It is easy, retrospectively, to endow one's youth with a false precocity or a false innocence ...That is a good thing to keep in mind when reconsidering our own youth. But here is what strikes me now: although he mentions both false precocity and false innocence, Ryder goes on to worry about only the precocity:
I should like to think—indeed I sometimes do think—that I decorated these rooms with Morris stuffs and Arundel prints and that my shelves were filled with seventeenth century folios and French novels of the second empire in Russian-leather and watered silk.Yup, that's what false precocity might look like but what about false innocence? Does Charles endow his past with any false innocence?
Just off the top of my head, I'd be inclined to say yes. I must keep an eye out for this as a I read along.
The first post in the Brideshead series is here.
The next post is here.
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