He becomes a schoolteacher at a public school in Wales, although he has not qualifications. Then again, not one of the teachers there has any qualifications of any kind and is completely unfit for the jobs they have. The master lies about his academic titles, the butler Phillbrick has a new story about his real identity every day, Pendergast is a clergyman who had doubts and captain Grimes finds himself in the soup all the time.
Paul has to
organize the Sports-day, because the Master wants to impress the parents. Paul
meets Margot Beste-Chetwynde here, the mother of one of his students. She liked
Paul and asks him to tutor her son during the holidays. The end result is that
Paul and Margot get engaged and luck seems to change for Paul. But soon he finds
the wheel of fortune is spinning again and Paul finds himself, and some old
friends, in prison.
In the
hands of a lesser writer this amount of misery would be a too depressing or a
too farcical.
Decline and fall is Evelyn
Waugh’s first book and already the hand of the master shows in the perfect
balance and tone. Yes, it is comical and witty and at times so funny I was
laughing outloud on the bus. Waugh writes
about a bunch of idiotic misfits and outrageous events, but at the same time
this is more than just a witty story.
Everybody is tackled, the authorities who
do not do their job, the airheads in the upper classes, the cultural snobs and
everyone who has a job he is completely incompetent at (schoolteachers, judges,
prisons governors, doctors etc)
This light
bitterness in the undercurrent never surfaces too much, but at the same time it
gives Decline and fall a dept that
makes sure this story is not just fluff that leaves no impression, but it stays
with you because it gives you an interesting afterthought.
As far as I
am concerned, Decline and fall
proves again that Evelyn Waugh is a
wonderful writer.
Published
in 1928
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