Brideshead Revisited: Book I. Et in Arcadia Ego. Chapter Four

Chapter Four

the languor of Youth -- how unique and quintessential it is! How
quickly, how irrecoverably, lost! The zest, the generous affections, the
illusions, the despair, all the traditional attributes of Youth -- all save
this -- come and go with us through life; again and again in riper years we
experience, under a new stimulus, what we thought had been finally left
behind, the authentic impulse to action, the renewal of power and its
concentration on a new object; again and again a new truth is revealed to us
in whose light all our previous knowledge must be rearranged. These things
are a part of life itself; but languor -- the relaxation of yet unwearie^l
sinews, the mind sequestered and self-regarding, the sun standing still in
the heavens and the earth throbbing to our own pulse -- that belongs to
Youth alone and dies with it. Perhaps in the mansions of Limbo the heroes
enjoy some such compensation for their loss of the Beatific Vision; perhaps
the Beatific Vision itself has some remote kinship with this lowly
experience; I, at any rate, believed myself very near heaven, during those
languid days at Brideshead.

"Why is this house called a 'Castle'?"

"It used to be one until they moved it."

"What can you mean?"

"Just that. We had a castle a mile away, down by the village. Then in
Inigo Jones's time we took a fancy to the valley and pulled the castle down,
carted the stones up here and built a new house. I'm glad they did, aren't
you?"

"If it was mine I'd never live anywhere else."

"But you see, Charles, it isn't mine. Just at the moment it is, but
usually it's full of ravening beasts. If it could only be like this always
-- always summer, always alone, the fruit always ripe and Aloysius in a good
temper. . . ."

It is thus I like to remember Sebastian, as he was that summer, when we
wandered alone together through that enchanted j palace; Sebastian in his
wheel-chair spinning down die box-edged walks of the kitchen gardens in
search of alpine strawberries and warm figs, propelling himself through the
succession; of hothouses, from scent to scent and climate to climate, to cut
the muscat grapes and choose orchids for our buttonholes; Sebas- | tian
hobbling, with a pantomime of difficulty, to the old nurseries, sitting
beside me on the thread-bare, flowered carpet with the toy-cupboard empty
about us and Nanny Hawkins stitching com- I placehtly in the corner, saying,
"You're one as bad as the other; a pair of children the two of you. Is that
what they teach you at college?" Sebastian prone on the sunny seat in the
colonnade, 1 as he was now, and I in a hard chair beside him, trying to draw
the fountain.

"Is the dome by Inigo Jones, too? It looks later."

"Oh, Charles, don't be such a tourist. What does it matter when it was
built, if it's pretty?"

"It's the sort of thing I like to know."
"Oh dear, I thought I'd cured you of all that--the terrible Mr.
Collins."

It was an aesthetic education to live within those walls, to wander
from room to room, from the Soanesque library to the Chinese drawing-room,
adazzle with gilt pagodas and nodding mandarins, painted paper and
Chippendale fret-work, from the Pompeian parlour to the great tapestry-hung
hall which stood unchanged, as it had been designed two hundred and fifty
years before; to sit, hour after hour, in the pillared shade looking out on
the terrace.

This terrace was the final consummation of the house's plan; it stood
on massive stone ramparts above the lakes, so that from the hall steps it
seemed to overhang them, as though, standing by the balustrade, one could
have dropped a pebble into the first of them immediately below one's feet.
It was embraced by the two arms of the colonnade; beyond the pavilions
groves of lime led to the wooded hillsides. Part of the terrace was paved,
part planted with flower-beds and arabesques of dwarf box; taller box grew
in a dense hedge, making a wide oval, cut into niches and interspersed with
statuary, and, in the centre, dominating the whole spendid space, rose the
fountain; such a fountain as one might expect to find in a piazza of
Southern Italy, such a fountain as was, indeed, found there a century ago by
one of Sebastian's ancestors; found, purchased, imported and re-erected in
an alien but welcoming climate.

Sebastian set me to draw it. It was an ambitious subject for an amateur
-- an oval basin with an island of formal rocks at its centre; on the rocks
grew, in stone, formal tropical vegetation and wild English fern in its
natural fronds; through them ran a dozen streams that counterfeited springs,
and round them sported fantastic tropical animals, camels and camelopards
and an ebullient lion all vomiting water; on the rocks, to the height of the
pediment, stood an Egyptian obelisk of red sandstone -- but, by some odd
chance, for the thing was far beyond me, I brought it off and by judicious
omissions and some stylish tricks, produced a very passable echo of
Piranesi. "Shall I give it to your mother?" I asked.

"Why ? You don't know her."

"It seems polite. I'm staying in her house."

"Give it to Nanny," said Sebastian.

I did so, and she put it among the collection on the top of her chest
of drawers, remarking that it had quite a look of the thing, which she had
often heard admired but could never see
the beauty of, herself.

I was myself in almost the same position as Nanny Hawkins.

