Here, at the age of 39,
I began to be old.
As I lay in that dark hour,
I was aghast to realize
that something within me long sickening
had quietly died.
I felt as a husband might feel
who, in the fourth year of his marriage,
suddenly knew he had no longer any desire
or tenderness or esteem for a once-beloved wife.
We had been through it together, the army and I,
from the first importunate courtship until now,
when nothing remained to us
except the chill bonds of law and duty and custom.
We were leaving that day, and I reflected
that whatever scenes of desolation lay ahead of us,
I never feared one more brutal than this.
Left, right, left, right, left, right, left!
So on this morning of our move,
I was entirely indifferent to our destination.
I would go on with my job,
but I could bring to it nothing more than acquiescence.
When we had marched into this camp in the winter of 1943,
I had brought with me a company of strong and hopeful men.
Word had gone round among them that we were at last
in transit for the Middle East.
But as the weeks passed and the snow began to clear,
I saw their disappointment change to resignation,
and I, who by every precept should have put heart into them,
how could I help them, who could so little help myself?
Morning, sir.
Good morning, Sergeant Major. How's the move going?
Last stores ready for loading 15:00, sir.
Good. Has Mr. Hooper appeared yet?
Haven't seen him at all this morning, sir.
Oh.
Has that been entered into the book?
Wind in the night, sir?
That'll do.
- Morning, Hooper. - Morning, sir.
I should like to speak to Mr. Hooper, Sergeant Major.
Very good, sir.
Where the devil have you been?
I told you to inspect the lines.
Am I late? Sorry.
Had a rush getting my gear together.
That's what you have a servant for.
Well, I suppose you're right, strictly speaking.
But you know how it is; He had his own stuff to do.
The trouble with Desmond
is that if I get on the wrong side of him,
he takes it out of me in other ways.
I'm not surprised, if you're so familiar with him.
Cap badge, Hooper.
Yeah.
C.O.'s orders:
All distinguishing marks to be removed.
Oh.
And what are you wearing all that gear for anyway?
You're not in the advance party.
I am.
Aren't I?
Of course you're not.
The orders were changed.
Don't you ever read the company notice board?
You don't mean they've changed it all again.
Oh, there you go.
Typical shambles.
Total inefficiency.
They couldn't get away with this in business, I can tell you.
Hooper, do you mind inspecting D squad now?
Righty-oh.
And for Christ's sake, don't say "righty-oh."
Sorry.
I do try to remember.
It just slips out.
C.O. just coming up, sir.
Thank you, Sergeant Major.
Good morning, sir.
Well, Ryder, everything squared up here?
Yes, I think so, sir.
Think so? You ought to know.
Ahl.
Has that been entered in barrack damages?
- Not yet, sir. - Not yet, eh?
I wonder when it would have been if I hadn't seen it.
Ahal.
Just look at that!
Fine impression that gives
to the regiment taking over from us.
Don't you know what sets the standard of a regiment?
The way it leaves camp, Ryder.
Yes, that's bad, sir.
It's a disgrace.
See that everything here is burned before we leave.
Very good, sir.
Sergeant Major, will you send over to the carrier platoon
and tell Captain Brown that the C.O.
would very much like this ditch cleared up?
Right, sir.
Remind me, Ryder,
what were you in civilian life?
I was a painter, sir.
You shouldn't do it, sir. You shouldn't, really.
That's not our rubbish.
Maybe it's not, sir, but you know how it is.
If you get on the wrong side of senior officers,
they'll take it out of you in other ways.
This is top security.
If I find any of those female camp followers when we arrive,
I shall know there's been a leakage.
Right, sir. I'll see there's a new order.
I called my wife last night.
She hasn't the slightest idea where I am.
Doesn't make sense.
That's the third time we've copped it this week.
They're picking on you, old boy.
How is the family, by the way?
The children sound a bit difficult.
Jennifer says they always turn into monsters
the minute my leave is over.
That young officer over there, isn't he one of yours?
- Yes, sir. - What's his name again?
Lieutenant Hooper, sir.
His hair needs cutting.
He's in no shape to go to a new HQ.
I'll tell him, sir.
That's the sort of thing, Ryder,
that lets down the regiment.
It does, sir. I'll see that it's done.
My God, the officers they send us now.
In my late regiment, if a young officer was intending
to go to a new HQ like that, the other subalterns
would bloody well have cut his hair for himl.
Would they, sir?
I'll tell you something, Ryder.
I do not intend to have
my professional reputation compromised
by the slack appearance of a few temporary officersl.
- Corporal Deakin? - Yes, sir.
- Get a pair of scissors. - Very good.
- Lieutenant James? - Sir?
Cut that man's hair for him.
Sir?
I said cut that man's hair for him.
I'm sorry, sir. I don't quite understand.
Is that an order, sir?
It is your commander officer's wish,
and that's the best kind of order I know.
Go on. Get him tidied up!
We're going to tidy you up a bit.
Sit down, Mr. Hooper.
Your scissors, sir.
Give them to Lieutenant James.
Can't you understand an order? Get on with it!
Go on. Start cutting it.
Carry on. Keep at it.
Cut it!
Company, gol.
Company, slope armsl.
Company will move to the left in threes.
Left turnl.
Company, by the left, quick marchl.
I'm sorry about your hair, Hooper.
Oh, that's all right.
It's not the sort of thing
that used to happen in this regiment.
No hard feelings. I can take a bit of sport.
I say, any idea where we're off to?
None.
Do you think it's the real thing?
No.
Just another flap?
Yes.
Everyone's been saying we're for it.
I don't know what to think, really.
It happens so often.
I wouldn't argue with that.
Three times in the last six months.
Seems so silly somehow, all this drill and training
if we never go into action.
I shouldn't worry, Hooper.
There'll be plenty for everyone in time.
Oh, I don't want much, you know,
just enough to say I've been in it.
♪ Gassed last night ♪
♪ And gassed the night before ♪
♪ We're going to get gassed tonight ♪
♪ Then we never get gassed anymore ♪
♪ When we're gassed, we're sick as we can be ♪
♪ Can't stop the bombing blitz from higher Germany ♪
♪ They're over us, they're over us ♪
What the hell's going on?
