Brideshead Revisited, The Sacred & Profane Memories of Captain Charles Ryder is a novel by the English writer Evelyn Waugh, first published in 1945. Waugh
wrote that the novel, "deals with what is theologically termed, 'the operation of Grace', that is to say, the unmerited and
unilateral act of love by which God continually calls souls to Himself". This is achieved by an
examination of the aristocratic Flyte family, as seen by the narrator, Charles Ryder.
Time included Brideshead Revisited in its list of "All-time 100 Novels." In
various letters, Waugh himself refers to the novel a number of times as his "magnum opus";
however, in 1950 he wrote to Graham Greene saying "I re-read Brideshead Revisited and was
appalled." In Fathers and Sons (2007), a biography of five generations of the Waugh
family, Alexander Waugh (son of Auberon and
grandson of Evelyn) quotes Evelyn's preface to the 1960 revised edition of Brideshead. In this preface, Evelyn explains
the circumstances in which the novel was written, in the six months between December 1944 and June 1945 following a minor
parachute accident. He is mildly disparaging of the novel, saying; "It was a bleak period of
present privation and threatening disaster — the period of soya beans and Basic English — and in consequence the book is infused with a kind of gluttony, for food and wine, for the
splendours of the recent past, and for rhetorical and ornamental language which now, with a full stomach, I find
distasteful."
Brideshead Revisited was brought to the screen in the ITV drama serialisation of 1981,
produced by Granada Television. A film adaptation of the book is currently in
pre-production, scheduled for release in 2008, which will concentrate solely on the relationship between Charles and Julia.
Plot
After an unpleasant chance first encounter, protagonist and narrator Charles Ryder, a student at an unnamed Oxford University
college (though critics have suggested Waugh used Hertford College as his
model; in the television series Charles Ryder wears a St Edmund Hall tie), and
Lord Sebastian Flyte, the younger son of an aristocratic family and himself an undergraduate
at Christ Church, become friends. Sebastian takes Charles to his family's palatial
home, Brideshead Castle, where Charles eventually meets the rest of the Flyte family, including Sebastian's sister, Lady Julia
Flyte.
During the holiday Charles returns home, where he lives with his father. Scenes between Charles and his father Ned (Edward)
provide some of the best-known comic scenes in the novel. During the holiday he is called back to Brideshead after Sebastian
incurs a minor injury. Sebastian and Charles spend the remainder of the summer together.
Sebastian's family is Catholic, but only first generation: Lord Marchmain, an Anglican,
converted to his wife's religion, Roman Catholicism. Religious considerations arise frequently among the family, and Catholicism
influences their lives as well as the content of their conversations, all of which surprises Charles, who had always assumed
Christianity to be "without substance or merit." Charles is also put off religion by Lady
Marchmain, Sebastian's mother, a devout Catholic who tries to control others through guilt and manipulation. Sebastian, in some
ways a troubled young man, learns to find greater solace in alcohol than in religion, and descends into that habit, drifting away from the family over a two-year period, which occasions
Charles' own estrangement from the Flytes. Yet Charles is fated to re-encounter the Flyte family over the years, and eventually
forms a relationship with Julia, who by that time is married but separated from the wealthy but uncouth Canadian entrepreneur, Rex Mottram.
Charles plans to divorce his own wife — who has been unfaithful — so he and Julia can marry.
However, motivated by a comment by her brother and by her father's deathbed return to the faith, Julia decides that she can no
longer live in sin, and for that reason can no longer contemplate marriage to Charles. Lord
Marchmain's reception of the sacrament of Extreme Unction also influences Charles, who had been "in search of love in
those days" when he first met Sebastian, "that low door in the wall...which opened on an enclosed and enchanted garden," a
metaphor that informs the work on a number of levels.¹ Waugh desired that the book should be about the "operation of divine grace
on a group of diverse but closely connected characters."
During the Second World War, Ryder, now an army officer after establishing a career as
an architectural artist, is billeted at Brideshead, once
home to many of his affections. It occurs to him that builders' efforts were not in vain, even when their purposes may appear,
for a time, to be frustrated.
Motifs and other points of interest
Catholicism
Taking into account the background of the author, the most significant theme of the book is Catholicism. Evelyn Waugh was a convert to Catholicism and the book is considered to be an attempt to
express the Catholic faith in secular literary form. Waugh wrote to his literary agent A. D.
Peters, "I hope the last conversation with Cordelia gives the theological clue. The whole thing is steeped in
theology, but I begin to agree that the theologians won't recognise it." Considering his
readership, who were generally urbane and cosmopolitan, a sentimental or a didactic approach would not have worked.
Sentimentalism would have cheapened the story while didacticism would have repelled a secular audience through excessive sermonising. Instead, the book brings
the reader, through the narration of the agnostic Charles Ryder, in contact with the
severely flawed but deeply Catholic Marchmain family. While many novels of the same era portray Catholics as the flatfooted
people put on the spot by brilliant non-believers, Brideshead Revisited turns the table on the agnostic Charles Ryder (and
presumably the reader as well) and scrutinises his secular values, which are tacitly
portrayed to fall short of the deeper humanity and spirituality of the Catholic faith.
