Barrel Strength

I have been reading high-minded rebuttals of the latest trendy atheists. In particular, Michael Novak’s “No One Sees God” is a fine engagement with the squadron of atheists who currently occupy mindshare.

But, tiring of my non-fiction diet of history, science, and religion, I found Evelyn Waugh’s “Brideshead Revisited” in an attracive edition, and have been devouring it to the exclusion of the weightier tomes.

You may be of an age to recall the wonderful Brideshead Revisited television series of 1981 with Jeremy Irons, with the gorgeous settings and the great music by Geoffrey Burgon. There is also a new movie covering the same, which I have not yet seen. Like Dune, Brideshead will engender a fresh edition each generation. It is one of the great stories.

In the chapter, “Brideshead Deserted”, the hero Charles Ryder encounters Cordelia Flyte, younger sister of his alcoholic former friend Sebastian, while on his first commission as an architectural painter, painting the Brideshead London palace before it is torn down to make way for a block of flats. This is several years after Charles had his falling out with Lady Teresa Flyte over Sebastian’s hopeless drinking. Cordelia asks Charles to take her out to dinner. She is fifteen, quite ugly and very perceptive.

They are at the restaurant talking of the late Lady Flyte, who was disliked by members of her family in varying degrees. Who can fail to recall Lady Flyte’s [Clare Bloom's] cool and withering denunciation of Charles Ryder for having assisted Sebastian’s drunkenness be lending him a couple of pounds? “Callous wickedness”, she called it, in her cool, quiet voice.

So here they are years later as Cordelia scarfs down her first meal in a public restaurant, speaking of her late mother.

Cordelia: “I got on best with her of any of us, but I don’t believe I ever really loved her. Not as she wanted or deserved. It’s odd I didn’t, because I am full of natural affections.”
Charles: “I never really knew your mother,” I said.
- “You didn’t like her. I sometimes think that when people wanted to hate God they hated mummy.”
-”What do you mean by that, Cordelia?”
“Well, you see, she was saintly but she wasn’t a saint. No one could really hate a saint, could they? They can’t really hate God, either. When they want to hate him and his saints they have to find something like themselves and pretend it’s God and hate that. I suppose you think that’s all bosh.”

Which constitutes the principal rejoinder to Hitchens, Dennet, Dawkins and the rest. They find something like themselves and pretend it is God and hate that. I wish they were clearer that what they hate is the projection of their ugly selves, or perhaps more fairly, the portion of themselves they most dislike.

Evelyn Waugh presents many difficulties for the reader, not least his snobbery and his Catholicism, which together act as the cover for an abiding dislike of modernity, of rough competence, of untutored sensitivities, of people who do not know or care for Monteverdi, fine cognac, or a simple but exquisite fish cooked in broth, in short, all those who are insensitive to his spiritual concerns and aesthetic sensibilities. Yet Waugh will last, I reckon, because he captures a sense that there were better eras than our own, or his. Whether this is true or not is difficult to judge. But if written and oral expression are the criteria, we have fallen far below our Victorian forebears.

I recall a plaque outside the Anglican church in Lunenburg, Nova Scotia. The burgher, on his deathbed, having gathered family and clergy about him, proclaiming his devotion to the Established Church, and his calm and serene mind on the approach of his encounter with his Maker, donated a church bell for posterity, that the faithful might be gathered to their devotions by its ringing. My recollection fails to do justice to the level of expression. They may still make people like him today, but the level of eloquence has sunk far below the standards commonly achieved by the educated of 150 years ago.

I heartily recommend Evelyn Waugh and in particular, Brideshead Revisited, for the refreshment of your soul and the pleasure of a fine read.