There is much to talk of in Brideshead Revisited, but I will focus on one thing: the journey of Charles Ryder to the faith and what led him there.
Charles is brought to Catholicism by the beauty of the things he loved before he found belief, much like the progression of love posited by Socrates in Plato’s Symposium. In the Symposium, Socrates reflects on the teachings of the priestess Diotima, and how love for temporal things can act as a ladder to the love and contemplation of the ideal form of beauty, which as we understand it is God Himself.
In the very beginning of his college years Charles is taken with the materialistic charm of this world. He is given “advice” by his father and Cousin Jasper. Mr. Ryder senior is a rather stuffy old man who counts as the sum of glory success in academic life. Cousin Jasper is very much what Charles’ father would like his own son to become. He is in all the right academic clubs, knows the best lecturers, and is familiar with the things one needs to know in order to get ahead at Oxford. Charles, however, feels that this is not all which Oxford has to offer, but he is still under the influence of his father and Jasper. This tawdry life is flung to the wayside when Charles experiences the charm of Sebastian Flyte.
Sebastian is like a ray of the sun shining into Charles’ grey life, and Charles eagerly steps out of the shadows, for he was “in search of love in those days, and...full of...the faint, unrecognised apprehension that here, at last, [he] should find that low door in the wall that others had found before him, which opened on an enclosed and enchanted garden, which was somewhere, not overlooked by any window, in the heart of that grey city.” Here marks the birthof wonder and grace in Charles’s life; he has entered Eden, that Arcadian paradise. He sees with Sebastian for the first time faith in action; the pair go to Brideshead and visit Nanny Hawkins, holding her worn Rosary and shut in her little domed room decorated around with religious imagery, most notably a picture of the Sacred Heart. They also visit the chapel and Charles dips his fingers into the font and genuflects, following the example of Sebastian.
From this point on Charles’ existence is richer; “his room had cast off its winter garments, and, not by very slow stages assumed a richer wardrobe.” He experiences a bright and youthful kind of innocence. It is not only the externals that have changed; Charles continues at Oxford, studies for (and passes) his exams; he reads many books but says, “I remember no syllable of them now, but the other, more ancient lore which I acquired that term will be with me in one shape or another to my last hour.” What Charles has acquired through Sebastian’s company is the ability to see beauty; this is most obviously seen when the two are at the Brideshead estate and Charles, at Sebastian’s suggestion, makes a sketch of the Italian fountain. He has always been interested in art, but has never crossed from interest to creation. With the urging of Sebastian he does so, and recalls, “For me the beauty was new-found.” As he sketches the fountain Charles remembers feeling “a whole new system of nerves alive within me, as though the water that spurted and bubbled among its stones was indeed a life-giving spring.” This puts us in mind of the Vidi Aquam antiphon sung after Easter; “I saw water flowing from the right side of the temple, and all who came to it were saved.” Charles comes to the water flowing in the Brideshead fountain, but he also encounters the holy water in the chapel. Here also begins Charles’ artistic career, which flourishes first at Brideshead and then beyond. Sebastian has introduced Charles to beauty, and the appreciation of natural beauty is a rung of the ladder to the contemplation of God.
In regards to Julia it is more simple to see how love, especially physical love, can be a stepping stone towards the divine. When we look at something beautiful we want to possess it; we want to be as closely united to it as possible. The closest way to be united to someone, at least on earth, is by physical love. Charles and Julia start such a physical relationship; both are unhappily married and they decide to divorce their respective spouses and marry one another.
Julia sees their relationship as a precursor to something greater; she muses that she and Charles were thrown together because they are “part of a plan”. She also mentions that she feels “as though all mankind, and God, too, [are] in a conspiracy against [them].” A touch of this is felt when they are dining at Brideshead with Bridey, who says that he will not bring his new fiancee to meet them there as they are living in sin. This distresses Julia very much. She apologises for her distraught behaviour later, saying to Charles: “I can’t explain.” She seems to have been struck by her sin, astounded by it; her wrongdoing is shameful to her now, and she seeks to cast it off.
