'I Am Trimmer, You Know ...' Lord Lovat in Evelyn Waugh's Sword of Honour (Critical Essay)
Evelyn Waugh Newsletter and Studies 2010, Autumn, 41, 2
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Beschreibung des Verlags
Call me foolhardy, but I am resolved to boldly go where Paul Johnson has already been threatened with violence. Some years ago Mr Johnson recounted a conversation he had with Simon Fraser, 15th Lord Lovat in which Lord Lovat said that he had 'kicked Evelyn Waugh out' of the Special Service Brigade 'for the Brigade's good.' This, of course, had aroused Waugh's 'undying fury.' Nor had Lovat mellowed. 'By kicking [Waugh] out,' he explained, 'I saved his life.' Lovat was alluding to very silly gossip that Waugh's men would have shot him if he went into action. 'But no good deed goes unpunished. He survived to write [Sword of Honour (1)] portraying me as a horrible hairdresser. For I am Trimmer, you know.' In reply to Johnson, Lord Lovat's doughty nephew, Sir Charles Maclean (son of Sir Fitzroy), virtually accused him of lying. Doubting that the conversation 'actually took place,' he promised Johnson a 'Glasgow kiss' if he 'showed his florid mug north of the border.' [2] Improbable as it might seem to a loyal nephew that Lord Lovat--MacShimi of the Fraser Clan, proud heir to Beaufort Castle (that focus of Old Roman Catholic culture) and 'dashing' scion of celebrated generals--could be portrayed as a 'horrible hairdresser,' it is in fact very likely that Trimmer/McTavish reflects Lovat. And no one will doubt that Waugh drew the portrait in revenge for Lovat's 'kicking him out' of the Commandos. The motto of the Scots Guards is 'Nemo me impune lacessit' ('No one attacks me with impunity'): Lovat therefore had to punish the insulting portrait. And the Lovat family maxim--'Hit them hard, hit them often and always below the belt' [3]--ensured that the punishment meted out would be extreme. Hence the amazingly vituperative, and almost purely fictional, counterattack on Waugh in Lovat's memoir, March Past (233-36).