The Loved One (13 page)
Authors: Evelyn Waugh
“It’s odd you should say that, Sir Ambrose. One of my chief aims was to raise my status.”
“Then chuck it, my dear boy, before it’s too late.” Sir Ambrose spoke at length of the industrial crisis in England, the need for young men and dollars, the uphill work of the film community in keeping the flag flying. “Go home, my dear boy. That is your proper place.”
“As a matter of fact,” said Dennis, “things have rather changed with me since that announcement was written. The Call I heard has grown fainter.”
“Capital,” said Sir Ambrose.
“But there are certain practical difficulties. I have invested all my small savings in my theological studies.”
“I expected something of the kind. That is where the Cricket Club comes in. I hope the time will never come when we are not ready to help a fellow-countryman in difficulties. We had a committee meeting last night and your name was mentioned. There was complete agreement. To put it in a nutshell, my boy, we will send you home.”
“First-class?”
“Tourist. I’m told it’s jolly comfortable. How about it?”
“A drawing-room on the train?”
“No drawing-room.”
“Well,” said Dennis, “I suppose that as a clergyman I should have had to practice certain austerities.”
“Spoken like a man,” said Sir Ambrose. “I have the check with me. We signed it last night.”
*
Some hours later the mortician returned.
“You have regained command of yourself? Sit down and listen attentively. You have two problems, Joyboy, and let me emphasize that they are
yours. You
are in possession of the corpse of
your
fiancée and
your
career is threatened. You have then two problems—to dispose of the body and to explain the disappearance. You have come to me for help and it so happens that in both these things I and only I can help you.
“I have here at my disposal an excellent crematorium. We are happy-go-lucky people at the Happier Hunting Ground. There are no formalities. If I arrive here with a casket and say, ‘Mr. Schultz, I’ve a sheep here to incinerate,’ he says, ‘Go ahead.’ Once you seemed inclined to look down on us for our easy manners. Now perhaps you feel differently. All we have to do is to collect our Loved One, if you will forgive the expression,
and bring her here. Tonight after working hours will be the time.
“Secondly, to explain the disappearance. Miss Thanatogenos had few acquaintances and no relations. She disappears on the eve of her wedding. It is known that I once favored her with my attentions. What could be more plausible than that her natural good taste should have triumphed at the last moment and she should have eloped with her earlier lover? All that is necessary is for me to disappear at the same time. No one in Southern California, as you know, ever inquires what goes on beyond the mountains. She and I perhaps may incur momentary condemnation as unethical. You may receive some slightly unwelcome commiseration. There the matter will end.
“For some time I have felt oppressed by the unpoetic air of Los Angeles. I have work to do and this is not the place to do it. It was only our young friend who kept me here—she and penury. And talking of penury, Joyboy, I take it you have substantial savings?”
“I’ve some insurance.”
“What can you borrow on that? Five thousand dollars?”
“No, no, nothing like that.”
“Two?”
“No.”
“How much then?”
“Maybe a thousand.”
“Draw it out, Joyboy. We shall need it all. And cash this check at the same time. Together it will be enough. It may seem to you sentimental, but I wish to leave the United States in the same style as I came. Whispering Glades must not fall below Megalopolitan Studios in hospitality. From your bank go to the travel agency and take me a ticket to England—a drawing-room to New York, Cunarder single stateroom with bath from there on. I shall need plenty of ready cash for incidental expenses. So bring the rest in a lump sum with the tickets. All understood? Very well. I will be at your mortuary with the collecting van soon after dinner.”
Mr. Joyboy was waiting for Dennis at the side entrance of the mortuary. Whispering Glades was ideally equipped for the smooth movement of bodies. On a swift and silent trolley they set Dennis’s largest collecting box, first empty, later full. They drove to the Happier Hunting Ground where things were more makeshift, but between them without great difficulty they man-handled their load to the crematorium, and stowed it in the oven. Dennis turned on the gas and lit it. Flame shot from all sides of the brick-work. He closed the iron door.
“I reckon she’ll take an hour and a half,” he said. “Do you want to stay?”
“I can’t bear to think of her going out like this—she loved to see things done right.”
“I rather thought of conducting a service. My first and last non-sectarian office.”
“I couldn’t bear that,” said Mr. Joyboy.
“Very well. I will recite instead a little poem I have written for the occasion.
