Brideshead Revisited (the Series) part two

Chapter 6 - Julia

This introduces Julia in more depth. We are now post Oxford and so post Waugh’s gay phase so naturally he moves on to a female love interest for Charles. Julia is clearly Mary Lygon but Evelyn and she were only ever friends.

Charles has returned to Paris and receives an unexpected visit from Rex. Rex has lost Seb and some money. He may have been taking him to the place in Zurich recommended for ‘drying out’. Charles can’t help but catch up on family gossip that interests him including that the Marchioness (Lady Marchmain) is sick, perhaps dying and remorseful concerning the parting fleas in the ear she had inflicted upon Charles. Charles remains fairly unmoved. This is the spring of 1925, Charles having first met Seb in 1922 according to Wikipedia’s entry on the serial adaptation.

The rest of this part of the chapter fills in the story of Julia, her travails with Rex and the unhappy state of affairs of belonging to a family with both the reduced circumstances of most such families in the offing and a social stain. The narrator of the novel (Charles) recalls that most of the news he relays here was reported to him ten years later in a storm on the Atlantic (of which more later). Rex apparently relayed some of the nature of the family’s financial issues but also his ongoing interest in marrying Julia regardless. The marriage occurred despite Rex having to convert in order to marry her, “Bridey’s bombshell” that Rex was still married (or at least if he was divorced his ex-wife was still living so that Catholic Canon law would make any marriage illegal unless that marriage could be annulled) and the Marchioness’s disapproval (but it had to be celebrated with a protestant rite as the annulment couldn’t happen, only Cordelia was willing to support it so it was celebrated without most of Julia’s prestigious if partly stained family in attendance (a great issue for Rex who sought social prestige) and it turned out a bit of a shambles in any case).

Chapter 7 - The Unseen Hook

This reflects upon grace. The heading refers to a quote about grace in one of the famous Father Brown novels the Marchioness had earlier read to her family at Brideshead. The hook in this case is bringing the narrator back to the Catholic family.

Charles was brought back to London by what he saw as a duty owed his nation by one of his class to help out during the General Strike of 1926. There he wanders the streets seeking an opportunity to do just that and bumps into ‘Boy’ who is able to give him one. He learns that the Marchioness is dying, being cared for by Julia and Cordelia and seeking a reconciliation with Charles. He also hears from Rex that the family is searching for Sebastian (this probably partly explains why the Marchioness wants to see Charles). After some work at the strike Charles dumps ‘Boy’ in the evening at a party when he meets Anthony Blanche there and goes off for some fun with his old frenemy (sometimes called Antoine on account of his murky ethnic origins and louche disposition). Antoine fills him in on the time he shared digs with Seb in Marseilles. There’s also talk of time spent in Athens and Constantinople (before ‘Boy’ discovers them again). After ‘Boy’ leaves again the discussion returns to Seb and his time in Tangiers. Antoine appears to believe he is now in “French Morocco” and now with a German hanger-on. 'Boy' returns having rung the fire alarm for a lark thus breaking up the party (as the brigade arrives).

The call comes from Julia and he arrives for an appointment at Marchers. He is greeted by Willcocks the servant and Julia (the Marchioness is too ill and frail for the reconciliation) and sent in search of Seb for the family (Samgrass is finally in disgrace – perhaps he was finally seen as surreptitiously colluding in or enabling Seb’s alleged offences) with the hope that he, too, can be fetched for a reconciliation with the Marchioness. The Wikipedia entry says that ‘Boy’ gives Charles the news of where Seb is (Fez). He travels to the British Consulate at Casablanca and from there is conducted to Fez’s “native town” where the consul believes him to be. He first meets the German at Seb’s house who directs him to the hospital/infirmary of San Sulpice. He finally discovers Seb there and learns he has 'the gripe'. He also learns the Marchioness has died while he and Seb are in Fez. Seb plans to stay put in Fez so Charles arranges with the family for him to have a regular allowance with further sums permitted to be drawn in proved emergencies. Seb is expelled from the hospital for smuggling in and consuming drinks thus sabotaging his treatment with his alcoholism so Charles finally leaves him back at home in the “native town” with his finances newly organised and with his German friend, Kurt, and their servant boy.

Chapter 8 - Brideshead Deserted

This reflects upon material dissolution. The dissolution and destruction of great houses is important to Waugh but here he wants to undermine its ultimate importance by finally contrasting it as the novel goes on with what is really important for him, spiritual resolution.