We are being sprayed by liquid mustard gas.
It's the C.O.'s joke.
Hooper, can you see that the windows are shut?
Check there are no casualties.
And write me a short situation report.
C Company is to drive on for a bit, sir.
Take the right fork.
You'll see a dump post on the road.
Morning, Ryder. Can I have a lift?
It's not a bad camp, apparently.
Big private house with two or three lakes.
Looks as if we might get some duck if we're lucky.
Excellent. In the back, Hooper.
Morning, Hooper.
Quick march.
Right, you lot. Get it moving.
- Morning, Sergeant. - Morning, sir.
Does anybody know where we are?
Not officially, sir,
but I did hear someone mentions the name of the house.
It's a place called Brideshead.
You can see it from over there.
Huge great barrack of a place.
Thank you, Sergeant. Carry on.
Thank you, sir.
Right, you lot.
At the double. Come on.
It was as though someone had switched off the wireless
and a voice that had been bawling in my ears
incessantly, fatuously, for days beyond number
had been suddenly cut short.
An immense silence followed,
empty at first but gradually filled with a multitude
of sweet, natural, and long-forgotten sounds,
for he had spoken a name that was so familiar to me,
a conjurer's name of such ancient power
that at its mere sound,
the phantoms of those haunted late years
began to take flight.
Where are you off to, Hooper?
B company have relieved us.
I've just sent the chaps off to get cleaned up.
Good.
Brigade headquarters are coming here next week.
I've just had a snoop around the house.
Very ornate, I'd call it.
And a queer thing:
There's a sort of RC church attached to it.
I had a look in.
There was a kind of service going on,
just the padre and one old man.
I felt very awkward.
More in your line than mine.
There's a frightful great fountain thing too out the back,
all rocks and carved old men with trumpets.
You never saw such a thing.
Yes, Hooper, I did.
I've been here before.
Oh, well, you'll know all about it, then.
I'll just go and get myself cleaned up.
See you, Ryder.
I had been there before.
I knew all about it.
First with Sebastian more than 20 years ago
on a cloudless day in June.
That day, too, I had come not knowing my destination.
Oxford, in those days, was still a city of aquatint.
When the chestnut was in flower and the bells rang out
high and clear over her gables and cupolas,
she exhaled the soft airs of centuries of youth.
It was this cloistral hush that gave our laughter its resonance
and carried it still joyously over the intervening clamor.
It was Eights Week.
Here, discordantly, came a rabble of womankind.
Echoes of the intruders penetrated every corner,
and my own college was no exception.
We were giving a ball.
Morning, Lunt.
Morning, Mr. Ryder.
Ah, thank you.
Gentlemen who haven't got ladies
are asked to eat out as far as possible
in the next few days.
Will you be lunching in?
No, Lunt.
To give the servants a chance, they say.
Huhl What a chancel
I've got to buy a pincushion for the ladies' cloakroom.
What do they want with dancing?
I don't see the reason in it.
There's never been dancing before in Eights Week.
As if the teas and the river weren't enough.
If you ask me, sir, it's all on account of the war.
It couldn't have happened but for that.
Now, wine in the evening
or one or two gentlemen for luncheon,
I can see the reasoning.
But not dancing.
It came in with them back from the war.
They were too old,
they didn't know, and they wouldn't learn.
Take my word.
And there's some what goes dancing
with the town at the Masonic,
but the proctor will have them; You'll see.
Ah, here's Lord Sebastian.
Well, I mustn't stand here talking,
not with pincushions to get.
Good morning, Lunt.
Charles, what in the world is happening at your college?
Is there a circus?
I've seen everything except elephants.
I must say, the whole of Oxford
is becoming very peculiar suddenly.
Last night, it was pullulating with women.
You're to come away with me at once, out of danger.
I've a motorcar outside, a basket of strawberries,
and a bottle of Chateau Peyraguey,
which is not a wine you've ever tasted, so don't pretend.
It's heaven with strawberries.
I shall go and get my things.
And bring some money in case we see anything we want to buy.
Yes.
"Does anyone feel the same emotion
"for a butterfly or a flower
as he feels for a cathedral or a picture?"
Yes. I do.
Ready?
Yes.
It's over there.
- Isn't it early? - Yesl.
The women are still doing
whatever women do before they come downstairs.
Sloth has undone them. We're away.
Where are we going?
To see a friend.
Now, take care of Aloysius.
Make sure he isn't sick.
Where did you get the car?
Property of a very gloomy man called...
Hardcastle.
Do please return the bits to him if I kill myself.
I'm not very good at driving.
God bless Hardcastlel.
Whoever he may bel.
He was supposed to be coming with us.
Well, I did tell him 10:00.
But he was still in bed at 8:00,
so I thought-l thought, "Well, he's not very eager.
Much kinder to go without him."
Oh, it's a pity neither of us can sing.
It was about 11:00 when Sebastian,
without warning, turned the car into a cart track and stopped.
We ate the strawberries and drank the wine.
As Sebastian promised, they were delicious together.
The fumes of the sweet golden wine
seemed to lift us a finger's breadth
above the turf and hold us suspended.
Just the place to bury a crock of gold.
I should like to bury something precious
in every place that I've been happy
so that when I'm old and ugly and miserable,
I could come back and dig it up and remember.
This was my third term at university,
but I date my Oxford life
from my first meeting with Sebastian,
which had happened by chance
in the middle of the term before.
We were in different colleges and came from different schools,
so I might well have spent my three or four years
in university and never have met him
but for the chance of his getting drunk
one evening in my college
and of my having ground-floor rooms
in the front quadrangle.
I had been warned of the dangers of these rooms
by my cousin Jasper, who alone, when I first came up,
thought me a subject for detailed guidance.
So what are you reading?
History.
Oh, that's a perfectly respectable school.
The very worst is English Literature.
The next worst is Modern Greats.
You want either a first or a fourth;
There is no value in anything between.
Time spent on a good second is time thrown away.
You should go to the very best lectures-
Arkwright on Demosthenes, for instance-
irrespective of whether they're in your school or not.
