Chapter Commentary of Brideshead Revisited - Study Guide by Evelyn Waugh

him, Brideshead fiercely determined that he should receive the last rites, Charles vehemently determined that he shouldn’t. His vehemence suggests, perhaps, an underlying insecurity, a growing doubt that it is all "bosh", a growing faith. Julia is unsure but she is angered by Charles’ objections. Eventually, she calls a priest who asks Lord Marchmain to give some outward sign that he is repentant. "I suddenly felt the longing for a sign, if only of courtesy, if only for the woman I loved, who knelt in front of me, praying, I knew, for a sign…I prayed more simply; 'God forgive him his sins…Please God, make him accept you forgiveness.'…Lord Marchmain made the sign of the cross. Then I knew that the sign I had asked for was not a little thing, not a passing nod of recognition" (322). Charles finally understands. "…a phrase came back to me from my childhood of the veil of the temple being rent from top to bottom" (322). His love of Julia has led him to a love of God. Like Sebastian, Julia was a forerunner for a deeper love.

Lord Marchmain dies and with him Charles and Julia’s romance. She explains to him, "I’ve always been bad…But the worse I am, the more I need God. I can’t shut myself out from his mercy. That is what it would mean; starting a life with you, without him…I saw today there was one thing unforgivable…that I’m not quite bad enough to do; to set up a rival good to God’s" (324). She doesn’t expect him to understand but he does. The avalanche that has been building up within him has given way. The log cabin, Charles’s warm world insulated from God’s will, has been swept away, "the last echoes died on the white slopes; the new mound glittered and lay still in the silent valley".

Epilogue: BRIDESHEAD REVISITED

Charles lays his memories to rest and the story comes up-to-date. Charles ‘revisit’ to Brideshead is in the present, not the past. Charles sees it in the harsh light of the modern world. The beautiful grounds are seen as having "great potentialities for an assault course and a mortar range" (325), the solid buildings show signs of modern vandalism, "Look where one careless devil went smack through the box hedge and carried away all that balustrade". The fountain, as Lord Marchmain had predicted on his death-bed, is dry, and its basin has become a rubbish dumb. Nanny Hawkins is still there but greatly aged. Among these ruins of what was once his Arcadia, Charles turns to Hooper and tells him, "I never built anything, and I forfeited the right to watch my son grow up. I’m homeless childless, middle-aged, loveless, Hooper" (330). Of course, Hooper doesn’t understand.

Charles goes to the chapel, the last place that he has to revisit, the last place that he reached and the most enduring: "The chapel showed no ill-effects of its long neglect; the art nouveau lamp burned once more before the altar. I said a prayer, an ancient newly-learned form of words" (330). As he walks towards the camp, the cookhouse bugles heralding the immediate concerns of the present, he thinks, "The builders did not know the uses to which their work would descend…generation after generation, they enriched and extended it…until, in sudden frost, came the age of Hooper; the place was desolate and the work all brought nothing; Quomodo sedet sola civitas. Vanity of vanities, all is vanity.

"And yet…and yet that is not the last word…Something quite remote from anything the builders intended has come out of their work, and of the fierce little human tragedy in which I played;…a small red flame…" (330). Brideshead might seem a sad story but, despite their sadness, the "tragedians" have all found faith, the little red flame burns. As Lady Marchmain says much earlier in the book, of another story, "I suppose, really, it’s meant to be an encouraging story" (160). She is mocking Rex but if she had considered the story in the same terms as Rex, she would realise that he is genuinely being positive. Similarly, if we consider Brideshead on the same terms as Waugh - in Catholic terms - it is not tragic but positive: "'You’re looking unusually cheery today,' said the second-in-command."