"Is the dome by Vanburgh?" "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 that interests me." "Oh dear, I thought I'd cured you of all that." "The terrible Mr Collins." "Sebastian in his wheelchair spinning down the box-edged walks of the kitchen gardens in search of alpine strawberries and warm figs." "Propelling himself through the succession of hot houses from scent to scent and climate to climate to choose orchids for our buttonholes." "It was an aesthetic education to live within those walls." "Since the days when, as a schoolboy" "I used to bicycle round the neighboring parishes rubbing brasses and photographing fonts" "I had nursed a love of architecture but my sentiments at heart were insular and medieval." "This was my conversion to the Baroque." "Why is this house called a castle?" "Because it used to be one until they moved it." "What do you mean?" "Just that." "It used to be a castle about a mile away, down by the village." "Then when they took a fancy to the valley they pulled the castle down and carted it stone by stone up here and built a new house." "I'm rather glad they did, aren't you?" "If it was mine, I couldn't live anywhere else." "But it isn't really mine." "I mean, just at the moment it is but usually it's full of ravening beasts." "If only it could be like this always always alone, always summer" "The fruit always ripe And Aloysius always in a good temper." "Charles!" "Charles!" "Aloysius!" "Are you alright?" "How's the ankle?" "Very, very funny." "Come on." "I suppose you'll be in bed for months now." "One day in a cupboard we found a box of oil paints." "Mummy bought these paints." "Someone told her that you couldn't appreciate the beauty of the world unless you tried to paint it." "Sebastian gave me the idea of decorating the Garden Room." "She couldn't draw at all." "The colours in the tubes were very bright but every time Mummy mixed them they came out a kind of khaki." "Be reasonable." "Well, you're ahead of me anyway." "Charles!" "You do that every single time!" "It's the wrong one." "I knew little of oil painting and learned its ways as I worked." "By luck, and the happy mood of the moment the brush seemed to do what was wanted of it and in a week it was finished." "ot bad, Charles." "Do you think your mother will mind?" "We won't know till she sees it, will we?" "One day we went down to the cellars with Wilcox and saw the empty bays which had once held a vast store of wine." "A lot of the old wine just wants drinking up." "We should have laid down the 18's and 20's by now." "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." "I know there's enough to last ten years." "But what happens then?" "That's what I want to know." "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 real acquaintance with wine." "Now, for the fullest of appreciation, first warm the glass gently at a candle flame." "Fill it a third high." "Chateau Lafitte 1899." "Swirl the wine gently round the glass." "That is a claret. o, I have burgundy in my hand." "Have you just poured this?" "I have claret in my hand." "This is burgundy." "This is burgundy!" "I know this is burgundy." "Yes." "This was claret." "A glass that inopportunely dropped out of my hand." "This legless glass." "This my glass." "Charles, have another biscuit. o." "This is claret." "This is a king of clarets." "Definitely a brother" "Good man!" "Up to the light" "Up to the light, under the nose, breathe it in." "It's like a flute by still water." "Ought we to be drunk every night?" "Yes" "I think we should." "Yes, I think we should too." "On Sundays, a neighboring priest called to say mass." "Sebastian's faith was an enigma to me at the time but not one that I felt particularly concerned to solve." "I took it as a foible, like his teddy bear." "He's such an old bore, Father Phipps." "He kept me back half an hour after Mass talking about cricket." "Do you want some cold coffee?" "Yes, please." "It's so difficult being a Catholic." "Does it make much difference to you?" "Of course." "All the time." "Well, I can't say that I've noticed it." "Are you struggling against temptation?" "You don't seem to me much more virtuous than me." "My dear Charles, I'm much, much wickeder." "Well then?" "Who was it used to pray 'Oh, God, make me good but not yet?" "'" "I don't know." "You, I should think." "I do" "All the time." "But it's not that." "Good Lord, another naughty scoutmaster." "I suppose they try and make you believe a lot of nonsense?" "Is it nonsense?" "I wish it were." "It sometimes seems particularly sensible to me." "My dear Sebastian, you can't seriously believe it all." "Can't I?" "o, I