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.
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.
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