Since the days when, as a school-boy, I used to bicycle round the
neighbouring parishes, rubbing brasses and photographing fonts, I have
nursed a love of architecture, but though in opinion I had made that easy
leap, characteristic of my generation; from the puritanism of Ruskin to the
puritanism of Roger Fry, my sentiments at heart were insular and mediaeval.

This was my conversion to the baroque. Here under that high and
insolent dome, under those tricky ceilings; here, as I passed j through
those arches and broken pediments to the pillared shade beyond and sat, hour
by hour, before the fountain, probing its shadows, tracing its lingering
echoes, rejoicing in all its clustered feats of daring and invention, I felt
a whole new system of nerves alive within me, as though the water that
spurted and bubbled among its stones was indeed a life-giving spring.


One day in a cupboard we found a large japanned-tin box of oil paints
still in workable condition.

"Mummy bought them a year or two ago. Someone told her that you could
only appreciate the beauty of the world by trying to paint it. We laughed at
her a great deal about it. She couldn't draw at all, and however .bright the
colours were in the tubes, by the time Mummy had mixed them up, they came
out a kind of khaki." Various dry, muddy smears on the palette confirmed
this statement. "Cordelia was always made to wash the brushes. In the end we
all protested and made Mummy stop."

The paints gave us the idea of decorating the office; this was a small
room opening on the colonnade; it had once been used for estate business,
but was now derelict, holding only some garden games and a tub of dead
aloes; it had plainly been designed for a softer use; perhaps as a tea-room
or study, for the plaster walls were decorated with delicate rococo panels
and the roof was prettily groined. Here, in one of the smaller oval frames,
I sketched a romantic landscape, and in the days that followed filled it out
in colour, and by luck and the happy mood of the moment, made a success of
it. The brush seemed somehow to do what was wanted of it. It .was a
landscape without figures, a summer scene of white cloud and blue distances,
with an ivy-clad ruin in the foreground, rocks and a waterfall affording a
rugged introduction to the receding parkland behind. I knew little of oil
painting and learned its ways as I worked. When, in a week, it was finished,
Sebastian was eager for me to start on one of the larger panels. I made some
sketches. He called for a fte champtre with a ribboned swing and a Negro
page and a shepherd playing the pipes, but the thing languished. I knew it
was good chance that had made my landscape, and that this elaborate pastiche
was too much for me.

One day we went down to the cellars with Wilcox and saw the empty bays
which had once held a vast store of wine; one transept only was used now;
there the bins were well stocked, some of them with vintages fifty years
old.

"There's been nothing added since his Lordship went abroad," said
Wilcox. "A lot of the old wine wants drinking up. We ought to have laid down
the eightcens and twenties. I've had several letters about it from the wine
merchants, but her Ladyship says to ask Lord Brideshead, and he says to ask
his Lordship, and his Lordship says to ask the lawyers. That's how we get
low. There's enough here for ten years at the rate it's going, but how shall
we be then?"

Wilcox welcomed our interest; we had bottles brought up from every bin,
and it was during those tranquil evenings with Sebastian that I first made a
serious acquaintance with wine and sowed the seed of that rich harvest which
was to be my stay in many barren years. We would sit, he and I, in the
Painted Parlour with three bottles open on the table and three glasses
before each of us; Sebastian had found a book on wine-tasting, and we
followed its instructions in detail. We warmed the glass slightly at a
candle, filled a third of it, swirled the wine round, nursed it in our
hands, held it to the light, breathed it, sipped it, filled our mouths with
it and rolled it over the tongue, ringing it on the palate like a coin on a
counter, tilted our heads back and let it trickle down the throat. Then we
talked of it and nibbled Bath Oliver biscuits, and passed on to another
wine; then back to the first, then on to another, until all three were in
circulation and the order of glasses got confused, and we fell out over
which was which, and we passed the glasses to and fro between us until there
were six glasses, some of them with mixed wines in them which we had filled
from the wrong bottle, till we were obliged to start again with three clean
glasses each, and the bottles were empty and our praise of them wilder and
more exotic.

"... It is a little, shy wine like a gazelle."

"Like a leprechaun."

"Dappled, in a tapestry meadow."

"Like a flute by still water."

"... And this is a wise old wine."

"A prophet in a cave."

"... And this is a necklace of pearls on a white neck."

"Like a swan."

"Like the last unicorn."

And we would leave the golden candlelight of the dining-room for the
starlight outside and sit on the edge of the fountain, cooling our hands in
the water and listening drunkenly to its splash and gurgle over the rocks.

"Ought we to be drunk every night?" Sebastian asked one morning.

"Yes, I think so."

"I think so too."

We saw few strangers. There was the agent, a lean and pouchy colonel,
who crossed our path occasionally and once came to tea. Usually we managed
to hide from him. On Sundays a monk was fetched from a neighbouring
monastery to say mass and breakfast with us. He was the first priest I ever
met; I noticed how unlike he was to a parson, but Brideshead was a place of
such enchantment to me that I expected everything and everyone to be unique;
Father Phipps was in fact a bland, bun-faced man with an interest in county
cricket which he obstinately believed us to share.

"You know, Father, Charles and I simply don't tyiow about cricket."

