Fathers and Sons

by Alexander Waugh

  From All Hallows Bron was sent, aged twelve, with a scholarship to the Benedictine monastery school of Downside in Somerset where his great-grandfather, the Brute, had been the school doctor. On hearing of his scholarship Evelyn sent a telegram: ‘ADMIRABLE BOY… PAPA’

  For a while at Downside, Bron behaved well, but a thick streak of anarchy was never far from the surface. Gossip lit up Evelyn's day, and Bron was aware that the best way to his father's heart was to entertain him with letters of scandal or high adventure from school. Bron's writing style shows surprising confidence for a fourteen-year-old:

  Dear Papa,

  Many happy returns of the day – I am sorry that I have no present for you, but I send my love instead.

  Yesterday was Field Day with its usual purgatory. There was a howling gale and, as a brilliant new idea, we were loaded with 50lbs weight of equipment precariously strapped on with rotted webbing. We were given ten blank rounds each, but as we did not see any enemy all day, we were ordered to shoot them off at a bit of

  heather which was said to look like a disguised enemy scout. Major Page, our illustrious commander, was wildly excited, blasting off red, green and yellow lights at the rate of seven a minute. We have an enormously keen Company Commander who crawled 600 yards on his stomach to whisper to someone that he should rub mud on his face…

  All my love and many happy returns Bron

  When there was nothing to report Bron enjoyed hinting darkly:

  No news here. We dug up a cow's tooth. There is rather a mad monk who wants to see you when you come down – he is called Dom Meinrad and spends his time making bombs in a little shack a good way away from the abbey. There are wild rumours about him, all scandalous and unmentionable.

  All my love Bron

  Evelyn's letters to Bron were usually warm and chatty, with only the odd sentence of reproach:

  Dear Bron,

  Pray accept my congratulations of your attainment of 15 years. May your sixteenth year start prudently. Give up this nonsense of beer drinking and smoking with local poachers. Eat heavily. Wash down crumpets and cakes with refreshing cups of tea. Keep good company.

  I was sorry not to be able to meet you on Saturday. I gather that you are not keen to go to the mountains this year. Perhaps next year you will be able to make up a party of friends.

  Juliet Smith, who I think was with you on Lord Camroses yacht, came to luncheon here on Sunday. She spoke only of the intestines of the smaller mammals.

  You will be sorry to hear that I am in pain from rheumatism of the right knee.

  Perhaps you would like to open a correspondence with this black boy (or perhaps girl?)?

  I have at last finished the book I was writing.

  Here is a pound – not for tobacco or beer.

  Your affec. papa E. Waugh

  At Downside religious discipline was exacting. On Sundays each boy was required to spend two and half hours praying in the chapel. Devotions started at seven thirty in the morning with low mass, and continued through the day with compline, high mass, a long sermon called sodality, vespers and benediction in the evening. The boredom was excruciating. When Bron tried to set up an alternative religious entertainment in the form of satanic black mass meetings in the chemistry lab, he was discovered and caned. The monks enjoyed whipping boys as a release from the constraints of their celibacy and my father, throughout his life, always claimed that to be beaten was a small sacrifice for a boy and a great treat for a monk. Both he and I earned the record in our schools for the most beatings in a single term but I have not inherited his gift for forgiveness.

  At Downside boys were expected to bend over with bare bottoms. Francis Dix at All Hallows used to order them out of his classroom to his study where they were instructed to await his arrival with their trousers down, prostrate over his desk. As he often forgot to return to his study after class, boys were left stranded in that position for hours, not daring to move. At my school we wore trousers for our beatings and, after careful experimentation, I discovered that the whippee could put on up to sixteen pairs of rugby shorts under his trousers before they bulged enough to be detected by the whipper. Only one master regularly disobeyed the rule about trousers and beat my bare bottom with the palm of his hand. It did not hurt as much as a cane – and far less than a gym shoe – but it was more humiliating than either. After his spankings he used to hug me tightly, his forehead pressed against mine and the rest of me enveloped by his large tummy and fat, red, flaky face.

