NEWS FROM ASTON CLINTON
Another intriguing email pops into my Evbox:
Hello Duncan,
We have been looking through old family photo albums - my partner’s father went to Aston Clinton and we were hoping to find out more about the school at that time. There seems to be very little information available and then we found your website.
His father was Patrick Grinling who is mentioned in connection with Evelyn Waugh and your photo of EW on his motorbike is in Patrick’s album - so instead of ‘photographer unknown’ you may now attribute it to Pat Grinling!
Attached is the relevant page from his album. We have a high resolution if you are interested.
Kind regards
Sue Willis (And Rupert Grinling)
Photos courtesy of Rupert Grinling and Sue Willis.
Being a lazy writer, like Evelyn, I'm saving time by quoting the full email exchange. Besides, I know where this is going, so I want to spin it out.
Hi Sue,
Very interesting. Thanks for telling me.
Can you be sure Pat was the photographer? Certainly, he seems to be part of the friendship group. Could you send me a hi res pic of the photo and of the one below which seems to feature the same bike? Thanks in anticipation.
What is on the previous page of photos? Does Pat’s album include any good scene-setting pics of the school itself?
I am away from base 'n' books just now but will look up Patrick Grinling when I get back to them.
Oh, and could you bear to temporarily remove the photo from the album and see if there is anything written on the back? If so, photo please!
All best,
Duncan
I'm still on holiday when this comes fluttering in:
Hi Duncan
Thanks for your reply.
The albums are not with us any more but we can retrieve them and attempt to prize the photos off the page but I fear they are stuck down.
Give us a few days!
Attached are separate photos, best quality we can get. Same bike definitely, don't know about the man.
We can confirm that Pat took the photos.
All the best, Sue.
Evelyn Waugh. Photo by Pat Griinling. Courtesy of Rupert Grinling and Sue Willis.
Photo by Pat Griinling. Courtesy of Rupert Grinling and Sue Willis.
The first of the above photos (I will come back to the second) is the one that was reproduced in the Christopher Sykes biography of Evelyn Waugh which came out in 1976. The photo is credited to the Waugh estate so I guess that Evelyn was given a copy of it by Pat in 1926, and kept hold of it. Martin Stannard used the same photo in his biography too, claiming that it was taken on Magdalene Bridge, Oxford. Then Paula Byrne used it on the cover of her Mad World, Evelyn Waugh and the Secrets of Brideshead, the image of Evelyn on his motorbike being superimposed onto a Brideshead-style country house background. The photo was correctly identified as being taken at Aston Clinton in an article by Diana Gulland concerning the history of Aston Clinton House found in Records of Buckinghamshire (vol 48), though in that article the year of the photo was stated as being 1925 (following Stannard) instead of 1926. You can read about all this misidentification, if you like, in an earlier page on this site. Indeed, I recommend the whole Aston Clinton section, which builds up a picture of Evelyn as a young man, trying earnestly to be a teacher.
Earnestly? The Diaries of Evelyn Waugh has an entry for June 23, 1926, which reads as follows:
'On Thursday [June 17, 1926] the Doctor ordained a whole holiday. I started for London to fetch back my motor bicycle and met Pat Grinling on the platform so we travelled up together. Feeling rich I took him to luncheon at the Ritz where we found Alec entertaining numberless elderly women. Bobbie joined us. He promised to drive my bicycle down to me next day so I went to Cobham to Pat's home. This was unwise as I was due at the school at 5 o'clock. His family were at Ascot - such a vulgar house, by the way - and there was no car to take us back so we dined there. I was due to take prep and came back by a very late train. Poor Captain Hyde-Upward was engaged for dinner that night and had to stay at the school. I feel rather ashamed of that. Bobbie came down next day. We had an agreeable dinner at the Bell and he missed his train back and woke me up to borrow pyjamas.'
How wonderfully un-earnest is that diary entry, with no school times or train times or deadlines taken at all seriously. I must try and find out just how old Pat Grinling was at the time. I suspect he was a pupil at Aston Clinton and that Evelyn was in the habit of treating his pupils like adults and equals. After all, it's how he was treated while in the sixth form at Lancing College.