"I wish I'd seen Tennyson make that fifty-eight last Thursday. That
must have been an innings. The account in The Times was excellent. Did you
see him against the South Africans?"

"I've never seen him."

"Neither have I. I haven't seen a first-class match for years -- not
since Father Graves took me when we were passing through Leeds, after we'd
been to the induction of the Abbot at Ample-forth. Father Graves managed to
look up a train which gave us three hours to wait on the afternoon of the
match against Lancashire. That was an afternoon. I remember every ball of
it. Since then I've had to go by the papers. You seldom go to sec'cricket?"

"Never," I said, and he looked at me with the expression I have seen
since in the religious, of innocent wonder that those who expose themselves
to the dangers of the world should avail themselves so little of its varied
solace.

Sebastian always heard his mass, which was ill-attended. Brideshead was
not an old-established centre of Catholicism. Lady Marchmain had introduced
a few Catholic servants, but the majority of them, and all the cottagers,
prayed, if anywhere, among the Flyte tombs in the little grey church at the
gates.

Sebastian's faith was an enigma to me at that time, but not one which I
felt particularly concerned to solve. I had no religion. I was taken to
church weekly as a child, and at school attended chapel daily, but, as
though in compensation, from the time I went to my public school I was
excused church in the holidays. The view implicit in my education was that
the basic narrative of Christianity had long been exposed as a myth, and
that opinion was now divided as to whether its ethical teaching was of
present value, a division in which the main weight went against it; religion
was a hobby which some people professed and others; did not; at the best it
was slightly ornamental, at the worst it was the province of "complexes" and
"inhibitions" -- catchwords I of the decade -- and of the intolerance,
hypocrisy, and sheer j| stupidity attributed to it for centuries. No one had
ever suggested to me that these quaint observances expressed a coherent
philosophic system and intransigeant historical claims; nor, had they done
so, would I have been much interested.

Often, almost daily, since I had known Sebastian, some chance ' word in
his conversation had reminded me that he was a Catholic, ' but I took it as
a foible, like his Teddy-bear. We never discussed the matter until on the
second Sunday at Brideshead, when Father Phipps had left us and we sat in
the colonnade with the papers, he surprised me by saying: "Oh dear, it's
very difficult being a Catholic."

"Does it make much difference to you?"

"Of course. All the time."

"Well, I can't say I've noticed it. Are you struggling against
temptation? You don't seem much more virtuous than me."

"I'm very, very much wickeder," said Sebastian indignantly.

"Well then?"

"Who was it used to pray, 'Oh God, make me good, but not yet'?"'

"I don't know. You, I should think."

"Why, yes, I do, every day. But it isn't that." He turned back to the
pages of the News of -the World and said, "Another naughty scout-master."

"I suppose they try and make you believe an awful lot of nonsense?"

"Is it nonsense? I wish it were. It sometimes sounds terribly sensible
to me."

"But, my dear Sebastian, you can't seriously believe it all."

"Can't I?"

"I mean about Christmas and the star and the three kings and the ox and
the ass."

"Oh yes, I believe that. It's a lovely idea."

"But you can't believe things because they're a lovely idea."

"But I do. That's how I believe."

"And in prayers? You think you can kneel down in front of a statue and
say a few words, not even out loud, just in your mind, and change the
weather; or that some saints are more influential than others, and you must
get hold of the right one to help you on the right problem?"

"Oh yes. Don't you remember last term when I took Aloysius and left him
behind I didn't know where? I prayed like mad to St. Anthony of Padua that
morning, and immediately after lunch there was Mr. Nichols at Canterbury
Gate with Aloysius in his arms, saying I'd left him in his cab."

"Well," I said, "if you can believe all that and you don't want to be
good, where's the difficulty about your religion?"

"If you can't see, you can't."

"Well, where?"

"Oh, don't be a bore, Charles. I want to read about a woman in Hull
who's been using an instrument."

"You started the subject. I was just getting interested."

"I'll never mention it again . . . Thirty-eight other cases were taken
into consideration in sentencing her to six months -- golly!"

But he did mention it again, some ten days later, as we were lying on
the roof of the house, sunbathing and watching through a telescope the
Agricultural Show which was in progress in the park below us. It was a
modest two-day show serving the neighbouring parishes, and surviving more as
a fair and social gathering than as a centre of serious competition. A ring
was marked out in flags, and round it had been pitched half a dozen tents o
varying size; there was a judges' box, and some pens for livestock; the
largest marquee was for refreshments, and there the
farmers congregated in numbers. Preparations had been going on for a
week. "We shall have to hide," said Sebastian as the day approached. "My
brother will be here. He's in his element 4 at the Agricultural
Show." So we lay on the roof under the balustrade.

Brideshead came down by train in the morning and lunched with Colonel
Fender, the agent. I met him for five minutes on his arrival. Anthony
Blanche's description was peculiarly apt; he had the Flyte face, carved by
an Aztec. We could see him now, through the telescope, moving affably among
the tenants, stopping to greet the judges in their box, leaning over a pen
gazing seriously at the cattle.

