She makes the most extravagant preparations, but the only guests who show up are a pair of snobs she pointedly did not invite. M arried calamity is a Waugh staple. He put his misery to admirable literary use. Family life is a battleground in Waugh, and no quarter can be expected, especially when large sums of money are involved. Billy's wife went back to Billy after a time, and in due course it was announced that she had delivered the requisite heir.
Unlimited savagery can be the mother lode for a writer with a suitably sardonic turn of mind.
At the last dinner, three years ago, a fox had been brought in in a cage and stoned to death with champagne bottles. The point of contact between civilization, such as it is, and barbarism constitutes Waugh's favorite comic territory. That is about as funny a sentence as a man can hope to write, and such antic virtuosity abounds in Waugh's novels. It is rarer in the stories, which tend to go about their work more soberly, though of course they do offer comic pleasures of their own. Eros had gone, but the pedestal rose above the reeds, moss grown and dilapidated.