Or maybe not. On the page before the Pat Grinling diary entry, Evelyn states: 'On Monday afternoon I found Edmund out of bounds and beat him with mixed feelings and an ash plant. He was very sweet and brave about it all. I have given him a Sulka tie as recompense.'
A Sulka tie, eh? Let's log that.
And on the page following the Grinling entry. Evelyn mentions reading Wind in the Willows to Edmund. He also writes on that same following page about dining at the Bell, a pub in Aston Clinton village: 'There were a lot of the boys dining with an old boy. We took them away to the pub by the canal and got very drunk and Alastair swam the canal with a glass of beer in each hand and drank them.'
The high spirits of eternal youth! After all Evelyn and Alastair were just a year or two out of Lewis Carroll's Oxford. I expect they called each other Captain Hyde-Upward and Doctor Jekyll-Downward' on a regular basis.
Dear Sue,
Back at base now. I’d like to write a short, separate piece about the motor bike photo. Have had a quick browse through E's diary but only saw the one entry re Pat Grinling, for 23 June 1926. Know of any more?
What age would Pat have been then? (Trying to work out if he was a pupil, an ex-pupil, or a teacher.) And it would be good to know what Pat went on to do with his life in broad terms.
Did Pat have anything to say about Evelyn to Rupert? Any facts or anecdotes? Like whether Evelyn was funny or friendly as a teacher?
Any info you can provide would be great, but don’t worry about ignoring any of these questions which are quite personal.
All best,
Duncan
I get a reply the same day. That day being TODAY, as it happens. It contains the exciting information that I am about to see two previously unpublished photos of Evelyn Waugh. And you too, dear reader, are in for such a treat. However, first things first. This is what Sue Willis has written to me:
The only one [diary entry] we know about was where EW met Pat at Tring railway station and they went back to Pat's house in Cobham.
Pat was born in 1909 so he would have been 17 and yes, he was a pupil.
He went on to marry a Danish Countess and they lived in Ewhurst, Surrey. Had 4 children.
During the war he was a conscientious objector and they went to Scotland where he worked for the war effort. They returned to Surrey in 1945 and he became MD of Rolcut Ltd. (secateurs etc.). He sadly died of cancer at the young age of 60 in 1970.
Pat never talked about his school to Rupert, we only found out about Aston Clinton when we were given the family albums.
The album is full of photos of Aston Clinton boys, the house, etc. and here are a couple more of EW and just one of Pat, sitting on the wall, The only one of himself in the whole album which enforces our thinking that he was the photographer of all the others. Rupert remembers him being very keen on photography.'
I am so grateful to Sue Willis for this information. Shall we have a look at the photos? First here's Pat, the taker of most of the photographs in his album, but on this occasion sitting on a wall:
Pat Grinling. Courtesy of Rupert Grinling and Sue Willis.
Would Evelyn have been comfortable taking Pat to the Ritz? Yes indeed, a very presentable young man. After all, he went on to marry a Danish Countess.
Here is the first of the new photos of Evelyn Waugh, at the ripe young age of 23:
Evelyn Waugh. Photo by Pat Griinling. Courtesy of Rupert Grinling and Sue Willis.
Evelyn: "Now Pat I want you to promise me that you won't call me 'Evelyn', as that is a girl's name. Instead I want you to broadcast to the world that my name is Aston. Aston Clinton."
Pat: "I promise… Aston."
Actually, the photo of Evelyn puts me in mind of one of David Bowie in his prime. 
I will always associate David Bowie and Evelyn Waugh, as I was reading Decline and Fall while listening to such records as Diamond Dogs and Ziggy Stardust, circa 1974, I was having my mind expanded, blown even, by the artistry of both. "Wham, bang, thank-you, Evelyn."
And here is the second of the new photos of Evelyn Waugh. Now seen by us all, 98 years after it was taken:
Evelyn Waugh. Photo by Pat Griinling. Courtesy of Rupert Grinling and Sue Willis.