Dress as you do in a country house.
Never wear a tweed jacket and flannel trousers.
Always wear a suit.
And go to a London tailor;
You get better cut and longer credit.
Good afternoon, sir.
Don't treat dons like schoolmasters.
Treat them as you would the vicar at home.
Join the Carlton now
and the Grid at the beginning of your second year.
If you want to run for the Union,
it's not a bad idea.
Make your reputation outside first
at the Chatham or the Canning.
Oh, and keep clear of Boar's Hill.
- Good afternoon, Ryder. - Hello.
And friends-
Charles, do watch the people you make friends with.
You'll find you spend your second year
getting rid of the undesirable ones
you made in your first.
Oh, and beware of Anglo-Catholics.
They're all sodomites with unpleasant accents.
In fact, steer clear of all religious groups.
They do nothing but harm.
I say, was this here when you arrived?
No, it's mine.
I put it up.
It's Van Gogh.
Really?
This is very pretty.
Well, I must be off.
I've got a JCR meeting at half past.
Oh, by the way, one last point.
Change your rooms.
But I was lucky to get them.
Ground-floor rooms on the front quad.
Terribly dangerous. I've seen men ruined.
People start dropping in.
They leave their gowns here
then pick them up on the way to hall.
Then you'll start giving them sherry.
Before you know where you are, you'll have opened a free bar
to all the undesirables in the college.
I do not know
that I ever consciously followed any of this advice.
I certainly never changed my rooms.
There were gillyflowers growing below the windows,
which on summer evenings, filled them with fragrance.
But that's the complete fallacy
of modern aesthetics, Charles.
Can't you see?
You mean, the whole argument of significant form
stands or falls by volume?
Precisely.
If you allow Cezanne to represent a third dimension
in his two-dimensional canvas,
then you must allow Landseer his gleam of loyalty
in the spaniel's eye.
My earliest friends were Collins-
a Wykehamist and an embryo don,
a man of solid reading and childlike humor-
and a small circle of college intellectuals
who maintained a middle course of culture
between the flamboyant aesthetes and the proletarian scholars.
It was by this circle that I found myself adopted
during my first term.
They provided the kind of company I had enjoyed
in the sixth form at school
and for which the sixth form had prepared me.
But even in the earliest days,
when the whole business of living at Oxford
with rooms of my own and my own checkbook
was a source of excitement,
I felt at heart
that this was not all which Oxford had to offer.
I knew Sebastian by sight long before I met him.
That was unavoidable, for from his first week,
he was the most conspicuous man of his year
by reason of his beauty, which was arresting,
and his eccentricities of behavior,
which seemed to know no bounds.
My first sight of him was in the door of Germer's,
and on that occasion, I was struck less by his looks
than by the fact that he was carrying a large teddy bear.
- Sheer exhibitionism. - Hmm.
That was Lord Sebastian Flyte, a most amusing young gentleman.
Apparently.
This way, sir.
He's the Marquess of Marchmain's second boy.
His brother, the Earl of Brideshead,
went down last term.
Oh, he was very different, quite like an old man.
What do you suppose Lord Sebastian wanted?
A hairbrush for his teddy bear.
It had to have very stiff bristles.
Not, Lord Sebastian said, to brush him with
but to threaten him with a spanking when he was sulky.
He bought a very nice one with an ivory back,
and he's going to have "Aloysius" engraved on it.
That's the teddy bear's name.
The barber, who, in his time, had had ample chance
to tire of undergraduate fantasy,
was plainly captivated by him.
L, however, remained censorious.
And subsequent glimpses of him did not soften me,
although Collins, who was reading Freud,
had a number of technical terms to cover everything.
Nor, when at last we met,
were the circumstances propitious.
Once we reduce chance to a mathematical formula,
we may subject it to the rules of probability.
And, indeed, we rob chance itself, therefore,
of the element of chance, which, if you see what I mean,
must seem a solution of quite impregnable logic.
- Oh, very good. - Excellent paper.
Very good.
Thank you very much.
There was a question?
I wanted simply to ask if the laws of mathematics
can be understood by reason-
- I think I can anticipate your question.
If the possibility exists that chance itself exists
in a rational universe, then the workings of chance
must be explained by rational processes.
If we believe that God created this rational world,
then it's perfectly possible to believe-
- Who are those awful people?
What are they doing in there?
Looks like a bloody prayer meeting to me.
Look, if God is ultimately responsible
for formulating Newton's law of gravity,
may He not, so runs my argument,
fulfill His purpose by using the infinite instances
which we call chance?
Shouldn't we say, then,
that chance is the very basic principle
of our life in this rational univer-
- All right, old man.
I trust that you will forgive my friend.
The wines were too various.
It was neither the quality nor the quantity
that was at fault; It was the mixture.
Grasp that, and you have the very root of the matter.
To understand all is to forgive all.
Yes.
Hey!
A couple of jugs of mulled claret,
and this has to happen.
You couldn't even get to the window, could you?
Them that can't keep it down are better without it.
It wasn't one of my party.
It was someone from out of college.
Yes, well, it's just as nasty to clear up, whoever it was.
There's five shillings on the sideboard.
So I saw, and thank you.
But I'd rather not have the money
and not have the mess in the morning.
With the restoration of the monarch,
the Age of Puritanism was finally vanquished.
I took my gown and left him to his task.
In those days, I still frequented the lecture room.
And female players, hitherto unknown,
appeared upon the English stage for the first time
in the history of English drama.
There was an air of relaxation in the land again.
Indeed, this novel feeling of unaccustomed freedom
manifested itself in a remarkable outburst
of artistic creativity.
Have you seen your room?
Lunt, what is all this?
The gentleman from last night, sir.
He left that note for you.
"I'm very contrite.
"Aloysius won't speak to me until he sees I am forgiven,
"so please come to luncheon today.
Sebastian Flyte."
A most amusing young gentleman, sir.
I'm sure it's a pleasure to clean up after him.
I take it you're lunching out, sir.
I told Mr. Collins and Mr. Partridge so.
They wanted to take their commons in here with you.