The Catholic themes of divine grace and reconciliation are pervasive in the book. Most of the major characters undergo a conversion in some way
or another. Lord Marchmain, a convert from Anglicanism to Catholicism, who lived as an adulterer, is reconciled with the Church on his deathbed. Julia, who is involved in an extramarital affair with
Charles, comes to feel this relationship is immoral and decides to separate from Charles in spite of her great attachment to him.
Sebastian, the charming and flamboyant alcoholic, ends up in service to a monastery while
struggling against his alcoholism. Even Cordelia has some sort of conversion: from being the
"worst" behaved schoolgirl her headmistress has ever seen, to serving in the hospital bunks of the Spanish Civil War. Most significant is Charles's apparent conversion, which is expressed very subtly
(otherwise, it would have been sentimental); at the end of the book, set 19 years after the main thread of the novel, Charles
kneels down in front of the tabernacle of the Brideshead chapel and says a prayer with "ancient words newly learned" — implying
recent instruction in the catechism. Waugh speaks of his belief in grace in a letter to
Lady Mary Lygon: "I believe that everyone in his (or her) life has the moment when he is open to
Divine Grace. It's there, of course, for the asking all the time, but human lives are so
planned that usually there's a particular time — sometimes, like Hubert, on his deathbed — when all resistance is down and Grace
can come flooding in." Aside from Grace and Reconciliation, other Catholic themes in the book are the Communion of Saints, Faith and Vocation.
The same themes were criticised by Waugh's contemporaries. Henry Yorke, a fellow
novelist, wrote to Waugh, "The end was not for me. As you can imagine my heart was in my mouth all through the deathbed scene,
hoping against hope that the old man would not give way, that is, take the course he eventually did." And Edmund Wilson, who had praised Waugh as the hope of the English
novel, wrote "The last scenes are extravagantly absurd, with an absurdity that would be worthy of Waugh at his best if it
were not — painful to say — meant quite seriously."
Nostalgia for the Age of English nobility
The Marchmain Family, to some, is a symbol of a dying breed — the English nobility. One reads in the book that Brideshead has
"the atmosphere of a better age," and, referring to the deaths of Lady Marchmain's brothers in the Great War, "these men must die to make a world for Hooper ... so that things might be safe for the
travelling salesman, with his polygonal pince-nez, his fat, wet handshake, his grinning
dentures." This is viewed by some as elitism. According to
Martin Amis, the book "squarely identifies egalitarianism as its foe and proceeds to rubbish it accordingly."[1]
Charles and Sebastian's relationship
The precise nature of Charles' and Sebastian's relationship remains a topic of considerable debate; are they simply close
friends, or does Waugh mean to imply a physical relationship between the characters? Given
that much of the first half of the novel circles around the initial encounter, friendship, and falling-away of these central
characters, this issue continues to pique the curiosity of readers.
A frequent interpretation is that Charles and Sebastian had a passionate yet platonic
relationship, an immature albeit strongly felt attachment that prefigures future heterosexual relationships. Indeed Cara, Lord Marchmain's mistress, says as much to Charles in the
context of the novel itself—that his relationship with Sebastian forms part in a process of emotional development "typical to the
English and the Germans". Waugh himself said that "Charles's romantic affection for Sebastian is part due to the glitter of the
new world Sebastian represents, part to the protective feeling of a strong towards a weak character, and part a foreshadowing of
the love for Julia which is to be the consuming passion of his mature years."
Others draw an alternative conclusion from the line "our naughtiness was high on the list of grave sins", although the
"naughtiness" in question could refer to the boys' gluttony, not to mention the
sloth and greed that characterize their carefree days, rather than
homosexual acts per se. Similarly, visits to female prostitutes could just as easily have been meant, especially since
prostitutes are mentioned in regard to Mulcaster. The latter interpretation is supported by the fact that a minor character,
Anthony Blanche, is portrayed as unambiguously homosexual in the book.
Parallels to actual historical persons
Many of the principals in Brideshead are considered by some people to be derived from notable characters in British
society during the Interwar period. These include:
Related works
A fragment about the young Charles Ryder entitled Charles Ryder's Schooldays was found after Waugh's death, and is
available in collections of Waugh's short works.
Brideshead Regained, Continuing the Memoirs of Charles Ryder by Michael Johnston was published in 2003 by akanos. The book deals with Ryder's career as a war artist and his subsequent reunion with the major
characters from Brideshead Revisited. Currently the book's legal status is in dispute and the sequel is unauthorised by
the estate of Evelyn Waugh with sales limited to certain Internet sites.
Film adaptations
- Further information: Brideshead Revisited
(miniseries) and Brideshead Revisited (2008 film)
References in other media
Brideshead Revisited has been referenced on television a few times, such as on Frasier. In the Family Guy episode "The Story on Page One," Stewie compares Brown University to Brideshead Revisited." In the film Dear
Wendy, the Dandies congratulate one another with what they refer to as a "Brideshead stutter."
In scene 2 of Tom Stoppard's 1993 play 'Arcadia', one character refers to another
character who attends Oxford as "Brideshead Regurgitated." Et in Arcadia ego, the Latin
phrase which is the title of the first chapter of Brideshead Revisited, is also a central theme to Tom Stoppard's
play.
References
- Waugh, Evelyn [1946] (1973). Brideshead
revisited. Boston: Little, Brown and Company. ISBN 0316926345.
- Amis, Martin (2001). The war against cliché. New
York: Hyperion. ISBN 0786866748.
External links
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