Brideshead Revisited

Jacket of the first UK edition of Brideshead Revisited

Brideshead Revisited, the Sacred and Profane Memories of Capt. Charles Ryder is a novel by 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 magazine includes Brideshead Revisited in its list of "All-time 100 Novels." And in his letters, Waugh himself refers to the novel a number of times as his "magnum opus", but writes to Graham Greene in 1950, saying "I re-read Brideshead Revisited and was appalled." In Fathers and Sons (2004), 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 enthused 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 has become well-known to modern audiences as a result of the ITV drama serialisation of 1981, produced by Granada Television.

Plot summary

Template:Spoiler After an unpleasant chance first encounter, protagonist and narrator Charles Ryder, a student at an unnamed college (though critics have suggested Waugh used Hertford College as his model) at Oxford University, and Lord Sebastian Flyte, an undergraduate at Christ Church, the younger son of an aristocratic family, become friends. Sebastian takes Charles to the palatial home of his family, Brideshead Castle, where Charles eventually meets the rest of the Flyte family, including Sebastian's sister, Lady Julia Flyte.

Charles returns home during the vacation, where he lives with his father. Scenes between Charles and his (unnamed) father provide some of the best-known comic scenes in the novel. During the vacation he is called back to Brideshead when Sebastian pretends to be unwell. Sebastian and Charles spend the remainder of the summer together.

Sebastian's family is Catholic. 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." 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. Charles plans to divorce his own wife so he and Julia can marry, until Julia, motivated by a comment by her brother and by her father's deathbed return to the faith, decides that she can no longer live in sin, and indeed 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 a 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.

Themes 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. 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 sermonizing. 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 scrutinizes his secular values, which are tacitly portrayed to fall short to the deeper humanity and spirituality of the Catholic faith.

The Catholic themes of grace and reconciliation are pervasive in the book. Most of the major characters undergo a conversion, in some way or another. Lord Marchmain, who lived as an adulterer, reconciles with the Church in 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 service in the hospital bunks of the Spanish Civil War. Most significant is Charles's 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.

Aside from Grace and Reconciliation, other Catholic themes in the book are the Communion of Saints, Faith and Vocation.

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 Teresa 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."

The nature of the relationship between Charles and Sebastian

The precise nature of 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 which 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 homesexual acts per se.

Television adaptation in 1981

The book was adapted for television by John Mortimer, directed by Charles Sturridge (part of one or more episodes by Michael Lindsay-Hogg), and starred Jeremy Irons as Charles Ryder, Anthony Andrews as Lord Sebastian Flyte, Laurence Olivier as Lord Marchmain, Claire Bloom as Lady Marchmain, Diana Quick as Lady Julia Flyte; also featuring Phoebe Nicholls as Lady Cordelia Flyte, John Gielgud as Edward Ryder, Simon Jones as Lord Brideshead, Nickolas Grace as Anthony Blanche, Stéphane Audran as Cara, Lord Marchmain's lover, and Charles Keating as Rex Mottram.

The Oxford scenes were largely filmed at Hertford (where Waugh studied), Wadham and Christ Church Colleges. The location for Brideshead was Castle Howard in Yorkshire. Scenes on the deck of a transatlantic liner were filmed aboard the QE2. By the standards of British Television drama series of the late 1970s the production was lavish; Granada Television's broadcasting franchise was up for competitive renewal in 1981 so the company designed Brideshead Revisted to prove themselves as a quality company.

It was shown in the US on PBS. In 1974 Irons and Andrews had appeared, with Nicholls' sister Kate, as college friends in the last few episodes of the BBC's serialisation of Anthony Trollope's Palliser novels. The memorable theme with a high baroque trumpet was composed by Geoffrey Burgon.

In a list of the 100 Greatest British Television Programmes drawn up by the British Film Institute in 2000, voted for by industry professionals, the adaptation was placed 10th.

Trivia

• "Et in Arcadia ego", the title of the first part of the novel, is a Latin phrase which means "I am found even in Arcadia". In the novel, while at Oxford, Ryder purchases a skull with the motto on it.
• Many of the principals in Brideshead are considered by some people to be derived from notable characters in British society during the period entre deux guerres. These include:
  • Alexander Flyte, Marquis of Marchmain: William Lygon, 7th Earl Beauchamp
  • Anthony Blanche: reported variously as either Anthony Blunt or Sir Harold Acton (or Brian Howard)

Pop culture references

• On Frasier, when Frasier was trying to tell a coworker obsessed with Star Trek that it's not real and "just a TV show", the co-worker retorted "So was Brideshead Revisited."
• In Dear Wendy, the Dandies congratulate one another with what they refer to as a "Brideshead stutter."

Unauthorised sequel

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.

External links

• 1945 New York Times Book Review on Brideshead Revisited
• A Companion to Brideshead Revisited (adapted for both book and serialisation)
• Downloadable audio about Brideshead Revisited and Evelyn Waugh from EWTN
• Brideshead Revisited at IMDb — 1981 mini-series
• Brideshead Revisited at IMDb — 2008 movie adaptation
• Brideshead Revisited at About Gay Movies Synopsis, gay theme, review, quotes, pictures and more.
• Article Regarding Waugh and Hollywood
• Encyclopedia of Television
• British Film Institute Screen Online