AUBERON WAUGH -- A MEMOIR.(Obituary)

IT IS A MEASURE of the esteem in which his colleagues held him that within two days of Auberon Waughs death of heart failure on 16th January of this new century, the Times, Daily Telegraph, Guardian, New York Times, Australian, Sydney Morning Herald and numerous other broadsheets throughout the English-speaking world published obituaries or lengthy news stories, in generally laudatory terms, regretting his passing. It is understandable that this is so. Auberon Waugh was a fearless, genuinely eccentric, vastly entertaining, but personally kindly person with great literary talent who had the misfortune to be born the son of the best, if melancholic and even more eccentric, English stylist of the twentieth century. It was this misfortune which diverted Auberon Waugh from fiction to journalism, a calling which he regarded in modern times as more intellectually rewarding and useful than that of novelist. He was, in short, the ultimate journalist's journalist.

Everyone knows that major newspapers hold obituaries written well in advance of the deaths of notable people. But the flood of grieving outpourings released so soon after Auberon Waugh died have about them a respect and spontaneous sincerity going beyond the polished and packaged product that awaits the passing of most prominent people. He was a link, indeed one of the last links, with the self-indulgent, politically incorrect, exciting but doomed world of evening-suited aristocrats, society authors and demimondaines that his father had inhabited. Except when he was declaring a fatwa over some actual or imagined ill that a rival had done him, he was a generous and loyal supporter of the profession of columnists and journalists. He was an expert on wine and generous with it. He regarded the legal profession, both those who prosecuted libel actions against writers and publishers, and those who counselled the latter to settle, with equal contempt.

My good fortune was to be introduced to the novels of Evelyn Waugh by a cousin whose father was the manager of an ecclesiastical furniture and vestments shop in Brisbane, which also stocked books for sale to parochial Catholic schools, and the selected works of some reliable Catholic authors of whom by then Waugh was considered to be one. I quickly exhausted the author's carefully measured output of fiction and looked to find works in a similar vein. I read his brother's, Alec Waugh's books but they were not even a pale shadow of Evelyn's art.

In time I came upon the fiction of the son, Auberon Waugh, regrettably brief in volume and consisting of only five novels: The Foxglove Saga, Path of Dalliance, Who are the Violets Now?, Consider the Lilies, and A Bed of Flowers, all written in a period of twelve years. Although at times Auberon used the sabre when his father would have used the rapier, the capacity to entertain and the skill of irony, a more subtle skill than satire, showed his lineage and that all the inherited, as well as some original skills were present. It took me some time to accept that by 1973 he had decreed that his career as a novelist was over.

I cannot now recall how I began a correspondence with Auberon Waugh. But we did exchange letters, his, courteous and patient, despite the pressure to produce words for a living that he laboured under daily. I very much looked forward to meeting him when he came to Australia to promote one of his anthologies of journalism. But it was not to be. I had come down to Sydney to attend a literary lunch at which he and Mr Robert Ellis were the speakers. The lunch went on for too long and I was obliged to return to do some urgent work before we could meet. It was not until later that year, in London, that we first met.

His demeanour as a speaker at the luncheon had to some extent prepared me. In person he was modest, considerate and engaging, as far removed from the curmudgeonly, aggressive, relentless columnist who made his targets' lives such a misery.

My wife and I took him to dinner at Mon Plaisir, a small French restaurant in Soho. When we were seated he looked around as if scenting the air, and said, "This is very sixties. I haven't been here for ages." I told him I had dined at the restaurant the first time I had visited the United Kingdom, which was indeed in that decade. Naturally, I asked him to choose the wine. He became concerned, deploring what he said to be the outrageous mark-up imposed by restaurateurs in England. In the end, out of consideration for my pocket, he chose the most modestly priced claret on the card. I was sure that he selected his food with the same circumspection.