MR. CRUTTWELL'S FINAL RECKONING
ONE: LANCING
The story of Evelyn Waugh's relationship with his History tutor is, in some ways, the story of the first half of the Twentieth Century. But why is it only being told - in full - almost two decades into the Twenty-First century? That's a question I'll leave hanging.
First contact; mid-December, 1921. Evelyn, while boarding at his school on the South Downs, received the news that he had won the scholarship worth £100 (roughly £5000 in 2019) to read Modern History at Hertford College, Oxford.
Accompanying this splendid news was a separate letter of congratulations from the Vice-Principal. C.R.M.F. Cruttwell communicated to Evelyn that in his entrance exam his General paper and English History were the best and his European History the worst. 'Most of your work was extremely promising and the quality of your English style about the best of any of the Candidates in the group.’
Evelyn floated about Lancing College for the rest of the day, a happy seventeen-year-old. The next day, having returned home to North London on the train, he wrote in his diary that he had left the school library, the debating society and the magazine in good hands and had left at the right time - 'as early as possible and with success'.
Lancing must have been shaking hands with itself. Sending one of its brightest pupils to the dreaming spires of Oxford so very well prepared for what was to come. The boy Waugh: apprentice writer, public speaker in the making and, first and foremost, HISTORY SCHOLAR.
TWO: 1ST YEAR AT OXFORD
Just a month later, Evelyn went up to Oxford at the suggestion of his father. Not the best time to go. It meant he had to settle for an obscure room, the better ones being taken, and had to make contacts at a time when friendship groups had already formed. In those first two terms, he sent letters to Lancing chums, Dudley Carew and Tom Driberg. To Carew he said that he was happy and that Oxford was all that he had hoped it would be.
In A Little Learning, the autobiography Waugh wrote near the end of his life, he clarifies that from the beginning he regarded Oxford as a place to be inhabited and enjoyed for itself, not as the preparation for anywhere or anything else.
Also to Carew that first term: 'Yesterday my tutor said to me ‘Damn you, you’re a scholar. If you can’t show industry I at least have some right to expect intelligence!’ I had just translated Eramus as Erasmus and it was too much for his scholarly manners.'
This tutor was Cruttwell. He was born in 1877, which meant he was fifteen years older than Waugh, and had served with distinction in the First World War, having been a fellow in History at All Souls College before then.
So the two came from very different generations. Waugh had thought through his views on this when he was at Lancing. In opposing the motion: 'This House deplores the disrespect for age by modern youth,' he came up with a robust argument. Basically, he was of the view that his parents' generation had had a war which the next generation had to fight. That young generation - Cruttwell's - had become a generation of broken and tired men. As of 1922 there were practically only two generations - the very young and the very old.
So let's be clear. Evelyn: very young. Cruttwell: very old. And as Waugh tells us in A Little Learning, his tutor was obsessed with the Rhine 'and it was the first, sharp difference between us that I was ignorant of its course.'
In Lancing College magazine, he had suggested that the young men of 1922 would be very different from previous generations. that above all they would be clear-sighted. Young Evelyn clear-sightedly observed C.R.M.F. as follows:
'He was tall, almost loutish, with the face of a petulant baby. He smoked a pipe which was usually attached to his blubber-lips by a thread of slime. As he removed the stem, waving it to emphasise his indistinct speech, this glittering connection extended until finally it broke leaving a dribble on his chin. When he spoke to me I found myself so distracted by the speculation of how far this line could be attentuated that I was often inattentive to his words.'
The course of the Rhine? Wasn't that from blubber lip to stubble chin? At the end of his first term, that's to say, Easter, cool young Waugh wrote to Tom Driberg that he had done no work and did not propose to do any in the following term. So he would be trying to do some reading in the holiday in order to have a chance of passing 'Schools' at the end of Summer Term. He was in the middle of Alice in Wonderland and finding it excellent.
He also told Driberg that he'd bought an edition of A Shropshire Lad published by the Riccardi Press. Not content with buying such a fine edition, he'd had it specially bound in what he called 'quarter black Levant and 3/4 parchment'.
In Brideshead Revisited, describing Charles Ryder's first two terms, among the short list of books to be found in his rooms was a Medici Press edition of A Shropshire Lad. So clearly this book symbolised Evelyn's early experience of Oxford.
By the way, the Riccardi/Medici disparity simply means that the Medici Press published the book using Riccardi paper. The book looked like the one shown below when it was published in 1914 in an edition of 1000. That is, simple board covers and a slipcase. Alongside, is the spine of one book that has been rebound, partly in leather, as was Evelyn's special copy. 
A Shropshire Lad was a book that Cruttwell's generation knew and admired, perhaps more than any other. Haunting poems, written in 1896, about young men who come a cropper, whether in war or in love. Here are a couple of verses from one poem:
Leave your home behind, lad,
And reach your friends your hand,
And go, and luck go with you
While Ludlow tower shall stand.
Come you home a hero,
Or come not home at all,
The lads you leave will mind you
Till Ludlow tower shall fall.
I need to say more about Cruttwell at this point. Before the war he'd been an outstanding History student gaining firsts and becoming a fellow at All Souls. He had a near-photographic memory which would have helped greatly. In August 1914 he'd been called up and had joined the Royal Berkshire regiment. By spring of 1915 he was fighting on the front line in and around the Somme. His experience of the trenches was brought to an end after a year, when he was wounded in the leg. Back home he worked for the war Office, then, after the war, went back to Oxford to resume his academic career, this time as a fellow at Hertford College. He was asked to write a history of his battalion's war experience, and this he did, the chapters appearing in book form in 1922, the year of Waugh's arrival at Hertford:
There is one strange thing about reading this book today. It's so objective, that the level of detail for the period August 1914 to spring 1916, when Cruttwell was living the nightmare, is exactly the same as for spring 1916 to October 1918, when he'd been invalided out.
Well, maybe not quite. Cruttwell uses the first person on very rare occasions, such as here, discussing the death of Lieutenant Ronald Poulton Palmer, the first officer to be lost:
'He had been nearly four years with the Battalion and was greatly loved by all ranks; as I went down the line at stand-to that morning many of the men of old F Company, which he commanded at Chelmsford, were crying.'
Appendix A of the book is a roll of the officers and ordinary soldiers who died during the war. It goes on for five pages. Appendix B lists the honours and decorations gained by officers and men.
