The incomparable Charlus

The Season of Brideshead
Et in Arcadia Ego, Chapter 5
Overall, the 1981 television series of Brideshead is pretty true to the book. Of the very few things it gets wrong, the only really troubling one is Mr. Samgrass. Take a look at the following three sentences. They occur during Charles first Christmas at Brideshead. Everyone has left save Bridey who is occupied with estate management, Theresa Marchmain and Sir Adrian Porson who are occupied with one another and Mr. Samgrass who is occupied with the book he is doing for Lady Marchmain. So here are the three sentences,

We [Charles and Sebastian] saw little of them except in the evenings; there was room under that wide roof for a wide variety of independent lives.

After a fortnight Sebastian said, 'I can't stand Mr. Samgrass anymore. Let's go to London,' so he came to stay with me and now began to use my home in preference to 'Marchers'.

That is very economical writing—those three sentences cover a lot of ground. It was a little too economical for the producers of the series and they created a new scene to intersperse between sentence number one and two of the three I cite above. Probably because Waugh doesn't tell us what it is about Mr. Samgrass, of whose presence Charles, at least, isn't all that aware of anyway, that Sebastian can't stand anymore. In the imagined scene created by the makers of the series, Charles leaves Theresa Marchmain's little talk and comes and finds Sebastian shooting skeet while Mr. Samgrass operates the mechanism that fires the clay pigeons. And they talk and Mr. Samgrass reveals himself to be a goofy fool who obviously does not know how to conduct himself in an atmosphere like this. He becomes a sort of George Kittridge character. This goofiness and ineptness is presumably what Sebastian can't stand. That makes he and Charles mere snobs.

And this is a  big problem because he isn't George Kittridge, he is Mr. Samgrass and there is something rather menacing about Mr. Samgrass that Waugh doesn't want to say in so many words but he leaves us some powerful clues in the scene where Charles arrives at Brideshead after Christmas to find Mr. Samgrass sitting alone before the fire in the Tapestry Room. Interestingly, the TV series, drops all three. Perhaps they didn't seem all that important.

Hints number one and two are hiding in plain sight:

'You find me in solitary possession,' he said, and indeed he he seemed to possess the hall and the somber scenes of venery that hung around it, to possess the caryatids on either side of the fireplace, to possess me, as he rose to take my hand and greet me like a host ....

1. "Venery" is an archaic word that means two things. It means hunting and the straightforward sense of the word is that the tapestries around Mr. Samgrass are of hunting scenes like the famous room of hunting tapestries at the Louvre that perhaps inspired this scene. But "venery" has a double meaning and the other archaic use is to mean sexual indulgence. And Maurice Bowra, on whom the character is based, was notorious for his predatory sexual behaviour. He was the man who said, "Buggery was invented to fill that awkward hour between evensong and cocktails."
2. Caryatids are columns carved into the shape of women draped in long gowns. The name "carya" comes from young virgins who danced for the festival or Artemis. Even they are "possessed" by Samgrass.
3. He even seemed "to possess me" says Charles completing this little trio

And we should not miss the basic point that, far from not fitting in, Samgrass fits in rather too well.

And then there is this:

I have been spending a cozy afternoon before the fire with the incomparable Charlus.

And odd sort of thing to say, don't you think? Who is this Charlus and why does Mr. Samgrass assume that Charles will know what he is talking about.

Charlus is a character in Proust and not just any character. He is an older man who preys on younger men. He disguises his interest in men by pretending to be a womanizer. In Proust, he first preys on the narrator and then, having failed with him, more successfully pursues a young violinist named Morel. He is a very dominant character, a powerful personality who supports and shapes the young Morel, using his rank and wealth. With rather an interesting twist, however. Outside the bedroom, he is a very dominant but inside the bedroom he is a very submissive character who likes to be whipped.

I suppose you might say someone like that was "incomparable" but left unqualified that would mean a good thing; if we mean bad, we will say "incomparably bad" not "incomparable" tout court.

Incidentally, the volume in which Charlus pursues his relationship with young Morel, called Sodom and Gomorrah, was published in 1923 and this conversation where Samgrass praises Charlus takes place just after Christmas of that year.

Whether Charles recognizes it or not, the hints that Waugh is dropping here tell us that this man is a sexually aggressive man not above using his position and power to try to have his way with Sebastian. When Sebastian angrily picks on Samgrass by singing, "Green arse, Samgrass — Samgrass green arse" we might, if we can stand the thought, think about what Bowra said about buggery. Not that Samgrass succeeded in his preying but that he tried would be enough.

The first post in the Brideshead series is here.

The next post will be here.