Brideshead Revisited (1945) by Evelyn Waugh About the story: Narrated by the middle-aged artist and Second World War army Captain, Charles Ryder, Brideshead Revisited tells the story of his involvement with the Flyte family: Catholic aristocrats whose family seat is the splendid Brideshead Castle. Having met Sebastian Flyte as a fellow student at Oxford University, middle-class Charles becomes his bosom friend, throwing himself wholeheartedly into the glamorous and decadent lifestyle of the young aristocrat and his exotic social circle. He is gradually introduced to the other members of Sebastian’s family: to Lady Marchmain, the pious matriarch; to Bridey, the awkward, ponderous elder son; to Sebastian’s beautiful sister, Julia, newly embarked on her first season as a debutante; to Cordelia, the deeply religious, but boisterous, younger sister; and to Lord Marchmain, estranged from his wife, and living a life of luxury with his mistress in Venice. As Charles is drawn more and more deeply into this fascinating and troubled family, he becomes increasingly aware of the tensions in their midst. Sebastian and Julia come to feel increasingly constrained by their Catholic faith (and by their mother’s strict adherence to that faith); Charles witnesses, and to some extent becomes complicit in, Sebastian’s gradual descent into alcoholism; Julia plans to marry the exciting, but somewhat shady, businessman and politician, Rex Mottram. Charles's blissful time in Arcadia comes to an end as Sebastian turns away from him and Lady Marchmain accuses him of encouraging her son's addiction. Expelled from Brideshead, Charles moves to Paris to study art, putting the Flyte family firmly behind him. From a distance he hears of Sebastian's continuing deterioration, and the problems Julia faces in marrying Rex. He becomes briefly involved once more, when asked by Julia to go to Morocco and bring back Sebastian before Lady Marchmain dies. Charles finds Sebastian sick and worn, but unwilling to leave Morocco and the German army deserter he has befriended. On hearing of Lady Marchmain's death, Charles leaves Morocco without Sebastian, whom he will never see again. Ten years have passed. On the brink of the Second World War, Charles Ryder is married to the well-connected Celia, and has developed a career as a successful architectural painter. But when their paths cross again unexpectedly aboard an ocean liner, he falls in love with Julia Flyte. Both decide to divorce their spouses, and they set up home together at Brideshead. As Charles and Julia make plans to marry, anticipating the happiness and security which has so far eluded them, events take an unexpected turn when the terminally ill Lord Marchmain returns to Brideshead Castle to end his days in his ancestral home. Appalled by his elder son's choice of bride, he bequeaths Brideshead to Julia; if Charles marries her, he will inherit the great house he has so loved. A lapsed Catholic convert, Lord Marchmain initially resists the attempts of the more devout members of the family to make him see a Catholic priest. However, in a moving deathbed scene, Lord Marchmain appears to embrace his faith again and he receives the last sacraments from the priest he had previously rejected. Charles Ryder, witnessing this scene, experiences a profound sense of its signficance, and we are led to believe that it marks his conversion to the Catholic faith. Julia, who has long been pondering the religious implications of her forthcoming marriage to Charles, is also deeply affected by the events at her father's deathbed, and she decides shortly afterwards that the marriage cannot go ahead. The story ends where it began, with the middle-aged Charles Ryder billeted at Brideshead Castle, which has been requisitioned by the army. Entering the chapel attached to the house, he experiences a deep feeling of satisfaction as he sees that the
sanctuary lamp is now re-lit: a symbol not only of his own newly-acquired Catholic faith, but also of its restoration to those members of the Flyte family who had temporarily lost touch with it. About the author: Evelyn Waugh (pronounced "war") was born in London, the second son of noted editor and publisher Arthur Waugh, He was brought up in upper middle class circumstances in the wealthy London suburb of Hampstead, where he attended Heath Mount School. His only sibling was his older brother Alec, who also became a writer. Both Arthur and Alec had been educated at Sherborne, an English public school, but Alec had been asked to leave early during his final year after publishing a controversial novel, The Loom of Youth, based on the homosexual relationships in his school life. Sherborne therefore refused to take Evelyn and his father sent him to Lancing College, a school of lesser social prestige with a strong High Church Anglican character. This circumstance would rankle with the status-conscious Evelyn for the rest of his life but may have contributed to his interest in religion, even though at Lancing he lost his childhood faith and became an agnostic. After Lancing, he attended Hertford College, Oxford as a history scholar. There, Waugh neglected academic work and was known as much for his artwork as for his writing. His social life at Oxford influenced Waugh's personal conversion to a more conservative social and cultural viewpoint, and provided the background for some of his most characteristic later writing. He left Oxford in 1924 without taking his degree. He was briefly apprenticed to a cabinetmaker and afterwards maintained an interest in marquetry, to which his novels have been compared in their intricate inlaid subplots. He also worked as a journalist, before he published his first novel in 1928, Decline and Fall. Other novels about England's "bright young things" followed, and all were well received by both critics and the general public. Waugh entered into a brief, unhappy marriage in 1928 to the Hon. Evelyn Florence Margaret Winifred Gardner, youngest daughter of Lord Burghclere and Lady Winifred Herbert, and granddaughter of Henry Herbert, 4th Earl