"Queer fellow, my brother," said Sebastian.

"He looks normal enough."

"Oh, but he's not. If you only knew, he's much the craziest of us, only
it doesn't come out at all. He's all twisted inside. He wanted to be a
priest, you know."

"I didn't."

"I think he still does. He nearly became a Jesuit, straight from
Stonyhurst. It was awful for Mummy. She couldn't exactly try and stop him,
but of course it was the last thing she wanted. Think what people would have
said -- the eldest son; it's not as if it had been me. And poor Papa. The
Church has been enough trouble to him without that happening. There was a
frightful to-do -- monks and monsignori running round the house like mice,
and Brideshead just sitting glum and talking about the will of God. He was
the most upset, you see, when Papa went abroad -- much more than Mummy
really. Finally they persuaded him to go to Oxford and think it over for
three years. Now he's trying to make up his mind. He talks of going into the
Guards and into the House of Commons and of marrying. He doesn't know what
he wants. I wonder if I should have been like that, if I'd gone to
Stonyhurst. I should have gone, only Papa went abroad before I was old
enough, and the first thing he insisted on was my going to Eton."

"Has your father given up religion?"

"Well, he's had to in a way; he only took to it when he married Mummy.
When he went off, he left that behind with the rest of us. You must meet
him. He's a very nice man."

'Sebastian had never spoken seriously of his father before.

I said: "It must have upset you all when your father went away."

"All but Cordelia. She was too young. It upset me at the time. Mummy
tried to explain it to the three eldest of us so that we wouldn't hate Papa.
I was the only one who didn't. I believe she wishes I did. I was always his
favourite. I should be staying with him now, if it wasn't for this foot. I'm
the only one who goes. Why don't you come too? You'd like him."

A man with a megaphone was shouting the results of the last event in
the field below; his voice came faintly to us.

"So you see we're a mixed family religiously. Brideshead and Cordelia
are both fervent Catholics; he's miserable, she's bird-happy; Julia and I
are half-heathen; I am happy, I rather think Julia isn't; Mummy is popularly
believed to be a saint and Papa is excommunicated -- and I wouldn't know
which of them was happy. Anyway, however you look at it, happiness doesn't
seem to have much to do with it, and that's all I want. ... I wish I liked
Catholics more."

"They seem just like other people."

"My dear Charles, that's exactly what they're not -- particularly in
this country, where they're so few. It's not just that they're a clique --
as a matter of fact, they're at least four cliques all blackguarding each
other half the time -- but they've got an entirely different outlook on
life; everything they think important is different from other people. They
try and hide it as much as they can, but it comes out all the time. It's
quite natural, really, that they should. But you see it's difficult for
semi-heathens like Julia and me."

We were interrupted in this unusually grave conversation by 1 loud,
childish cries from beyond the chimney-stacks, "Sebastian, Sebastian."

"Good heavens!" said Sebastian, reaching for a blanket. "That sounds
like my sister Cordelia. Cover yourself up."

"Where are you?"

There came into view a robust child of ten or eleven; she had the
unmistakable family characteristics, but had them ill-arranged in a frank
and chubby plainness, two thick old-fashioned pigtails hung down her back.

"Go away, Cordelia. We've got no clothes on."

"Why? You're quite decent. I guessed you were here. You didn't know I
was about, did you? I came down with Bridey J and stopped to see Francis
Xavier." To me, "He's my pig. Then we had lunch with Colonel Fender and then
the show. Francis Xavier got a special mention. That beast Randal got first
with a mangy animal. Darling Sebastian, I am pleased to see you again. How's
your poor foot?"

"Say how-d'you-do to Mr. Ryder."

"Oh, sorry. How d'you do?" All the family charm was in her smile.
"They're all getting pretty boozy down there, so I came away. I say, who's
been painting the office? I went in to look for a shooting stick and saw
it."

"Be careful what you say. It's Mr. Ryder."

"But it's lovely. I say, did you really? You are clever. Why don't you
both dress and come down? There's no one about."

"Bridey's sure to bring the judges in."

"But he won't. I heard him making plans not to. He's very sour to-day.
He didn't want me to have dinner with you, but I fixed that. Come on. I'll
be in the nursery when you're fit to be seen."


* * *

We were a sombre little party that evening. Only Cordelia was perfectly
at ease, rejoicing in the food, the lateness of the hour and her brothers'
company. Brideshead was three years older than Sebastian and I, but he
seemed of another generation. He had the physical tricks of his family, and
his smile, when it rarely came, was as lovely as theirs; he spoke, in their
voice, with a gravity and restraint which in my cousin Jasper would have
sounded pompous and false, but in him was plainly un-assumed and
unconscious.

"I am so sorry to miss so much of your visit," he said to me. "You are
being looked after properly? I hope Sebastian is seeing to the wine. Wilcox
is apt to be rather grudging when he is on his own."

"He's treated us very liberally."

"I am delighted to hear it. You are fond of wine?"

"Very."

"I wish I were. It is such a bond with other men. At Magdalen I tried
to get drunk more than once, but I did not enjoy it. Beer and whiskey I find
even less appetising. Events like this afternoon's are a torment to me in
consequence."

