by Evelyn Waugh
In the event, that Easter vacation formed a short stretch of level road in the precipitous descent of which Jasper warned me. Descent or ascent? It seems to me that I grew younger daily with each adult habit that I acquired. I had lived a lonely childhood and a boyhood, straitened by war and overshadowed by bereavement; to the hard bachelordom of English adolescence, the premature dignity and authority of the school system, I had added, a sad and grim strain of my own. Now, that summer term with Sebastian, it seemed as though I was being given a brief spell of what I had never known, a happy childhood, and though its toys were silk shirts and liqueurs and cigars and its naughtiness high in the catalogue of grave sins, there was something of nursery freshness about us that fell little short of the joy of innocence. At the end of the term I took my first schools; it was necessary to pass, if I was to remain at Oxford and pass I did, after a week in which I forbade Sebastian my rooms and sat up to a late hour, with iced black, coffee and charcoal biscuits, cramming myself with the neglected texts. 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.
‘I like this bad set and I like getting drunk at luncheon’; that was enough then. Is more needed now?
Looking back, now, after twenty years, there is little I would have left undone or done otherwise. I could match my cousin Jasper’s game-cock maturity with a sturdier fowl. I could tell him that all the wickedness of that time was like the spirit they mix with the pure grape of the Douro, heady stuff full of dark ingredients; it at once enriched and retarded the whole process of adolescence as the spirit checks the fermentation of the wine, renders it undrinkable, so, that it must lie in the dark year in, year out, until it is brought up at last fit for the table.
I could tell him, too, that to know and love one other, human being is the root of all wisdom. But I felt no need for these sophistries as I sat before my cousin, saw him, freed from his inconclusive struggle with Pindar, in his dark grey suit, his white tie, his scholar’s gown; heard his grave tones and, all the time, savoured the gillyflowers in full bloom under my windows. I had my secret and sure defence, like a talisman worn in the bosom, felt for in the moment of danger, found and firmly grasped. So I told him what was not in fact the truth, that I usually had a glass of champagne about that time, and asked him to join me.
On the day after Jasper’s Grand Remonstrance I received another, in different terms and from an unexpected source.
All the term I had been seeing rather more of Anthony Blanche than my liking for him warranted. I lived now among his friends, but our frequent meetings were more of his choosing than mine, for I held him in considerable awe.
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.
An attempt had been made in his childhood to make an Englishman of him; he was two years at Eton; then in the middle of the war he had defied the submarines, rejoined his mother in the Argentine, and a clever and audacious schoolboy was added to the valet, the maid, the two chauffeurs, the pekinese, and the second husband. Criss-cross about the world he travelled with them, waxing in wickedness like a Hogarthian page boy. When peace came they returned to Europe, to hotels and furnished villas spas, casinos, and bathing beaches. At this age of fifteen, for a wager; he was disguised as a girl and taken to play at the big table in the Jockey Club at Buenos Aires; he dined with Proust and Gide and was on closer terms with Cocteau and Diaghilev; Firbank sent him novels with fervent inscriptions; he had aroused three irreconcilable feuds in Capri; by his own account he had practised black art in Cefalù and had been cured of drug-taking in California and of an Oedipus complex in Vienna.
At times we all seemed like 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 stepfather’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 subtropical 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.
He asked me to dinner, and I was a little disconcerted to find that we were to dine alone. ‘We are going to Thame,’ he said. ‘There is a delightful hotel there, which luckily doesn’t appeal to the Bullingdon. We will, drink Rhine wine and imagine ourselves…where? Not on a j-j-jaunt with J-J-Jorrocks anyway. But first we will have our apéritif.’
At the George bar he ordered ‘Four Alexandra cocktails, please,’ ranged them before him with a loud ‘Yum-yum’ which drew every eye, outraged, upon him. ‘I expect you would prefer sherry, but, my dear Charles, you are not going to have sherry. Isn’t this a delicious concoction? You don’t like it? Then I will drink it for you. One, two, three, four, down the red lane they go. How the students stare!’ And he led me out to the waiting motorcar.
‘I hope we shall find no undergraduates there. I am a little out of sympathy with them for the moment. You heard about their treatment of me on Thursday? It was too naughty. Luckily I was wearing my oldest pyjamas and it was an evening of oppressive heat, or I might have been seriously cross.’ Anthony had a habit of putting his face near one when he spoke; the sweet and creamy cocktail had tainted his breath. I leaned away from him in the corner of the hired car.
