De Britse schrijver Evelyn Waugh werd geboren in Londen op 28 oktober 1903. Zie ook alle tags voor Evelyn Waugh op dit blog.
Uit: Brideshead Revisited
“I threw open my windows and from the quad outside came the not uncommon sounds of bibulous laughter and unsteady steps. A voice said: “Hold up”; another, “Come on”; another, “Plenty of time . . . House . . . till Tom stops ringing”; and another, clearer than the rest, “D’you know I feel most unaccountably unwell. I must leave you a minute,” and there appeared at my window the face I knew to be Sebastian’s — but not as I had formerly seen it, alive and alight with gaiety; he looked at me for a moment with unseeing eyes and then, leaning forward well into the room, he was sick.
It was not unusual for dinner parties to end in that way; there was in fact a recognized tariff on such occasions for the comfort of the scout; we were all learning, by trial and error, to carry our wine. There was also a kind of insane and endearing orderliness about Sebastian’s choice, in his extremity, of an open window. But, when all is said, it remained an unpropitious meeting.
Anthony Andrews als Sebastian in de tv-serie Brideshead Revisited uit 1981
His friends bore him to the gate and, in a few minutes, his host, an amiable Etonian of my year, returned to apologize. He, too, was tipsy and his explanations were repetitive and, towards the end, tearful. “The wines were too various,” he said; “it was neither the quality nor the quantity that was at fault. It was the mixture. Grasp that and you have the root of the matter. To understand all is to forgive all.”
“Yes,” I said, but it was with a sense of grievance that I faced Lunt’s reproaches next morning.
“A couple of jugs of mulled claret between the five of you,” Lunt said, “and this had to happen. Couldn’t even get to the window. Those that can’t keep it down are better without it.”
Evelyn Waugh (28 oktober 1903 – 10 april 1966)
Waugh als student in Oxford, 1923