Unholy Waugh
Sir: In my view Beverley Nichols (October 27) overstates his case with regard to Evelyn Waugh. Waugh may not have been a gentleman, but to be born the son of an affluent publisher and go to Lancing and Hertford College Oxford hardly makes him grounded in the dead-centre middle class. As well say that Chatterton never rose above his origins. As for his infernal cheek and outrageous impertinence, one need look no further than his friend Mr Randolph Churchill, undeniably of aristocratic descent, for evidence that such conduct and such manners are by no means confined to those of plebeian extraction. The late Julian Osgood Field, in his highly entertaining Uncensored Recollections (1924, p206) had
• a story about Macduff, Duke of Fife, for some unaccountable reason a great favourite with Queen Victoria who, to his inferiors, "rivalled even Lord Randolph Churchill in his coarseness." It was my misfortune once to be in the room when a tailor came to try on some clothes, and the way he spoke to that unfortunate man — telling him he smelt like a polecat — " Don't put your d--d filthy paws so near my face," etc. — was pitiful." In another of his books he has a story about Lord Randolph Churchill, Sir Winston's father, behaving similarly to a barber in Jermyn Street, for, as he says, "a very decided brusquerie of manner is an inseparable accident of the ducal house of Churchill." After all, even Louis XIV squirted wine from his mouth onto a lady's bosom.
George Chowdharay-Best 174 Clay Hill Road, Basildon, Essex tin Beverley Nichols'S review last week Father D'Arcy should, of course, have been described as "the eminent Jesuit priest who received Waugh into the Catholic Church." — Editor, The Spectator-1
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