PHOTOGRAPHIC SESSION: APRIL, 1959
Or
HOUSE OF THE RISING SON
As soon as Evelyn got back from his cruise he made an effort to organise a family photo. He realised that this might be the last time that all the children would be at home for some time, since Teresa had hooked up with an American boyfriend and Bron was planning to go to Italy to further his recovery from being shot six times through the torso. The person Waugh entrusted with this job was his publisher, John MacDougall, who got in touch with Mark Gerson. Gerson being an established portrait photographer who specialised in taking photos of literary figures.
Here is Waugh trying to ensure that Gerson made it to Combe Florey in deepest Somerset without getting lost:
Evelyn Waugh postcard, copyright, Waugh Estate
Transcription: 'Thank you for swift action with photographer. We will expect him to luncheon on Friday. Tell him to take Minehead Road out of Taunton, go through Bishops Lydard, look out for Commercial Inn on the left and take first turn on left (where bull-dozers are at work) through arched gatehouse on right of village street. I shan't be here on Saturday but my wife will be.'
What could possibly go wrong? The visit is covered in detail in Martin Stannard's biography, so I will plug into that, but don't worry, I have new information to add.
Over to Stannard: 'Gerson and his wife were invited for the weekend - not to stay but for two days' work - and, setting off for Somerset in their dilapidated Vauxhall Cresta, broke down on the other side of Salisbury Plain. They telephoned. The reply was cool. The family, Waugh explained, were waiting for their luncheon. An hour late, the Gersons were ushered into the dining room to be greeted by six pairs of hostile eyes. The entire brood was sitting, pointedly, at table. Waugh appeared amused to see the couple at all and embarrassed them further by insisting on pre-lunch drinks.'
Six glowering Waugh children sitting round the dinner table. A fine photo opportunity missed.
Evelyn enjoying his first drink of the day. Another opportunity lost forever.
'During his sharp cross-questioning about the erratic lives of photographers, the rest of the family remained silent. Only Laura attempted to rescue her visitors through courtesy. The children took their cue from Papa. They were trained not to interrupt until he was done with his prey; their expressions were glazed, indifferent. And Gerson eager to conclude this awful meal and begin work, soon discovered a further hiatus. After luncheon, Waugh disappeared. He remained untraceable for the rest of the day.'
At the end of his career, when Gerson was asked, out of all the writers and artists he had photographed, who had intrigued him most. His answer was 'My most intriguing sitter was Evelyn Waugh.' I think this was because of something that happened during his second visit to Combe Florey, in 1963, which we'll come to in due course. But there is plenty to be said about this first visit right now, dear reader.
'Laura showed her guests round the house while Gerson took interior shots: of the library, of her bedroom with its four-poster, of the Betjeman Benefaction, of a gasolier salvaged from the demolished Holborn Restaurant and re-hung over the staircase. The photographs appeared over four pages of 'Good Housekeeping'.'
I have not been able to trace a copy of the relevant issue. If any reader has access to the piece I would truly appreciate scans of the images.
'Gerson had booked into the local pub and next morning was at Combe Florey early. There was still no sign of Waugh. Eventually, after luncheon, he put in an appearance, prohibiting colour film because it made him look florid. Gerson blithely loaded cameras with Ektachrome while Waugh nagged Bron to change into uniform.'
I can see why Bron may not have been keen to change into the uniform of the regiment which he'd been serving in when he'd copped a bellyful of lead nine months earlier. (Strictly speaking a lungful and a spleenful.) But there is a photo that suggests he succumbed to Evelyn's persuasion.
Mark Gerson, Auberon Waugh, 1959.
Ektachrome is a type of colour film made by Kodak. Which means that Gerson must have been able to put Waugh at ease about the question of appearing florid. Waugh would have been paranoid about appearing red in the face since a footman at White's Club had attached a label with the word 'florid' to his bowler hat and inadvertently returned it with said label still attached. Correction, it wasn't until December 1960 that the White's Club incident happened, eighteen months after the photoshoot. The incident must have been unnerving. The very word that Evelyn had come to dread being associated with, written down by an objective hand. Waugh must have been aware that his alcohol consumption meant that appearing florid was simply part of the deal he'd struck with God. But he didn't have to like it.
