EVELYN WAUGH AND RANDOLPH CHURCHILL
ONE
High time I wrote about this pair of rabble rousers. Rabble rousers? Trouble comes in elastic-waistbanded trousers.
Evelyn's diary first mentions Randolph Churchill in 1930, when Evelyn was high on his Vile Bodies success. Why had they not met at Oxford, where Churchill had rooms in Christ Church? Because Randolph was eight years younger. So he would only have just graduated from Oxford when their paths crossed in London in 1930.
The first mention of him in Waugh's Diaries is on Sunday June 15, 1930. 'A delightful day. There was one row. Randolph Churchill threw a cocktail in Wanda's face.'
The second mention of Randolph is later in the month: 'Diana had a supper party. I enjoyed the party, became very drunk and fought Randolph in the servants hall. Olivia very drunk. All the usual people were there.'
Vile Bodies personified. Here is what Evelyn and Randolph looked like in 1930. First, Randolph:
By Lafayette. National Portrait Gallery. Reproduced with the forbearance, I hope, of the copyright holder.

Randolph: "As soon as I'm drunk enough, I'm going to fight Evelyn in the toilets. Which is what we call the servants quarters."
Evelyn: "As soon as Diana is not looking, I'm going to fight Randolph in the servants quarters. Which is what he's been calling the toilets."
Evelyn Waugh by Howard Coster, 1930. Print available from National Portrait Gallery.
In other words their friendship - because that's what it was, based on mutual admiration of lively qualities - had a boisterous side to it from the start.
TWO
While Evelyn spent the 1930s travelling and writing (and turning Catholic) Randolph focussed on politics, and several times stood for election as a Conservative candidate. In which endeavour he failed repeatedly, until finally slipping into the constituency of Preston unopposed in 1940. Randolph Churchill, MP.
However, by then war had changed everything and Evelyn and Randolph's paths crossed again during officer training on the west coast of Scotland. Evelyn learned how different the Commando set-up was from his previous regiment, the Royal Marines. The officers were roughly equally divided into professional soldiers and 'dandies'. There was little administration or discipline, but this was supposed to be balanced by greater flexibility and initiative. Which begs the question: Is panache an important quality in an army?
8 Commando consisted of ten troops of 50 men, each led by a captain aided by two subalterns. Subaltern just means an officer under the rank of captain, commonly a lieutenant. It's what Evelyn was, having been a captain in the Marines. Randolph Churchill was another subaltern. Several wives were also staying at the Marine Hotel, Largs, including Randolph's. The dandy officers and their wives went up to Glasgow to dinner most nights, which Evelyn could not afford to do. The dandies also gambled heavily in the hotel. Waugh set up a table of his own, where the stakes were much lower. 
Randolph Churchill and Pamela Digby on their wedding day, 1939.
Clearly, Evelyn had a perverse respect for Randolph Churchill. The latter's monthly bill at the hotel was enormous; he lost a fortune to fellow officers at cards; he refused to serve under one officer who referred to the dandies as 'scum'; he was expelled from a three-week course on field training for heckling the trainers; and he wanted to bet people that he could swim out to the island that loomed large from the beach at Largs. The island that Winston Churchill's only son wanted to swim to is marked with a question-mark on the map below. 
Evelyn: "How much have you lost at the table in the three weeks that I've been here?"
Randolph: "£50... But so what? - easy come, easy go... I bet you £50 I could swim to that island."
Evelyn: "Great Cumbrae is two miles away. You would be unlikely to make it, but you just might. Instead, I'll bet you £500 you can't swim from here to Arran."
Randolph: "Done."
Between Arran and the much smaller Holy Island was a deep water channel which could readily be defended. The British navy used it both as a safe haven and place from which the industrial Clyde could be defended. 11 Commando (drawn from Scottish regiments) and 8 Commando (Evelyn and Randolph's lot) used the conjunction of shipping and the terrain of Arran to train for operations planned for the Mediterranean.
The plan was for each Commando troop to go ashore alternately for two weeks, while the other did boat training on Holy Island and Arran. So for two weeks Evelyn was on the Glenroy doing boat training and for two weeks on Arran doing field training. And so was Randolph Churchill.
Waugh tells us that the boat training consisted of packing into ALCs (Assault Landing Craft) 'which the military seemed to consider an esoteric art requiring great practice', and letting the naval officers mess up the navigation. Again and again ALCs were run aground and got left stranded by the tide.