mean about Christmas and the star and the ox and the ass and the three kings." "Oh yes." "I believe all that." "It's a lovely idea." "But you can't believe things because they're lovely ideas." "Well, I do." "That's how I believe." "Do you believe in prayer?" "Oh Charles, don't be a bore." "I'm trying to read about this woman in Hull who's been using an instrument." "You started the subject." "I was just getting interested." "Well, I'll never mention it again." "But he did, ten days later, when our peace was disturbed on the occasion of the annual Agricultural Fair." "The house, which seemed to have slept during the past weeks, awoke to a flurry of activity and Brideshead, Sebastian's elder brother, came down to preside." "Queer fellow, my brother." "Now he's here I think we should stay out of the way." "He's in his element today." "He's a very big part of the Agricultural Show." "He looks normal enough to me." "Oh, but he's not." "If you only knew." "He's much the craziest of us, only it never comes 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." "It was awful for Mummy." "She couldn't exactly try and stop him but of course it was the last thing she wanted." "I mean, imagine what people would have said "The eldest son!"" "It's not even as if it were me." "And poor Papa." "The Church had been enough trouble to him without that happening." "I wonder if I'd have been like that if I'd gone to Stoneyhurst." "I should have gone, but Papa went abroad before" "I was old enough." "The first thing he insisted upon was my going to Eton." "Has your father given up religion?" "Well, he's had to, in a way." "He only took it up when he married Mummy." "When he went off he left it behind with a mistress." "You must meet him." "He's a very nice man." "Now don't look down, Charles." "So, you see, we're a mixed family religiously." "Brideshead and Cordelia are both fervent Catholics." "He's miserable, she's very happy." "Julia and I are both semi-heathens." "I am happy." "I rather think Julia isn't." "Mummy is popularly believed to be a saint and Papa is excommunicated." "I wouldn't know which of them were 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 everyone else." "My dear Charles, that's exactly what they're not particularly in this country, where they're so few" "I mean, it's not just that they're a clique." "Everything they think is important is different from other people." "I mean they try and cover it up but it comes out all the time." "So you see, it's difficult for semi-heathens like Julia and me." "Sebastian!" "Sebastian!" "That sounds like my sister, Cordelia." "Cover yourself up." "Where are you?" "Go away, Cordelia." "We're not decent." "Yes, you are." "I guessed you were here." "You didn't know I was about, did you?" "I came down with Bridey and I stopped off to see Francis Xavier." "He's my pig." "And then I had lunch with Colonel Fender and then onto the show." "Francis Xavier got a special mention." "But that beast Randal got first with a very mangy looking animal." "Darling Sebastian." "It is lovely to see you." "How's your poor foot?" "Say how do you do to Mr Ryder." "Oh sorry." "How do you do?" "I am sorry about your pig." "They're all getting pretty boozy down there, so I came away." "I say, who's been painting the Garden Hall?" "I went in to get 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 come down?" "There's nobody about." "Bridey's bound to bring the judges in." "o, no he won't." "I heard him making arrangements not to." "He's very sour today." "He didn't want me to have dinner with you but I fixed that." "Oh, do come on!" "I'll be in the nursery when you're fit to be seen." "We were a somber little party that evening." "Brideshead was only three years older than Sebastian and I but he seemed of another generation." "I hope Sebastian is seeing the wine." "Wilcox is apt to be rather grudging when he's on his own." "He's treated us very liberally." "I'm delighted to hear it." "You're fond of wine?" "Very." "I wish I were." "It's such a bond with other men." "At Oxford I tried to get drunk once or twice." "But I didn't enjoy it." "Beer and whisky" "I find even less appetizing." "Events like today's show are in consequence a torment to me." "I like wine." "My sister Cordelia's last report said that she was, not only the worst girl in the school but the worst that had ever been in the memory of the oldest nun." "That's because the Reverend Mother said that if I didn't keep my room tidy Our Lady would be very grieved and I told her that our Blessed Lady didn't give two hoots whether I put my gym shoes on the left" "or the right of my