baying for broken glass'. However, what must have appeared rippingly humorous in 1928 - when Mrs Beste-Chetwynde, the guest of honour, turns up with her black boyfriend called 'Chokey' - is written in a form of cold racism mesmerisingly unfunny to today's perceptions. Try reading this without your stomach turning: 'I think it's an insult bringing a nigger here,' said Mrs Clutterbuck. 'It's an insult to our own women.' 'Niggers are all right,' said Philbrick. 'Where I draw the line is a Chink, nasty inhuman things. I had a pal bumped off by a Chink once. Throat cut horrible, it was, from ear to ear'. Clearly Waugh ascribes the words to the character, who in the latter sentence is a duplicitous confidence trickster posing as a butler, but the Chokey theme carried on long enough to cure me completely of any nostalgia I might have had for this book.

I really enjoyed Decline and Fall. It was certainly not on the level of Sword of Honor or Brideshead Revisited, but it was a delightful read. I'd recently listened to the BBC adaptation that someone (Judy? Nigeyb?) recommended, so I had a pretty good idea of the story, but the book was so much better. There were several times when I burst out laughing at Waugh's humor. I especially loved the Arnold Bennett comment in the Resurrection chapter. What I didn't love were Waugh's racist remarks. I know such attitudes were widespread and socially acceptable at the time, but I still find it shocking and disappointing that Waugh would participate. And given that his homosexual affairs made him part of a forbidden and despised group himself, it does seem to me that he should have had more sensitivity. I had to remind myself that he was also scathing in his judgment of the upper classes, that he wasn't "just" singling out one group. I do wonder what he was like in his personal relationships with others..... As in Sword of Honor, Waugh's use of names was often hilarious. Grimes, Clutterbuck, Tangent, Viscount Metroland, lady Circumference--funny and appropriate. The little poems and Waugh's own illustrations added to my enjoyment of the book too. And I loved Professor Silenus's explanation of life as being like the wheel at Luna Park. It was the highlight of the book for me. So glad to have read this! (less)

Evelyn Waugh's first novel, published in 1928 is a dark satire, with some spot on observations on public school life (private schools in the UK), religion and modern life. The title takes a leaf out of Gibbon's 'The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire' and Oswald Spenglers 'Decline of The West' and follows the rise in fortunes and then the decline of the hapless Paul Pennyfeather. Paul is sent down for indecent behaviour due to the wild antics of others, but despite his inability to teach he gets a job at a school and all kinds of mayhem unfolds. He comes across a mixture of characters all cyphers for Waugh's critiques and observations of society. Pennyfeather falls for the charms of the very wealthy 'Lady Metroland', Margot Beste-Chetwynde who makes her income from illicit means. Lady Metroland was loosely based on Lady Edwina Mounbatten who was rumoured to have had affairs with the musician Leslie 'Hutch' Hutchinson and actor Paul Robeson. At one point, we meet Margot's black lover Sebastian Cholmondeley or 'Chokey' as he is known. He gives a speech that is reminiscent of Shylock's in Shakespeare's 'The Merchant of Venice'. The book is very funny in parts and sends up a range of people, institutions and life generally. Cultural and moral confusion happens faster than the average typing speed. Sadly, it is let down by the casual racism and stereotyping of the black character Sebastian. I suspect that Waugh was poking fun at the racists, however such comments made uncomfortable reading. A part from this, an amusing novel. (less)

I liked this title a little less than A Hand full of Dust. The absurdity of HFD was there, but this was definitely a lighter treatment of interbellum bedlam. The most disturbing part of this book and other Waugh books is how accurately he depicts bland characters who are anti-Romantic. By this I mean characters who go along with whatever life gives them without sorrow or happiness and without really fighting for anything. life passes by their dim perception and then they die. At some point in this book the drunk 13-year-old Earl of someplace or other remarks that there are two kinds of people in this world: dynamic and non-dynamic. Paul, the main character realizes that he is not the dynamic type, but feels no regret for not being of the character and thinks nothing more about it. There is a brilliant section about King's Thursday, a renaissance estate torn down and replaced with a minimalist cube of a house. Once again, absolutely no regret for destruction of a house that required 20 servants to run, for a self-sufficient cube. It is an architectural treatise that begins to feel like analogy and then devolves into nothing in particular. Which leaves me to wonder what the book was about and also why I need to feel that it was about anything at all.