  ‘You know why I did that, don't you, Alex?’

  ‘Um, ’cos I was bad, sir?’

  ‘But specifically. Why did I do it, Alex?’

  ‘Er, because I threw a billiard ball at Henderson, sir?’

  ‘No. I did it because I love you. Now, come here. Come closer. You understand. It is because I love you and wherever you are in the world at any time, if you are in any sort of trouble, you must call me. Yes? Promise?’

  ‘Promise, sir.’

  ‘All right. You may go.’

  In my experience, corporal punishment was of no benefit. When people are treated like animals they descend to the bestial mean.

  Within a few terms of his arrival at Downside Bron's attitude to rules, discipline and authority had deteriorated. He took his gun to school and hid it in rented rooms in the village that he was using as headquarters for his newly founded Downside Numismatic Society. His interest in coins was not affected, but it was partial: the society's chief concerns were smoking, drinking, shooting and gambling with cards. Bron invoked the law of trespass on all prefects who threatened to disturb their meetings. When he discovered an air-pistol on the headmaster's desk that had been confiscated from another pupil, he removed it and shot a boy called Gregory in the leg; when asked for an explanation, he stated that he had intended only to stir up the gravel beside Gregory's feet.

  Evelyn had warned the monks at Downside that his son had a ‘defective sense of honour’ and asked them to report regularly on his progress. In the holidays he tried to monitor Bron's behaviour more closely. In reply to a weekend invitation from Randolph Churchill in 1953, Evelyn wrote:

  Laura, who, alas, will be busy with farm and children all summer, sends her love and regretfully declines your kind invitation. The boy Auberon Alexander is available for

  little Winston's entertainment. His chief interest is shooting sitting birds with an airgun and making awful smells with chemicals. He is devoid of culture but cheerful and greedy for highly peppered foods. If not closely watched he smokes and drinks. Shall I bring him for the first weekend of August?

  After Bron's first year at Downside the monks were far from pleased with his progress. They enjoyed writing to Evelyn and receiving his witty replies. Bron, they said, was spiritually idle, his attitude to religion was cynical, he appeared to enjoy breaking school rules, he did things ‘just to annoy’ the teachers and went about the school with a superior air. Evelyn wrote to Bron from Jamaica where he was staying with his friends the Brownlows:

  Dear Bron,

  I was sorry not to see you before your return to Downside. Had I done so I would have offered you sage advice. I got the impression that last term you were going a bit far in your defiance of school rules. I should hate you to be low spirited and submissive, but don't become an anarchist. Don't above all things put on side. It is an excellent thing to see through the side of others – particularly of youths who think they are young Gods because they are good at games. But they at least are good at something. There is no superiority in shirking things and doing things badly. Be superior by cultivating your intellect and your taste. Enough of this, but pay attention to it…

  I wish your mother were here with me. She would not like the bats which fly about the verandahs in the evening in hundreds. I left her cold and sad. I hope she is now at Pixton recuperating.

  Lord Brownlows son has just failed to get a commission in the Grenadiers – a sad warning to boys who give themselves airs. Take heed.

 
; Tiny humming birds are hovering round the flowering trees. It is really most agreeable here.

  Your affec. papa E. Waugh

  Despite Evelyn's counsel, Bron's behaviour worsened in the months that followed. Evelyn threatened to pack him off to the colonies – a one-way ticket to Australia – if he did not pull himself together, but two months later he received a flood of letters from the headmaster complaining that Bron was more unmanageable than ever.

