THE FOXGLOVE SAGA
ONE
Oh good, another chance to write about Decline and Fall. Would Auberon Waugh have known about his father's first novel? Of course he would! And everyone at Downside would have known how brilliant it was too. Bron would have walked tall on the kudos of being the son of the man who wrote what in many people's opinion is the funniest book in the English-speaking world.
Mark Gerson, The Waugh family (detail), 1959.
Auberon Waugh was 19 when he wrote his first novel, The Foxglove Saga, in 1959, whereas his father had been 24 when he'd written D&F. That explains why the first half of Evelyn's novel is about his first job as a teacher, post-Oxford, while Auberon's book begins with his multiple protagonists still at public school.
Auberon Waugh skilfully manages the experiences of three young men who we are introduced to at a school, Cleve, run by monks, as was Downside, the actual school that Auberon Waugh attended. Martin Foxglove, Kenneth Stoat and William O'Connor are the three lads. And in a second I'll begin by introducing each of them. But first I need to say that one of the monks - one of the teachers - is called Brother Aloysius. That is the name that Aloysius in Brideshead Revisited would like to have been called. Because he was such a religious bear.
Martin is the son of Sir Derek Foxglove and Lady Julia Foxglove. They live at Bidcombe in Gloucestershire, which uses elements of both Combe Florey (combe) and Piers Court (the Glos. setting). Many of the male characters in the book adore beautiful Lady Foxglove. I think this is a tribute to Auberon's mother, Laura Waugh, even though Martin can't stand the hypocrisy of her Christian faith. Clearly, Auberon Waugh loved his mother: she was there for him in his hour of need. This allows the author to do what he likes with the mother figure in his novel - and ultimately she is very cruelly treated - because it doesn't matter. The father figure is a different matter. Sir Derek dies half way through the book so that Martin doesn't have to interact directly with him. Auberon finds other ways to talk about his relationship with Evelyn.
The second protagonist is Kenneth Stoat. He's middle-class with only a fraction of Martin's looks and charisma. He gets expelled from Cleve for so-called indecent behaviour and lives a low life in London for most of the book, hooking up with an unsuitable male friend. There are touching scenes between Kenneth and his father, who is a successful dentist. At one stage, Kenneth drinks much of a bottle of whisky without his father's permission, echoing an incident in Bron's teenage years. Kenneth's father went to school with Martin's father and that leads to an important plot development - an Evelyn Waugh parallel - which I'll look at in more detail shortly.
The third protagonist is William O'Connor, a more idealistic and intellectual boy. He too gets expelled from Cleve for mysterious wrongdoing. He joins the Pigs, a commando unit similar to the one that Evelyn Waugh joined after leaving a more traditional regiment. Martin also joins this regiment, but on his way there the Halberdiers are mentioned. This is a fictional regiment, the one that Guy Crouchback joins at the beginning of the Sword of Honour trilogy. O'Connor has a particularly rough time in the book, dealing with his own downfall with insouciance for the most part. He deserts the regiment, gets put in a prison, then a mental hospital. All of which deliberately echoes the fate of Paul Pennyfeather in Decline and Fall. Again I'll go into this in more detail a little later.
Mark Gerson, The Waugh family (detail), 1959. Photo available from Bridgeman Images.
The Foxglove Saga is in three sections. The first features the illness and decline of Brother Thomas. It's a chance for Auberon to get his hellish hospital experiences off his chest, albeit with a consistently light touch. Basically, part one presents the author with the opportunity to introduce us to Martin, Stoat and O'Connor. Well, I've already done that.
Things get moving in part two. O'Connor also gets expelled from Cleve. He meets up with Martin again who ends up in the Pigs for less convincing reasons, having finished school in the normal way but without the grades to get to university. (In reality, Auberon won a place at Oxford, but deferred it in order to get his National Service out of the way.) Martin's father - Sir Derek - dies suddenly and a Mr Dooney is appointed his biographer. (Does a surgeon warrant a biography as a matter of course?) Dooney finds a scrap of paper that has a poem written on it by Stoat's father to Sir Derek, written while Sir Derek was Michael Stoat's fag at Cleves. It's deliberately ambiguous, so I'll quote it:
"O blushing flower, within thy velvet Glove
Thou holds me faster than the Reynard's tooth,
In silken chains of solitary love,
'Though such confinement's sweet enough, forsooth.
