“Brideshead Revisited: The Sacred and Profane Memories of Captain Charles Ryder”, by Evelyn Waugh

276 pages, Folio Society

Like, perhaps, most of the people who have ever heard of Brideshead Revisited these days, I first became acquainted with Evelyn Waugh’s tale through the 1981 miniseries based on the novel, starring a young Jeremy Irons. Many moons later, I acquired a copy of the book from the Folio Society and began to read it immediately - only to put it down almost as quickly for reasons I don’t remember (that was twenty years ago; I know this because, upon reopening the book I found one of my old business cards from Saffron Billiards - “The Ultimate Gameroom Store” - that went belly-up in 2000).

This book has long been acclaimed as Waugh’s most intimate and personal work, with several of the characters being identified as one real life person or other: Charles Ryder is, of course, Evelyn Waugh himself; Sebastian Flyte was (its been said) based on a composite of (principally) Brian Howard - the English poet and writer for the New Statesman - and (secondly) Hugh Lygon - a younger son of the Earl Beauchamp (the openly homosexual Anthony Blanch can also be said to be an amalgamation of these two Bright Young Things); while the others to be found - Lord and Lady Marchmain, Julia Flyte, Cordelia Flyte, Boy Mulcaster; Mr. Samgrass, Rex Mottram and so on - have created an everlasting game amongst Bridesheadophiles as to whom was inspired by whom (yes, yes, yes, I know, I know: “I am not I: thou art not he or she: they are not they”. Sod off.). I, however, have better things to talk about.

Such as the relationship between Charles and Sebastian: were they the best of friends or gay lovers? This has proven to be a vexing question, especially in light of today’s obsession with Identity Politics, but I don’t think it’s controversial at all. While Sebastian may very well have been gay - especially in light of his later “relationship” with Kurt - Charles was not, especially in light of his later relationship with Julia. Furthermore, the secret to Charles and Sebastian’s friendship was discovered and defined by Cara, Lord Marchmain’s Italian mistress: “I know of these romantic friendships of the English and the Germans…I think they are very good if they do not go on too long…It is a kind of love that comes to children before they know its meaning. In England it comes when you are almost men; I think I like that. It is better to have that kind of love for another boy than for a girl”.

According to this, Charles and Sebastian were in love, but it was a love of the heart and of the mind, not of the body. Even of the spirit. This concept is nothing new, being in line with the Victorian and Edwardian notions of platonically romantic male friendships (for context, think Pip and Herbert Pocket from Great Expectations, Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson from the Sherlock Holmes mysteries, or even Ratty and Mole from The Wind in the Willows; all are the best of friends; none are sleeping together). But I should also think that the answer given by the author himself, in a 1947 memorandum to American studios over negotiations to bring Brideshead to the silver screen, should put paid to any discussion: “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”.

It is, I believe, one of the myriad consequences of the Sexual Revolution that states that all modern relationships must be reduced to sex; Charles and Sebastian cannot be just friends, cannot take joy and satisfaction from one another’s company, cannot seek comfort with each other’s minds and interests. They must also be sleeping together. Platonic male friendships just do not exist; there must also be a physical element involved. This says much more about our modern day prurient interests than it does about Brideshead. That Charles marries and has children, and ultimately sets his sights on Sebastian’s sister Julia - for all of her similarities to Sebastian - would seem to put paid any thought of his being gay. Indeed, Charles recognizes this himself when he says that “it was Julia I had known in him [Sebastian], in those distant Arcadian days”.

The other significant theme of the book is Catholicism, as shouldn’t be a mystery, seeing as Waugh converted in 1930 after the failure of his first marriage, a full fifteen years before the publication of Brideshead. We, the readers, are brought by the author through the medium of his stand-in Ryder to the very Catholic themes of divine grace and reconciliation with God and His purpose; indeed, most of the major characters are seen undergoing personal conversions throughout the book: Lord Marchmain, the Anglican convert who abandons his wife and family to live adulterously with his mistress, is ultimately reconciled with the Church (though only on his deathbed); Julia, whose invalid marriage to Rex Mottram all but drove her from the Church, likewise returns to the fold and, in so doing, sacrifices her love for Charles; even Sebastian, who lived as un-Catholic a life as one could imagine, finally ends up serving at a monastery while also seeking to battle his alcoholism.