In a little foreword to this novel the author entreats us to bear in mind throughout that his book is meant to be funny, and we have, though at times somewhat strenuously, to take him at his word.

And Mr. Waugh is funny, with that mingling of worldly wisdom and bunkum which is the ne plus ultra of your masterly undergraduate. He affects to tell the story of a varsity man who was sent down, but the story is, as it is intended to be, so very silly that he has had merely to interest himself in its superficial presentation, and he manages this so extremely well that one is occasionally reminded of P. G. Wodehouse, though it must be added that Mr. Wodehouse has a far greater knowledge of human nature than appears to reside at present in Mr. Waugh's consciousness. But anyway "Decline and Fall" is a great lark; its author has an agreeable sense of comedy and characterisation, and the gift of writing smart and telling conversation, while his drawings are quite in tune with the spirit of the tale.



Explanation of the title I find it quite difficult to say what the connection is between the title and the story. `Decline and Fall' implies that the main character during the story gets into trouble and ends in the gutter, while Paul Pennyfeather, the main character of this book, gets indeed in all kinds of trouble, but finally gets back to the right road again.



So to explain the title I guess I have to look a little bit further. Now I find Mrs. Margot Beste-Chetwynde. When we first get to now her, she is a popular, rich woman from the Upperclass, who enjoys a lot of respect in society. This changes during the story, her popularity is declining, until she has to fit in, in the rest of society to save her good name and her place in the Upperclass. The tone in which Waugh describes the whole high society of Great Britain at the beginning of the 20th century, is why I think this decline of status is maybe where Waugh is pointing at with her title. The whole story makes the English Upperclass, or rather the whole `class-thing' kind of laughable. Overview The story starts at Scone College, Oxford, on Bollinger evening. On this evening the (adult) Upperclass members of the so called Bollinger Club have dinner together, drink a lot and finally behave more and more outrageous. Paul Pennyfeather, a Middleclass student in his third year Theology becomes a victim of this lot, with his suspension from the school as result. His guardian is not willing to help Paul with the trouble he came into completely innocent, and that is why he needs to go to find himself a job. He goes to a scholastic agent and a mister Levy of this agent gets him a job at a school in Wales.

 Although he has no experience whatsoever, Paul is accepted as the new junior assistant on Llanabba Castle. His colleges captain Grimes and mister Prendergest make that he feels at home quite soon and so he starts his life as a teacher. One day the school organizes a sports day. There will be some of the most eminent parents to watch the students during the games. Margot Beste-Chytwynde, a widow, is one of them. Paul falls in love with her. When she asks him to join her and her son Peter during the holidays to tutor Peter, Paul immediately agrees. And so Paul gets to know Margot better and better. He knows she wants to get married again and one day he has the courage to ask her. She is content and agrees, although she wants to ask Peter for his opinion. When the boy reacts enthusiastically, she tells Paul she will make her decision in the morning. Of course she decides to marry him - she liked him from the start - and so Paul gets engaged with one of the richest women of High Society. Margot leads a business in South-America. At first it is kind of vague what kind of business it is, but it turns out that it has to do something with slave trade. Three days for the wedding there are some problems in Marseilles with a couple of girls Margot send to South-America as entertainment girls. Because Margot is very busy with the wedding she sends Paul to solve (whatever that is) the problem. All goes well and on the morning of his wedding Paul returns in London. But when he, his best man and Peter have a drink just before they go to the church, an inspector of Scotland Yard comes in and arrests Paul for mingling in Margot's dark business. And so Paul ends up in jail; he is “committed to seven years' penal servitude for traffic in prostitution”. In the period he is in jail, Paul meets Prendergest, Philbrick - the butler of Llanabba Castle - and Grimes again. Prendergest is murdered after a while by a physically ill prisoner, Grimes escapes from the prison no one ever escaped. Paul himself is rescued by Maltravers, the man Margot married in the meanwhile. Because he would save her reputation and it would give Paul a change to get out of prison; he is the Home Secretary and can get things like that done. They fake a needed removal of Paul's appendix, so Paul can die (only on paper, of course) during the operation. After that he spends a while at the villa of Margot at Corfu and when some time has passed he gets back to Oxford, where he starts with the theology study again. So at the end, things turned out quite all right for Paul Pennyfeather. Characters The main character of this novel is Paul Pennyfeather, a young man somewhere in his twenties who at first seems to have a talent for bad fortune. He is a quiet, kind man, who wants to act the right way and always thinks twice before acting. He is honest and intelligent.