Forgive my boldness, weed on which I dote,
And in thy sweet forgiveness smile on Stoat."
On ode to mutual masturbation? The merest suggestion of anal sex? It echoes the finding of a naked photo of Alastair Graham in a box that Evelyn Waugh kept all his life. For sure, Lady Foxglove feels most uncomfortable about the finding and wants it destroyed. Instead, Dooney blackmails her.
This 'part two' is mostly set in the offers training camp, from which O'Connor deserts and makes his way to Kenneth Stoat in London. O'Connor is on the run and this interview with a police inspector takes place:
"What do you do for money?"
"I forget."
"Come now, Mr O'Connor, we'll find out in time."
"Honestly, I've quite forgotten."
It's mentioned that Martin Foxglove joined the Pigs on August 21, 1959. One wonders what significance this date has for Auberon Waugh as he was writing the novel in May and June of 1959.
Things move even quicker in part three. Martin loses his faith which upsets Lady Foxglove. O'Connor is in "B" Block of Kitchener Barracks, military prison. Like Pennyfeather, he prefers solitary confinement. 'O'Connor always rather preferred his spells of solitary, which became quite frequent after a time. It was a great strain always having to talk in an assumed Irish accent and remember that one was a jolly boy from the bogs.'
He was looking forward to a visit from his mother as she would be bringing fags, money, a set of poker dice and a bottle of whisky. However, Lady Foxglove pretends to be his mother and visits instead. The scene puts one in mind of Margot Beste Chetwynde visiting Paul Pennyfeather in prison near the end of Decline and Fall. Though in this case O'Connor gets a single jar of gooseberry jam instead of all the luxuries that he had hoped for.
At the behest of his father, Major O'Connor, the editor of a newspaper, William gets transferred to Sister Cardew's Home for the Mentally Infirm, a less austere establishment outside Brighton. Letters pass between William, Kenneth and Martin to further the plot. Speaking of which, the biographer, Dooney, and his wife, have a monstrous baby, and after blinding its mother, the child is adopted by Lady Foxglove.
Meanwhile, banished from Sister Cardew's Home, William O'Connor goes by the name of Arthur Connolly. Arthur, because Evelyn's 'boring' father was called Arthur. Connolly because Evelyn introduced a character called Connolly into most of the books he wrote in the middle part of his career as a way of mocking Cyril Connolly. Major O'Connor gets involved again on his son's behalf, and enables William to complete his sentence in a Church Home for Christian delinquents. Which means that Kenneth has to return to London from Brighton, the book that he was going to write as a collaboration with William remaining unwritten.
Martin, still with the Pigs, is coming up for twenty-one, when he will inherit Bidcombe Manor and have Lady Foxglove kicked out. This echoes the real-life arrangement whereby Evelyn ensured that Bron inherit Combe Florey, possibly leaving Laura at the mercy of Bron's generosity. To Evelyn, it was the continuation of the male line that mattered, and this patriarchal mindset may have ben much discussed as Bron was growing up.
The monster child, Tarquin, is a real problem for Lady Foxglove, who gets through innumerable nannies in trying to keep the monster at arms length. Anyway, Martin's 21st birthday party approaches. The Bidcombe Platinum Band and the Bidcombe Chromium Swingers compete for the honour of providing the music. Auberon Waugh's birthday is November 3, and he would have been 20 on that day in 1959. On the day of Martin's 21st birthday, the frost lay on the virgin surface of the Manor House lawns, so I think we can safely say that the author was thinking of his own birthday. Brother Aloysius is in attendance. Martin refers to the only other time in his life that the Manor House had opened its gates to the neighbourhood. I suspect the author was thinking of the time when Evelyn opened Piers Court so that his collection of Victorian art could be seen by the public in 1954, when Bron would have been 14.
