Brideshead Revisited was published as three books. The first opens with the return of Charles Ryder, during World War Two as preparations to free Europe from Fascism are underway, and he begins to look back how he first came to visit the property and developed relationships with all the members of the Catholic aristocratic family in residence. The focus is the relationship with Lord Sebastian Flyte, the younger son, during their idyllic first year at Oxford, and long summer vacation spent at Brideshead and two weeks at Venice. The relationship ends as Sebastian becomes an unhappy alcoholic driven between his need for pleasure and unhappiness arising from his Catholic based guilt, constantly reinforced by the fundamental beliefs and practices of his mother Lady Marchmain. While the end of their day to day relations top is instigated by Lady Marchmain, Charles realises that he cannot help his friend to break the addiction and that Sebastian wants him to collude with the addiction and end contact with other family members. Throughout the book there is an examination of what Catholicism means to the six members of the Flyte family compared to the agnosticism of Charles and his dismissal of Catholic faith and ritual as mumbo jumbo.
The second book is a Transition during which time Charles progress as painter studying in Paris after leaving Oxford at he end of his second year. He loses all contact with Sebastian who se subsequently finds at the request of the dying Lady Marchmain living in dreadful conditions in North Africa, without his allowance, after stealing £300 pounds from the fiancée of the eldest sister, Lady Julie. Sebastian is too weak to return home and his mother dies before he is in a position to decide what to do. Charles is commissioned to paint pictures of the internal and external views of the Marchmain House, their London home which is to be turned into a block of flats. He makes his name as a fashionable artist painting views of Stately homes. We learn that Julia the eldest sister has married the socially ambitious fiancée despite parental opposition. This marriage takes place in a Church of England Chapel after the discovery that the fiancée was married and divorced.
Charles had had limited contact with Julia and therefore the new film significantly misrepresents the position suggesting that the deterioration of Sebastian is caused by discovering that Julia and Charles have fallen in love on the trip to Venice when in fact the trip only involved Charles and Sebastian and Julia was in the South Of France meeting her future fiancée Rex Mottram for the first time. Both Lady Marchmain and the atonement young sister Cordelia attempt to convert Charles to Catholicism.
Throughout the book we learn about the main characters and their relationships with each other and their friends, the society of the upper middle class and the aristocracy but a constant thread is the agnosticism of Charles and the Catholicism of the Brideshead Family. First Lady Marchmain and then younger sister Cordelia set about trying to convert Charles and there is much consideration of the problems when faith along with romantic love ends. The second book ends with a discussion about a Catholic life vocation between the younger sister and Charles.
The third book is not a detailed chronology of subsequent events but series of jumps into situation over the subsequent decade and half. Charles is dissatisfied with his work as an architectural painter and with his life overall, and goes off for two years to Mexico and Central America, not Africa as stated in the film. The books talks of the paintings without describing their content so that the TV Adaptation and the Film have very different interpretation of what they look like. This book informs us that Charles has married the Aristocratic sister of Lord Boy Mulcaster the young man who was part of Sebastian's set at Oxford. They have a son of the marriage and since his expedition commenced, a daughter, with a question mark over whether this child is his or that of an affairs between his wife and someone else. She is a great socialite with Royal Household connections who attend the private view of the exhibitions of his paintings made in America.
In an attempt to renew their relationship his wife journeys to the United States and New York to meet her husband and they return first class on a transatlantic liner with the Q E 2 being used which is a coincidence, considering that the ship recently returned to the Tyne on its last voyage around the UK before being converted into a hotel in Dubai.
On this journey they meet with Lady Julia who his wife regards as a friend from before she met Charles unaware the there had been previous contact however limited. Confined bed because of the weather his wife gives approval on hearing that Charles and Julia have spent the day together. It is now evident how Charles came to know to know so much about Julia and her relationship with Rex Mottram and his attempt to convert to Catholicism. In the third book we learn that Rex felt that Julia had failed him as she was unable to give birth to a living child or accept the continuing relationship between Rex and his former mistress, He was primarily concerned with developing his business and political career using Brideshead as a base for parties which would have scandalised Lady Marchmain. They had taken over Brideshead as Rex had the means to run the house while the bachelor elder son and heir to the title, called within the family Bridey, who occupies a small suite of rooms at the top of the house next to his former nanny. While their marriage has become one in name only, Lady Julia, in the same way as Charles' wife is an excellent hostess. Charles and Julia admit that they do not like his wife as they become lovers on the ship and set up home together as Brideshead.