An example of his good character is his dilemma about answering the question about his leaving university: 'I understand, too, that you left your University rather suddenly. Now - why was that?' This was the question that Paul had been dreading, and, true to his training, he resolved upon honesty. `I was send down, sir, for indecent behaviour'. Another example is his doubt after the guy who is responsible for Paul's suspension, offers him money for sort of damages: `If I Take that money', he said to himself, `I shall never know whether I have acted rightly or not. It would always be on my mind. If I refuse, I shall be sure of having done right. I shall look upon my self-denial with exquisite self-approval. By refusing I can convince myself that, in spite of the unbelievable things that have been happening to me during the last ten days, I am still the same Paul Pennyfeather I have respected so long. It is a test-case of the durability of my ideals. Other characters who are more or less important to the story are Doctor Fagin, Captain Grimes, Mister Prendergest, Mister Philbrick and Margot Beste-Chytwynde. There are more characters, but I don't find them important enough to the main theme of the story to explicate here. Doctor Fagin is the principal of Llanabba Castle and a little bit weird. There is not really much to tell about him. He is very Upperclass-minded and for this reason he dislikes Captain Grimes in a way and he loves the boys who come from the `better families'. Still, he seems to me a friendly man, who, like Paul, wants to do the right thing. He doesn't care about diploma's et cetera, he just want the teachers in his school to have `vision': `I understand you have no previous experience?' `No, sir, I am afraid not.' `Well, of course, that is in many ways an advantage. One too easily acquires the professional tone and loses vision. But of course we must be practical. I am offering a salary of one hundred and twenty pounds, but only to a man with experience. I have a letter here from a young man who holds a diploma in forestry. He want an extra ten pounds a year on the strength of it, but it is vision I need, mister Pennyfeather, not diplomas.'  Captain Grimes is also a weird kind of man. He always `gets in the soup', but always he finds a way or a helping hand to get out of it again. He can be quite cynical, but is always in for a laugh and a drink with his friends. He and Paul become soon after Paul's arrival good friends. Grimes is engaged with one of the two daughters of Doctor Fagin and after his marriage he becomes depressive by the way Fagin is treating him [Note the fact that

Fagin prefers the Upperclass, of which Grimes is no part]. He simulates a suicides, but some weeks later he turns out to be still alive, asking Margot for a job in South-America. He ends up in jail a while later, but finds a way to escape. After that he disappears. Mister Prendergest is clergyman who got doubts and is really depressed about that. He left the church and now teaches at Llanabba Castle, but isn't able to handle the boys. They make fun of him because of his wig and his way of acting. Not long after Paul left with Margot he finds out that there exists something called `the modern churchman', this offers him the change to work for the church without feeling guilty about his former doubts. That is how he became chaplain in the same prison Paul was locked up after his trial. But as a chaplain he neither can manage, he seems quite unhappy to me. Then one day he is murdered by one of the prisoners. Mister Philbrick is the butler of Llanabba Castle and it is quite difficult to tell the right story about this man, because he tells everybody an other story about his live. He is not very trustworthy. Still though, I find him kind of sympathetic. He, too, ends up in jail where he gets himself the best job there is, reception cleaner, and he manages quite well. 

Morgot Beste-Chytwynde is at first the most distinguished woman of Upperclass England. She is very modern in her ideas and she is a well seen woman in High Society. And she acts like it, rules are not made for her, she lives conform her own ways. But after Paul is imprisoned and she turns out to be a slave trader, her good name is in danger and she has to choose a saver road by marrying Maltravers, the Home Secretary. She really loved Paul, though and after her marriage she uses it to help Paul out of prison, this, to me, shows her affection to the younger man she should have married when things had turned out like they had to. Time The story plays in the twenties of the 20th century. Between Paul's suspension and his return to Scone College about a year passes. Structure The story is told chronological. There is a great continuity, without flashbacks or great gaps in the time passing. The end is closed, of course there is a lot that still can be told, like what happened to Captain Grimes, but the story of Paul Pennyfeather has an obvious end in his return to Scone College. Location/Situation

