Helena [Paperback]

Evelyn Waugh wrote very funny, sophisticated novels about the British upper and bohemian classes. His short novel Helena is set in the late Roman empire, long before those categories existed, at least as we know them. It is about the mother of Constantine the Great, the first Christian emperor, and her search for the True Cross in fourth century Palestine, after a life of imperial politics that took her from one end of the known world to the other. She was not active in politics, but born and married into it, being the daughter of a British Celtic chief (whom Waugh names Cole)and the wife of Chlorus, a Roman aristocrat and soldier who was the father of the future emperor. The first two-thirds of the book is a beautifully written fictional account of her life at the top, and we discover that after all there was an upper class with bohemian hangers-on not unlike Britain's in the last century. Waugh creates a completely convincing imperial court that is treacherous and sophisticated, and a very convincing saint who discovers her purpose in life in it. The supporting figures in the novel--a tutor; an architect; a humble, over-worked bishop; a pair of coniving witches--are among the best things in the book.

This is a very different sort of historical fiction. Waugh does evoke the time and place of the fourth Century Roman Empire but he never leaves you to really imaginatively enter into that world. He's always at your side, nudging the careful reader in the ribs to share a laugh at the expense of self-important intellectuals or effete no-talent artists trying to pass off their lack of ability as refined aesthetic sensibility. Some laughs, he throws in just for the fun of it and because he can (look for the thinly veiled nursery rhyme allusion on page 32).

There are a handful of passages that are worth the price of the book all by themselves: the account of Fausta's demise, the conversation between Constantine and the architect and artist working on his triumphal arch, and the prayer of Helena to the three Magi at the grotto in Bethlehem on the feast of Epiphany, to name just a few.

This volume is highly recommended, though much different than Waugh's more traditional biography of Edmund Campion, which has its own sort of excellence.

Evelyn Waugh is known for biting caustic satire and misogyny. He thinks nothing of killing small boys or tiny animals while scoring points against the bounders of society. His fiction contains more heartless, designing women then the back catalogs of ELO and Hall & Oates combined.

"Helena" (1950) is one odd novel from such a man. Satiric quips come thick and fast, but there's a rare and deep sense of emotional investment, too. And the hero is the title character, a woman named Helena who finds herself the victim of a designing husband for a change but shakes off her disappointment in search of something true and eternal, a hunger that eventually leads her to Christianity and sainthood.

Catholicism is the other thing Waugh is known for, and his trumping concern as far as "Helena" is concerned, a spiritual novel from the least spiritual of religiously-inclined writers. "The church isn't a cult for a few heroes," Helena is told by Pope Sylvester, advising her on what becomes her quest, to uncover the fragments of the Cross of the Crucifixion and bring them to the European heart of the Empire. "It is the whole of fallen mankind redeemed."

While based on the real life of the mother of the first Roman emperor to reputedly embrace Christ, Waugh takes some liberties. Helena starts out here a British princess, horse-mad and lusty, who catches the eye of the Roman royal Constantius. Waugh's treatment of ancient customs isn't too far afield of how he serves up early 20th century London. When Constantius asks Helena's father for his daughter's hand, and mentions he has a chance of becoming emperor, the father isn't all that impressed.

"Some of the emperors we've had lately, you know, have been nothing to make a song about," Poppa replies. "It's one thing burning incense to them and quite another having them in the family."

Waugh employs this sort of anachronistic tension throughout his narrative, presenting Helena's contemporaries as social strivers not at all different from the people of Waugh's own day (and ours.) He also writes some of his most affecting prose this side of "Brideshead Revisited," beautiful visions of nature, the ancient world, and a boy who comes home from fishing "to lay his dripping creel before his mother, proud as a dog with a rat." Readers of Robert Graves' Claudius books will recognize a similar style to Waugh's depictions of court intrigue, romance, and life and death.

Like another of Waugh's books, "Handful Of Dust," this is slightly flawed in pace and tone but a riveting read throughout, very different from his other novels yet in tune with Waugh's overall sensibility. Waugh called "Helena" his most successful novel, a verdict few share; yet it certainly represents a worthwhile stretching of his talents and ably communicates the sense of grace and purpose he drew from his faith often lacking even from his more famous works.

› Go to Amazon.com to see all 15 reviews  4.1 out of 5 stars