52 pages • 1 hour read
Evelyn WaughBrideshead Revisited
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1945A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Book 2Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Book 2: “Brideshead Deserted”
Book 2, Chapter 1 Summary
Samgrass and Sebastian, having returned from their travels, tell tales of their journeys. Charles has the sense that there is something about their travels that they are not saying. Anthony Blanche appears briefly in their photographs. Though Sebastian claims he’s happy to be home, his mood is flat; both Nanny and Charles observe that he looks ill. Rather than prying, Charles regales him with stories of art school in Paris, where he has lived for the past few months. Brideshead tells Charles that no alcohol will be left out in front of Sebastian, who relapsed in his alcohol use disorder while abroad. Julia calls her brother’s struggles with dependency “boring” and accuses Samgrass of being “fishy.”
When Sebastian is served whiskey at dinner, everyone conspicuously ignores that he’s been given a decanter that is less full than is typical. Everyone is pleased that Sebastian shows interest in the following day’s hunt, but he confides to Charles that he plans to slip away to drink at a nearby pub. Sebastian resents being treated like a “dipsomaniac” (a contemporary word that referred to alcohol use disorder). His family closed his access to bank accounts, so he asks Charles for money. Charles refuses. Sebastian confesses to having escaped Samgrass’s care for several weeks during their trip; he spent the time with Anthony.
The next morning, Sebastian, Brideshead, and Cordelia go hunting after Sebastian convinces Charles to give him two pounds. Charles confronts Samgrass about Sebastian’s escape, but Samgrass seems relieved that someone else knows the truth. Charles dislikes discussing Sebastian with Samgrass. Julia interrupts, announcing that Rex Mottram is arriving. Charles butts heads with Lady Marchmain, who wishes to send Sebastian abroad again, while Charles wishes to take Sebastian with him to London. He believes the constant observation will make Sebastian worsen.
Rex suggests sending Sebastian to a sanatorium, while Julia frets that nobody likes her Christmas present to him (a living tortoise emblazoned with her initials, set in diamonds). Cordelia returns from the hunt; Sebastian is not with her, having gotten drunk at a hotel. When he returns, Lady Marchmain invites him to drink more. The evening is awkward, and the next day Charles asks Sebastian if he wants him to leave. Sebastian does. Charles confesses to giving Sebastian money, which Lady Marchmain calls “wantonly cruel.” He leaves Brideshead, certain he will never return, feeling he is also leaving behind his youth. Cordelia writes to him in Paris a week later, reporting that Julia and Rex are taking Sebastian to the German sanatorium.
When Rex appears at Charles’s rooms in Paris shortly thereafter, Charles immediately knows Sebastian has escaped. Sebastian robbed Rex before departing, which gave him considerable funds. Charles and Rex dine at an expensive restaurant, where Rex reports the news from Brideshead: Julia revealed that Samgrass lost Sebastian on their travels, and he was expelled from the house; Cordelia furnished Sebastian with whiskey for a week before being caught. Rex believes Lady Marchmain to be dying of some unnamed illness and explains that the Marchmains are deeply in debt. Rex cares mainly about what this might mean for his own marriage settlement to Julia. Since Lady Marchmain does not approve of Rex (who had a scandalous mistress and is not an aristocrat), Rex plans to ask Marchmain, who will agree to anything that would annoy his wife. Charles ignores as much of the conversation as he can, focused on enjoying his meal. Rex and Julia eventually marry, to Charles’s surprise, in a Protestant church (later revealed to be due to Rex’s previous marriage and divorce, prohibited in Catholicism).
Book 2, Chapter 2 Summary
Charles recalls when he first met Julia in 1923. He relays secondhand knowledge of Julia’s society debut and regrets his missed chance to attend a ball at one of the “great houses” before these parties began to disappear. Julia is a prominent society figure, and Charles is fascinated with her, which Julia, preoccupied with questions of marriage, does not reciprocate. Julia knows her Catholic upbringing limits her chances at an advantageous marriage, as heirs to titles would not marry a Catholic. Undeterred, Julia develops a highly detailed picture of the sort of man that she hopes to wed: wealthy, older, consumed by his career, and recently widowed.
