The Season of Brideshead
A Twitch Upon the Thread, Chapter one
What does this bit of dialogue mean?
Well, in a sense it is easy. These three are alone in the face of the storm just like the three characters in Lear. And each of them has been the noble one and who has failed to live up to the standards expected of their nobility (Lear). Each of them has been the stalwart subject standing nobly by another (Kent). And each of them has been cheated upon and cheated themselves (playing the Fool).
There are a lot of things from Lear that appear in this last part of Brideshead: there is an illegitimate child, there are multiple betrayals, there is a storm, there is a rightful heir who is disinherited in favour of a younger child, there is a daughter named Cordelia who, alone among her siblings, will not flatter her father. And there must be more.
But there is another sense in which I think Charles (but not Waugh) is completely missing the point. Lear's tragedy is provoked when Lear refuses to live up to his proper role. This starts a chain of events wherein everyone forgets their proper role and place in life and everyone abandons and betrays him.
Only Kent will stand by his King and what is perhaps the key bit of dialogue comes when Kent shows up and drives the horrible Oswald away:
The lack of respect for differences shows up at the Captain's table the first night out and Waugh, who can rarely resist a dig at Anglicanism, puts foolish words into the mouth of an Episcopalian Bishop who tells Charles that he is on a mission to Barcelona to "reconcile the so-called Anarchists and the so-called Communists". There was, of course, nothing "so-called" about either group: they were very much real Anarchists and real Communists and they were engaged in a death fight like the Bloods and The Crips. A struggle that had the Communists in the role of the Crips: they successfully massacred pretty much all the Anarchists in Italy, Spain and France by 1944. Not that it would have been any better if the Anarchists had won.
But our friend the Bishop cares little about such details as labels and ideologies, he, like Lear, has good intentions and thinks that is enough. When a diplomat's wife at the table asks the Bishop what language he plans to speak in Barcelona he answers:
Anyway, lets look at our three characters in this tragedy.
Celia
If we take everything Charles tells us about Celia at face value we will dislike her but, as I hope is clear by now, we should never take anything Charles says at face value.
One obvious place to look when trying to understand any character in Brideshead is to look up their saint's name. The name "Celia" is a form of Cecilia who is one of the companions of Agnes, which is to say she is one of a group of virgin martyrs who begins as a real person but about whom all sorts of mythology accrues. And the key bit of mythology regarding Saint Cecilia is that she talks her husband out of sex on her wedding night and forevermore after that. And that, I would humbly suggest, is Charles real complaint against Celia, that she lets him down sexually. Another woman will comment in this chapter that 'Celia's never quite got the orange blossom out of her hair, has she?' (Orange blossoms were traditional in Bridal floral arrangements at the time because the orange blossoms and fruits at the same time. We've lost our taste for that kind of symbolism.) In any case, Charles resents Celia for being something of a perpetual virgin.
We've had two mentions of Celia in the story before and the second of these confirms this thesis. It is made by Mr. Samgrass when he possess everything at Brideshead including the young maidens, his favourite among whom is Celia:
Anyway, back on topic, here is how Charles describes Celia ten years later:
The real problem comes out in the sex scene with Celia (and I hope at least some readers are beginning to suspect that it's not just me who keeps coming back to the sex but Waugh himself). Here is how Charles describes "his wife's" (he doesn't like using her name does he?) sexual response:
Okay, you may be saying, but what about Celia's infidelity? Well the important thing here, it seems to me, is not that Celia actually is so virginal as that Charles sees her that way. Mr. Samgrass sees "saucy" and I suspect he is the better judge here. You've know women whose public sexuality is like that haven't you.
And then there is Caroline. Perhaps Charles suspects or knows something awful here:
That name carries two powerful echoes by the way. The first is "Carolingian" meaning "a descendant of Charles". But "Caroline" also calls to mind Queen Caroline who was so shabbily treated by George IV who complained, probably incorrectly, that she wasn't a virgin—not the least troubled by most emphatically not being one himself—only had sex with her three times during their marriage and then locked her out.
