Luke Mohan’s Reviews > Brideshead Revisited > Status Update

…the hand moved slowly down his breast, then to his shoulder, and Lord Marchmain made the sign if the cross. Then I knew that the sign I had asked for was not a little thing, a passing nod of recognition, and a phrase cane back to me from my childhood of the veil of the temple being rent from top to bottom.

…and then in condescension to my paganism, she added…

“perhaps all our loves are merely hints and symbols; … along the weary road that others have tramped before us; perhaps you and I are types and this sadness which sometimes falls between us springs from disappointment in our search, each straining through and beyond the other, snatching a glimpse now and then of the shadow which turns the corner always a pace or two ahead of us.

… I loved buildings that grew silently with the centuries, catching and keeping the best of each generation, while time curbed the artist’s pride and the Philistine’s vulgarity, and repaired the clumsiness of the dull workman.

But as I drove away and turned back in the car to take what promised to be my last view of the house, I felt that I was leaving part of myself behind, and that went wherever I went afterwards I should feel the lack of it, and search for it hopelessly, as ghosts are said to do, frequenting the spots where they buried material treasures without which they cannot pay their way to the nether world.

I often think of that bathroom - the water colors dimmed by steam and the huge towel warming on the back of the chintz armchair - and contrast it with the uniform, clinical, little chambers, glittering with chromium-plate and looking-glass, which pass for luxury in the modern world.

‘Just the place to bury a crock of gold,’ said Sebastian. ‘I should like to bury something precious in every place where I’ve been happy and then, when I was old and ugly and miserable, I could come back and dig it up and remember.’