  Passmore, as the headmaster was called, had an evil countenance. He filed his teeth and was unable to eat without half-masticated lumps of food slipping between the gaps and staining his habit. He was phenomenally fat. He loathed Bron, and having beaten him to within an inch of his life for smoking, drinking, insolence and general insubordination, he was presented with a petition signed by the boys for his removal as headmaster. It was all Bron's idea. ‘We the undersigned members of Downside School, would respectfully beg of the Rt Rev. Father Abbot to consider their plea for a new headmaster.’ Bron signed first and fetched forty other signatories, some of whom lost their bottle and scribbled out their names when Passmore vowed to whip every boy on the list. When he addressed the school next morning at assembly Bron made mocking gestures, huffed, puffed and rolled his eyes to the heavens. In noisy asides (sometimes louder than the speech itself), he appealed to fellow pupils at every passing platitude. For this he was beaten again, and again, and again, but Bron accepted his floggings with insouciance and a proud curl of the lip. As one of his persecutors later wrote to remind him: ‘You ruled your little empire of friends with ruthless efficiency and gave every impression of complacent triumph over the ineffectiveness of authority.’

  Between Passmore and Evelyn it was agreed that Bron had fallen into bad company and that the best thing for him would be to change house in the winter term of 1955 and so he was moved from Roberts, under the housemaster ship of Dom Hilary Steuert, to Caver el, presided over by an unctuous, hairy Welshman called Dom Aelred Watkin.

  Father Aelred was infatuated with Evelyn and consequently delighted to have Bron in his house so that he could bombard the famous novelist with a hundredweight of letters every day. Before informing Bron of his fate, Evelyn wrote to Father Aelred on a done deal:

  Dear Fr Aelred,

  Ever since the Headmaster told me that you had kindly consented to take Bron into your house, I have been on the point of writing to thank you. It is an act of charity. He is not at all a vicious boy or ill-mannered, but I think he is listless, lazy, conceited and not completely truthful. He has no respect or liking for his present housemaster. I think that this is the stage in his life when he must be in contact with someone he does respect and like. I am sure you are the man.

  Fr Aelred, excited by such flattery, wrote back immediately: ‘All I really wanted to say was that of course I shall be only too glad to help you – and Bron – in any way I can … I much hope he will always feel himself able to speak freely to me, for then things always go so much more better [sic]…’

  Evelyn, unfazed by such a blatant exhibition of illiteracy from his son's tutor, sent a curt postcard to Bron: ‘Your headmaster has kindly consented to transfer you from Fr Hilary's care to Fr Aelred's. You will find him a man deserving of your full respect and I hope you will make a new start in his house and redeem your past mistakes.’

  Bron was appalled that his own father should have connived with the hated monks to remove him from his house and all of his closest friends without any prior consultation with him. In reply he wrote coldly to Evelyn on his new Downside Numismatic Society letterhead:

  Dear Papa,

  Thank you for your postcard which arrived this morning.

  Since you are obviously resolved to effect the transfer I cannot dissuade you. It is unprecedented in the history of the school to change house outside Junior House, let alone approaching the fourth year here. You made the decision ignorant of the constitution or opinion of the school and could not have realised how drastic such a course is. Your esteem for Father Aelred and my indifference towards Father Hilary are hardly sufficient grounds to justify the step; nor will my circle of friends change with my house, or if it does, it will be for the worse; Caverel House under Father Aelred's ministrations is by far the most vicious of all.

  However since the decision is made I can do nothing; even if Passmore decided to change his mind, he would hold such a transfer over me as a threat.

  Frankly, I would rather the ticket to Australia. Bron

  It was a hopeless case, a battle that Bron could never expect to win. Evelyn's reply was the last word in the matter:

  My dear Bron,

  Don't write in that silly tone. No one has any motive with regard to you except your own welfare. No decision is absolute yet. If you have a better suggestion to make I shall be pleased to hear it.

  I warned you at the beginning of last term that you are heading for trouble. You paid no attention. I need not repeat what I said to you at the end of the holidays. I could not tell you then what I had in mind for your future, as I had left the Headmaster to make his own arrangements in his own time with the house-masters. I fully realise that it is a most unusual kindness of the headmaster's to allow you to change houses. My first idea was to send you to another school. It is possible that Stonyhurst might take you, but I should have to ask them to do so as a favour, and I

  cannot do this unless you are confident that you intend to behave yourself. If you go there as Psmith and Mike went to Sedleigh, determined to sulk, it would be hopeless.