Sebastian is a forerunner to Charles’ love of Julia; he tells her candidly, “he was the forerunner.” Julia replies “perhaps I am only a forerunner too.” Such prophetic words! I think Julia knows. Charles falls into a reverie, and thinks: “perhaps all our loves are merely hints and symbols…[and we] snatch a glimpse now and then of the shadow which turns the corner always a pace or two ahead of us.” Cordelia tells Charles about Sebastian, who is now become a porter in a monastery on the Mediterranean. Charles, thinking of those days in Eden beside “the youth with the teddy-bear under the flowering chestnuts” does not understand how Sebastian would turn so towards God. Later, at night, Charles wakes up and contemplates his lack of understanding; he thinks: “How often, it seemed to me, I was brought up short, like a horse in full stride suddenly refusing an obstacle...too shy even to put his nose at it and look at the thing.” Another image comes to his mind; a warm little cabin with snow heaping up against the door, “until quite soon when the wind dropped and the sun came out...the thaw...would move, slide, and tumble...and the little lighted place would open and splinter and disappear, rolling with the avalanche into the ravine.” He is beginning to doubt his icy heart, frozen fast against God; the sun cannot be resisted for long. Understanding will come.
This little entrance of doubt into Charles’ resolve opens the door to a different garden; Lord Marchmain comes home to die, and Brideshead becomes Gethsemane. Lord Marchmain says so himself, asking: “Cordelia, will you watch for an hour in this Gethsemane?” His words pitifully evoke those of Christ, begging His disciples to watch with Him. Bridey decides that a priest must be called; Charles is struggling against it, “it’s all tomfoolery, witchcraft, hypocrisy, mumbo-jumbo.” Julia is enraged; “What’s it got to do with you or me whether my father sees his parish priest?” Charles can make no response, he feels that “the fate of more souls than one [is] at issue; that the snow [is] beginning to shift on the high slopes.” The ice of Charles’ unbelief is melting, and he knows this and is afraid. He is beginning to understand.
And finally, Father Mackay comes. Charles is irate, in that fearful way a child is when he knows he has told a lie and has been caught at it. There is a “wall of fire” between Charles and Julia, and she takes the priest in to her father. As Father Mackay absolves the dying man and Charles sees the sign of the Cross being made, he drops to his knees, praying: “Oh God, if there is a God, forgive him his sins, if there is such a thing as sin.”, and Lord Marchmain sighs and his eyelids flicker. Charles prays then for a sign that the old man accepts the blessing; “So small a thing to ask.” And slowly, Lord Marchmain makes the sign of the Cross. “And then,” says Charles, “then I knew that the sign I had asked for was not a little thing...and a phrase came back to me...of the veil of the temple being rent from top to bottom.”
Outside the sickroom a few minutes later the priest says cheerfully to Charles: “That was a beautiful thing to see...the devil resists to the last moment and then the Grace of God is too much for him.” And then, later that day, Julia and Charles say goodbye forever. Julia grieves: “Now we shall be alone, and I shall have no way of making you understand.” Charles replies: “I don’t want to make it easier for you; I hope your heart may break, but I do understand.” The avalanche was down, the hillside swept bare behind it; the last echoes died on the white slopes; the new mound glittered and lay still in the silent valley.” The sun has melted the ice, and Charles’ heart is cleansed, whiter than the driven snow.
Years later, during the war, Charles returns to Brideshead, which is now a temporary military encampment. The old house is changed by the war; the great rooms are rather bare, the family is gone, all scattered far and wide. “The place is desolate, and all the work brought to nothing; quomodo sedet sola civitas.” The only one remaining is Nanny Hawkins, in her little tabernacle of a room up beneath the dome. But the chapel remains pristine; it has been reconsecrated, and Charles prays, “an ancient, newly-learned form of words.” As he makes his way back to his soldiers he ponders what has been brought about by the builders of the old house: “Something quite remote has come out of their work;...a small red flame-a beaten-copper lamp of deplorable design relit before the beaten-copper doors of a tabernacle; the flame which the old knights saw from their tombs, which they saw put out; that flame burns again for other soldiers, far from home, farther in heart than Acre or Jerusalem. It could not have been lit but for the builders and tragedians, and there I found it this morning, burning anew among the old stones.”