I don't suppose Evelyn was ever given a copy of The War Service of The Royal Berkshire Regiment. Cruttwell would have been too self-effacing for that. Which might partly explain why, in A Little Learning, Waugh is so cold when he recalls Cruttwell, who would occasionally go on a bender and be seen around midnight making his way very slowly round the railings of the Ratcliffe Camera believing them (according to Waugh's interpretation) to be those of Hertford College.
This aerial photograph shows the Ratcliffe Camera, bottom centre, and Hertford College, left centre. Perhaps poor Crutwell was thinking of the domed building as a monument to his dead comrades. Just a thought, but I don't think it would have been possible to return to Oxford from the Somme without one's fair share of grief and anguish. 
This image used by Bing as a Screensaver in February 2019. No photographer was attributed.
It was in these first two terms of 1922 that Evelyn became close friends with Terence Greenidge. And as from the start their relationship was based on carousing together, let us introduce another poem from A Shropshire Lad. Take it away, Evelyn, standing with your precious book and your lively chum in the main quad at Hertford towards the end of a long convivial lunch:
'Terence, this is stupid stuff:
You eat your victuals fast enough;
There can’t be much amiss, ’tis clear,
To see the rate you drink your beer.
But oh, good Lord, the verse you make,
It gives a chap the belly-ache.
'The cow, the old cow, she is dead;
It sleeps well, the horned head':
We poor lads, ’tis our turn now
To hear such tunes as killed the cow.
Pretty friendship ’tis to rhyme
Your friends to death before their time
Moping melancholy mad:
Come, pipe a tune to dance to, lad.’
At which point, Terence Greenidge, second year Greats scholar, takes command of the exquisite book and replies, Rupert Bear style:
'Why, if ’tis dancing you would be,
There’s brisker pipes than poetry.
Say, for what were hop-yards meant,
Or why was Burton built on Trent?
Oh many a peer of England brews
Livelier liquor than the Muse,
And malt does more than Milton can
To justify God’s ways to man.
Ale, man, ale’s the stuff to drink
For fellows whom it hurts to think:
Look into the pewter pot
To see the world as the world’s not.
And faith, ’tis pleasant till ’tis past:
The mischief is that ’twill not last.
Oh I have been to Ludlow fair
And left my necktie God knows where,
And carried half way home, or near,
Pints and quarts of Ludlow beer:
Then the world seemed none so bad,
And I myself a sterling lad;
And down in lovely muck I’ve lain,
Happy till I woke again.
Then I saw the morning sky:
Heigho, the tale was all a lie;
The world, it was the old world yet,
I was I, my things were wet,
And nothing now remained to do
But begin the game anew...'
I think if Cruttwell had heard that kind of thing from his first floor rooms he might even have smiled indulgently. True, his personally selected History scholar was off to a slow start as far as his formal studies were concerned, but time was still very much on his side.
This is what Evelyn wrote to Tom Driberg during the Summer term:
'Life here is very beautiful. Mayonnaise and punts and cider cup all day long. One loses all ambition to being an intellectual. I am reduced to writing light verse for the Isis and taking politics seriously. I made a very bad speech again at the Union last night. I don’t know why it is I can never think clearly in that House.
Do let me seriously advise you to take to drink. There is nothing like the aesthetic pleasure of being drunk and if you do it in the right way you can avoid being ill the next day. This is the greatest thing Oxford has to teach.
To summarise. Evelyn had spent his first year drinking and messing about with friends, listening to union debates and making tiny contributions to Isis, but when he came back after the summer, his long-suffering History tutor hoped Evelyn would be ready to explore his academic potential. Surely he would!
One more thing to say at this point. Cruttwell was not a well man and did not expect to make old bones. Or as Housman might have put it to young Evelyn Waugh, on the dry historian's behalf:
'Say, lad, have you things to do?
Quick then, while your day’s at prime
Quick, and if ’tis work for two,
Here am I, man: now’s your time
'Send me now, and I shall go;
Call me, I shall hear you call;
Use me ere they lay me low
Where a man’s no use at all;
'Ere the wholesome flesh decay,
And the willing nerve be numb,
And the lips lack breath to say,
"No, my lad, I cannot come."'
So I'm saying that Cruttwell would have been frustrated that his protégé had so little time for him or his interests. Yes, I'm saying that for now.
THREE: 2ND AND 3RD YEARS AT OXFORD
Two individuals who would be greatly influential on Evelyn came up to Oxford with the new intake of September, 1922.
First, Harold Acton to Christ Church, from whom Evelyn learned an appreciation of the modernists, in particular TS Eliot and the Sitwells. Second, Alastair Graham to Brasenose College, who Evelyn would have a deep and long-term relationship with. In the first two terms, Evelyn had fallen romantically for Richard Pares, but that relationship had ended with Pares going off with the Dean of Balliol. Evelyn and Alastair proved a better match as they both liked to drink to excess, whereas Richard had never liked getting drunk.
The letters to old Lancing chums dried up in Evelyn's second year. He was so busy engaging with what Harold and Alastair and everyone else at Oxford had to offer.
And what of Evelyn and the Dean of Hertford? Evelyn now had a set of rooms in the main quad of the college, directly under Cruttwell's. Waugh tells us in A Little Learning that after he had been conspicuously drunk after the freshers' 'blind', Cruttwell had asked to see him and had tried to be sympathetic, suggesting that Evelyn, having come up in January, was obviously having to make a special effort to make friends. Evelyn was having none of this and gave a fatuous response. It was at that point, reckoned Evelyn, that 'their mutual dislike became incurable'.
They began reading together for Final Schools. Waugh tells us: ‘After a very few sessions he fell into such frenzies of exasperation that for a time he refused to see me at all and I was left without tutoring of any kind.'
Which suited Evelyn. Evelyn's relationship with Terence Greenidge continued to prosper. It was Terence who came up with the notion that Cruttwell was sexually attracted to dogs. He bought a stuffed one and together with Evelyn they set it up in the quad as an allurement for the don on his return from dining at his old college, All Souls. According to Waugh, the pair used rather often to bark under Cruttwell's windows at night.
Alexander Waugh, in Fathers and Sons, suggests that the pair sang the following under Cruttwell's window. The pair addressing the dog and ostensibly receiving its answer:
"Cruttwell dog, Cruttwell dog, where have you been?"
"I've been to Hertford to sleep with the dean."
"Cruttwell dog, Cruttwell dog, what did you do there?"
"I bit off his penis and pubic hair."