Charles returns to Marchers and reports to Bridey and Cordelia and receives a painting commission from Bridey. Cordelia apparently reminds Charles of Father Brown's unseen hook (of Catholicism and of the previous chapter) at this meeting. The hook actually refers to the catching of a thief by Father Brown but Cordelia links it to the hook of grace that she says she believes will bring Seb (and Julia) back to the church. Little does she know, apparently, that Charles, too, is on the hook.

Then there is a ten year gap. We learn that Charles has become a successful and exhibited painter of great houses (he had apparently begun his glittering career by painting four scenes from Marchers for Bridey as commissioned all those many years ago, as it had been about to be demolished to make way for flats – Rex had reserved a penthouse much to Cordelia’s disgust (which she had registered at that meeting ten years earlier)) and is now about to return from the New World (principally Mexico, I think) where he has been painting something completely different which he is hoping again to exhibit (in London).

He returns to a wife (and child with another on the way, I think) in New York. We learn also that his wife has been as much of a catch as Julia would have been (or even more so as she is also a beauty as well as a glittering society hostess with connections in the art world). She is also ‘Boy’s sister but she has been unfaithful and been caught. The marriage is unhappy and part of the real reason appears to be that the agnostic Charles is still in love with the Flytes (or is it that mysterious Catholicism?)

Estranged husband and wife Charles and Celia finally cross the Atlantic together on the usual means of crossing in those times – a fine ocean liner. By chance (or is it? Doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo to the tune of the Twilight Zone theme), Julia is a fellow passenger.

Chapter 9 - Orphans of the Storm

This returns us to the story of Julia and Charles (the orphans).

They met on the crossing and eventually spent many days together virtually alone as a major swell left the bulk of the passengers (including Celia) and perhaps a good portion of the crew bedridden on account of seasickness. They apparently finally have sex (or at least ‘made love’) on board. The hook is now thoroughly baited and we’re all at sea. Julia is still going on about her religion. They meet again in London and Charles has his exhibition there. He also gets whisked off to a gay bar by Antoine where he has strips torn off his artistic enterprise. Among other things he calls Charles a ‘louche little boy’ (I think) which may have been a compliment coming from Antoine. Samgrass is also at the exhibition. Charles also discovers from Antoine that everybody knows about his affair with Julia and gathers from Celia that she certainly does. With that in mind he heads to Brideshead where the cuckold Rex awaits (with his wife (and Charles’s lover and partner in his Brideshead assignation) Julia).

Rex, Julia, Bridey and nanny now all live together at Brideshead and Seb’s whereabouts aren’t known to them. Cordy is away nursing (the model for Cordy also did a lot of this nursing on foreign shores lark though in different locales and also incidentally loved the hunt (as Cordy did in the series) – in the case of the model she was still Master of the Hounds for a hunt when she died in 2005 just a year before all hunting in England of the traditional sort was banned).

Chapter 10 - A Twitch Upon the Thread

Here there is more on grace and yet again this refers to the quote from the Father Brown story related by the Marchioness all those years before. The twitch is ‘upon the thread’ of the aforementioned baited Catholic hook. It’s interesting that he makes the least likable character the most pious and also meaningful for the story considering that he became quite pious himself before writing this novel just before WWII that he wanted to serve as a Christian apologetic of a kind. I guess this just serves as a reminder that all humans are faulty (perhaps especially the pious ones). He was often regarded as an unpleasant person himself in his later years. He also knew this however and often asked people to imagine how much worse he would be if he wasn’t a Catholic (or perhaps if he wasn’t as pious).

Divorces are apparently amicably coming through after a couple of years and marriage seems possible for the two heathens. This episode is all about the fountain and it’s quite farcical. One minute at the fountain they are lovers discussing the magic of their affair and longing to be wed (secularly, naturally), the next they are inside and a ‘bloody insensitive’ remark by Bridey in the circumstances at dinner (per Charles – about them living in sin and hence that Bridey’s middle class fiancée Mrs Muspratt would be uncomfortable staying under the same roof as them in response to a suggestion by Julia that she come to Brideshead) stirs up Julia’s lapsed Catholic guilt so badly that she goes into hysterics and finally lashes out at Charles (back at the fountain again). Charles even remarks in the dialogue about the dramatic and farcical nature of the continual fountain scenes (there’s one final one) and that doesn’t go down especially well with Julia either. Julia’s baited hook is certainly being twitched but is it pulling Charles along with her? Not a bit of it! Not yet at any rate. Waugh wants to make them all suffer some more. They fight some more and make up some more but it’s a bloody business. Charles escapes back to Bayswater (Evelyn also as needed often escaped back to his father’s home from the rest of his life (and in his case also his mother’s – Charles’s mother had died but Evelyn's hadn't died so early)).

