Most of us, at one time or another--our protestations notwithstanding--have dreamed of passing our days in languished ease and lighting up our nights partying, skiing, and cruising. And we've dreamed of weekending with the sort of people who, no matter how many more wrinkles and gray hairs the passing the years add, do not diminish in their ability to fascinate the perusers of gossip columns and supermarket tabloids. In the United States such social circles will comprise real state tycoons, movie stars, network news caster's the offspring of politicians with great futures behind them--people, in other words, who have "made it," even if only to the extent of being an object of speculation as to why they haven't "made it" bigger.
In Britain what counts is family name. In a much less mobile society than America, money has circulated chiefly, until very recently, through the means of steeply progressive taxation. The beneficiaries were council-house tenants, the unemployed, unmarried mothers, old-age pensioners, and frequent users of the free public-health services--not exactly the jet set. All that was left to feed the appetite for gossip were the doings and undoings of the scions of the old aristocracy or, rather, of the families who did well from Britain's enormous commercial expansion during the last century. On the other hand, it has been precisely this that has given Britain the picturesque, old worldly quality that has helped earn millions for the Exchequer through the worldwide distribution rights of television series based on novels set at the turn of the century and depicting a world only too recognizable today.
Advanced Hanger-on
And what happens when, after many years of patiently waiting, one finally becomes a member of, or is at least allowed to be a hanger-on of the upper classes or the jet set or, come to that, of any social circle suggestive of glamour and exclusivity? Does one discover the lifestyle is not quite as exciting as one had been led to believe? Sure, but whoever heard of reality living up to expectations? One's new friends don't seem to have the warmth and genuineness of one's folks back home? Of course, but, you, know, the higher one climbs the more rarified the air. Their morals are not conducive to a happy life? Yes, but . . . And it is at this point that most of us, even if we dare not admit it, will start to get cold feet. Drug-taking, adultery, homosexuality, unsentimentality about one's friends, all of these have traditionally been part-and-parcel of the defiance of bourgeois convention that is the absolutely essential condition for the existence of a bohemian class. One has to be strong enough or, at least, obtuse enough, to take it. Judging by his bitter and harrowing novel A Handful of Dust, Evelyn Waugh was neither.
Written in 1934, shortly after the breakup of his first marriage, the story traces with increasing despair the tragic outcome of an adulterous liaison. However autobiographical the novel may at first appear, one should not waste too much time trying to find clues about Waugh's life in it. For one thing, the central protagonist is not a talented young writer just beginning to receive the accolades that were to be heaped on him with such abundance in the years to come. The cuckold of the novel is Tony Last, his very surname suggestive of someone belonging to a bygone era. Moreover, he is an aristocrat, the proud owner of Hetton Abbey, a Gothic monstrosity of no interest even to architecture buffs. Where Waugh seems to identify with his hero is, first in the
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