The Season of Brideshead: more autobiography problem

Keeping Saint-Beuve alive
Someone named Paula Byrne has sprung up with a new biography of Waugh and she takes the full Saint-Beuve view that biography explains fiction.

Well, it might explain something but as near as I can tell she mostly ends up demonstrating that there are clear limitations to the biographical approach. Here is what she says of Waugh and Alastair Graham in a newspaper article about her new biography:

"He had what he called an 'acute homosexual phase' when he was at Oxford, like most Oxford men in the Twenties.

It was not particularly unusual, particularly because women were not permitted to go to Oxford.

"It was very much perceived as acceptable as long as it was a phase you grew out of when you left Oxford. He used to joke to friends who hadn't had a gay phase that they had missed out on something. He said it was like fermenting wine, in order to prepare you for later on - for being married."

"Used to joke" seems the key phrase here.  But this is a legitimate opinion no? I have gay friends and I look at them and think, "It's too bad your missing out on the really good part of sex." Sometimes I've even say it aloud to friends I know won't be offended*.  They also could, of course, make the same remark going the other way but they would be wrong ;-)

And "most Oxford men" ... but I'll get back to that.

Ms. Byrne shows the limitations of focusing on biographical details when she goes on to say,

Graham became a diplomat and adopted a gay life overseas. Waugh disapproved and turned his back on Graham, who he believed was following a "seedy, expatriate life".

The problem with saying that is that another one of Waugh's very best friends, Harold Acton, did exactly the same thing and Waugh remained close friends with him for the rest of his life. Waugh did indeed drift apart from Graham but he did not do so until years after Graham was firmly entrenched in his seedy expatriate life. There was something about Graham's life Waugh did not like but I don't know what it is and, whatever it was, it cannot be summed up that easily.

And Waugh destroyed the relevant sections of his diaries. But, if we read about Anthony Blanche and Sebastian carefully, we might see Waugh telling us not about the facts about Alastair Graham and Hugh Lygon or about of his relationships with them but something more profound about what he learned about human relationships from these experiences.

"Most Oxford men"
What Waugh did was not uncommon but I suspect it is a stretch to say most men did it.


The sort of relationship that Waugh had is not unheard of today. The most recent National Survey of Sexual Health and Behavior about ten percent of men in their twenties and fourteen percent of women in their twenties have had sexual relations with a member of the same sex. Most will not repeat the experience but some will experiment on the other side now and then throughout their lives. Less than two percent will come to coinsider themselves gay or lesbian.

If you think about it, that's a lot of "experimentation". In fact, it sounds like falling in love with someone of your own sex while growing up is, while not universal, a fairly normal thing to do. You almost certainly know people whom you have never suspected or even thought to suspect such a thing who have fond memories of a year at summer camp or something where they tasted love. For ninety percent of men and eighty-five percent of women, Charles's experience is something very foreign but remember that even if you cannot imagine doing such a thing yourself someone you know and love probably has. And no they won't want to talk about it. They especially won't want to talk about it if the particular they is a she and you are a he for fear you'll enjoy it too much.

And if you look at your own past carefully you may well remember a friendship that, while it was not ever actually sexual, carried clear homoerotic overtones. Think about the person you had not so much a friendship with but a boy-crush or girl-crush with because you so wanted to be like them or they so wanted to be like you. One of you picked up the mannerisms and expressions of the other and you started dressing alike and you often wanted to be alone together because there was no one else you could talk to quite like you could talk to him or her. If you think about it honestly, you might be able to remember how that friendship could have with just the right amount of privacy and a little more risk taking on one or both your parts have become something that was openly erotic love.

Just maybe. I don't want to force anything on anyone here.

This aspect of human behaviour has never been very closely studied by the way.  The recent scientific bias seems to be to try and deny it exists all among men, despite ample evidence to the contrary in sources such as the National Survey of Sexual Health and Behavior. This, I suspect, because it muddles up the current politically correct theories about genetic origins of same sex preference.

The above figures tell us something  very important about what it must be like to be young and gay. For the number of people who are primarily heterosexual but capable and willing of having same-sex love outnumber actual gays and lesbians by a ration of somewhere between 5 to 1 to 7 to 1. That means that most young gay men and young lesbians are far more likely to have sexual experiences with people who are not gay or lesbian like themselves.

If we relate this to Brideshead we should acknowledge that Waugh clearly knows of what he speaks here. For a young gay man like Sebastian, and he is, his early experiences of love are far more likely to be with someone like Charles than another young gay man. As we read along, we should think about how that experience shapes Sebastian's thoughts about Charles. For Sebastian has to be becoming increasingly aware that Charles is not really like him and he is not really like Charles and that has to have something to do with the growing distance between the two lovers.

A final thought that has nothing to do with Brideshead: given the ratios I discussed above, you would expect these "ambisextrous people" (as we used to say back in the 1980s) would figure in gay and lesbian literature. And they do. There is an interesting difference however between the two subcultures. In gay literature, sexually curious heterosexual men who have relationships with other men before going back to heterosexual life are treated in a positive way and they are often highly sought after partners in gay personals. In lesbian writings, women who do the same are sneered at and treated as traitors. You occasionally even see expressions such as "going back to the pricks"  or "LUG" (lesbian until graduation) to describe such women.

The first post in the Brideshead series is here.

The next post is here.



* By the way, that is all my gay friends. Not one of them has ever be offended by this sentiment. I have a heterosexual friend, however, who depsite being very uncomfortable around gay men himself once took great umbrage on behalf of gay men when I said something to this effect.