Abstract
Over the last two years several friends rung to tell me that Evelyn Waugh’s first wife had been on television and revealed that the Vatican’s annulment of the Waugh marriage was a sham. Waugh had persuaded her to testify to the Roman Catholic marriage court, falsely, that before marrying they had decided they would ‘never have children’ — and it was this untruth that won the case.
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Notes
An excerpt from Mrs Nightingale’s letter to Stannard appears in Martin Stannard, Evelyn Waugh: The Early Years 1903–1939 (London: Dent, 1986) pp. 352–3.
Humphrey Carpenter, The Brideshead Generation: Evelyn Waugh and His Friends (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1989) p. 250. No authority for this statement is cited.
Evelyn Waugh, ‘Let the Marriage Ceremony Mean Something’, Daily Mail, 8 Oct. 1929, p. 12; ‘Tell the Truth about Marriage’, John Bull, 23 Aug. 1930, p. 7. Rpt. in Essays, Articles and Reviews of Evelyn Waugh, ed. Donat Gallagher ( London: Methuen, 1983 ), pp. 94–5.
Peter Laslett, ‘Marriage’s Ups and Downs’ (rev. of Putting Asunder: A History of Divorce in Western Society), Times Literary Supplement, 4–10 Aug. 1989, p. 843.
Evelyn Waugh, A Handful of Dust ( London: Chapman and Hall, 1934 ).
A.P. Herbert, Holy Deadlock (London: Methuen, 1934; Penguin, 1955), p. 10.
Sir William Geary, ‘The Vatican and Divorce’, The Times, 19 Nov. 1926, p. 10d.
Lewis and Lewis, ‘The Duke of Marlborough’, The Times, 27 Nov. 1926, p. 13d.
Quoted in John St John, To the War with Waugh ( London: Leo Cooper, 1974 ), p. 15.
T.L. Bouscaren, compiler, Canon Law Digest: Officially Published Documents Affecting the Code of Canon Law, vols 1 and 2 with annual supplements (Milwaukee: Bruce, 1934–7).
Martin D’Arcy, S.J., ‘The Religion of Evelyn Waugh’, in David PryceJones, ed., Evelyn Waugh and His World (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1973), p. 74.
Christopher Sykes, Evelyn Waugh: A Biography (London: Collins, 1975,) pp. 123–4, 132.
Judge Ben B. Lindsey and Wainwright Evans, The Companionate Marriage, with an Introduction by the Hon. Mrs Bertrand Russell ( London: Brentano’s Ltd., 1928 ).
The following account is based on Degna Marconi, My Father, Marconi (London: Frederick Muller, 1962), pp. 149–63 (marriage), pp. 242–63 (annulment), pp. 269ff (use of correspondence against Marconi).
T.L. Bouscaren and A.C. Ellis, Canon Law: A Text and Commentary, 2nd rev. ed (Milwaukee: Bruce, 1951 ), p. 560.
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© 1992 Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited
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Gallagher, D. (1992). Evelyn Waugh and Vatican Divorce. In: Blayac, A. (eds) Evelyn Waugh. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-21803-5_4
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