‘Picture me, my dear, alone and studious. I had just bought a rather forbidding book called Antic Hay, Which I knew I must read before going to Garsington on Sunday, because everyone was bound to talk about it, and it’s so banal saying you have not read the book of the moment, if you haven’t. The solution I suppose is not to go to Garsington, but that didn’t occur to me until this moment. So, my dear, I had an omelette and a peach and a bottle of Vichy water and put on my pyjamas and settled down to read. I must say my thoughts wandered, but I kept turning the pages and watching the light fade, which in Peckwater, my dear, is quite an experience — as darkness falls the stone seems positively to decay under one’s eyes. I was reminded of some of those leprous façade’s in the vieux port at Marseille, until suddenly I was disturbed by such a bawling and cater-wauling as you never heard, and there, down in the little piazza, I saw a mob of about twenty terrible young men, and do know what they were chanting? “We want Blanche. We want Blanche,” in a kind of litany. Such a public declaration! Well, I saw it was all up with Mr Huxley for the evening, and, I must say I had reached a point of tedium when any interruption was welcome. I was stirred by the bellows, but, do you know, the louder they shouted, the shyer they seemed? They kept saying “Where’s Boy?” “He’s Boy Mulcaster’s friend,” “Boy must bring him down.” Of course you’ve met Boy? He’s always popping in and out of dear Sebastian’s rooms. He’s everything we dagos expect of an English lord. A great parti I can assure you. All the young ladies in London are after him. He’s very hoity-toity with them I’m told. My dear, he’s scared stiff. A great oaf — that’s Mulcaster — and what’s more, my dear, a cad. He came to le Touquet at Easter and, in some extraordinary way, I seemed to have asked him to stay. He lost some infinitesimal sum at cards, and as a result expected me to pay for all his treats — well, Mulcaster was in this party; I could see his ungainly form shuffling about below and hear him saying: “It’s no good. He’s out. Let’s go back and have a drink?” So then I put my
head out of the window and called to him; “Good evening, Mulcaster, old sponge and toady, are you lurking among the hobbledehoys? Have you come to repay me the three hundred francs I lent you for the poor drab you picked up in the Casino? It was a niggardly sum for her trouble, and what a trouble, Mulcaster. Come up and pay me, poor hooligan!”
‘That, my dear, seemed to put a little life into them, and up the stairs they came, clattering. About six of them came into my room, the rest stood mouthing outside. My dear, they looked too extraordinary. They had been having one of their ridiculous club dinners, and they were all wearing coloured tail-coats — a sort of livery. “My dears,” I said to them, “you look like a lot of most disorderly footmen.” Then one of them, rather a juicy little piece, accused me of unnatural vices. “My dear,” I said, “I may be inverted but I am not insatiable. Come back when you are alone.” Then they began to blaspheme in a very shocking manner, and suddenly I, too, began to be annoyed. “Really,” I thought, “when I think of all the hullabaloo there was when I was seventeen, and the Duc de Vincennes (old Armand, of course, not Philippe) challenged me to a duel for an affair of the heart, and very much more than the heart, I assure you, with the duchess (Stefanie, of course, not old Poppy) — now, 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 art ecstasy 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.”
‘Do you know, they all looked a little foolish at that? I walked down with them and no one came within a yard of me. Then I got into the fountain and, you know, it was really most refreshing, so I sported there a little and struck some attitudes, until they turned about and walked sulkily home, and I heard Boy Mulcaster saying, “Anyway, we did put him in Mercury.” You know, Charles, that is just what they’ll be saying in thirty years time. When they’re all married to scraggy little women like hens and have cretinous porcine sons like themselves getting drunk at the same club dinner in the same coloured coats, they’ll still say, when my name is mentioned, “We put him in Mercury one night,” and their barnyard daughters will snigger and think their father was quite a dog in his day, and what a pity he’s grown so dull.’ Oh, la fatigue du Nord!’
It was not, I knew, the first time Anthony had been ducked, but the incident seemed much on his mind, for he reverted to it again at dinner.
‘Now you can’t imagine an unpleasantness like that happening to Sebastian, can you?’
‘No.’ I said; I could not.
‘No, Sebastian has charm’; he held up his glass of hock to the candle-light and repeated, ‘such charm. Do you know, I went round to call on Sebastian next day? I thought the tale of my evening’s adventures might amuse him. And what do you think I found — besides, of course, his amusing toy bear? Mulcaster and two of his cronies of the night before. They looked very foolish and Sebastian, as composed as Mrs P-pponsonby-de-Tomkyns in P-p-punch, said, “You know Lord Mulcaster, of course,” and the oafs said, “Oh, we just came to see how Aloysius was,” for they find the toy bear just as amusing as we do — or, shall I hint, just a teeny bit more? So off they went. And I said “S-s-sebastian, do you realize that those s-sycophantic s-slugs insulted me last night, and but for the warmth of the weather might have given me a s-s-severe cold,” and he said “Poor things. I expect they were drunk.” He has a kind word for everyone, you see; he has such charm.
