Mad World: Evelyn Waugh and the Secrets of Brideshead (TEXT ONLY) by Paula Byrne

Author:Paula Byrne [Byrne, Paula]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
ISBN: 9780007455478
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2012-11-21T16:00:00+00:00

‘Brandolin’ was the Palazzo Brandolini on the Grand Canal in Venice, where Richard Wagner had once stayed. It was there that Evelyn and Maimie went after saying goodbye to Boom. That summer of 1932, Venice was full of society people, among whom the most glamorous was Diana Cooper. Another Nordic blonde like Diana Mitford, she was witty, elegant, charming and unconventional. Brought up as the daughter of the Duke of Rutland (though almost certainly the result of the duchess’s liaison with a dashing writer called Harry Cust), she was regarded by many as the most beautiful woman in England. An actress as well as a society fixture, she married the diplomat Duff Cooper and entranced every man who met her. Evelyn too fell under her spell. His cup filled to overflowing as he found himself in the company of Diana as well as Maimie.

English society in Venice was orchestrated by an ambitious American called Laura Corrigan, a professional hostess who offered high-class accommodation and entertainment for wealthy visitors. The Guinnesses, Cecil Beaton, Lady Cunard, Randolph Churchill and many others from the ‘smart set’ were all to be seen at candlelit dinner parties in crumbling palazzi, the tables adorned with heavily scented tuberoses. By day the guests were ferried to the Lido on Mrs Corrigan’s outsize motor-launch. Liveried footmen arranged backgammon boards on the beach, poured drinks and served elaborate luncheons. It was a time of late nights and sleeping in till noon. At cocktail hour, people would gather at Harry’s Bar to drink Bellinis and plan the rest of the evening.

Evelyn wrote up his experience of this trip in a ‘letter’ entitled ‘Venetian Adventures’ for Harper’s Bazaar. The argument of the piece was that Venice was a superior destination to the French Riviera. He defended the delicious scampi that was unfairly given a bad name by the English: ‘It is pure legend that they are caught in the canals. I spent a night last week trawling in the Adriatic with one of the boats of the Chioggia fishing fleet, and watched netfuls of scampi being drawn in from the deep water for the Venice markets. We cooked them on a charcoal brazier and ate them in their shells at dawn.’ But he then characteristically deflates his own lyricism, adding ‘with cups of hideous coffee compounded, it seemed, of chicory, garlic and earth’.

Evelyn, Maimie and a group of others visited the monastery island, San Lazzaro, once a leper colony but now home to Armenian monks. The island was made famous by Lord Byron, who would row out there to learn the language and help the monks to compose an English-Armenian dictionary. Evelyn enjoyed talking to the brothers in Latin. One of them complained about ‘Mulieres stridentes et vestitae immodestissime’ (‘noisy and immodestly dressed wives’). Evelyn gave a donation and tried to explain that there were six English Members of Parliament in the party (‘Hic sunt sex senatores Britannici’).

He painted a rosy picture of Venice, which he was to draw upon many years later when he wrote Brideshead.

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