Evelyn (middle column, somewhere): "Do you know the ALC has run aground?"
Randolph (middle column, somewhere): "You hum it, Evelyn, I'll play it."
Such a conversation is not entirely appropriate, as Waugh and Churchill were not in the same troop of fifty men. But I'm going to persist with it.
Randolph: "I bet you £50 my bladder holds out longer than yours does."
Evelyn: "We'll all be writing home about that bet."
Really, it's the raison d'être of this essay. To see which man's bladder holds out the longest.
Photography was not allowed in military establishments during the war. Miraculously, there is a picture reproduced in Selina Hastings biography of EW, where the caption reads: 'Evelyn and the "smart set" of 8 Commando training on Arran':
I would have captioned it slightly differently:
Anonymous Officer: "No photography of military personnel!"
Randolph: "But it's only our Evelyn. Besides, my father's Winston Churchill and it should never be forgotten that I can do whatever I fucking well like."
Once 8 Commado was trained, they left the UK in the Glenroy, which sailed to the Mediterranean in order to help with the battle for Crete.
Waugh wrote several times to his wife from the Glenroy, each time mentioning Randolph's gambling:
February 18, 1941: Waugh tells Laura that chemin de fer was being played most nights with the banks never being lower than £50. Randolph lost £400 in one evening.
February 23, 1941: Waugh tells Laura that the commandos get more and more like the Russian cavalry of Tolstoy's War and Peace. At the last settling day, Randolph was £800 down. 'Poor Pamela will have to go to work.' That's a reference to Randolph's wife of getting on for two semi-absent years. I don't imagine she was missing him half as much as Preston was missing their local M.P.
May 7, 1941: Waugh tells Laura that a commando was found to have written on the troop-deck wall: 'Never in the field of human endeavour have so few been buggered about by so many'. Evelyn explains that this is funnier if you were as familiar as Randolph made everyone on board with Winston's speeches. Poor Randolph had had a letter from Pam about his losses and she was most annoyed with him.
Randolph had put together his father's speeches from May 1938 to November 1940 and published them as Into Battle, which was published as a 300-page hardback in February 1941, and so no doubt Randolph would have had his own copy of the book aboard the Glenroy. 
In particular, this book contains the speeches Winston made in the House of Commons as Prime Minister. Churchill stood up in front of his peers, outlined the situation at home and abroad, described the contribution of the Air Force, the Army and the Navy to what was going on in various theatres of war. He spoke directly to fellow MPs, but also, via radio-waves, to the British population and to English-speaking people all around the world. He educated, he moralised, he spoke from the heart as well as the head, he inspired. The line that Evelyn alludes to in his letter to Laura was delivered in August 1940 in tribute to the Air Force. 'Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many by so few.' It's just one line in the middle of a paragraph in the middle of a forty-minute speech.
Randolph must have been crushed by his father's reputation and statesmanship. What else explains the son's irresponsible behaviour on board the Glenroy? 'Never in the field of human gambling was so much owed by a single officer to so many of his fellow officers.' Ha! - Evelyn was right - it's impossible not to make a joke out of it.
The action that 8 Commando saw was in helping with the retreat of allied forces from Crete. This was a debacle, and Evelyn, having survived it, sailed home to Britain via the Cape of Good Hope. In other words, the journey back took the whole of the summer of 1941 and Evelyn took the opportunity to write Put Out More Flags. This didn't deal with his training on Arran and the near-disaster of Crete, Officers and Gentlemen wasn't written until the mid 1950s. Put Out More Flags deals with the manoeuvring for position that took place in England in 1939, once war had been declared. Evelyn and Randolph lived separate existences in 1939, but because they'd been together since then, Evelyn dedicated the book to him. This shows that their relationship had survived their year in 8 Commando. The dedication reads:
Dear Randolph, I am afraid that these pages may not be altogether acceptable to your ardent and sanguine nature. They deal, mostly, with a race of ghosts [this will become an important word in correspondence between EW and RC], the survivors of the world we both knew ten years ago, which you have outflown in the empyrean of strenuous politics, but where my imagination still fondly lingers. I find more food for thought in the follies of Basil Seal [who tried unsuccessfully to become a Member of Parliament] and Ambrose Silk, than in the sagacity of the higher command. These characters are no longer contemporary [8 Commando is what was contemporary]; they were forgotten even before the war; but they lived on delightfully in holes and corners and, like everyone else, they have been disturbed in their habits by the rough intrusion of current history. Here they are in that odd, dead period before the Churchillian renaissance, which people called at the time the Great Bore War. So please accept them with the sincere regards of
Your affectionate friend,
The Author.
