Chapter Commentary of Brideshead Revisited - Study Guide by Evelyn Waugh

She does know it and that is the root of the problem. It is not just Brideshead’s understanding of the facts, it is hers’ too. "He’s quite right…bought…for a penny at the church door. You can get anything for there for a penny, in black and white, and nobody to see that you pay…Put a penny in the box, or not, just as you like; take your tract. There you’ve got it in black and white…one little, flat, deadly word that covers a lifetime…sin. A word from so long ago, from Nanny Hawkins…Mummy carrying my sin with her to church…Mummy dying with it; Christ dying with it…No way back; the gates barred; the angels and saints posted along the wall…" (272ff.). As suddenly as she began, she stops and returns to congratulate Brideshead on his engagement. When Charles shows her Holman Hunt’s picture, 'The Awakened Conscience', she laughs, saying "You’re perfectly right. That’s exactly how it felt" (274).

Charles does not understand. He tries to comfort her during her outburst on mortal sin but she has entered a world that is as strange to him as the world that Rex inhabits, "I was adrift in a strange sea…I was as far from her in spirit…as when years ago I had lit her cigarette on the way from the station" (276). He tries to explain this outburst in psychological terms of preconditioning and guilt. "you do know at heart that it’s all bosh, don’t you" he asks and she replies "How I wish it was!" (276). He is no closer to a real understanding than when he had asked Sebastian the same question and received the same reply, "Is it all nonsense? I wish it were" (84). Charles does not understand Julia’s conscience or faith, nor is she at ease with either. She reacts violently, when he talks in abstract terms, of "Estrangement and misunderstanding" in act two: "Why must you see everything second-hand? Why must my conscience be a pre-Raphaelite picture?…I hate it" (277), she says, swiping at his face with a thin branch. Julia is tries to draft a compromise between her will - to marry Charles - and God’s, just as she had done when she wished to marry Rex (182). She argues that she has gone too far, "All I can hope to do is to put my life in order in a human way, before all human order comes to an end. That’s why I want to marry you" (276).

Cordelia returns. She brings news of Sebastian - that he has returned to Catholicism, that Kurt had recovered and returned to Germany but had been sent to a concentration camp where he had hanged himself. She says of Sebastian, "He was a very holy old man and recognized it in others". "Holiness", Charles asks. "Oh yes, Charles, that’s what you’ve got to understand about Sebastian" (291). She recognizess that Charles romance with her sister is "thwarted" and he begins to recognize it also. An image comes to him of an avalanche building up in the midst of which sits a hut, "everything dry and ship-shape and warm inside". The pressure of the avalanche slowly mounts until finally it gives way. The hut is broken up, splintered and disappears, "rolling with the avalanche into the ravine" (296).

Next to return is Lord Marchmain, now an old man and a dying man. He has returned to die and asks for the huge ornamental ‘Queen’s bed’ to be assembled in the Chinese drawing room. Cara had once told Charles that Lord Marchmain was in love with his own childhood and now, Charles asks himself, "Had it come to him at that moment, an awakened memory of childhood, a dream in the nursery - 'When I’m grown up I’ll sleep in the Queen’s bed in the Chinese drawing-room' - the apotheosis of adult grandeur?" (301). As he lies, slowly dying, other childhood memories come back along with a catalogue of family history. He talks of the titles held by his family, "We were knights then, barons since Agincourt, the larger honours came with the Georges. They came the last and they’ll go the first. When you are all dead, Julia’s son will be called by the name his fathers bore before the fat days…" (317). Charles fails once again to understand: ‘He’s got a wonderful will to live, hasn’t he?’ he says. "Would you put it like that?" asks the doctor, "I should say he has a great fear of death" (316). Charles does not see beyond the delicate mask, the elegy, "From dust we came and to dust we shall return".

Lord Marchmain talks also of escape and freedom. He feels increasingly trapped, like the oxygen in its bottle. Cara told Charles in Venice that Lord Marchmain loves her because she protects him from Lady Marchmain; that his hate for Lady Marchmain is, in fact a hate of himself (99f.). Cordelia told Charles that people hated Lady Marchmain when they wanted to hate God (213). As death approaches, Lord Marchmain can no longer escape to the Cara’s protective bosom. He, alone, has to face up to God, to his sin. "Next to death, perhaps because they are like death, he feared dark and loneliness…he liked to have us in his room and the lights burnt all night" (316). As he struggles, those around him struggle for