After first meeting Charles, Julia leaves Brideshead for the South of France, where she refines her picture of her supposed future husband. When she meets a man who meets her criteria, however, she finds she prefers Rex. She finds Rex’s age and mysterious air appealing; she likes that he is not of her class but associates with powerful and prestigious figures. When they meet, Rex is in a relationship with a married woman, Brenda Champion; despite this, the two begin a subtle flirtation, each viewing the other as “a suitable prize” (178). Rex, upon returning to England, organizes his life to maximize his contact with Julia’s sphere. The two have no sexual contact, which increases Julia’s longing.
Julia falls in love and is thus devastated when she sees him leaving Mrs. Champion’s house. Though she attempts to ignore him, he pursues her and convinces her to marry him, which she feels is the only way to “save” him from the immorality of an extramarital affair. Lady Marchmain does not approve and urges Julia to break the engagement; she doesn’t, and she and Rex remain secretly engaged for a year. They begin having sex, and Julia turns her back on her religion when a priest refuses to tell her that a small sin is permissible if it is committed in service of preventing a larger one.
As the year continues, more and more people learn of the secret engagement. Lady Marchmain endeavors to keep them apart but, in early 1925 (the same time as Rex’s visit to Charles in Paris), Marchmain gives his approval for immediate marriage between Rex and Julia. Rex has a ring specially designed, which delights Julia, though she refuses to get involved in the marriage settlements. Rex offers to convert to Catholicism, which Lady Marchmain fears he takes too lightly. He takes conversion classes with Father Mowbray, who complains about Rex’s strange ideas about the requirements of Catholicism, and Cordelia confesses to making up silly stories about the religion to tease him. Lady Marchmain encourages the priest to consider Rex “an idiot child” (187). Father Mowbray reluctantly agrees to the conversion.
Three weeks before the wedding, Brideshead dramatically announces that the wedding is canceled, because Rex is divorced. Rex is baffled; he hadn’t been aware that a divorced person could not remarry in the Catholic church. Rex suggests simply keeping his previous marriage secret, but Brideshead, Cordelia, and Lady Marchmain all object. Julia announces that she and Rex have been having sex for some time and declares she will continue to do so, regardless of whether they marry.
In a conversation a decade later, Charlies asks why Julia admitted this to her mother; she says she did so because it was the truth. She recounts the various negotiations on how they could be married, which ended when Rex telegraphed Marchmain, who easily agreed to a Protestant wedding. She laments that the wedding was “squalid” and shrouded in scandal, and comments that “poor Rex” ended up married to “an outcast” (192). She reports that she realized, after a year of marriage, that Rex “wasn’t all there” (193). The couple is separated by this point.
Book 2, Chapter 3 Summary
In 1926, Charles returns to London for the General Strike (a nationwide workers’ strike). He expects to find revolution and is disappointed to find London much as he remembers it. He goes out to dinner, by chance encountering Anthony and Boy Mulcaster. They speak of Sebastian, who spent time with Anthony after his falling-out with Charles. Sebastian stole from Anthony, pawning his possessions for money for alcohol. The last Anthony saw him, Sebastian had befriended a German ex-soldier, with whom he drank frequently; they reportedly traveled to French-colonized Morocco.
Mulcaster convinces Charles to join an activist group that supports the policemen; Charles finds this activity “not worth leaving Paris” (199). Julia, learning Charles is in England, urges him to go visit an ailing Lady Marchmain. When he visits, she is too tired to see him, however, so Julia explains that her mother regrets being harsh with Charles and longs to see Sebastian before she dies. Charles agrees to attempt to contact Sebastian, though he doubts he’ll be successful.
Charles travels to Casablanca, where the British Consul is relieved to see him; between the French (who think Sebastian a spy) and the Muslim population (who dislike alcohol), Sebastian is unpopular. Charles travels to Sebastian’s house, where he first encounters the German ex-soldier. Sebastian isn’t there; he’s been taken to an infirmary. The German, Kurt, who shot himself in the foot to escape the Foreign Legion, is primarily interested in Sebastian for the comforts his money affords.
Charles goes to the hospital, where an unfeeling doctor communicates that while Sebastian is in no danger of dying, a bad case of the flu (and an immune system depressed by alcohol misuse) means he is unfit to travel. Charles finds Sebastian emaciated. As soon as he recovers slightly, Sebastian begins misusing alcohol again. Lady Marchmain dies; they receive news via telegram. Charles asks Sebastian to return to England with him but Sebastian wants to continue caring for Kurt. Charles arranges so that Sebastian will receive his allowance; Sebastian approves, believing Kurt will rob him, given the chance. Charles returns to England.