Note. At this stage in their lives, Evelyn called Randolph 'friend', and did him the great honour of dedicating a novel to him, as earlier novels had been dedicated to Harold Acton, the Lygon sisters and Diana Guinness.
And then what happened?
THREE
In August 1942, Evelyn wrote in his diary that he had spent ten days wandering about Mayfair, mostly in the company of Randolph or someone else. Their paths then diverged for nearly two years. While Evelyn was trying to find a way back into the action he injured a knee on a parachuting course, and ended up being given leave in which he wrote Brideshead Revisited. Randolph meanwhile, teamed up with his dad, or at least that's what the following photo suggests, taken in February 1943.
Winston Churchill during the Second World War. Keating (Capt), No 1 Army Film & Photographic Unit. This photograph E 22267 comes from the collections of the Imperial War Museums.
Randolph is second from left, the only seated figure not wearing a military hat. He too was trying to find a way back into the action. And when Fitzroy McLean gave him an opportunity, he contacted Evelyn so that his best fighting buddy could be in on it too.
In July 1944 Randolph and Evelyn were among the ten survivors of a Dakota crash in Croatia. Randolph suffered spinal and knee injuries while Evelyn was burnt in several places. After discharge from hospital in Bari (southern Italy), Randolph convalesced with Duff and Diana Cooper in Algiers, while Evelyn recuperated in Rome.
By September, 1944, Randolph and Evelyn were back in Yugoslavia, where Waugh recorded that Churchill was drunk most days. Evelyn had to tell Randolph things twice. Once when the latter was drunk and again when he was sober. Waugh described him as 'a flabby bully who rejoices in blustering and shouting down anyone weaker than himself and starts squealing as soon as he meets anyone as strong. He has set himself very low aims and has not the self-control to pursue them steadfastly.'
On good days Randolph could be excellent company. With Evelyn he established a military mission at Topusko on 16 September 1944. One outcome was a formidable report detailing Tito's persecution of the clergy. It was "buried" by Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden to save diplomatic embarrassment, as Tito was then seen as a required ally of Britain and an official "friend".
I took that last overview from Wikipedia. But will now revisit my own analysis, done when writing an essay about Unconditional Surrender for this site.
Waugh's diary entry, 27 October, 1944: 'I have felt less inclination to hide my scorn since his loss of self-control during the air-raid on Sunday. The facts are that he is a bore - with no intellectual invention or agility. He has childlike retentive memory and repetition takes the place of thought… He is not a good companion for a long period, but the conclusion is always the same - that no one else would have chosen me, nor would anyone else have accepted him. We are both at the end of our tether as far as war work is concerned and must make what we can of it.'
Needless to say the 'he' of that entry is Randolph Churchill. It's interesting that Waugh chose to leave Churchill out of the narrative of Unconditional Surrender. Perhaps his presence would have unbalanced the structure, coming late in the story. More likely, Waugh would have calculated that he couldn't get away with it. Randolph would have sued him twice. He would have sued him drunk, and he would have sued him sober.
Here are our war heroes.
The photo has inspired me to take a second look at the Diaries from September 14 to December 11, 1944. And what I hadn't picked up on before was that, as the commanding officer, Randolph had access to alcohol and Evelyn didn't. On Sunday September 24, Waugh declares 'I have no cigars or wine and so neither smoke nor drink.' This helps explain why Waugh mentions Randolph being drunk so often, almost on a daily basis. His disdain is in part that of a frustrated addict.
Freddy Birkenhead arrived (October 13) and took a lot of the social strain off Evelyn, who was able to take a step back and observe his fellow men (while reading that bizarre biography, Quest for Corvo). In the entry for Monday 23 October, Waugh wrote: 'At luncheon Randolph and Freddy became jocular. They do not make new jests or even repeat their own. Of conversation as I love it - a fantasy growing in the telling, apt repartee, argument based on accepted postulates, spontaneous reminiscences and quotations - they know nothing. All their noise and laughter is in the retelling of memorable sayings of their respective fathers or other public figures.'