Then there are episodes of billiards being played with ‘Boy’ (his ex-wife’s brother) and time with Rex shooting the breeze discussing life before we return to the important stuff of Charles getting news of Seb from Cordy, who he hasn’t seen for twelve years and is newly returned from her ministrations in Civil War Spain. Cordy and Charles also visit nanny. Seb is apparently in Tunis and getting into absinthe. He’d lost Kurt in Greece and followed him to Germany before finally losing him again to a concentration camp and suicide.

Chapter 11 - Brideshead Revisited

This is the culminating chapter meditating on the results of grace, the responsibilities of grace and the return to Eden (not a material but a spiritual return).

It’s all very to the point but yet it’s drawn out because it’s about the death and final reconciliation with God of a sinner, Lord Marchmain. He has finally returned to England (with Cara, his mistress) now that his wife is dead and war is almost upon Europe and he is dying himself. He makes the sign of the cross (his very last ever gesture) when being given the last rites that killed him and everybody including Charles appears to be very impressed. Clearly Charles now understands why Julia needs to give marriage with him up (the very thing she most wants) for her God. Waugh’s own actual conversion apparently owed something to witnessing something very like this scene of a man irreligious in life returning to Roman Catholicism at the very last possible time in his life.

Finally we are returned again to the wartime re-acquaintance of Charles as a soldier with Brideshead and a final act of conversion in the chapel, now no longer a family chapel but a chapel being used by soldiers. Nanny is still there and Julia has been made the mistress of the house by her father but is away along with Cordy helping in the war effort. Sebastian has probably also died and Bridey and Mrs Muspratt are, of course, elsewhere too (either due to the war or Mrs Muspratt’s middle class sensibilities). Madresfield Court was never used by the army as it was being held in reserve should the princesses Elizabeth and Margaret be required to depart London due to the blitz (or occupation, perhaps).

So why is it a great novel? Because it was able to turn an autobiographical novel into a specious argument for Christianity while bring so many issues of the time into fine relief.

Brideshead Revisited (the Series) part one

So that's China from me. Now I realise I'm two short of 200 posts so I'll fill in two posts just for the sake of getting to that (200) milestone. This one is notes I've made on why this series (based on a great novel) is such a masterpiece. Many of the notes are inspired by a great literary biography of Evelyn Waugh, Mad World, which has that novel at its centre.

The novel was subtitled “The Sacred and Profane Memories of Captain Charles Ryder” and that dualism of the sacred and profane is at the heart of the novel and the series. Waugh evidently wants his reader to prefer what is sacred while at the same time he never denies the pull of the profane. So here are the notes over two posts (divided according to the divisions in the series that from memory somewhat correspond with the chapters in the novel).

Chapter 1 - Et in Arcadia Ego

This heading (combined with the main heading) sets up the story as a history of an exit from (and then return to) some Eden.

Charles Ryder is in the army during WWII when he is stationed at a great house called Brideshead. Memories of his first visits there and his time at Oxford in the 1920s come flooding back. He had met the younger son (Sebastian Flyte) of the owner of Brideshead at Oxford. Flyte had in turn introduced him to the aesthete movement there (after he had already been there for at least a term mixing with a rather dour and dryly intellectual crowd) and eventually gone on to visit the house.

(Much more can be said concerning how Seb (my abbreviation only) and his group debauched Charles and the parallel with Evelyn’s own Oxford life and his several years in the thrall with the Lygon boys (Hugh, in particular, was the model for Sebastian – his older brother in the novel was clearly based somewhat on Hugh’s older brother) and their mostly old Etonian aesthete crowd (including two especial models for the (in)famous Anthony Blanche). I’ll just say here that the novel begins to reveal that there are two competing visions of Eden: a material aesthetic one and a spiritual one of material self-denial delivered by grace that requires a material death of a kind and that he is yet to understand.)

