That novel about Vile Bodies is being printed off and I will send a copy as soon as I get them, dreading your verdict very much because now when anyone says they liked Decline and Fall I think, oh how bored they will be by Vile Bodies.
I see Hamish 16 and Maurice 17 and I saw Harold 18 yesterday.
I am afraid this is all about myself. What I really set out to do was to ask after Dig’s tonsils. I do hope everything was completely successful. Did you go to the Brighton Pageant? Alex Waugh was Nelson, which I think is very funny.
I envy you the Metropole.
Love to you both,
Evelyn
Questions and topics for discussion
1. Money is an ephemeral good in Vile Bodies, and Adam’s quest for it drives the plot. Given that the novel was written during and after the stock market crash of 1929, what is the significance of money in the lives of the Bright Young People?
2. Claud Cockburn, a well-known journalist and cousin of Evelyn Waugh’s, once described young Waugh as being “oppressed and strained” by a “sense of inexplicable doom.” Given that Vile Bodies was published in 1930, firmly in between the two wars, do you get a sense of this in his text?
3. Adam devotes himself to making enough money to marry Nina, who then cruelly chucks him for Ginger. Did Nina love Adam as much as he loved her?
4. During the writing of Vile Bodies, Evelyn Waugh’s first wife left him for another man. Is there a shift in tone in the second half of the book? Does Vile Bodies ultimately praise or condemn love?
5. In the preface, Waugh notes, “I think I can claim that this was the first English novel in which dialogue on the telephone plays a large part.” What role does modernity play in Vile Bodies?
6. The book was published in the same year that Waugh converted to Roman Catholicism. Is this ironic considering his skewering of religious characters such as Father Rothschild and Mrs. Ape?
7. Adam is penniless and without a family to rely upon, though he has some social connections through his schooling and upbringing. In what ways is Adam a prototypical Waugh male character? In what ways is he not?
8. Is the position of Mr. Chatterbox cursed?
9. Is it the motor crash that drives Agatha Runcible mad, or are there deeper issues at hand?
10. By the end of the novel almost all of Adam’s friends have dissipated or gotten married. Was their social set ever meant to last? Will they be replaced by a new crop of rebellious young people?
Suggested reading
Curious to find out more about Evelyn Waugh? Here are some titles worth investigating.
A Little Learning: An Autobiography, Evelyn Waugh
When the Going Was Good, Evelyn Waugh
Waugh Abroad: The Collected Travel Writing, Evelyn Waugh
The Letters of Evelyn Waugh, edited by Mark Amory
The Diaries of Evelyn Waugh, edited by Michael Davie
The Letters of Nancy Mitford and Evelyn Waugh, edited by Charlotte Mosley
The Letters of Evelyn Waugh and Diana Cooper, edited by Artemis Cooper
Evelyn Waugh: The Early Years, 1903 –1939 , Martin Stannard
Evelyn Waugh: The Later Years, 1939 –1966 , Martin Stannard
Evelyn Waugh: A Biography, Selina Hastings Evelyn Waugh: A Biography, Christopher Sykes
The Life of Evelyn Waugh: A Critical Biography, Douglas Patey
Will This Do? An Autobiography, Auberon Waugh
Fathers and Sons: The Autobiography of a Family, Alexander Waugh
About the Author
Evelyn Waugh (1903–1966) was born in Hampstead, England, into a family of publishers and writers. He was educated at Lancing and Hertford College, Oxford, where he majored in journalism and modern history.
Waugh’s first book, Rossetti: His Life and Works, was published in 1928. Soon afterward his first novel, Decline and Fall, appeared and his career was sensationally launched. “In fifteen novels of cunning construction and lapidary eloquence,” Time summarized later, “Evelyn Waugh developed a wickedly hilarious yet fundamentally religious assault on a century that, in his opinion, had ripped up the nourishing taproot of tradition and let wither all the dear things of the world.” Apart from his novels, Waugh also wrote several acclaimed travel books, two additional biographies, and an autobiography, A Little Learning. His short fiction is collected in The Complete Stories.