Yes, Lunt. Lunching out.
Oh, do take some flowers for yourself...
and Mrs. Lunt, if you'd care to.
Oh, thank you, sir.
There is no Mrs. Lunt.
I went there uncertainly, for it was foreign ground,
and there was a tiny priggish warning voice in my ear
which, in the tones of Collins,
told me it was seemly to hold back.
But I was in search of love in those days,
and I went, full of curiosity
and the faint unrecognized apprehension that here, at last,
I should find that low door in the wall
others I knew had found before me,
which opened on an enclosed and enchanted garden
which was somewhere not overlooked by any window
in the heart of that gray city.
I've just counted them.
There are five each and two over,
so I'm having the two.
I'm unaccountably hungry today.
I placed myself unreservedly in the hands
of that obliging little chemist in the High,
and now I feel so drugged that I've almost begun to believe
that the whole of yesterday evening was a dream.
Please don't wake me up.
Hello.
Let's have some champagne.
Thank you for the flowers.
My room looks like a hothouse.
My beastly scout has put Aloysius to bed,
which is probably just as well,
since there won't be any plovers' eggs for him.
Do you know Hobson hates Aloysius?
I wish I had a scout like yours.
He was perfectly sweet to me this morning,
when some people might have been quite strict.
How did you get home in one piece last night?
There was the most frightful rumpus outside my staircase,
so I assumed it must be you.
Nonsense. We were quiet as mice.
Damn close thing, though.
As each guest came into the room,
he made first for the plovers' eggs
then noticed Sebastian and then myself
with a polite lack of curiosity which seemed to say,
"We should not dream of being so offensive as to suggest
that you never met us before."
I say, plovers' eggs.
The first I've seen this year.
Where did you get them?
Mummy sent them from Brideshead.
They always lay early for her.
We were eating the lobster thermidor
when the last guest arrived.
My dears, I couldn't get away before.
I was lunching with my p-p-preposterous tutor.
He thought it very odd, my leaving when I did.
I t-told him I had to change for footer.
Come and sit down.
I'm afraid I've already eaten your eggs.
Oh.
Oh, I forgot. You don't know Charles Ryder.
Hello.
No.
Anthony Blanche.
But I have the most delicious feeling I'm going to.
Oh, my God, Blanchel
it's all over the house, you know.
What is?
My dear boy, the news
that you have finally lost your virginity-
or, perhaps I should say, mislaid it.
You put my own grandes passions quite in the shade.
What are you rattling on about,
you appalling dago?
If you're going to be horrid
about my c-cosmopolitan upbringing,
I shall tell how you borrowed 300 francs
to spend a torrid night with that elderly drab in Le Touquet.
It was a niggardly sum to pay for her trouble.
And what a trouble.
Charles, don't look so serious.
You don't mean to say
you let Boy have a go at your duchess?
My affair with the Duchess of Vincennes
was on an altogether higher plane
than any of you hobbledehoys can conceive.
Do you know what it was that cemented our love?
We used the same colored varnish for our toenails.
"The time is now propitious, as he guesses.
"The meal is ended.
"She is bored and tired.
"Endeavors to engage her in caresses
"which still are unreproved, if undesired.
"Flushed and decided, he assaults at once.
"Exploring hands encounter no defense.
"His vanity requires no response
"and makes a welcome of indifference.
"And I, Tiresias, have foresuffered all
"enacted on this same divan or bed.
"L, who have sat by Thebes below the wall
"and walked among the l-l-lowest of the dead.
"Bestows one final patronizing kiss
and gropes his way, finding the stairs unlit."
How I have surprised them.
All boatmen are Grace Darlings to me.
Hi, old boy.
Too much, certainly. Too much.
Too much.
Now we have to cope with these terrible stairs.
Something will have to be done about that damn nancy boy.
You can count me out.
My dear, I should like to stick you
full of barbed arrows like a pincushion.
I think it's perfectly brilliant of Sebastian
to have discovered you.
Where do you lurk?
I shall come down your burrow and chivvy you out
like an old s-s-stoat.
Au revoir.
Well...
I'd better be off too.
Thank you very much.
Have some more Cointreau.
Then I must go to the botanical gardens.
Why?
To see the ivy.
I've never been to the botanical gardens.
Oh, Charles, what a lot you have to learn.
There are more kinds of ivy than I ever knew existed.
I don't know where I should be without the botanical gardens.
When at length I returned to my rooms,
I found them exactly as I had left them that morning,
but I detected a jejune air that had not irked me before.
Nothing except the golden daffodils seemed to be real.
If you ask me, sir,
I was never very fond of that myself.
I suppose you'll be wanting me to get rid of it next,
though where I'd have room for it
is nobody's business.
That day was the beginning of my friendship with Sebastian.
And thus it came about that morning in June
that I was lying beside him in the shade of the high elms,
watching the smoke from his lips drift into the branches.
You still haven't told me where we're going.
Don't be so impatient, Charles.
I told you. To see a friend.
Yes, but who's the friend?
Name of Hawkins.
But who is Hawkins?
Wait and see.
Well?
What a place to live in.
It's where my family live.
Don't worry; They're all away.
You won't have to meet them.
But I should like to.
Well, you can't. They're in London, dancing.
Everything's shut up.
We'd better go in this way.
I want you to meet Nanny Hawkins.
That's what we've come for.
Well, this is a surprise.
Who's this? I don't think I know him.
This is Mr. Charles Ryder, Nanny,
a friend of mine from Oxford.
Oh.
How do you do, Mrs. Hawkins?
How do you do?
You've come just the right time.
Julia's here for the day.
She was up with me nearly all the morning,
telling me about London.
Such a time they're all having.
You must have just missed her.
It's the Conservative women.
She won't be long.
She's leaving immediately after her speech, before the tea.
I'm afraid we may miss her again, Nanny.
Oh, don't do that, dear.
It'll be such a surprise to her, seeing you,
though she ought to wait for the tea.
I told her, it's what the Conservative women come for.
Well, what's the news?
Are you studying hard at your books?
Not very, I'm afraid, Nanny.
Mm, cricketing all day long, I expect, like your brother.
