Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh, Post 3

This is the third post on Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited.

You can find Post #1 here.  

Post #2 here.  

 

Book 2, Chapter 1

Part 1: Samgrass and Sebastian have returned from the Levant and after Christmas Samgrass provides the family a projection presentation of the photographs.  In time it is revealed that Sebastian escaped Samgrass at the Levant to drink away most of moths there.  It is also revealed that Sebastian escaped Samgrass again once in England over Christmas, again to soak in alcohol.  The family plans to fox hunting one day, and Sebastian rides off escaping the hunt by drinking at an inn with money given to him by Charles.  Charles is found out and leaves Brideshead in disgrace. 

Part 2: Back in Paris returned to his art studies, Charles has Rex suddenly turn up at his apartment.  He had been taking Sebastian to Zurich to a doctor but Sebastian had given him the slip.  Rex and Charles go out to dinner to discuss the events at Brideshead.  Lady Marchmain has forgiven Charles since Cordelia herself snuck drink to Sebastian.  Rex and Julia have become engaged and have made plans to marry.  Later Charles learns that they have married in a manner opposite to their plans.

 

Book 2 Chapter 2

Charles as narrator, from a vantage point of many years later, informs the reader of the events of Julia’s history from those Oxford days to her marriage.  He starts with the difficulties of Julia making a proper marriage given her class and Catholicism.  Despite his unsuitability, Julia found herself attracted to Rex Mottram, and after some crafty and perhaps dishonest courting from Rex, the two were engaged, despite significant opposition from Julia’s mother.  After the secret engagement went public, Lady Marchmain forbid the marriage and was going to take Julia away, when Rex contacted Lord Marchmain for his permission which was granted.  Rex decides he will convert to Catholicism for the grand wedding and for the family and takes on instruction in the faith.  Just as the wedding is weeks away, Bridey finds out that Rex has been married before and divorced and so cannot marry in a Catholic Church.  What was planned to be a semi-royal wedding devolved into a rushed and “squalid” one.

Charles has learned of all this from Julia, who at some point in the future from the Oxford days had confided to Charles all her nitty personal details. 

### 

I found the instruction of Rex into the Catholic faith to be hilarious.  Here’s Fr. Mowbray telling Lady Marchmain and Cordelia about one of their lessons.

 

“Take yesterday. He seemed to be doing very well. He learned large bits of the catechism by heart, and the Lord’s Prayer, and the Hail Mary. Then I asked him as usual if there was anything troubling him, and he looked at me in a crafty way and said, ‘Look, Father, I don’t think you’re being straight with me. I want to join your Church and I’m going to join your Church, but you’re holding too much back.’ I asked what he meant, and he said: ‘I’ve had a long talk with a Catholic—a very pious, well-educated one, and I’ve learned a thing or two. For instance, that you have to sleep with your feet pointing East because that’s the direction of heaven, and if you die in the night you can walk there. Now I’ll sleep with my feet pointing any way that suits Julia, but d’you expect a grown man to believe about walking to heaven? And what about the Pope who made one of his horses a Cardinal? And what about the box you keep in the church porch, and if you put in a pound note with someone’s name on it, they get sent to hell. I don’t say there mayn’t be a good reason for all this,’ he said, ‘but you ought to tell me about it and not let me find out for myself.’ ”

 

“What can the poor man have meant?” said Lady Marchmain.

 

“You see he’s a long way from the Church yet,” said Father Mowbray.

 

“But who can he have been talking to? Did he dream it all? Cordelia, what’s the matter?”

 

“What a chump! Oh, mummy, what a glorious chump!”

 

“Cordelia, it was you.”

 

“Oh, mummy, who could have dreamed he’d swallow it? I told him such a lot besides. About the sacred monkeys in the Vatican—all kinds of things.”  (pp. 223-224)

 

Waugh has this ability to be both serious and comedic at the same time.

###

When Charles admits he has given Sebastian money to go drink in Book 2, chapter 1 and Lady Marchmain reprimands him, Charles takes leave of Brideshead for he thinks at the moment will be the last time, he sums up his life to that point.  It’s an inflection point in the novel and worth quoting.  I’ll start with that morning with Sebastian.

 

Next morning I said to Sebastian: “Tell me honestly, do you want me to stay on here?”

 

“No, Charles, I don’t believe I do.”

 

“I’m no help?”

 

“No help.”

 

So I went to make my excuses to his mother.

 

“There’s something I must ask you, Charles. Did you give Sebastian money yesterday?”

 

“Yes.”

 

“Knowing how he was likely to spend it?”

 

“Yes.”

 

“I don’t understand it,” she said. “I simply don’t understand how anyone can be so callously wicked.”

 

She paused, but I do not think she expected any answer; there was nothing I could say unless I were to start all over again on that familiar, endless argument.

 

“I’m not going to reproach you,” she said. “God knows it’s not for me to reproach anyone. Any failure in my children is my failure. But I don’t understand it. I don’t understand how you can have been so nice in so many ways, and then do something so wantonly cruel. I don’t understand how we all liked you so much. Did you hate us all the time? I don’t understand how we deserved it.”

 

I was unmoved; there was no part of me remotely touched by her distress. It was as I had often imagined being expelled from school. I almost expected to hear her say: “I have already written to inform your unhappy father.” But as I drove away and turned back in the car to take what promised to be my last view of the house, I felt that I was leaving part of myself behind, and that wherever I went afterwards I should feel the lack of it, and search for it hopelessly, as ghosts are said to do, frequenting the spots where they buried material treasures without which they cannot pay their way to the nether world.