Books by Evelyn Waugh
Novels
Decline and Fall
Vile Bodies
Black Mischief
A Handful of Dust
Scoop
Put Out More Flags
Brideshead Revisited
The Loved One
Helena
Men at Arms
Officers and Gentlemen
The Ordeal of Gilbert Pinfold
Unconditional Surrender (also published as The End of the Battle)
Sword of Honor (omnibus)
Stories
Mr. Loveday’s Little Outing, and Other Sad Stories
Tactical Exercise
Basil Seal Rides Again
Charles Ryder’s Schooldays
The Complete Stories
Biography
Rossetti
Edmund Campion
Msgr. Ronald Knox
Autobiography/Diaries/Letters
A Little Learning
The Diaries of Evelyn Waugh
The Letters of Evelyn Waugh
Travel/Journalism
A Bachelor Abroad
They Were Still Dancing
Ninety-Two Days
Waugh in Abyssinia
Mexico: An Object Lesson
When the Going Was Good
A Tourist in Africa
A Little Order
The Essays, Articles and Reviews of Evelyn Waugh
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* Perhaps it should be explained—there were at this time three sorts of formal invitation card; there was the nice sensible copy-book hand sort with a name and At Home and a date and time and address; then there was the sort that came from Chelsea, Noel and Audrey are having a little whoopee on Saturday evening : do please come and bring a bottle too, if you can; and finally there was the sort that Johnnie Hoop used to adapt from Blast and Marinetti’s Futurist Manifesto. These had two columns of close print; in one was a list of all the things Johnnie hated, and in the other all the things he thought he liked. Most of the parties which Miss Mouse financed had invitations written by Johnnie Hoop.
* See Decline and Fall.
* This story, slightly expanded, found its way later into a volume of Highland Legends called Tales from the Mist, which has been approved to be read in elementary schools. This shows the difference between what is called a “living” as opposed to a “dead” folk tradition.
1 Yorke’s nom de plume was Henry Green. He was author of the novels Living, Loving and Party Going. He and Waugh were contemporaries at Oxford, friends, and literary rivals.
2 Bryan Guinness and Diana Mitford, married 1929–1934.
3 Writer and editor, mutual friend from Oxford.
4 Sir Sacheverell Sitwell, writer and art critic.
5 Maud Burke, married to Sir Bache Cunard. Nicknamed herself Emerald in 1926.
6 Acton’s book The Last of the Medici was published in 1932.
7 John Heygate, writer. Became a baronet in 1940.
8 On July 9, Evelyn had sent Waugh a letter declaring that she was in love with, and the lover of, Heygate. There had been a reconciliation. Waugh had left London on July 26 and returned on August 1 to find the house deserted. The next day he received a letter explaining that she had left him. She went to Venice to stay with an aunt.
9 Two of Evelyn Gardner’s sisters had been divorced.
> 10 Acton had written on August 5 : “Are you so very male in your sense of possession? I am somewhat astounded by all the philandering I see around me. Or is it the fact of its being Heygate? Or is it due to quarrels and boredom?”
11 Yorke’s wife, Adelaide.
12 Bryan was heir to the Guinness Brewery fortune.
13 Heygate.
14 Lord Redesdale, father of Nancy and Diana Mitford, had a real though unremunerative gold mine in Canada.
15 Sir Alexander Spearman. When interviewed, he said he had no recollection of whales.
16 Hamish St. Clair Erskine, a mutual friend.
17 Maurice Bowra, another mutual friend.
18 Acton.
Contents
Welcome
Dedication
Preface
Epigraph
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Happy Ending
Reading Group Guide
Letters
Questions and topics for discussion
Suggested reading
About the Author
Books by Evelyn Waugh
Newsletters
Copyright
Copyright
The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
Copyright © 1930 by Evelyn Waugh
Copyright renewed © 1958 by Evelyn Waugh
Reading group guide Copyright © 2012 by the Estate of Evelyn Waugh and Little, Brown and Company
Author photograph © Hulton-Deutsch Collection / CORBIS
Cover design by Keith Hayes. Cover illustration by Jon Contino
Cover copyright © 2012 by Hachette Book Group, Inc.
All rights reserved. In accordance with the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, the scanning, uploading, and electronic sharing of any part of this book without the permission of the publisher constitute unlawful piracy and theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), prior written permission must be obtained by contacting the publisher at
[email protected] Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.
Little, Brown and Company
Hachette Book Group
237 Park Avenue, New York, NY 10017
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First e-book edition: December 2012
The text of this edition follows, with minor emendations, an edition of 1965, which was the last to be overseen by the author.
ISBN 978-0-316-21664-7
Evelyn Waugh, Vile Bodies
(Series: # )
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