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Waugh tells the story of the Marchmain family. Aristocratic, beautiful and charming, the Marchmains are indeed a symbol of England and her decline in this novel of the upper class of the 1920s and the abdication of responsibility in the 1930s.
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EVELYN WAUGH BRIDESHEAD REVISITED THE SACRED AND PROFANE MEMORIES OF CAPTAIN CHARLES RYDER Penguin Books Ltd, Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England Penguin Books, 625 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10022, U.S.A. Penguin Books Australia Ltd, Ringwood, Victoria, Australia Penguin Books Canada Ltd, 2801 John Street, Markham, Ontario, Canada L3R IB4 Penguin Books (N.Z.) Ltd, 182-190 Wairau Road, Auckland 10, New Zealand First published by Chapman & Hall 1945 Published in Penguin Books 1951 Reprinted 1952, 1954, 1957, 1959 Revised edition first published by Chapman & Hall 1960 Published in Penguin Books 1962 Reprinted 1964, 1967, 1968, 1970, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1976, 1977,1978, 1979, 1980 (twice), 1981 Copyright 1945 by Evelyn Waugh All rights reserved Made and printed in Great Britain by Richard Clay (The Chaucer Press) Ltd, Bungay, Suffolk Set in Monophoto Baskerville Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser AUTHOR'S NOTE I am not I: thou art not he or she: they are not they E.W. -1- CONTENTS Preface Prologue: BRIDESHEAD REVISITED Book One: ET IN ARCADIA EGO Chapter One: I meet Sebastian Flyte - and Anthony Blanche - I visit Brideshead for the first time Chapter Two: My cousin Jasper's Grand Remonstrance - a warning against charm - Sunday morning in Oxford Chapter Three: My father at home - Lady Julia Flyte Chapter Four: Sebastian at home - Lord Marchmain abroad Chapter Five: Autumn in Oxford - dinner with Rex Mottram and supper with Boy Mulcaster - Mr Samgrass - Lady Marchmain at home - Sebastian contra mundum Book Two: BRIDESHEAD DESERTED Chapter One: Samgrass revealed - I take leave of Brideshead - Rex revealed Chapter Two: Julia and Rex Chapter Three: Mulcaster and I in defence of our country Sebastian abroad - I take leave of Marchmain House Book Three: A TWITCH UPON THE THREAD Chapter One: Orphans of the Storm Chapter Two: Private view - Rex Mottram at home Chapter Three: The fountain Chapter Four: Sebastian contra mundum Chapter Five: Lord Marchmain at home - death in the Chinese drawing-room - the purpose revealed Epilogue: BRIDESHEAD REVISITED To LAURA -2- PREFACE THIS novel, which is here re-issued with many small additions and some substantial cuts, lost me such esteem as I once enjoyed among my contemporaries and led me into an unfamiliar world of fan-mail and press photographers. Its theme - the operation of divine grace on a group of diverse but closely connected characters - was perhaps presumptuously large, but I make no apology for it. I am less happy about its form, whose more glaring defects may be blamed on the circumstances in which it was written. In December 1943 1 had the good fortune when parachuting to incur a minor injury which afforded me a rest from military service. This was extended by a sympathetic commanding officer, who let me remain unemployed until June 1944 when the book was finished. I wrote with a zest that was quite strange to me and also with impatience to get back to the war. It was a bleak period of present privation and threatening disaster - the period of soya beans and Basic English - and in consequence the, book is infused with a kind of gluttony, for food and wine, for the splendours of the