‘I can see he has completely captivated you, my dear Charles. Well, I’m not surprised. Of course, you haven’t known him as long as I have. I was at school with him. You wouldn’t believe it, but in those days people used to say he was a little bitch; just a few unkind boys who knew him well. Everyone in pop liked him, of course and all the masters. I expect it was really that they were jealous of him. He never seemed to get into trouble. The rest of us were constantly being beaten in the most savage way, on the most frivolous pretexts, but never Sebastian. He was the only boy in my house who was never beaten at all. I can see him now, at the age of fifteen. He never had spots you know; all the other boys were spotty. Boy Mulcaster was positively scrofulous. But not Sebastian. Or did he have one, rather a stubborn one at the back of his neck? I think, now, that he did. Narcissus, with one pustule. He and I were both Catholics, so we used to go to mass together. He used to spend such a time in the confessional, I used to wonder what he had to say, because he never did anything wrong; never quite; at least, he never got punished. Perhaps he was just being charming through the grille. I left under what is called a cloud, you know — I can’t think why it is called that; it seemed to me a glare of unwelcome light; the process involved a series of harrowing interviews with m’ tutor. It was disconcerting to find how observant that mild old man proved to be. The things he knew about me, which I thought no one — except possibly Sebastian — knew. It was a lesson never to trust mild old men — or charming school boys; which?
‘Shall we have another bottle of this wine, or of something different? Something different, some bloody, old Burgundy, eh? You see, Charles, I understand all your tastes. You must come to France with me and drink the wine. We will go at the vintage. I will take you to stay at the Vincennes. It is all made up with them now, and he has finest wine in France; he and the Prince de Portallon — I will take you there, too. I think they would amuse you, and of course they would love you. I want to introduce, you to a lot of my friends. I have told Cocteau about you. He is all agog. You see, my dear Charles, you are that very rare thing, An Artist. Oh yes, you must not look bashful. Behind that cold, English, phlegmatic exterior you I are An Artist. I have seen those little drawings you keep hidden away in your room. They are exquisite. And you, dear Charles, if you will understand me, are not exquisite; but not at all Artists are not exquisite. I am; Sebastian, in a kind of way, is exquisite, but the artist is an eternal type, solid, purposeful, observant — and, beneath it all, p-p-passionate, eh, Charles?
‘But who recognizes you? The other day I was speaking to Sebastian about you, and I said, “But you know Charles is an artist. He draws like a young Ingres,” and do you know what Sebastian said? — “Yes, Aloysius draws very prettily, too, but of course he’s rather more modern.’ So charming; so amusing.
‘Of course those that have charm don’t really need brains. Stefanie de Vincennes really tickled me four years ago. My dear, I even used the same coloured varnish for my toe-nails. I used her words and lit my cigarette in the same way and spoke with her tone on the telephone so that the duke used to carry on long and intimate conversations with me, thinking that I was her. It was largely that which put his mind on pistol and sabres in such an old-fashioned manner. My step-father thought it an excellent education for me. He thought it would make me grow out of what he calls my “English habits”. Poor man, he is very South American…I never heard anyone speak an ill word of Stefanie, except-the Duke: and she, my dear, is positively cretinous.’
Anthony had lost his stammer in the deep waters of his old romance. It came floating back to him, momentarily, with the coffee and liqueurs. ‘Real G-g-green Chartreuse, made before the expulsion of the monks. There are five distinct tastes as it trickles over the tongue. It is like swallowing a sp-spectrum. Do you wish Sebastian was with us? Of course you do. Do I? I wonder. How our thoughts do run on that little bundle of charm to be sure. I think you must be mesmerizing me, Charles. I bring you here, at very considerable expense, my dear, simply to talk about myself, and I find I talk
of no one except Sebastian. It’s odd because there’s really no mystery about him except how he came to be born of such a very sinister family.
‘I forget if you know his family. I don’t suppose he’ll ever let you meet them. He’s far too clever. They’re quite, quite gruesome. Do you ever feel there is something a teeny bit gruesome about Sebastian? No? Perhaps I imagine it; it’s simply that he looks so like the rest of them, sometimes.