If that's true, it's a wonder that the pair were not sent down. Instead, Evelyn floated through another Easter and Summer term, spending much of his time in Barford with his soulmate, Alastair. Sewing the seeds for the friendship between Charles Ryder and Sebastian Flyte that Waugh would write about so enchantingly in the early pages of Brideshead Revisited. Time wasted as far as getting a decent grounding in Modern History was concerned? Indubitably. Time wasted full stop? I think not:
Sebastian: "I should like to bury something precious in every place where I've been happy and then, when I was old and ugly and miserable, Iike Cruttwell, I could come back and dig it up and remember."
Of course, I added that 'like Cruttwell' to what was already a perfectly balanced sentence. Just couldn't resist it. But I'm not unsympathetic to the older man. So please bear with me.
The historian A.L. Rowse was of Evelyn's generation, a student at Christ Church, and he got to know and like Cruttwell. He's written three books of reminscences. A Cornishman at Oxford (1965), A Cornishman Abroad (1976) and A Man of the Thirties (1979).
I'll print an extract from each. This paragraph from A Cornishman at Oxford concerns Cruttwell:
This suggests there was something formidable about the don. An opinion echoed and embellished in this extract from A Cornishman Abroad:
That last statement is an important one in setting the record straight. Men, not dogs, were what Cruttwell was attracted to.
Finally this extract from A Man of the Thirties. Please forgive A.L. Rowse his repetition:
Actually, just how often do we need to be told that Cruttwell referred to emotional female dons as breast-heavers? Perhaps just as well that A.L. Rowse didn't come across Evelyn Waugh at Oxford. I've a feeling he'd have had the piss ripped out of him.
Poor Cruttwell. Surrounded by breast-heavers. When all he wanted to look upon was a dog cocking its leg.
Evelyn seems to have spent much of the summer of 1923 writing short stories for the newly relaunched Oxford magazine called The Cherwell, because five of them appeared before the start of the new autumn term. The story of interest in this context is 'Edward of Unique Achievement', which was published on 1 August 1923.
In the story, 'Edward' murders his tutor, a 'Mr Curtis'. Edward is described as being - until his second failure in History previous (through his inability to draw maps) - a senior History scholar.
(I wonder when it was that Cruttwell took away Waugh's History scholarship. Could it have been at the end of the second year?)
Mr Curtis's room was on the first floor just above the side gate to the college. The side gate was closed at nine and the key kept in the porter's lodge. Another key was kept in the Bursary and this is the one that Edward got hold of so that he could get to his tutor's room without anyone knowing about it.
Basically, Edward's alibi for the murder was that he was at the union all night, contributing to the debate. But, in fact, he discreetly left the building for eight minutes in order to kill Mr Curtis.
Waugh does not dwell on the murder, simply says: 'His tutor had that habit, more fitting for a house master than a don, of continuing to read or write some few words after his visitor entered, in order to emphasise his superiority. It was while he was finishing his sentence that Edward killed him and the sentence was merged into a pool of blood. On his way back, Edward had gone down George Street as far as the canal and there had sunk the dagger. It had been a good evening, Edward thought.'
Back at the union, Edward spoke as he had done before his short departure.
'His speech was, perhaps, more successful as an alibi than a piece of oratory, but few were there to hear it. As he walked home that evening there was singing in his heart. It had been an admirable murder.'
To put this in perspective, it has to be said that another of the stories Waugh wrote in 1923 featured murderous violence against a friend that had tried the first-person protagonist's patience. Clearly, Evelyn was subject to strong passions while an undergraduate, and the expression of such feelings may have helped cope with them.
So how did Evelyn's final year go with that to kick it off? He and his tutor seemed to avoid each other. In April 1924, when Waugh was an assistant editor at Isis, an unsigned piece appeared there under the title: Isis Idol no. 596: C.R.M.F. Cruttwell, M.A.
Waugh biographers seem to think that Waugh wrote it. But Donat Gallagher, editor of Essays, Articles and Reviews of Evelyn Waugh for the CWEW project has compared the sentence structures with other journalism that Waugh produced as a student, and doesn't think so.
I have to agree with Donat, the piece is too long-winded, erudite and boring to be Waugh's. Here is a sample. Good luck in getting through it:
Photo of page from Essays, Articles and Reviews of Evelyn Waugh edited by Donat Gallagher. CWEW.
In the next paragraph, we learn that Cruttwell 'hated bicycles', something to bear in mind a little later in this essay.
Evelyn put in some work in his last summer term in an effort to impress the History Finals examiners. But he didn't impress them. Instead he was awarded a third-class degree. Evelyn's father didn't think it was worth Evelyn going back for the final autumn term - which was needed for minimum matriculation requirements - so Evelyn didn't even get his third. Moreover, Evelyn didn't get to enjoy the term-long binge he'd hoped for.
As his non-star pupil left Oxford, Cruttwell wrote him a letter: ‘I cannot say that your Third does you anything but discredit: especially as it was not even a good one; and it is always at least foolish to allow oneself to be given an inappropriate intellectual label. I hope that you will soon settle in some sphere where you will give your intellect a better chance than in the History School.’
Not altogether unfriendly that. Cruttwell was acknowledging that Evelyn had a brain, and hoped that said brain would find its place in the world.
That should have been that. But it wasn't. Put the kettle on, this story is just getting going.
FOUR: DECLINE AND FALL
A funny thing happened in autumn 1927, three years after going down. Evelyn Waugh began to write Decline and Fall.
A very funny thing happened in September 1928. The book was published by Evelyn's father's firm and every bright young thing in England read it and laughed from beginning to end.
Cruttwell is bound to have seen it at an early stage. I mean, this hilarious novel, written by a Hertford man about a young man being unjustly sent down from an Oxford college very like Hertford, must have been compulsive reading for anyone with Oxford, never mind Hertford, connections. All academia agog!
And it begins in the most engaging manner. Take it away, Evelyn Waugh:
'Mr, Sniggs, the Junior Dean, and Mr Postlethwaite, the Domestic Bursar, sat alone in Mr Sniggs's room overlooking the garden quad at Scone College.'
Cruttwell, Dean of Hertford College, must have thought straight away: 'My God, this book begins in the very room I'm sitting in. Junior Dean indeed. Sniggs indeed....'
The sense of deja vu would not have let up as the dons watched the boisterous behaviour that led to Pennyfeather's expulsion. And Cruttwell's sense of outrage would have risen on learning about the paedophile teacher Grimes's war experience, as recounted on page 30 of the first edition.
Grimes got into the soup in France. (Seducing some young soldier, one presumes.) In order to avoid the regimental disgrace that a court martial would involve, Grimes was left alone in a room for half an hour with a revolver. Unfortunately, (for the military's plan) there was also a decanter of whisky to hand, which Grimes helped himself to. When his commanding officers came back, all Grimes could do was laugh. As the story goes on:
'Silly thing to do, but they looked so surprised, seeing me there alive and drunk.'