Either Mark Gerson persuaded Waugh to accept the application of some make-up before the photographs were taken, or Gerson had assured him that he would be able to deal with any problems in the darkroom. I think Gerson may also have given instructions that all members of the family who had a favourite garment of deep red should wear it in preference to any other strong colours. And so we get this superb photograph taken in the grounds of Combe Florey:
Mark Gerson, The Waugh family, 1959. Photo available from Bridgeman Images.
The red of Laura's blouse, Hatty's skirt, Septimus's jersey (and socks), and the ties of Evelyn and Bron (directly behind his father), bounce off the green of the grass, rendering all other colours neutral. Evelyn's forehead shines like an iceberg. Well done that professional photographer!
Moreover, if one enlarges it sufficiently, one can see that green and red have been added to Septimus's face so that his cheek burns red. Thus distracting from any colour in his father's face. The photographer's art is a mysterious one.
Oddly, the above photograph exists in the alternative version below, available from the National Portrait Gallery. It's been flipped on the vertical axis. Or at least either the photo available from Bridgeman Images or the one on offer at the National Gallery has been flipped. Which one is correct? Evelyn was right-handed, so the National Portrait Gallery print is the right way round. 
Mark Gerson, The Waugh family, 1959. Photo available from National Portrait Gallery.
That second version is so much redder than the first. Evelyn's face isn't red though. Rather the bottom half of it looks brown and tanned.
The party moved to a distinctive gate outside Combe Florey which allows the house to be seen in the background. Also, the couple who acted as servants to the Waugh family are in this one.
Mark Gerson, The Waugh family, 1959. Photo available from Bridgeman Images.
Again, no trace on Evelyn's lily-white face of the seven bottles of wine and three bottles of spirits that he drank each week. (These figures are according to letters written by him to two of his regular correspondents while at Combe Florey.) I would suggest that some post-shoot editing has been done with the white of Meg's jumper, which is directly behind Evelyn's face. I'm guessing that having got Evelyn's face to appear un-red, Gerson wanted to show it off.
Mark Gerson, The Waugh family (detail), 1959. Photo available from Bridgeman Images.
What is the smiling Bron thinking? (He seems to be wearing a three-piece suit, like Evelyn. He seems to be wearing the same tie.) Don't worry, dear reader, you'll soon find out.
But first Laura and Evelyn. Laura looks exhausted. But whether from 20 years of being Evelyn's wife, or nine months of praying for her eldest son's survival, I couldn't say.
Mark Gerson, Evelyn and Laura Waugh, 1959. Photo available from Bridgeman Images.
Actually, let's try saying a bit more about the shooting incident in Cyprus. Alexander Waugh's Book, Fathers and Sons, is comprehensive about this. After all, he'd got skin in the game. His father's and his grandfather's.
'On the roadside Bron was given the last sacraments as he and his troops waited anxiously for medical assistance. On the way to the military hospital in Nicosia the regimental doctor stood over his bed reciting De Profundis while Bron spluttered responses through mouthfuls of blood. On arrival he was operated on immediately. The army surgeon removed his spleen and two ribs; a third rib was wired together. Bron's left hand was also seriously damaged.'
Four days after the shooting, Evelyn wrote to Diana Cooper: 'Laura is in Cyprus with Bron. His life is very precarious. He seems to have had more than one bullet in lung and spleen. I shall go out to travel home with Laura if he dies.'
Alexander suggests that Evelyn was furious with Bron for disgracing the Waugh name through wanton exhibitionism. His ostensible excuse for not flying out to Cyprus with Laura was that Henry and Pansy Lamb were visiting and could not be put off. Alexander suggests that Waugh was behaving in the inhumanely cold way he was as some kind of reverse reaction to his own father's fussing and fretting over his brother's survival during the First World War, leaving young Evelyn feeling left out and unloved.
Back to Alexander's narrative: 'Unable to move from his bed, Bron impressed everyone with his bravery. The heat in Cyprus was stifling - often as high as 108 degrees Fahrenheit during the day. Matters were not improved by painkillers which made him hallucinate, an abscess on his chest which had to be drained every other day of poisonous fluids, and a running high temperature of 102 degrees. For a week he was unable to speak more than a few stuttered words as his mouth was filled with tubes and the effort exhausted him. Laura saw him for fifteen minutes twice a day. As he strengthened, the length of the visits increased. For weeks he received no word from his father or from the rest of his family in England. Every day Laura begged her husband to write, but he did not respond.'
Alexander then quotes from Laura's letters of June 11, 17, 18, 19 and 20, each one begging for letters. The one on the 19th states: 'He has received no letters. Please get everyone to write to him, he longs for it and all he thinks about is Combe Florey and the family.'
