‘But that’s not what it was built for’ The use of architecture in Evelyn Waugh’s work Bruce Gaston Architecture is everywhere in Evelyn Waugh‟s works, but critical analysis has concentrated on his depictions of country houses, which it usually views from an antiquarian and aesthetic perspective. Although this approach is understandable in an age when sightseers troop around stately homes, it is both anachronistic and limiting. In fact, a desire to preserve buildings just because they are old is a modern phenomenon. Starting from an investigation of Waugh‟s use of the term architecture, this article offers an alternative way of reading not only the canonical texts such as Brideshead Revisited but also less well-known parts of Waugh‟s oeuvre. It shows how Waugh‟s views of architecture were formed and informed by the classical architectural theories which underpinned Palladianism and specifically by the Roman architect and writer Vitruvius‟s trinity of values: durability, utility and beauty. Taken together, these criteria enable Waugh to explore the experience of architecture in its totality. One should stress the term experience, for if any definite verdict on architectural value is possible, then it is not a building‟s artistic merit that matters but its suitability for fulfilling its original function. 1. Introduction From an early age Evelyn Waugh was interested in architecture and the built environment, as references in the diary he kept as a schoolboy make clear 1 . In his autobiography A Little Learning he recalled that as a child he linked styles of church decoration to types of Anglicanism 2 . His time at Oxford and then at art school sharpened his appreciation of architecture, 1 See the entries for Sunday 13, Thursday 17 and Friday 18 August 1916; Wednesday 5 November 1919; Wednesday 2 June and Saturday 11 September 1920; Thursday 24 March and Sunday 7 August 1921. 2 “Prot, Mod, High, spiky” (Waugh 1964: 93). AAA - Arbeiten aus Anglistik und Amerikanistik Band 41 (2016) · Heft Gunter Narr Verlag Tübingen 2 Bruce Gaston 24 an interest which apparently received expression in his destroyed first novel The Temple at Thatch, about “an undergraduate who inherited a property of which nothing was left except an eighteenth-century classical folly [my emphasis] where he set up house and […] practised black magic” (Waugh 1964: 16, 31, 223). Indeed, Waugh‟s name is most associated with a building and Brideshead Revisited is a key text of what has come to be called „country house literature‟. But Brideshead Castle is only the most well-known of the upper-class country houses that are a recurring motif in Waugh‟s fiction: King‟s Thursday, Doubting Hall, Hetton Abbey, Boot Magna Hall … These stately homes are generally held to represent the decline of the English aristocracy and nostalgia for a more „civilised‟ age: In Brideshead the house, stripped and defaced by the military authorities who use it as a headquarters, represents the decline of social order and another step in the destruction of old monuments which had begun with the dismantling of Marchmain House. (Sullivan 1984: 449-50) Most critics leave it at that. It seems strange that there has been no full study of Waugh‟s opinions about architecture and of his depictions of buildings (both country houses and other constructions), especially given his evident interest in the subject, as evinced by both his fiction and nonfiction. This article cannot, of course, be a full study. Its purpose is to advance some preliminary ideas towards understanding Waugh‟s attitudes towards architecture 3 , especially as they are informed by neoclassical aesthetics, and specifically neo-classical architectural theory. The advantage of the approach proposed here is that it can encompass not only stately homes but many other types of built structures; furthermore, it facilitates critical readings that move beyond from the prevailing tendency to write about and evaluate buildings in Waugh‟s works on aesthetic criteria (criteria which, moreover, will be shown to be anachronistic). There is little to dispute in the general argument, made by Malcolm Kelsall and Richard Gill among others, that over the course of the twentieth century the country house became aestheticised and platonised, and thus gained symbolic potentiality, at just the time that it was losing its real social significance; nor can one deny that the country house lent itself to Waugh‟s critique of the values of the modern world. But build- 3 The term architecture is not unproblematic; indeed, it is the subject of lively debate among architects. Pace those (among them Pevsner and Le Corbusier) who would reserve the designation architecture for important buildings, I am using the word here in its everyday sense to refer to both the science of designing structures intended for habitation or some other practical purpose and the end result of these processes (building as verb and noun, as it were), with an attendant recognition that both architectural theory and its end-products vary according to period, location, culture and fashion and can thus be read semiotically. The use of architecture in Evelyn Waugh’s work 25 ings in Waugh‟s work are more than just symbols: they have a very real existence, as is shown by the emphasis put on how they are experienced by the characters, and indeed even to an extent how they affect the course of some characters‟ lives. Charles Ryder in Brideshead Revisited is the obvious example here, but it should also be considered how two of the motive forces of the plot in “Work Suspended” are John Plant‟s need to dispose of his father‟s home on the one hand and to find a home for himself on the other. The end result of this approach will be a readjustment of focus which at the minute tends too much towards what one might call the „National Trust‟ perspective. As will be seen, Waugh is less romantic and more practical than he is often given credit for. 2. Architectural Writing As has been mentioned, Waugh‟s writings are packed with references to buildings and architectural styles; indeed, the topic was so immediately present to his mind that he often resorted to architecture as a source of metaphors and similes, especially when discussing writing. For example, describing A Handful of Dust to Lady Diana Cooper, Waugh wrote that “the general architecture is masterly” [emphasis in original] (quoted in Villar Flor 2005: 82). It is worth considering this metaphorical use in some detail, for this choice of analogy inevitably emphasises some aspects of the writing process while eliding others. Indeed, analogies for the creative process are often unconsciously chosen to match the user‟s own pre-existing opinions and theories about it. What is important is therefore not the accuracy of the analogy per se but what the use of a particular form of analogy reveals. Detailed analysis of such comments and of the specific ways in which Waugh employs architectural terms figuratively reveals a great deal about his unspoken preconceptions and preoccupations concerning architecture. 4 In “Present Discontents”, his review of Cyril Connolly‟s Enemies of Promise (1938), Waugh explained in more detail what he meant by architecture in reference to writing: […] “Creative” is an invidious term too often used at the expense of the critic. A better word, except that it would always involve explanation, would be “architectural.” I believe that what makes a writer, as distinct from a clever and cultured man who can write, is an added energy and breadth of vision which enables him to conceive and complete a structure. Critics, so far as they are critics only, lack this; Mr. Connolly very evidently, for his book, full as it is of phrase after phrase of lapidary form, of delicious exercises in parody, of good narrative, of luminous metaphors, and once at any rate - in the passages describing the nightmare of the man of promise - of haunting originality, is 4 My thoughts on this are based on Abrams (1953: 4-5). Bruce Gaston 26 structurally jerry-built. It consists of the secondary stages of three separate books, an autobiography, an essay on the main division of modern literature between the esoteric (which he happily names the Mandarin School) and the popular, and a kind of Rogues Handbook of practical advice to an aspiring author. He comes very near to dishonesty in the way in which he fakes the transitions between these elements and attempts to pass them off as the expansion of a single theme. Nor does he seem to be fully aware of this defect either in his own work or in those he examines; on page nine he recommends the habit of examining isolated passages, as a wine taster judges a vintage by rinsing a spoonful round his mouth; thus, says Mr. Connolly, the style may be separated from the impure considerations of subject matter. But the style is the whole. Wine is a homogeneous substance: a spoonful and a Jeraboam [sic] have identical properties; writing is an art which exists in a time sequence; each sentence and each page is dependent on its predecessors and successors; a sentence which he admires may owe its significance to another fifty pages distant. I beg Mr. Connolly to believe that even quite popular writers take great trouble sometimes in this matter. (Waugh 1977: 124) Waugh concretises this rebuttal of Connolly‟s claim in the introduction he wrote for the 1947 reprint of The Unbearable Bassington by “Saki” (H.H. Munro). In it, he praises the style and wit of the novel, but deplores “faults in construction” (Waugh 1977: 87). Specifically, in his opinion, the first chapters are a series of false starts, misleading the reader as to what the novel will be about, and as a result the story only really begins in chapter four. Later, “an inexplicable interlude in chapter eight […] only serves to arouse unfulfilled expectations in chapter fifteen. (Surely the mysterious Keriway will reappear in Vienna? But no.)” (Waugh 1977: 88). “Saki” (who, as Waugh comments, was more successful as a shortstory writer) therefore fails to sustain all his elements within a single, harmonizing design in the way Waugh says a good writer should be able to: the novel‟s “architecture” is unsound. To return to Waugh‟s own work, probably the most famous example of a sentence owing its significance to another occurs in Brideshead Revisited. In Book One, Lady Marchmain reads part of G.K. Chesterton‟s The Wisdom of Father Brown aloud to the family and Charles (128). Cordelia alludes to this event at the end of Book Two (of the 1960 version), explaining to Charles that God will eventually bring the others back into His grace (212). Father Brown‟s religious metaphor then provides Book Three with its title: “A Twitch Upon The Thread”, in which Cordelia‟s prediction comes true. The inclusion of Cordelia‟s explanation leads one to conclude that an intertextual reference by itself was not considered sufficient; its significance also needed to be reinforced through explicit repetition. The use of architecture in Evelyn Waugh’s work 27 As a structuring principle, repetition is frequently combined with variation, such as in the short summaries that accompany the chapters on the Contents page of Brideshead Revisited: “Sebastian at home - Lord Marchmain abroad”, “Samgrass revealed”, “Rex revealed”, “the purpose revealed”, etc. These peritextual summaries reveal how episodes and themes are paralleled and counterpointed in the narrative itself, and this use of echoes and contrasts is typical of the way the novel is structured throughout 5 . Intratextual references, spaced out across the novel‟s parts, help give it unity, in much the same way that architectural features (for example, windows, chimneys, or decorative features such as pilasters) are spaced out and repeated to give a physical structure definition. A further way a good writer can give structure to a novel is by ensuring balance and even a kind of symmetry between its various parts. Waugh originally divided Brideshead Revisited into four parts: a framing prologue and epilogue, and two books of unequal length, with the break coming before the chapter “Orphans of the Storm”, and thus at the point in the narrative where there is a ten-year gap. A defect of this was that it made Book One disproportionately long or Book Two disproportionately short. Possibly to address this criticism, Waugh‟s 1960 revision used the final three chapters of Book One to create a new, comparatively short Book Two (Davis 1990: 16). The old Book Two then was renumbered as Book Three. After the reassignment, the proportions are now (counting pages) the almost symmetrical 2: 20: 12: 19: 1. Waugh‟s most elaborate use of the “writing as architecture” metaphor appeared in the article “Literary Style in England and America” (1955): From the middle of the eighteenth century until the middle of the nineteenth there was published in England a series of architectural designs for the use of provincial builders and private patrons. The plates display buildings of varying sizes, from gate-lodges to mansions, decorated in various “styles”, Palladian, Greek, Gothic, even Chinese. The ground plans are identical, the “style” consists of surface enrichment 6 . At the end of this period it was even possible for very important works such as the Houses of Parliament in London to be the work of two hands, Barry designing the structure, Pugin overlaying it with medieval ornament. And the result is not to be despised. In the present half century we have seen architects abandon all attempt at “style” and our eyes are everywhere sickened with boredom at the blank, unlovely, unlovable facades which have arisen from Constantinople to Los Angeles. But this use of style is literally superficial. Properly understood style is not a seductive decoration 5 On all of this, see Davis (1990: 39-45, 85) and passim. 6 For example, Robert Lugar, Architectural Sketches for Cottages, Rural Dwellings and Villas: in the Grecian, Gothic, and fancy styles, with plans, suitable to persons of genteel life and moderate fortune: preceded by some observations on scenery and character proper for picturesque buildings (Josiah Taylor, London, 1805), which Waugh owned. Bruce Gaston 28 added to a functional structure; it is of the essence of a work of art. [My emphasis] This is unconsciously recognized by popular usage. When anyone speaks of Literary Style the probability is that he is thinking of prose. A poem is dimly recognized as existing in its form. There are no poetic ideas; only poetic utterances and, as Wordsworth pointed out, the true antithesis is not between prose and poetry, but between prose and metre. Now that poets have largely abandoned metre, the distinction has become so vague as to be hardly recognizable. Instead of two separate bodies of writing, we must see a series of innumerable gradations from the melodious and mystical to the scientific. Literature is the right use of language irrespective of the subject or reason of the utterance. A political speech may be, and sometimes is, literature; a sonnet to the moon may be, and often is, trash. Style is what distinguishes literature from trash. (Waugh 1977: 106) If one compares this extract with the earlier one, it can be seen that Waugh‟s thoughts on this matter have remained unchanged across two decades. The writer as architect was a common metaphor in neo-classical poetics (Abrams 1953: 166-7). It implies conscious craftsmanship in choosing materials and shaping them according to a preconceived plan; it correspondingly involves a rejection of Romantic notions such as genius, inspiration etc. In this context one may recall Waugh‟s oft-quoted comment about writing being for him “an exercise in the use of language” (Jebb 1963). Moreover, his comments about writing are phrased in the architectural language of a particular debate between the neo-classical and the gothic styles. For critics of the gothic style, its fault was “excess ornamentation or barbarism”, the style being a set of architectural features that could be copied without reference to the structure they were to be placed on. “This distinction allows for the condemnation of Gothic as decorative repetition without concrete reference” (Bernstein 2008: 45). The parallel with Waugh‟s comment about how style should not be abstracted away from structure and considered on its own is unmistakeable. Equally, Waugh‟s comment that “style […] is of the essence of a work of art” has a parallel in neo-classical architectural theory, according to which outer appearance inheres in the materials and their use: “even what are now the ornamental Parts of an Edifice, originally were created by Necessity” (John Gilbert Cooper, “Letters Concerning Taste” [1757], quoted by Gibson 1971: 492). That is to say, purpose, structure and form are inseparable and indistinguishable. This view applies to both building and writing, and is reflected across Waugh‟s work. By extension, neo-classical values such as unity, proportion, balance and symmetry are viewed positively. In its proportions and symmetry, the revised structure of Brideshead Revisited described earlier is very reminis- The use of architecture in Evelyn Waugh’s work 29 cent of a neo-classical façade, taking Book Two as the main building, the other two Books as wings, and the prologue and epilogue as the terminating loggias, as in a Palladian villa. 3. Waugh and Neo-Classical Architecture That the analysis set out above is more than just speculation can be seen from Waugh‟s most detailed consideration of architecture as architecture: the article “A Call to the Orders”, written in late 1937. “I think it is much the best thing I have written for Nash Harpers and ought to appear somewhere,” he wrote to his agent, A.D. Peters, urging him to find a suitable outlet after it was rejected by Harpers Bazaar 7 . Subsequently offered to Country Life, it was published in a supplement in February 1938. The “orders” refer in the narrowest sense to the classical categories of column styles (Tuscan, Doric, Ionic, Corinthian and Composite, of which the first and last are Roman additions to the original Greek three). More broadly, the term means the system of measurements, proportions, hierarchies and appropriate decoration worked out by Italian Renaissance architectural theorists (principally Sebastiano Serlio and Giacomo Barozzi da Vignola) on the basis of their studies of Roman architecture, and popularised by the success above all of the architect Andrea Palladio in the sixteenth century. Waugh‟s article is a paean to classically inspired and in particular English Palladian architecture, 8 and should be seen in the context of the „Georgian revival‟ of the 1930s. At that time, appreciation for historic structures was mostly limited to “The Mansions of England in the Olden Time” 9 and to historic churches, whose gothic architecture matched aesthetic preferences moulded by the Arts and Crafts movement of the Victorian period. The Little Guides that began to appear in 1897 and became the standard architectural handbooks of their generation tended to ignore classical architecture entirely, giving exhaustive coverage of secular and domestic architecture 7 Quoted in the notes to its reprinting in Waugh (1977: 60). 8 It is difficult to find a single satisfactory term to describe this period style. Architectural historians would distinguish between Palladian and neo-classical. “Georgian” is also less than ideal, as it refers to a time period rather than a style. As a further complication, Castle Howard, which is strongly associated with Waugh thanks to its use in both the 1981 television series and the 2008 film of Brideshead Revisited, is actually an example of English baroque. In this article I have chosen to use “neo-classical” in a loose way, as it usefully describes a wider school of thought than just architecture. 9 The quotation is the title of a very successful series of lithographs by Joseph Nash, published 1839-1849, depicting both the interiors and exteriors of Tudor and Jacobean great houses as it was imagined they would have looked. See Mandler 1997: 40-5. Bruce Gaston 30 before the sixteenth century but petering out rapidly after that. Their more opinionated contributors were not above applying epithets such as „wretched‟ and „rubbish‟ to plain Georgian work. (Mandler 1997: 145) Even notable Georgian buildings such as Nash‟s Regent Street, Soane‟s Bank of England or Adam‟s Adelphi were torn down or redeveloped with very little public protest during this period. “There were the occasional expressions of regret and nostalgia in the editorial columns, but a sense of resignation rather than sustained protest” (Delafons 1997: 49). In response, a movement to raise public awareness of the value of Georgian architecture was spearheaded by Country Life magazine under Christopher Hussey, its editor from 1933. Waugh‟s contemporary and friend John Betjeman launched the Shell Guides series of guidebooks in 1934 “with the idea of counteracting the antiquarian, Gothic effect of the Little Guides […] and making people interested in Georgian” (Betjeman 1976: 58). The pressure group The Georgian Group was founded in the year Waugh composed his article. “A Call to the Orders” therefore both reflects and seeks to effect a change in opinions about the buildings of this era. As such, it is a good example of how public taste can be consciously shaped by a small group of individuals, a point that will have significance later in this discussion. Campaigners for Georgian architecture were no doubt aided by the fact that by the 1930s the taste for Tudor and Jacobean buildings had been commodified and debased into the „Tudorbethan‟ style beloved of suburban house-builders. Betjeman (who is often erroneously credited with inventing this portmanteau term) criticised the misappropriation and misuse of the style both in his poetry and in his writing for the Architectural Review, while Osbert Lancaster published satirical drawings of the styles of houses built in their thousands in the Garden City developments, categorizing them into mock architectural genres: „Stockbroker‟s Tudor‟, „By-pass Variegated‟ and the like (Carpenter 1989: 210-8). Waugh had already attacked “ye oldeness” in his 1930 travel book Labels 10 and in “A Call to the Orders” he now returned to the theme, contrasting classically inspired architecture favorably not just with Tudor and Gothic but also with modern architecture. Waugh begins by praising “the monuments of our Augustan age of architecture”, within which he encompasses not just the great stately homes but also lesser buildings: the houses of the bourgeoisie, old rectories, coaching inns and the like (Waugh 1977: 61). It is worth noting that Georgian country houses were among the least appreciated examples of that period‟s buildings, attention being principally directed at Georgian urban architecture (Mandler 1997: 278, 282). He remarks with satisfaction that, after a brief period of infatuation with modernist architecture, 10 On p. 65-6 there is a long, mocking list (unfortunately too long to quote here) of the various manifestations of this tendency. The use of architecture in Evelyn Waugh’s work 31 the British are returning to older, more appropriate models. This is followed by a section which offers, I think, the key to understanding Waugh‟s attitudes to architecture. After bemoaning the disregard once given to Georgian architecture, he writes: Now the trouble is all the other way; enthusiasm has outrun knowledge, and we are in danger of doing to the styles of the eighteenth century what our fathers and grandfathers did to Tudor and Jacobean. It is a serious danger, because imitation, if extensive enough, really does debauch one‟s taste for the genuine. It is almost impossible now to take any real delight in Elizabethan half-timber - logical and honourable as it is - because we are so sickened with the miles of shoddy imitation with which we are surrounded. We are now threatened with a new disorder, the first symptom of which is, usually, a formidable outcrop of urns; they are bristling up everywhere - on filling stations and cafés and cottage chimneypieces. Now, there is nothing specifically beautiful about an urn as such - its value depends on its precise shape and where it is put. The builders of the eighteenth century used them liberally, but with clear purpose. Nowadays, we not only scatter them indiscriminately, but we seem to have lost the art of designing them - witness the ghastly jars that have been stuck up in Oxford along the St. Aldates wall of the new gardens at Christ Church. And even where recent decorators have been to the trouble to buy up - only too easily, from the yards of the contractors who are demolishing London - genuine pieces of eighteenth-century work, they have often re-erected them with scant regard for architectural propriety. […] Eighteenth-century ornament is singularly ill adapted for use as bric-à-brac; every piece of it has been designed for a specific purpose in accordance with a system of artistic law. (62-3) Here, no doubt, is the original of Waugh‟s use of architectural analogy in his discussion of Connolly‟s Enemies of Promise, quoted in the previous section. The close link between a building‟s form and its function is an example of another neo-classical value, namely “congruity, which is perceived when the form and ornaments of a structure are suited to the purpose for which it is intended.” (Home 2005: vol II, 706). Even here, however, his point about the relationship between ornament and overall design is not new. The trinity of the good, the useful and the beautiful goes all the way back to Socrates 11 , and a corresponding thread can be followed in architectural theory from Vitruvius through Palladio to their British disseminators and popularisers, such as the Earl of Shaftesbury or Lord Burlington. The latter was the addressee of one of Alexander Pope‟s Moral Essays, in which the poet mocked the same kind of misuse of architectural features: 11 “For all things are good and beautiful in relation to those purposes for which they are well adapted, bad and ugly in relation to those for which they are ill adapted.” (Xenophon 1923: III.viii.7). Bruce Gaston 32 Yet shall (my Lord) your just, your noble rules Fill half the land with imitating fools; Who random drawings from your sheets shall take, And of one beauty many blunders make; Load some vain church with old theatric state, Turn arcs of triumph to a garden gate; Reverse your ornaments, and hang them all On some patch‟d dog-hole ek‟d with ends of wall; Then clap four slices of pilaster on‟t, That lac‟d with bits of rustic, makes a front. (“Epistle IV”: ll. 23-34) Waugh won a prize at school for an essay on Pope (Patey 1998: 7). Given his lifelong interest in architecture, it seems fair to assume he knew this poem, which deals with the correct application of neo-classical principles for building and landscaping. Both writers perceive architecture as a complete system, of which sculptural architectural features are only one aspect. It is therefore worth considering this system in more detail. 4. Utilitas: Buildings in Use Waugh‟s neo-classical understanding of architecture is therefore derived ultimately from Vitruvius, but it is in fact not so much the technical aspects of the classical orders that inform his views but rather Vitruvius‟s trinity of virtues. In De architectura, the Roman architect wrote that good buildings combine firmitas (durability), utilitas (convenience or usefulness) and venustas (beauty) (bk. 1, ch. 3, sec. 2). These criteria became cornerstones of Renaissance architectural theory. In England, Vitruvius‟s trinity was modified by his earliest disseminator in English, Sir Henry Wotton, who gave utilitas precedence, a preference I find echoed in Waugh‟s attitudes towards architecture for reasons set out below. Irrespective of whether Waugh had actually read Wotton or not 12 , he had clearly absorbed the general principles of Vitruvian and Palladian theory 13 and would have been in full agreement with Wotton that “[t]he 12 I ought to make it clear that I have no evidence that Waugh definitely had read Wotton, but Wotton‟s influence on later English writers on architecture was immense (Worsley 1995: 34). 13 Waugh‟s library, stored at the Harry Ransom Centre, Austin, Texas, contains editions of Vitruvius (in English), Palladio‟s I Quattro Libri Dell‟Architettura, and key texts in the English Palladian tradition: James Gibbs‟s A Book of Architecture; Isaac Ware‟s The Plans, Elevations, and Sections, Chimney-pieces, and Ceilings of Houghton in Norfolk; Sir William Chambers‟s A Treatise on Civil Architecture; Sir John Soane‟s Sketches in Architecture; as well as two examples of popular practical handbooks that helped spread the Palladian style: The Builder‟s Jewel: or, The Youth‟s Instructor, and Workman‟s Remembrancer by Batty Langley; and The Country Gentleman‟s Pocket Companion, and Builder‟s Assistant by William Halfpenny. The use of architecture in Evelyn Waugh’s work 33 end is to build well” 14 . For example, in “A Call to the Orders” he grounds his criticism of “concrete-and-glass functional architecture” (62) as much in practicality as in aesthetics, art deco being unsuited to the British climate: In a few months our climate began to expose the imposture. The white flat walls that had looked as cheerful as a surgical sterilising plant became mottled with damp; our east winds howled through the steel frames of the windows. The triumphs of the New Architecture began to assume the melancholy air of a deserted exhibition, almost before the tubular furniture within had become bent and tarnished. (62) 15 Waugh‟s satirisation of modern architecture in his fiction is based upon the same considerations. The purpose of Otto Silenus‟s inclusion in Decline and Fall is not only to mock modern architects such as Le Corbusier; rather, the point is equally that his replacement for King‟s Thursday is poorly conceived, impractical (Silenus only grudgingly gives it a staircase) and soon replaced (120, 143). It thus fails to meet any of Vitruvius‟s criteria for a good building. A similar point is made in “Work Suspended”: the “decent house” of John Plant‟s father, built nearly a century earlier (118), is literally overshadowed by the shoddily built flats put up beside it. John sells the house, predicting that it will be replaced by “another great, uninhabitable barrack” which will in its turn deteriorate and be demolished (120). Note the use of the word “uninhabitable” here: the building is characterised as not being fit for its purpose. The test of a successful house is therefore whether it fulfils the function it was designed for. This same principle is applied to evaluate other types of buildings and constructions. One could point to the approving comment in Labels on the fact that Malta has not: lapsed into bogus autonomy as a carefully nurtured „quaint survival‟. […] The occupation by the British Navy has prevented all that; the fortifications have not been allowed to crumble and grow mossy; they are kept in good order, garrisoned and, whenever it was expedient, ruthlessly modified; roads have been cut through them and ditches filled up. Nothing, except the one museum in the Auberge d‟Italie, has been allowed to become a show place; everything is put to a soundly practical purpose. [My emphasis] (104) The paramount importance of the correct use of buildings can be seen by contrasting the chapels of Brideshead and Broome (in the Sword of Honour trilogy). Broome, the ancestral home of the Crouchbacks, may have 14 This dictum is to be found on the very first page of Wotton‟s The Elements of Architecture (1624). 15 Again, a parallel with Pope‟s “Epistle to Burlington” may be noted: “Or call the winds through long arcades to roar” (l. 35). Bruce Gaston 34 been let to a convent for want of a better use, but this is given a positive gloss by the fact that the building and above all the chapel remain in use: “And the sanctuary lamp still burned at Broome as of old” (10). In contrast, Brideshead chapel has been used only rarely and is then deconsecrated, becoming (in Cordelia‟s words) “just an oddly decorated room” (212) 16 . And it is its return to use as a place of worship that offers Charles hope at the end of the novel, whatever despoliation may have befallen the rest of the house. The inverse is also true. Throughout Waugh‟s work one finds a rejection of all kinds of what is called in German Zweckentfremdung, that is to say, using things for a purpose other than their intended one. For example, in Put Out More Flags, Basil Seal visits the home of the Harknesses, an old mill which has been converted “into a dwelling house by a disciple of William Morris”, who in the process had the stream diverted and the mill pool drained (93). Far from presenting this action as an exemplary rescue of an old building from ruination, Waugh uses the mill‟s alteration as one subtle component in his characterisation of its owners as pretentious and self-serving hypocrites. “It looks quite a little place from the road, but is surprisingly large, really, when you count up all the rooms,” comments Mr Harkness smugly (93). The Harknesses are play-acting a bohemian fantasy of rural life and their country mill is just as inauthentic as the Tudor-style suburban villas referred to earlier. 5. Discomfort in a Stately Home Recognising the fact that buildings, for Waugh, are to be used, not to be looked at, can act as a corrective to the view of him as a country house snob, but one can go a step further with this analysis. In the previous sections excerpts from Waugh‟s novels were introduced to support claims, derived from a reading of his non-fiction, about the unarticulated premises of his understanding of architecture. This conflation of fictional and non-fictional references can be justified for a number of reasons. Firstly, one would be hard put to find a critic who would deny that Waugh‟s personal experiences and opinions fed into his writing. Most obviously, both the early satires and the late Catholic apologetic novels are written from a definite standpoint; Waugh himself made very definite remarks about their instructional import. Accepting this does not necessarily mean succumbing to the temptation of a simplistic biographical form of criticism. Secondly, in contrast to Waugh‟s frequent and vocal declarations of his Catholic beliefs, his attitudes about architecture are rarely expressed as 16 Cordelia makes this comment after the chapel is closed following her mother‟s requiem mass. It is reminiscent of Heidegger‟s observation in Der Ursprung des Kunstwerkes that temples become works of art when their gods have fled. See Handa 2011: 187. The use of architecture in Evelyn Waugh’s work 35 clearly and intentionally as in “A Call to the Orders”. Rather, they arise from an unconsciously held base of premises, prejudices and preferences which delineate the basic parameters and principles that come into operation whenever he writes or speaks of architecture. Finally, as I intend to demonstrate in what follows, neo-classical architectural theory offers a perspective that permits a broader reading which is sustainable across the whole of Waugh‟s written works. If one bears in mind the significance Palladian theory accords to utilitas when looking at Waugh‟s portrayals of country houses, it is not hard to find an acknowledgement that such houses are often uncomfortable and invariably expensive to live in. Take, for example, the introductory description of King‟s Thursday in Decline and Fall (115-19) - the first half is often quoted (as an example of modernity‟s destructiveness and of Waugh‟s nostalgia for a past age), the second (starting at “But the time came when King‟s Thursday had to be sold”) is not. In this description (too long to quote in full here) there is a good deal of irony, largely directed at the type of country house fetishist Waugh is often accused of being. [A]fter tea Lord Pastmaster would lead the newcomers on a tour round the house, along the great galleries and into the bedrooms, and would point out the priest-hole and the closet where the third Earl imprisoned his wife for wishing to rebuild a smoking chimney. “That chimney still smokes when the wind‟s in the east,” he would say, “but we haven‟t rebuilt it yet.” (116) Such pride in the refusal to fix a faulty chimney is clearly intended as mockery of the antiquarian tendency, as is a reference to “clergymen devis[ing] folk-tales of the disasters that should come to crops and herds when there was no longer a Beste-Chetwynde at King‟s Thursday”. The romantic nostalgia King‟s Thursday evokes in its admirers is based on a false appreciation of the past. The age‟s fad for the Tudor, which translated into the popularity of whatever looked Tudor, has already been mentioned 17 , and the campaign to save King‟s Thursday is populated with “Merry Englande” enthusiasts. It is led by a journalist, “Jack Spire” of the “London Hercules”. Spire is a transparent allusion to J. C. Squire, who (Waugh thought) represented the folklore image of a merry-old, cricket-playing England that Waugh considered as spurious as modern timbered architecture. The Waugh of Decline and Fall scorned, or affected to scorn, sentimental wistfulness for preindustrial life, or at least for the quaint trappings of agrarian England. (Garnett 1990: 52) 17 See also Mandler 1997: 230. Bruce Gaston 36 Such antiquarianism is dismissed for being purely aesthetic, a kind of tourism that is satisfied with an inauthentic experience that does not represent full reality. Those campaigning to save King‟s Thursday want to be able to admire it, but would not be willing to actually live in it. They are implicitly accused of hypocrisy for valuing something they have themselves rejected in favour of “modernized manors” with hot baths and electricity (116). It is crucial to bear in mind that in the first thirty years of the twentieth century conservation remained the concern of a small and elitist group (Delafons 1997: 43). While the Ancient Monuments Department of the Office of Works was slowly extending its powers and the number of sites under its protection, its remit was limited. As the name suggests, it principally looked after monuments and sites of historical interest, such as ruined monasteries and castles, as well as archaeological remains and a few buildings that belonged to the government such as the Tower of London and Hampton Court Palace. Its unofficial cut-off was 1714 and it emphatically did not get involved with buildings that were either still in use, or had been recently (Thurley 2013: 183, 181). Conservation bodies have always had to cope with the charge that their interventions constituted unwarranted interference in private property rights (Mandler 1997: 154, 178-80, 188-91, 273-4). At first, private houses did not come within their remit at all. The pioneering conservation group, The Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings (SPAB, founded in 1877 by John Ruskin), focussed on protecting medieval buildings, especially churches and cathedrals. It remained a tiny pressure group with eccentric political views and almost no influence beyond architectural specialists (Mandler 1997: 160). The original purpose of the National Trust (founded in 1895) was to protect the British countryside; it was not until the mid-thirties that it began to reorient itself towards the conservation of grand country houses with which it is most associated today. In fact, Pastmaster‟s selling of King‟s Thursday would have been regarded by many contemporaries as completely understandable behaviour. The Great War had brought about changes in social attitudes and behaviour, as well as in politico-economic conditions. As a result, between the two wars, many aristocrats were quite happy to sell up and move somewhere cheaper and closer to „society‟, where the cachet of a title could be exploited (Mandler 1997: 245) 18 . A similarly unromantic attitude can be found in the 1932 short story “Love in the Slump” (“The choice was between discomfort with her parents in a Stately Home and discomfort with a husband in a London mews” (Waugh 1997: 58)) and in A Handful of Dust. 18 Margot Beste-Chetwynde comments that she doesn‟t want her brother-in-law to marry because she wants the Pastmaster title for her son Peter (Waugh 2003: 135). The use of architecture in Evelyn Waugh’s work 37 This intensely pragmatic attitude is also motivated by financial considerations. Throughout Waugh‟s fiction there is a clear recognition that it is almost ruinously expensive to own and run a grand house. This was especially true in the 1920s and ‟30s, when higher taxation and falling land values hit the land-owing aristocracy very hard (Mandler 1997: 225- 8 and passim). Country houses could no longer support themselves on land rents from their estates and it was nearly impossible to realise the cash value of an estate. Waugh frequently thematises these financial difficulties, particularly through references to death duties 19 . They are a contributory factor to the Lasts‟ relative poverty in A Handful of Dust (14, for example), but figure most prominently in the short story “Winner Takes All”, in which they are the trigger for the whole plot. The chapter on this period in Peter Mandler‟s book The Fall and Rise of the Stately Home is entitled “White Elephants” and that is how many owners of large country houses viewed their properties 20 . What Brenda Last tells John Beaver about Hetton Abbey sums up the conflicting feelings many families must have had about their homes at that time: “I detest it … at least I don‟t mean that really, but I do wish sometimes that it wasn‟t all, every bit of it, so appallingly ugly. Only I‟d die rather than say that to Tony. We could never live anywhere else, of course. He‟s crazy about the place … It‟s funny. None of us minded very much when my brother Reggie sold our house - and that was built by Vanbrugh, you know … I suppose we‟re lucky to be able to afford to keep it up at all. Do you know how much it costs just to live here? We should be quite rich if it wasn‟t for that. As it is we support fifteen servants indoors, besides gardeners and carpenters and a night watchman and all the people at the farm and odd little men constantly popping in to wind the clocks and cook the accounts and clean the moat, while Tony and I have to fuss about whether it‟s cheaper to take a car up to London for the night or buy an excursion ticket … l shouldn‟t feel so badly about it if it were a really lovely house - like my home for instance … but of course Tony‟s been brought up here and sees it all differently …” (45) 6. The Value of Architecture Brenda‟s comments, quoted above, bring us to the question of a building‟s value, be it monetary or other. In maintaining the primacy of utilitas, I have been arguing that Waugh sees buildings primarily in terms of their “use value”. In one sense, this claim is a banality: after all, at the most basic level, the purpose of a building is to enclose a space for the purpose 19 On this topic and its effects, see Mandler 1997; its importance may be gauged from the fact that “death duties” take up 8cm in the index. 20 On all of this, see Mandler 1997: 244-5, 254 and passim. (Indeed, the whole chapter is eye-opening.) Bruce Gaston 38 of shelter, and what it looks like from the outside is the least important thing. However, this is clearly only true in a limited sense and the disproportionate importance accorded to a building‟s external appearance is a paradox that is often discussed in architectural theory 21 . This raises another question, namely whether a building has a value if it is not of any use? Do the buildings mentioned in Waugh‟s work have any real financial value? Although it may surprise us to find so, Waugh in his fiction seems to suggest that the only economic significance buildings have is due to the land they stand on. In the interwar period it was very difficult to sell a large country house: they were out of fashion and very expensive to maintain. Consequently, the buildings themselves often had no “exchange value” (to continue for a moment with the Marxist terminology). The contradiction is neatly presented in Decline and Fall: At dinner Margot talked about […] how Bobby Pastmaster was trying to borrow money from her again, on the grounds that she had misled him when she bought his house and that if he had known she was going to pull it down he would have made her pay more. “Which is not logical of Bobby,” she said. “The less I valued this house, the less I ought to have paid, surely? ” (135) Lord Pastmaster thinks he is selling a house, but Mrs Beste-Chetwynde buys a site. Changes in land use recur throughout Waugh‟s work, mostly as demolitions and erections of new structures. In Brideshead Revisited Marchmain House is sold and pulled down to make space for flats (209), just like John Plant‟s family home in “Work Suspended”. In Men at Arms, Apthorpe is disconcerted to find his school has been replaced with suburban housing (Waugh 2001: 86) and, similarly, the army camp near Glasgow where Brideshead Revisited begins is surrounded by farmland recently rezoned and marked out for housing (9-10). In each case, a change in the land‟s use affects its value. Staying with the question of value, if a stately home doesn‟t have a monetary value, can it have an aesthetic value? The point is touched on three times in Brideshead Revisted. The first time occurs when Charles asks whether Brideshead Castle‟s dome is by Inigo Jones. Sebastian, embodying the pure „art for art‟s sake‟ tendency, retorts, “What does it matter when it was built, if it‟s pretty? ” (78). The second occurrence is when Sebastian‟s elder brother mentions at dinner that the local bishop is considering closing the house‟s art nouveau private chapel. “[…] The point is whether it wouldn‟t be better to let it [the chapel] go now. You are an artist, Ryder, what do you think of it aesthetically? ” “I think it‟s beautiful,” said Cordelia with tears in her eyes. 21 Bernstein 2008: 8-9; or Germann and Schnell 2014: 106-7. The use of architecture in Evelyn Waugh’s work 39 “Is it Good Art? ” “Well, I don‟t quite know what you mean,” I said warily. “I think it‟s a remarkable example of its period. Probably in eighty years it will be greatly admired.” “But surely it can‟t be good twenty years ago and good in eighty years, and not good now? ” “Well, it may be good now. All I mean is that I don‟t happen to like it much.” “But is there a difference between liking a thing and thinking it good? ” “Bridey, don‟t be so Jesuitical,‟ said Sebastian, but I knew that this disagreement was not a matter of words only, but expressed a deep and impassable division between us; neither had any understanding of the other, nor ever could. (89-90) Sebastian‟s purely instinctual reaction to the architecture of his family home exemplifies his childish attitude to life, which makes him incapable of coping with the realities of adult existence and in the end renders him an alcoholic - it is clearly an inadequate response (O‟Brien 2013: 21). In contrast, Cordelia‟s reaction to a place she loves, though also on an emotional level, is understandable since she really is still a child. Charles tries to fudge his response, probably out of politeness, and instead attempts a cultured, objective answer by relating the chapel to the standards of a particular style and period. Nonetheless, Brideshead‟s persistent questioning finally forces him into answering according to his gut feeling. Later still in the novel, Charles and Bridey once again return to the question of architectural merit. Referring to the imminent demolition of the family‟s London residence, Bridey says: “Well, I‟m sorry of course. But do you think it good architecturally? ” “One of the most beautiful houses I know.” “Can‟t see it. I‟ve always thought it rather ugly. Perhaps your pictures will make me see it differently.” (209) It is perhaps a measure of how far Charles‟ opinions and feelings have changed that this time he does not query Bridey‟s use of the word good and himself uses the word Cordelia had used about the chapel. But one suspects that the change is at least partly due to Charles‟ increasing emotional attachment to the Marchmain family and their world. If so, then that would suggest that there is no objective way of measuring a building‟s aesthetic value: in this extract Bridey even is suggesting that a two- Bruce Gaston 40 dimensional, partial representation (a painting) may help change his opinion of an actual physical structure. 22 How much taste is fickle and alters according to fashion and personal investment in a place also becomes clear from a close reading of A Handful of Dust. All critics are in agreement that Waugh intended Hetton Abbey to be the ugliest and most ridiculous stately home he could imagine. “I instructed the architect [sic] to design the worst possible 1860,” Waugh wrote to Tom Driberg, referring to the frontispiece of the novel, drawn by J.D.M. Harvey (Waugh 2009: September 1934). There are plenty of opinions expressed about the house in the novel. The tone is set by its very first mention, when Mrs Beaver tells John, “I‟ve never seen it but I‟ve an idea it‟s huge and quite hideous.” This is followed in the next chapter by condemnation of the house as “devoid of interest” by the county Guide Book, which a reader would probably assume to be an impartial judge (13). But is Hetton Abbey really so awful? In fact, it is hinted that it is more unfashionable than intrinsically bad; the main thing that makes it only semi-habitable is lack of money. The criticisms directed at Hetton can be categorised into the aesthetic and the practical. Chief among the latter are the facts that the house is cold, hard to maintain, and does not have enough bathrooms. On the aesthetic level, the harshest condemnations of the house are undermined by being put into the mouths of some of the novel‟s more objectionable characters: Mrs Beaver (whose artistic taste is hardly presented as a model for the reader to follow) and Brenda‟s shallow London friends (106-7). Additionally, the reader is reminded early on of how tastes change: They [the house‟s features] were not in the fashion, he [Tony] fully realized. Twenty years ago people had liked half timber and old pewter; now it was urns and colonnades; but the time would come, perhaps in John Andrew‟s day, when opinion would reinstate Hetton in its proper place. Already it was referred to as „amusing‟, and a very civil young man had asked permission to photograph it for an architectural review. (15) Despite - or perhaps precisely because of - his love for the house, Tony has no desire to preserve the place in aspic. Instead, he is slowly but sympathetically renovating it: “For the most part that morning he occupied himself with the question of bathrooms and lavatories, and of how more of them could be introduced without disturbing the character of the house” (38; see also 13-14 and 88). In so doing, he is displaying the will to make the house habitable - to use it. 22 In “The Rejection of Beauty in Waugh‟s Brideshead Revisited” (Renascence 58.3 (2006): 181-194.) Laura White argues that the message of the novel is that Christian belief requires renunciation of worldly things like art and beauty. The use of architecture in Evelyn Waugh’s work 41 In A Handful of Dust the characters‟ attitudes to Hetton Abbey exemplify the various possible criteria for forming an opinion about a building: affective, aesthetic, financial and practical. While some characters judge based on only one or a couple of them, Tony is the nexus at which they all meet. Moreover, in uniting them he shows how they are interconnected, a point that this article will return to later. However, interconnected does not mean interchangeable: aesthetic value is not the same thing as monetary value, nor can the one always be easily converted into the other. 