'The man's a cad,' said the colonel, but even then I couldn't stop laughing, so they put me under arrest and called a court martial.'
Now that passage would have gone against everything that Cruttwell stood for. There is nothing about cowardice, or desertions, or homosexuality in The History of the Royal Berkshire Regiment, even though all these things must have reared their heads during the First World War.
Worst of all, on page 63, Cruttwell would have found himself looking at his own name. It comes in the middle of Philbrick's story. Philbrick, ostensibly a servant at Llannabba School, has a mysterious and seemingly glorious past that he is keen to communicate to Paul Pennyfeather.
First, Philbrick is surprised that Pennyfeather hasn't heard of old 'Solly' Philbrick. Though he is less surprised that he hasn't heard of 'Chick' Philbrick. And then this:
Imagine the speed with which Cruttwell would have turned the page of his first edition in order to find out more about his namesake...
News of how Llannabba School sports are going briefly interrupts Philbrick's story. Which then continues:
On the next page, Waugh tells us that Toby Cruttwell got the V.C. in the war. Toby then turned respectable and was now in Parliament - Major Cruttwell - 'member for some potty town on the South Coast.'
What would C.R.M.F. Cruttwell made of all that? Pleased that he'd cut his connections with the landlord of the Lamb and Flag? Pleased that he'd won the V.C. in the war? Pleased that he'd got hold of a safe Conservative seat? Or simply outraged at this Cruttwell, Cruttwell, Cruttwell nonsense?
For sure, what Cruttwell would have been thinking about, once he'd calmed down, was a meeting that took place earlier that year between himself and Lady Bughclere. This was the mother of Evelyn Gardner who was trying to prevent her daughter from marrying Evelyn Waugh. At the meeting in College on 3 May, 1928, Cruttwell would no doubt have given an honest account of his opinion of Waugh's suitability to marry a respectable young woman. Indeed, we know roughly how that meeting went because She-Evelyn wrote to her friend John Maxse about it the next day:
'Evelyn and I came up from Wimborne yesterday thinking all was going smoothly and our engagement would be announced this week. I was greeted by Mama who said that she had interviewed the authorities at Oxford about E’s past career. A Mr Crutwell (palpatating with perverse vices) and the Dean of Hertford. They said that he used to live off vodka and absinthe (presumably mixed) and went about with disreputable people (there followed a string of French remarks about ‘ces vices’ something or other, all beautifully pronounced but unintelligible).
I think we can forgive She-Evelyn for not realising that Cruttwell was the Dean. The other person present was probably the Principal. And I think we can assume - given that She-Evelyn wasn't at the meeting - that she got the phrase 'palpitating with perverse vices' from He-Evelyn, who knew Cruttwell as of old.
She-Evelyn's letter to Maxse goes on, and Waugh's recent biographer, Philip Eade, interprets what happened this way: 'Cruttwell assured Lady Burghclere that Evelyn drank copious amounts of vodka and absinthe, went about with disreputable people, lived off his parents, ill-treated his father, had no moral backbone or character, would soon cease to love Shevelyn and would drag her down into the abysmal depths of Sodom and Gomorrah.'
I think it's safe to say that Waugh would have been mortified to learn about Cruttwell's attempt to interfere in his life in this way. His words could have seriously damaged Waugh's prospects. And if Evelyn hadn't been on a war footing with his old tutor before, he certainly was after this interview.
One can't help speculating whether Cruttwell's name was put into the manuscript of Decline and Fall after, and because of, this incident. Basically, Waugh finished the novel in April/May. But the Philbrick story is introduced by way of an insert as the following page from the manuscript shows (See the middle of it where it says [Insert Philbrick's story, pages A,B,C,D,E.) 
Extract from manuscript of Decline and Fall held at Harry Ransom Centre, Austin, Texas.
The manuscript consists of loose sheets of lined paper that were bound together by Waugh at a late stage, having thrown away earlier drafts. I suspect it's now impossible to say whether the name Cruttwell crops up in Decline and Fall in the way it does, because of long-festering wounds from college days (which I suggest does account for the opening scenes of the novel) or from the fresh wound of the interview with She-Evelyn's mother.
FIVE: THE GREAT WAR
So what happened next? I'll answer that purely in Waugh v Cruttwell terms.
Vile Bodies came out in 1930. It contains a passage where the protagonist, Adam Fenwick-Symes overhears two Conservative ladies talking on a train. One woman is reading from a wire sent to her MP: 
Cruttwell seems to have more or less kept his identity from Decline and Fall. Still an MP, though demoted from major to captain.
Black Mischief followed in 1932. Any mention of you-know-who? 
And on the next page:
Another piece of continuity. Toby being the name used in Decline and Fall. However, this was the first time Cruttwell was portrayed as a pathetic character. A touch which no doubt tickled Evelyn.
A Handful of Dust was published in 1934. This time Cruttwell gets several mentions, starting with this:
I first read that as "What do you suppose is Mr, Cruttwell's sex-life?" the conjunction of hated names, Beaver and Cruttwell, is probably deliberate.
There are two different kinds of jokes using names in the above passage. One a private joke (Cruttwell) and one public (Cockpurse). At least I assume that Evelyn didn't know a woman called Cockpurse.
The private joke here is the idea that Cruttwell's job in life might be to lay hands on women, and by so doing heal them or give them physical pleasure.
It's funny, I'd say. Though ultimately it's hard cheese on Tony.
What's the joke here? That Cruttwell won't lay his magic fingers on men, only women?
So how would Cruttwell have felt about all this? Even if he wouldn't have read the books, the passages would have been brought to his attention. His aforementioned friend, A.L Rowse covered this in A Cornishman Abroad:
'When he [Waugh] went down he put the name of Cruttwell into novel after novel, as a lunatic nurse, a club bore, or crazy army officer - I forget the various avatars. I suppose Cruttwell could have had him for libel; all he said was, without malice, 'I suppose I should have sent him down.'
Not sure that would have helped. Not sure that wouldn't have made things worse. But then I'm not sure that Crutters would have been that bothered by the situation. He had bigger nuts to crack. Working away in Oxford library and study, he came up with an authoritative book about the First World War.
Behold - Cruttwell's legacy standing on a bed of Flanders mud/blood/flood. 
Sorry, I mean on a bed of Waugh.
