Evelyn Waugh Autograph Letter Signed.

WAUGH, Evelyn.

$1,600.00

Item Number: 149224

Autograph letter signed by Evelyn Waugh. Quarto, one page on Hotel Ritz, Mexico letterhead, the letter reads, “Sept 14th Dear Mr. Jones, Very many thanks for your letter which has just reached me here. I am so glad you found Scoop funny… Letters like yours are very encouraging. I am out here trying to study Mexican conditions, but finding it very hard to concentrate while things in Europe look so grave. Perhaps my next book will have to be about life in the army. Yours sincerely Evelyn Waugh.” The recipient, Richard Arnold-Jones, was a young man who had recently been awarded the 1938 Duke of Devonshire Prize Competition (offered by the British Empire League). Arnold-Jones went on to become a prominent Anglo-Catholic, poet, teacher and co- founder of the Redrice School. Waugh’s readers would have to wait until 1952 for the first of his three books ‘about life in the army’, but it is interesting to note the germ of an idea was there before the war started and before he had joined up. On his conversion to Catholicism, Waugh had accepted that he would be unable to remarry while Evelyn Gardner was alive. He wanted a wife and children, however, and in October 1933, he began proceedings for the annulment. A delay in the submission of the papers to Rome meant that the annulment was not granted until July 4th 1936. In the meantime, following their initial encounter in Portofino, Waugh had fallen in love with Laura Herbert. He proposed marriage, by letter, in the spring of 1936. There were initial misgivings from the Herberts, an aristocratic Catholic family; as a further complication, Laura Herbert was a cousin of Evelyn Gardner. Despite some family hostility the marriage took place on 17 April 1937 in London. Scoop was published in May 1938 to wide critical acclaim. In August 1938 Waugh, with Laura, made a three-month trip to Mexico after which he wrote Robbery Under Law, based on his experiences there. In the book he spelled out clearly his conservative credo; he later described the book as dealing “little with travel and much with political questions.” In very good condition.