The Book Tower

‘Just the place to bury a crock of gold,’ said Sebastian. ‘I should like to bury something precious in every place where I’ve been happy and then, when I was old and ugly and miserable, I could come back and dig it up and remember.’

A famous television series from 1981. Jeremy Irons and Anthony Andrews. Teddy bears. Long visits to Venice to meet Laurence Olivier. Oxford undergraduates drinking heavily and speaking through megaphones. These are just a few of the images that have haunted me over the years, stopping me in my tracks every time I thought about reading Brideshead Revisited. But I decided it was time to take the plunge, and although I had many flashbacks when I was reading the novel I just held on tight until they passed. My edition is the 1957 Penguin; it’s been in my possession for as long as I can remember. I’ve moved house eight times in the last 15 or so years and this is one of those books that has always travelled with me.

An army captain is billetted to an old house during the Second World War. He’s been there before, and it evokes memories of his past; Oxford in the early 1920s, where Charles Ryder befriends the effete, charismatic and extrovert Sebastian Flyte. They quickly develop an intense and often disturbingly insular friendship; whilst their relationship is never revealed to be a homosexual one, they prefer their own company to others and are indifferent to the charms of women. Although both from the priviliged upper classes, both also come from dysfunctional families; Charles’ closest relative is his eccentric and slightly mad father, Sebastian’s own father lives in apparent exile overseas after leaving his mother. They begin to drift apart when Sebastian himself drifts into hopeless alcoholism; neither Charles or his own family are able to help him. Ten years later Charles, now a successful artist, embarks on a doomed love affair with Sebastian’s sister Julia.

Although he’s perhaps not someone you’d want to be associated with in real life, the star of Brideshead Revisited is definitely Sebastian. He’s the friend from hell; you begin to despise them and their actions of self destruction but you still try, and fail, to save them. He irritated and infuriated me, but the parts of the book where he wasn’t around were just dull. And the teddy bear, which was a suitable affectation for the fashion conscious of the early 80s, is one of just many keys to the personality of a doomed individual. And putting the homosexual debate to one side, Sebastian, as Charles’ first love, represents the first love for all of us – the one we can never forget even if we might want to (even if it means settling for the sister).

I’ve heard reports that the new cinema version, due for release in 2008, will concentrate mainly on Charles and Julia’s relationship. Something that won’t capture the imagination, or haunt the memory, nearly as much. Why? I found them unappealing characters, and the novel sagged without Sebastian’s disturbing exploits. Unfortunately Brideshead Revisited is ultimately a depressing read. The scenes with Charles’ father are hilarious but the comedy in this novel is minimal. There’s always the sense that life will be a disappointment, even before it’s really got going, with things lost never to be retrieved again:

I felt that I was leaving part of myself behind, and that wherever I went afterwards I should feel the lack of it, and search for it hopelessly, as ghosts are said to do, frequenting the spots where they buried material treasures without which they cannot pay their way to the nether world.

Crocks of gold? I think in Waugh’s mind, if memories of youth are rekindled they invariably only serve to cause feelings of sadness or regret. Depressive that I am, I tend to agree with him.