* Evelyn Waugh's 'Brideshead Revisited' - a balance: eloquent narrative, eloquent sketches, and eloquent dialogue. How does it do it? Ultimately, perhaps novels of this sort are recognized in their balance? A balance in their pace, their editing. And it certainly helps if amongst the things you're trying to balance are unusual eloquence in narrative, in character sketches, in dialogue . . .
(Narrative.) 'Thus with Julia and Lady Marchmain I reached deadlock, not because we failed to understand one another, but because we understood too well. With Brideshead, who came home to luncheon and talked to me on the subject - for the subject was everywhere in the house like a fire deep in the hold of a ship, below the water-line, black and red in the darkness, coming to light in acrid wisps of smoke that oozed under hatches and billowed suddenly from the scuttles and air pipes - with Brideshead, I was in a strange world, a dead world to me, in a moon-landscape of barren lava, a high place of toiling lungs.'
(Sketch.) 'In years, he was barely my senior, but he seemed then to be burdened with the experience of the Wandering Jew. He was indeed a nomad of no nationality. (-) At times we all seemed children beside him - at most times, but not always, for there was a bluster and zest in Anthony which the rest of us had shed somewhere in our more leisured adolescence, on the playing field or in the school-room; his vices flourished less in the pursuit of pleasure than in the wish to shock, and in the midst of his polished exhibitions I was often reminded of an urchin I had once seen in Naples, capering derisively, with obscene, unambiguous gestures, before a party of English tourists; as he told the tale of his evening at the gaming table, one could see in the roll of his eye just how he had glanced, covertly, over the dwindling pile of chips at his step-father's party; while we had been rolling one another in the mud at football and gorging ourselves with crumpets, Anthony had helped oil fading beauties on sub-tropical sands and had sipped his apéritif in smart little bars, so that the savage we had tamed was still rampant in him. He was cruel, too, in the wanton, insect-maiming manner of the very young, and fearless like a little boy, charging, head down, small fists whirling, at the school prefects.'
(Dialogue.) '". . . to submit to impertinence from these pimply, tipsy virgins . . . Well, I gave up the light, bantering tone and let myself be just a little offensive.
Then they began saying, 'Get hold of him. Put him in Mercury.' Now as you know I have two sculptures by Brancusi and several pretty things and I did not want them to start getting rough, so I said, 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. It would be an ecstacy of the very naughtiest kind. So if any of you wishes to be my partner in joy come and seize me. If, on the other hand, you simply wish to satisfy some obscure and less easily classified libido and see me bathe, come with me quietly, dear louts, to the fountain."'
* Then there is of course that pleasing 'bookend' structure. The novel opening with the narrator, a billeted soldier now, finding himself unexpectedly in the very same glorious house where his tender student holidays had been spent.
'"There's a frightful great fountain, too, in front of the steps, all rocks and sort of carved animals. You never saw such a thing." "Yes, Hooper, I did. I've been here before." The words seemed to ring back to me enriched from the vaults of my dungeon. "Oh well, you know all about it. I'll go and get cleaned up." I had been there before; I knew all about it.'
The novel returning to those university days, passing through the years and finishing in the same place.
'"The worst place we've struck yet," said the commanding officer; "no facilities, no amenities, and Brigade sitting right on top of us."
* And ok, the section on the student days at Oxford is precious, fey, and 'fey' is tiresome. But this is the best of fey, certainly one of 'the originals' laid down all those years ago and is now planted in the public consciousness.
'"The Marquis of Marchmain's second boy. His brother, the Earl of Brideshead, went down last term. Now he was very different, a very quiet gentleman, quite like an old man. What do you suppose Lord Sebastian wanted? A hair brush 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."'
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