And that sort of hypocrisy is also problem with Charles. When Charles begins to recount his pursuit of Julia he contrasts it with his many other seduction attempts these past ten years. How can he complain about Celia then? Charles is a moral hypocrite plain and simple.
(The other previous mention of Celia is in the prologue by the way. It's in that long bit comparing Charles loss of love for the army with a man's loss of love for his wife "in the fourth year of his marriage, suddenly knew he had no longer any desire, or tenderness, or esteem, for a once-beloved wife ...." Kermode wonders in the introduction to my edition why this was not cut and the answer is because it is Charles speaking and he tells us something about himself by going on too long about his wife.)
Finally, I think the salient moral fact is that Celia wants to be forgiven and Charles does not want to forgive her.
Julia
Julia is also the name of one of the companions of Agnes. Her legend is that she was sold in slavery and traveled on a ship with her master before being captured by pirates. Unlike our Julia, the legend has her being tortured and crucified but, magically, never violated. This seems more than a coincidence. And while Julia is not actually crucified, she does go through sudden and unexpected suffering after she is swept up by the pirate Charles.
The telling moment, I think, is when Charles compares her to the Mona Lisa and notes that the effects of the years weigh on her:
And we might stop a second and contrast this Charles with his namesake Charles Swann in Proust who can only fall in love when he is able to see Odette in terms of a great work of art.
Charlus Rex
And that brings us to Charles and the vindication of Rex.
For here, in one chapter, Charles does everything he sneered at in Rex.
But, if we are right to be offended, we have no right to be offended on Julia's behalf. There is no evidence whatsoever to indicate that she fails to appreciate how she is being taken nor is there any to indicate that this is anything but exactly what she wants.
A quick hit on Sebastian and Bellini this afternoon and then on to Chapter 2 tomorrow.
The first post in the Brideshead series is here.
The next post will be here.
A Twitch Upon the Thread, Chapter one
What does this bit of dialogue mean?
Soon only Julia, my wife, and I were left at table, and, telepathically, Julia said, 'Like King Lear.'I'm not sure I can do much better.
'Only each of us is all three of them.'
'What can you mean?' asked my wife.
'Lear, Kent Fool.'
'Oh dear, it's like that agonizing Foulenough conversation over again. Don't try and explain.'
'I doubt if I could,' I said.
Well, in a sense it is easy. These three are alone in the face of the storm just like the three characters in Lear. And each of them has been the noble one and who has failed to live up to the standards expected of their nobility (Lear). Each of them has been the stalwart subject standing nobly by another (Kent). And each of them has been cheated upon and cheated themselves (playing the Fool).
There are a lot of things from Lear that appear in this last part of Brideshead: there is an illegitimate child, there are multiple betrayals, there is a storm, there is a rightful heir who is disinherited in favour of a younger child, there is a daughter named Cordelia who, alone among her siblings, will not flatter her father. And there must be more.
But there is another sense in which I think Charles (but not Waugh) is completely missing the point. Lear's tragedy is provoked when Lear refuses to live up to his proper role. This starts a chain of events wherein everyone forgets their proper role and place in life and everyone abandons and betrays him.
Only Kent will stand by his King and what is perhaps the key bit of dialogue comes when Kent shows up and drives the horrible Oswald away:
Come, sir, arise, away! I'll teach you differences."I'll teach you differences" means, I'll teach you to know your place and rank but the lesson is not just for Oswald for everyone in the Kingdom has forgotten their differences beginning with Lear himself. "[M]easure your lubber's length again" means I'll knock you flat on the ground but, for our purposes, it is perhaps most interesting that he uses a nautical insult and, at least initially, that difference in character in this chapter seems to correspond to how good a sailor you are. (Only notice, Charles and Julia finally commit adultery after falling flat against a bulkhead; their "fall" begins, quite literally, with a fall.)
Away, away! if you will measure your lubber's
length again, tarry: but away! go to; have you
wisdom? So!