Reassuring, perhaps, that Cruttwell's authoritative book was underpinned by his own wartime service and by writing up the story of his own beloved regiment ten years before. This new book, however, was a monumental exercise, a 600-pager, and would have called on the qualities that made him a fine dean. Geoffrey Ellis, who wrote the entry for Cruttwell in the Dictionary of National Biography, states: 'his administrative ability was characterised by a penetrating intelligence, wide-ranging knowledge, firm grasp of detail, decisive judgement and good memory'.
Let's line up those Cruttwells...
Shoulder to shoulder: a fine body of men: Toby Cruttwell, criminal turned V.C.; Captain Cruttwell, solid Tory M.P; Toby Cruttwell, gentleman of leisure; Mr. Cruttwell, osteopath to high society; C.R.M.F. Cruttwell, Dean of Hertford College, Oxford. Well, no. As the title page of A History of the Great War makes clear, Cruttwell was now Principal of the College. Top dog, as it were. Mr Postlethwaite (Domestic Bursar) and Mr Sniggs (Junior Dean) eat your hearts out.
Moreover, Cruttwell's book had been published by the Clarendon Press in Oxford. Evelyn would have been forced to concede that wonderful Oxford had finally and absolutely fallen to the enemy. In other words, Evelyn felt he had no choice but to raise the stakes.
SIX: MR. CRUTTWELL'S OUTING
A Handful of Dust was published in September 1934, about the same time as A History of the Great War. Was it the appearance of the latter that incited Waugh to devote a short story to Cruttwell? In any case, a story was written in October and appeared as 'Mr Crutwell's Little Outing' in the March 1935 edition of Harper's Bazaar in America, and, as the one word less, 'Mr. Crutwell's Outing' in the May 1935 edition of Nash's Pall Mall Magazine in the UK.
For the first time, Cruttwell's name is spelt with one 't' rather than two. Why? Possibly for no good reason. Waugh was not a consistent or careful speller and may simply have missed out the second 't' in the manuscript.
My access to the UK publication was courtesy of the National Library of Scotland. As you can see, Waugh's piece wasn't publicised on the cover:
Nor was it given much emphasis in the contents page. However, it is there, third in the list of short stories:
Illustration by L.G. Illingworth
On a more positive note, the story's opening double-page spread sucks the reader in. Surely it does:
Illustration by L.G. Illingworth
So do let yourself, dear reader, get sucked in. A young woman, Angela, is visiting her father, Lord Moping, in the lunatic asylum that he's been confined to for the last ten years. Lord Moping spends his time 'writing' with the secretarial help of another inmate, Mr Crutwell. Lord Moping is always busy and is not pleased to be interrupted by his daughter. He wonders if Crutwell has typed out that letter to the Pope yet. Crutwell hasn't had time. He reminds Lord Moping that he asked him to look up figures about Newfoundland fisheries first. Lord Moping turns towards his daughter and says that she has no doubt come to talk to him about the Danube. Well, she must come back some other time as he has not had an opportunity to give his full attention to it. Lord Moping then has a petulant outburst, declaring the Danube to be insignificant in relation to such rivers as the Amazon, the Tigris and the Elbe.
"Eh, Crutwell? Danube indeed. Nasty little river. Well, can't stop, nice of you to come. I would do more for you if I could but you can see how I am fixed. Write to me about it. That's it. Put it in black and white."
Not only is this intended to be funny for the general reader (eg. a lunatic writing letter to the Pope with help of his lunatic secretary), it's an in-joke in the light of the history of Waugh's dealings with Cruttwell. Lord Moping making such a fuss about the insignificance of the Danube turns on its head Cruttwell making such a fuss about Waugh's ignorance of the course of the Rhine. Waugh was indeed putting it in black and white. In my opinion, hilariously so.
In the story, Angela thinks Crutwell perfectly sane. She is told: "He certainly has that air," said the doctor, "and in the last twenty years we have treated him as such. He is the life and soul of the place. Of course, he is not one of the private patients, but we allow him to mix freely with them. He plays billiards excellently, does conjuring tricks at the concerts, mends their gramophones, valets them, helps them with their crossword puzzles and various - er - hobbies. We allow them to give him small tips for services rendered, and he must have amassed quite a little fortune. He has a way with even the most troublesome of them. An invaluable man about the place."
Waugh is piling it on here. Crutwell is a servant to rich lunatics. There is even the suggestion (via the 'er') that he may provide a sexual service. Or am I reading too much into that discreet hesitation?
Angela feels sorry for what she sees as the eminently sane Mr Crutwell, being locked up in an asylum. (One's mind flits to Cruttwell at Hertford College. Confined to spend so much of his time there, all the more so following his promotion from dean to principal.)
Indeed, Angela begins a study of the lunacy laws, which she breaks off from in order to visit Crutwell again. This time she finds him busy making a crown for one of his companions who expected hourly to be made Emperor of Brazil. But he left this work to speak to his visitor. Angela asks if he ever wants to get away from the place. Mild Crutwell suggests he would indeed like a brief holiday so he could fulfil an ambition of his, then return refreshed to the poor crazed people in the asylum.
The poor crazed people at Hertford is one reading of this. And what is Mr Crutwell's secret ambition? One feels there is a clue in that sentence of She-Evelyn's that Mr Cruttwell 'palpitated with perverse vices'. We shall find out soon enough.
Angela secures grounds for Mr Crutwell's permanent release. The asylum marks the day of his departure with some ceremony. The wealthier lunatics subscribe to give Crutwell a gold cigarette case. Those who supposed themselves to be emperors shower Crutwell with decorations. The warders give Crutwell a silver watch and many of the non-paying inmates are in tears as the presentation is made. The doctor in charge tells Crutwell that he leaves behind nothing but everyone's warmest good wishes. In other words, everything was exactly as things would be if C.R.M.F. Cruttwell was ever to leave Hertford College, Oxford,
Illustration by L.G. Illingworth
The gates of Hertford are held open by the porter, as they had been every day for years. But this time Mr Cruttwell is not coming back. Having done a magnificent job for the college, through his administrative abilities and his scrupulous publication history, he is free to go. For he's a jolly good fellow!
Illustration by L.G. Illingworth
Again, Waugh's devil is in the detail, just as much as in the private joke. Crutwell is told that he will always be welcome back. Crutwell steps into his freedom. His trunk had gone on ahead to the station but Mr Crutwell chooses to walk.
Everyone is surprised when Mr Crutwell turns up at the gate again two hours later. The assumption was that he was going to London first before going to stay with his step-sister in Plymouth. But Crutwell is adamant that he has enjoyed his little outing and that he can now settle down to his work without any regrets.