Bron survived. And here he is, below, standing in the grounds of Combe Florey nine months after the machine-gunning, having emerged from hospital just one month before. What is going on in his mind in the centre of this photo which I believe would also have been in colour, though my printed source is black and white?:
Mark Gerson, The Waugh family, 1959.
Maybe something like this:
"There is a house in Summer Set
They call the Rising Sun
And it's been the ruin of many a poor boy
And God, I know, I'm one.
"My mother was a tailoress
She sewed my new blue jeans.
And my father was a gamblin' man
Way down in New Orleans.
Mark Gerson, The Waugh family (detail), 1959.
"Now the only thing a gambler needs
Is a suitcase and a trunk.
And the only time he's satisfied
Is when he's down and drunk.
"He fills his glasses up to the brim
And he'll pass the cards around
And the only pleasure he gets out of life
Is rambling, lost not found.
"Oh, mother, tell your children
Not to do what I have done.
To spend your lives in sin and misery,
In a house called the Rising Sun."
Mark Gerson, The Waugh family, 1959.
I'm going to interrupt Bob Dylan's, The Animals, and Sinead O'Connor's superb arrangements of this traditional song, to say something about this latest, most accomplished photograph by Mark Gerson. The intense look is between Evelyn and his third-born, Margaret (Meg) and I'll be exploring the depths of their relationship in due course. But for now its back to Bron and his perspective, via Dylan, O'Connor and The Animals:
"I got one foot on the platform
And another one on the train.
And I'm going home to New Orleans
To wear that ball and chain."
Bron was about to go to Bologna where he would write his first novel, The Foxglove Saga. No doubt he had been planning it while lying in bed all these months. You will be wanting to know what the book is about. I will give you my interpretation of its narrative in the next essay. But the boy was only nineteen years old, for goodness sake. All he'd known was Piers Court and Combe Florey, Downside School and army training. Those are what he would have to write about.
"There is a house in Summer Set
They call the Rising Sun.
And it's been the ruin of many a poor boy
And God, I know, I'm one.
And God, I know, I'm one."
TWO
Mark Gerson completed his assignment by taking series of photographs of Evelyn in his library. I think he used black and white film for this. Maybe there was nothing he could do about Evelyn's florid features in such an environment. Though you'll be delighted to know that he had thought of something by the time he came back in 1963.
Mark Gerson, Evelyn Waugh 1959. Photo available from Bridgeman Images.
Evelyn looking thoughtful. Perhaps he was wondering if he'd treated the serious illness of his son in the correct way. Once Bron was flown back to London and admitted to a hospital, Evelyn visited him. According to Alexander Waugh: 'When Evelyn finally talked to his son he was life-enhancing - witty, warm, sympathetic, clever, profound. If Bron had borne him any grudge for not writing or rushing to his bedside in Cyprus, all was forgiven.'
Mark Gerson, Evelyn Waugh, 1959.
Alexander's account continues. 'Too embarrassed to express his love to Evelyn's face he put it in a letter, sealed it up and left it with his bank in Oxford with instructions to pass it to his father after his death.'
In the event, Bron didn't pre-decease Evelyn, so the letter was returned to Bron and is now part of the Waugh Archive at Milverton. The letter begins 'Dear Papa' and goes onto say:
'Just a line to tell you what for some reason I was never able to show you in my lifetime, that I admire, revere and love you more than any other man in the world.'
A sentiment which echoes Mark Gerson's remark that Evelyn Waugh was the most intriguing subject that ever came his way. 
Mark Gerson, Evelyn Waugh, 1959.
I say again that when these photos were taken, Bron was on the brink of writing a novel. The effort would take him just six weeks. Its title ended up being The Foxglove Saga, but I'm thinking that The Houndstooth Sage would have been just as appropriate. 
Mark Gerson, Evelyn Waugh, 1959. Photo available from Bridgeman Images.
Well, you'll soon see.
If you look closely at the next crop, you can see a network of veins over Evelyn's nose. I'd suggest those red lines are hard-won and that Evelyn would have been entitled to sport them with pride. 
Mark Gerson, Evelyn Waugh (detail), 1959.
Put it this way:
"And the only thing a gambler needs
Is a cellar and a trunk
And the only time he's satisfied
Is when he's up and drunk."
March 27, 2025. That essay was so easy to write that it can't be any good.
Tomorrow's work is this essay.