"I like wine," said Cordelia.

"My-sister Cordelia's last report said that she was not only the worst
girl in the school, but the worst there had ever been in the memory of the
oldest nun."

"That's because I refused to be an Enfant de Marie. Reverend Mother
said that if I didn't keep my room tidier I couldn't be one, so I said,
Well, I won't be one, and I don't believe Our Blessed Lady cares two hoots
whether I put my gym shoes on the left or the right of my dancing shoes.
Reverend Mother was livid."

"Our Lady cares about obedience."

"Bridey, you mustn't be pious," said Sebastian. "We've got an atheist
with us."

"Agnostic," I said.

"Really? Is there much of that at your college? There was a certain
amount at Magdalen."

"I really don't know. I was one long before I went to Oxford."

"It's everywhere," said Brideshead.

Religion seemed an inevitable topic that day. For some time we talked
about the Agricultural Show. Then Brideshead said, "I saw the Bishop in
London last week. You know, he wants to close our chapel."

"Oh, he couldn't," said Cordelia.

"I don't think Mummy will let him," said Sebastian.

"It's too far away," said Brideshead. "There are a dozen families round
Melstead who can't get here. He wants to open a mass centre there."

"But what about us?" said Sebastian. "Do we have to drive out on winter
mornings?"

"We must have the Blessed Sacrament here," said Cordelia. "I like
popping in at odd times; so does Mummy."

"So do I," said Brideshead, "but there are so few of us. It's not as
though we were old Catholics with everyone on the estate coming to mass.
It'll have to go sooner or later, perhaps after Mummy's time. The point is
whether it wouldn't be better to let it go now. You are an artist, Ryder,
what do you think of it aesthetically?"

"I think it's beautiful" said Cordelia with tears in her eyes.

"Is it Good Art?"

"Well, I don't quite know what you mean," I said warily. "I think it's
a remarkable example of its period. Probably in eighty years it will be
greatly admired."

"But surely it can't be good twenty years ago and good in eighty years,
and not good now?"

"Well, it may be good now. All I mean is that I don't happen to like it
much."

"But is there a difference between liking a thing and thinking it
good?"

"Bridey, don't be so Jesuitical," said Sebastian, but I knew that this
disagreement was not a matter of words only, but expressed a deep and
impassable division between us; neither had any understanding of the other,
nor ever could.

"Isn't that just the distinction'you made about wine?" '"No. I like and
think good the end to which wine is sometimes the means -- the promotion of
sympathy between man and man. But in my own case it does not achieve that
end, so I neither like it nor think it good for me."

"Bridey, do stop."

"I'm sorry," he said, "I thought it rather an interesting point."

"Thank God I went to Eton," said Sebastian.

After dinner Brideshead said: "I'm afraid I must take Sebastian away
for half an hour. I shall be busy all day to-morrow, and I'm off immediately
after the show. I've a lot of papers for Father to sign. Sebastian must take
them out and explain them to him. It's time you were in bed, Cordelia."
"Must digest first," she said. "I'm not used to gorging like this at
night. I'll talk to Charles."

"Charles?" said Sebastian. "Charles? Mister Ryder, to you, child."

"Come on, Charles."

When we were alone she said: "Are you really an agnostic?"

"Does your family always talk about religion all the time?"

"Not all the time. It's a subject that just comes up naturally, doesn't
it?"

"Does it ? It never has with me before."

"Then perhaps you are an agnostic. I'll pray for you."

"That's very kind of you."

"I can't spare you a whole rosary you know. Just a decade. I've got
such a long list of people. I take them in order and they get a decade about
once a week."

"I'm sure it's more than I deserve."

"Oh, I've got some harder cases than you. Lloyd George and the Kaiser
and Olive Banks."

"Who is she?"

"She was bunked from the convent last term. I don't quite know what
for. Reverend Mother found something she'd been writing. D'you know, if you
weren't an agnostic, I should ask you for five shillings to buy a black
god-daughter?"

"Nothing will surprise me about your religion."

"It's a new thing a missionary priest started last term. You send five
bob to some nuns in Africa and they christen a baby and name her after you.
I've got six black Cordelias already. Isn't it lovely?"

When Brideshead and Sebastian returned, Cordelia was sent to bed.
Brideshead began again on our discussion.

"Of course, you are right really," he said. "You take art as a means
not as an end. That is strict theology, but it's unusual to find an agnostic
believing it."

"Cordelia has promised to pray for me," I said.

"She made a novena for her pig," said Sebastian.

"You know all this is very puzzling to me," I said.

"I think we're causing scandal," said Brideshead.

That night I began to realize how little I really knew of Sebastian,
and to understand why he had always sought to keep me apart from the rest of
his life. He was like a friend made on
board ship, on the high seas; now we had come to his home port.


Brideshead and Cordelia went away; the tents were struck on the show
ground, the flags uprooted; the trampled grass began to regain its colour;
the month that had .started in leisurely fashion came swiftly to its end.
Sebastian walked without a stick now and had forgotten his injury.