It's in this entry that Waugh writes memorably 'I remarked how boring it was to be obliged to tell Randolph everything twice - once when he was drunk, once when he was sober.' What really irked Evelyn was that on both occasions of the telling, the teller was stone cold sober. 'Two hours later, in fuddled state, with a glass of raki in his hand, he came to my room to expostulate with me for unkindness.' Four days later, Waugh wrote: 'Further tiffs with Randolph resulting in his making further appeal to me for kinder treatment. It left me unmoved.'
By November 8, Waugh is writing: 'Randolph broke into maudlin reproaches of my failure of friendship and cruelty to him. 'It can't go on. It can't go on." "All right then I'll go back to Bari." "I'm still fond of you. In spite of all your beastliness to me. I am wounded and grieved…" Evelyn noted that he did not feel the smallest stir of compunction.
Couldn't Randolph have guessed that the reason Evelyn was being so cruel to him was that Randolph was drinking continuously and Evelyn was running on empty?
In order to keep Randolph quiet, Freddy and Evelyn each bet him £10 that he couldn't read the Bible right through in a fortnight. 'He has set to work but not as quietly as we had hoped. He sits bouncing about on his chair and saying "I say, did you know this came in the Bible 'bring down my grey hairs with sorrow to the grave'. Or simply "God, isn't God a shit?"'
About a week later, Waugh's proofs for Brideshead Revisited arrive. So that meant Evelyn reading his own magnum opus and Randolph reading the Bible. But Randolph abandoned his task two days later, eleven days into his reading challenge. Another lost bet.
Evelyn's diary entry for Saturday, November 25, is a classic: 'Proof corrections. Randolph soaking all the afternoon and attempting to compose verse. He sat with a glass of raki stinking beside him, grunting, counting out the syllables on his fingers and in the end produced the line: 'Nostalgia for the limbo of the oblivion of your love.' Later he became abusive, and later comatose.'
One becomes aware that 'Randolph drunk' becomes the most commonly juxtaposed words in Waugh's diary between September and December 1944. It must have reminded Waugh of Charles's feelings concerning Sebastian's dipsomania at Brideshead. And then suddenly it was over. The weather changed and the road to Split was opened. Waugh took the opportunity to hit the road.
Three months of living in close conjunction with Randolph Churchill had been a very different experience from turning up to the same party as Randolph in London. Or even from training to be an officer while surrounded by dozens of other men. How can I put it?
No, that's not quite what I mean. Dammit, I am going to have to annotate the image all over again.
FOUR
During the war, both Randolph Churchill and Evelyn Waugh became members at White's and many of their meetings thereafter were spontaneous encounters at that club. But the story of their ongoing relationship is mainly told by letters between the two and from Evelyn's letters to his regular correspondents.
In October 1945, a year after their three months of living together, Evelyn thanked Randolph for a birthday present, a box of cigars, 'a rare and beautiful gift'. Evelyn's enthusiasm would have been genuine as cigars remained almost as rare as bananas for years after the war.
In February of 1946, Evelyn and Randolph dined together at White's and in April of that year, Evelyn wrote to Randolph about his experience of the Nuremberg Trials. He ended the letter by urging Randolph not to quote anything that would suggest Evelyn was ungrateful to his hosts, in fact not to quote him at all.
In 1947, when Waugh was in California being hosted by Hollywood who wanted to make a film of Brideshead, Evelyn bumped into Randolph, who he described as disgustingly drunk in private but good when he had a platform in public. Back in London, Evelyn learned that Randolph was dead broke but refused to pay him £100 for a gold cigar case.
In 1948, Evelyn told Randolph that a copy of The Loved One would shortly be sent to him. If Randolph was thinking of sending him a reciprocal gift then a pair of linen trousers (short) with a waist circumference of 39 would be much appreciated. Later that year, Evelyn wrote to June Osborne who Randolph was about to marry. Apparently, Randolph had requested that some letter of encouragement be written. In it, Evelyn stated 'I have always felt that he had a unique natural capacity for happiness which, one way and another, has never yet been fully developed. I am sure you will be able to do this for him.' 
Randolph Frederick Edward Spencer Churchill by Cecil Beaton, 1948. Reproduced with the forbearance, I hope, of the copyright holder.