The lack of respect for differences shows up at the Captain's table the first night out and Waugh, who can rarely resist a dig at Anglicanism, puts foolish words into the mouth of an Episcopalian Bishop who tells Charles that he is on a mission to Barcelona to "reconcile the so-called Anarchists and the so-called Communists". There was, of course, nothing "so-called" about either group: they were very much real Anarchists and real Communists and they were engaged in a death fight like the Bloods and The Crips. A struggle that had the Communists in the role of the Crips: they successfully massacred pretty much all the Anarchists in Italy, Spain and France by 1944. Not that it would have been any better if the Anarchists had won.
But our friend the Bishop cares little about such details as labels and ideologies, he, like Lear, has good intentions and thinks that is enough. When a diplomat's wife at the table asks the Bishop what language he plans to speak in Barcelona he answers:
'The language of Reason and Brotherhood, madam,' and, turning back to me, 'The speech of the coming century is in thoughts and not in words. Do you not agree Mr. Ryder?'Charles says he does but is probably being ironic. More ironic than he knows for he soon falls victim of his own little fantasy where thoughts matter more than words. He thinks Julia and he can say so much without words.
Anyway, lets look at our three characters in this tragedy.
Celia
If we take everything Charles tells us about Celia at face value we will dislike her but, as I hope is clear by now, we should never take anything Charles says at face value.
One obvious place to look when trying to understand any character in Brideshead is to look up their saint's name. The name "Celia" is a form of Cecilia who is one of the companions of Agnes, which is to say she is one of a group of virgin martyrs who begins as a real person but about whom all sorts of mythology accrues. And the key bit of mythology regarding Saint Cecilia is that she talks her husband out of sex on her wedding night and forevermore after that. And that, I would humbly suggest, is Charles real complaint against Celia, that she lets him down sexually. Another woman will comment in this chapter that 'Celia's never quite got the orange blossom out of her hair, has she?' (Orange blossoms were traditional in Bridal floral arrangements at the time because the orange blossoms and fruits at the same time. We've lost our taste for that kind of symbolism.) In any case, Charles resents Celia for being something of a perpetual virgin.
We've had two mentions of Celia in the story before and the second of these confirms this thesis. It is made by Mr. Samgrass when he possess everything at Brideshead including the young maidens, his favourite among whom is Celia:
'I shall miss the pretty creatures about the house—particularly one Celia ... She has a bird-like style of conversation, pecking away at the subject in a way I find most engaging, and a school-monitor style of dress which I can only call "saucy". I shall miss her, for I do not go tomorrow.'(Notice, typical Samgrass, that he will miss her not because she is going but because he is not and will, therefore, be unable to pursue her. Maurice Bowra (the model for Samgrass) upon hearing of a wedding announcement once said, "Nice couple, slept with both of them.")
Anyway, back on topic, here is how Charles describes Celia ten years later:
My wife's softness and English reticence, her very white, small regular teeth, her neat rosy finger nails, her schoolgirl air of innocent mischief and her schoolgirl dress, her modern jewelery, which was made at great expense to give the impression, at a distance, of having been mass produced, her ready, rewarding smile, her deference to me and her zeal in my interests, her motherly heart which made her cable daily to nanny at home—in short, her peculiar charm ....And we might say, wait a minute, what's peculiar about that? The key to his objection is the schoolgirl air of innocent mischief and to that we can only say, what's wrong with your libido Charles?
The real problem comes out in the sex scene with Celia (and I hope at least some readers are beginning to suspect that it's not just me who keeps coming back to the sex but Waugh himself). Here is how Charles describes "his wife's" (he doesn't like using her name does he?) sexual response:
Then she knew what was wanted. She had neat, hygienic ways for that too, but there was both relief and triumph in her smile of welcome.And we now know what kind of sex Charles wants from Julia don't we? And we know she delivers. I know, I know, so many readers just don't want to confront this but it's there. If Celia is a perpetual virgin in bed, Waugh gives us lots of hints that Julia is most decidedly not.
Okay, you may be saying, but what about Celia's infidelity? Well the important thing here, it seems to me, is not that Celia actually is so virginal as that Charles sees her that way. Mr. Samgrass sees "saucy" and I suspect he is the better judge here. You've know women whose public sexuality is like that haven't you.
