Nearly thirty years have passed since my wife and I viewed the weekly televised series ‘Brideshead Revisited’ during the fall of 1981, even on one occasion around Christmas dressing up and sipping champagne while pretending we were chums with Charles Ryder (actor Jeremy Irons), his college companion Sebastian Flyte (Anthony Andrews), and Sebastian’s sister Julia (Diana Quick). In company with these characters played by then relatively new actors were stage veterans Laurence Olivier (as Lord Marchmain, Sebastian’s father) and John Gielgud (as Edward Ryder). This romance of lost time and paradise regained was riveting then, and reading Evelyn Waugh’s novel is an even better, intricate experience of the relationships between family and friends of the noble Marchmain family, set between the two world wars at palatial Brideshead, the Marchmain estate.

Charles Ryder, student at Oxford University becomes friends with fellow student Sebastian Flyte who is more interested in dissipation and drink than studies. During term break, aristocratic Sebastian invites middle-class commoner Charles, to Brideshead Castle (Castle Howard near York, England, actual filming location for the series) where the two remain for the summer. Sebastian’s languor revolves around alcohol while Charles becomes infatuated with his host’s family: Sebastian’s mother, Lady Marchmain, older brother Lord Brideshead ‘Bridey’ and sisters Lady Julia and Lady Cordelia. Toward the end of summer, Sebastian decides he and Charles will visit Lord Marchmain and they travel by boat and train and carriage, “conifers changing to vine and olive” to Venice where his father, estranged from Lady Marchmain, resides with his mistress, Cara. After a fortnight on the Lido and in the Piazza San Marco at the Caffe Florian, Charles in conversation with Cara one evening learns of another side of the Marchmain family, one that, for both Lord Marchmain and Sebastian, has to do more with hate than love, “hating all the illusions of boyhood — innocence, God, hope.”

Back at Oxford for their second year, Charles begins study at the Ruskin School of Art while Sebastian, on notice for his poor performance, continues to withdraw from friends and studies into his own narcissistic world, and faces the possibility of being ‘sent down’, that is, dismissed from university. His mother pays a visit, ostensibly to work with colleagues on a memorial project, but actually to see to it that Sebastian mends his ways. One evening Sebastian in the company of friends visits Ma Mayfield’s, a private club with friendly women entertainers, becomes inebriated, and while driving erratically, is arrested and jailed. His sister Julia and her friend Rex Mottram provide bail, Sebastian appears before the Bow Street magistrate, and is released in the recognizance of family. Sebastian returns to Brideshead for awhile, then to Oxford, and after another bout of drunkenness finally is ‘sent down’ and Charles becomes the “loneliest man in Oxford.” (p. 131) Lady Marchmain confides in Charles that she had experienced such drunkenness before with his [Sebastian’s] father, and later in a letter to Charles says that Sebastian has left Brideshead to live with his father and then will tour the Levant [Middle East] with a family friend before returning to Oxford in the charge of one Monsignor Bell. Thus ends the first part of this novel, entitled ‘Et in Arcadia Ego’, which is an allusion to classical representations of idyllic youth carefree enjoying the pleasures of life yet always aware of the penumbra of death. One such representation is Nicolas Poussin’s painting, Les Bergers d’Arcadie, depicting youth before a tomb with the Latin inscription, Et in arcadia ego, translated as “and I too was once in Arcadia” which may be understood to mean ‘life is short; make the most of it.’

[to be continued] ( )

As my introduction to Evelyn Waugh, Brideshead Revisited gave me a taste of an author who can build a beautiful, revealing and devastatingly painful story.

Charles Ryder is a WWII soldier, stationed in Britain, who has just been relocated to a new headquarters. Much to his surprise, he finds that it is Brideshead, a country manor he first visited as an Oxford student. It was the scene of some of his favorite memories and also his most painful. This novel takes us back as Charles recounts his history with his college friend, Sebastian Flyte, and Flyte's family.

I found much of this novel to be engaging and fascinating. There were a few parts that were a bit slower paced than the rest of the story and I struggled a bit through them. Still, this was an incredibly well-written and believable story which deals with such diverse topics as Catholicism, war, English nobility and homosexuality.

http://webereading.com/2009/12/i-have... ( )

A lovely, lovely and heartbreaking book. The shallowness of the characters is, shall I say, only skin deep. Well worth a reread. ( )

This book is a really well written tome about pretty unlikeable people. There's a whiny rich boy with a teddy bear who doesn't like his mother and decides that's a good reason to be an alcoholic...and his slutty father, and soul less sister, and Charles. Who returns from two years abroad and can't be bothered to visit his own children. It's hard for me to like a book where literally none of the characters are sympathetic because I just...don't care what happens to them. ( )

One of the best books in the English language. Luminous!

http://driftlessareareview.wordpress.... ( )