"I think you'd better come with me to Venice," he said.

"No money."

"I thought of that. We live on Papa when we get there. The lawyers pay
my fare -- first class and sleeper. We can both travel third for that."

And so we went; first by the long, cheap sea-crossing to Dunkirk,
sitting all night on deck under a clear sky, watching the grey dawn break
over the sand dunes; then to Paris, on wooden seats, where we drove to the
Lotti, had baths and shaved, lunched at Foyot's, which was hot and
half-empty, loitered sleepily among the shops and sat long in a. half-empty
cafe waiting till the time of our train; then in the warm, dusty evening to
the Gare de Lyon, to the slow train South; again the wooden seats, a
carriage full of the poor, visiting their families -- travelling as the poor
do in Northern countries, with a multitude of small bundles and an air of
patient submission to authority -- and sailors returning from leave. We
slept fitfully, jolting and stopping, changed once in the night, slept again
and awoke in an empty carriage, with pine woods passing the windows and the
distant view of mountain peaks. New uniforms at the frontier, coffee and
bread at the station buffet, people round us of Southern grace and gaiety;
on again into the plains, conifers changing to vine and olive, a change of
trains at Milan; garlic sausage, bread and a flash of Orvieto bought from a
trolley (we had spent all our money save for a few francs, in Paris); the
sun mounted high and the country glowed with heat; the carriage filled with
peasants, ebbing and flowing at each station; the smell of garlic was
overwhelming in the hot carriage. At last in the evening we arrived at
Venice.

A sombre figure was there to meet us. "Papa's valet, Plender."

"I met the express," said Plender. "His Lordship thought you must have
looked up the train wrong. This seemed only to come from Milan."

"We travelled third."

Plender tittered politely. "I have the palace gondola here. I shall
follow with the luggage in the vaporetto. His Lordship has gone to the Lido.
He was not sure he would be home before you
-- that was when we expected you on the express. He should be there by
now."

He led us to the waiting boat. The gondoliers wore green and white
livery and silver plaques on their arms; they smiled and bowed.

"Palazzo. Pronto"

"Si, Signor Plender."

And we floated away.

"You've been here before?"

"No."

"I came once before -- from the sea. This is the way to arrive."

"Ecco ci siamo, signori."

The palace was a little less than it sounded, a narrow Palladian
facade, mossy steps, a dark archway of rusticated stone. One boatman leapt
ashore, made fast to the post, rang the bell; the other stood on the prow
keeping the craft in to the steps. The doors opened; a man in rather raffish
summer livery of striped linen led us up the stairs from shadow into light;
the piano nobile was in full sunshine, ablaze with frescoes of the school of
Tintoretto.

"The marchese at Lido coming quick. Your sleeping this way please.
Making wash at once."

Our rooms were on the floor above; reached by a precipitous marble
staircase, they were shuttered against the afternoon sun; the butler threw
them open and we looked on to the Grand Canal; the beds had mosquito nets.

"Mostica not now."

There was a little bulbous press in each room, a misty, gilt-framed
mirror, and no other furniture. The floor was of bare marble slabs.

"Make hot wash," said the butler, leaving us. ' "A bit bleak?" asked
Sebastian.

"Bleak ? Look at that." I led him again to the window and the
incomparable pageant below and about us.

"No, you couldn't call it bleak."

A tremendous explosion next door announced a setback to the hot wash.
We went to investigate and found a bathroom which seemed to have been built
in a chimney. There was no ceiling; instead the walls ran straight through
the floor above • to the open sky. An antiquated geyser was sending out
clouds of steam, a strong smell of gas and a tiny trickle of cold water.

"No good."

"Si, si, subito, signori"

The butler ran to the top of the staircase and began to shout down it;
a female voice, more strident than his, answered. Sebastian and I returned
to the spectacle below our windows. Presently the argument came to an end
and a woman and child appeared, who smiled at us, scowled at the butler, and
put on Sebastian's press a silver basin and ewer of boiling water. The
butler meanwhile unpacked and folded our clothes and, lapsing into Italian,
told us of the unrecognized merits of the geyser, until suddenly cocking his
head sideways he became alert, said "// signor marchese" and darted
downstairs.

"We'd better look respectable before meeting Papa," said Sebastian. "We
needn't dress. I gather he's alone at the moment"

I was full of curiosity to meet Lord Marchmain. When I did so I was
first struck by his normality, which, as I saw more of him, I found to be
studied. It was as though he were conscious of a Byronic aura, which he
considered to be in bad taste and was at pains to suppress. He was standing
on the balcony of the saloon which was the main living-room of the palace,
and, as he turned to greet us, his face was in deep shadow. I was aware only
of a tall and upright figure.

"Darling Papa," said Sebastian, "how young you are looking!"

He kissed Lord Marchmain on the cheek and I, who had not kissed my
father since I left the nursery, stood shyly behind him.

"This is Charles. Don't you think my father very handsome, Charles?"

Lord Marchmain shook my hand.

"Whoever looked up your train," he said -- and his voice also was
Sebastian's -- "made a btise. There's no such one."