The first part of the story is situated in a Upperclass-minded environment (Llanabba Castle), where the difference between the social classes in the English society becomes clear. After Paul's departure to Margot's manor it is chiefly the High Society that is in sight, after Paul's imprisonment we get to see life in prison. Although we get to see chiefly the Upperclass, the difference between the social classes is a main theme in this book. Geographically the story is situated partly in Wales and partly in and around London. Theme and Genre The theme of this book is, I guess, the ephemerality of the Upperclass, even a woman like Margot isn't able to preserve her good reputation. With this novel Waugh gives a comical account of an innocent plunged into the sham, brittle world of high society. The genre is in my opinion a comical novel, in my opinion it has no deeper message, although the author maybe likes to point out the laughable character of a class society. Language The Language Evelyn Waugh uses isn't very difficult. This book is easy to read, although sometimes it is hard to really `get into the story'. Still, `Decline and fall' is really not hard to read, it's a fun, easy written book. Perspective The story is told by an omniscient narrator. Place in the history of literature I guess Waugh fits in with the modernism that is growing as a literary trend in the twenties of the 20th century, although he mixes it in my opinion with some surrealism, he makes the reality `bigger' to create a funnier picture of the English society of his time. Some aspects of the story make it realistic for the time it is placed in (For example the `League of Nations Union', which is spoken about several times) and also the critical

tone of the story at the address of class society makes it in my opinion suitable for the twenties. The intention of the writer I guess, like I said before, that this novel has no deeper message, although the author maybe likes to point out the laughable character of a class society. In my opinion it seems to be written to amuse the public and maybe a little to provoke the patrons of social classes, and especially the Upperclass.

 Decline and Fall – Evelyn Waugh 

Part 1



This is the one in which Paul Pennyfeather gets de-bagged by the toffs in his Oxford college and is sent down – so far down, in fact, that he ends up in a two-bit school in the middle of nowhere teaching stuff he knows nothing about…. It’s farce, not tragedy, so instead of rage against the obscene injustice it becomes part of Waugh’s running joke about the crassness of the aristocracy and the toadying that goes on all around them. Everybody who is given any power or authority is too lazy and self-serving to do anything with it. If there’s a moral core in the novel – I’ll come back to that – it’s focused on Waugh’s mockery of the way nobody seems to give a shit. Plot? Not a lot, more a series of preposterous episodes. Obviously the



school, somewhere near Llandudno so Waugh can make jokes about the appalling Welsh, is a waste of space. It must have plenty of teachers but we only ever meet two others: Grimes, lurching from job to job as he constantly gets himself ‘in the soup’, only saved by a kind of idiot optimism and his old Harrovian status; and Prendergast, former vicar rendered useless by Doubts. They’re both comic turns – Grimes with his juvenile determination to have a good time, Prendergast with his wig and the impression he gives that he really was born yesterday. There’s the head, only keeping the place going because his daughters are a lot more competent than he is, and the butler, another comic turn…. What happens? Not a lot in the education line: after one lesson Waugh gets bored with that and focuses on the ridiculous stuff. There’s the boys’ routine over-familiarity with all the staff. There’s the head’s gloom, occasionally



enlivened by a crackpot idea for raising the school’s profile. And there’s Philbrick, the butler with a past… which he describes to Paul in all its Dickensian splendour. He’s my favourite, bold and in your face enough to make anybody believe anything. It turns out he’s told completely different stories to the others – and when the police do eventually track him down it’s to arrest him for doing what we’ve seen: pretending he’s someone he isn’t and living off it. And when the cops arrive he’s already left. The biggest set piece is the sports day. It’s a farce, obviously, but lady



Circumference the appalling snob and Margot Beste-Chetwynde the society fashion-plate don’t notice. Prendergast gets drunk at the mere whiff of alcohol at the local and shoots Lady Circ’s son in the foot with the (loaded) starting-pistol. And Mrs B-C’s escort is a Black American who gives Waugh all the opportunities he needs to send up Black Americans. How we laughed. Anyway, Paul is making his way and actually seems to be gaining something



from the experience – which is a lot more entertaining than his thin existence at Oxford. This isn’t the sort of novel to have the young, inexperienced teacher tortured by the boys: he, and they, come up with a satisfactory modus vivendi almost from the start. He even seems to have discovered lurve – although he doesn’t recognise it even when he trips over it: Grimes has to spell it out for him in an absurd Q&A session. But… Grimes doesn’t do so well and, to extricate himself from the soup again, he marries one of the head’s daughters. Disaster. The last trace we see of him is a pile of clothes on the beach and an apparent suicide note in which he seems to accept that retribution has finally caught up with him. So, Jimmy Carr-style black comedy or moral treatise? Neither, obviously,