Cordelia the young sister tried to become a nun but then goes to Spain to operate a ambulance on the side pf the state in much the same way that Charles had joined in trying to keep services going and break the General Strike. On her return to Brideshead with a Medal she tells Charles how she went in search of Sebastian and found him still an alcoholic by living as part of a Christian brotherhood and regarded as spiritual being. Given the reinstatement of his allowance he lived and travelled with his German friend who had gone to prison in Greece after a fight and then expelled back to Germany where the Nazis were ensuring that all citizens were returned their homeland to he trained as Nazi and allocated to the service of their Fuehrer in preparation for the war. Sebastian had gone to Germany in search of his friend but found that he had hanged himself and this event had led to further deterioration and the return to the Middle East.
Charles and Julia gain divorces and plan to marry and live in grand style at Brideshead. Bridey announces that he is to marry a widow with children and because she is devout Catholic she could not be invited to Brideshead to meet Julia because she was living in sin with Charles. This upsets Julia into an hysterical outburst and emotional breakdown and we learn the extent to which her anti Catholicism hides great guilt and uncertainty.
It is at this point that Lord Marchmain returns home to die and the world of Charles and Julia is turned inside out and upside down.
I wrote the first draft of this in the early hours of Monday morning, grabbing a few hours of rest before rising to put out the bin and environment recycling box and preparing for my Midland mini trip. The recycle box was cleared but the wheelie bin remained un emptied as I was ready to depart so with the assistance of neighbours I transferred the waste sack to their bins and returned mine to the garage. I had set off for a mile or two when I thought that I may not have closed the garage door in all the rush and returned to find that I was mistaken. The journey south was a good one in fine autumn sunshine and I remained fresh and alert through the three hour journey. I had bought a sandwich pack at the supermarket, consumed at a midway stop, as well as visiting a cash machine. Later in the evening I enjoyed a carvery roast with two thick slices of beef and a plate full, but not overfull, of roasted vegetables and two small balls of stiffing at village inn. The news en route sounded hopeful with a good market response as France, Germany and Spain followed the approach taken by Britain, and the prospect of a similar approach by the USA on Tuesday.
The second book is a Transition during which time Charles progress as painter studying in Paris after leaving Oxford at he end of his second year. He loses all contact with Sebastian who se subsequently finds at the request of the dying Lady Marchmain living in dreadful conditions in North Africa, without his allowance, after stealing £300 pounds from the fiancée of the eldest sister, Lady Julie. Sebastian is too weak to return home and his mother dies before he is in a position to decide what to do. Charles is commissioned to paint pictures of the internal and external views of the Marchmain House, their London home which is to be turned into a block of flats. He makes his name as a fashionable artist painting views of Stately homes. We learn that Julia the eldest sister has married the socially ambitious fiancée despite parental opposition. This marriage takes place in a Church of England Chapel after the discovery that the fiancée was married and divorced.
Charles had had limited contact with Julia and therefore the new film significantly misrepresents the position suggesting that the deterioration of Sebastian is caused by discovering that Julia and Charles have fallen in love on the trip to Venice when in fact the trip only involved Charles and Sebastian and Julia was in the South Of France meeting her future fiancée Rex Mottram for the first time. Both Lady Marchmain and the atonement young sister Cordelia attempt to convert Charles to Catholicism.
Throughout the book we learn about the main characters and their relationships with each other and their friends, the society of the upper middle class and the aristocracy but a constant thread is the agnosticism of Charles and the Catholicism of the Brideshead Family. First Lady Marchmain and then younger sister Cordelia set about trying to convert Charles and there is much consideration of the problems when faith along with romantic love ends. The second book ends with a discussion about a Catholic life vocation between the younger sister and Charles.
