Chapter Commentary of Brideshead Revisited - Study Guide by Evelyn Waugh

consigns himself to the "real world": "Hence forth I live in a world of three dimensions - with the aid of my five senses" (164).

Charles gone, Sebastian is left drinking himself out of his mother’s clutches with the help of his little sister, Cordelia, who smuggles whisky for him. Sebastian’s other sister, Julia, has a boyfriend called Rex Mottram, an ambitious and confident man. He argues that the only cure for Sebastian is to go to Borethus at Zurich, "Borethus is the man. He works miracles every day at that sanatorium of his" (159). Rex’s understanding of Sebastian’s problems is completely mistaken. His understanding is formed by the precepts of the world in which he lives, a very different world to the Marchmains. Lady Marchmain understands her son better than that - she understands at least his background - and is rightly sceptical of Rex’s proposal. Eventually though, she despairs and takes Rex’s advice. Sebastian is sent to Borethus at Zurich with Rex as his guardian. But Rex, for all his big talk, fails. On their way to Zurich, Sebastian slips away as he snoozes, unsuspecting, his head resting peacefully on the table of a Parisian restaurant.

Charles returns to find Rex waiting in his apartment. "Have you got him?", Rex asks (165), and thus the world of Brideshead that Charles had resolutely put behind him returns to haunt him. What follows is an amusing and interesting scene between Charles and Rex that highlights the different worlds in which they live. As Lady ‘Ma’ Marchmain had said to Rex, "We live in different atmospheres" (169). As they talk and eat, it is clear that Rex and Charles live for different things, they breathe different air. "Those were the kinds of thing he heard, mortal illness and debt," Charles thinks, "I rejoiced in the Burgundy. It seemed a reminder that the world was an older and better place than Rex knew, that mankind had learned another wisdom than his…but sentences came breaking in on my happiness, recalling me to the harsh, acquisitive world which Rex inhabited" (169). Later Julia speaks about Rex, "He wasn’t a complete human being at all…he was something absolutely modern and up-to-date that only this ghastly age could produce. A tiny bit of man pretending he was whole" (193). Charles’ dinner with Rex begins with the question, "Any sign of Sebastian?" (166). It ends with Rex talking about Julia, "his voice…like a dog’s barking miles away on a still night", Rex "at peace with his world", Charles "at peace in another world than his" (171). And so, the book moves from Charles’ relationship with Sebastian to Charles’ relationship with Julia.

Chapter 2 relates what Charles learned of Julia and her relationship and marriage to Rex. Written in retrospect, ("it was ten years later that she said this to me in a storm in the Atlantic" (193)), he describes the young Julia, her romantic notions of marriage and her relationship with Rex. Particularly amusing is the account of Rex’s conversion to Catholicism (184-7) which shows the lack of depth in his character. It is also very important as one of the contrasting examples of attitudes towards religion and the nature of faith. Every major character is or becomes a Catholic and this is the most important theme of the book. The nature of Rex’s faith, if you can call it faith, is relatively easy to understand - it is merely a means to an end, the end being marriage to Julia with a fashionable service, conducted by cardinals, etc. - but this passage also sheds light on Julia’s faith. Her faith is much more complicated, an odd compromise between God’s will and hers.

Charles returns to the proper chronology of his memories. He leaves Paris for London in the spring of 1926, the time of the General Strike. He meets up with Anthony Blanche and Boy Mulcaster, both old friends of his from his Oxford days. He explains that he has returned "from overseas, rallying to old country in need" (198). He is again among his friends from Arcadia, his mind, again reeling with romantic notions of duty and patriotism. "…I, at any rate, had formed in my mind a clear, composite picture of ‘Revolution'- the red flag on the post office, the overturned tram…" (194) and inevitably, he and Blanche talk of Sebastian. Blanche tells him that Sebastian had stayed with him in Marseilles after he left the snoozing Rex, "such a sot…Sip, sip, sip like a dowager all day long. And so sly…" (195f.). From there Sebastian had gone to Tangier and "there, my dear, Sebastian took up with his new friend" (196). Blanche describes Sebastian’s new friend, Kurt, "like a footman in Warning Shadows - a great clod of a German who’d been in the foreign legion… Sebastian found him, starving as a tout to one of the houses in the Kasbah, and brought him to stay with us. It was too macabre…" (196f.).