The first visit was to ‘nanny’ in an otherwise virtually empty house (except for a few servants, I presume). Contrasted with this new glamour for Charles is life upon his return to stay with his middle class father in Bayswater, London. After Sebastian injures himself during the vacation he calls on Charles who comes running back to the beautiful old house. There he meets Seb’s sister Julia (clearly based on Mary Lygon) for the first time and spends the summer aiding Seb in his recuperation. Nothing of the kind of these events ever happened between Hugh Lygon and Evelyn while Hugh was at Oxford with Waugh – Waugh was an Oxford pal only and never deemed suited to visit the great house in those years.

Chapter 2 - Home and Abroad

This is a rather innocuous heading but the abroad part (while still bearing a glamour for Charles) is also an indicator of exile. The main character turns out to be not Sebastian but actually the whole Marchmain family. The head of the family is in actual exile in Venice (based on the actual exile from England of the Lygon patriarch, Earl Beauchamp). He is the main character theologically speaking in this unashamedly theological novel so to note that there is a sort of masked exile here is to recognise the final theological point being made. More on that as the commentary proceeds.

This chapter further draws us in to notice the material nature of the aesthetic idyll of great houses and Oxford friendships and aestheticism by means of that summer at Brideshead with Seb and Julia. Charles also meet the older brother known only as Bridey in the novel (presumably his courtesy title as heir to the Marquis Marchmain was a lesser title that would have seen him referred to formally as Lord Brideshead – Hugh’s older brother also went by Lord Elmley for similar reasons although his father was an earl rather than a marquis) and a younger sister, the adorable and pious Cordelia (also based on an equally adorable younger Lygon sister), and the staff. Incidentally the family is Roman Catholic and ultimately inspired Charles’s conversion late in the novel but the family they were based on were Anglo-Catholic – Waugh himself became RC via a different route than this family albeit that he came to be as close with them as Charles came to be with the Flytes.

The visit with Seb’s dad Lord Marchmain in Venice and his mistress reveals more of the life of the aesthete and more great architecture and art (Charles is an aspiring (and putatively atheist) painter just as Evelyn too was an aspiring (literary) artist (but more likely agnostic in his early years)). The real Lord Beauchamp (father of the Lygons and the model for Marchmain, father of the Flytes) was apparently more interested in rent-boy gondoliers and servants rather than mistresses and ranged around Europe frequently summering in Australia but he truly was in exile from England between the wars (for the very reason of his sexual preferences).

Charles then drops off Seb at the family’s London townhouse Marchmain House (that they call Marchers just as the Flyte family called their London townhouse Halkyn House Halkers) and spent the final days before term commenced back at Bayswater with his own dad. Incidentally the main Flyte house that Evelyn came to know (besides Halkyn) was in Worcestershire and was called Madresfield Court (known to the family as Mad) but they also stayed annually (when he lived in England) at Walmer Castle at Deal in Kent that Earl Beauchamp also possessed in his capacity as Lord Warden and Admiral of the Cinque Ports from 1913 as his ceremonial duties dictated.

Chapter 3 - The Bleak Light of Day

Here we are back to reflecting upon the Eden of Oxford and its aestheticism juxtaposed against the reality beyond (taught to us now via Sebastian).

Seb is now being supervised at uni by Mr Samgrass, a ‘tame Don’ of Seb’s mother (due to alleged irregular performance of various kinds). Evelyn also had several models of such Dons to choose from. We thus learn that his mother likes a little bit of meddling (but isn't that a bit like God).

This may not have happened to Hugh Lygon but again the characters of the real and fictional mothers are eerily similar. Both were extremely pious and both were in the end in conflict with their spouses (and most of their children mainly because of the conflict with their spouses and their piety) but not their own natal families. According to Wikipedia, Charles also gets a visit from Lady Marchmain to implore him to be a good influence upon her son (and perhaps judge whether she might be able to enlist him in a little bit of spying for her, too).

We also meet Rex, a suitor of Julia’s who later becomes a minister in the wartime government, when he and Julia visit Seb and Charles at Oxford. A minister friend of Evelyn’s is a good model for Rex. Julia is to be in town for her ‘coming out’ (hosted by her mother at Marchers) and invites the boys with hilarious results. After leaving Marchers, deciding to skip the respectable coming out ball before it has really begun and attending a somewhat seedy nightclub (Ma Mayfield’s ‘Old Hundredth’ at 100 Sink Street – apparently there is no such address but there certainly were somewhat seedy nightclubs popular with ‘gentlemen’ in 1920s Soho in London) with ‘Boy’ Mulcaster (Lord Mulcaster to us, an Eton contemporary of Seb’s – Evelyn would have come into contact with any number of models for ‘Boy’), the boys drive drunk in search of another club, cause some damage and get arrested.