  You have made a mess of things. At your age that is not a disaster, but you must help yourself. Your future, temporal and spiritual, is your own making. I can only provide opportunities for your achievements.

  Your affectionate papa E.W.

  Fr Aelred used Bron's turmoil as an excuse to worm himself deep into the fabric at Piers Court. He came to stay, several times, ostensibly to talk about his charge, but mainly to excite his host into helping him with his mother's memoirs of his grandmother2. Evelyn did not think they were good enough to publish but continued to revere Fr Aelred and all Catholic clergymen with the same unquestioning gusto as Laura revered her cattle. Fr Aelred got away with much. He wrote often to update Evelyn on Bron's spiritual progress. ‘I find it very hard to sum up Bron at the moment. I don't think he is irreligious, though I don't think religion means a great deal to him…’ His points were often clumsily expressed, but Evelyn, usually a stickler for the finer points of language, seemed not to care. ‘To a boy of Bron's cast of mind religion frequently seems something bourgeois; a mere sanction imposed upon the infringement of certain tiresome and unexciting virtues … I believe we shall have just to wait and watch and pray.’

  Lying. He has lied to me this term (to my knowledge) but when I put it to him he admitted it. I believe in his case that it is fear that causes it – not fear of anything concrete but just fears. He is lacking in real confidence and so likes to appear brighter. I'll just have to work away at him. But it will have to be the work of grace – he has few natural virtues – but supernatural ones, though harder to acquire, are the most worthwhile and the answer to every problem in him is a religious one, as you say, and the building is slow work and transformation almost imperceptible. But I think the beginnings are there.

  Bron's end of term reports – all of them – abound with adjectives like glib’, ‘slovenly’, ‘superficial’ and ‘slack’: ‘It surprises me that so intelligent a boy should have such a callow fondness for untidiness and casual disregard for normal house discipline. Apart from these defects he is a cheerful and agreeable member of the House.’ Before long Bron got the gist of what was going on and altered his attitude so that at least Fr Aelred's reports to his father would read more favourably: ‘I feel very happy about Bron this term, he really seems to be taking religion more seriously.’ As a further measure to quell Bron's exuberance and make him more religious, Evelyn had asked the razor-toothed headmaster to interview him once a week. Bron had no idea that h
is father was complicit in this arrangement and was working on other fronts to win paternal approval. In the spring of 1955 he wrote a series of short stories on broadly religious themes and sent them, unsolicited, to magazines for publication. One, ‘The Twelve Caesars’, went to Everybody's, John Bull and the Evening Standard. To Esquire and Colliers Magazine in New York he sent ‘The Cheerful Chivalry,’ while Lilliput and Clubman got ‘The Mills of God’. Only Lilliput showed any interest and then only because they had noticed that the author was the son of Evelyn Waugh. The editor wrote to Bron to say that he would like to run ‘The Mills of God’ but was unenthusiastic when Bron replied that he wished the story to appear anonymously:

  To be frank, we think The Mills of God is very good but it is not the sort of short story we normally consider publishing. I fully understand your reluctance about using your fathers name in any way but I think it would justify the use of a piece which is out of character with us, if we were to mention who had written it. This could be done discreetly and in a way approved by yourself. I don't suggest for a

  moment that it should appear as though the story is being published because your father is Evelyn Waugh. Nevertheless I think it adds considerably to the interest of the reader to find the son following in a famous fathers footsteps.

  We won't discuss payment until you have reconsidered this position. Meanwhile I will retain the story.

  Inevitably Bron's desire for cash prevailed over his scruples about the use of the family name. Within days an agreement was struck: ‘Thank you for your kind acceptance. I will guarantee that we will be discreet. I suggest we pay you 25 guineas. Perhaps you will let me know if this is acceptable.’ Of course it was. Bron had never had so much money in his pocket before. He wrote to announce the good news: