Evelyn Waugh, 1947
Below, Evelyn Waugh responds to Anne Fremantle’s request for a blurb for Desert Calling, her biography of Charles de Foucauld.
September 14, 1949, Gloucestershire
Dear Anne
T. Burns sent me your proofs & I read them with zest. I could now suggest several better titles—’Lost Vocation’ or ‘Pig in a Poke’. The language, of course, distressed me, as did your sudden introduction of the sexual habits of your adolescent fellow countrywomen, but I thought you had made a rattling good yarn out of Père Mata Hari.
You want something to print on the cover, not a review. How about ‘Hagiography at its sauciest’? or:
highly readable
highly contemporary
modern & readable deeply interesting
a vivacious study of a deeply significant life
vivid very important
audacious
enjoyable
Well the best thing in all these cases is to leave it to the author. Put what you like on the cover with my name attached and I shall not complain.
My love to Cathy, Cutting, Claire etc. I get very fond of Americans when I am far away from you all. One came here self-invited to dinner (not Cathy Cutting or Claire) & fell flat on its face drunk & had to be carried out by its chauffeur. No one else was remotely tipsy.
Do write to me whenever you have the inclination & tell me the gossip of New York. My Life article is appearing shortly so I suppose that is the end of American trips for me though I filled it with honey & flowers.
My children are all obstreperously well. They are getting up some sort of ghastly theatricals for the end of the holidays.
I write a sentence a week on the Empress Helena. It will be interesting only to the very few people who know exactly as much history as I do. The millions who know more will be disgusted; the few who know less, puzzled. Americans will inevitably fall into these two classes only.
Love from
Evelyn
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