UNCONDITIONAL EVELYN
ONE
With Ronald Knox and A Tourist in Africa out of the way, Evelyn Waugh could get back to his life's work. At the very end of 1959, he wrote to a researcher asking for information about the Sword of Stalingrad because he knew that was going to be his starting point for his next book.
By the end of April, 1960, he still hadn't started (he'd had articles to write for the Mail based on his travelling). He told Ann Fleming: 'I am shortly embarking on a third volume of the Crouchback saga'. He wrote again to the researcher telling her that October 29-31, 1943, were the important dates. He knew that the sword went from being an object of craftsmanship at Goldsmith's Hall and the V&A to an object of veneration at Westminster Abbey. 'I am not much interested in the appearance of the sword. It is the wave of popular sentiment culminating in the ecclesiastical status that interests me. Eg. Was it blessed? Weather? Also was London then free of all air raids.' The sword was a gift from the British king to Stalin, celebrating the British/Russian alliance against the Germans. That alliance would become morally ambiguous in the final section of the book, which would be set in Yugoslavia, which might explain why Waugh wanted to establish it from the beginning. On May 18, Evelyn was able to tell Nancy Mitford 'I am toiling away at third volume of war novel'. Good. Evelyn was off, sword in hand, and writing with it.
The book begins with a synopsis of previous volumes (3 pages); then a prologue called 'Locust Years', accounting for the two years of frustration and inactivity between autumn 1941 and 1943 (7 pages); then goes on to book one: 'State Sword' (34 pages). 'State Sword' focuses on Friday, October 29, 1943, which was Guy Crouchback's 40th birthday. Of course, the day before, 28 October, 1943, had been Evelyn Waugh's 40th birthday. All of which suggests that Evelyn Waugh sitting in his library in Coombe Florey was aware that he was approaching 60 (he would be 57 next birthday), looking back at a time when he was already very conscious of his age, It was the fact of being 40 that was preventing Evelyn (and by extension, Guy Crouchback) from being given an active job in the army back in 1943, which was what he'd very much wanted. What was the fact of being nearly 60 stopping him from doing in 1960? Nothing really. Except Waugh knew he was approaching a stage in his life when he wouldn't be able to do this kind of exacting, literary work any more.
Any reason why Waugh shuffled Guy Crouchback's birthday from October 28 to 29? Well, in the novel, the birthday culminates in a publishing party and maybe these only happened on a Friday. Guy has his birthday lunch with Jumbo Trotter, then goes back to the weird, overtly political non-office where he works. In the evening, he goes to the publishing party hosted by Everard Spruce (Cyril Connolly) via some conversations at Bellamy's Club (White's). Also headed to the party at Survival (Horizon) is Ian Kilbannock (Patrick Balfour aka Lord Kinross). The important role Kilbannock plays in the book is as a military fixer. He and his wife, Kerstie, fix Virginia (Guy's ex-wife) with lodgings at this stage in the book. The third main character who makes his way to the publishing party is Ludovic, an important, sinister corporal in the second volume in the trilogy, Officers and Gentlemen), now a major, who at five o'clock is looking at the State Sword and a bit later is talking to Sir Ralph Brompton, with whom he'd had an affair some years before. Sir Ralph tells Ludovic that he has sent his manuscript, Pensées, to Everard Spruce and that Spruce wants to publish it and will be expecting him at the party that evening. Sir Ralph says to Ludovic:
"The only thing he doesn't quite like is the title."
"Pensées." said Ludovic. "D'you know what they call our badge?" He tapped the floral device on the lapel of his tunic. 'A pansy sitting on its laurels'".
"Yes, yes. Very good. I have heard the witticism before. No: Everard thinks it is dated. He suggests 'Notes in Transit' or something of the sort."
