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Helena

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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.

Normally, an Evelyn Waugh novel is funny from beginning until the dark end, which is typically still funny but often with some in-your-face bit of reality that bites.

_Helena_ is far from a comic (or dark comic) novel, yet it still has all of things that make a Waugh novel so good: the realistic dialogue, solid character development and detailed description that helps give the novel depth.

It's more like _Brideshead Revisited_ because of its more serious, dramatic feel, but if you like Waugh, you'll like _Helena_ (especially if you hang in there for an awesome ending).

Helena is one of Evelyn Waugh's lesser known works, but it deserves to be more widely read. It is a fictional biography of St. Helena, the mother of the Emperor Constantine. She is supposed to have discovered the True Cross and identified the sites of Calvary, Jesus' Tomb, and other episodes in the life of Christ.

Helena is a good example of Waugh's ability to write clearly and wittily and also of his deep Catholic faith. Most of Helena's life is clearly legendary, but nevertheless Waugh does an excellent job of bringing her to life and giving her a definite personality while demonstrating her (and his) deep religious devotion.

Waugh tells us in his Preface that his story of the Empress Helena, the mother of Constantine the Great, is legend - and among the various legends he could draw on was the one prevalent in Britain, popularized by Geoffrey of Monmouth, that Helena was the daughter of an English kinglet, a vassal of Rome, whose court was at Colchester. (Other stories have her born in Asia Minor.) It is not a legend, however, that she was married for a time to the Roman general Constantius, and Constantine was their son. Constantius was politically ambitious, and eventually, in 293, became Caesar to Maximian, Diocletian's co-Emperor in the West. To achieve this position, he had divorced Helena in 289 and married Maximian's daughter. Helena and her son were sent to the court of Diocletian. In due course Constantius became Emperor, and on his death, his troops proclaimed Constantine as Emperor in 306. His rival and co-Emperor Maxentius was defeated and killed at a battle in 312, prior to which, so legend has it, Constantine had a dream to say he would conquer under the sign of the Cross. After his victory he issued an edict tolerating Christianity which had been savagely persecuted by Diocletian. In 324 he made Christianity the official religion of the Empire, but himself is believed to have been baptized only on his death-bed in 337. Helena, however, had been baptized at some unspecified earlier time. In 325 Constantine bestowed the title of Empress on his mother, and in the following year the old lady, now in her late seventies, went on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land and, again so a famous legend has it, miraculously discovered the True Cross, a part of which she brought back with her to Rome.

Waugh builds his story around these part-legendary, part historical events. Most of the book reads easily, as one would expect of this great stylist. The dialogue often has colloquialisms of the 1950s. But the relationship between all the members of a very complicated family are hard to follow, let alone to remember: even though this is a novel, an appendix giving a family tree would have been welcome.

The portrait of Constantine as Emperor is half farcical, half terrifying - a picture of a moody, paranoid and unpredictable dictator who has several of his close relatives murdered. The book was first published in 1950 - did Waugh have the parallels with Stalin in mind?

Waugh gives to the young Helena a somewhat tomboyish but also an educated British girlhood. She married Constantius out of love, but is portrayed as accepting the waning of Constantius' initial affection, his secretiveness about his political activities, and then the divorce in a pretty matter-of-fact way: while Waugh lets himself go in expressive descriptions of the countryside and of the then shabby city of Rome, his emotional tone is cool. His portrayal of Helena as a young woman is much more vivid than that of the older one - until in the last two chapters, dealing with Helena's pilgrimage, the ironical tone of the rest of the novel dies away, and Waugh paints a touching picture of Helena's sincere devotion and of her spirituality. The legends surrounding the finding of the True Cross - including one Waugh has invented himself - are not mocked. Waugh was after all a devout convert to Roman Catholicism.

This book is not exactly what one might expect from historical fiction. Most books of that genre spill much ink filling in extra details of important historical events. Waugh, however, has a different purpose: he would like the reader to view sainthood in a different light by seeing the path to sainthood that St. Helen trod. As such, he glances over some seemingly important details: he doesn't even try to recreate the events surrounding Helena's conversion to Christianity, and he introduces her desire to find the True Cross practically as an aside. I found Waugh's focus in this book a bit quixotic; most of the book is focused on Helena's pre-Christian life, and the chapters on her life after converting seem an afterthought.

Yet reading this book is thoroughly enjoyable; Waugh's humor runs throughout the book. In fact, "Helena" is worth its price just for Fausta's speech to Helena after Helena arrives at Rome. It begins with a discussion of Pope Sylvester:

"Sylvester? Oh yes, of course you'll have to meet him. It's only polite. And of course we all respect his office. But he's not a man of any personal distinction, I assure you. If he's ever declared a saint they ought to commemorate him on the last day of the year."

(For those not aware, St. Sylvester's feast day is celebrated on December 31st)

Fausta's speech continues for some pages and is laugh out-loud funny at many points. These type of humorous interjections make this book, if nothing else, the funniest historical fiction you'll read. It will also make you think a bit more about what it means to be a saint; Waugh's contention is that the saint must do that "one thing" which God has called him or her to do - nothing more, nothing less. There are worse definitions of saints than this, to be sure.

"Helena" is not a typical historical novel--it is too self-conscious in its purpose, and Waugh fills the dialogue with Britishisms ("What a lark!" and "dearest Mummy"). It does, however, contain a subtle and emotional portrayal of how Helena, mother of Constantine, finds Christianity and the true cross. This is not a novel that will make you feel as if you are experiencing the time period, but it may speak to your emotions, despite its rather contrived form.

Prostitute, stable-hand, or British princess? The legends swirl around Helena, wife or mistress of Constantius Chlorus ("The Green"), a Roman officer who is eventually created co-Emperor. In this delicate, hilarious fantasy Waugh takes the advice of his friend and fellow convert to Catholicism, Ronald Knox; he goes "up the nursery stairs" to find Helena in rhymes of Old King Coel and tales of princesses in towers. Along the way he finds an ardent, imaginative, and entirely lovable girl who marries the dour and priggish Constantius, and is discarded by his ambitious divorce and re-marriage to become co-Emperor. In middle-age she sees her son Constantine become Emperor, extremely eccentric "Christian," and murderous tyrant. She retains her passion for life, and falls in love with the Church newly emerged from persecution. Waugh repeatedly refers to Heinrich Schliemann's similar attitude towards Homer and the legends of Troy. Stubbornly as any child, she searches for the solid objects of Christianity: A real, cheaply-constructed wooden cross; a smelly cave used as a stable in Bethlehem; stairs from a Roman governor's residence. Nothing is legendary or metaphorical to Helena, who identifies with the Magi, those royal astrologers journeying so far, compounding with the infanticidal Herod, presenting their curious gifts, and fading into legend. Her souvenirs are in the crypt of Santa Croce in Gerusalemme in Rome, once the household chapel of the palace her son gave to her, wistful as a child's toys and as moving.

This is an oddity for Waugh -- but well worth reading.

I was impressed by his historical research to begin with. The author admits where he filled gaps in the known facts with his own inventions. It has all the mastery of writing that Waugh was known for and is full of wit but not the biting sarcastic wit of much of Waugh. Altogether it's a heartfelt and gripping read.