“Aimée, thy beauty was to me,
Like those Nicean barks of yore—”
“Hey, you can’t say that. That’s the phony poem.”
“Joyboy, please remember where you are.
“That gently o’er a perfumed sea
The weary way-worn wanderer bore
To his own native shore.
“It’s really remarkably apposite, is it not?”
But Mr. Joyboy had left the building.
The fire roared in the brick oven. Dennis must wait until all was consumed. He must rake out the glowing ashes, pound up the skull and pelvis perhaps and disperse the fragments. Meanwhile he entered the office and made a note in the book kept there for that purpose.
Tomorrow and on every anniversary as long as the Happier Hunting Ground existed a postcard would go to Mr. Joyboy:
Your little Aimée is wagging her tail in heaven tonight, thinking of you.
“Like those Nicean barks of yore (
he repeated),
That gently o’er a perfumed sea,
The weary way-worn wanderer bore
To his own native shore.”
On this last evening in Los Angeles Dennis knew he was a favorite of Fortune. Others, better men than he, had foundered here and perished. The strand was littered with their bones. He was leaving it not only unravished but enriched. He was adding his bit to the wreckage; something that had long irked him, his young heart, and was carrying back instead the artist’s load, a great, shapeless chunk of experience; bearing it home to his ancient and comfortless shore; to work on it hard and long, for God knew how long. For that moment of vision a lifetime is often too short.
He picked up the novel which Miss Poski had left on his desk and settled down to await his loved one’s final combustion.
The Loved One
An Anglo-American Tragedy
by
EVELYN WAUGH
In 1947, Evelyn Waugh and his wife, Laura, ventured to Los Angeles for three months so that he could consult with MGM after the studio acquired film rights to
Brideshead Revisited
. Waugh thoroughly disliked his trip to America—and the film project ultimately went nowhere—but he got the inspiration to write
The Loved One
after touring Forest Lawn Cemetery. Following are a selection of letters that Waugh wrote to his agent, A. D. Peters, and some close friends, taken from the time period surrounding
The Loved One
’s inception and eventual publication.
To A. D. Peters
3 October [1946]
Dear Pete,
I have no insuperable artistic scruples about their filming any book except
Brideshead
. I should greatly prefer, however, to be allowed to write all additional dialogue.
I should like to take Laura for a jaunt to Hollywood in February. The sort of offer I should find most attractive would be a tax-free trip, lecture-free, with a minimum of work of any kind at the other end. Luxury not lionization is the thing. And all troubles spared me of getting permits & booking cabins etc.
The sum paid beyond that is not of great interest. I should like to have it by installments if it is large. With enough pocket money for us to do some shopping in New York.
Yours,
Evelyn
To A. D. Peters
6 March [1947]
Beverly Hills Hotel & Bungalows
Beverly Hills
California
1
Dear Pete,
Thanks to Charles Mendl,
2
no thanks to MGM, I have at least got a fairly decent set of rooms.
I have had a telephone call from Knox’s agent & frozen him out.
I am entirely obsessed by Forest Lawn & plan a long short story about it. I go there two or three times a week, am on easy terms with the chief embalmer & next week am to lunch with Dr. Hubert Eaton himself. It is an entirely unique place—the only thing in California that is not a copy of something else. It is wonderful literary raw material. Aldous [Huxley] flirted with it in
After Many a Summer
3
but only with the superficialities. I am at the heart of it. It will be a very good story.
… MGM bore me when I see them but I don’t see them much.
4
They have been a help in getting me introductions to morticians who are the
only
people worth knowing.
Social life gay and refined. Not as generally defined. Laura returns on Q.E. sailing 22nd. Probably I go with her.
Mr. Mayer
5
cried when his horses were sold.
Did you know that the cadaver was referred to as “the loved one” at F.L. I have seen dozens of loved ones half painted before the bereaved family saw them. In the Church of the Recessional at F.L. they have Enid Jones’s
National Velvet
in a glass case with a notice saying that it is comparable to
Alice in Wonderland
& was inspired by Rottingdean Church from which the Church of the Recessional derives.
6
I will try and get one from Eatons books signed for you.
