Reflections – Brideshead Revisited

The thing to remember about Evelyn Waugh is that he is often writing about things that people don’t recognise he is writing about; readers are focused on something else, often something  more attractive, facile and easier to understand.

An example of this could be heard no long ago on a BBC Radio 4 book programme where Mariella Frostrup led a discussion of Waugh’s Decline and Fall. Throughout the half hour discussion, the comment was about the comedy, the upper-class, and the superficiality of the characters. What was wholly missed – by Miss Frostrup and the audience – was the biting social satire that showed corruption in every major British institution from Oxford (“Oh, please God, make them attack the Chapel!”), public schools, the class system, the Home Office and prison system, and the – even then noticeable – disregard for Britain’s heritage by those who should know better (the demolition of King’s Thursday).

D H Lawrence wrote to Waugh saying that if people  knew what you were really writing about, they’d throw ten brickbats at you for every one they threw at me for Lady C.

The same is true of Brideshead Revisited. Once you start to try to talk or write about it, one realises how complex it is. This gives some credibility to the story that John Mortimer’s much-acclaimed script for the Granada Television series (1981) was actually not used, but a virtual transcription of  the book (written by the producers) was.

It’s an enormously clever book and has something for just about everyone: history, romance (both hetero and homo), satire and humour, belief and disbelief, saints and sinners, and historical social drama.

It also has a large dose of nostalgia. The war was not yet over when the book was published, but the tide had turned, and Waugh recognised that things would never be the same again – just as they weren’t after the Great War. As a result, the period observations, nostalgia and sentimentality make a heady mixture. In fact, the book’s opening line could easily have been, “Last night I dreamt I went to Brideshead again.”

This makes the book an open meeting to which everyone can bring his own agenda: socialist, secular, religious, political, ethical, gay, straight, national, and so on ad nauseum. As a result, what is quite possibly Waugh’s intention is buried.

*

It what is a very intimate book, focused on one family and a handful of friends, the book still manages to have a scope of subjects and locations that cover a large canvas. The characters, as mentioned, include saints and sinners: from Lady Marchmain, Bridey, and Cordelia, to those who struggle with faith (Julia), those who struggle with the very concept (Rex Mottram), and the ostensibly faithless (Charles).

Sebastian is very interesting in this regard: he loves the pleasures of life, and is youthfully self-indulgent. Yet, one feels that he never abandons his faith, which is stronger than one supposes. He learns that being looked after is ultimately self-destructive, and that caring for – as well as caring about – someone else is where true satisfaction lies. Hence, his relationship with the repulsive Kurt. In the end, he is a hanger-on at a monastery.

We have an important insight into both Sebastian and Charles in this exchange about Roman Catholicism:

“But, my dear Sebastian, you can’t seriously believe it all?”

“Can’t I?”

“I mean about Christmas and the star and the three kings and the ox and the ass.”

“Oh, yes, I believe that. It’s a lovely idea.”

“You can’t believe things because they’re a lovely idea.”

“But I do. That’s how I believe.”

This conversation gives insights into both characters.

First, it underlines Sebastian’s child-like wonder at the world. But, on a more sophisticated level, it shows that he understands that faith is a parallel universe; they do things differently there, and the rules of earthly logic either do not apply, or are subservient to higher laws.

Secondly, it reveals Charles’ intellect to be pedestrian. For someone who becomes an artist to have so little concept of the power of beauty, is very disappointing in a character that the reader (at this point) is still trying to like.

The truth of this is expressed in Anthony Blanche (and bwilliantly delivered by Nickolas Grace in the TV series). Blanche is talking to Charles about how eager he had been to see his new paintings and the experience of doing so:

“I found, my dear, a very naughty and very successful practical joke. It reminded me of dear Sebastian when he liked so much to dress up in false whiskers. It was charm again, my dear, simple, creamy, English charm, playing tigers.”

That we don’t doubt Antoine’s analysis, and recognise it as utterly damning, tells us a lot about how we already regard Charles Ryder.

The reader has already turned against him for his treatment of Lady Celia. She may be shallow, but she does care for Charles in spite of his dreadful neglect of her, but it is the total uninterest in seeing his own son that particularly egregious.

So, where does that leave us?

Despite Julia’s infatuation – and possibly love – for Charles, her conscience awakens and she knows she must move forward, away from him. She has already experienced the social ostracism and sinful guilt following her marriage to Rex Mottram, and she cannot face it again. It is the twitch upon the thread that makes her break with him.

Ironically, and I think this is Waugh’s point, it is the decision that saves Charles.

*

There are wonderful comic moments in Brideshead Revisited. For me, the high comic point is when Rex Mottram reveals that he has swallowed all Cordelia’s nonsense about the Roman Catholic Church, sleeping facing the East, and the sacred monkeys in the Vatican. There are good comic scenes in Oxford, in Charles’ visits to his father, and in small incidents and witty dialogue throughout the book, but I think Waugh’s purpose is far more serious, and not that difficult to grasp if one reads what he has written.

One of the problems is that many people read Waugh for the humour, and those that do, don’t really want – or are unable to see – anything more. When Brideshead came out, Waugh was primarily thought of as a writer of social comedy, so few were looking for something that had moved into Graham Greene territory.

The signs are all there, though. The sub-title says it all: “The Sacred and Profane Memories of Captain Charles Ryder.”

The book is a confession; a story of conversion. Perhaps not a perfect conversion, as the Charles Ryder we see in the opening pages is pretty taciturn, but the final proof of his at least partial reformation is in the last pages:

The chapel showed no ill-effects of its long neglect; the art-nouveau paint was as fresh as ever; the art-nouveau lamp burned once more before the altar. I said a prayer, an ancient, newly learned form of words, and left, turning towards the camp. . . .

Then:

Something quite remote from anything the builders intended has come out of their work, and out of the fierce little human tragedy in which I played; something none of us thought about at the time: a small red flame – a beaten-copper lamp of deplorable design, relit before the beaten-copper doors of a tabernacle; the flame which the old knights saw from their tombs, which they saw put out; that flame burns again for other soldiers, far from home, farther, in heart, than Acre or Jerusalem. It could not be been lit but for the builders and the tragedians, and there I found it this morning, burning anew among the old stones.

Charles Ryder will probably never find peace on earth; his experience has cut him deeply, and just how deeply it cut him, he is just beginning to realise, yet his – at least potential – reformation is underlined in the final line when he returns to the camp from the chapel:

“You’re looking unusually cheerful to-day,” said the second-in-command.