It's a bit odd having a long scene at the premises of Survival. Although Evelyn Waugh had things published by Cyril Connolly's Horizon during (and after) the war, it is unlikely that he would have attended a literary event there. During the war, Waugh saw himself as a soldier first, and certainly not as a left-wing writer, which was how Waugh understood the politics of the publication. Though I'm not sure that such a reductive opinion was fair. After all, Connolly had chosen to publish the first chapter of Work Suspended as 'My Father's House' in a 1941 issue (below left) Evelyn probably couldn't forgive Connolly for publishing Peter Quennell, as for example in the June 43 issue (below right).
What seems odd to me is the emphasis in this 'book one' of Unconditional Surrender of an obscure literary publication and the gay liaison between Ludovic and Sir Ralph Brompton. Indeed it introduces an element of absurdity into the proceedings. I'm seeing Sir Ralph Brompton presenting both the Sword of Stalingrad and a copy of Pensées to Stalin or his representative. No, definitely to the top man himself. A tear comes into Stalin's eye. Not because of the millions of his countrymen killed in action against the Germans on the Eastern Front, but from the realisation that Russia had such a civilised ally in Great Britain. 
Mark Gerson, Evelyn Waugh, 1959. Annotations by the author.
Peculiar sort of war book, you'll be thinking. Let's see where Evelyn Waugh takes it.
TWO
Book two is 'Figne de Ligne' and is much concerned with the death of Guy Crouchback's father. Waugh had written in the first person about a father's death in 1939, in the first section of Work Suspended. But his own father hadn't died until April of 1943 and I expect Waugh was drawing on that experience in many ways, while writing Unconditional Surrender in 1960. In August he wrote to Lady Mary Lygon: 'I am writing a novel. It is all about a funeral. Ought to be popular.'.
The book is also much concerned with the beginning of a life. Virginia tries to get rid of the baby she is due to have from her liaison with Trimmer, but that proves unexpectedly hard. Ian KIlbannock has lost patience with Virginia but Kerstie still tries to help and Guy's father's brother also makes himself useful on her behalf. As Waugh told Ann Fleming in September: 'I am busily and happily at work on a sequel to those two war novels I wrote. The trouble is it is quite unintelligible to anyone who doesn't know them by heart. I have to keep dipping into them to find what I wrote seven or eight years ago. Otherwise it is gripping tale.'
Before the end of the month he writes agin to Ann Fleming saying: 'I am not sending you or any of my honoured friends a copy of my African pot boiler because I despise it.' How could he think otherwise about A Tourist in Africa when he was in the middle of such a carefully crafted, multi-layered work?
In the same letter, he tells Ann that Cyril Connolly wrote to him suggesting that Graham Greene and Evelyn were enabled to keep writing in spite of prosperity by 'internal tensions'. Waugh asks: 'What can the booby mean? Perhaps it is your duty to introduce internal tensions into your coterie of fuddy-duddies who don't seem awfully productive. Boofy, now that's a man who I should say had internal tensions but he doesn't write.'
In the meantime, Guy Crouchback may be going to be selected for a mission in Italy or Yugoslavia and needs to take a parachute course in preparation for it. Which is where the fun starts. Because the officer in charge of the parachute school in Essex is Ludovic. (In November 1943, Waugh attended a parachute school at Ringway near Liverpool. The commandant was charming, a song-writer in private life, Waugh noted in his 1943 diary.) Ludovic manages to evade Guy Crouchback's queries about what happened in a cave on Crete and on a little boat escaping from Crete (Ludovic killed his fellow soldiers in order that a few of them were able to survive but there is no way he can risk telling that to Crouchback).
This time Ludovic will avoid Crouchback by staying in his room. Basically, all Ludovic has to do is write reports on the soldiers that do the parachuting course. For this he makes extensive use of both dictionary and thesaurus. His love for words and his black sense of humour is much to the fore. If this isn't a self-portrait of Evelyn Waugh in his library at Combe Florey I don't know what is. For example, a junior officer has to intrude on Ludovic's privacy every now and again. As here:
"What did you think of our last batch?"
"Not up to much."