But of course it is the agnostic Charles’ conversion that really cements Waugh’s work, when he kneels at Lord Marchmain’s deathbed and fervently prays for the dying man to give a sign of his acceptance of God’s forgiveness, or later when he kneels before the tabernacle in the Brideshead chapel and says “an ancient, newly learned form of words” (a prayer, thus implying recent instruction in the catechism). Another quote from the book (itself a quote from G.K. Chesterton’s Father Brown mystery The Queer Feet) perhaps sums it up best: “I caught him, with an unseen hook and an invisible line which is long enough to let him wander to the ends of the world, and still to bring him back with a twitch upon the thread”, a quotation used twice in the book, cementing its importance to Waugh. This, then, illustrates the Catholic concept of Divine Grace and Freewill intermingling at the moment of conversion.

A final theme is reverence for Old England, epitomized by the family Flyte and its grand country house, Brideshead, which has “the atmosphere of a better age”, or, more cynically (to say nothing of tragically), the referencing Lady Marchmain’s three brothers, each of whom was killed in the Great War: “These men must die to make a world for Hooper [Charles’ bumbling underling]; they were the aborigines, vermin by right of law, to be shot off at leisure so that things might be safe for the traveling salesman, with his polygonal pince-nez, his fat wet hand-shake, his grinning dentures”. Not surprising when you consider that Waugh has long been seen as a hanger-on to the aristocracy, a middle-class parvenu who sought entry into that glittering world of privilege and prestige.

There is one widely quoted passage which, I believe, signifies his longing for the status he sees the Flytes and the rest of the English gentry occupying: “But I was in search of love in those days, and I went full of curiosity and the faint, unrecognized apprehension that here, at last, I should find that low door in the wall, which others, I knew, had found before me, which opened on an enclosed and enchanted garden, which was somewhere, not overlooked by any window, in the heart of that grey city”. Most see this quote imply Charles’ entering the world of homosexuality, but consider this other quote, when Charles leaves Brideshead for what he thinks is the last time: “A door had shut, the low door in the wall I had sought and found in Oxford; open it now and I should find no enchanted garden”. From this we see that “love” meant “acceptance”, into another, better world, or class, or “enchanted garden”.

With all of this said, according to Waugh himself, the central theme of Brideshead Revisited is “the operation of divine grace on a group of diverse but closely connected characters”, and so perhaps we should accept this as what this most intimate of books is really about. When I finished reading Brideshead, I felt a kind of melancholy, just like what I felt when I watched the brilliant miniseries; a sadness that these otherwise blessed and privileged people were unable to find happiness and fulfillment, in spite of their many natural and inherited gifts. A sad commentary on the human condition, but a necessary one.

“Great Battles of World War II”, by John MacDonald, forward by General Sir John Hackett

 

192 pages, Chartwell Books, ISBN-13: 978-0785830979

 

Great Battles of World War II was first published in 1986 and was designed to take advantage of the then-novel advances in computer graphics, especially in regard to topography used in military-style games; indeed, as General Sir John Hackett points out in his introduction, a flat, two-dimensional map never tells the whole story when it comes to the challenges faced in particular battles. To this end, this book features illustrations that recreate these challenging environments, such as the steep, angular mountain of Monte Cassino, Italy, that Allied forces fought to capture for months in 1944. At Kursk, we see how German tanks went into battle in an axe-shaped Panzerkeil formation that maximized firing power instead of the speed favored in their earlier, better-known Blitzkrieg attacks. At Kohima, near the India-Myanmar border, British troops found their hilly redoubt shrinking against repeated Japanese attack, yet managed to hold on despite losing the highest ground, a fact clearly seen in the topographical map in this book. But the most notable technological devices employed in Great Battles may well be watercolors and paintbrush, as each battle comes with at least one, sometimes two, splashy illustrations of this kind showing forces in action at key moments. While no doubt compressed and somewhat romanticized (they look as exciting as they do brutal), the depictions (by Harry Clow, going by the credits) are the book’s key takeaway and do give you a sense for how the battles might have went down.

The narratives, meanwhile, are a bit lacking when it comes to nuances. We learn something about the friction among the British high command during the Battle of Britain, though its only glanced upon. The chapter on Arnhem concentrates almost exclusively on that battle between British paratroopers and German panzer forces, rather than the surrounding campaign, Operation Market-Garden. The book has a clear English focus (being a British publication), which I found tedious after a while: while the British did fight through more of the war than the Americans or even the Russians, and should be given all due credit for hanging on by their fingernails, it was the influx of millions of American troops and the overwhelming industrial might of the Americans which turned the tide in the West (in the East, the Russian steamroller – which slaughtered just as many Russians as it did Germans – was the true decisive factor). There is an impressive range of conflict contained in this book, everything from convoy attacks in the North Atlantic to the defense of Malta to the battle in the skies over England, not to mention land battles around Moscow, Guadalcanal, and El Alamein. Each chapter (some of which detail more than one battle) includes a solid textual overview explaining what happened and why it was important. Also, there are sidebars on key leaders; on the tanks, planes, or ships involved; and such fascinating secondary subjects, such as the layout of Hitler’s bunker during the final battle for Berlin, or how a British biplane managed to sink Germany’s greatest battleship.