He found time to study too, though.
Oh, did you see that piece about Julia in the paper?
She brought it down for me.
Not that it's nearly good enough of her,
but what it says is very nice.
"The lovely daughter
"whom Lady Marchmain is bringing out this season,
witty as well as ornamental, the most popular debutante."
Well, that's no more than the truth,
though it was a shame to cut her hair.
Such a lovely head of hair she had,
just like her Ladyship's.
I said to Father Phipps, "it's not natural."
He said...
Sebastian and the old woman talked on.
It was a charming room.
Laid out on top of the mantelpiece
were a collection of small presents
which had been brought to her at various times
by her children,
the souvenirs of many holidays.
Presently, it was time for tea.
Look, Nanny, I'm afraid we can't stay for tea.
We really must get back.
Oh.
Oh, Julia will be upset when she hears.
It would have been such a surprise for her.
Good-bye, Nanny.
Bye, love.
Come on, Charles.
- Good-bye. - Good-bye.
Poor Nanny.
She does lead such a dull life.
I've a good mind to bring her to Oxford to live with me,
only she'd always be trying to send me to church.
We must go quickly before my sister gets back.
Who are you ashamed of, her or me?
I'm ashamed of myself.
I'm not going to let you get mixed up with my family.
They're so madly charming.
All my life, they've been taking things away from me.
If they once got hold of you with their charm,
they'd make you their friend and not mine,
and I won't let them.
All right.
I'm perfectly content.
But aren't we going to see some more of the house?
It's all shut up. We came to see Nanny.
On Queen Alexandra's day, it's all open for a shilling.
Come and look, if you want to.
Well, it's all like this, you see.
Nothing to see.
A few pretty things I'd like to show you some day.
Not now.
But there's the chapel. You must see that.
This way.
Why'd you do that?
Just good manners.
Well, you needn't on my account.
So you wanted to do sightseeing.
What do you think of this?
Golly.
Papa had it restored for Mama.
As a wedding present.
Julia.
We only just got away in time.
I'm sorry.
I'm afraid I wasn't very nice this afternoon.
Brideshead often has that effect on me.
But I had to take you to see Nanny.
I don't keep asking you questions about your family.
Neither do I about yours.
But you look so inquisitive.
You're so mysterious about them.
I'd hoped I was mysterious about everything.
Perhaps I am rather curious about people's families.
You see, it's not a thing I know much about.
There's only my father and myself.
An aunt used to keep an eye on me,
but my father drove her abroad.
You don't know what you've been saved.
There are lots of us.
Look them up in Debrett.
I had lived a lonely childhood
and a boyhood straightened by war
and overshadowed by bereavement.
To the hard bachelordom of English adolescence,
the premature dignity and authority of the school system,
I had added a sad and grim strain of my own.
Now, that summer term with Sebastian,
it seemed as though I was being given a brief spell
of what I had never known, a happy childhood.
And though its toys were silk shirts
and liqueurs and cigars
and its naughtiness high in the catalog of grave sins,
there was something of a nursery freshness about us
that fell little short of the joy of innocence.
Towards the end of that term, I took my first exams.
It was necessary to pass if I was to remain at Oxford,
and pass I did
after a week in which I forbade Sebastian my rooms
and sat up to a late hour with iced black coffee
and charcoal biscuits,
cramming myself with neglected texts.
I remember no syllable of them now,
but the other, more ancient love which I acquired that term
will be with me in one shape or another
till my last hour.
The end of that term was also the occasion of the last visit
and grand remonstrance of my cousin Jasper.
I was just free of the schools, having taken
the last paper of History previous the day before.
Jasper's subfusc suit and white tie
proclaimed him still in the thick of it.
He had the exhausted but resentful air
of one who fears he has failed to do himself full justice
of the subject of Pindar's Orphisms.
Duty alone had brought him to my rooms
at great inconvenience to himself
and, as it happened, to me.
I don't know what sort of allowance my uncle makes you,
but you must be spending double.
Is that paid for?
Or these?
Or this peculiarly noisome object?
Yes, I had to pay cash for the skull.
And your clothes.
Your present getup seems an unhappy compromise
between the correct wear
for a theatrical garden party in Maidenhead
and a glee singing competition in a garden suburb.
I'm sorry if it disturbs you.
And drink!
No one minds a man getting tight once or twice a term.
In fact, he ought to, on certain occasions.
But you, my dear Charles,
are constantly seen drunk in the middle of the afternoonl
I think that's my affair, Jasper.
Look, Charles,
I expected you to make mistakes
in your first year.
We all do.
I got in with some thoroughly objectionable
Christian Union men who ran a mission to hop-pickers
during the long vac.
But you, my dear Charles, whether you realize it or not,
have gone hook, line, and sinker
to the very worst set in the university.
So that's what's worrying you.
Well, Anthony Blanche.
There's a man there's absolutely no excuse for.
I don't particularly like him myself.
Well, he's certainly always hanging about here.
You realize, the stiffer element in college don't like it.
They won't stand for him at the house.
They threw him in Mercury last night.
I heard.
You may think that living in digs,
I don't know what goes on in college,
but I hear things.
In fact, I hear too much.
I find I've become a figure of mockery
on your account at the Dining Club.
And then there's that chap Sebastian Flyte
you seem inseparable from.
Well, he may be all right; I don't know.
His brother, Brideshead, was a very sound fellow.
But this friend of yours, well, he looks odd to me,
and he gets himself talked about.
I'm sorry, Jasper.
I know it must be embarrassing for you,
but I happen to like this bad set.
I like getting drunk at luncheon.
And although I haven't quite spent
double my allowance yet,
I undoubtedly shall by the end of term.
Will you join me?
I usually have a glass of champagne about this time.
If you stay, you might meet the despicable Mr. Blanche.
I'm dining with him tonight.
No, thank you.
L-
I have Greek History and Morals on Monday.
So my cousin Jasper despaired.
Looking back,
there is little I would have left undone or done otherwise.
Perhaps now I could match
my cousin Jasper's gamecock maturity
with a sturdier fowl.
I could tell him that to know and love one other human being
is the root of all wisdom.