dancing shoes." "Reverend Mother was livid." "Cordelia, Our Lady cares about obedience." "Bridey, don't be so pious." "We've an atheist in our midst." "Agnostic." "Really!" "What were the entries like this year?" "Were you pleased?" "o, the standard was remarkably low." "ot a decent animal to chose between." "If I'd had my way no prizes would have been awarded." "It would have served Randal right." "Cordelia!" "By the way, did I tell you I'd seen the Bishop of London?" "o, Bridey, you didn't." "He wants to close the chapel." "He couldn't." "Do you think Mummy would let him?" "There are so few of us." "It isn't as though we're old Catholics with everyone on the estate coming to Mass." "Does that mean we're going to have to drive miles on winter mornings?" "We must have the Blessed Sacraments here." "I like popping in at odd times, so does Mummy." "So do I but it'll have to go sooner or later perhaps after Mummy's time." "o thank you" "The point is whether it wouldn't be a better to let it go now." "You're an artist, Ryder." "What do you think of it aesthetically?" "I think it's beautiful." "Is it good Art?" "Well, I don't quite know what you mean." "Oh, Bridey, stop being so Jesuitical." "I'm sorry, I thought it was an interesting point." "Well, if you'll excuse me." "I must take Sebastian away for half an hour." "There are some family matters to deal with." "It's time you were in bed, Cordelia." "Must digest first." "I'm not used to gorging like this at night." "I'll talk to Charles." ""Charles?", "Charles?" "Mr Ryder to you, child." "Send her to bed if she's a bore." "Are you really an agnostic?" "Do your family always talk about religion all the time?" "ot all the time." "It's a subject that 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." "Thank you." "I'm sure it's more than I deserve." "Oh, I've got harder cases than you." "I've got Lloyd George, the Kaiser and Olive Banks." "Who's she?" "She got bunked last term from the convent." "The Reverend Mother found something she'd been writing." "If you weren't an agnostic, I should ask you for five shillings to buy a black goddaughter." "Nothing will surprise me about your religion." "It's a new thing that a 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." "Isn't that lovely?" "That night I began to realise 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." "Sorry I've been ignoring you." "Bridey's got all these papers he wants me to take to Papa." "I'd a nice talk with Cordelia." "She's going to pray for me." "She made a novena for her pig." "Now come on." "We must pack." "I've decided you'd better come to Venice with me." "But that's absurd, I haven't got any money." "I've thought of that." "We live off Papa when we're there." "The lawyers pay my fare plus first class and sleeper." "We can both travel third for that." "You see." "It's fixed." "But I haven't got any clothes for Venice" "Oh, Charles" "And so Sebastian and I came to Venice." "We had traveled on the long cheap route by boat and train, on wooden seats in hot carriages filled with peasants and the smell of garlic as the sun mounted higher and the country began to glow with heat." "You've been here before?" "o." "I came once, from the sea." "This is the way to arrive." "Dove site stati" "Sí, sí, sí" "Hello, Plender." "Hello, my Lord." "How are you?" "Very well, thank you." "Mr Ryder." "How do you do, sir?" "How do you do?" "We expected you on the morning express." "His Lordship thought you must have looked up the train wrong." "Ah, well." "We came third." "His Lordship said to tell you that he was at the Lido." "Did he?" "Quick Maria, have you got the towels ready?" "Yes, yes." "The boys are bringing them." "Si, si." "This is your room, my Lord, the one you had before." "Right, thank you." "Mr Ryder." "You're next door, sir." "Your rooms are ready, my Lords." "The luggage has arrived." "Scuse." "Mosquitoes." "Mostica not now." "Make hot wash." "If I may sir." "Sometimes the bath does not work but" "Signor Plender is very clever He will mend it." "It's this Venetian plumbing, my Lord." "It's not to be trusted." "I'll get some hot water." "Presto." "Presto Maria, porti dell acqua calde per le camere dei signori." "It's a bit bleak." "Bleak?" "Come here." "Now look at that." "I don't think you could call it bleak." "There you are." "Some nice hot water for you to wash in after your journey." "Hot wash?" "ot so hot wash." "Il signor Marchese arrivato." "Il signor Marchese." "Presto, presto." "Better look respectable to meet Papa." "Plender, is my father alone?" "At the moment, my Lord, yes." "Good." "Charles, we needn't dress for dinner." "Darling