“Sons of Heaven: A Portrait of the Japanese Monarchy”, by Jerrold M. Packard

 

400 pages, Scriber, ISBN-13: 978-0684186337

 

Y’know, when I read Farewell in Splendor: The Passing of Queen Victoria and Her Age by Jerrold M. Packard (reviewed on April 8th, 2020), I could have sworn I had heard that name before and, sure enough, I had: years ago I read Sons of Heaven: A Portrait of the Japanese Monarchy by the same author and thoroughly enjoyed it (so why its taken me this long to review it is beyond me; but anyway…) Sons of Heaven was published in 1987 when the Emperor Hirohito was still alive and reigning (damn, talk about longevity), and so some of what Packard wrote is naturally out of date, but everything up until that time is, so far as I can tell, relevant and accurate.
 

According to legend, the unbroken line of Japanese Emperors was founded by Amaterasu, the goddess of the sun and the universe, and has reigned for over 2000 years and sired 124 rulers at the time of writing (thus, in this context, the matronymic “son of heaven” is more than appropriate). However, these sovereigns of Japan never really served as chiefs of state who set policy and demanded its execution, unlike their contemporaries across the Sea of Japan or elsewhere in the world; rather, their principle role was in embodying the Empire’s religious and temporal aspirations and linking the Japanese people to their ancient heritage. They reigned rather than ruled and served as a kind of living beacon for their people, above politics and virtually god-like themselves. Good work if you can get it.
 

But it wasn’t necessarily good to be the Emperor - this cypher to whom all loyal subjects swore fidelity - as they were more often than not simply trapped within the grandest of all gilded cages, especially during the period of the Tokugawa Shogunate (1600-1868). Rampant xenophobia kept the country a caste-ridden society that shut itself off from the outside world (well, not according to David Abulafia in The Boundless Sea, reviewed on May 23rd, 2020, but that isn’t Packard’s take) until, during the era of the Meiji Restoration (1868-1912), reforms initiated by the Emperor Meiji transformed Japan into a modern industrial power during the latter years of the 19th Century. But a modern-day shogunate came to the fore in the form of militarism, the purveyors of which set Japan on a disastrous course that ended in atomic holocaust.
 

Packard dispenses culture and erudition over the entirety of Sons of Heaven, charting the history of the world’s longest reigning monarchy in a mere 400 pages or so. Naturally, such a brief overview can only scratch the surface of the lives of the Emperors of Japan, but anything to shine the light of day upon these shadowy enigmas of the past and bring them forth is a good thing. Packard has essentially produced a primer on Japanese history, and I now know that I really have to find a better, more detailed take on this most perplexing and fascinating people.

“The Romanov Sisters: The Lost Lives of the Daughters of Nicholas and Alexandra”, by Helen Rappaport

544 pages, St. Martin’s Griffin, ISBN-13: 978-1250067456

I first became aware of the Romanov Sisters – Ольга (Olga Nikolaevna Romanova); Татьяна (Tatiana Nikolaevna Romanova); Мария (Maria Nikolaevna Romanova); and Анастасия (Anastasia Nikolaevna Romanova); “OTMA” as the sisters referred to themselves – when I read Nicholas and Alexandra: In Intimate Account of the Last of the Romanovs and the Fall of Imperial Russia by Robert K. Massie (reviewed on February 6th, 2012) way back in high school. I can still remember the feeling of horror, of tragedy, of black despair I felt when I read that these four beautiful, accomplished and, yes, privileged girls (along with their parents, little brother and a few doomed servants) were cut down by the mad-dog Reds, because they were such a threat to the New Order the Commies were going to build. Bastards.

So when I saw this book by Helen Rappaport, The Romanov Sisters: The Lost Lives of the Daughters of Nicholas and Alexandra – and when I remembered her excellent Caught in the Revolution: Petrograd, Russia, 1917 – A World on the Edge (reviewed on April 24th, 2018) I knew I had to have it, even at the risk of dredging up old, dark emotions. I reviewed Faust’s Metropolis: A History of Berlin by Alexandra Richie on December 5th, 2017, and mentioned that it was “not so much a history of the city of Berlin as a history of Germany from a Berliner’s (or Berlinerin’s) perspective” (this is the second time I’ve recycled this quote). I mention this as certain stretches of The Romanov Sisters felt more like the history of the fall of Tsarist Russia and less like a quadruple biography of the four Grand Duchesses. However, as the book continued and the author got into her groove, these four young women – and their brother Алексе́й (Alexei Nikolaevich Romanov, Tsarevich of Russia) – began to come back to life, as more and more evidence of their personalities came to light and was recorded for all the world to see.

