The Story of Brideshead Revisited

II

Charles remembers how he first came to Brideshead twenty years before on a beautiful, warm summer’s day. It was owing to a remarkable friendship that had developed between him and Lord Sebastian Flyte, whose family lives at Brideshead.

When Charles went up to Oxford University as a callow youth in 1922, he was, as students usually are at first, conscientious in his work and moderate in his wishes. His cousin Jasper Ryder gave him good advice which would have led him along a safe path of meritorious behaviour to a satisfactory outcome and prepared him for leading a life of public service. He retained a few friends from school and at Oxford made a few more, and joined earnestly in discussion groups with some of the serious men.

But, not fully recognised even by himself perhaps, Charles was an artist. He sensed there was far more to be learned and experienced at Oxford. The opportunity to participate in a different life was offered when one night a young man in a rowdy party was sick through the window of his room in college - but from the outside in. The following day this young man, Sebastian, sent many bunches of flowers in apology and invited Charles to lunch with him in his college, Christ Church.

There Charles met students who lived very differently. They dedicated themselves to enjoying life, and were unashamed of exerting their privileges to do so. He met not only Sebastian, but also Viscount ‘Boy’ Mulcaster, a man of little brain, and Anthony Blanche, a bisexual aesthete who had travelled the world and had many astounding experiences. Quickly Sebastian and Charles found that they were compatible and soon they were inseparable.

One day Sebastian borrows a motor-car and drives Charles to Brideshead, which lies nearly a hundred miles from Oxford. He wants to visit his old nurse Nanny Hawkins, who has retired but has been invited to continue living in her own room in the castle. Brideshead is not really a castle but a sixteenth/seventeenth century palace with a dome and later additions. It stands in its own extensive grounds with three lakes and a fountain. Charles, his artistic instincts aroused, wants to see over the whole building but Sebastian shows him only a closed-up room and then the chapel, a striking example of late nineteenth century architecture and decoration but in its garishness entirely different from the rest of the castle. They get away just in time to avoid meeting Sebastian’s sister Julia. Sebastian does not want Charles to meet her or the rest of his family because, he says, he fears they will take Charles away from him with their charm and attractiveness.