 

“I shall not go back,” I said to myself.

 

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.

 

I had come to the surface, into the light of common day and the fresh sea-air, after long captivity in the sunless coral palaces and waving forests of the ocean bed.

 

I had left behind me—what? Youth? Adolescence? Romance? The conjuring stuff of these things, “the Young Magician’s Compendium,” that neat cabinet where the ebony wand had its place beside the delusive billiard balls, the penny that folded double, and the feather flowers that could be drawn into a hollow candle.

 

“I have left behind illusion,” I said to myself. “Henceforth I live in a world of three dimensions—with the aid of my five senses.”

 

I have since learned that there is no such world, but then, as the car turned out of sight of the house, I thought it took no finding, but lay all about me at the end of the avenue.

 

Waugh, Evelyn. Brideshead Revisited (p. 193-5). Little, Brown and Company. Kindle Edition.   

 

It’s a remarkable description of a loss of innocence.  After the rejection of Sebastian’s friendship, after the crises of being reprimanded by his mother, Charles gives provides a metaphor of rising from under the ocean and poking up over the water’s surface and finding the “light of common day.”  The enchanting magic of youth, the illusion of wonder disintegrates as he looks back at that romantic castle for the last time.  The magic is gone and the common is about him.

###

My Reply to Kerstin, who didn’t see it as a loss of innocence:

"I had left behind me—what? Youth? Adolescence? Romance?" “I have left behind illusion," "I have since learned that there is no such world."

 

How else to read that but loss of innocence?

 

Irene Replied, also unsure if it was a loss of innocence:

I am not sure if "loss of innocence" is the term I would use, but maybe it fits. It is certainly the first time we see Charles having to face moral responsibility in a clear way. Even though he knew that he was asked not to supply Sabastian with money or alcohol for his own good, even though he recognized the harmful effect alcohol was having on Sabastian's life, he gave him the money. Whether we attribute his motivation to the inability to resist peer pressure or the desire to be liked by his friend or a moral laziness that took the easy way out in the situation, he did what he knew would harm his friend and the family that was offering him hospitality. Unlike the self justification or righteous indignation of a child when punished for an offense, this time, he understood the magnitude of his offense

 

My Reply to Irene:

I get where you see that Irene, but I'm not so sure that's how Waugh intended it. I'm not sure Charles feels he was all that wrong to give Sebastian money for drink. Even Cordelia later gets him alcohol.

 

What I think Charles feels is that it has been a no win situation. If he didn't give Sebastian money, then his friendship might have ended. If he does, he upsets Sebastian's family. If he lets Sebastian drink, Sebastian is hurt from the alcohol. But if he doesn't then Sebastian is hurt emotionally, maybe spiritually. This impossible situation I think is why he feels a loss of innocence.

 

At least that's how I read it, but this is a very hard novel to feel confident in one's reading

 

Mark Replied, also unsatisfied with characterizing it as a loss of innocence:

Is disillusionment equivalent to loss of innocence? Are only the innocent subject to illusions and the desire for illusionary things? Is innocence equivalent to living in an illusionary state? I don't find myself ready to come down one one side of that question or the other. It seems perhaps to identify innocence too much with lack of knowledge.

 

My Reply to Mark:

Good point there is a distinction between disillusionment and loss of innocence. Disillusionment is Charles' word. That's not necessarily Waugh speaking, but the character. Perhaps the scene is no longer fresh in my mind, but what exactly is he disillusioned from? That Sebastian was his friend? Possibly.

 

I used "loss of innocence" based on this:

 

I had left behind me—what? Youth? Adolescence? Romance? The conjuring stuff of these things, “the Young Magician’s Compendium,” that neat cabinet where the ebony wand had its place beside the delusive billiard balls, the penny that folded double, and the feather flowers that could be drawn into a hollow candle.

 

“I have left behind illusion,” I said to myself. “Henceforth I live in a world of three dimensions—with the aid of my five senses.”

 

Leaving behind youth is leaving behind innocence. And he has a progression: youth, adolescence, romance. Is Charles over ruling that first thought or amplifying it? Living in a "world of three dimensions" implies a hard reality of life has hit him. I think that is a loss of innocence. So while disillusionment and loss of innocence are not completely synonymous, I think Charles means both. I think he means he has lost his sense of innocence and the means of that loss is disillusionment.

 

My Reply to Mark, who brought up Waugh’s use of alcohol in another novel:

 Mark wrote: "I find this business of Charles being expelled for giving Sebastian drink (or the means to obtain it) particularly interesting because he uses this device again in the Sword of Honor trilogy when G...

Is this Waugh doubling down on the theme that physical and psychological health are of little consequence compared to spiritual health?"

It could be yes. But it also strikes me as the author's values are not in line with general society. Was Waugh an alcoholic himself? I don't know. I have seen places where he drank heavily. It could be that his view of alcohol was different than his general society. I'm not speaking of our society's view today. I don't get the feeling that Waugh sees drinking to being drunk as a negative thing. Sort of like in Hemingway.

My other thought on that is that he's playing off a Catholic trope of the time. Catholics were supposed to be free in taking alcohol while Protestants restrained. In fact Baptists ban it outright even today. Prohibition in the US was pushed by Protestant groups. You see this in Hemingway too. I think this was mentioned in Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises.

My Reply to Frances, also on the alcohol scene:

Frances, the term "enabling" is a contemporary term and outside of Waugh's ken. But it doesn't strike me that Waugh thinks giving alcohol to an alcoholic is not necessarily a bad thing. It strikes me that his values on this subject run contrary to most.