Apart from the dread weight of knowing the Romanov’s ultimate fates while researching her book, it became obvious that Rappaport was often stymied by some unfortunate realities. Firstly, Russia, since the Reign of Paul I (1754-1801), was under Salic Law, which excluded women from inheriting the Russian throne; thus, upon his birth on August 12th, 1904, Alexei automatically took precedence over his older sisters. Not that Nicholas and Alexandra didn’t love their daughters any less (some of Nicholas’ surviving comments on the birth of various daughters are achingly beautiful), but in dynastic terms, all eyes were on Alexei. Secondly, during the Victorian era, there were more strictures on the acceptable roles and presentation of young women, and, thus, while we have much in the way of white dresses and masses of hair, there is little about their opinions or options for life. Thirdly, the Grand Duchesses, due to the fears of terrorist attacks on the family, were sheltered to an extraordinary degree, even for young women of the era, and so any sighting of them was rare. Lastly, after the Revolution of 1918, while a great deal of information was saved, so much about their lives was lost, from letters, to diaries, to the people who knew them first hand (indeed, it was delightfully surprising to learn the number of correspondents the sisters had beyond the family, and the frequency with which they wrote to these friends).

In her introduction to The Romanov Sisters, Rappaport mentions that she “had to make a very clear decision about where my story was going to end, having already written about the Romanovs” in 2008; thus, we are, mercifully, spared the family’s final horrific final moments. And I, for one, was glad, as I am all too familiar with their doom. Instead, I was left with a vision of four young women, cut down before their lives truly began; their haunted younger brother; and their docile though out-of-their-depths parents. While I have no qualms about the downfall of the Tsars, and however much I may wish that a democratic republic had been established upon the ashes of that decrepit system, I also wish that Nicholas, Alexandra, Olga, Tatiana, Maria, Anastasia and Alexei had been allowed to leave Russia and live out their lives on a farm in England, like they wanted to after their overthrow.

“Black Flags, Blue Waters: The Epic History of America’s Most Notorious Pirates”, by Eric Jay Dolin

416 pages, Liveright, ISBN-13: 978-1631496226

When one thinks of the American Colonies pre-1776, what does one think of? If “Vicious Treacherous Bloodthirsty Reprehensible Piracy” does not top your list well then, brother, you’ve got a wee bit of enlightenment coming your way, for as Eric Jay Dolin recounts in Black Flags, Blue Waters: The Epic History of America’s Most Notorious Pirates, Yanks were as enthusiastic about piracy as we were about freedom, tobacco and not paying taxes to an unjust and far off parliament. If you’re anything like me, then your knowledge of pirates is principally based on movies and novels (I think Disney and their Pirates of the Caribbean movies - and before that Robert Louis Stevenson and Treasure Island - ill-prepared me for the real-life stories of these usually despicable men). I knew very little about the Real Story of (American) piracy and its role in shaping Colonial America, but, Dolin has written a fascinating history of the rise and fall of the Yankee Pirate Complex, with a focus on its (sometimes colorful, ofttimes awful) participants. You, Dear Reader, will learn about the unglamorous, violent, terrifying but often lucrative realities of the lives of those who were involved in this (it turns out) very American trade during the late 17th and early 18th Centuries.

Perhaps what I appreciated most about Dolin’s work was his investigation into the “whys” of piracy as much as the “hows”, such as the (never-ending) attempts by the Colonists to get around England’s restrictive mercantile system which taxed and stifled native prosperity and industry; the would-be victims who had no vested interest in defending themselves against a black-flagged pirate ship raising the blood-red (read: “no quarter”) flag; and revenge by abused seamen against cruel captains (said cruelty sometimes being real but just as often imagined). For a time American pirates were quite successful: the colonies served often as home-bases out from which the pirates sailed to plunder Spanish ships in the Caribbean or Muslim ships in the Indian Ocean (that’s right; Yankee vessels reached all the way to India to practice their bloody trade). The pirates would then come home and share their treasure with their hard-money-starved communities through lavish spending and gifts, thus explaining why these supposedly-loyal subject of the Crown of England tolerated these nefarious goings-on (indeed, in the words of William Merritt, Mayor of New York from 1695 to 1698, “Pirates had been civil to him, and that the money they brought with them was an advantage to the country”).

