Thinking about the Waughs
There are times when the soul clamors for something bawdy. Something to take the edge off. More so during the darker winter months. For this reason, I was very pleased to discover my trove of books written by and about Evelyn Waugh. Outrageous is too mild a word to describe his temperment. To get a better sense of him, consider this quote from an article written by his son Auberon Waugh
My fate was to be left in a boarding school on January 28, 1946, two months after my sixth birthday.
During my first term there, when I was still very nervous, (my father) played one of his best practical jokes on me.
He told me he proposed to change our family name and that, when he had done so, the headmaster would summon the school together and say: “Boys, the person you have hitherto called Waugh will in future be called Stinkbottom.”
I understood perfectly well that he was joking, but one never knew how far he would be prepared to go with his jokes.
Every morning at school assembly, I felt a slight tightening of the chest as the headmaster came forward to make his daily announcements.
I read this the first time several years ago, but there is something so odd about the joke and the telling of it that I laugh whenever I think of it, once even at a rather formal dinner where an elderly lady was sure that I had gone slightly bonkers. Come to think of it, perhaps she was right.