 

but you can see why I ask. Waugh is a cruel author, not suffering fools gladly – and everybody’s a fool. Or ridiculous, to a greater or lesser extent. Or self-serving, juvenile. But is he using the antics of these clowns to say something about life and how it should be lived? Doesn’t he, somewhere, care about Paul and the lessons he’s having to learn, or Prendergast and the terrible region of hell he’s living in now he’s lost sight of God? And what about Grimes, who finally seems to have run out of road? Ask me later. 14 November Part 2



We know (don’t we?) that none of this is to be taken seriously… and this section confirms we’re not in any kind of world we’d recognise as real. Waugh’s had enough of satirising the public school system and moves us to Margot Beste-Chetwynde’s stately pile. Except it’s not a stately pile any more: she had it knocked down and replaced with a Modernist statement. If anything, Paul is even more of an innocent abroad: Margot has invited him to be her son’s tutor for the Easter holidays, and within about a week she’s got him to propose, and she’s had him give a demonstration of his credentials in the bed department. Everything’s fine, since you ask: in this world it seems a woman with nearly two decades of sexual experience can be satisfied by a cloistered virgin like Paul. Waugh lets us believe it: throughout these chapters things simply happen to



Paul – all of them at Margot’s instigation – and, like him, we’re a bit bemused by the way stuff happens. Margot feels like demolishing her house, a uniquely untouched Tudor national treasure? Fine. She wants to replace it with a satire on Modernism designed by an autistic egomaniac? No problem. So when Paul becomes her next fad, now that she’s bored with the Black American, we’re as happy to accept it as he is. Throughout this section, as things become darker and darker, Waugh



resolutely describes them in terms that make sense to the innocent Paul. The white slaves Margot is exporting – we’ve guessed by now, even if Paul hasn’t – get stuck at Marseilles. She sends Paul to sort it out with a bit of bribery and corruption and, because we’re ahead of him in understanding what’s really going on, we’re not as surprised as he is when he’s arrested shortly after his arrival back in England, on the morning before his wedding. He should have been warned by the way Margot’s rich-woman vagueness disappears when she interviews the girls for the venues that make her money in South America. But why would he? Like Prendy, he seems to have been born yesterday when it comes to understanding the ways of the world – but unlike Prendy, he never asks himself difficult questions. He blithely lets it all happen and, just as the wheel is about to give a great lurch downwards, he drinks to ‘Fortune, a much-maligned lady.’ Silly boy: he doesn’t realise he’s in a novel by an author who only pretends not to care. As for Margot…. I don’t think she planned to have Paul so comprehensively shafted – the lavish wedding preparations are real enough, after all – but,



well, she’s one of the Fitzgerald rich: she leaves a trail of destruction behind her as she does one thing after another on a whim. Suddenly the destruction of the house makes complete sense: that’s what the super-rich are like. One other thing. In the two-page chapter Interlude in Belgravia Waugh



whips off his authorial mask for a couple of minutes and talks to us about Paul man-to-man. Yes, he knows that Paul is just a ‘shadow that has flitted about this narrative’ but for an evening he lets him be the real person we all think we are, ‘materialized into the solid figure’ of an intelligent middle class man. Of course, the mask is back up again almost immediately: this chapter comes before all the preposterous action at the series of intersecting volumes masquerading as Margot’s house, and we’re back with the shadow. But as I said a minute ago, Waugh is only pretending not to care. 17 November



Part 3 – to the end Waugh gives us another venue: prison. As ever, Paul takes it utterly in his stride. Waugh puts him through the absurdities of both the strict regime of Standard Regulations – as when he’s bopped on the head with his own shoes when saying sorry, because he was speaking out of turn – and of the equal and opposite absurdities of the new governor’s liberal policies. This is typical Waugh: as soon as we think we know where he stands – against the pointless rigours of bread and water – he satirises the new regime and the governor, with his degree in sociology, from a university in (spit) the midlands. As I mentioned, Paul is fine with it. He loves solitary confinement and asks for another four weeks of it after the statutory four he gets when he arrives. But that’s not allowed, and the new gov forces unwanted company on him – culminating with a murderous psychopath. Their forced strolls around the prison yard are pure absurdist farce, as the guard responds to any silences with barked orders to talk. And so on. The psycho’s finest moment comes when the gov allows him carpenter’s tools to bring out his creativity: he cuts off the padre’s head – the padre being poor old Prendergast, who has discovered that atheism is no barrier to a career in the modern church. It seems arbitrary – until you remember that he did shoot a boy in the foot, which over many chapters has gone through the stages of gangrene, amputation – and, eventually, death. So it goes.



