Evelyn Gardner

Evelyn Florence Margaret Winifred Gardner (27 September 1903 – 11 March 1994) was the first wife of Evelyn Waugh. She was one of the Bright Young Things. Life Gardner was born on 27 September 1903 in London. She was the youngest of four daughters born to Herbert Gardner, 1st Baron Burghclere, and Lady Winifred Herbert.

In the 1920s she came to be regarded as one of the Bright Young Things, a nickname given by the tabloid press to a group of bohemian young aristocrats and socialites. During this time she lived alone with Pansy Pakenham. It was such an unusual arrangement that the pair were interviewed by Alec Waugh in the spring of 1927 for an article on modern girls. The two girls invited Alec to a party given in Portland Place by the Ranee of Sarawak, and he brought along his brother Evelyn Waugh. Harold Acton was the best man, Robert Byron, the writer and art critic, gave away the bride, and Alec Waugh and Pansy Pakenham were the witnesses. Among their friends, the couple quickly became known as "He-Evelyn" and "She-Evelyn". After only one year of marriage, Gardner left Waugh for their mutual friend John Heygate, whom she married in 1930. The marriage ended in divorce in 1936. In 1937 she married Ronald Nightingale, a civil servant and later an estate agent. They had one son, Benedict Nightingale, a drama critic, and one daughter, Virginia Nightingale, a landscape architect.

After Gardner and Waugh's divorce, of all their friends, only Anthony Powell remained in contact with Gardner, despite the fact that most of them had been her friends before they had been his. It has been suggested that the adultress Brenda Last in A Handful of Dust (1934) is based upon Gardner.