Thoughts on Brideshead Revisited

I've finished the first five chapters of Brideshead Revisited. As I began, I was recalling the beautiful BBC production of thirty years ago. And as I continue, images from that series continue to occur from time to time.

I read the account of Charles and Sebastian's first spring at Oxford and their summer at Brideshead and in Venice with a feeling akin to nostalgia, but for something I had never actually experienced. I suppose I wish I had been in such a friendship.* And as I continue reading, I find myself wishing that Charles had been able somehow to save the relationship.

But it occurs to me that the author does not share my wish, and perhaps not even my nostalgia. For this is not the story of Sebastian, nor even the story of Charles and Sebastian. It is the story of Charles Ryder, and if the love between him and Sebastian was necessary for Charles, it was also necessary, in Waugh's eyes, for the relationship to end.

When I was watching the TV series, my interest waned when Sebastian was no longer in the picture. Now, I think I can be more attentive to what Waugh wants to tell us through Charles' life.

When I was in my late 20' I was in love with a slightly younger alcoholic. He was straight, so there was no Charles and Sebastian relationship in our friendship, but there was in him some degree of the compulsion to escape from faith and family which Waugh gives Sebastian. I was happy to become acquainted with his family. Maybe he wasn't as pleased about it as I was.

* I don't mean that I wish that I had done things that are "high in the catalogue of grave sins," just that the intimacy of reciprocal love would have been pleasant. Indeed, one of the things that makes the time of Charles and Sebastian's friendship attractive is that no grave sins are actually mentioned.