The Loved One by Evelyn Waugh
"The Loved One" by Evelyn Waugh is a satirical novel that explores the absurdities of the funeral industry and cultural contrasts between British expatriates and American society in post-war California. The story follows Dennis Barlow, an unsuccessful English screenwriter who navigates the eccentricities of Los Angeles after moving from England. He becomes entangled in a romantic relationship with Aimee Thanatogenos, an assistant at Whispering Glades, a cemetery designed to beautify death. Dennis's attempts at poetry and his lack of direction lead to both comedic and tragic situations, including the suicide of his roommate and Aimee’s eventual demise through a misguided act of desperation.
Waugh's characters, while often portrayed as zany, embody a sense of dignity in their misguided pursuits. The novel critiques the frivolity of both the British expatriates and American culture, depicting them as out of touch with deeper values. Furthermore, Waugh’s exploration of the themes of mortality and the commercialization of death reflects a moral commentary on societal values. Ultimately, "The Loved One" is recognized for its blend of dark humor and poignant observations, offering insight into the human condition against a backdrop of cultural absurdity.
The Loved One by Evelyn Waugh
First published: 1948
Type of work: Satire
Time of work: The late 1940’s
Locale: Hollywood and Los Angeles, California
Principal Characters:
Dennis Barlow , an English dilettante who has traveled to Southern CaliforniaAimee Thanatogenos , his girlfriend, assistant to Mr. Joyboy at Whispering Glades, a cemetery in the Hollywood HillsMr. Joyboy , the chief cosmetician and embalmer at Whispering GladesSir Ambrose Abercrombie , the leader of the English expatriate colony in HollywoodSir Francis Hinsley , a screenwriter at Megalopolitan StudiosMr. Schultz , the owner of The Happier Hunting Ground, a pet cemetery in Southern California“Guru Brahmin” , actually three contributors to an advice-to-the-lovelorn column for a newspaper, the chief correspondent being Mr. SlumpDr. Wilbur Kenworthy (the Dreamer) , the founder of Whispering Glades
The Novel
Dennis Barlow, having recently emigrated from England, hoping to establish his fortune as a screenwriter in Hollywood, arrives in Los Angeles, a city that at first seems to resemble the heart of Africa rather than a civilized Western community. At the bungalow of Sir Ambrose Abercrombie, the most dignified of English expatriates in Southern California, he learns the rules of protocol appropriate for travelers from abroad, especially the need to maintain British decorum while in Hollywood, one of the “barbarous regions of the world.” Dennis, who has pretentions to being a poet, lacks the basic skills as a writer to work for Megalopolitan Studios. The closest he can come to Megalo is to share lodgings with Sir Francis Hinsley, a shabby screenwriter, who, after having been unceremoniously fired, commits suicide by hanging himself. At Sir Francis’ funeral, Dennis’ tasteless elegy for his roommate scandalizes the English colony. They had already dismissed the young man from their society because of his employment at The Happier Hunting Ground, a glorified pet cemetery operated by Mr. Schultz.
Dennis has enjoyed one small triumph, however, to compensate for his failures. He has won the heart of Aimee Thanatogenos, assistant to the chief cosmetician at Whispering Glades. This cemetery, nestled in the Hollywood Hills, a resting place for “Loved Ones” such as Sir Francis, was established by “The Dreamer,” Dr. Wilbur Kenworthy, as a refuge where death might be transfigured to seem beautiful and where funeral objects might have aesthetic or sentimental value for the “Waiting Ones” (those not yet dead). Aimee is attracted to Dennis because she mistakenly believes that he is a real poet, rather than a plagiarizer of love poetry from literary anthologies. Yet there is an obstacle to their love: Aimee has also promised her love to Mr. Joyboy, her boss at Whispering Glades.
Unable to decide between the two suitors, Aimee, in desperation, writes for counsel to the Guru Brahmin, who dispenses wisdom in an advice-to-the-lovelorn column in the local newspaper. In fact, the Guru is not a single savant but a trio of hacks, consisting of the actual writer of the column (once titled “Aunt Lydia’s Grab-Bag”), his secretary, and a morose alcoholic named Mr. Slump, who responds to the personal correspondence addressed to the Guru. Mr. Slump, disgusted by Aimee’s inane questions, finally urges her to solve her problem by taking a leap from a high building. Instead, she returns to Whispering Glades, injects herself with embalming fluid, and dies. The presence of her corpse is an embarrassment for Mr. Joyboy, who at first cannot guess how to get rid of it. Dennis, however, ever the gallant, disposes of Aimee at The Happier Hunting Ground crematorium. On the anniversary of her death, Mr. Joyboy will receive this memorial notice: “Your little Aimee is wagging her tail in heaven tonight, thinking of you.”