After this 'poor Randolph' became a regular expression used in letters to Waugh's platonic lady friends. To Lady Mary Lygon in November 1949: 'Poor R. Churchill cannot survive the year at liberty. The gates of Bedlam gape for him.'
To Nancy Mitford in April 1951: 'Poor Randolph is in hospital again with his little unhealed wound. No sign of June at the bedside. His legal and financial difficulties are huge. I must say I lead an awfully dull life here but when I see the alternative I am consoled.'
To Nancy again in October of the same year: 'Poor Randolph. It was a very difficult seat and he didn't think he could get in. At the count he was so nervous he left the room and returned just as they were finishing.He asked the town clerk who presided: "How am I doing?" 'Thirty thousand something and something." "Isn't that rather good?" "Oh yes, you're quite safe." Dazed with joy he rushed out and told his committee. All embraced. Two minutes later the town clerk padded out. "Oh Mr Churchill I made such a silly mistake. I gave you Mr Foot's figures."He then had to be protected from the mob by 40 policemen when he went to his train home. Nothing he has ever done deserves such punishment.'
Their post-War friendship came to a culmination in July 1953. A correspondence commenced with Evelyn telling Randolph what he thought of the book he had just authored and sent to Piers Court called Fifteen Famous English Homes. Waugh wrote disparagingly:
'Dear Randolph, I do not think you have chosen a subject well suited to your genius. You have no appreciation of architectural beauty or of the paintings and decorations and treasures that enhance it. I do not know what reader you seek to interest. Certainly not the specialist or the amateur. Forgive my bluntness. This is not your proper work. You need hot, whisky-laden, contemporary breath, the telephone, the latest gossip, the tang of the new world, to bring out what is lively in you. History and Culture are for gentler creatures.'
Randolph soaked up the punishment, as he had in Croatia, and invited Evelyn to a dinner party, I think at Oving House, near Aylesbury, where he was living for the time being with June. But Evelyn had to turn down the invitation because Duff Cooper, husband of Diana Cooper, was to be a guest. 'Cooper I have never tolerated except for his charming wife. In later years he has given up any pretence of liking me.'
This was a daft thing to write in a letter to Randolph, who soon showed it to Duff Cooper, causing deep resentment. Cooper wrote to Waugh, expressing his shock and disappointment, feeling that Evelyn and he had got to like each other over the years. And Diana Cooper also wrote to Waugh in the following terms: 'Really Bo. What is this I hear? That you chucked Randy because Duff was of the company? It's hard to believe - if you took exception to our rudeness, why did you stay on my return from the baby's birth for another 4 or 5 days and nights, apparently on the best of terms with both of us? "I'm afraid I'm on Duff's nerves and yours" you said to me but you believed my emphatic denials. All was happy again and now crash! Can't meet Norwich - too rude - and again, these stories of attempted poisoning. Please do write and say it's rot exaggerated. You must not lose friends so deliberately - you'll find it hard to lose me - you've tried, but it's possible to succeed, though I shall be miserable.'
Evelyn managed to steady the ship of friendship with Diana. And Duff bent over backwards to accept Evelyn's apologies. The latter's letter finishes: 'You say it would now be absurd to offer your friendship. If that is all that stands in the way of the offer I shall consider it as offered and can answer that it is accepted. I have never been afraid of absurdity as no doubt this correspondence has proved.'
In August, Evelyn wrote to Ann Fleming: 'I met R.S. Churchill and was so full of kind feeling and self-reproach for ever being such an ass to write to him indiscreetly, that I greeted him with my old affection. He replied with hectoring complaints of my chucking his party. This was too much for my rare mood of charity. Every year, I suppose, for countless years, I have resolved to avoid him. I always made it up, so I suppose I shall do so again. At the moment I don't feel like it.'
FIVE
Let's quickly get us to 1962.
In 1954, Randolph and June did call in at Piers Court, but only long enough to whisk Evelyn and Laura off to Bath where the foursome saw an exquisite palace that the Churchills were thinking of buying.
In 1955, Diana Cooper read a letter from June describing a gruesome dinner party at Winston Churchill's. A drunk Randolph called one of the other guests a shit, which enraged his father. Father and son argued furiously and Randolph declared his intention to leave the house immediately. At 1 a.m, Winston padded down a corridor to make it up with his troubled son.
In 1956, Evelyn was sitting in White's when Randolph imposed his company on him. Evelyn then went to Ann Fleming's and was told black stories about Randolph who was gaining a terrible reputation.
