Evelyn Waugh - Biography - Childhood - Golders Green and Heath Mount

Golders Green and Heath Mount

In 1907 the family left Hillfield Road for Underhill, a house which Arthur had had built in nearby Golders Green, then a semi-rural area of dairy farms, market gardens and bluebell woods. Evelyn received his first lessons at home from his mother, with whom he formed a particularly close relationship—Arthur Waugh was a more distant figure, whose bond with his elder son Alec was such that Evelyn often felt excluded. In September 1910 Evelyn began as a day pupil at Heath Mount preparatory school. He was by then a lively child of many interests, who had already written his first complete story, "The Curse of the Horse Race". Waugh spent six relatively contented years at Heath Mount; on his own assertion he was "quite a clever little boy", who was seldom distressed or overawed by his lessons. Physically pugnacious, he was inclined to bully weaker boys; among his victims was the future society photographer Cecil Beaton, who never forgot the experience.

Outside school, Waugh and other children in the neighbourhood performed dramatic works usually written by him. On the basis of a belief then being fostered in the press that the Germans were about to invade England, he organised his friends into a gang called "The Pistol Troop", which built a fort, went on manoeuvres and paraded in makeshift uniforms. After the First World War broke out in 1914, Waugh and other boys from Heath Mount's Boy Scout troop were sometimes employed at the War Office as messengers. He hung about in the corridors hoping to get a glimpse of Lord Kitchener, but never did. Family holidays were usually spent with the Waugh aunts at Midsomer Norton, in a house lit by oil lamps that Waugh recalled with delight many years later. At Midsomer Norton he became deeply interested in high Anglican church rituals—the first stirrings of the spiritual dimension that would later dominate his life—and served as an altar boy at the local Anglican church. During his last year at Heath Mount Waugh devised and edited a school magazine, The Cynic.

A blue plaque commemorates Waugh at 145 North End Road, Golders Green.