Rex is called and does well at smoothing things over with the police (while ‘Boy’ seems to be doing his best to have the opposite effect) but as Seb was driving he gets into the most trouble and it becomes big news. Samgrass assists in court as a character witness at the same time gaining himself some leverage over the family (and over Seb). I guess you could say Rex was playing a similar game giving himself a shot with Julia. The judge accepts the Don’s disingenuous suggestion that Seb is ‘unused to wine’ and is quite lenient. The audience of course is in on the fairly open secret among those in the know that Seb is well used to wine (as he and other Eton/Oxford aesthetes are also well known to be ‘used to wine’ (along with other 'pleasures')).

Charles and Rex (I think) get invites to the Christmas hunt and both attend (I’m sure at least Charles did). Back at Oxford later, life is bleaker still for Seb as he now has more supervision than ever from Samgrass (now along with senior local RC clergy, I think) and he begins drinking sullenly for the first time. His idyll is over and Charles appears worried that the supervision is the main problem.

Chapter 4 - Sebastian Against the World

More stress upon the reality beyond here.

At Easter at Brideshead Charles notices for the first time that Seb has been drinking alone a lot and is becoming an abusive drunk. Cordy (Cordelia – my abbreviation) notices too and childishly dobs to Lady Marchmain who we see at home here for the first time. The Marchioness represents the world beyond aestheticism, I guess. Most of the family go off to the chapel to pray (leaving Charles, Julia and Seb). Seb apologises to Charles for having abused him but it appears to Charles that he had better skedaddle off to Bayswater which he soon does (with a biography of Lady Marchmain’s brother Ned signed by Lady Marchmain – this kind of thing eats away at Seb making him think Charles might be becoming a spy for Lady Marchmain but Charles assures him that won’t happen).

Back at Oxford the boys are hoping for ‘digs’ of their own on Merton Street but Seb fears he may end up being forced to live with Monsignor Bell. Another Seb accident after a visit from ‘mummy’ seals the deal for his mother (and possibly Oxford authorities) and Seb chooses to go down rather than face the choice of being sent down or living with the Bellmeister.

Oxford in those times for Seb’s class wasn’t always really about getting a degree and then going on to any specially demanding profession – it was about growing up a bit with a bit of distance from one’s family. Younger sons didn’t really have the prospect of being able to run a manor but they didn’t really have to worry too much about earning a crust either. They could be supported from their older brother’s family estate, I guess. In this regard, Evelyn would also have encountered a fair few models for Sebastian.

Charles returns to Bayswater following a lonely term without Seb going down from Oxford himself and on to an art school in Paris (Waugh also went down although he may have graduated first (with a ‘3^rd’, I think)). He didn’t see Seb for a year but he reads in a letter from Lady Marchmain that he’s gone to West Asia under the supervision of Samgrass.

Chapter 5 - A Blow Upon a Bruise

This is a meditation upon the 'joys' of friendship when the love is tested.

Charles returns to Brideshead having been invited to New Year’s celebrations and Seb is back from the Levant with the ‘grass. Samgrass can’t produce any pictures with Seb in them claiming he was always holding the camera. It’s clear to Charles and probably others that Seb has escaped from Samgrass’s supervision at various times to go off on binges.

In discussions of Seb’s ongoing issues, Rex proposes he be sent to a successful sanatorium or doctor he knows of in Zurich that treats alcoholism (and interestingly, for some interpreters of the novel, sexual issues, since the model father and son for the father and son having most problems in the novel were apparently both what we would now call gay or at least apparently predominantly of that persuasion).

There is something of a dramatic scene for Charles at the house during which Lady Marchmain sends Charles away with some resounding fleas in his ear after learning he had given Seb drinking money while on the hunt and thus away from close supervision (along the lines of asking what did the family ever do to make him hate them so and that he and/or his actions were ‘callously wicked’ and ‘wantonly cruel’). He presumably expects never to return to that house or have anything further to do with that family (that isn’t to be the case, however, as we shall soon see).

Lady Marchmain later sends a letter of apology (I think) that fails to move Charles.