Evelyn Waugh During the Pinfold Years
On a trip to Ceylon in January and February 1954, Evelyn Waugh suffered the hallucinations that form the basis of The Ordeal of Gilbert Pinfold.1 Like the protagonist of his novel, Waugh believed he was being persecuted by a group of psychologists using some sort of electronic telepathy to listen in on his private thoughts and to tease, torment, and vilify him about his private life and his public reputation. It is clear both in the novel and in biographical accounts of the incident that Waugh's and Pinfold's ordeals were caused by the cumulative effects of chloral hydrate and bromide, combined with liberal doses of alcohol.2 Yet the paramount importance of the episode in Waugh's life is that he fictionalizes it as an artistic crisisÂ—a thorough shaking of confidence in his imaginative powers. Pinfold emerges victorious from his ordeal first by maintaining his belief that the "voices" were realÂ—real to him at any rateÂ—and then by establishing control over his imagination through writing his own Ordeal of Gilbert Pinfold. Waugh himself regains control by laying to rest many