Pat: "Thank-you, Aston. Another classic pose for my album."
Evelyn: "You can also call me Tom. Tom of Tom Hall."
Pat: "Not Weasel of Weasel Dyke?"
Evelyn: "My lad, you are in danger - serious danger - of abusing the teacher-pupil relationship."
Which is all very well, but the real thing to say at this point is that this second new photo of Evelyn Waugh reveals a third new photo of Evelyn Waugh. The man with the bike in that earlier image is Evelyn in the baggier, sexier jacket. I think by touching the rubber tyre - and/or the mudguard - he'd had a revelatory vision of his future as an artist, and so was staring at his hand after dismounting from his motor bike:
Evelyn Waugh. Photo by Pat Griinling. Courtesy of Rupert Grinling and Sue Willis. David Bowie added by Duncan McLaren.
While at Aston Clinton, Evelyn Waugh did write one short story. 'The Tutor's Tale, A House of Gentlefolks.' On the back of 'The Balance' - a story which came out in October 1926, though it was written in 1925 when Evelyn was a schoolmaster in North Wales - Evelyn was asked to write a story for The New Decameron on February 20, 1927. And he did so over two days and had finished it by February 28. It's a fascinating tale and it must draw on many things that had been happening to him while working at Aston Clinton. I want to suggest that it draws on the day Evelyn spent with Pat Grinling travelling between Aston Clinton, London and Cobham. But really it's just an excuse to quote extensively from the sweetly funny story.
The protagonist, a character unsubtly called Ernest Vaughan, is commissioned to take a 'mad' boy - who will inherit a dukedom when he comes of age - to London, and then abroad, from a house called Vanburgh in the village of Stayle. Ernest describes the living room as follows:
'I was quite unprepared for the overpowering heat that met us as the Duke opened the door. The double windows were tight shut and a large coal fire burned brightly in the round Victorian grate. The air was heavy with the smell of chrysanthemums, there was a gilt clock under a glass case on the chimney piece and everywhere in the room stiff little assemblages of china and bric-a-brac. One might expect to find such a room in Lancaster Gate or Elm Park Gardens where the widow of some provincial knight knits away her days among trusted servants.'
Did Evelyn think he was describing something that was 'vulgar', as he says in his diary entry? I'm not sure.
Evelyn/Ernest describes the boy's parents, plus the mother's sister, so in that he couldn't have been thinking of the day in Cobham. But there is an absurd conversation about whether Ernest came by motor or train that could be inspired by the diary entry that Evelyn made on June 23, 1926, with all its mentions of trains and motorbikes.
"My dear, this is Mr Vaughan, who is going to take Stayle abroad - my sister, Lady Emily. Mr Vaughan has just driven down from London in his motor."
"No," I said, "I came by train - the 12.55."
"Wasn't that very expensive?" Said Lady Emily.
"Did you say you came by train?" Said the Duke.
"By the 12.55."
But you said you were coming by motor."
"No, really, I can't have said that. For one thing I haven't got a motor."
"But if you hadn't said that, I should have sent Byng to meet you. Byng didn't meet you, did he?"
"No," I said "he did not,"
"Well, there you see."
At this moment another old lady, almost indistinguishable from Lady Emily, came into the room.
"This is Mr Vaughan, my dear. He's going to take Stayle abroad - my sister, Lady Gertrude.
Lady Gertrude smiled brightly and took my hand.
"Now I knew there was someone coming to luncheon, and then I saw Byng carrying in the vegetables a quarter of an hour ago. I thought, now he ought to be at Vanburgh meeting the train."
"No, no, dear," said Lady Emily."Mr Vaughan came down by motor."
"Oh, that's a good thing. I thought he said he was coming by train."
When the young man appears he is described as follows.
'He wasn't a bad-looking youth at all, slightly over middle height, and he spoke with that rather agreeable intonation that gentlepeople acquire who live among servants and farm hands. His clothes, with which he had obviously been at some pains, were unbelievable - a shiny blue suit with four buttons, much too small for him, showing several inches of wrinkled wooden sock and white flannel shirt. Above this he had put on stiff evening collar and a very narrow tie, tied in a sailor knot. His hair was far too long, and he had been putting water on it. But for all this he did not look mad.'