Two for you...
and two for me.
Yum, yum.
I expect you would prefer sherry,
but, my dear Charles,
you are not going to have sherry.
You're going to try this delicious concoction instead.
What is it?
Brandy Alexander.
You don't like it?
Then I'll drink it for you.
One.
Two.
Three.
Four.
Down the little red lane they go.
How the students stare.
I'm not surprised, Anthony.
I'm a little out of sympathy with the undergraduates
for the moment.
That's why we're dining at Thame.
- Who else is coming? - No one.
I've got you to myself tonight.
There's a delightful hotel there which, luckily,
doesn't appeal to the hearties of the Bullingdon.
You heard what they did to me last night?
Yes, I-
- it's too naughty.
It was not, I knew, the first time
that Anthony had been ducked.
But the incident seemed much on his mind.
I didn't want them to start getting rough,
so I said to them pacifically, "Dear, sweet clodhoppers,
"if you knew anything of sexual psychology,
"you would know that nothing could give me keener pleasure
"than to be manhandled by you meaty boys.
"Ecstasy of the naughtiest kind.
"If any of you wishes to be my partner in joy,
"then come and seize me.
"If, on the other hand, you wish to satisfy some obscure
"and less easily classified libido,
then come with me quietly to the water."
So I just got in the fountain,
and, do you know, it really was rather refreshing.
So I sported there and struck some attitudes.
Oh, la fatigue du Nord!
Now, you can't imagine an unpleasantness like that
happening to Sebastian, can you?
- No, I can't. - No.
Sebastian has charm, such charm.
Of course, you haven't known him as long as I have.
How long have you known him, Anthony?
I was at school with him.
You wouldn't believe it, but in those days,
people used to say he was a little bitch.
The rest of us were constantly being beaten
in the most savage way on the most frivolous pretexts,
but never Sebastian.
I can see him now at the age of 15.
He never had spots, you know.
Boy Mulcaster was positively scrofulous,
but not Sebastian.
Or did he have one rather a stubborn one
at the back of his neck?
Yes, now I think of it, he did.
Narcissus with one pustule.
You know, he and I were both Catholics,
so we used to go to mass together.
He used to spend such time in the confessional,
I used to wonder what he had to say,
because he never did anything wrong, never quite.
At least he never got punished.
Perhaps he was just being charming through the grill.
I told Cocktail all about you.
He's absolutely agog.
You see, my dear Charles, you are that very rare thing:
An artist.
But who recognizes you?
The other day, I told Sebastian
that you drew like a young lngres.
And do you know what he said?
"Yes, Aloysius draws very prettily too,
but of course, he's rather more modern."
So charming, so amusing.
Do you wish Sebastian was with us?
- No. - Of course you do.
And do I? I w-w-wonder.
Hmm, how our thoughts do run on that little bundle of charm,
to be sure.
I think you must be mesmerizing me, Charles.
I bring you here, at very considerable expense,
simply to talk about myself,
and I find I talk of no one except Sebastian.
It's odd, because there's really no mystery about him,
except how he came to be born of such a very sinister family.
It's when one gets to the parents
that a bottomless pit opens.
My dear, such a pair.
They were married for 15 years or so,
and then Lord Marchmain went off to war.
He never came back
but formed a connection with a highly talented dancer.
Why doesn't she divorce him?
Because she's so pious.
My dear, you would think that old reprobate
had tortured her; Stolen her patrimony;
Flung her out of doors;
Roasted, stuffed, and eaten her children;
And gone frolicking about wreathed in all the flowers
of Sodom and Gomorrah.
She's a bloodsucker, my dear, a b-bloodsucker.
You can see the tooth marks on all her victims.
It's witchcraft. There's no other explanation.
So, you see, we mustn't altogether blame Sebastian.
For what?
For seeming a little insipid.
But then, of course, you d-don't blame Sebastian,
do you, Charles?
With that very murky background, what could he do
except set up as being simple and charming,
particularly as he isn't very well endowed in the top story.
We couldn't claim that for him, could we, Charles,
much as we love him?
Tell me candidly,
have you ever heard Sebastian say anything
that you have remembered for more than five minutes, hmm?
You know, when I hear him talk,
I'm reminded of that nauseating picture Bubbles.
Conversation should be like juggling.
Up go the balls and plates,
up and over, in and out, glittering in the footlights.
But when dear Sebastian speaks,
it is like a little sphere of soapsud
drifting off the end of an old clay pipe,
full of rainbow light for a second
and then... fft!
Vanished with nothing left at all.
Nothing.
Shall we go, Anthony?
What's the time?
It's after 9:00. I let you lie in.
I didn't think you'd be going to corporate communion.
And you were absolutely right, Lunt.
It was the last Sunday of term, the last of the year.
It was nearly 11:00 when I left, and during my walk,
I heard the change ringing cease and, all over the town,
give place to the single chime which warned the city
that service was about to start.
None but churchgoers seemed abroad that morning,
on their way to St. Barnabas, St. Columba, St. Aloysius,
St. Mary's, Pusey House, Blackfriars,
all in the summer sunshine,
going to the temples of their race.
Four proud infidels alone proclaimed their dissent,
four lndians from the gates of Balliol
making for the river.
So through a world of piety,
I made my way to Sebastian.
Hello.
I've been to mass.
I knew Mummy'd been writing to Monsignor Bell.
He's asked me to dinner twice last week.
So I sat bang in the front
and absolutely shouted the Hail Marys.
I'm glad that's over.
So how was dinner with Antoine?
What did you talk about?
Well, he did most of the talking.
That's not unusual.
Did you know him at Eton?
Hardly.
He was sacked in my first half.
Though I do remember seeing him about a bit.
Did he go to church with you?
Don't think so. Why?
Has he met any of your family?
Charles, how very peculiar you're being today.
No, I don't suppose so.
So why all this interest?
Well, I'm-
I was trying to find out how much truth there was
in what he said last night.
Very little, I should think.
That's his great charm.
Well, you may think it charming.
I think it's devilish.
Do you know he spent most of last evening
trying to turn me against you?
And he almost succeeded.
Did he?