A rabble of coistrell curates?"
Sir?"
"Never mind."
I can imagine Waugh intimidating his sons, James and/or Septimus, in this kind of way, whenever they had the unfortunate need to step into Waugh's territory to communicate something.
Ludovic was continuing to write down new pensées in this section of the book. Here is one:
'The penalty of sloth is longevity.'
I think this is self-referential too, as by this stage of his life, Waugh was no longer keeping a full diary. Instead he was making 'irregular notes'. The first such note reads: 'Fading memory and a senile itch to write to The Times on all topics have determined me to keep irregular notes of what passes through my mind.'
One such note that speaks to Ludovic's above pensée is: 'All fates are "worse than death".'
Here is another of Ludovic's:
'Those who take too keen an interest in the outside world, may one day find themselves locked outside their own gates.'
Ludovic's relationship to his room and the grounds of the military establishment is intense. Occasionally he slips out of the back door and goes to the trees.
'Ludovic walked alone among the trees. What had been paths were ankle deep in dead leaves and cones and pine needles. His glossy boots grew dull. Presently he turned back and, avoiding the French windows, entered by a side door and the back stairs. On his table lay a great plate of roast meat a heap of potatoes and cold thick gravy, and beside it a pudding of sorts.'
The commandant at a military organisation in 1943? Or Evelyn Waugh at Combe Florey in 1960? You decode and you decide, gentle reader.
There was a knock at the door. He did not answer. Captain Fremantle (James Waugh) looked in and the light from the passage revealed Ludovic sitting there, empty-handed, staring.
"Oh," said Captain Freemantle (James Waugh), "I'm sorry, sir. I was told you had gone out. Are you all right, sir?"
"Quite all right, thank-you. Why should you fear otherwise? I like sometimes to sit and think. Perhaps if I smoked a pipe, it would seem more normal. Do you think I should buy a pipe?"
"Well, that's rather a matter of taste, isn't it sir?"
"Yes, and to me it would be highly disagreeable. But I will buy a pipe, if it would make you easier in your mind about me."
Captain Freemantle (James Waugh) withdrew. As he shut the door he heard Ludovic switch on the light. He returned to the ante-room (Laura's kitchen).
"The old man's stark crazy," he reported.
Ludovic decides instead to buy himself a little dog. He required a loving pekinese. Through the heavy oak panels of the door, Captain Freemantle (James Waugh) could hear the singing of a song:
"Father won't buy me a bow-wow, bow-wow
Father won't buy me a bow-wow-wow
I've got a little cat and I'm very fond of that
But what I want's bow-wow-wow."
When the Peke arrives, Ludovic is very worried about it. He can't get it to eat anything. Then when he turns his back, the little devil tears into the latest issue of Survival. It wasn't the issue with Ludovic's Pensées in it, but one which had gone to press long before. Actually, I'd rather quote the scene:
'When Freemantle enters the room, Ludovic is on all fours making cooing noises at the dog which was crouched under Ludovic's bed in a nest of shredded paper. He raised to Freemantle a face radiating with simple glee. "Cor," he said, "Just take a dekko at the little perisher. Wouldn't fancy anything I give him. Had me worried. Thought he was sick. Thought I ought to call in the M.O. Then I turned my back for a jiffy and blessed if he hasn't polished off the latest number of Survival. How d'you call that for an appetite?" Then falling into a fruity tone of infatuation, he addressed himself to the puppy: "What'll kind staff-captain-man say if you won't eat his nice grub, eh? What'll kind editor-man say if you eat his clever paper?"'
I wonder if one of the Waugh children were allowed to have a dog. If so, there would have been strict rules that the child feed it, walk it and, above all, keep it out of Evelyn's library. But dogs have a habit of doing what people think they don't want them to do. And surely Waugh wouldn't mind being distracted from his novel and from his war diary from time to time.
Mark Gerson, Evelyn Waugh, 1959. Annotations by the author.
