Reading Note: Not Funny
After seeing the new Brideshead Revisited last Friday, I went to McNally Robinson and bought a copy of the novel. (I may still have the one that I read as a teenager in storage, but, if so, it has got to be unreadable: a ghastly old Dell cheaperback with, by now, pages of ochre.) I also bought a copy of Scoop — forgetting that I already had one, probably because I’ve never read it.
The other night, I opened Scoop — never mind why — and was presently roaring with laughter. the following passage, describing the heroes country seat, Boots Magna, is funny in the way that pepper is hot — not right away.
The house was large but by no means too large for the Boot family, which at this time numbered eight. There were in the direct line: William who owned the house and estate, William’s sister who claimed to own the horses, William’s widowed mother who owned the contents of the house and exercised ill-defined rights over the flower garden, and William’s widowed grandmother who was said to own “the money.” No one knew how much she possessed; she had been bedridden as long as William’s memory went back. It was from her that such large cheques issued as were from time to time necessary for balancing the estate accounts and paying for Uncle Theodore’s occasional, disastrous visits to London. Uncle Theodore, the oldest of the male collaterals, was by the far the gayest. Uncle Roderick was in many ways the least eccentric. He had managed the estate and household throughout William’s minority and continued to do so with a small but regular deficit which was made up annually by one of grandmama’s cheques. The widowed Lady Trilby was William’s great Aunt Anne, his father’s elder sister; she owned the motor car, a vehicle adapted to her own requirements; it had a horn which could be worked from the back seat; her weekly journey to church resounded through the village like the Coming of the Lord. Uncle Bernard devoted himself to a life of scholarship but had received little general recognition, for his researches, though profound, were narrow, being connected solely with his own pedigree. He had traced William’s descent through three different lines from Ethelred the Unready, and only lack of funds fortunately prevented him from prosecuting a claim to the abeyant barony of de Butte.
Crisper writing can’t be had. The long crescendo of names, followed without punctuation by ever-nuttier possessions, finally explodes with “the money,” which is, after all, the only thing worth owning, since everything else is actually an expense (house, horses, and furniture polish). There is the horn in the back seat — a wonderful touch, and undoubtedly copied from the life. Finally, the dilatory revelation of Uncle Bernard’s research topic. Two paragraphs later, we learn that practically all the servants are bedridden.
It’s fair to say that Scoop, in which the retiring William, mistaken for his dashing cousin, John Courtenay Boot, is packed off to a distant civil war as a correspondent for the Daily Beast, crackles.
But what about that other book, the one that I haven’t read since I was eighteen or so — and never been seriously tempted to re-read; what about Brideshead?
   We drove on and in the early afternoon came to our destination: wrought-iron gates and twin, classical lodges on a village green, an avenue, more gates, open parkland, a turn in the drive; and suddenly a new and secret landscape opened before us. We were at the head of a valley and below us, half a mile distant, shone the dome and columns of an old house.
   “Well?” said Sebastian, stopping the car. Beyond the dome lay receding steps of water and round it, guarding and hiding it, stood the soft hills.
   “Well?”
   “What a place to live in!” I said.
   “You must see the garden front and the fountain.” He leaned forward and put the car into gear. “It’s where my family live.” And even then, rapt in the vision, i felt, momentarily, like a wind stirring the tapestry, and ominous chill at the words he used — not “That is my home,” but “It’s where my family live.”
Oh dear. Waugh is in love with what he’s writing about. It’s deadly! I must say I like Julian Jarrold’s film much better!
PS: In response to George’s comment, below, I’ll say only that writing about things he loved is not what Evelyn Waugh was put on this earth to do. Other writers (Jane Austen, for starters) can do it very well.