How silly.
Aloysius would not have approved of that at all.
Would you, you pompous old bear?
The long vacation came,
and Sebastian disappeared into that other life of his
where I was not asked to follow.
I was left, instead, forlorn and regretful.
I returned to my father's house without plans
and without money.
I faced a bleak prospect.
I was overdrawn at the bank,
and without my father's authority, I could draw no more.
My dear boy, they never told me you were here.
Hello, Father.
Did you have a very exhausting journey?
They gave you tea?
Yes, Mrs. Abel brought me some.
You're well?
I have just made a somewhat audacious purchase
from Somerschein's,
a terra-cotta bull of the fifth century.
I was examining it and so forgot your arrival.
Was the carriage very full?
No, I managed to get a corner seat.
Good.
Hayter brought you the evening paper.
No news, of course. Such a lot of nonsense.
What do you like to drink?
Hayter, what have we for Mr. Charles to drink?
There's some whisky.
There's whisky. Perhaps you like something else?
What else have we?
There isn't anything else in the house, sir.
There's nothing else.
You must tell Hayter what you would like,
and he will get it in.
I never keep any wine now.
I am forbidden it, and no one comes to see me.
But while you are here, you must have what you like.
You are here for long?
I'm not quite sure, Father.
It's a very long vacation.
In my day, we used to go on what was called reading parties,
always in mountainous areas.
Why? Why should alpine scenery be thought conducive to study?
I had thought of putting in some time at an art school.
My dear boy, you'll find them all shut.
The students go to Barbizon or such places
and paint in the open air.
There was an institution in my day
called Sketching Club.
Mixed sexes, bicycles, pepper-and-salt knickerbockers,
holland umbrellas
and, it was popularly thought, free love.
Such a lot of nonsense.
I expect they still go on.
You might try that.
One of the problems of the vacation, Father,
is money.
Oh, I shouldn't worry about a thing like that at your age.
You see, I've run rather short.
Yes?
In fact, I don't know how I'm going to get through
the next couple of months.
Well, I'm the worst person to come to for advice.
I've never been short, as you so painfully call it.
And yet what else could you say?
Hard up? Penurious? Distressed?
Embarrassed? Stoney-broke? On the rocks?
In Queer Street?
Yes, well, let us just say you were in Queer Street
and leave it at that.
Yes, but what do you suggest I should do?
Your cousin Melchior was imprudent in his investments
and got into a very queer street.
He went to Australia.
Hayter, I've dropped my book.
During the sultry week that followed,
I saw little of my father during the day.
He spent hours on end in his study.
Now and again, I would hear him go out,
sometimes for half an hour or less,
sometimes for a whole day.
Ah, so there you are.
Splendid, splendid.
Very warm today, very warm.
Yes.
His errands were never explained.
The dinner table was our battlefield.
I do think, Charles, you might talk to me.
I've had a very exhausting day.
I was looking forward to a little conversation.
Of course, Father.
What shall we talk about?
Cheer me up. Take me out of myself.
Tell me about the new plays.
But I haven't been to any.
You should, you know. You really should.
It isn't natural in a young man
to spend all his evenings at home.
Well, Father, as I told you,
I haven't much money to spare for theatergoing.
My dear boy, you must not allow money
to become your master in this way.
Why, at your age, your cousin Melchior
was part owner of a musical piece.
It was one of his few successful ventures.
You should go to the play as part of your education.
I received one letter from Sebastian.
It was written on and enveloped in
heavy Victorian mourning paper,
black-coroneted and black-bordered.
Dearest Charles, I found a box of this paper
at the back of the bureau, so I must write to you,
as I am mourning for my lost innocence.
It never looked like living.
The doctors despaired of it from the start.
Soon, I am off to Venice
to stay with Papa in his palace of sin.
I wish you were coming.
I wish you were here.
I'm never quite alone.
Members of my family keep turning up
and collecting luggage and going away again.
But the white raspberries are ripe.
I have a good mind not to take Aloysius to Venice.
I don't want him to meet a lot of horrid ltalian bears
and pick up bad habits.
Love or what you will, S.
Strife was internecine during the next fortnight.
But I suffered the more,
for my father had greater reserves to draw on.
One day, by chance, a weapon came to hand.
I met an old acquaintance of school days named Jorkins.
I never had much liking for Jorkins,
but I greeted him with enthusiasm
and asked him to dinner.
My father was quick to retaliate.
He made a little fantasy for himself
that Jorkins should be an American.
So nice of you to come all this way, Mr. Jorkins.
Oh, it isn't far.
It's really only a matter of minutes.
Ah. Science annihilates distance.
You are over here on business?
Well, I'm in business, if that's what you mean.
I had a cousin who was in business.
You wouldn't know him; It was before your time.
I was telling Charles about him only the other night.
He has been much in my mind.
He came a cropper.
You find his misfortune a subject for mirth?
Or perhaps you were unfamiliar with the word I used.
You, no doubt, would say "folded up."
Well, I don't know that.
I mean-
- I suppose, with your standards,
you find our life here very parochial.
My father was master of the situation.
Nonetheless, there are fine things to see.
Throughout the evening, he played
a delicate, one-sided parlor game with him,
explaining any peculiarly English terms
in the conversation, translating pounds into dollars
so that my guest was left with the vague sense
that there was a misconception somewhere as to his identity
which he never got the chance of explaining.
I mean, if-
- Only once, I thought my father had gone too far.
Of course, I'm afraid, living in London,
you must sadly miss your national game.
My national game?
Cricket.
Never mind.
I've decided to diversify Charles' evenings at home.
Tonight I have a surprise.
I've asked a few young friends over
for a little music-making.
Charles, you know the Orme Herricks.
Did you know
that Miss Orme Herrick was a student of the cello?
She's going to play for us tonight after dinner.
Charles.
I really have to go.
Please.
I'm afraid Jorkins has to go, Father.
He has to be up very early in the morning.
Oh, what a pity.
Good-bye then, Mr. Jorkins.
I hope that you will pay us another visit
the next time you cross the herring pond.
Good-bye, Mr. Ryder, and thank you.