Waugh isn’t going to make Paul suffer much, obviously, and he sets up a



typically absurd escape plan for him. (It’s not the same as Grimes’s escape plan. He’s turned up in a thinly-disguised Dartmoor, where Paul gets moved to, and Waugh lets the guards tie themselves in knots in the fog as he leaps on one of their horses.) Margot hasn’t forgotten him, and he soon stops being surprised by arrivals of caviar and high-class novels. But… well, she’s been seeing rather a lot of the very toff who de-bagged Paul all those months before – and she’s had a proposal from the other idiot who looks set to become the new Home Secretary. If she marries him he’ll probably find a way to get Paul out. It all works like clockwork as Waugh shows how none of the normal rules apply in Toff-land. Lucky old them – and lucky old Paul. The wheel – and there’s a neat reference to a fairground wheel that sends



everybody spinning off unless they’re canny enough to be at the centre – has come full circle. It’s easy for Waugh to get Paul back at university, back doing what he wants: despite his apparent lack of any workable moral code (he wonders about Margot’s guilt and, well, simply accepts that she couldn’t possibly be sent to jail) he’s studying to become a priest. He’s all right – but in the last chapter we meet someone who isn’t. I haven’t mentioned Margot’s son Peter, the one Paul was pretending to teach. He’s always been the most grown-up character in the novel, dispensing advice and cocktails whenever necessary…. But by the time he’s old enough to go to Oxford himself he’s an alcoholic wreck, a member of the same mindless set that did all the damage in the first chapter. Another wheel has come full circle and… …and what? Has Paul learnt a lesson? Has Peter? Margot? Have we? Or, in the spinning Waugh universe, are we wasting our time if we look for anything so bourgeois as meaning?

In Decline and Fall (1928) comic nonsense and fantasy bring to light the insanity which prevails in post-war society. The plot is presented with a maximum of economy and a studied will to shock. The hero, a product of the public-school and academic systems, is an innocent marked as a victim of the corrupt world into which he is unwillingly thrust. Paul Penny feather lets things happen to him; he “would never have made a hero, the only interest about him arises from the unusual series of events of which his shadow was witness.” (p. 123) Returning from a meeting of the League of Nations Union, he is “debagged” by members of the Bollinger Club, who are having their annual dinner and greatly enjoy being riotous and destructive, and as a consequence

he is sent down for indecent behaviour. He becomes a schoolmaster at Llanabba Castle, where Dr. Fagan, a cynical but not too exacting headmaster, assures him that “he has been in the scholastic profession long enough to know that nobody enters it unless he has some very good reason which he is anxious to conceal.”3 Paul falls in love with Margot Best-Chetwynde, the mother of one of his pupils, a millionairess who runs a chain of brothels euphemistically called “The Latin-American Entertainment Co. Ltd.” She introduces him into Mayfair society and involves him in the white-slave trade without his knowledge. He is arrested on the morning of their marriage and sentenced to seven years’ imprisonment. He spends a few months in prison and is rescued by Margot, who arranges to have him sent to a nursing home headed by Dr. Fagan, M.D. After a mock-operation he is alleged to be dead and allowed to disappear from the social scene. He returns to Oxford and resumes his studies in theology. 3Paul’s incursions into various spheres of English society are so many encounters with the irresponsibility, amoralism, corruption or sheer madness discernible in many aspects of English life. Whether at Oxford, in an employment agency in London, in a public school in Wales, in a country house, a prison, or a nursing home, people act with the same carelessness and unawareness of the real implications of their actions. Paul’s experience with the Bollingers is only a rehearsal for his experience in the world: he is ill-treated under the eyes of the Junior Dean, who does not intervene because Paul is not important enough. Actually, the representatives of authority implicitly encourage the destructiveness of the Bollingers because of the highly prized port that is only brought up from the cellars when the college fines reach fifty pounds. Similarly, Paul is unjustly condemned and sent to prison, while Margot Metroland escapes punishment. Paul’s innocence and naivete contrast with, and emphasize, the outrageous behaviour of the other characters. On the other hand, his passivity and lack of insight into human character not only reveal the inadequacy of his education but also his incapacity to discriminate between good and evil. In a way, Waugh is more contemptuous of the people who, like Paul, stick to the rules without understanding them than of the rogues who deliberately defy society or disturb its order and get away with it. 4Though none of Waugh’s early characters is capable of a responsible, mature, or simply humane, attitude, some appear to have in his eyes a kind of saving grace which is not unrelated to the superb aplomb with which they take their pleasure in complete defiance of all moral judgment. Margot Metroland belongs to this category: beautiful, attractive, and rich, she makes the most of what life has to offer without troubling in the least about right or wrong. Very skilfully, Waugh provokes at once indignation and tolerance for the people of her kind. Yet she is an impostor like Grimes, Philbrick and Dr. Fagan. These characters’ success in life is proportionate to their impudence; no representative of traditional institutions, whether in justice, education, or religion, performs his task with integrity and a sense of responsibility. Grimes, an unscrupulous rogue, is “always in the soup”; yet he is never “let down” because he is an expublic-school man. Philbrick is a swindler and a criminal who ends up as opulent as he has always pretended to be. Fagan, a cynical impostor on a grand scale, will do anything provided it