And then there is Caroline. Perhaps Charles suspects or knows something awful here:
'... but frankly I do not remember hearing that your new baby was called Caroline. Why did you call it that?'The thing about being chivalrous is that if you ever want to be a complete cad, all you have to do is let slip in the tiniest way. That "your baby" and "why did you cal it" are the kind of thing that leaves a mark. Poor Celia has named the baby Caroline to recall Charles and with the hope of giving him a sense of ownership regarding a daughter he doesn't feel is his own.
That name carries two powerful echoes by the way. The first is "Carolingian" meaning "a descendant of Charles". But "Caroline" also calls to mind Queen Caroline who was so shabbily treated by George IV who complained, probably incorrectly, that she wasn't a virgin—not the least troubled by most emphatically not being one himself—only had sex with her three times during their marriage and then locked her out.
And that sort of hypocrisy is also problem with Charles. When Charles begins to recount his pursuit of Julia he contrasts it with his many other seduction attempts these past ten years. How can he complain about Celia then? Charles is a moral hypocrite plain and simple.
(The other previous mention of Celia is in the prologue by the way. It's in that long bit comparing Charles loss of love for the army with a man's loss of love for his wife "in the fourth year of his marriage, suddenly knew he had no longer any desire, or tenderness, or esteem, for a once-beloved wife ...." Kermode wonders in the introduction to my edition why this was not cut and the answer is because it is Charles speaking and he tells us something about himself by going on too long about his wife.)
Finally, I think the salient moral fact is that Celia wants to be forgiven and Charles does not want to forgive her.
Julia
Julia is also the name of one of the companions of Agnes. Her legend is that she was sold in slavery and traveled on a ship with her master before being captured by pirates. Unlike our Julia, the legend has her being tortured and crucified but, magically, never violated. This seems more than a coincidence. And while Julia is not actually crucified, she does go through sudden and unexpected suffering after she is swept up by the pirate Charles.
The telling moment, I think, is when Charles compares her to the Mona Lisa and notes that the effects of the years weigh on her:
Time had wrought another change, too; not for her the sly, complacent smile of la Gioconda; the years had been more than 'the sound of lyres and flutes', and had saddened her.And that little quote there is, in case you didn't recognize him, our old friend Walter Pater.
She is older than the rocks among which she sits; like the vampire, she has been dead many times, and learned the secrets of the grave; and has been a diver in deep seas, and keeps their fallen day about her; and trafficked for strange webs with Eastern merchants: and, as Leda, was the mother of Helen of Troy, and, as Saint Anne, the mother of Mary; and all this has been to her but as the sound of lyres and flutes, and lives only in the delicacy with which it has moulded the changing lineaments, and tinged the eyelids and the hands.What is happening here? It's Charles trying to live out the commitment he made to realism. He no longer sees Julia in terms of art but is, he thinks anyway, seeing her real and direct. He is firmly convinced he is leaving his days as an aesthete behind him.
And we might stop a second and contrast this Charles with his namesake Charles Swann in Proust who can only fall in love when he is able to see Odette in terms of a great work of art.
Charlus Rex
And that brings us to Charles and the vindication of Rex.
For here, in one chapter, Charles does everything he sneered at in Rex.
- He connects with Celia because she is a woman who gives him access to the world of status and glamour he wants just as Rex did with Brenda Champion. And Celia's importance to Charles success shines through here, She is good at what he wanted and she has been good for him.
- He dumps this woman when he discovers that he is not happy with what he sought for in her once he has it.
- He takes Julia like a piece of property.
It was no time for the sweets of luxury; they would come, in their season, with the swallow and the lime flowers. Now on the rough water there was a formality to be observed, no more. It was as though a deed of conveyance to her narrow loins had been drawn and sealed. I was making my first entry as the freeholder of a property I would enjoy and develop at leisure.That is one ugly sentiment and if you don't believe me consider what he was literally entering and that he now describes metaphorically as property. His property!
But, if we are right to be offended, we have no right to be offended on Julia's behalf. There is no evidence whatsoever to indicate that she fails to appreciate how she is being taken nor is there any to indicate that this is anything but exactly what she wants.
A quick hit on Sebastian and Bellini this afternoon and then on to Chapter 2 tomorrow.
The first post in the Brideshead series is here.
The next post will be here.
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