Then in January 1957, in a letter to Ann Fleming, Evelyn wrote: 'I overheard Randolph saying huskily: "All I try to do is bring a little happiness into the lives of others."'
After that more of the same. Actually, after that not much at all about Randolph until 1962 when there was an exchange of several letters, mostly concerning Randolph's copies of Evelyn's books. In the first letter, dated August 26, 1962, Randolph told Evelyn that he was reorganising his library and that in doing so he discovered that there was a 'dreadful gap' in his 'handsomely red-morocco-bound set of your books'. He added that all of them were first editions and that nearly all of them were presented by Evelyn to Randolph with an 'agreeable or offensive dedication'. 'The gap is Scoop, a strange one for a journalist like myself. Have you a first edition handy? If so would you sign it and give it to me? Alternatively could you tell me where I might be able to get hold of one?'
I should say that what Randolph was talking about with this moroccan-bound thing was that the first editions published by Chapman and Hall would have been taken out of their hardboard covers and bound in new covers of red leather. That seems to me - with my 2025 head on - a horrendous process, and rather a solipsistic one, the emphasis being on the reader's personal library rather than the publisher's list. But one has to forgive Randolph, this sort of thing was quite common back then, at least amongst the moneyed, bookplated and libraried upper-middle class.
Here is my first edition of Scoop. 
I am sending it to Randolph Churchill through time and space. When it arrives in Suffolk in 1962 I expect its snakeskin boards to be professionally removed and replaced with something much tamer.
Evelyn wrote back straight away and with relish. He would be glad to give Randolph a first edition of Scoop since at the time of writing (1937) Evelyn was proud to call Randolph his friend, but he had no spare copy. Evelyn suggested a couple of places in London where the book might be acquired and said that if Randolph managed to source a copy its author would indeed inscribe it.
Waugh then added that the ghost who wrote in Randolph's name for the Evening Standard should watch his words. He meant that the image of people and newspapers 'entangled' in light was not a happy one. The ghost business was a tease, whereby Evelyn was suggesting that Randolph used secretaries to write his books and articles. (The Wikipedia entry for Randolph Churchill lists seven men who worked for him at one time or another as 'researchers'.)
One wonders how Randolph reacted to such a letter. I mean there is Randolph, full of respect, asking Evelyn to sign first editions of his splendid, literary works. And there is Evelyn claiming that Randolph doesn't even write his own stuff and that the people who were writing it for him weren't up to the task!
Randolph Churchill, 1958. ©Yousuf Karsh/Camera Press
Let me quote Randolph's reply. 'Thank-you for your letter. I marvel, in view of the impressive size of your letter-heading, that you can get so much acerbity into a single page. I shall take your advice about Scoop and am grateful to learn that when I have procured a copy you will do me the kindness of inscribing it. I found also that I have not your Rossetti.
Over to Evelyn in his study. 
Mark Gerson, Evelyn Waugh, 1959. Reproduced with the forbearance, I hope, of the copyright holder.
This time (September 3, 1962) it's just a postcard addressed to Randolph Churchill Esq., MBE, Stour, East Bergholt, Suffolk. Stour being the house Randolph had been living in since 1955. A house never visited by Evelyn Waugh.
'Rossetti was written before I came under your literary influence and is of no interest.'
Actually, the first edition of Rossetti is of special interest because it retains its printed dedication to Evelyn Gardner. He-Evelyn let She-Evelyn disappear into the ether just as easily as Randolph shrugged off Pamela, his own first wife. Well, he didn't, but let's move swiftly on.
On the 18th of September, Evelyn wrote again, saying he'd been to London and had been informed by the trade that Randolph had been speculating in the book market and that his reason for wanting association copies was commercial not sentimental. In which case, Randolph must enclose stamps for the return of volumes which were being sent soliciting autographs.
Next day, Randolph wrote back saying that Evelyn had been misinformed. It was true that he was looking to buy some of his father's signed works for purposes of resale at a future date. However, except in an hour of direst penury, he could not envisage allowing Evelyn's books to leave his library. He went on: 'Nonetheless I was becoming conscious that I was putting some burden on you in the matter of posting and even more so in that of repacking. Hence yesterday's stamped, addressed label and the despatch box. If you will let me know how much you had previously disbursed on my behalf on postage, paper, cardboard and string I will send you a cheque forthwith. I would not wish you to be out of pocket even for 'sentimental' reasons.'
