Arcadian Minutiae: Notes on Brideshead Revisited

Abstract

‘Et in Arcadia ego’ is the motto engraved on the skull Charles Ryder has in his room at Oxford in 1923, at the end of his first year. The skull is part of ‘All this’ (B1.II,52),¹ a phrase of Jasper’s during this ‘last visit and Grand Remonstrance’ (B1.II.50), that exposes his younger cousin’s life-style, the men he associates with, the line of conduct he pursues, the luxury articles he collects. No matter how honestly Charles is now endeavouring to give a fair account of the scene, as also of his whole life, his recent renouncement of a world of pomp and vanity, previous to the collapse of the war, cannot inspire in him a dumb feeling of condonation of Jasper’s irksome ways. They still sound offensive and silly for all their bearing the hall-mark of sanity. A few digs at the impromptu mentor cannot be repressed, gravity is touched up with irony, and a mixed effect of pathos and dry sarcasm is achieved in the record. It is Charles’s natural disposition and style to turn over a new leaf upon an old one.

Those golden times And those Arcadian scenes that Maro sings, And Sidney, warbler of poetic prose …

William Cowper