Brideshead Revisited, Revisited

Do not be dissuaded by my Brideshead post. Do find a particularly rainy weekend to immerse yourself in the full eleven hours of Brideshead Revisited. After carefully spending the first few hours flush with headiness of those Oxford years, you can continue watching while you read Paula Byrne’s Mad World: Evelyn Waugh and the Secrets of Brideshead.

Byrne focuses on Waugh during the years he conceived of (and lived) his novel and much of the aftermath, including Waugh’s first marriage. On the 27 June 1928 Evelyn Waugh married Evelyn Gardner making them Evelyn and Evelyn Waugh. (Let me take this opportunity to say that if you are planning to write a novel where the protagonist marries a women with the same name and you present this manuscript to a “writing” instructor, you will be told in no uncertain terms that one cannot have a book where both the protagonist and his wife bear the same name. The reader will forever be confused as to which on you are writing about.) This is why truth is stranger and often far more interesting than fiction.

She-Evelyn and He-Evelyn

It was quickly decide by their very quick friends that the Waugh’s would be known as He-Evelyn and She-Evelyn to differentiate them. The ever-quick Nancy Mitford felt they looked a bit like twins, like schoolboys. Present at the wedding were two of Waugh’s Oxford friends; Harold Acton acted as best man and Robert Byron gave away the bride.

Acton and Waugh remained close even though Acton was a bit ruffled by the character of Anthony Blanche in Brideshead Revisited.

Nickolas Grace as Anthony Blanche

Aesthetes, Acton and Brian Howard, came together in one of Waugh’s most notable characters, Anthony Blanche. Waugh, trying to appease his friend often said that Blanche was one-third Acton (the good third, presumably) and two-thirds Howard (the stammering, wicked parts). Harold Acton said of Waugh, “I still see him as a prancing faun.” The sophisticated Acton infatuated Waugh. Of Brian Howard, Waugh was a bit more leery believing him to be “bad, mad and dangerous to know.” It was Acton who stood on the balcony reciting T. S. Eliot from a megaphone. Brian Howard was thought to have had the greatest promise of his group of friends but his potential was never fully developed. His only biography/collection compiled by Marie-Jacqueline Lancaster bears the title, Brian Howard: Portrait of a Failure.



Acton went on to write extensively and is known for book, Memoir of an Aesthete and for writing a memoir of Nancy Mitford.


Another great read about this period (remember, Brideshead is ELEVEN hours, you will have plenty of reading time) is D. J Taylor’s Bright Young People: The Lost Generation of the Jazz Age.



It casts a wider net of the characters and their hedonism in London during the 1920’s. Truly, the era between the World Wars was a unique and traumatic period of history. After enduring the ravages of World War I and believing it to be a war to end all wars, World War II happened. The youthful frivolity and reckless hedonism came crashing in around Bright Young Things as they faced a growing global darkness. So, yes, Brideshead grew darker as did the times. I won’t fault Evelyn Waugh.

Brideshead Revisited

I have vivid memories of the first time I saw Brideshead Revisited --the sweeping mini-series, not the recently miscast abridged version. I am told that when it first in Washington, D. C., dinner reservations were easy to come by on the night Brideshead was shown as EVERYONE was home watching it.

WETA, the PBS station in DC loved it so much that it seemed every time someone need change for the parking meter, they would launch a fundraiser with Brideshead Revisited. But nothing beats that first experience. I was smitten. Pasty-faced English boys reading poetry and drinking champagne! It was divine. In fact, as memory served me, Brideshead Revisited was the perfect embodiment of Evelyn Waugh's novel. As I remember it, there were hours and hours of those pasty-faced boys and their alcohol.

So I can't tell you how happy I was when I received the 25th Anniversary re-mastered DVD of Brideshead. I was so excited that it took me months to actually watch it. I wanted just the right time to allow for the full 11 hours of uninterrupted viewing. Finally that weekend came to fruition. Just as had remembered there were hours of lovely boys drinking to excess. Actually there were about 2 1/2 hours of what I had remembered. And there were nearly nine hours of abject tediousness.

Needless to say I was crushed. How could I have remembered it so poorly? Why did Evelyn Waugh ever want to become a Catholic after writing Lady Marchmain? Was my love of Jeremy Irons clouded by my first sight of him? Should I even bother to watch the Medici's?

I turned to the great Nancy Mitford for clarification on these matters. Mitford had asked Waugh how he could behave so abominably and yet still consider himself a practicing Catholic to which Waugh replied, "You have no idea how much nastier I would be if I was not a Catholic. Without supernatural aid I would hardly be a human being."


Mitford and Waugh carried on a robust correspondence which has thankfully been published for all to read. While Mitford believed Brideshead Revisited to be a classic, she found the character of Charles Ryder a bit "dim." Waugh wrote, “Yes, I can see how you think Charles is dim, but then he’s telling the story.” Still, this minor exchange was a revelation to me. "Dim" seems to be the perfect word for Charles Ryder and the more I watched my DVD's the more I wanted to smack him! It is inconceivable that anyone would have fallen for Ryder and allowed him to be a part of their lives.

I was reminded of an old Fraiser re-run. (Yes, I read AND watch television.) The Crane Brothers find that their favorite actor (the one who came to their school and preformed a Shakespearean tribute and changed their lives) was now a "space alien" in a popular television show. They rent a theater to produce a big stage comeback, re-creating his Shakespeare. And then they see it and he is AWFUL.

Memory is a terrible thing to waste! I have given up watching Brideshead and have concentrated on more extensive reading. More later....