But Evelyn was not happy with the pile of books he had been asked to sign and post back to Randolph. As he put it: 'Your bibliomaniac ghost has overreached itself. You were given Brideshead Revisited and The Ordeal of Gilbert Pinfold in the hand-made paper editions.' And he added that he had a letter of July 21, 1957 acknowledging receipt of the Pinfold.
Over to Randolph: 'I understand your tedium in signing the books that I send to you; I don't understand your annoyance; but I shall be seeking a complete set of your first editions as well as a your limited editions. If you have a spare Brideshead on the hand-made paper I would gladly buy it from you or accept it as a present. Alternatively I will advertise for it.
'It would be silly to have a nearly complete set of your first editions and limited editions, most of them dedicated and all of them signed by you, without completing it. My grandchildren may have to dispose of them in their old age and we must all think about this.'
This correspondence is continued, but not until five months have passed. On March 26, 1963, Randolph wrote again to Evelyn: 'By the way, I have three or four more of your first editions (including a curious Thirty-Four Decorative Designs by Francis Crease with preface by Evelyn St.J. Waugh - "very rare") which I would like you to sign. If I were to send them to you with the return postage enclosed would you be so good as to do what I ask?'
Now this pricked Evelyn's interest. 'I am much interested that a copy of Francis Crease's Designs should have come into your hands. I possess no copy and have long sought one. Perhaps you would surrender yours to me for the price you paid? I will sign your first editions if your Ghost will enclose not only stamps but string, packing and addressed label.'
Mark Gerson, Evelyn Waugh, 1959. Reproduced with the forbearance, I hope, of the copyright holder.
Soon Evelyn was writing again, thanking Randolph for the book. 'No gift could have given me greater delight than your discovery of Francis Crease's Designs. Will you not let me repay you for the purchase? If you insist on being munificent, I can only redouble my thanks. The book comes most opportunely as am at the moment writing of Crease in my autobiography.' 
Waugh's letter continued: 'A handsome leather case has arrived with copies of books of mine for inscription. I am gratified that you should want a complete set for your own library. It is not clear why you require duplicates, unless you are going into trade. Your generosity in the matter of Crease's Designs disarms me, but I must point out that I gave you a copy of Men At Arms on publication. What happened to that? And why two more copies? Do you make frequent bonfires of fiction?'
I have to say that the first edition of Men At Arms is no great shakes. After the war, Chapman and Hall abandoned the red snakeskin for plain blue boards. The dust-jacket in this instance was deadly boring. And my own copy, unprotected by a dust-jacket that may have been discarded decades before the book came my way, has lost the majority of its gold lettering on the spine. So by all means let this book be disbound and rebound in 100 percent red Morocco.
Below is a photograph of Randolph Churchill at home at Stour. I like to think it shows him shortly after writing again to Evelyn explaining the matter of the duplicate Men At Arms. If Evelyn had seen this picture I suspect he would have been sending Randolph a present of a new pair of linen pants (long) with waist circumference of 39 inches. A waist size utterly normal for men - indeed spoonbills, I mean warriors - of their generation.
Ida Kar, 1950s, National Portrait Gallery. Reproduced with the forbearance, I hope, of the copyright holder.
'Don't be silly. A present is a present is a present. I am glad to hear that it is timely. The reason that I want duplicates of your books is that I plan to leave the red Morocco set to Winston [son] and the other to Arabella [daughter]. I am not "going into trade". As to "two" more copies it is convenient to have spares which can be swopped for missing items. We make no bonfires. I am not a "dealer" but I am bound to say that I think your first editions are ludicrously under-priced and are a good investment for our children.'
Wow. So after all that, Randolph admitted that he was in part getting Waugh's signature on his books so that he could indeed sell a few of them at a profit. I suppose that was just Randolph doing what he'd always done. Lying and dissembling - with immense charm - to get what he wanted. 
Ida Kar, 1950s, National Portrait Gallery. Reproduced with the forbearance, I hope, of the copyright holder.
Waugh concluded the correspondence as follows: 'I should perpetrate a fraud if I inscribed to you personally books intended for the market. I have therefore signed duplicates on the title page as I do for charitable bazaars.'