"We came on it."

"You can't have. There was only a slow train from Milan at that time. I
was at the Lido. I have taken to playing tennis there with the professional
in the early evening. It is the only time of day when it is not too hot. I
hope you boys will be fairly comfortable upstairs. This house seems to have
been designed for the comfort of only one person, and I am that one. I have
a room the size of this and a very decent dressing-room. Cara has taken
possession of the odier sizeable room."

I was fascinated to hear him speak of his mistress, so simply and
casually; later I suspected that it was done for effect, for me.

"How is she?"

"Cara? Well, I hope. She will be back with us to-morrow. She is
visiting some American friends at a villa on the Brenta Canal. Where shall
we dine? We might go to the Luna, but it is filling up with English now.
Would you be too dull at home? Cara is sure to want to go out to-morrow, and
the cook here is really quite excellent."

He had moved away from the window and now stood in the full evening
sunlight, with the red damask of the walls behind him. It was a noble face,
a controlled one, just, it seemed, as he planned it to be; slightly weary,
slightly sardonic, slightly voluptuous. He seemed in the prime of life; it
was odd to think that he was only a few years younger than my father.

We dined at a marble table in the windows; everything was either of
marble, or velvet, or dull, gilt gesso, in this house. Lord Marchmain said,
"And how do you plan your time here? Bathing or sight-seeing?" "Some
sight-seeing, anyway," I said.

"Cara will like that -- she, as Sebastian will have told you, is your
hostess here. You can't do both, you know. Once you go to the Lido there is
no escaping -- you play backgammon, you get caught at the bar, you get
stupefied by the sun. Stick to the churches. You've just come from England?"

"Yes, it was lovely there."

"Was it? Was it? It has been my tragedy that I abominate the English
countryside. I suppose it is a disgraceful thing to inherit great
responsibilities and to be entirely indifferent to them. I am all the
socialists would have me be, and a great stumbling-block to my own party.
Well, my elder son will change all that, I've no doubt, if they leave him
anything to inherit. . . . Why, I wonder, are Italian sweets always thought
to be so good ? There was always an Italian pastry-cook at Brides-head until
my father's day. He had an Austrian, so much better. And now I suppose there
is some British matron with beefy forearms."

After dinner we left the palace by the street door and walked through a
maze of bridges and squares and alleys, to Florian's for coffee, and watched
the grave crowds crossing and re-crossing under the Campanile. "There is
nothing quite like a Venetian crowd," said Lord Marchmain. "The country is
crawling with Communists, but an American woman tried to sit here the other
night with bare shoulders and they drove her away by coming to stare at her,
quite silently; they were like circling gulls coming back and back to her,
until she left. Our countrymen are much less dignified when they attempt to
express moral disapproval."

An English party had just then come from the water-front, made for a
table near us, and then suddenly moved to the other side, where they looked
askance at us and talked with their heads close together. "That is a man and
his wife I used to know when I was in politics. A prominent member o your
church, Sebastian."

As we went up to bed that night Sebastian said: "He's rather a poppet,
isn't he?"


Lord Marchmain's mistress arrived next day. I was nineteen years old
and completely ignorant of women. I could not with any certainty recognize a
prostitute in the streets. I was therefore not indifferent to the fact of
living under the roof of an adulterous couple, but I was old enough to hide
my interest. Lord March-main's mistress, therefore, found me with a
multitude of conflicting expectations about her, all of which were, for the
moment, disappointed by her appearance. She was not a voluptuous
Toulouse-Lautrec odalisque; she was not a "little bit of fluff'; she was a
middle-aged, well-preserved, well-dressed, well-mannered woman such as I had
seen in countless public places and occasionally met. Nor did she seem
marked by any social stigma. On the day of her arrival we lunched at the
Lido, where she was greeted at almost every table.

"Vittoria Corombona has asked us all to her ball on Saturday."

"It is very kind of her. You know I do not dance," said Lord Marchmain.

"But for the boys? It is a thing to be seen -- the Corombona palace lit
up for the ball. One does not know how many such balls there will be in the
future."

"The boys can do as they like. We must refuse."

"And I have asked Mrs. Hacking Brunner to luncheon. She has a charming
daughter. Sebastian and his friend will like her."

"Sebastian and his friend are more interested in art than heiresses."

"But that is what I have always wished," said Cara, changing her point
of attack adroitly. "I have been here more times than I can count and Alex
has not once let me inside San Marco even. We will become tourists, yes?"

We became tourists; Cara enlisted as guide a midget Venetian nobleman
to whom all doors were open, and with him at her side and a guide-book in
her hand, she came with us, flagging sometimes but never giving up, a neat,
prosaic figure amid the immense splendours of the place.
The fortnight at Venice passed quickly and sweetly -- perhaps too
sweetly; I was drowning in honey, stingless. On some days life, kept pace
with the gondola, as we nosqd through the side-canals and die boatman
uttered his plaintive musical bird-cry of warning; on other days, with the
speed-boat bouncing over the lagoon in a stream of sun-lit foam; it left a
confused memory of fierce sunlight on the sands and cool, marble interiors;
of water everywhere, lapping on smooth stone, reflected in a dapple of light
on painted ceilings; of a night at the Corombona palace such as Byron might
have known, and another Byronic night fishing for scampi in the shallows of
Chioggia, the phosphorescent wake of the little ship, the lantern swinging
in the prow and the net coming up full of weed and sand and floundering
fishes; of melon and prosciutto on the balcony in the cool of the morning;
of hot cheese sandwiches and champagne cocktails at the English
bar.