THREE
In February, 1961, Waugh wrote to Ann Fleming: 'It is very painful to me to be in England at this season. I am tied to my desk by my novel. I can't leave it until it is finished. I am killing off the characters fast with 'flying bombs' and hope to take Margaret to Monte Carlo by the end of the month.'
I think it would have taken a long time for Evelyn to write book three of Unconditional Surrender, in order to fictionalise what had happened to himself in 1944 and to make it work as the climax to the novel. I also think that he would have been referring a great deal to his wartime diary, though he didn't by any means stick slavishly to his personal history.
Here's a map that shows the basics of the situation, in fact and in fiction. It's best to get the three red pins clear in your mind, dear reader.
In the novel, Guy Crouchback flies from Britain into Bari in late February. He meets various military types and is put in the picture about what's happening in the Balkans (Croatia, Bosnia, etc.). Basically the allies are liaising with the partisans against the Germans. But the communist partisans real loyalties are to Russia and any co-operation between them and the British and Americans is delicate.
Crouchback, who has close links with Italy that make him qualified for this assignment, flies to Croatia from Bari (red pin in Italy) in March, and is put in charge of a military mission with an airport. He has a translator called Bakic who he has an edgy relationship with. A party of 108 displaced Jews make themselves known to the mission. They want to get to Bari. There is nothing Crouchback can do to help them at this stage, though he sympathises with their position. On June 4, Crouchback is told by telegram that Virginia, who he's married again for totally unselfish reasons, has given birth to her son by Trimmer, the date of birth being June 4 1944. 'Birth' is first spelt 'bath' and then 'borth'. Although Guy knows exactly what he's being told, he keeps asking for clarification to confound the rude and obstructive officer sending the telegram.
Now, in reality, Evelyn Waugh, following the injury sustained to his knee on the parachuting course, had been given leave to write a novel. Briideshed Revisited was written in a pub at Chagford, near Exeter, between December 1943 and June 1944. In Unconditional Surrender, it's Ludovic, safely tucked away in his office at the parachute school, that writes 3,000 words per day in coming up with a huge romantic book - and complete contrast to his preceding Pensées - called The Death Wish. At this time, Laura gave birth to Harriet, the Waugh's fourth child. She was born towards the end of May, 1944. Waugh left off his completion of Brideshead Revisited long enough to visit Laura and the baby at the Herbert family home, Pixton .
Back to the novel. By June, Ludovic has finished The Death Wish and had it typed. Waugh writes that, had Ludovic known it, half a dozen other English writers had been turning from the privations of war to write ravishingly and nostalgically of pre-war years. Ludovic hadn't planned the book. Just known that by the end Lady Marmaduke (Lord Marchmain in Brideshead) would have to be dead, the bitch. Meanwhile, flying bombs were causing fear and panic in London, presenting an excuse for Virginia to have her son Gervase, who she hadn't bonded with, taken away to be safe in the countryside. She stayed on in the danger zone of London and sure enough a bomb falls on her abode. Guy Crouchback is informed of his wife's death and he makes use of the local Catholic priest to formally commemorate her passing. Meanwhile, the typescript of The Death Wish has reached the offices of Survival. Everard Spruce (Cyril Connolly) thinks the book is going do very well, though his supporting staff, his literary ladies, hate it for its vulgarity.
It was only at the beginning of July that Randolph Churchill contacted Evelyn Waugh and go him involved in a military mission in Croatia. So Waugh was a few months behind his fictional counterpart in heading east. In the middle of July, the plane taking them from Bari to Topuko crashed on landing, and both Evelyn and Randolph were flown back to Italy to recuperate from the burns and the bruises and the shock. In Unconditional Surrender, Waugh took advantage of this incident by having Ian Kilbannock (now a war journalist) fly from Bari to Begoy (the fictional equivalent of Topuko). Also in the plane is an American general and Brigadier Ritchie-Hook, a main character (and a head case) from Men at Arms. Again the plane crashes, and minor characters are killed. The action quickly moves on to the military event that these people have been flown in to witness. The partisans, aided by strikes from an allied plane, are to destroy an enemy position, a pillbox. It all goes wrong, the partisan soldiers abandon the project, but Ritchie-Hook takes over and turns the episode into a one-man suicide mission. This not only ends his life but, ironically, inspires the partisans to have more respect for the allies commitment to the anti-German cause.
