{"id":231,"date":"2014-06-16T10:32:05","date_gmt":"2014-06-16T10:32:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/waughandwords\/?p=231"},"modified":"2025-02-26T13:22:18","modified_gmt":"2025-02-26T13:22:18","slug":"handfulofdust","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/waughandwords\/2014\/06\/16\/handfulofdust\/","title":{"rendered":"Book Group: A Handful of Dust"},"content":{"rendered":"

On Saturday morning, Manaus was the name on everybody’s lips. Not only was some football apparently going to be played there that evening, but this particular part of the Amazonian rainforest is also the last known whereabouts of Tony Last, hero of Waugh’s masterpiece\u00a0A Handful of Dust.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Magazine<\/a>

A Handful of Dust started life as the illustrated short story ‘The Man Who Liked Dickens’, which appeared in Nash’s Pall Mall Magazine in November 1933<\/p><\/div>\n

This 1934 novel marks a real shift in Waugh’s work and the latent darkness of Decline and Fall<\/a> and Vile Bodies<\/a> bubbles up to the service in adultery, child death and a nightmare fate for the lead character that sees Tony Last incarcerated in a remote corner of Brazil reading Charles Dickens to his captor\u00a0for, we must assume, the rest of his days. The basic storyline is this: Tony and Brenda Last are happy enough, on the surface at least, until Brenda falls for the worthless social hanger-on and sponger John Beaver. When the Lasts’ six-year-old son John Andrew is killed on the way back from hunting, Brenda leaves Tony for John. Tony then embarks on an uncharacteristic expedition to the Amazonian rainforest, where he catches fever and taken in by the sinister Mr Todd who, as we soon learn, is reluctant to let him go.<\/p>\n

While on Saturday morning we were, as yet, blissfully unaware of the final England V. Italy scoreline, Tony’s eventual fate is\u00a0subject to rather more foreshadowing. The indigenous people employed as his escort disappear in the night, and his rescuer-turned captor’s name is the\u00a0German for death. And as for poor John Andrew, Tony’s son: well, we counted at least four hints in the text that his first hunting trip (‘I hope he won’t break his neck’…’Are you sure it’s safe’… ‘You\u00a0<\/em> won’t see any death’… ‘The world might come to an end…’)\u00a0would also be his only one. Just don’t get on Thunderclap, John Andrew (even the boy’s pony is named after a steed which killed to riders before mortally wounding itself on a hunt) .<\/p>\n

\"Kristin<\/a>

Brenda Last: worst mother in literature?<\/p><\/div>\n

And what if John Andrew had not been killed? Then literature would have been robbed of some of its most infamous lines of dialogue. When John Andrew’s mother, Brenda, is first told of her son’s death she mistakenly believes that it is her lover who has come to grief. These lines follow her process of realisation:<\/p>\n

She frowned, not at once\u00a0taking in what he was saying.<\/p>\n

“John…John Andrew…I….Oh thank God…’ Then she burst into tears.<\/p>\n

This reaction has earned Brenda a place in countless lists of “worst mothers in literature”. Is this fair? On Saturday, we mounted a partial defence of her:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. People often react very oddly when given bad news. This is in fact the explanation later Brenda gives to Jock for her outburst (Jock goes on to marry Brenda, so could not have been irrevocably disturbed by her behaviour).<\/li>\n
  2. Elsewhere we are told that Brenda really did care for John Andrew: for example, she and Tony never holidayed abroad because ‘Brenda never wanted to leave John Andrew’.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    So shocking as her words are, they probably underscore what is suggested elsewhere in the novel; Brenda is not calculating or heartless, just profoundly thoughtless and easily led.<\/p>\n

    A lovely contrast to Brenda is provided by one of our favourite female Waugh characters to date: Mrs Rattery, aka the ‘Shameless Blonde’. Mrs Rattery, blissfully unaware of social convention arrives\u00a0at the Lasts’ home in an aeroplane she pilots herself and joins\u00a0in with the workmen as they strip the morning room ceiling. As we’ve come to expect from Waugh, it’s this incidental character who is blessed with greater powers of perception\u00a0than any of the main cast. Mrs Rattery\u00a0is about to go to London with Jock to tell Brenda of her son’s death when she realises she is needed where she is:<\/p>\n

    \"Members<\/a>

    Rebecca, Geoffrey and Harriet discuss A Handful of Dust<\/p><\/div>\n

    There was something in Tony’s voice as he said this which made Mrs Rattery ask, ‘What are you going to do while you’re waiting?’<\/p>\n

    ‘I don’t know. I suppose there will be things to see to.’<\/p>\n

    ‘Look here’, said Mrs Rattery, ‘Jock had better go up by car. I’ll stay here until Lady Brenda comes’<\/p>\n

    ‘It would be awful for you.’<\/p>\n

    ‘No, I’ll stay’.<\/p>\n

    Such is the kindness of this near-stranger to Tony that she sits with him all day, keeping him occupied in card games and trying to stop him thinking.<\/p>\n

    Can this work beat Brideshead Revisited <\/a>to the title of Waugh’s best novel? We certainly admired it, and the general feeling in the group was that it is in another class compared to the rest of\u00a0the ‘social comedy’ run – for there is humour here, although\u00a0it’s pitch black in places. Gone, for the most part, are Waugh’s earlier charicatures; the horror here, despite the inspired absurdity of Tony’s final fate, is all too believable.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    On Saturday morning, Manaus was the name on everybody’s lips. Not only was some football apparently going to be played there that evening, but this particular part of the Amazonian rainforest is also the last known whereabouts of Tony Last, hero of Waugh’s masterpiece\u00a0A Handful of Dust.\u00a0 This 1934 novel marks a real shift in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":141,"featured_media":234,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-231","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-waugh-book-group"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/waughandwords\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/231","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/waughandwords\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/waughandwords\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/waughandwords\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/141"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/waughandwords\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=231"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/waughandwords\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/231\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":608,"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/waughandwords\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/231\/revisions\/608"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/waughandwords\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/234"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/waughandwords\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=231"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/waughandwords\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=231"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/waughandwords\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=231"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}