of Carnarvon. Their friends called them "He-Evelyn" and "She-Evelyn." Gardner's infidelity would provide the background for Waugh's novel A Handful of Dust. The marriage ended in divorce in 1930. Waugh converted to Catholicism and, after his marriage was annulled by the Church, he married Laura Herbert, a Catholic, daughter of Aubrey Herbert, and, like Waugh's first wife, a granddaughter of the 4th Earl of Carnarvon. This marriage was successful, lasting the rest of his life, producing seven children, one of whom, Mary, died in infancy. His son Auberon Waugh followed in his footsteps as a notable writer and journalist. Waugh's fame continued to grow between the wars, based on his satires of contemporary upper class English society, written in prose that was seductively simple and elegant. His style was often inventive (a chapter, for example, would be written entirely in the form of a dialogue of telephone calls). His conversion to Roman Catholicism in 1930 was a watershed in his life and his writing. It elevated Catholic themes in his work, and aspects of his deep and sincere faith, both implicit and explicit, can be found in all of his later work. The essential issue, he believed, was making a choice between Christianity or chaos. Waugh saw in Europe's increasing materialization a major decline in what he felt created Western Civilization in the first place. His faith and his conviction persisted throughout all the chapters of his life. At the same time (and perhaps because it integrated both his beliefs and his natural
"dark humor"), Black Mischief and A Handful of Dust contain episodes of the most savage farce. In some of his fiction Waugh derives comedy from the cruelty of mischance; ingenuous characters are subject to bizarre calamities in a universe that seems to lack a shaping and protecting God, or any other source of order and comfort. The period between the wars also saw extensive travels around the Mediterranean and Red Sea, Spitsbergen, Africa (most famously Ethiopia) and South America. Sections of the numerous travel books which resulted are often cited as among the best writing in this genre. A compendium of Waugh's favourite travel writing has been issued under the title When The Going Was Good. With the advent of the Second World War, Waugh was commissioned in the Royal Marines in 1940. Few can have been less suited to command troops. There was some concern that the men under his command might shoot him instead of the enemy. Later, Waugh was reassigned to the Royal Horse Guards. During this period he wrote Brideshead Revisited. Brideshead Revisited (1945), is an evocation of a vanished pre-war England. It is an extraordinary work which in many ways has come to define Waugh and his view of his world. It not only painted a rich picture of life in England and at Oxford University at a time (before World War II), which Waugh himself loved and embellished in the novel, but it allowed him to share his feelings about his Catholic faith, principally through the actions of his characters. Amazingly, he was granted leave from the war to write it. The book was applauded by his friends, not just for an evocation of a time now — and then — long gone, but also for its examination of the manifold pressures within a traditional Catholic family. It was a huge success in Britain and in the United States. Decades later a television adaptation (1981) achieved popularity and acclaim in both countries, and around the world. Another a film adaptation was made in 2008. Waugh revised the novel in the late 1950s because he found parts of it "distasteful on a full stomach" by which he meant that he wrote the novel during the grey privations of the latter war years. Much of Waugh's war experience is reflected in the Sword of Honour trilogy. It consists of three novels, Men at Arms (1952), Officers and Gentlemen (1955) and Unconditional Surrender (1961), which loosely parallel his wartime experiences. His trilogy, along with his other work after the 1930s, became some of the best books written about the Second World War. The period after the war saw Waugh living with his family at Combe Florey, Somerset, where he enjoyed the life of a country gentleman and continued to write. During this period he wrote Helena, (1953), a fictional account of the Empress Helena and the finding of the True Cross, which he regarded as his best work. He also wrote The Ordeal of Gilbert Pinfold (1957), which depicts its hero's steady descent into madness. Waugh's health and literary output declined in later life. On April 10, 1966, at age 62, he died of a heart attack in his home after attending a Latin Mass on Easter Sunday. Other interesting information: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sD0nrC-vfaY https://www.theguardian.com/books/2008/sep/27/evelynwaugh.fiction https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UvtjUt0GzKg
Topics for Discussion:
1. Charles Ryder is enamoured of the wealth, beauty and privileged life he finds at Brideshead, a paradise, "very near heaven." Yet beneath the surface glamour lie discontent, anxiety, resentment —chinks in the perfect armour of the Flyte family—that presage later problems. Can you identify some of those chinks? 2. What is the reason for Sebastian's decline? Trace its beginnings and the role that Lady Marchmain plays. 3. Why does Julia marry Rex Mottram? 4. The overriding theme of the novel is Catholicism and the opening of one's life to grace. At one point the inevitability of grace is described as the "twitch upon the thread," referring to how a fisherman gently wiggles the line to bring in the catch. You might explore the role that religion (or its rejection) plays in the life (or ultimate fate) of the characters—Sebastian (with his teddy bear), Charles, Julia, Lady Marchmain and her husband. 5. Is Lord Marchmain's deathbed conversion genuine? 6. Critics have found Brideshead Revisited elitist, saying that the work champions the life of the aristocracy over the life of the middle class? Do you find evidence of that in the work? Or is that an unfair assertion.