Does this description of George, the young Duke of Stayle, in any way accord with the photo of Pat Grinling sitting on the wall?
Pat Grinling. Courtesy of Rupert Grinling and Sue Willis.
Ernest introduces George to a London tailor and to London society. Ernest, while, spending as much of his client's money as possible, is impressed with the way George conducts himself. But not straight away:
'We spent the next day ordering clothes. It was clear the moment I saw his luggage that we should have to stay on in London for four or five days; he had nothing that he could possibly wear. As soon as he was up I put him into one of my overcoats and took him to all the shops where I owed money. He ordered lavishly and with evident relish. By the evening the first parcels had arrived and his room was a heap of cardboard and tissue-paper. Mr. Phillrick, who always gives me the impression that I am the first commoner who has dared to order a suit from him, so far relaxed from his customary austerity as to call upon us at the hotel, followed by an assistant with a large suitcase full of patterns. George showed a well-bred leaning towards checks.'
Near the end of the deadpan yet hilarious story, when George's panicking family have put an end to the whole arrangement, a paragraph reads:
'"It's been a marvellous four days," said George.; and then: "Anyway, I shall be twenty-one in three years and I shall have my mother's money then. I think it's rather a shame sending back those ties though. Don't you think I could keep one or two?"
This was accepted for publication in March, 1927, nine months after the trip to London from Aston Clinton with Pat. But I've a feeling that it provides part of the inspiration for the story. How often would Evelyn have travelled to London with a young man and taken him to the Ritz and introduced him to his brother, complete with elderly female guests? Actually, there is another quote I should use. Take it away Ernest Vaughan:
'He was an immediate success with everyone I introduced him to. He had no "manner" of any kind. He said all he thought with very little reticence and listened with the utmost interest to all he heard said. At first he would sometimes break in with rather disturbing sincerity upon the readymade conversations with which we are mostly content, but almost at once he learned to discern what was purely mechanical and to disregard it. He would pick up tags and phrases and use them with the oddest twists, revitalising them by his interest in their picturesqueness.'
That describes Stayle. But does it describe Pat? I leave you to ponder that question.
Here he is once again, the young writer/devil. Butter wouldn't melt in his mouth. Ink wouldn't stain his lily-white fingers. Or is that why his hands are hidden behind his back?
Evelyn Waugh. Photo by Pat Griinling. Courtesy of Rupert Grinling and Sue Willis.
Evelyn: "Remember, Pat. Call me Aston Clinton."
Pat: "Or Tom of Tom Hall."
Evelyn Waugh. Photo by Pat Griinling. Courtesy of Rupert Grinling and Sue Willis.
Evelyn: "Or Ernest Vaughan."
Evelyn Waugh. Photo by Pat Griinling. Courtesy of Rupert Grinling and Sue Willis.
Pat: "Or Doctor Jekyll-Downward."
Evelyn Waugh. Photo by Pat Griinling. Courtesy of Rupert Grinling and Sue Willis. David Bowie added by Duncan McLaren.
What I've just written would be one way to finish this essay. But let's actually end it by drawing attention to the fact that these fabulous photographs by Pat Grinling are very nearly 100 years old, and yet newly revealed to an Evelyn Waugh public. They show two young men (17 and 23, respectively) at the beginning of their adult lives. Both will have ups and downs, certainly Evelyn did. Both will have careers, marry, and have several children. Both will die relatively young (60 and 62, respectively).
The photographer and his subject, with their adult lives before them. The photographer and his subject, both long, long dead. Dead long before I was laughing aloud at Decline and Fall.
How did I put it in the 'WAUGH CONFERENCE LOWDOWN' essay I uploaded yesterday? 'Ah, TIME, cruel separator of parents from children, readers from writers, and the individual from everyone else.'
AUGUST 11 and 12, 2024
