Refinement can be, on one hand, a way to love indeed, Hilaire Belloc writes in one of his poems, “in my Walks it seems to me/ That the Grace of God is in Courtesy.” And it is the courtesy of plover’s eggs and strawberries, mansions and estates, and especially wine, that Charles Ryder, the protagonist, learns to know and love. That interpretation can only be corrected by forgetting about the author (Waugh, the consummate snob) and remembering this author’s insight about wisdom. One of the ways Brideshead Revisited can be misinterpreted is as some sort of elegy to aristocratic England, to its manners, its social ease, and its refinement. But even more lovely, and more worth the hard work of reading, are the few moments in the book of complete content and joy, true love expressed truly, “zest, the generous affections, the illusions, the despair, all the traditional attributes of Youth,” and the “languor… that belongs to Youth alone and dies with it.” Working by paradox, the current of unhappiness powers some of the most humorous scenes in the book.

The most uncomfortable moments compensate by being laugh-out-loud funny. Most uncomfortable of all is the unhappiness that accompanies most of the characters in the book most of the time.īut there are great rewards for making one’s way through this book. Harder to bear than the confrontation between the elite and us, are the duels among the former-the slender, deep sword-thrusts of cruelty and apathy within families, even married couples. For another, there is the combination of sordidness and elegance in 1920’s Oxford. There are many reasons: For one, the prominence of a faded elite which rebuffs us with its snobbery and which stings us, like a slight branch whipped across our face, with the consciousness of the real superiority of that elite in culture and intelligence. To be ready to read this book, and to be able to benefit from it, it is of absolute importance to take this definition of the “root of all wisdom” seriously.īrideshead Revisited is a truly gnarly book, being root-like, and is an uncomfortable read much of the time. It is a bloom of which we on earth can only see faint signs, as through a glass darkly. Where it has confused critics and devotees alike is in its concern with the root and not the flower, being a study of the unhappiness that is sometimes the manure for a plant whose flower blooms, if it blooms, in heaven. Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh is a story of the cultivation of wisdom and even salvation. Wisdom is indeed a wonderful thing, but the knowledge and love that produce it are, like roots, usually better left underground. To know and love one other human being is the root of all wisdom.

Brideshead revisited by evelyn waugh