I remember Sebastian looking up at the Colleoni statue and saying,
"It's rather sad to think that whatever happens you and I can never possibly
get involved in a war."

I remember most particularly one conversation towards the end of my
visit.

Sebastian had gone to play tennis with his father and Cara at last
admitted to fatigue. 'We sat in the late afternoon at the windows
overlooking the Grand Canal, she on the sofa with a piece of needlework, I
in an armchair, idle. It was the first time we had been alone together.

"I think you are very fond of Sebastian," she said.

"Why, certainly."

"I know of these romantic friendships of the English and the Germans.
They are not Latin. I think they are very good if they do not go on too
long."

She was so composed and matter-of-fact that I could not take I her
amiss, but I failed to find an answer. She seemed not to ' expect one but
continued stitching, pausing sometimes to match the silk from a work bag at
her side.

"It is a kind of love that comes to children before they know its
meaning. In England it comes when you are almost men; I think I like that.
It is better to have that kind of love for another boy than for a girl. Alex
you see had it for a girl, for his wife. Do you think he loves me?"

"Really, Cara, you ask the most embarrassing questions. How should I
know? I assume ..."

"He does not. But not the littlest piece. Then why does he stay with
me? I will tell you; because I protect him from Lady I Marchmain. He hates
her; but you can have no conception how he hates her. You would think him so
calm and English -- the milord, rather blase, all passion dead, wishing to
be comfortable and not to be worried, following the sun, with me to look
after that one thing that no man can do for himself. My friend, he is
•' a volcano of hate. He cannot breathe the same air as she. He will
not set foot in England because it is her home; he can scarcely be happy
with Sebastian because he is her son. But Sebastian hates her too."

"I'm sure you're wrong there."

"He may not admit it to you. He may not admit it to himself; they are
full of hate -- hate of themselves. Alex and his family. . . . Why do you
think he will never go into Society?" "I always thought people had turned
against him." "My dear boy, you are very young. People turn against a
handsome, clever, wealthy man like Alex? Never in your life. It is he who
has driven them away. Even now they come back again and again to be snubbed
and laughed at. And all for Lady Marchmain. He will not touch a hand which
may have touched hers. When we have guests I see him thinking, 'Have they
perhaps just come from Brideshead? Are they on their way to Marchmain House?
Will they speak of me to my wife? Are they a link between me and her whom I
hate?' But, seriously, with my heart, that is how he thinks. He is mad. And
how has she deserved all this hate? She has done nothing except be loved by
someone who was not grown-up. I have never met Lady March-main; I have seen
her once only; but if you live with a man you come to know the other women
he has loved. I know Lady March-main very well. She is a good and simple
woman whp has been loved in the wrong way.

"When people hate with all that energy, it is something in themselves
they are hating. Alex is hating all the illusions of boyhood -- innocence,
God, hope. Poor Lady Marchmain has to bear all that. He loved me for a time,
quite a short time, as a man loves his own strength; it is simpler for a
woman; she has not all these ways of loving.

"Now Alex is very fond of me and I protect him from his own innocence.
We are comfortable.
"Sebastian is in love with his own childhood. That will make him very
unhappy. His Teddy-bear, his Nanny . . . and he is nineteen years old. . .
."

She stirred on her sofa, shifting her weight so that she could look
down at the passing boats, and said in fond, mocking tones:

"How good it is to sit in the shade and talk of love," and then added
with a sudden swoop to earth, "Sebastian drinks too much."

"I suppose we both do."

"With you it does not matter. I have watched you together. With
Sebastian it is different. He will be a drunkard if someone does not come to
stop him. I have known so many. Alex was nearly a drunkard when he met me;
it is in the blood. I see it in the way Sebastian drinks. It is not your
way."

We arrived in London on the day before term began. On the way from
Charing Cross I dropped Sebastian in the forecourt of his mother's house.
"Here is 'Marchers,'" he said with a sigh
which meant the end of a holiday. "I won't ask you in, the place is
probably full of my family. We'll meet at Oxford." I drove on to Hyde Park
Gardens.

My father greeted me with his usual air of mild regret. "Here to-day,"
he said; "gone to-morrow. I seem to see very little of you. Perhaps it is
dull for you here. How could it be otherwise? You have enjoyed yourself?"

"Very much. I went to Venice."

"Yes. Yes. I suppose so. The weather was fine?"

When he went to bed after an evening of silent study, he paused to ask:
"The friend you were so much concerned about, did he die?" "No." "I am very
thankful. You should have written to tell me. I worried about him so much."