Papa." "Goodness, how young you're looking." "This is Charles, Papa." "Charles don't you think my father very handsome?" "How do you do?" "How do you do, sir?" "Whoever looked up your train made a betise." "There's no such one." "We came on it." "You can't have done." "There's only a slow train from Milan at that time." "I've just been to the Lido." "I've taken to playing tennis there with a professional in the early part of the evening." "It is the only time of day when it's not too hot." "How very energetic of you, Papa." "I hope you boys will be comfortable." "My room's wonderful." "This house was built for the comfort of one person only." "I am that person." "I have a room this size and a very splendid dressing room besides." "Cara has taken possession of the only other suitable room." "How is she?" "Cara?" "She's gone to visit some Americans at a villa on the Brenta canal." "She'll be back with us tomorrow." "So what shall we do tonight, Papa?" "Oh, we could go to the Luna, though it's getting very filled up with English people now, or would it be too dull to stay here?" "Cara is bound to want to go out tomorrow." "o, no." "That would be lovely." "Well, we dine at eight." "We could go out and have a drink first." "I had been 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." "Why, I wonder, are Italians always supposed to be so good at sweet?" "We had an Italian pastry cook at Brideshead until my father's day." "Then we changed to an Austrian so much better." "Now, I suppose, there is a British matron with beefy forearms." "How do you two propose to spend your time here?" "Bathing or sightseeing?" "Well, I should like to do some sightseeing." "Um, Cara will love that." "You can't do both things." "Charles is very keen on painting." "Yes?" "Yes." "Any particular Venetian painter?" "Bellini." "Ah, which one?" "I didn't know there were two." "There are three, to be precise." "Painting then was very much a family business." "How was England when you left?" "It's been lovely this summer." "Was it?" "Was it?" "It's my tragedy that I abominate the English countryside." "I suppose it's very wrong to inherit great responsibilities and be entirely indifferent to them." "I am all that the socialists would have me be and a great stumbling block to my own party." "However, no doubt my elder son will change all that if they leave him anything to inherit." "He's rather a poppet, isn't he?" "Don't worry." "He's really very sweet underneath." "He does frighten me a bit." "You'll soon get used to that." "Well, shall we walk, or take a cab?" "Oh, I think a cab." "Okay?" "Where do you want to go?" "I don't know." "I'll show you something very, very special." "The Bridge of Sighs, St Marks" "Lord Marchmain's mistress appeared the next day." "Bon giorno, Cara." "Bon giorno." "I was completely ignorant of women and could not with any certainty recognize a prostitute in the streets." "I was not therefore indifferent to the fact of living under the same roof as an adulterous couple." "But I was old enough to hide my interest." "Lord Marchmain's mistress, therefore, found me with a multitude of conflicting expectations about her all of which were, for the moment, disappointed by her appearance." "How lovely to see you, Sebastian." "You must be Charles." "How do you do." "My dear." "Alex, Vittorio Corombonna has asked us to her ball." "Shall we accept?" "It's very kind of her." "But, as you know, I do not dance." "o, but for the boys it is a thing to be seen the Corombonna Palace all lit up for a ball and one does not know how many such balls there will be in the future." "The boys must do as they like, but 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 Bellini than heiresses." "Oh, but that's what I've always wished." "I have been here more times than I can count and Alex has never let me inside San Marco even." "Let's become tourists." "There's an extraordinary little man" "Daisy Guzzoli's uncle." "He knows everybody." "He'll make a marvelous guide." "And now off to see our works of art." "Tiepolo, Tinteretto, Bellini" "So we became tourists." "All doors were open to Cara's little Venetian nobleman." "With him and a guide book she came with us flagging sometimes, but never giving up." "A neat, prosaic figure amid the immense splendors of the place." "As a child I had no religion." "I was taken to church weekly and at school attended to chapel daily." "But, as though in compensation from the time I went to my public school" "I was excused church on 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 of the decade," "And of the intolerance, hypocrisy and sheer stupidity