7. The Hell of the National Trust In the case of old houses, if one cannot sell them, then one of the only other ways to make money from them is to sell tickets to see them. Country house visiting itself is not a new phenomenon, as anyone who has read Pride and Prejudice will know, but it had peaked in the 1870s and then declined (Thurley 2013: 150). In the twentieth century it moved onto a more professional, business footing. Many historians see financial pressure behind this development: opening to the public was a way of getting the costs off the owners‟ hands. Pioneering tourist attractions such as Warwick Castle were very clearly commercial enterprises (Mandler 1997: 217-21). The sites managed by the government‟s Ancient Monuments Department (see section 5) did not need to generate a profit but were nonetheless expected to attract enough visitors to be self-financing. Advocates of preservation realised early on that to succeed they would have to “educate” the public so that it understood the value of these sites and buildings and would come and visit them. At first, education was understood in the literal sense: the AMD choose its acquisitions on the basis of their suitability to represent British national history. (Thurley 2013: 76-7). But what happened was also an education of the public‟s taste. It was a shift, moreover, that was partly engineered by a minority, in which specialinterest organisations such as The Georgian Group and the National Trust played a significant role. The most successful reorientation of public opinion was the revolution in attitudes towards the British country house. From being derided as “white elephants”, they came to be seen as “arguably Britain‟s greatest contribution to civilization” (Lord Charteris of Amisfield, speaking in the House of Lords, 24 April 1985) 23 . The stately home is omnipresent in today‟s culture: the National Trust is one of the largest membership organisations in the world, proudly claiming on its website to have “about 23 HL Deb 24 April 1985, vol. 462, cc. 1184-211 [online] http: / / hansard.millbank systems.com/ lords/ 1985/ apr/ 24/ cultural-heritage-tax-concessions (16 May 2016) Bruce Gaston 42 six times more members than all the main political parties put together” (National Trust 2016: website), and the television series “Downton Abbey” is the most successful British costume drama since the 1981 television adaptation of Brideshead Revisited. This reassessment occurred surprisingly quickly. Waugh himself admitted in the 1959 preface to Brideshead Revisited that when he wrote the novel he had not foreseen “the present cult of the English country house” (8). The novel was written at a low point for architectural conservation in general: military requisitions, high taxation, general privation, German bombing and insensitive central planning all contributed to buildings being destroyed or abandoned in the forties and well into the fifties. In a development no one had foreseen, the number of stately homes open to the public more than doubled between 1951 and 1961 with a corresponding boom in visitor numbers (Mandler 1997: 371-3; Thurley 2013: 195). Concerted action was taken to protect at least some of those threatened with destruction. This was only possible due to a shift in public attitudes in which country houses became identified with British national identity, culture and history. It is, as numerous commentators have pointed out, a fiction, as is the concomitant image of the owners as enlightened stewards holding their possessions in trust for some nebulous notion such as “the nation” or “future generations” 24 . The success of Brideshead Revisited, of course, helped to foster this incorrect belief. Musing on Brideshead Castle at the end of the novel, Charles employs figures of speech that emphasise organic, incremental growth: The builders did not know the uses to which their work would descend; they made a new house with the stones of the old castle; year by year, generation by generation, they enriched and extended it; year by year the great harvest of timber in the park grew to ripeness; until, in sudden frost, came the age of Hooper. (331) Such thoughts are a romantic idealisation, their teleology unjustified. Instead, the part of this quotation that should make us stop and think is actually the statement “they made a new house with the stones of the old castle”. This is a reference to the house‟s history, which Charles learned from Sebastian: “We had a castle a mile away, down by the village. Then we took a fancy to the valley and pulled the castle down. Carted the stones up here, and built a new house” (77). Certainly, an earlier generation of Flytes had no concept of an obligation to preserve or protect an ancient structure. In this they were not unusual: 24 See Adams 2013 for an overview. The use of architecture in Evelyn Waugh’s work 43 We should remember also that from Tudor to Victorian times country houses were bought and sold, built and demolished at will, as architectural fashion changed, and as owners came and went. They were not then regarded as shrines to be venerated, as relics of a vanished golden age which must be preserved untouched and unchanged, at all cost. Instead, they were viewed more dispassionately as machines to be lived in, and they were regularly (and often scathingly) criticised by contemporaries on utilitarian or artistic grounds if they failed to fulfill their functions. (Cannadine 1994: 243) The change in public feeling has been so complete that it is hard nowadays to accept that once it was otherwise. It is now “common sense” in the Gramscian sense that, provided they are of a certain age, the ostentatious houses of the upper classes should be protected and maintained, if necessary with public money and through government action. Nonetheless, an extract from the late story “Basil Seal Rides Again” suggests that Waugh did not view this development wholly positively. Basil‟s daughter has just returned from a stay at Malfrey, the country house of his sister Barbara (which featured more fully in Put Out More Flags), and complains to him: You know what Malfrey‟s like as well as I do. Oh the hell of the National Trust. It‟s not so bad in the summer with the charabancs. Now it‟s only the French art experts - half a dozen a week, and all the rooms still full of oilcloth promenades and rope barriers and Aunt Barbara in the flat over the stables and those ridiculous Sothills in the bachelors‟ wing […]. (Waugh 1997: 509) We can infer from real-life practice what has happened. Presumably, Malfry has been considered worthy of protection. Of the six main reasons for taking over a house, it most likely falls into the category of “Country house museum: Product of multi-generational development of the house, furnishings, collections and gardens.” (Young 2006: 3). Like many stately homes in the post-war period, Malfrey has been given into the care of the National Trust, which has opened the grand state rooms and gardens to the public. The family remains in residence in the less „interesting‟ parts of the buildings (Pugh 2008: 351; Thurley 2013: 182). But while such action may have saved the house from a fate such as demolition, this commodification is only possible by making the house a musealised object. It can no longer be altered but must be preserved as it is (or the semblance thereof maintained). In a self-reinforcing process of giving the visitors, i.e. consumers, what they expect, the house is altered to meet their needs: the family are moved away, areas roped off, explanatory signs installed, floors given protective coverings, and so on. This “staged authenticity” (MacCannell‟s term; cf. Germann and Schnell 2014: 88-9), which is itself often highly inauthentic, abstracts a house from its original Bruce Gaston 44 purpose and makes it inconvenient to live in, and this again returns us to the earlier point about Waugh valuing the practical use of a building. 