When Charles assures Brideshead that Kurt is not a criminal, merely a lazy man who enjoys being Sebastian’s companion, Brideshead agrees to the arrangement regarding the allowance. Brideshead commissions Charles to paint a picture of the family’s London house, which is slated for sale and demolition. He applies himself to the task diligently, sometimes observed by a 15-year-old Cordelia. She speaks matter-of-factly about the destruction of her home, seeming far more upset about the closing of the chapel at Brideshead. She is sad but not bereft over the death of “poor mummy.” She hopes she has “a vocation” and can become a nun.
Book 2 Analysis
If Book 1 evokes a pastoral idyll, then Book 2, “Brideshead Deserted,” charts the idyll’s decline. This decline is represented by Sebastian’s struggles with alcohol use disorder, a condition that worsens as his family tries to help him. Sebastian, in Chapter 1, presents his alcohol misuse as causal; it is his family’s interference, he posits, that pushes him to drink. Yet Charles’s discovery of Sebastian, wasting away in Morocco due to long-term alcohol misuse, challenges this assertion. Sebastian, at this point in the narrative, has been away from his family’s influence for some time, yet his alcohol misuse continues. The family and Charles struggle to understand Sebastian’s alcohol misuse, framing it at various times as wholly pathological (using and disregarding medical terminology at various points), wholly a matter of personal choice, or somewhere in between. Brideshead, for example, hopes that Sebastian is misusing alcohol because he cannot control himself (following the disease theory of alcohol misuse, now widely accepted but with significantly less social purchase in the 1920s), rather than because he likes it. Charles hopes the opposite, feeling that a happy Sebastian is healthier than a miserable Sebastian. Though each person wishes to help Sebastian, no one consults Sebastian on how to manage his own behavior, instead speaking among themselves.
Another decline is Charles’s relationship with the Flyte family. Book 2 refines Charles’s middle-class sensibilities as he grows more distant from the Flytes. Though disagreement over Sebastian’s alcohol misuse leads to a falling-out with them (and a consequent disillusionment with the social mores of the aristocracy), Charles reveals his own penchant for snobbery during his dinner with Rex in Paris. Rex’s frank discussion of finances offends Charles, who mentally scoffs at Rex’s lack of appreciation for the fine meal in front of them. Rex prefers chopped onion on his caviar and dislikes the delicate cognac (preferring harsh whiskey), which Charles sees as reflective of a lack of subtlety that comes with “new money.” This coarseness seems, to Charles, an undeniable marker of outsider status. Rex, in wanting to marry Julia—and in daring to admit financial motives in doing so—marks himself as that most distasteful of things: a social climber.
Yet Charles’s relationship to class is far from untroubled. He sees himself as superior because he is not, like Rex, overtly trying to gain a foothold in the aristocracy, but he struggles to find his place in the 1926 Grand Strike. Before leaving France, Charles engages in liberal discussions about revolution, but ultimately is convinced to join a pro-government activist group that combats the striking miners. Yet Charles is not galvanized by this activism, either; he finds it a pale imitation of the “Great War” that made so many heroes in his youth. This desire for action as a way to achieve personal glory foreshadows his later career in the army (and his disillusionment with army life when glory is unforthcoming). Ultimately, Charles’s middle-class identity is most evident in his satisfaction with the status quo, even when he denies or mentally rebels against such satisfaction.
Catholicism and Anti-Catholicism emerges as a key theme in this part of the novel. Charles’s account of Julia’s debutante season highlights the consequences of anti-Catholic bias among the British upper classes. Even though Julia is widely admired, she knows that she is not marriageable by the Protestant aristocracy’s standards because her family is Catholic. She therefore settles for marrying Rex Mottram, a wealthy, well-connected, but decidedly un-aristocratic outsider. Even this marriage costs her much of her Catholic identity, as he is divorced and thus cannot marry in a Catholic church.
The Flytes’ Catholicism necessarily puts them in conflict with the world of upper-class England in the 20th century. However, there is a way to live with this conflict, the novel suggests. The answer is not to turn away from faith, as Julia does in her marriage to Rex, but to embrace it more fully. The happiest characters are those who manage to live a life in accord with their faith. When Cordelia comments, at the end of Book 2, that she hopes she has a vocation to be a nun, she frames a life of religious service as something that one cannot wholly choose. This vocation is divinely ordained, almost predestined. While Cordelia will ultimately find she doesn’t have a vocation, she still manages to build her life around religious service.
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