The third book is not a detailed chronology of subsequent events but series of jumps into situation over the subsequent decade and half. Charles is dissatisfied with his work as an architectural painter and with his life overall, and goes off for two years to Mexico and Central America, not Africa as stated in the film. The books talks of the paintings without describing their content so that the TV Adaptation and the Film have very different interpretation of what they look like. This book informs us that Charles has married the Aristocratic sister of Lord Boy Mulcaster the young man who was part of Sebastian's set at Oxford. They have a son of the marriage and since his expedition commenced, a daughter, with a question mark over whether this child is his or that of an affairs between his wife and someone else. She is a great socialite with Royal Household connections who attend the private view of the exhibitions of his paintings made in America.
In an attempt to renew their relationship his wife journeys to the United States and New York to meet her husband and they return first class on a transatlantic liner with the Q E 2 being used which is a coincidence, considering that the ship recently returned to the Tyne on its last voyage around the UK before being converted into a hotel in Dubai.
On this journey they meet with Lady Julia who his wife regards as a friend from before she met Charles unaware the there had been previous contact however limited. Confined bed because of the weather his wife gives approval on hearing that Charles and Julia have spent the day together. It is now evident how Charles came to know to know so much about Julia and her relationship with Rex Mottram and his attempt to convert to Catholicism. In the third book we learn that Rex felt that Julia had failed him as she was unable to give birth to a living child or accept the continuing relationship between Rex and his former mistress, He was primarily concerned with developing his business and political career using Brideshead as a base for parties which would have scandalised Lady Marchmain. They had taken over Brideshead as Rex had the means to run the house while the bachelor elder son and heir to the title, called within the family Bridey, who occupies a small suite of rooms at the top of the house next to his former nanny. While their marriage has become one in name only, Lady Julia, in the same way as Charles' wife is an excellent hostess. Charles and Julia admit that they do not like his wife as they become lovers on the ship and set up home together as Brideshead.
Cordelia the young sister tried to become a nun but then goes to Spain to operate a ambulance on the side pf the state in much the same way that Charles had joined in trying to keep services going and break the General Strike. On her return to Brideshead with a Medal she tells Charles how she went in search of Sebastian and found him still an alcoholic by living as part of a Christian brotherhood and regarded as spiritual being. Given the reinstatement of his allowance he lived and travelled with his German friend who had gone to prison in Greece after a fight and then expelled back to Germany where the Nazis were ensuring that all citizens were returned their homeland to he trained as Nazi and allocated to the service of their Fuehrer in preparation for the war. Sebastian had gone to Germany in search of his friend but found that he had hanged himself and this event had led to further deterioration and the return to the Middle East.
Charles and Julia gain divorces and plan to marry and live in grand style at Brideshead. Bridey announces that he is to marry a widow with children and because she is devout Catholic she could not be invited to Brideshead to meet Julia because she was living in sin with Charles. This upsets Julia into an hysterical outburst and emotional breakdown and we learn the extent to which her anti Catholicism hides great guilt and uncertainty.
It is at this point that Lord Marchmain returns home to die and the world of Charles and Julia is turned inside out and upside down.
I wrote the first draft of this in the early hours of Monday morning, grabbing a few hours of rest before rising to put out the bin and environment recycling box and preparing for my Midland mini trip. The recycle box was cleared but the wheelie bin remained un emptied as I was ready to depart so with the assistance of neighbours I transferred the waste sack to their bins and returned mine to the garage. I had set off for a mile or two when I thought that I may not have closed the garage door in all the rush and returned to find that I was mistaken. The journey south was a good one in fine autumn sunshine and I remained fresh and alert through the three hour journey. I had bought a sandwich pack at the supermarket, consumed at a midway stop, as well as visiting a cash machine. Later in the evening I enjoyed a carvery roast with two thick slices of beef and a plate full, but not overfull, of roasted vegetables and two small balls of stiffing at village inn. The news en route sounded hopeful with a good market response as France, Germany and Spain followed the approach taken by Britain, and the prospect of a similar approach by the USA on Tuesday.
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