The Thumbnail Book Reviews
by John Q McDonald --- 23 January 2010
by Evelyn Waugh
It seems that eighty percent of the television shows we see on public television are based on a rosy nostalgia for English country life, full of cozy cottages and the big mansions occupied by fading landed gentry. Why Americans are so enamoured of this genre may have something to do with the American spirit of sprawl and development that has gradually erased much to be nostalgic about in this country. During times of crisis or disaster, we cling ever more to picturesque visions of what was supposedly a simpler time. It was in such an atmosphere of disaster that Waugh wrote the novel many consider to be his masterpiece. It is hard for us to imagine, today, the sense of threat experienced by the British in World War 2, but we can't blame Waugh for escaping into his university years between the 1920s, or for feeling nostalgic for an upper-class culture that he saw vanishing in those decades. Marcel Proust lamented a similar collapse in France during the first world war. One of Waugh's minor characters (the effete Anthony Blanche) makes passing reference to dining with Proust and the reader wonders if this is Waugh's nod to a similarly nostalgic author. This novel was famously adapted into a 1980 television miniseries seen, of course, on American public television. It seemed one couldn't get away from it. This may make it difficult for some readers to separate the adaptation from the original novel. Our narrator is Charles Ryder, a student at Oxford, but not a very good student. He uses his college years, as so many of us do, to feel his wild oats and discover the joys of alcohol. Helping him along is Sebastian Flyte, scion of the Brideshead estate, and brother of Lord Brideshead. Sebastian starts out seeming fairly silly and dissipated. He soon becomes awash in drink, fleeing the controlling influence of his family in increasingly extravagant binges. He introduces Charles to the family at the family manse, Brideshead, a baroque pile in the country. There Charles meets Sebastian's mother and sisters, Julia and Cordelia. And Charles becomes increasingly devoted to Sebastian in a friendship with strong homoerotic overtones. Sebastian's father, however, is living in sin in Venice. And sin is a key element to the story. These people are all, to some degree, Catholics. Their faith is somewhat exotic to Church of England types and other Protestants. Indeed, Waugh's own conversion to Catholicism caused a stir in his life. He uses the novel to walk us through Charles's confusion and irritation at the faith of his friends. We get to experience the same misunderstanding. The book therefore doesn't feel like it is proselytizing. On the other hand, Waugh does have great affection for the faith and for these characters. He honors what seem to be arbitrary decisions based in faith but which seem almost perversely designed to make people unhappy. And yet he asks us to have some understanding for their choices. Sebastian continues his flight from the homestead. Charles sees this as a flight as much from Catholicism as from the family's controlling nature. But Sebastian ends up in the bosom of a monastery in North Africa. Later, on Charles's return journey from South America, he meets up with Julia again, and the two fall in love. They each escape their respective marriages of convenience and live, in sin, for two years before finally seeking divorces and a future together. But Julia, too, is a lapsed Catholic. Can two divorced people be joined in this faith? It doesn't seem likely. In the end, Charles finds himself billeted at Brideshead during the war. The mansion is nearly abandoned, and echoes with his memories of these people. Charles is lost, but refreshed by the light burning in the little chapel on the estate. There are moments when the reader expects Waugh to turn polemical, but he always sways back into subtle satire and a beautifully-rendered vision of life among the well-to-do between the wars. It is an ornate, masterful turn. It is well that it should be considered one of the masterpieces of twentieth century English fiction.
Also by Waugh: [Decline and Fall] [A Handful of Dust]