Brideshead Revisited (1945)

I joked to a friend I knew I was back in literary-land again at the reappearance of all the semi-colons. In fact, there doesn't seem much difference in style, and not much in voice, between this 1944 novel by Waugh and Bronte's 1853 novel Villette which I read recently. Both have elegant, rather plush prose styles with a leisurely pace and fondness for extended metaphor, both are very, very English, told through first person narrators and both deal with Catholic themes. Villette harshly critiqued Roman Catholicism from an English Protestant point of view, its narrator Lucy Snowe seeing it as bearing a fruit of "ignorance, abasement, and bigotry." Evelyn Waugh's Charles Ryder is presumably of Protestant roots but calls himself an agnostic--and he falls more than a little in love with the entire Catholic Flyte family and their faith. They, of course, are differently situated than the Belgium Catholics in Villette as English Catholics in between the two world wars. Catholics in England had been persecuted for centuries and barred from public life from "Elizabeth’s reign till Victoria’s." A bit isolated, discriminated against, especially in aristocratic circles marrying within only a few families, their situation reminded me more of the Jewish experience in recent centuries than that of Christians in Christian dominated countries. Evelyn Waugh was a convert to Catholicism so naturally his view is more positive than Bronte's, or at least seemed less caricatured. He wrote in a letter to Nancy Mitford included in the back matter that Brideshead Revisited is "steeped in theology" and suggested to his publisher that if they didn't like the original title an alternative might be "A Household of Faith." The subtitle is "The Sacred and Profane Memoirs of Captain Charles Ryder."

For all of that the Flytes' religion as depicted in the book seemed more the source of needless tragedy than strength for each of them, driving them to lives hopeless and loveless. It could be that given I'm tone deaf on spiritual subjects--I do try to understand what is so important in so many lives but I admit it's pretty lost on me--that this just isn't a theme that could resonate with me. That may be why the ending fell flat with me and felt so unsatisfying. Nor did I find it the moving experience that my friend who recommended it to me did. I don't know I can say I much identified or sympathized with any of the characters, who seemed the cause of their own destruction despite all their privileges and gifts. They lived in a very rarefied atmosphere indeed of tea and crumpets, fox-hunting, old piles with private chapels, footmen, valets, nannies and chauffeurs. Sebastian, who charms almost everyone, from almost all the characters in the book to many readers, left me rather cold. The narrator, an indifferent parent and husband, left me colder. He laments a dying world where "wealth is no longer gorgeous and power has no dignity." The kind of aristocratic wealth and power a tiny few were born to, but almost no one could or did earn, so again I think the nostalgia for that lost world was something for which I felt a decided lack. Yet note I rated this novel fairly highly. It did have the rather voyeuristic thrill of a Downton Abbey world, at times deliciously gossipy and eccentric, almost satiric (especially in the first part), and there is the almost Victorian gleam of Waugh's prose, wit, and rather biting social commentary. I did read it with pleasure and it sped past while I was transported to another world. ( )

I wanted to finish it, I really did. I just don't have the patience for the flowery prose. I don't care what the house looks like! And Anthony Blanche (I think that's his name) talked for a whole chapter. I just couldn't take much more past page 70...I think I'll just watch the movie. ( )

An absorbing and sumptuous eulogy for the end of the golden age of the British aristocracy. Beautifully written and with so much to enjoy: faith and - in particular - Catholicism, duty, love, desire, grandeur, decay, memory, and tragedy. At its heart there is a beautiful and enchanting story. The various characters, right down to the most minor ones, are stunningly and credibly drawn - having just finished the book I feel that I have been amongst them and known them. I have read most of Evelyn Waugh's novels and this is his finest. If you haven't read it yet I envy you. ( )

No doubt much religious advocacy ends with an unconvincing appeal to unreason, and that's the spirit that the final deathbed drama here had for me, but it's one of the few jarring moments in this precise and poised saga of the interwar years. Years, in Waugh's telling, of gilded decay. Rereading now, 30 years on from Granada TV's glossy production, I'm stuck by how much more expansive it's scope is than just a squiffy toff vomiting decorously. From an Atlantic liner to a 'pansy bar', from pointless wartime encampments to the General Strike to the travails of the crumbling aristocracy, all with careful descriptions, details, and restraint. As with 'Decline and Fall' but less farcically, Waugh sees through the veneers of society, but is sceptical of all that's novel or modish; the ways of the Establishment, one senses, make for the worst system apart from all the others. ( )

A bit of a slow story, yet very enjoyable. I really like Waugh's writing style. He paints a very real picture of life in Oxford before the second world war, and of the decline of an old noble family.
The story seems more of a momentary glimpse into the lives of its characters, rather than a complete story with a beginning and an ending. The end doesn't give any answers as to what will happen to the main characters, and leaves the reader wondering how they will end up.
I've been thinking about how to describe this, but I'm finding it difficult, so I'll make a comparison: it's more of a landscape painting, a broad overview without anything standing out in particular, rather than a comic book in which we follow a story through individual, 'special' events.
Personally I liked it very much, but I can imagine it's not to everybody's taste. ( )