‘There’s Brideshead who’s something archaic, out of a cave that’s been sealed for centuries. He has the face as though an Aztec sculptor had attempted a portrait of Sebastian; he’s a learned bigot, a ceremonious barbarian, a snow-bound lama…Well, anything you like. And Julia, you know what she looks like. Who could help it? Her photograph appears as regularly in the illustrated papers as the advertisements for Beecham’s Pills. A face of flawless Florentine quattrocento beauty; almost anyone else with those looks would have been tempted to become artistic; not Lady Julia; she’s as smart as — well, as smart as Stefanie. Nothing greenery-yallery about her. So gay, so correct, so unaffected. I wonder if she’s incestuous. I doubt it; all she wants is power. There ought to be an Inquisition especially set up to burn her. There’s another sister, too, I believe, in the schoolroom. Nothing is known of her yet except that her governess went mad and drowned herself not long ago. I’m sure she’s abominable. So you see there was really very little left for poor Sebastian to do except be sweet and charming.
‘It’s when one gets to the parents that a bottomless pit opens. My dear, such a pair. How does Lady Marchmain manage it? It is one of the questions of the Age. You have seen her? Very, very beautiful; no artifice her hair just turning grey in elegant silvery streaks, no rouge very pale, huge-eyed — it is extraordinary how large those eyes look and how the lids are veined blue where anyone else would have touched them with a finger-tip of paint; pearls and a few great starlike jewels, heirlooms, in ancient settings, a voice as quiet as a prayer, and as powerful. And Lord. Marchmain, well, a little fleshy perhaps, but very handsome, a magnifico, a voluptuary, Byronic, bored, infectiously slothful, not at all the sort of man you would expect to see easily put down. And that Reinhardt nun, my dear, has destroyed him but utterly. He daren’t show his great purple face anywhere. He is the last, historic, authentic case of someone being hounded out of society. Brideshead won’t see him, the girls mayn’t, Sebastian does, of course, because he’s, so charming. No one else goes near him. Why, last September Lady Marchmain was in Venice staying at the Palazzo Fogliere. To tell you the truth she was just a teeny bit ridiculous in Venice. She never went near the Lido, of course, but she was always drifting about the canals in a gondola with Sir Adrian Porson — such attitudes, my dear, like Madame Récamier; once I passed them and I caught the eye of the Fogliere gondolier, whom, of course, I knew, and, my dear, he gave me such a wink. She came to all the parties in a sort of cocoon of gossamer, my dear, as though she were part of some Celtic play or a heroine from Maeterlinck; and she would go to church. Well, as you know, Venice is the one town in Italy where no one ever has gone to church. Anyway, she was rather a figure of fun that year, and then who, should turn up, in the Maltons’ yacht, but poor Lord Marchmain. He’d taken a little palace there, but was he allowed in? Lord Malton put him and his valet into a dinghy, my dear, and transhipped him there and then into the steamer for Trieste. He hadn’t even his mistress with him. It was her yearly holiday. No one ever knew how they heard Lady Marchmain was there. And, do you know, for a week Lord Malton slunk about as if he was in disgrace? And he was in disgrace. The Principessa Fogliere gave a ball and Lord Malton was not asked nor anyone from his yacht — even the de Pañoses. How does Lady Marchmain do it? She has convinced the world that Lord Marchmain is a monster. And what is the truth? They were married for fifteen years or so and then Lord Marchmain went to the war; he never came back but formed a connection with a highly talented dancer. There are a thousand such cases. She refuses to divorce him because she is so pious. Well, there have been cases of that before. Usually, it arouses sympathy for the adulterer; not for Lord Marchmain though. You would think that the old reprobate had tortured her, stolen her patrimony, flung her out of doors, roasted, stuffed, and eaten his children, and gone frolicking about wreathed in all the flowers of Sodom and Gomorrah; instead of what? Begetting four splendid children by her, handing over to her Brideshead and Marchmain House in St James’s and all the money she can possibly want to spend, while he sits with a snowy shirt front at Larue’s with a personable, middle-aged lady of the theatre, in most conventional Edwardian style. And she meanwhile keeps a small gang of enslaved and emaciated prisoners for her exclusive enjoyment. She sucks their blood. You can see the tooth marks all over Adrian Porson’s shoulders when he is bathing. And he, my dear, was the greatest, the only, poet of our time. He’s bled dry; there’s nothing left of him. There are five or is others of all ages and sexes, like wraiths following her around. They never escape once she’s had her teeth into them. It is witchcraft. There’s no other explanation.