Illustration by L.G. Illingworth
It wasn't long before everyone in the institution had been briefed as to what had happened. 
How did Waugh get away with this? Well, he was advised to change the name when it came to book publication. So Mr Loveday's Little Outing and Other Sad Stories is what the book is called. And when the Daily Express published the opening tale on a Saturday in June, 1936, it was as 'Mr Loveday's Little Outing'. I bet Waugh was reluctant to agree to this. But the publishers would have insisted, surely. They would not have wanted to risk being sued.
In spring of 1935, Waugh wrote a short story called 'Winner take All'. This features Gladys Cruttwell, a working class girl, high-spirited, even-tempered, and unintelligent. In many ways, the opposite of C.R.M.F.Cruttwell. But that's all part of the game called irony.
Again, I don't know if Cruttwell would have cared too much. Too busy doing his own thing. In May 1935, the real Cruttwell stood to be a Conservative MP for Oxford, at a time when the city had two MPs. It had always been a safe Tory seat but he didn't get in under the single transferrable vote system. In other words, he came third in the poll. In a letter to his parents, Evelyn said in passing: 'It was good news about Cruttwell'.
In 1936, when the Gladys Cruttwell story appeared in Mr Loveday's Little Outing and Other Sad Stories, C.R.M.F. Cruttwell was delivering a series of lectures in Cambridge. They were published by Cambridge University Press that same year as The Role of British Strategy in the Great War. 
The little book concentrates on the big judgements that were made by top politicians, generals and admirals from 1914-1918. Cruttwell may even have sent the Pope a copy. Why not? The Pope would have loved the sterile, faux-modest formality of the preface. 
Positively Papal! Cruttwell would have got his secretary, Crutwell, to send copies to all the top people discussed in the book. Churchill, KItchener, Haig, Lloyd George and Commander-in-Chief Jellicoe.
I think Evelyn should have insisted that his publishers hold their nerve over Loveday/Crutwell. I can see their lawyer having so much fun, standing up in court and saying: "I'm sorry, your lordship, I'm having trouble seeing the connection between the learned don, C.R.M.F. Cruttwell, author of A History of the Great War, and the fictional character who pushed a young woman off her bike and strangled her for his own sexual gratification. That is not a libel, m'lord. That is not a bicycle built for two. That is a bridge too far."
What next? In 1937, Waugh wrote Scoop. At the emporium where William Boot went to buy 'essentials' for his trip to Africa, General Cruttwell was the person who stepped forward to serve him. General Cruttwell, F.R.G.S., an imposing man: Cruttwell Glacier in Pitzbergen, Cruttwell Falls in Venezuela, Mount Cruttwell in the Pamirs, Cruttwell's Leap in Cumberland marked his varied travels. On the other hand, Crutwell's Folly, a waterless and indefensible camp near Salonika, was notorious for all who served with him in the war. The F.R.G.S initials stand for Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society. But they surely allude to C.R.M.F.
Meanwhile, Cruttwell was continuing to push his historical perspectives to the next logical step. And so we have:
A valiant effort this. For shouldn't a historian who has experienced battle for himself, who has pieced together the whole tragic story of a world war, and who has studied the decision-making that was responsible for it, write about how war might be avoided in the future?
How is my 'Mixed Cruttwells' bookshelf getting along? It's looking like this:
You'll be wondering what that book is in between Cruttwell's British Strategy and Waugh's Scoop. Well, it's a biography of the Duke of Wellington, written by Cruttwell and published by Duckworth's in 1936 Duckworth's were, of course, the publishers of Waugh's travel books and of his Rossetti biography. Do we need a reproduction of the title page? Yes, why not.
When it says: 'great lives', does it mean Wellington, or Wellington and Cruttwell, both? Indeed, does it mean Wellington, Cruttwell, plus Rossetti and Waugh as another author/title combo in the Duckworth series? We are slowly but surely working out the answer to that, or something like it, are we not?
Perhaps Evelyn was getting spooked by Cruttwell's unwillingness to lie down. His own first four novels we republished in a standard edition in 1937. Here they are photographed against Flanders floorboards:
Courtesy of John Freeman.
The signatures on the title pages of at least one set (see acknowledgements), were as follows:
Courtesy of John Freeman.
This is not how Evelyn normally signed his books. Does the E.A.St.J. equate in some way to C.R.M.F.? If so, could it be a mark of respect? One old enemy to another?
SEVEN: CRUTTWELL IMMOLATUS
Health problems caused Cruttwell to retire from his duties at Hertford in 1939. He was only fifty-one, and in other circumstances might have gone on to head the college for another twenty years.
I'm not exactly sure what the trouble was. The legacy of the leg wound sustained in 1916? Complications from rheumatic fever? That's what the entry in the Dictionary of National Biography suggests. There is a chapter in a book called Best of Friends by Alan Thornhill, that deal's with Cruttwell's final phase. And that puts it: 'Nobody could diagnose his medical trouble, and he eventually was sent to a nursing home in Bath for special treatment.'
Thornhill had been a history student of Cruttwell's just a few years after Evelyn Waugh. Tutor and student had got on fairly well, though Thornhill had always found Cruttwell a formidable person. He recalls that when Cruttwell had been Dean, and responsible for college discipline, he could quell a drunken undergraduate party, without bothering to get up from his bed. "Will you be quiet, you something, something so-and-so's," he would roar through the open window. "I know who you are. I'll see you in the morning." And it would have the desired effect.
I wonder if that worked when the partying individual was Evelyn Waugh. In particular, I doubt if Evelyn Waugh and Terence Greenidge were stopped quite that easily when in their cups.
Anyway, in 1931, not long after he became Principal of Hertford, Cruttwell asked Thornhill if he would take on the position of chaplain for the college. ("Or you can be Junior Dean," whispers the ghost of Evelyn. "Or Domestic Bursar.")
Their relationship had its ups and downs. Thornhill alludes to the strangeness of Cruttwell's personality. Alas, he doesn't give many examples of this. Though apparently Cruttwell favoured some hymns over others to the extent that he would express loud displeasure when a disliked hymn was chosen.
Thornhill: "Let us stand and sing the first song on the hymn sheet. 'How Sweet the name of Jesus sounds'.
Cruttwell: "Damnable pap!"
Or:
Thornhill: "Now stand and sing with me: 'Jesus shall reign where'er the sun doth his successive journeys run.'"
Cruttwell (thumping his bible closed): "What grotesque English!"
