London: The Waste Land after the War

interpretations of this Latin phrase. Firstl y, if we translate it as “I was also in Arcadia,” this is a nostalgic phrase by which a person recalls old

memories of life in paradise. Secondl y, however, there is a more notable and contradictory translation: Memento Mori. If we translate it as “Even in Arcadia, there am I, ” this becomes a line signifying Death, warning that every paradise carries an omen of death.⁴ These two meanings are also perfectl y layered in Charles ’ memories. It intimates that he was once in a paradise of youth with Sebastian, but that also the seed of their tragedy was already sown in that paradise. The relationship between Charles and

Sebastian certainl y has a phase of Arcadia, in the sense of a romantic friendship between men. But Waugh shows that peopl e cannot remain in that phase. Sebastian eventuall y leaves England, fl ying from his mother ’s oppressive personalit y, and finds a way of reviving himself as a Christian in Morocco. He never returns to Charles. Charles comes to know that true faith does not grow from an eternal friendship.

As above, when we consider the roles of Oxford in this novel as “the remains of the Oxford Movement, ” “the imperial institution to produce elites,” and “the environment of friendship between youths, ” Oxford is not onl y a s ymbol of Charles ’ individual nostalgia, it symbolizes old England and the vestiges of the British Empire, which cast its shadow over the twentieth century.

are related to his painting exhibition. However, London, in contrast to

Oxford, onl y makes Charles feel remote from the world. There is an episode to prove it. Soon after entering the universit y, Charles battles with his

father for the first time when he returns home for the first vacation.

Charles’ father, Edward (Ned) Ryder, is a gentle old man who is fond of collecting antiques. Here Charles describes his father:

He was then in his late fifties, but it was his idiosyncrasy to seem much older than his years; to see him one might have put him at sevent y, to hear him speak at nearl y eight y. . . When he dined at home – and he seldom dined elsewhere – he wore a frogged velvet smoking suit of the kind which had been

fashionable many years before and was to be so again, but, at that time, was a deliberate archaism. (55)

Because Charles ’ mother had already died i n the First World War as a nurse, Charles went to a public school and had lived apart from his father. The house of the Ryders becomes a kind of battleground where a father and a son fight with each other for position. They are both mature adults now and must determine who should be the master of the house. As Charles says,

“[t]he dinner table was our battlefield ” (58), they invite to dinner guests who are the most unappealing to each other. It is because that is the most effective way to discourage the ir opponent. However, beaten by his father ’s large network of connections, Charles runs away to Brideshead as soon as he receives Sebastian ’s invitation letter. Charles cannot feel at home in London.

It is difficult to figure out the intentions of Charles ’ father in the novel. Charles onl y imagines his feelings twent y years later:

He [Charles ’ father] never declared his war aims, and I do not to this day know whether they were purel y punitive – whether he had reall y at the back of his mind some geopolitica l idea of getting me out of the country . . . or whether, as seems most likel y, he fought for the sheer love of a battle in which indeed he shone. (64)

From the phrase “the sheer love of a battle, ” Mr. Ryder seems to belong to the group of unreliable fath ers who appear in Waugh ’s earl y novels. Waugh had retained the theme of a son ’s battle against an unreliable father figure since his earl y novels, such as Vile Bodies. Brideshead Revisited is the last one dealing with that theme. It is noteworthy that Char les is mentall y

expelled from his own house by his own parent to start a new life as a déraciné, which he will remain for the rest of his days .

Following this incident, London becomes a place of sterilit y and confusion for Charles. There he experiences drunkenness, a car accident, a general strike, and endless flattery from those who visit the exhibition of his paintings. London is a veritable “Waste Land” for him. Waugh

consistentl y expressed his dislike for London in his works. Ruth Breeze explains that tendency: “whereas Eliot glimpsed a prospect of redemption for urban man, Waugh instinctivel y rejected him, seeking solace away from the metropolitan crowds and if possible, away from the modern age ” (137).

London as described by Waugh is a fallen metropolis where imprudent

“Bright Young Things ” (people who became adults after the First World War, including Waugh himself) walk around, immersed in t he over-sophisticated high societ y. London never performs the function of an institution for raising patriotic spirits like Oxford.

As an exception, however, Charles finds serenit y at a prominent place in London. The incident happens on the day when Charles holds an

exhibition as a painter after he comes back from a sketching trip in Mexico.

Anthony Blanche, one of Charles ’ friends in Oxford, visits the exhibition when Charles is exhausted after attending to visitors all day. Anthony pul ls Charles out of the exhibition, whispering, “Not quite your milieu, m y dear, but mine, I assure you. After all, you have been in your milieu all day ” (252). Guided by him, Charles sets foot in another milieu (ambiance), the hidden, underground London, li ke Alice chasing the white rabbit in

Wonderland.⁵ Charles remembers the scene:

Anthony led me from the gallery and down a side street to a door between a disreputable newsagent and a disreputable chemist, painted with the words ‘Blue Grotto Club. Members Onl y.’ . . . He led me downstairs, from a smell of cats to a smell of gin and cigarette-ends and the sound of a wireless. . . . The place was painted cobalt; there was cobalt linoleum on the floor. Fishes of silver and gold paper had been pasted haphazard on ceiling and walls. (252 -53)

Charles gets rapidl y dragged down from fashionable societ y into an underground gay bar, the “Blue Grotto Club. ” It is full of underwater

images, for exam ple, its underground location, cobalt paint, and paper fish.

In this bar, Charles eventuall y grows relaxed and his mind is brought back to Oxford: “As he spoke to the bar and bar-tender . . . the whole drab and furtive joint seemed to fade, and I was back in Oxford looking out over Christ Church meadow through a window of Ru skin-Gothic” (253). Through the images of blue grotto and the air of homosexualit y drifting there, this place is related to Oxford, the place where men had romantic friendships.

This scene is deepl y associated with The Waste Land by T. S. Eliot.

When Anthony appears in the novel for the first time as an Oxford student, he recites lines from The Waste Land. The lines are about a blind,

androgynous prophet, Tiresias, wandering alone in London. Anthony starts:

‘I, Tiresias, have foresuffered all, ’ he sobbed t o them from the Venetian arches;

‘Enacted on this same d -divan or b-bed, I who have sat by Thebes below the wall

And walked among the l -lowest of the dead . . .’ (28)

Here, Anthony, a pleasure -seeking homosexual traveller, is overlapped with Tiresias, who “walked among the lowest of the dead ” (Eliot 63). Anthony also takes Charles to a dark, low, underground world, recalling for him the aesthetic atmosphere of Oxford. C harles later comes to himself, mocking himself ironicall y: “It’s been a day of nightmare. . ., ending up with half an hour’s well-reasoned abuse of m y pictures in a pansy bar ” (255). Thus, even some small part of the wasteland of London encourages Charles to

restore his mind with memories of Oxford in Brideshead Revisited.