Have you noticed, dear reader, that Evelyn and Randolph were still fighting as they had done since they first met. A competitive friendship, shall we say. Or were they no longer friends? That issue was about to surface.
SIX
Randolph's next letter arrived more than a year later, and was typed as follows:
The interesting correction is point ix. For on page 153 of A Little Learning, after a long quote from Evelyn's preface to the Francis Crease volume, the text reads: 'Through the kindness of a former friend a copy of this volume, which I had not seen for more than thirty years, recently came into my hands and I read those words and the many more of the same kind without much shame.'
Just to be clear, Randolph's point ix reads: '"Through the kindness of a former friend…" Ghosts now say I have falsely informed them that we were recently reconciled. I have explained to Ghosts that at the time of this modest gift I was a "former friend" and that our reconciliation only came later. I trust I am right in this explanation.'
Waugh responded to ix with the words: 'Yes. Written before reconciliation. To be corrected.'
The reconciliation hadn't come through the receipt of the Francis Crease volume in September 1963. It had come in March 1964, when Randolph had gone into hospital for an operation. Surgeons removed a lung, complete with tumour, which on examination was announced to be non-malignant. Evelyn's comment to a fellow member of White's was that it was a typical triumph of modern science to find the only part of Randolph that was not malignant and remove it. This story was repeated to Randolph who found it funny. When Waugh saw Randolph in White's looking feeble and breathless he was prompted to make up their estrangement of some twelve years.
I suppose Randolph must have looked something like he did below, a year later, at age 53 would you believe, and after visiting his dying father:
Reproduced with the forbearance, I hope, of the copyright holder.
As Evelyn said in a letter to Diana Cooper of April 1964: 'I have become reconciled with Randolph. He looked so pathetically thin and feeble and when he tried to shout a whisper came. So 12 years enmity are expunged.'
Evelyn Waugh knew Randolph Churchill from 1930 to 1966. A total of 36 years. The ratio of friendship to enmity, approximately 2:1. A lot more favourable than the love/hate balance between Evelyn and Cecil Beaton, Evelyn and C.R.M.F. Cruttwell, Evelyn and Cyril Connolly, or Evelyn and Peter Quennell. So Randolph should think himself let off lightly.
Oh, I nearly forgot. After being reconciled with Randolph, and since Evelyn Waugh was being made a Companion of Literature as Winston Churchill still was, Randolph offered Evelyn one of Winston's books. Evelyn left the choice of which book to Randolph, but said he would read it with respect and close attention.
Randolph also told Evelyn he was writing a 'major article' for the Sunday Times, on tulip trees, and looked to Evelyn for help. Waugh wrote that an old man who worked about the grounds of Combe Florey had told Evelyn that he had eight tulip trees - some decrepit, some mere saplings. 'I beg you not to let Ghost reveal this. The wood is in great demand for veneers and timber poaching is becoming a grave danger. All my neighbours have tulip trees. I think if Ghost flits from Tewkesbury to Exeter he will find one every five miles. Ghost will only cause trouble to tree-lovers if he gives publicity to these modest adornments. Timber-merchants are predatory vandals.'
On being further sounded out about his tulip trees by an editor, Evelyn wrote to Randolph urging him to put him off. And when Randolph confirmed that he'd done so, Evelyn wrote that he felt he could now remove the false beard he had been wearing since receiving the editor's alarming letter.
Given the photo sessions of Mark Gerson with Evelyn of October 1963, I'm thinking along these lines:
Then on June 19, 1964, Evelyn wrote: 'For Ghost's (not Snowdon's) information my tulip trees are now in full flower.'
Evelyn then turned to the book he had received from Randolph: 'I am enjoying Marlborough. The author has no specifically literary talent but a gift of lucid self-expression in words - lost when least excited.' Much the same could have been said of Randolph. Or, indeed, some might say (but not me), of Evelyn.
Evelyn summed up the tulip tree scare in a paragraph of a letter written to Ann Fleming on June 18, 1964: 'The dangers of reconciliation with Randolph! I heard indirectly that he wanted to send Lord Snowdon here to photograph a very shabby tulip tree. I have succeeded in convincing him that they are as common as laburnums in the West Country. The poor booby thinks them a great rarity.'
My God, the competitive nature of their relationship. Did the combat ever end? Yes, it ended. There was neither a winner nor a loser.
Just friendly ghosts that pass in the night.