I'm so sorry I have to leave.
I'll just see him out, Father.
Such a versatile young man.
You must ask him again soon.
Good night, Jorkins.
What very dull friends I have.
You know, without the spur of your presence,
I would never have roused myself to invite them.
I've been very neglectful about entertaining lately.
Now you are paying me a long visit,
I will have many such evenings.
You liked Miss Orme Herrick?
- No. - No?
Was it her little moustache you objected to
or her very large feet?
Do you think she enjoyed herself?
No.
That was my impression also.
I doubt if any of our guests will count this
among their happiest evenings.
That young foreigner plays atrociously, I thought.
Where can I have met him?
And Miss Constantia Smethwick,
where can I have met her?
But the obligations of hospitality must be observed.
While you are here, you shall not be dull.
Finally, one Sunday afternoon,
a telegram arrived from Sebastian
which threw me into a state of fevered anxiety.
Father.
You'll never guess where I've spent the day.
I've been to the zoo.
It was most agreeable.
The animals seem to like the sunshine so much.
Father, I have to leave at once.
Yes?
A friend of mine, he's gravely injured.
I must go to him.
There's a train in about half an hour.
"Gravely injured. Come at once. Sebastian."
Well, I'm sorry you are upset.
Reading this message,
I do not think that the accident could be quite so serious
as you seem to think.
Otherwise, it would hardly be signed
by the victim himself.
Still, of course, he may well be fully conscious
but blind or paralyzed with a broken back.
Why exactly is your presence so necessary?
You have no medical knowledge.
You are not in holy orders.
Do you hope for a legacy?
I told you; He's a great friend.
Well, Orme Herrick is a very great friend of mine,
but I should not go tearing off to his deathbed
on a warm Sunday afternoon.
I rather doubt
whether Lady Orme Herrick would welcome me.
However, I see you have no such doubts.
I shall miss you, my dear boy.
But do not hurry back on my account.
Fear worked like yeast in my thoughts,
and the fermentation brought to the surface,
in great gobs of scum, the images of disaster.
A loaded gun, held carelessly at a stile.
A horse rearing and rolling over.
A shaded pool with a submerged stake.
A car at a blind corner.
All the catalog of threats to civilized life
rose and haunted me.
I even pictured a homicidal maniac,
mouthing in the shadows, swinging a length of lead pipe.
Ticket, please, sir.
- Brideshead, sir? - Yes.
Lady Julia's waiting in the yard.
Thank you.
- You're Mr. Ryder? - Yes.
Jump in.
- How is he? - Oh, he's fine.
Have you had dinner? Yes, on the train.
Well, I expect it was beastly. There's some more at home.
Sebastian and I are alone, so we thought we'd wait for you.
What's happened to him?
Didn't he say?
I expect he thought you wouldn't come if you knew.
He cracked a bone in his foot so tiny that it hasn't a name.
But they X-rayed it yesterday
and told him to keep it up for a month.
It's a great bore to him, putting out all his plans.
He's been making the most enormous fuss.
Everybody else has gone.
At first, he tried to make me stay back with him.
Well, I expect you know how maddeningly pathetic he can be.
I almost gave in, and then I said,
"Surely there must be someone you can get hold of?"
And he said everybody was away or busy,
and anyway no one else would do.
But at last, he agreed to try you,
and I promised I'd stay if you failed him,
so you can imagine how popular you are with me.
I must say, I think it's noble of you
to come all this way at a moment's notice.
How did he do it?
Believe it or not, playing croquet.
He lost his temper and tripped over a hoop.
Not a very honorable scar.
She so much resembled Sebastian
that sitting beside her,
I was confused by the double illusion
of familiarity and strangeness.
I hate driving at this time of the day.
There doesn't seem anyone left at home who can drive a car.
Sebastian and I are practically camping out.
- Cigarette? - No, thanks.
Light one for me, will you?
It was the first time in my life
that anyone had asked this of me,
and as I took the cigarette from my lips and put it in hers,
I caught a thin bat's squeak of sexuality
inaudible to any but me.
Thanks.
You've been here before. Nanny reported it.
We both thought it very odd of you
not to stay to tea with me.
That was Sebastian.
You seem to let him boss you around a good deal.
You shouldn't. It's very bad for him.
Here we are.
I wouldn't have put it past Sebastian
to have started dinner without you.
Thank you.
Hello, darling.
Thank you, Wilcox.
Well, darling, I've collected your chum.
I thought you were dying.
I thought so too.
The pain was excruciating.
Julia, do you think, if you asked him,
Wilcox would give us champagne tonight?
I hate champagne.
And Mr. Ryder has already had dinner.
Mr. Ryder? Mr. Ryder?
Charles drinks champagne at all hours.
Do you know, looking at this great swaddled foot of mine,
I can't get it out of my head that I've got gout,
and that gives me a craving for champagne.
Ow!
Which way?
This way.
Dinner was served in the Red Dining Room.
While they dined, I ate a peach
and told them of the war with my father.
And he said to him, "Living in London,
you must miss your national game."
And Jorkins said, "What national game?"
And my father said, "Why, cricket, of course."
I mean, I-l really think he's sometimes quite mad.
He sounds a perfect poppet to me.
And now I'm going to leave you boys.
- Where are you off to? - The nursery.
I promised Nanny a last game of halma.
Dear Nanny Hawkins.
She lives entirely for pleasure.
Good night, Mr. Ryder, and good-bye.
I'm leaving early.
I can't tell you how grateful I am to you
for relieving me at the sickbed.
My sister's very pompous tonight.
I don't think she cares for me.
I don't think she cares for anyone very much.
I love her. She's so like me.
Do you? Is she?
In looks, I mean, and the way she talks.
I wouldn't love anyone with a character like mine.
Charles, we're going to have a heavenly time alone.
When, next morning,
I saw Julia drive from the forecourt and disappear,
I felt a sense of liberation and peace
such as I was to know years later when,
after a night of unrest,
the sirens sounded the all clear.
I believed myself very close to heaven
during those languid days at Brideshead.
It is thus I like to remember Sebastian
as he was that summer
when we wandered alone through that enchanted palace.