The Scrapbook begs to be forgiven for its belly laugh at Time’s new list of the 100 most popular female authors on college campuses. Not because Time is now reduced to promoting listicles on its website, but because Time‘s popular female author No. 97 is none other than Evelyn Waugh. Waugh (1903-1966), the author of Vile Bodies, A Handful of Dust, Brideshead Revisited, etc., was of course male, not female.
To be sure, there are extenuating circumstances—almost all of which would have amused Waugh. In America, for example, the name Evelyn is almost exclusively assigned to females; but in Britain, there have been more than a few prominent male Evelyns in modern history—General Sir Evelyn Wood of African fame, the colonial administrator Sir Evelyn Baring, the first Earl Cromer—and the current Rothschild patriarch is Sir Evelyn de Rothschild. That Time seems unaware of all this would certainly conform to Evelyn Waugh’s contemptuous view of America and its inhabitants.
Then again, by a coincidence that might have seemed improbable in one of his novels, Evelyn Waugh’s first wife (a female, as we must clarify these days) was named Evelyn as well. The marriage didn’t last very long; but while it did, their friends among the Bright Young Things of 1920s London took to calling them He-Evelyn and She-Evelyn to avoid confusion. The Scrapbook suspects that Time wasn’t conversant with this, either.
Then again, it could be said that an old joke has returned to haunt the late novelist. During World War II, Waugh served on a British military mission to Yugoslavia, where he formed an everlasting disdain for Marshal Tito, the Communist partisan leader and postwar Yugoslav dictator. In subsequent years, whenever Tito would visit Great Britain, Waugh would insist, loudly and publicly, that Tito was, in fact, a woman in drag—referring to him, on second reference, as “she.” Perhaps the Time deputy assistant managing editor for listicles conflated this story? Not likely.
No, The Scrapbook must reluctantly conclude that the obvious explanation is probably the right one: The list was undoubtedly compiled by some contemporary bright young thing who, despite his/her/its Ivy League education, wouldn’t know Evelyn Waugh from the French and Indian Waugh. At which point, indeed, The Scrapbook would be relieved to learn that the editor in question knows that the novelist’s name is pronounced “waw,” not “waff.”
