(3 of 3)
The trilogy took Waugh at least ten years to complete, not principally for literary reasons. After 1948 and the splash success of The Loved One, his travesty on the California way of death, he progressively withdrew from the 20th century. Surrounded by six children, whom he saw only once a day "for ten, I hope awe-inspiring minutes," he lived in an 18th century country house 140 miles from London, where tie played the rural squire with a conservatism that soon became simply amniotic. He refused to drive a car, rarely answered the phone, harrumphed indignantly that the Times of London had gone bolshie, appeared in public with an ear trumpet two feet long, and took savage pleasure in annoying Americans—"Erie Stanley Gardner," he announced sweetly to one visitor, "is the finest living American author."
In the last ten years of his life he was a flabby old Blimp with brandy jowls and a menacing pewter complexion. Plagued by insomnia and stunned by sedatives, he suffered intermittent hallucinations, persecuting voices, recurrent depressions. About a year ago he gave up writing almost entirely. And then last week on Easter Sunday, home from a Mass sung (to his crusty satisfaction) in Latin, he climbed the stairs to his study and died of a heart attack. His novels survive and will continue to survive as long as there are readers who can savor what Critic V. S. Pritchett calls "the beauty of his malice."