Stoat and O'Connor have been invited to the party. Two to three years have passed since the majority of the book took place, which allows William to tell the reader and Stoat what he'd been up to. This paragraph brings the career and narrative voice of Crutwell in Decline and Fall to mind, in more ways than one. Moreover, some of the places mentioned resonate with Evelyn Waugh's biography:
"Oh well after I left you I had to go to a sort of school for Christian Delinquents. Creepy joint it was, and they were all so gloomy you wouldn't believe it. I'd rather the pagan variety any day. Well, I got bored with that after a few days and skipped it, and joined the pantomime in Tunbridge, but then there was bit of a bust-up with a silly old tart who wore a wig, so I chucked that and joined something rather terrible called a skiffle-group where we all tried to grow beards and have Free Love, but it never really worked. Then I wanted to stand for Parliament but my father got bit bolshie, and he was so disagreeable that I went to Morocco for a time where there was a Swedish woman called Anya or something in Marrakesh who was quite nice, but there was a bit of a fuss when they found I hadn't got a passport - I lost it, you know, in the public lavatories at London Airport and thought it was too gruesome to pick it up again. But they were so unpleasant, those stinking little wog policemen, that I decided to hop across to Aden where I found Rigid living like a fighting cock and terribly rich all of a sudden, so I collected some money from him and came home, and now I'm a gossip columnist for the Daily Truth, which is a pretty crummy job but quite fun."
The child, Tarquin, dies that evening, possibly by the hand of Martin's batman. William interviews Martin and insinuates that he's homosexual in his column, which means that Martin feels he has no choice but to resign his commission from the Pigs. Lady Foxglove is banished from Bidcombe to Sister Cardew's madhouse which is where the blind mother of Tarquin resides. Lady Foxglove lives in fear of her identity being exposed to this woman, who lives in the delusion that her son is growing up strong and successful, and ends up being transferred to a tiny room in Paddington run by nuns. Martin pays her lodgings and sends her a small allowance. How does Lady Foxglove's story end? As the novel does, with these final two paragraphs:
After a time she gave up the effort to engage Sister Alfreda's attention, and lay still, or bounced up and down on her mattress and listened to the squeaks. She tried to think of every word she knew beginning with B: Beautiful, Blue, Bonny, Baby, Bastard, Buggery (Get behind me Satan), Basket work, Bill, Bitch, It was no good. The stains on the ceiling assumed strange shapes, and she invented stories round them, but after a while she would be sweating with terror at the force of her own imagination, and all the time Sister Alfreda sat and wordlessly awaited the Hour.
She died soon after Christmas, as she had lived, in the odour of sanctity, and everybody agreed it would be difficult to imagine a more perfectly Christian death. 
Mark Gerson, The Waugh family (detail), 1959.
Before we go any further, what had Lady Foxglove done to deserve such a cruel fate? True, her Catholic faith was more than a tad hypocritical. But to be ruthlessly ejected from her own house to die a lonely death? Bearing in mind that the author knew - in formal and symbolic terms - that Lady Foxglove could be linked to his own mother.
Well, here is how that could be done. First, Auberon Waugh knew that he loved his mother the human being who had stood by him in his hours and days and weeks of need. And he'd learned from his father that as long as you kept your true feelings in a separate box, and acknowledged them, you could say what you liked in public. And if you said the opposite of what you really thought and felt, then that could come across as very funny. True, it could come across as completely heartless. But to a sophisticated as opposed to a sentimental taste, it comes across as hilarious. Auberon loved his mother and admired his father. That's what The Foxglove Saga is all about, or so it seems to me.
Mind you, it would have taken a strong son to expect his mother to definitely see things that way. But then Laura had lived with Evelyn for twenty-odd years. She knew where The Loved One came from, if anyone did. She knew the score. Didn't she?
Mark Gerson, The Waugh family (detail), 1959.
TWO
In the summer of 1959, word got to Evelyn (seemingly via his daughter, Harriet) that Bron had written a book that might be thought of as a diatribe against the monks at Downside. Evelyn considered the monks to be patient and magnanimous men. And he told Bron to bear in mind that until he was 21 he could not sign a contract without his father's consent. He suggested that Bron type out the manuscript and send it to Peters (Evelyn's literary agent) without disclosing his name. All of which wouldn't feel out of place as a plot device in The Foxglove Saga.
