A Handful of Dust - Plot

Plot

In A Handful of Dust Waugh satirises the British landed gentry and mercantile class. The novel is set in the 1930s, and focuses on the breakdown of the marriage of Tony and Brenda Last. The aristocratic Tony is preoccupied with the maintenance of his family home, Hetton Abbey, an example of unfashionable Victorian Gothic architecture. John Beaver, a self-interested and impoverished social climber, invites himself to Hetton for the weekend, and soon after begins an affair with Brenda, who yearns for urban excitement.

After the Lasts' son, also called John, dies in a riding accident, Brenda decides that she wants a divorce. In order to avoid any scandal for his wife, Tony agrees to go through the sham of creating appropriate grounds for divorce. Their agreement on the divorce falls apart when Brenda's brother reveals that Brenda's family (at Beaver's urging) will insist on a monetary settlement so large as to require Tony to sell Hetton; Tony refuses to grant or file for a divorce. Instead, he participates in an expedition to Brazil. Stranded in the jungle, Tony falls ill, and his expedition companion, Dr. Messinger, dies while attempting to retrieve help. Tony wanders, delirious, until he stumbles into an isolated tribal village. Once there, he is nursed back to health, and then held captive by a Mr. Todd, who insists that Tony remain forever, reading the works of Charles Dickens to him. Meanwhile, Brenda's relationship with John Beaver has fallen apart, after it became apparent that she would not become a rich divorcée. Shortly after Tony is declared dead, Brenda marries the couple's mutual friend, Jock Grant-Menzies. The novel ends with obscure relatives of Tony taking over Hetton.

Waugh used as the final chapter for the novel a slightly adapted version of a pre-existing short story, "The Man Who Liked Dickens". When the novel was serialized in the American magazine Harper's Bazaar, Waugh had to supply a new ending because the short story, which had been published in the US earlier, could not for copyright reasons appear in the magazine. In the alternative ending, included as an appendix in some editions of the book, Tony returns from Brazil and to his relationship with Brenda.

Waugh wrote of the novel's development:

"I had just written a short story about a man trapped in the jungle, ending his days reading Dickens aloud. The idea came quite naturally from the experience of visiting a lonely settler of that kind and reflecting how easily he could hold me prisoner eventually the thing grew into a study of other sorts of savages at home and the civilized man's helpless plight among them." (Gallagher, 303).