Reading between the lines, Thornhill was an evangelical individual, and Cruttwell came to believe that the actions of his chaplain were jeopardising the academic results of his students. So they fell out, hardly speaking to each other for a year, and after five years' Thornhill's contract was not renewed.
'Not long after I left Hertford, Cruttwell became seriously ill. He had been a victim of shell-shock in the First World War. He was a man afflicted by deep wounds of body and spirit. He was divided between a bitter hatred of many people and of much of life, and yet at the same time he had a longing for something new.'
That is suggested in the title of his final book. The one about 'Peaceful Change' in the world.
'One morning in my time of quiet a compelling thought arrested me: 'You must go and see Cruttwell today and put things right with him.' I discovered his whereabouts from the college and set out on a long and round-about train journey to Bath. I was not eager for the encounter and I still did not know what to say to him. Some of the old fear remained. I could only seem to think of the slogan: 'Say it with flowers', and I bought a bouquet on my way from the station.'
Is that what you do for a man who has survived the mud of Flanders? Say it with flowers?
''At the nursing home I was informed that I could only see him for a few minutes; "Mr Cruttwell is not at all well and very disturbed in spirit." I walked into a large half-darkened room, the flowers clutched in my hand. I could see him looking up, gaunt and grey, in the bed. I put the flowers in his hand. At last he saw who I was. We sat there quite a long time in silence, his hand resting on my arm, the flowers between us. Very few words were said. I know that I apologised for being too cowardly to be the friend to him that I might have been. I can't remember much else, but I can see now how his eyes filled with tears and I can hear his voice muttering again and again words that sounded like "It's very good of you. Very good of you."
Well done Alan Thornhill for making that visit and for putting it down in black and white. It's pretty obvious that Cruttwell would have found it very difficult being removed from his Oxford base. As far as his adult experience went, if you weren't safely tucked up in Oxford you were suffering in the Somme. Straight from Heaven to Hell. That's where Cruttwell went the day he was forced to retire.
Thornhill goes on: 'A few days afterwards a clergyman in Bath, entirely independent of me, made some visits to this nursing home, which was in his parish. He knew nothing of Cruttwell. He was not an intellectual man - in fact, something of a simple, timid soul. But he was a good man and just recently, only a few weeks before in fact, he had attended some meetings of the Oxford Group and had experienced a renewing of his faith. Somehow, this man, a complete stranger, found his way to this particular room.'
That gives me an idea. But I'll come back to it. For now let's stick with the simple man of God, as told by Alan Thornhill:
'When Cruttwell saw him, he asked the nurse to leave him, and then to this visiting priest he said, "My whole life has been a sham and a fraud. What I need is a simple experience of Jesus Christ. Will you help me?" I learnt this much later.'
This is good. This is what I needed to read.
'An intellectual discussion would have been completely beside the point. A sermon would have been hopeless. This man had the simplicity and faith to do what was required. "We will pray," he said. "I think you are only ready so far to pray the Lord's Prayer. Let us say it together."
Here is the last paragraph of Thornhill's Cruttwell chapter:
'I can only guess what followed, but I do know this: not long after another Hertford man visited Cruttwell. He said he had seldom seen anyone so transformed. He seemed as it were, washed clean. He was as simple and open as a child. He was at peace. Not long after that he died.'
Damn it. Thornhill has missed out the important bit. He's missed out the visitor between the simple priest and the unknown Hertford man. Never mind, I feel I'm in a position to plug said gap.
EIGHT: FINAL RECKONING
Angela walked into the half-darkened room, plonked a bunch of red roses in a vase and opened wide the half-closed curtains. "Good afternoon, Crutters."
"Who is it?"
"Angela."
"Angela who?"
"Angela who is going to tell you something that is going to cheer you up."
And so she did. She told him that in December 1939, Evelyn Waugh, at the age of 37, began training to be an officer in the Royal Marines. No other regiment would take him, but he was determined to do his bit for the country.
"Well, well."
"Evelyn got his basic training at the Marines regimental headquarters in Chatham. During operational training he was put in charge of a company, and found himself in action off the course of West Africa in summer of 1940. I believe captain was your own rank in the Royal Berkshires."
"I was a second lieutenant, most of the time. But I did rise as high as captain just before copping a bullet. The higher ranks are for the regular soldiers. That is until all the regular soldiers have been slaughtered. Please go on with your news."
"When Evelyn got back to Britain last summer, he lost patience with the traditional regiment and signed up for the newly formed ommandos. With 8th Commando he trained on the Isle of Arran under Robert Laycock. And a few weeks ago Layforce set off on the long journey round Africa bound for the Mediterranean via the Grand Canal. They are trained for a variety of operations; Evelyn is eager for the fight. If you're worried about turning up in another of Evelyn's novels, don't be. You are both on the same side now. He knows that."
"Has he had me in a story since I was portrayed as a pompous shop assistant in Scoop? General Cruttwell I was there. My highest ever rank."
"Just once. In the short story 'An Englishman's Home' - written in 1939, but pre-War. The relevant line is "Oh dear, is poor Mr Cruttwell having trouble with the Wolf Club account again."" Angela paused, then went on precisely. "Apparently fourpence had gone astray, on the credit side this time." She paused again. "I think the implication was that you were a bookkeeper having trouble with a simple set of accounts."
"The joke being that, in my day, I was a most efficient administrator."
"I repeat. There isn't going to be another Cruttwell story. This second World War changes everything."
Cruttwell was lying in bed. It seemed difficult for him to move. He asked Angela if she would fetch a particular book from below the bed. He described it as his 'half-leather Housman'.
"Got it. What a lovely book."
"Evelyn had a similar copy in quarter leather. Silly fool had to sell it in his second year when he realised he was running out of money. Spent the whole scholarship I'd awarded him on ale."
"And exquisite books."
"Admittedly. But not history books."
Angela had noticed that Cruttwell also had a copy of Decline and Fall under his bed. She asked why.
"Funniest book in the English Language."
"I didn't think you'd think so."
"What? Not find Toby Cruttwell, non-sporting character, funny? Him who brought off the Amalgamated Steel Trust robbery of 1914? Got a V.C, in the Dardanelles for killing a lot of blooming Turks? Now an MP who keeps changing rank from Captain to General? Occasionally to be seen at the Lamb and Flag in South London, drinking with his old pal, Solly Philbrick?"
The take on Waugh's style wasn't done particularly well, but Angela smiled.
Cruttwell asked Angela to read a particular poem from his Housman. Which she did.