attributed to it for centuries." "o one had ever suggested to me that these quaint observances expressed a coherent philosophical system." "and in transigents historical claims." "or had they done so would I have been much interested." "My father did not go to church except on family occasions, and then with derision." "My mother, I think, was devout." "It once seemed odd to me that she should have thought it her duty to leave my father and me and go off with an ambulance to Serbia to die of exhaustion in the snow in Bosnia." "But I later recognized some such spirit in myself." "Later, too, I have come to accept claims which then in 1923" "I never troubled to examine and to accept the supernatural as the real." "But I was aware of no such needs that summer." "Some days life kept pace with the gondola as we nosed through the side canals and the boatman uttered his plaintive musical bird cry of warning." "And other days, with the speed boat, bouncing over the lagoons the stream of sunlit fell on me." "Every morning after breakfast, Sebastian, Cara and I would leave the palace by the street door and wander through a maze of bridges and squares and alleys to Florien's for coffee." "And watched the grave crowds crossing and recrossing under the Campanile." "I was drowning in honey, stingless." "The fortnight at Venice passed quickly and sweetly, perhaps too sweetly." "It left a confused memory of fierce sunlight on the sands, of cool, marble interiors, of water everywhere, lapping on smooth stone reflected in a dapple of light on painted ceilings," "of a night at the Corombonna Palace such as Byron might have known." "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." "It was the first time we had been alone together." "I think you're very fond of Sebastian." "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 don't go on too long." "It is a kind of love that comes to children before they know its meaning." "In England it comes a little later, when you are almost men." "I think I like that." "I think it's better to have this first kind of love for a boy than for a girl." "Alex, you see, had it for a girl, his wife." "Do you think he loves me?" "Really, Cara, you do ask the most embarrassing questions." "How should I know?" "I assume." "He does not." "But not the littlest piece." "But then why does he stay with you?" "Because I protect him from Lady Marchmain." "He hates her." "But you can have no conception how he hates her." "My friend, he is a volcano of hate." "He can't breathe the same air as she." "He won't set foot in England because it's her home." "He can scarcely be happy with Sebastian because he's her son." "But Sebastian hates her, too." "Oh no, I think 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." "And how has she deserved all this hate?" "She's done nothing except to be loved by someone who was not grown up." "When people hate with all that energy it's something in themselves they are hating." "Alex is hating all the illusions of boyhood." "Innocence." "God." "Hope." "Sebastian is in love with his own childhood." "That will make him very unhappy." "His teddy-bear, his anny and he is nineteen years old." "How good it is to sit in the shade and talk of love." "Come, let's go and meet them." "Sebastian drinks too much." "I suppose we both do." "With you it doesn't matter." "I've watched you together." "With Sebastian it's different." "He'll become a drunkard if someone doesn't come to stop him." "I have known so many." "Alex was nearly a drunkard when I met him." "It's in the blood." "I see it in the way Sebastian drinks." "It's not your way." "Cara!" "English weather!" "Well, thank God, it's driven the English away." "It is sad for the boys' last day." "We arrived back the day before third term began." "On the way from Charring Cross I dropped Sebastian in front of Marchmain house, his family's London home on the edge of Green Park." "Good morning, Austin." "Well Marchers." "I won't ask you in because the place is probably full of my family." "See you in Oxford." "Have a good journey up tomorrow." "The taxi took me all alone to Bayswater." "Where my father greeted me with his usual air of mild regret." "Here today and gone tomorrow." "I seem to see very little of you." "Perhaps it's dull for you here." "How else could it be otherwise?" "Have you enjoyed yourself?" "Very much." "I went to Venice." "Yes." "Yes." "I suppose so." "The weather was fine?" "Yes, father." "That friend you were so concerned about Did he die?" "o." "I went to Venice with him." "I'm very thankful." "You should have written to tell me." "I worried about him so much." "613"