Dolin, then, goes far in debunking the myths and legends surrounding some of America’s most (in)famous pirates and tells the real tales behind these men, proving once again that the most fascinating and eye-opening tales ever told are Ten Thousand times more interesting than the fantastical stories made up by storytellers of their day or ours. So avast ye landlubber, if’n ye no wanna dance the hempen jig nor seem a scallywag to an Old Salt, blimey ye better fetch and meter Black Flags, Blue Waters or ye’ll feed the fish in Davy Jones’ Locker. Arg.

“Hitler’s Banker: Hjalmar Horace Greeley Schacht”, by John Weitz

361 pages, Little Brown & Co., ISBN-13: 978-0316929165

Hitler’s Banker: Hjalmar Horace Greeley Schacht by John Weitz is the tale of Hjalmar Schacht, a Frisian German who stopped the German hyper-inflation of the 1920s and became a prominent financier of the 1930s; his actions also resulted in funding the rise of the Third Reich and the armaments industry. Whoops. Weitz is from a German Jewish background and tries to review Schacht’s actions both as a banker and politician. While Schacht was instrumental in helping fund the Nazi political machine, he didn’t belong to the party and broke with Hitler prior to the war. The Federal Republic sought to imprison him for what he did when he was Finance Minister and head of the German Bank, but he was acquitted by the Allies at Nuremburg and lived a quiet existence after the war. After reading this book, one can detect how arrogant Schacht was: he was probably not a pleasant person to be around and was one of those people who think they know everything and seek to tell you how intelligent they are (we all know at one of those, don’t we?).

While I, for one, don’t think it was unjustified to prosecute him after the war, because he was, after all, responsible for (eventually) funding the Third Reich. His actions didn’t immediately cause the deaths of millions, even if his policies led to the Third Reich being financially solvent during rearmament. Overall, Hitler’s Banker is a surprisingly even-handed treatment of the controversial banker who helped ease Hitler’s rise to power and then fell out of favor and landed up in a concentration camp. It’s too easy to demonize everyone associated with Hitler and tougher to show how someone like Schacht could see how Hitler could help a devastated Germany after Versailles and the great inflation but not recognize his inherent evil. Those who like a world of stark blacks and whites may not like this book because it shows humanity in a portrait of grays.

“Chapterhouse: Dune”, by Frank Herbert

464 pages, Berkley Books, ISBN-13: 978-0425086537

Okay, folks, here we are: Chapterhouse: Dune and the end of the original Dune series (and the last that I will be reading/reviewing; I had begun reading the prequels, but as of this writing, there are now something like 15 books that Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson have written. No thank you very much indeed sirs). A direct follow-up to Heretics of Dune, the situation is desperate for the Bene Gesserit as they find themselves the targets of the Honored Matres, whose conquest of the Old Empire is almost complete. The Matres are seeking to assimilate the technology and developed methods of the Bene Gesserit and exterminate the Sisterhood itself. Now in command of the Bene Gesserit, Mother Superior Darwi Odrade continues to develop her drastic, secret plan to overcome the Honored Matres. The Bene Gesserit are also terraforming the planet Chapterhouse to accommodate the all-important sandworms, whose native planet Dune had been destroyed by the Matres. As with every other Dune book, there’s a lot going on with characters and plot and storylines and this and that and whatnot and…oh, and Jews in space. Well, why the hell not?

I felt like Chapterhouse was a return to the feel of the original trilogy in terms of verve and interest; I mean, there are characters that I really gave a damn about, after years of so-so people in the preceding couple of books. What I especially liked was the fact that the Bene Gesserit are finally shown to be – wait for it – HUMAN! For most of the series all the reader saw was a very manipulative religious sect that did whatever it could as long as it benefited the Bene Gesserit, who always came out on top; if it didn’t benefit humanity too then that was just too bad. Chapterhouse gives the Sisterhood a very human side as their new Mother Superior, Odrade, struggles against the time honored traditions and rules of the Bene Gesserit in her attempt to adapt them into the modern universe and, for once, saving humanity, as well. Oh, and in this book they sometimes screw up.

Herbert intended to follow this sixth book up with a seventh before his death – which eventually became Hunters of Dune and Sandworms of Dune in Brian Herbert’s and Keven J. Anderson’s hands – and so Chapterhouse ends with a cliffhanger; I said I was done with this series, but…well, we’ll see. For now, though, I look back on this series with warmth and awe: I mean, it has it all: Atreides vs. Harkonnens vs the Bene Gesserit vs the Spacing Guild vs the Fremen…these factions comprise a fascinating opera of competing interests, all focused on a planet that houses the Spice. Maybe Herbert and Anderson deserve credit for keeping the crazy train running, after all.