Brideshead Revisited

by Evelyn Waugh

“Poor mummy. She really was a femme fatale, wasn’t she? She killed at a touch.”

In some ways Brideshead was an easy man to deal with. He had a kind of mad certainty about everything which made his decisions swift and easy.

But God won’t let them go for long, you know. I wonder if you remember the story mummy read us the evening Sebastian first got drunk—I mean the bad evening. ‘Father Brown’ said something like ‘I caught him’ (the thief) ‘with an unseen hook and an invisible line which is long enough to let him wander to the ends of the world and still to bring him back with a twitch upon the thread.’

I sometimes think when people wanted to hate God they hated mummy.”

“Well, you see, she was saintly but she wasn’t a saint. No one could really hate a saint, could they? They can’t really hate God either. When they want to hate him and his saints they have to find something like themselves and pretend it’s God and hate that. I suppose you think that’s all bosh.”

My theme is memory, that winged host that soared about me one gray morning of war-time.

in the last decade of their grandeur, Englishmen seemed for the first time to become conscious of what before was taken for granted, and to salute their achievement at the moment of extinction.

they seemed voices so distant as to be meaningless; their matter passed clean through the mind, and out, leaving no mark, like the facts about themselves which fellow travelers distribute so freely in American railway trains.

I remained unchanged, still a small part of myself pretending to be whole.

in that city there is neurosis in the air which the inhabitants mistake for energy.

however inexpressible her thought, however quick and far it had glanced from the matter in hand, however deep it had plunged, as it often did, straight from the surface to the depths, I knew; even that day when I still stood on the extreme verge of love, I knew what she meant.

“You loved him, didn’t you?” “Oh yes. He was the forerunner.” Julia understood.

He can’t see the point of me,

when I was waiting for the birth, I thought, ‘That’s one thing I can give her. It doesn’t seem to have done me much good, but my child shall have it.’ It was odd, wanting to give something one had lost oneself. Then, in the end, I couldn’t even give that: I couldn’t even give her life.

“I’ve been punished a little for marrying Rex. You see, I can’t get all that sort of thing out of my mind, quite—Death, Judgment, Heaven, Hell, Nanny Hawkins, and the catechism. It becomes part of oneself, if they give it one early enough. And yet I wanted my child to have it…

“You are standing guard over your sadness.”

“Oh dear,” said Julia, “where can we hide in fair weather, we orphans of the storm?”

Charm is the great English blight. It does not exist outside these damp islands. It spots and kills anything it touches. It kills love; it kills art; I greatly fear, my dear Charles, it has killed you.”

with a little sigh of ease—a sigh fit for the pillow, the sinking firelight, and a bedroom window open to the stars and the whisper of bare trees.

time for a laugh—a throaty mirthless laugh, the base currency of goodwill.

in the tranquil, lime-scented evening,

the wind had fallen to a soft breeze which gently stirred the blossom in the limes and carried its fragrance, fresh from the late rains, to merge with the sweet breath of box and the drying stone.

He seems to have a penchant for my children.

“Sometimes,” said Julia, “I feel the past and the future pressing so hard on either side that there’s no room for the present at all.”

he had a kind of massive rectitude and impermeability, an indifference to the world, which compelled respect.

she wept her heart out for the death of her God;

“Weren’t you? Were you not? I distinctly remember last Christmas seeing you together and thinking how happy you looked, and wondering why.

“Why bring Julia and me into this?” asked Rex. “If Celia wants to marry again, well and good; let her. That’s your business and hers. But I should have thought Julia and I were quite happy as we are.

“It’s frightening,” Julia once said, “to think how completely you have forgotten Sebastian.” “He was the forerunner.” “That’s what you said in the storm. I’ve thought since, perhaps I am only a forerunner, too.”

They loved him there. He’s still loved, you see, wherever he goes, whatever condition he’s in. It’s a thing about him he’ll never lose.

One can have no idea what the suffering may be, to be maimed as he is—no dignity, no power of will. No one is ever holy without suffering.

I’ve seen so much suffering in the last few years; there’s so much coming for everybody soon. It’s the spring of love…”

“His heart; some long word at the heart. He is dying of a long word.”

“Can’t they even let him die in peace?” “They mean something so different by ‘peace.’ ”

“It’s such a lot of witchcraft and hypocrisy.” “Is it? Anyway, it’s been going on for nearly two thousand years. I don’t know why you should suddenly get in a rage now.”

when he had finished Cara slightly marred the unity of the Catholic front by saying in simple wonder, “I never heard that before.”

“You don’t convince anyone else and you don’t really convince yourself.”

“Oh, Charles, don’t rant. I shall begin to think you’re getting doubts yourself.”

she seemed to throw herself against the restraints of her love for me like a caged animal against the bars.

I said to the doctor, who was with us daily: “He’s got a wonderful will to live, hasn’t he?” “Would you put it like that? I should say a great fear of death.” “Is there a difference?” “Oh dear, yes. He doesn’t derive any strength from his fear, you know. It’s wearing him out.”

Thus, till mid-July, Lord Marchmain lay dying, wearing himself down in the struggle to live.

I prayed more simply; “God forgive him his sins” and “Please God, make him accept your forgiveness.” So small a thing to ask.

Then I knew that the sign I had asked for was not a little thing, not a passing nod of recognition, and a phrase came back to me from my childhood of the veil of the temple being rent from top to bottom.

You know I’m not one for a life of mourning. I’ve always been bad. Probably I shall be bad again, punished again. But the worse I am, the more I need God. I can’t shut myself out from his mercy. That is what it would mean; starting a life with you, without him.

“The builders did not know the uses to which their work would descend; they made a new house with the stones of the old castle; year by year, generation after generation, they enriched and extended it; year by year the great harvest of timber in the park grew to ripeness; until, in sudden frost, came the age of Hooper; the place was desolate and the work all brought to nothing;

“and yet that is not the last word; it is not even an apt word; it is a dead word from ten years back.

I should not think six Americans will understand it.

I should like this book to be in decent form because it is very good.

Yes, Lady Marchmain is an enigma. I hoped the last conversation with Cordelia gave a theological clue. The whole thing is steeped in theology, but I begin to agree that theologians won’t recognize it.

Lady Marchmain,10 no I am not on her side; but God is, who suffers fools gladly; and the book is about God. Does that answer it?