America Through British Eyes: A Review of Evelyn Waugh's The Loved One

Behold I dreamed a dream and I saw a New Earth sacred to HAPPINESS. There amid all that Nature and Art could offer to elevate the Soul of Man I saw the Happy Resting Place of Countless Loved Ones. And I saw the Waiting Ones who still stood on the brink of that narrow stream that now separated them from those who had gone before. Young and old, they were happy too. Happy in Beauty, Happy in certain knowledge that their Loved Ones were very near, in Beauty and Happiness such as the earth cannot give.

I heard a voice say: "Do this."

And behold I awoke in the Light and Promise of my DREAM I made WHISPERING GLADES.

ENTER STRANGER and BE HAPPY.
- Sculpted on the entrance of Whispering Glades

Poor Sir Francis Hinsley. Scuttled out the door by the Hollywood studio for which he works, without so much as a thank-you or retirement mug, the weary British expatriate attempts to exit the stage with dignity by hanging himself. Alas, however, there is no dignity in 1940s Hollywood. Degraded in death as he was in life, Sir Francis’s corpse falls into the ghastly clutches of Whispering Glades, a funeral home that commemorates its departed dead with obscenely garish burial services. All done in a non-sectarian way, of course.

Thus unfolds Evelyn Waugh's The Loved One: An Anglo-American Tragedy, his pitiless satire of Hollywood, America, and death. The plot centers on Dennis Barlow, a minor British poet, who comes to Hollywood commissioned to bring Percy Shelley’s life to the big screen, but instead settles for employment at a pet cemetery called the Happier Hunting Ground. Life at the H.H.G. is rewarding: where else could one experience the satisfaction that comes from scattering the ashes of a tabby cat from an airplane over Sunset Boulevard? It presents one problem, however, namely the ire of the British expatriate community in Hollywood (yes, there is one) who see Dennis' career choice as another sad example of a Britisher "going native."

When Sir Francis kicks off, however, Dennis proves indispensable by arranging his funeral at Whispering Glades, a tasteless affair set in the flowered gaudiness of the Orchid Slumbering Room. In the process, he falls in love with Aimee Thanatogenos, a junior cosmetician at the Glades, whom he woos with the classics of British poetry (which he pretends are his own). It's a strategy with promise; unfortunately, Dennis finds he has a rival. As the plot proceeds, Aimee is hopelessly torn between the affections of young Dennis and a Mr. Joyboy, the innovative and "morally earnest" mortician at Whispering Glades. This rivalry occupies the remainder of the book, and in typical Waughian fashion, all does not end well, though the final result is much more darkly comic than tragic.

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