is remunerative. He is twice an agent in Paul’s change of personality, once when Paul becomes a schoolmaster at Llanabba Castle and a second time when he presides over Paul’s mock-death. For both he and Paul this event is the beginning of “a new phase in life,” i.e., of another round of swindling for the one, of another period of dull and unrealistic initiation into life for the other. 5After his departure from Oxford Paul meets the same characters playing the same parts in different spheres of society: Llanabba Castle, Mayfair, Egdon Prison. Wherever he goes, inefficiency, madness and dishonesty prevail. Prendergast, the unhappy and unauthoritative schoolmaster, who left the Church because he had “doubts,” is seen at Egdon as the prison chaplain. His doubts are a source of disorder even in prison, where his incapacity to impose discipline lands him into trouble with prisoners as it did with pupils. By a cruel irony, his head is sawn off by a visionary maniac, a man who has appointed himself “the sword of Israel: the lion of the Lord’s Elect.” Philbrick imparts the news to Paul in chapel: ‘O God, our help in ages past,’ sang Paul. ‘Where’s Prendergast to-day?’ ‘What, ain’t you ‘eard?’ e’s been done in.’ ‘And our eternal home.’ ‘Damned lucky it was Prendergast, Might ‘ave been you or me! The warder says – and I agree – It serves the Governor right.’ ‘Amen’ (pp. 183-4) 6The gruesome humour of the song leaves no doubt as to the way in which this piece of savagery should be interpreted. Prendergast’s weakness marks him as a victim. He had left the Church then gone back to it after discovering “that there is a species of person called ‘Modern Churchman’ who draws the full salary of a beneficed clergyman and need not commit himself to any religious belief.” (p. 141) Sir Lucas-Dockery, the governor of the prison, is a caricature of the modern reformist who applies literally and without understanding them the new methods of psycho-analysis. He is more concerned with the success of his method than with the welfare of the prisoners under his care and will blindly go to any length to prove his optimistic conviction that “almost any crime is due to the repressed desire for aesthetic expression.” (p. 177) He gives carpenter tools to the mystic criminal who kills Prendergast. The episode is turned into an inhuman farce which derides the lunacy, not of the inmates, but of those who are chosen to ensure the working of institutions. Clearly, it is a mad world which trusts a Fagan to educate its children, a Lucas-Dockery to see to it that criminals are fit to return to society, and a Prendergast to officiate as a representative of the Church. Yet each episode is treated with apparent levity and a non-committal fake-seriousness which demystify society as well as the people who take themselves seriously or distort the ideals they pretend to be serving. Society is a sham, which Waugh exposes with insolent gusto, bringing to light the disorder created by well-meaning