When I was one-and-twenty
I heard a wise man say,
“Give crowns and pounds and guineas
But not your heart away;
Give pearls away and rubies
But keep your fancy free.”
But I was one-and-twenty,
No use to talk to me.
When I was one-and-twenty
I heard him say again,
“The heart out of the bosom
Was never given in vain;
’Tis paid with sighs a plenty
And sold for endless rue.”
And I am two-and-twenty,
And oh, ’tis true, ’tis true.
After a moment, Cruttwell spoke. "The man who wrote that poem, A.E. Housman, was educated at St John's Collge, Oxford. He fell in love with his room mate but never spoke of his love. My story's much the same. Never spoke directly of my love for the man I fell for. I was a Scholar at All Souls. It's that unrequited love which defines me, as much as the War. Though that didn't come along until I was 27 and set in my solitary ways."
Angela sat and listened. She doubted if Cruttwell had ever spoken like this to another soul. She had timed her visit to perfection.
"Evelyn wasn't the same kettle of fish at all. I saw him with his tongue down Richard Pares throat in his first year. Saw him out walking with Alastair Graham, arm in arm, in the second year. All I could do was watch from my room. I know I was jealous. And my jealousy turned into something bitter and twisted. I was terribly hard on Evelyn in tutorials. No wonder it left such an impact."
Cruttwell lapsed into a self-recriminatory silence. Until:
"There's another book under my bed. Degenerate Oxford? by Terence Greenidge. That's the wild young man who used to stand a stuffed dog in the middle of the quad. He and Evelyn used to bark at it. God knows what they were up to. He was nuts that boy. But his book, published in 1930, just a few years after he went down, is well argued, Could you read from the middle of page 90, please, Angela."
Angela checked if there were any further books under the bed, thinking to fetch them all out at once and save her bending down repeatedly, but this was the last. She opened it:
She noticed that it was published by Evelyn Waugh's father's firm. She seemed to remember that Arthur Waugh had resented Terence Greenidge staying at the Waugh house in Hampstead so often in the vacations. But he couldn't have resented it that much, given that he'd published his book in the same year as he'd published his son's Vile Bodies. Vile Bodies and Degenerate Oxford? Seems like Evelyn and Terence were still singing from the same hymn sheet in 1930.
Angela found her place and read: "And in any case Oxford romances often are not pursued to lengths which would engender difficulties with our criminal code, for the simple reason that undergraduates are immature enough to see something worthwhile in Platonic affection. Queer deeds may occasionally get done among those who come from over-emancipated Public Schools. And maybe some of us have read Havelock Ellis, and learnt to view sex coldly and clearly. But the majority of us favour that vague romanticism which may be likened to a warm, misty July morning.... We are dealing with young men who are in a state of transition. In most cases these odd manifestations of the spirit seem but temporary."
"True of Greenidge. True of Waugh. Not true of Housman or myself. Go on from 'The attraction of man for man,' on the facing page, if you would."
"The attraction of man for man I shall term Romanticism. One word is always better than two, the phrase 'romantic friendship' being rather a mouthful, and Homosexuality I do not favour. For it sounds very sinister, and also denotes more than I really intend."
"Does it sound sinister to you?"
""What?"
"Homosexuality."
"No."
"To me neither. But it does sound shameful. I could never get over my sense of shame."
"Until now."
"Until now."
Silence in the room.
"Look, before you go, would you do something more for me, my dear? For if you look closely under the bed you will see that there is another slim book, the same colour as the carpet. Would you get it out?"
"And now would you read the names as they are listed in Appendix A. The private soldiers. Nice and slowly. I will close my eyes. I may even drop off before you get to the end. But you just carry on reading and slip out after you're done. All right?"
And so Angela read a list of names, each of which seemed to bounce off Cruttwell, C.R.M.F.
"Abery, L. H., Adlam, F.C., Andrews, G., Annetts, P., Appleton, G., Atkins, F., Aubrey, F.W., Austin, J.W., Ayles, E.H., Bacon, P.G.W., Badcock, A., Baker, P.G., Barnett, A.A., Barney, C., Bateman, J., Beckett, A.J., Beckinsale, L, Belcher, S.E., Benger, A.T., Bickle, A.E., Bird, F., Blade, H.R.W., Bloomfield, C.I., Bolton, C., Bond, F.S., Boothby, R., Borley, F.G., Bowell, G.P., Bracey, G.G., Brant, B.J.L, Bromley, H., Brooman, H.B., Brown, C.J.F., Bullen, E.L., Burrows, C., Butler, A.J., Buxcey, A.E., Buxton, W.,..."
When Cruttwell awoke, he lay still for a while. Eventually, he got hold of his Housman and read.
The vane on Hughley steeple
Veers bright, a far-known sign,
And there lie Hughley people
And there lie friends of mine.
Tall in their midst the tower
Divides the shade and sun,
And the clock strikes the hour
And tells the time to none.
To south the headstones cluster,
The sunny mounds lie thick;
The dead are more in muster
At Hughley than the quick.
North, for a soon-told number,
Chill graves the sexton delves,
And steeple-shadowed slumber
The slayers of themselves.
To north, to south, lie parted,
With Hughley tower above,
The kind, the single-hearted,
The lads I used to love.
And, south or north, 'tis only
A choice of friends one knows,
And I shall ne'er be lonely
Asleep with these or those.
It was shortly after Cruttwell read this that his last visitor, a Hertford man, came in. And found his old tutor at peace.
NINE: OUTRO
It's true that Evelyn Waugh didn't lampoon Cruttwell again in fiction. That may have been out of new-found respect. Or because Cruttwell died on him. Or because - with champagne socialist Cyril Connolly offering himself as an irresistible target - he got distracted.
Acknowledgements and notes
1) Explanatory notes to the 'Isis Idol no, 496 C.M.R.F. Crutwell, M.A.' piece, as reprinted in Donat Gallagher's Essays, Reviews and Articles of Evelyn Waugh, volume 20 in the CWEW, put me onto the contributions of both A.L. Rowse and Alan Thornhill in preserving the memory of the subject of this essay.
2) Thanks to John Freeman for telling me about, and providing images of, the four Evelyn Waugh books signed by EW in 1937 that are pictured in section six.
3) Waugh's final words about Cruttwell can be found in A Little Learning. The CWEW volume, edited by John H Wilson and Barbara Cooke, may have some further perspective on them. I will be consulting the volume in due course.
4) For a complementary assessment of the legacy of C.M.R.F. Cruttwell, see Alexander Waugh in Fathers and Sons, pages 175 to 180.