Mulcaster!

The Season of Brideshead
Et in Arcadia Ego, Chapter 2
Many of us have seen the 1981 series and it has a strong influence on the way we imagine the people, events and places we find in Brideshead Revisisted. For the most part that is okay but there are two characters that I believe the series misleads us about. The second of these is Mr. Samgrass, whom we will meet shortly. The first is Boy Mulcaster.

The problem in both cases is that the series makes the two men rather too comic. And that is a problem because they both are slightly sinister forces that come up against Charles and Sebastian.

Of course the first we hear of Mulcaster is from the lips of Anthony and he mocks poor Boy mercilessly. But that tells us something for there are things we must grudgingly admit even of those we would mock. So when, in the midst of calling Mulcaster a cad and an oaf, Anthony lets slip that, "All the young ladies in London are after him," we should note this: Mulcaster is very attractive to women. He doesn't come across that way in the 1981 series.

Mulcaster is a guy with more status than Charles. He is an Etonian, he has a title and he is probably better looking in the eyes of women (later Charles will be remembered as having been a "pretty boy" at this point in his life). Yes, he has no experience with women and is a little afraid of them leading him bluster a bit and to go to prostitutes but that is not so unusual a thing.

We also live after the sexual revolution, which is to say in an era when casual sex is available to almost everyone if the really want it. It is also an era when nice young women can have sex without destroying their reputations. This was not quite true at the time this book was written.  We are, therefore, more censorious of Boy going to prostitutes than any of his contemporaries would have been.

Don't read him as an example of a particularly laughable or inept young man. Many of Boy's weaknesses and failings are also those of Charles and Sebastian. When Charles says that "at times most of us seemed like children beside [Anthony]" we should take that as an opportunity to group Boy together with Charles and not see him as a laughable failure as compared to him. Boy is a sexual blunderer to be sure but we all are at that age and, slow as he may be, he is ahead of Charles at this point.

The first post in the Brideshead series is here.

The next post is here.