Oxford: A Shadow of Great Britain

experiences in those two cities.

rare glory of her summer days – such as that day – when the chestnut was in flower and the bells rang out high and clear over her gables and cupolas, exhaled the soft airs of centuries of youth. (17)

The “Newman” mentioned here is John Henry Newman, a theologian of Oxford Universit y who led the Oxford Movement in the earl y nineteenth century. The Oxford Movement was a religious movement with the aim to reform the Anglican Church from the inside, which, the reformers believed, had become corrupt and lost its authority b y reaching a settlement with the Catholic Church in the Vatican. The embers of this movement seem to have remained at least until the earl y twentieth century when Charles enters the universit y.

Waugh mentions also the homosexual relationship conjectured in the movement. Charles’ cousin, Jasper, denounces the group and, while

introducing the campus to Charles, says, “Beware of the Anglo -Catholics – they’re all sodomites with unpleasant accents. In fact, s teer clear of all the religious groups: they do nothing but harm . . . ” (22). His warning about homosexualit y is not unfounded, and has some grounds: for instance, Timothy Jones writes about the relationships between Newman and his comrade, Ambrose St. Joh n, as follows:

Famousl y, John Henry (later Cardinal) Newman had an intense friendship with Ambrose St. John. . . . Certainl y, at his own request Newman was buried in the same grave as St. John.

Hilliard argues that this and many other documented “romantic

friendships ” were acceptable in earl y Victorian England. (136)

Such facts changed into gossip, and in the 1920s it became common slander against religious people.

Charles’ conversion to Roman Catholic is a cardinal theme of Brideshead Revisited. In fact, however, Charles eventuall y becomes a

Roman Catholic, without any help from the promoters of this movement. He converts with a completel y different motive. It is noteworthy that he is led to the Catholicism by the association with the Fl ytes. In particul ar, the most influential one in the famil y is Sebastian Fl yte, who open s a door for Charles to the long journey for conversion, by their close friendship in Oxford. Watching their friendship, Cara, a mistress of Sebastian ’s father, says, “It is a kind of love that comes to children before they know its meaning. In England it comes when you are almost men ” (92). Therefore, after all, their relation becomes what can be called a sort of “romantic friendship,” like the quotation above, echoing the relationship s seen in their senior Anglo -Catholics. In that scene, the name of Newman, which appears in the memories of the middle -aged Charles is a keyword for reading this novel.

At the same time, it is necessary to examine the fact that Oxford was an imperial insti tution for raising elites. Charles majors in history, “[a]

perfectl y respectable school ” (21) as Jasper points out. His love for English history is described in the prologue of the novel. Charles, reaching middle -age, accompanies a young officer, Hooper, a nd he is astonished every time Hooper shows little interest in English history. For Hooper, who is over twent y years Charles ’ junior, English history is almost equal to the history

of legislation and industrial change, and has been taught without any of th e images of English heroism that have occurred over the ages:

The history they taught him [Hooper] had had few battles in it, but, instead, a profusion of detail about humane legislation and recent industrial change. Gallipoli, Balaclava, Quebec, Lepanto, Bannockburn, Roncevales, and Marathon –these, and the Battle in the West where Arthur fell, and a hundred such names whose trumpet-notes, even now in m y sere and lawless state, called to me irresistibl y across the intervening years with all the clarit y and strength of boyhood, sounded in vain to Hooper. (6)

For Charles, history is a sort of extension of the epics which he admired so much in his boyhood. That is obvious in his words “m y last love” (3), directed toward the arm y to which he belongs now as a man of thirt y -nine years old. Those words are his last pride as a former student who majored in history at Oxford Universit y, even though presentl y he is a single and childless officer in the arm y. Simultaneousl y, it intimates that he belongs to the last generation that believes in such elitism on the battlefield. The two ideologies at Oxford, religiousness and elitism, have firml y taken root in Charles’ soul, and been sustained even after graduation.

Moreover, it is notable that an important meaning is placed on the friendship between Charles and Sebastian at Oxford. The first chapter of this novel where their friendship is described, is titled “Et in Arcadia Ego,”

quoted from the title of Guercino ’s painting (c. 1618 -1622). It is also known as the title of Nicolas Poussin ’s painting.³ There are two

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.