Waugh was flirting with danger here. By replacing himself and Randolph Churchill with Ian Kilbannock (based on Patrick Balfour for much of the trilogy) and mad Ritchie-Hook, there would have been the chance of upsetting Randolph Churchill. At the time of writing in 1961, Churchill and Waugh were estranged, and so the former might have taken umbrage and sued. But the previous history of the character meant that there was no consistent link between Ritchie-Hook and Churchill, so Evelyn must have decided he could get away with it.
Now, as well as using his diary to help come up with book three of Unconditional Surrender, Waugh wanted to bear in mind the fictional story he had already written and published in 1949, 'Compassion'. This dealt with how the equivalent of Guy Crouchback (a Major Gordon) managed to get the party of Jews from being displaced and desperate in northern Croatia to relative safety and comfort in Bari, Italy. Waugh effectively used that entire story, slicing it up into sections, in Unconditional Surrender.
Now Waugh's own experience from September 1944 to February 1945 was split into two sections. The time in Topusko, with Randolph his charge, one of Churchill's duties being to deal with some displaced Jews (it's only mentioned briefly in the diary). This time, autumn 1944, was dominated by the relationship between Randolph (constantly drunk) and Evelyn (who didn't have access to alcohol). A seething time was had by both. 
Then, in November - having corrected the proofs of Brideshead Revisited while Randolph was reading the Bible all the way through as a bet (to keep him quiet) - Waugh managed to get away from the intolerable situation. He was reposted to a mission in Dubrovnik (see the above map). This time he was in sole charge of the mission and he realised that the local Catholic population was in danger of being persecuted by the partisans. So he did what he could to protect them by liaising with both his own command and with the partisan authorities. Soon the partisans wanted him out of the way, and that is what was achieved since the allies did not want to rock the relationship with the partisans at that stage, even though eventually the partisans fell in completely with the Russians, as it had been obvious that they would.
So in 1949, when writing 'Compassion', Waugh chose to set the story in north Croatia, where he'd been with Randolph, and to work on behalf of the Jews, but drew on his experience of negotiating on behalf of the Roman Catholic population when he had been in sole charge and the one doing the difficult and delicate work. Perhaps he chose that, because in doing so he could leave Randolph out of it. But it's also probably the case that the actually displaced Jews and the potentially persecuted Catholics were not interchangeable in a narrative. It might have suited an important theme of the trilogy more - Guy's loyalty to the Roman Catholic Church - if Waugh could have helped the Catholics rather than the Jews, but is wasn't possible to weave the action in such a way.
Anyway, Waugh stuck with the decisions he'd made in composing 'Compassion' for Unconditional Surrender. Although Crouchback, like Waugh, moves from Northern Croatia to Dubrovnik, it is the Jews of the north who are transported from there to Bari with whom he is concerned with. And the Dubrovnik experience, trying to protect the Roman Catholic community, is much truncated. Indeed the Roman Catholic 'problem' is not even mentioned in the novel. Wheras in the diary it is given much space. Waugh eventually writes report on it and succeeds in having an audience with the Pope about it. 
Mark Gerson, Evelyn Waugh, 1959. Annotations by the author.
I don't know how clear that is. The relationship between fact and fiction is complex. Waugh has aimed at creating an exciting and coherent and politically meaningful narrative. He certainly wasn't simply following what happened in his diary.
Let me dip back into the novel and the diaries to try and illustrate this with a detail or two. Let's drop in on Evelyn Waugh and Guy Crouchback round about the time of their 41st birthdays on October 28 and 29 of 1944, respectively.