Yours ever,
Evelyn
Randolph [Churchill] came for two days & behaved abominably. I thought he could never shock me anymore but he did. Brutishly drunk all the time, soliciting respectable women at luncheon parties etc. His lecture, to which we went to Pasadena, was surprisingly good considering the grave condition he was in. He mocked the Jews to the sound of applause. I was not the least anti-Semitic before I came here. I am now. It is intolerable to see them enjoying themselves.
The news that weekly papers have closed down in England brought the crisis
7
home to us as nothing else had.
To A. D. Peters
[9 July 1947]
Dear Pete,
… Then there is the question of whether
The Loved One
should appear at all in the USA. It will greatly shock many & I feel comes rather poorly after an article in
Life
in which I declared that I would only write religious books in future. Ought I concentrate on setting up in USA as a serious (as they mean it) writer or ought I to keep them guessing? It is hard for you to advise without having read the story…
Yours ever,
Evelyn
To A. D. Peters
14 September [1947]
Piers Court.
Dear Pete,
I am sorry you don’t like
The Loved One
. I have been sweating away at it and it is now more elegant but not less gruesome. I enclose a yank opinion (please return) from a woman of high Boston origins lately become a best seller. But I am not headstrong in this matter & don’t want to antagonize future customers. The tale should not be read as a satire on morticians but as a study of the Anglo-American cultural impasse with the mortuary as a jolly setting. This is emphasized in the final version which here I enclose…
Yours ever,
Evelyn
To A. D. Peters
[December 1947]
Dear Pete,
I hope you have passed a cheerful and refreshing Christmas. I have not.
… To avoid boredom in 1948.
Scott-King
would make a very funny film. Neutralia should cease to be Spain & become a Soviet satellite, thus giving topical patriotic point. I would enjoy (or think I would) writing for Rank. Any good?…
Yours,
E
The more I re-read
Loved One
the better content I am with it.
To Cyril Connolly
2 January 1948
Dear Cyril,
I am in your debt for two delightful letters. I was in London for two days this week & hoped to see you. Perhaps I did see you. I cannot tell, for I got really drunk at once & remained drunk causing, rather than collecting, gossip. I shall be back next week, staying at St. James’s Club but frequenting White’s, remaining over the weekend. Perhaps Lys would let me call on you both one evening?
I was moved by your verdict that the misfortunes of your friends are not the perfect subject for humor. I do not know how you can bear to go so much into society if you feel this.
With regard to
The Loved One:
I anticipated ructions & one reason, apart from the predominant one of my affection for
yourself, for my seeking publication in
Horizon
was the confidence that its readers were tough stuff.
The Americans embrace the democratic superstition that everything must be equally pleasing to everyone. I think it highly undesirable that popular papers should get hold of the tale. (After a momentary weakness towards the
New Yorker
which they themselves at once dispelled.) Fortunately American law is stricter than ours about quotation. If you insert one of those formal notices about “reproduction in whole or in part” being “reserved” they will not be able to say much about it.
For myself I have always found deep comfort in the text: “Woe unto you when all men shall speak well of you,” and rejoice in the stinks [?] & groans [?] of the field dressing station, but I am sympathetic to your own quite different problem as the editor of a magazine which must enjoy goodwill or perish. It might be prudent for you to introduce the story with soft words and I know you will do it brilliantly. I look forward eagerly to seeing the “Comment” in the February issue but would sooner not see it before or attempt any censorship. It must be your opinion of the tale, not mine.
The ideas I had in mind were: 1st & quite predominantly over-excitement with the scene of Forest Lawn. 2nd the Anglo-American impasse—“never the twain shall meet.” 3rd there is no such thing as American. They are all exiles uprooted, transplanted & doomed to sterility. The ancestral
gods they have abjured get them in the end. I tried to indicate this in Aimée’s last hours. 4th the European raiders who come for the spoils & if they are lucky make for home with them. 5th Memento mori, old style, not specifically Californian.
But there is no reason why any of these should appear in your introduction. I should like you to treat it as a book for review by a writer unknown to you.
Do you think this postcard would make a pretty frontispiece?
I disagreed deeply with you about the need for an “advanced guard”—last month’s Comment.
Miss Trumper has some fine teats
8
for sale—only £85 a box. Even in my drunkenness I did not buy them.
My plans. I arrive in London Wednesday afternoon and shall be in Whites before dinner, dining out, lunching out Thursday & Friday otherwise not engaged.
Could you please keep me a dozen copies of February
Horizon
?