incompetent fools. Scoundrels are not more harmful because they at least know what they are up to. 7The heartless and barbarous world of Decline and Fall is pictured with a disconcerting but calculated detachment which makes it all the more shocking. For instance, little Lord Tangent’s death is imparted without comment in four sentences: Tangent was sitting on the grass crying because he had been wounded in the foot by Mr. Prendergast’s bullet, (p. 71) ‘Tangent’s foot has swollen up and turned black,’ said Best-Chetwynde with relish, (p. 94) Everybody was there except little Lord Tangent, whose foot was being amputated at a local nursing-home. (p. 105) ‘It’s maddenin’ Tangent having died just at this time, ‘[Lady Circumference] said.’ People may think that that’s my reason for refusin’. (p. 149) 8These statements are a merciless comment on the negligence, the foolishness and the lack of compassion of those involved. Tangent’s death and Prendergast’s unheroic martyrdom are extreme consequences of a general unconcern. The Junior Dean who witnesses Paul’s “debagging” does not protest when he is sent down. Neither Margot nor Peter can be bothered about Paul’s unjust condemnation. Potts, Paul’s best friend, is the main witness for the prosecution at his trial and is even commended by the court for his unshakeable attitude. Paul takes this general callousness for granted. Apart from his youthful infatuation for Margot, he himself seems hardly capable of genuine feeling. He is not unattractive as a character because he is a victim who never retaliates, a convenient scapegoat. In the end he accepts Silenus’ definition of life as a game for a few privileged people: ‘You pay five francs and go into a room with tiers of seats all round, and in the centre the floor is made of a great disc of polished wood that revolves quickly. At first you sit down and watch the others. They are all trying to sit in the wheel, and they keep getting flung off, and that makes them laugh, and you laugh too. It’s great fun.’ … But the whole point about the wheel is that you needn’t get on it at all, if you don’t want to. People get hold of ideas about life, and that makes them think they’ve got to join in the game, even if they don’t enjoy it. It doesn’t suit everyone…. ‘Now you’re a person who was clearly meant to stay in the seats and sit still and if you get bored watch the others. Somehow you got on to the wheel, and you got thrown off again at once with a hard bump. It’s all right for Margot, who can cling on, and for me, at the centre, but you’re static. Instead of this absurd division into sexes they ought to class people as static and dynamic. There’s a real distinction there, though I can’t tell you how it comes. I think we’re probably two quite different species spiritually. (pp. 208-9) 9Paul is also static in a different sense, for his experience in the world leaves him almost unchanged. He acquires a sense of humour, which is perhaps an indication that he understands a

little better what goes on around him, but he behaves much as he did during his first stay at Oxford. He joins again the League of Nations Union and acquires a new friend called Stubbs, with whom he develops the same kind of relationship as with Potts. The only lesson Paul has learned as a future clergyman is to avoid Prendergast’s mistake. Order in the Church must be preserved at all costs, which suggests that social order should also be enforced if necessary: There was a Bishop of Bithynia, Paul learned, who had denied the divinity of Christ, the immortality of the soul, the existence of good, the legality of marriage, and the validity of the Sacrament of Extreme Unction. How right they had been to condemn him! (p. 212) 10Paul even condones intolerance for the sake of the established order: So the ascetic Ebionites used to turn towards Jerusalem when they prayed. Paul made a note of it. Quite right to suppress them. (p. 216) 11Paul’s failure to achieve maturity is typical of Waugh’s pre-war heroes and no doubt implies that maturity and real understanding of traditional institutions are non-existent in contemporary society. The academic world is not more reliable than fashionable London. Lady Circumference’s moral code is a mere set of conventions and prejudices: though a representative of the landed aristocracy, she is not more aware of the values traditionally connected with her class than the newly-made peer Maltravers, who was born in a slum. Left to themselves the young drift into debauchery. Society is only a gathering of unattached individuals easily adaptable to any situation because nothing really matters. The reckless and shameless pursuit of excitement has become the only recognizable law, but it doesn’t lead to happiness; apart from Philbrick and Fagan all the characters are disenchanted, even Grimes, the “life force.” Margot regains respectability by marrying Maltravers, and takes Alastair Trumpington as a lover to shake off the boredom of her new married life. Her son, Peter, Waugh’s first Bright Young Thing, is disappointed in Paul and in his mother, who shows him the way to irresponsibility. 12In scene after scene madness, greed, irresponsibility and selfishness are displayed as normal behaviour in Church, in prison, at school, or among London fashionables. There is no room for reason or humaneness in this savage world. The opening scene at Scone is fairly typical of what happens in Waugh’s novels: the social élite destroy the symbols of culture and civilization, breaking a grand piano, smashing China, throwing a Matisse in a water-jug or destroying the manuscript of a poem. The novel ends, as it began, on the evening of the Bollingers’ annual dinner; they play their game of destruction with the same gusto as their predecessors. Yet, obviously, Waugh feels more sympathy for them than for the social outsiders who occasionally cross their path and whom he slightly despises for their tediousness, their lack of style and of charm. He combines satire of an unprincipled social élite with a hardly concealed admiration for them, which adds to the ambiguity created in his early novels by the absence of implicit standards.

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