8. The Totality Of Architectural Experience Writing to the Times in 1942, Waugh pointed out that “there is always dead ground immediately in front of the lines of popular taste extending for two generations. It is only recently, still imperfectly and after heavy losses, that the work of the eighteenth century has been recognised as having aesthetic value” (Waugh 1983: 269). Here we may see the influence of the architectural historian Geoffrey Scott, whose The Architecture of Humanism (subtitled A Study in the History of Taste) Waugh owned 25 . Scott‟s comment in his introduction that “whatever has once genuinely pleased is likely to be again found pleasing” is reminiscent of the sentiments expressed by both Bridey and Tony Last, as quoted earlier. In fact, with the benefit of hindsight, we can say that Tony was correct: it is evidence of the changed attitude to Victorian architecture that the National Trust‟s most recent major acquisition was a real-life Hetton Abbey: Tyntesfield Hall, an 1860s Victorian gothic remodelling of older house. This acquisition by the National Trust does not just represent a value judgement but is a constitutive process, heritage being what one declares heritage (Adams 2013: 2). Changing trends in architectural preservation remind us that aestheticisation depends on a consensus that something is worth seeing - a consensus which (as far as stately homes are concerned) was absent throughout the major part of Waugh‟s writing life. This insight has far-reaching implications, for it is here that Waugh is forced to depart from classical architectural theory. Vitruvius, writing in the age of Augustus, at what was arguably the highpoint of Western culture thus far, could well believe that the triad of virtues in architecture was as god-given, inevitable and immutable as the laws of mathematics and that what he set forth in his treatise was the best (indeed, the only correct) way of building. But in fact, only two of the Vitruvian virtues can be considered as being unchanged in status from Roman times to the modern age: durability and usefulness 26 . Waugh, writing nearly two millennia later, knew that tastes change with time. It has been proposed that the three elements of the Vitruvian triad should be understood as being interdependent: The Roman architect and writer Vitruvius said that the essentials of architecture were „commodity, firmness and delight‟, an observation at once so obvious and so dull that it is hard to know what to do or say next. The Swiss archi- 25 The bookplate is dated 1921. 26 The actual manner of using buildings is not unchanged, but the principle that a building must fulfil a use remains valid. The use of architecture in Evelyn Waugh’s work 45 tect Jacques Herzog, however, has pointed out that the trinity becomes more interesting if its parts are interrelated. The commodity of a building, its ability to serve us well, might make it delightful. If a building charms no one, and has no commodity, it will also lack firmness - in that people will want to destroy it - as the various concrete tower blocks that have been blown up testify. Conversely, if a building inspires delight, but is made of fragile stuff, it will have strength. (Moore 2013: chap. 8). If this is true, then the instability of the third virtue („venustas‟ - beauty) makes any definitive verdict on architectural merit impossible. A building‟s beauty may move us to compensate for its lack of usefulness or lack of durability, but beauty is not absolute or eternal, and so by itself is not enough. So although Waugh praised “Augustan” architecture in “A Call to the Orders”, his high opinion of it should not be oversimplified into an aesthetic valuation or a regard for such buildings‟ relative antiquity. Take the final point in the article: One of the difficulties is that during the last twenty years the architecture schools have been getting into the hands of a generation who do not understand the Orders; they can most of them do you a presentable reproduction of a Cotswold farm (for exactly ten times the cost of buying a genuine one) […] but very few of them have had that grinding, back-breaking apprenticeship with the “Orders” about which the great architects of the past complained so bitterly and from which they profited so much. (63-4) I think that Waugh‟s use of the adjective presentable here is telling, for it suggests an object that is to be put on show, rather than used. It is on a par with his earlier choice of the surprising attribute homely to describe the “palaces” of the “Whig oligarchs” (61). In both cases the words do not so much describe the things as indicate the way they are to be used. “A Call to the Orders” can therefore perhaps be seen as an attempt at moulding not just readers‟ aesthetic preferences but also their understanding of the principles behind architecture. The advantage of the classical approach to architecture was its ability to encompass the totality of architectural experience. The rival theories were too one-sided: the Gothic style was all about surface decoration and thus lacked a “totalizing structure that would organize parts and whole, detail and purpose” (Bernstein 2008: 45), while modern architecture rejected aesthetic effects entirely and prioritised building forms 27 . Only Palladian architectural theory united all elements within a single system. 28 27 I was already thinking along these lines when I read Gordon Graham‟s 2003 essay on architectural aesthetics, which proposes a similar division between aesthetic and what he calls “teleological” approaches to architecture. 28 This is not entirely true, but it is what I take Waugh‟s view to be. Bruce Gaston 46 9. Conclusion To summarise, if we concentrate on stately homes, our modern attitudes to these mislead us into concentrating on aesthetics, and if we concentrate on aesthetics, we lose sight of other qualities. Instead, we should remember, as the Scottish Enlightenment philosopher Lord Kames wrote in his Elements of Criticism, “[t]here is a beauty in utility; and in discoursing of beauty, that of utility must not be neglected” (Home 2005: vol. II, 685). For Waugh buildings should be used, they should be designed so that they can be used, and, what is more, they should be used for the purpose they were intended for. All three criteria are found grotesquely reversed in the dystopian satire “Love Among The Ruins.” Mountjoy Castle, once a stately home with extensive landscaped gardens, is now used as rehabilitation centre for criminals. This still fine building contrasts with the Dome of Security, an exemplar of modern architecture which is ugly, poorly built and doesn‟t work after less than twenty years, and the primitive “huts” that normal people have to live in (Waugh 1997: 455, 458, 466). Of course, questions of use open up questions about the conditions that allow use. The outrages against architecture in “Love Among The Ruins” are, Waugh wished to suggest, an inevitable consequence of the left-wing, socially liberal, atheistic policies of post-war governments. Equally, one finds elsewhere in Waugh‟s works allusions to financial matters and even government policies (such as death duties or planning regulations) that have an impact on how and where one can live. Being a response to a basic human need, architecture quite literally makes concrete for everyone a whole gamut of economic, social, political and cultural factors. Vitruvius, as a practising architect, was aware of this, but so too was Waugh. Thus, when reading his fiction one needs to keep in mind the full breadth of possible human interactions with architecture. He, like Burlington in Pope‟s poem, truly shows us “pompous buildings once were things of use” (l. 24). References Abrams, M.H. (1953). The Mirror and the Lamp. New York: Oxford Univ. Press. Adams, Ruth (2013). “The V&A, the Destruction of the Country House and the Creation of „English Heritage.‟” Museum and Society 11/ 1. 1-18. Bernstein, Susan (2008). Housing Problems. Meridian: Crossing Aesthetics. 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