Bron put the manuscript in a drawer for the time being. But after having a car accident at Oxford a few months later, he returned to the script in January 1960, had it typed out and sent under his own name to Jack MacDougall at Chapman and Hall. The book's acceptance was telegraphed by return. In a follow-up letter, MacDougall commented 'I suppose you were born with a first-rate prose style, for I cannot think how you could have acquired it so soon.' (How about from listening to his father throughout his childhood!) 'There are no signs of the beginner in the writing of this book.' (If there had been, Evelyn Waugh would have scolded him most thoroughly.)
As it was, Evelyn enjoyed the book when he read it in proof. And on March 7 he wrote to Bron giving his response:
'I fell upon Foxglove Saga and read it with great delight. I congratulate you. It is original, lively and well-written; far better than I or your uncle Alec wrote at your age. I particularly enjoyed the army episodes. I am confident you will get encouraging reviews.'
Those words must have delighted Bron. Evelyn went on:
'Do not count on any great gain except prestige from your book. Prestige is more enjoyable at Oxford than in Paris, London, New York or Bologna. Make the most of it.'
As the book was in proof, Evelyn then provided a list of errata. He pointed out that it should be 'Lady Julia', not 'Lady Foxglove'. Though any link with Lady Julia in Brideshead might have seemed bit forced if Bron had taken him up on that suggestion.
Evelyn also suggested that the position of O'Connor père as newspaper editor comes too late in the book. I agree with Evelyn about that, Major O'Connor's military career is what the reader is introduced to earlier on.
'The book is full of excellent jokes. Too much stealing perhaps? Theft should be an outrage not a normal form of conduct if it is to be funny. 'Hen' 'Ken' admirable joke. As many others.'
I need to remind myself of the Hen/Ken jest. Martin is about to introduce Kenneth Stoat to his mother, but doesn't think the name 'Kenneth' hits the right note. Kenneth explains miserably that his father calls him 'Ken'. Martin then says that he will introduce him to his mother as 'Henry. After the introduction has taken place, Lady Foxglove asks: "Tell me, are you always called Henry, or do your friends sometimes call you 'Harry' or anything?" At which point Martin chips in with "His father sometimes calls him 'Hen'." Yes, admirable joke. In fact, Ab Fab.
This Evelyn to Bron letter is included by Alexander Waugh in his book Fathers and Sons. Evelyn's grandson wrote further:
'Martin Stannard claimed that Evelyn (who at this time felt his own creative powers were fading) was jealous of his son's success, but I can find no evidence to support this. He was delighted by the 'undeserved' success of The Foxglove Saga; he thought it was a very funny book; he helped to publicise it in the Daily Mail, to antagonise those critics who had insulted it and was demonstrably proud to be the father of its author. "I rejoice in your success" he wrote to Bron. "Regard it as a lucky win in gambling - not likely to be repeated. Think of your Uncle Alec who had great success at your age [The Loom of Youth] and waited 40 years for another [Island In the Sun]. But enjoy it to the full while you have it."'
Evelyn may have given Chapman and Hall explicit permission to juxtapose his own latest work with his son's.
And yet Martin Stannard writes about Evelyn; 'He did not wish to be uncharitable but the nightmare of Bron's overtaking him as he staggered into dotage could not easily be dispelled. His African book was small beer. It was crucial, he instructed Peters, that 'Tourist' and 'Foxglove' should not appear simultaneously. Comparisons would be inevitable and, on this basis, could only redound to Waugh père's discredit.'
Presumably (Stannard is impeccably reliable) Waugh did write to Peters in this way. But his confidence in his own abilities would have grown throughout 1960 as the book that would be published under the name of Unconditional Surrender was being assembled. It would be a successful conclusion to the war trilogy, with all the threads carried through to what I think of as a triumphantly humane conclusion.
In September, by which time Evelyn had submitted the first 30,000 words of his new war novel, Evelyn took up his son's book for a second time with 'enhanced enjoyment'. He recognised that the best passages were based on personal experience. However, rather rashly, Bron had used up almost all his experience - school, army, hospital - leaving little to draw on for future novels. That had been one of Evelyn's keys to longevity: the careful nurturing of near-catastrophic experience.
I'll leave you with this.
.
.
Bron's dedication reads: 'For Michael Curtis. A humble addition to his collection.' Evelyn couldn't have put it more modestly himself.
May 28, 2025. Three essays in three days. I'll have to take a break for a week or so. Not that I want to, but we all have family commitments.
Right, break over: Next essay.
