The Temple at Thatch

The Temple at Thatch: A Lost Masterpiece

Imagine a novel that could have changed the course of literature, but was never published. That’s what The Temple at Thatch is to Evelyn Waugh. This unpublished manuscript, which he began in 1924 and burned just months later due to harsh criticism from his friend Harold Acton, remains a tantalizing mystery in Waugh’s literary legacy.

A Manuscript Burned in Despair

Waugh was no stranger to the pressures of creative writing. His father was a literary critic and his elder brother was already a successful novelist by the time young Evelyn picked up a pen. At Oxford, he formed close friendships with aristocrats and focused more on social pleasures than academic work. His interest in the occult and experiences at Oxford are evident in various works, including an amateur film and stories like ‘Unacademic Exercise: A Nature Story.’ The Temple at Thatch was to be about magic and madness, a semi-autobiographical tale based on his own Oxford days.

From Inspiration to Despair

In June 1924, Waugh spent time working out the plot. He began writing on July 21 but stopped in September when he felt it was ‘in serious danger of becoming dull.’ Reading William Drummond’s essay A Cypress Grove inspired him and he considered retitling his story. After securing a teaching job in North Wales, Waugh continued to work on the manuscript but found few opportunities due to exhaustion and other interests.

He sent the first few chapters to friend Harold Acton for criticism and received a polite but negative response. The letter reportedly described the story as ‘too English’ and unfashionable. It was a misfired jeu d’esprit. Waugh did not query his friend’s judgement, but took his manuscript to the school’s furnaces and unceremoniously burnt it.

A Near-Tragedy

The double blow affected Waugh severely; he wrote in his diary in July: ‘The phrase ‘the end of the tether’ besets me with unshakeable persistence.’ In a moment of despair, he went down alone to the beach with thoughts full of death. He took off his clothes and began swimming out to sea. Did he really intend to drown himself? That was certainly in his mind.

He left a note with his clothes, a quotation from Euripides about the sea washing away all human ills. A short way out, after being stung by jellyfish, he abandoned the attempt, turned round and swam back to the shore. The Temple at Thatch was quickly forgotten, and has failed to arouse much subsequent interest from scholars.

Recovery and New Beginnings

Although he had destroyed his novel, Waugh still intended to be a writer. In the late summer of 1925, he completed a short story called ‘The Balance,’ which became his first commercially published work when Chapman and Hall included it in a short stories collection the following year. The story has clear references to The Temple at Thatch, both works having Oxford settings.

Acton’s dismissal of The Temple at Thatch had made Waugh nervous of his potential as an imaginative writer—he deferred to Acton’s judgement on all literary issues—and he did not for the time being attempt to write another novel. After ‘The Balance,’ he wrote a humorous article, ‘Noah, or the Future of Intoxication,’ which was first accepted and then rejected by the publishers Kegan Paul.

However, a short story called ‘A House of Gentle Folks’ was published in The New Decameron: The Fifth Day, edited by Hugh Chesterman. Thereafter, for a time, Waugh devoted himself to non-fictional work. An essay on the Pre-Raphaelites was published in a limited edition by Waugh’s friend Alastair Graham; this led to the production of a full-length book, Rossetti, His Life and Works, published in 1928.

The Rise of Decline and Fall

The desire to write fiction persisted, however. In the autumn of 1927, Waugh began a comic novel which he entitled Picaresque: or the Making of an Englishman. The first pages were read to another friend, the future novelist Anthony Powell, who found them very amusing. Just before Christmas, Waugh told him that the manuscript had been burned. This was not in fact the case; Waugh had merely put the work aside.

Early in 1928, he wrote to Harold Acton, asking whether or not he should finish it. On this occasion Acton was full of praise; Waugh resumed work and completed the novel by April 1928. It was published later that year under a new title, Decline and Fall. According to his recent biographer Paula Byrne, Waugh had ‘found his vocation as a writer, and over the next few years his career would rise spectacularly.’

The Temple at Thatch remains a lost gem in Waugh’s literary legacy, a testament to the pressures of creative writing and the importance of perseverance. It serves as a reminder that sometimes, it’s not what we create but how we overcome challenges that truly defines our journey.