On Guy's 41st birthday he received a present; a signal reading: 'Receive special flight four Dakotas tomorrow night 29th dispatch all Jews.' Crouchback felt like Moses leading people out of captivity.
As for Evelyn's actual birthday: 'My 41st birthday and the glummest I have had for eleven years. It has been a good year - a daughter born, a book written, a narrow escape from death. I pray God that next year I am at my own home, at my one work, and at peace.'
On January 9, in Dubrovnik, Waugh's diary notes the receipt of letters and books from Nancy Mitford. Nancy tells him that she loves Brideshead which has just been published, and she encloses The Unquiet Grave by Cyril Connolly. Waugh had a lot of time to devote to the reading of this book, which he hated. He made lots of offensive comments in its margin. But the experience clearly bound Cyril Connolly's literalryidentity to Evelyn Waugh's 1944 experience, and must partly explain the major role that Everard Spruce and Survival have in all three parts of Unconditional Surrender. Indeed, Ludovic's The Death Wish may be partly a response to Connolly's The Unquiet Grave as well as Waugh's own Brideshead.
The main characters of the book: Guy Crouchback, Major Ludovic and Ian Kilbannock were all, in part, based on Evelyn himself, or shared certain of his experiences. Likewise Cyril Connolly and Randolph Churchill fed into the book, the latter only in fits and starts. I still think it's a miracle that Evelyn Waugh had the discipline to keep Randolph Churchill's personalty and behaviour out of it. He was the son of Winston Churchill, after all, and as such a totally atypical officer. All the same, the humour that was there to be exploited!
OUTRO
At the beginning of April, 1961, Waugh wrote to his agent: 'I have finished the novel - now called Unconditional Surrender. I hope to send you a typescript by the end of the week. I don't think the last 1/3 as good as the first 2/3. I shall be interested to hear your opinion.'
He then talks about not writing another novel for five or six years. Instead he thinks he might write a 3-volume autobiography over ten years. Which prompts me to think about what Waugh had just achieved: a sequence of five novels about World War Two written over twenty years (1941 to 1961). In order of experience, they were 1) Put Out More Flags (1939), 2) Men At Arms (1939-1940), 3) Officers and Gentlemen (1940-1941), 4) Brideshead Revisited, (1944 and 1920s Oxford) and 5) Unconditional Surrender (1943-44). But in order of writing, they were 1) Put Out More Flags (1941), 2) Brideshead Revisited (1944), 3) Men at Arms (1952), 4) Officers and Gentlemen, 1956 and 5) Unconditional Surrender (1960- 1961). The last three books making up the Cuy Crouchback trilogy, 'Sword of Honour'.
Which allows one to understand why there was something incredibly fresh about Put Out More Flags, written in the exhilaration of Waugh's escape from the debacle of Crete. Just as there was something truly considered about Unconditional Surrender, written so long after the extraordinary event: Europe at war.
Taking the five novels together, an enormous achievement, a set of books that helps us understand what happened in Europe in the middle of the 20th Century. But it's also a very personal statement. It's because Unconditional Surrender was written in 1960-61, following a trip to British Guiana with his daughter Margaret (Meg) and prior to a holiday with her in Monte Carlo, that the book is dedicated to her. The child, Harriet (Hatty), who was actually born in 1944, in the middle of the action that comprises Unconditional Surrender, got no such book dedication. I hope that she was able to take into account the honesty of her father's emotions (Meg was always his favourite) and the singularity of his writing process.
There is an epilogue (3 pages) to Unconditional Surrender. Basically, it deals with the importance as a symbol of Gervase, Virginia's child by Trimmer. I've gone into that in some depth in this earlier essay. But the emphasis in the present piece is the fact that the novel was written when it was, 1961. By which time Waugh was long over the devastation caused in his life by John Heygate.
Next up in the Combe Florey experience is this.