The Characters
Evelyn Waugh’s characters may seem a collection of zanies to the reader but not to themselves, at least not within the context of the story. Waugh makes his characters all the more comic because they act their ridiculous roles with dignity, at times with high moral sentiment. They are amusing (or to some readers, repulsive) precisely because they do not imagine themselves as objects of amusement (or of revulsion).
Like most of Waugh’s feckless heroes in other novels (Paul Pennyfeather, Tony Last, Gilbert Pinfold, Basil Seal), Dennis Barlow, the protagonist, is an innocent thrust into a world he cannot fully comprehend. A failure at nearly everything—poetry, screenwriting, his love life—he is, nevertheless, a sympathetic victim because he lacks malice. His romantic counterpart, Aimee Thanatogenos (her name, a grotesque mixture of words derived from French and Greek, may be roughly translated into English as “beloved of the race of death”), is a simpleton even more innocent, if that is possible, than Dennis. Waugh imagines her as a typical American woman: feeble in intellect, indecisive, sentimental, perpetually immature.
None of the other characters, whose activities revolve around those of the star-crossed lovers, are evil; they are, simply, bores, both the snobs and the vulgarians. Among the snobs are the Englishmen, especially Sir Ambrose Abercrombie (who may have been modeled, according to Waugh’s biographer Christopher Sykes, upon the dignified actor Sir C. Aubrey Smith) and Sir Francis Hinsley. In this group also is Mr. Joyboy, a Californian whose claim to be an artist rests mainly on his cosmetic ability to transform hideous corpses into smiling replicas of human beings. Mr. Joyboy complements Aimee, because he is similarly immature, a perpetual child under the domination of his mother.
Other characters are, in different degrees, crassly materialistic (Mr. Schultz and the tycoons at Megalo) or dissipated (Mr. Slump) or pretentious (Dr. Wilbur Kenworthy). Stripped of their comic masks, these vulgarians represent forces that hasten the decline of Western culture.
Critical Context
Waugh’s novel, subtitled “An Anglo-American Tragedy,” may not appear tragic to most readers. Nevertheless, Waugh wrote the book in a despondent rather than humorous frame of mind. For his diary entry of October 28, 1947, he wrote:
My 44th birthday I am a very much older man than this time last year, physically infirm & lethargic. Mentally I have reached a stage of non-attachment which if combined with a high state of prayer—as it is not—would be edifying.... I have vast reasons for gratitude but am seldom conscious of them.
One of the reasons for gratitude, he goes on to note, is that he has written in the past year two good stories, Scott-King’s Modern Europe (1947) and The Loved One, and has “decided to remain in England.”
Most readers, fortunately, will not detect Waugh’s gloomy tone when they read the novel. Instead, The Loved One will strike them as a spirited romp of the macabre, with delicious portraits that remain long in the memory. In spite of these amusing portraits, some critics have judged the book as a whole a work of “black comedy.” The year of its publication places The Loved One very early in the absurdist movement that became popular, especially in the theater, during the 1950’s. Yet Waugh’s novel is not true black comedy, because the writer’s attitude is not absurdist. Waugh does not believe that the universe lacks a moral purpose or direction, that human inactions are meaningless or are motivated simply by chance or accident. Instead, Waugh places an ideal standard of Christian morality against which his characters measure themselves, only to fall ridiculously short. Dennis Barlow’s actions are not absurd but foolish. He is not doomed to live a meaningless life because of the ineluctable forces of cosmic absurdity; rather, he chooses to be indolent, to be mean and grubby.
From the point of view of Christian absolutism, the humor of the novel springs not from exaggeration but realism. For example, Dennis’ elegy on the death of Sir Francis Hinsley is shocking and amusing because his description is so accurate:
They told me, Francis Hinsley, they told me you were hung
In death, Hinsley in fact looked that way, although Dennis’ phrasing is plagiarized from the epitaph on the Spartan dead, a quotation found in many anthologies. So realistic is the general theme of The Loved One—that the funeral industry of Southern California makes a mockery of reverence for the dead—that Jessica Mitford agreed with Waugh’s thesis in her sociocultural study, The American Way of Death (1963). The evidence she derives from scholarly research does not markedly differ from the speculations of Waugh’s novel, derived from religious conviction, fancy, and bile.
Bibliography
Bradbury, Malcolm. Evelyn Waugh, 1964.
Cook, William J., Jr. Masks, Modes, and Morals: The Art of Evelyn Waugh, 1971.
Stopp, Frederick J. Evelyn Waugh: Portrait of an Artist, 1958.
Sykes, Christopher. Evelyn Waugh: A Biography, 1975.