“Return to Brideshead” in a short summary
During the Second World War, while in England and commanding a company that did not take part in hostilities, Captain Charles Ryder received orders from the commanders to transport his subordinates to a new place. Arriving at the place of destination, the captain discovers that he was at the Brideshead estate, with which his whole youth was closely related. It embraces memories.
In Oxford, in the first year of college, he met the son of an aristocratic family of Marchmaines, his fellow-lord Lord Sebastian Flyte, a youth of extraordinary beauty and a lover of extravagant pranks. Charles captivated his society, his charisma, and the young people became friends, spending the first year of training in friendly feasts and frivolous tricks. During the first summer vacation, Ryder lived first in his father’s house, in London, and then, receiving a telegram from Sebastian informing him that his friend was crippled, rushed to him and found him in Brideshead, the family mansion of
Sebastian’s father, Lord Alexander Marchmaine, had lived separately from his wife, Sebastian’s mother, for a long time, and hated her, although it was difficult to explain why this hatred was anyone. Sebastian had a difficult relationship with his mother. She was a very devout Catholic, and therefore her son was oppressed by her association with her, as well as by her older brother Brideshead and sisters, Julia and Cordelia, also raised in the Catholic faith. The mother demanded from each member of the family the ability to keep within the strict limits prescribed by religion.
After returning from summer vacations to Oxford, young people discovered that in their lives they lacked the former fun and former ease. Charles and Sebastian spent a lot of time together, sitting together for a bottle of wine. Once, at the invitation of Julia and her admirer, Rex Mottrem, young people went to them on a holiday in London.
On Christmas Eve Charles arrived in Brideshead, where all the family members, including Sebastian, had already met with Mr. Samgrass, one of the attorneys to guard him in Oxford teachers, a journey through the Middle East. As it turned out later, at his last stage, Sebastian fled from his escort to Constantinople, lived there with a friend and drank. By this time he had turned into a real alcoholic who could hardly help. His behavior shocked and upset his family, so that Rex was instructed to take Sebastian to Zurich, to a sanatorium to Dr. Barethus. After one incident, when Charles, pouring himself over a friend, sitting penniless and who was also severely restricted in alcohol consumption, supplied him with two pounds for a drink in the nearest tavern,
Soon Rex came in search of Sebastian, who on his way to Zurich fled from him, taking three hundred pounds with him. On the same day, Rex invited Charles to a restaurant where, at dinner, he told of his plans to marry the beautiful Julia Marchmaine and at the same time not to let go of her dowry, in which her mother flatly refused him. A few months later, Rex and Julia actually married, but very modestly, without the members of the royal family and prime minister, whom Rex knew and counted on. It was like a “wedding secret”, and only a few years later Charles found out what really happened there.
Though Captain Ryder’s thoughts switch to Julia, who has played only an episodic and rather mysterious role in the drama of Sebastian, and who later played a huge role in Charles’s life. She was very beautiful, but she could not count on a brilliant aristocratic party because her noble family had a stamp of her father’s immoral behavior, and because she was a Catholic. It so happened that fate brought her with Rex, a native of Canada, making his way to the highest financial and political circles in London. He erroneously assumed that such a party would become a trump card in his impetuous career, and he used all his powers to capture Julia. Julia really fell in love with him, and the date of the wedding was already set, the most significant cathedral was rented, even the cardinals were invited, when it suddenly became clear that Rex was divorced. Not long before that, for the sake of Julia, he had accepted the Catholic faith and now as a Catholic he had no right to marry a second time with his first wife alive. Violent disputes broke out in the family, as well as among the holy fathers. At their height, Rex claimed that she and Julia preferred a wedding according to Protestant canons. After several years of married life, the love between them dried up; Julia revealed the true essence of her husband: he was not a man, in the full sense of the word, but “a small part of a man pretending to be a whole human being.” He was obsessed with money and politics and was a very modern, latest “invention” of that century. Julia told Charles about this ten years later, during a storm in the Atlantic.
In 1926, during a general strike, Charles returned to London, where he learned that Lady Marchmain was at death. In this regard, at the request of Julia, he went to Algeria for Sebastian, where he settled for a long time. At that time, he lay in the hospital and recovered from the flu, so he could not go to London. Even after the illness, he did not want to leave, because he did not want to leave one of his new friends, the German Kurt, with the painful leg that he had picked up in Tangier, starving to death, took to himself and was now cared for. He did not manage to end the drunkenness.
Back in London, Charles learned that the London house of the Marchmaines would be sold because of financial difficulties in the family, it would be demolished and in its place would be built an apartment house. Charles, has long been an architectural painter, at the request of Brideshead for the last time captured the interior of the house. Safely surviving the financial crisis of those years due to its specialization, having published three luxurious albums of his reproductions depicting English mansions and estates, Charles went to Latin America for the sake of a life-changing change in his work. There he spent two years and created a series of beautiful paintings, saturated with tropical color and exotic motifs. From England to New York, by prior arrangement, a wife came to visit him, and together they flew back to Europe on the boat. During the trip, it turned out that Julia Marchmain was sailing with them along with them, It was a passion that came to America after a man whom she thought she loved. Quickly disappointed in her, she decided to return home. On the ship during the storm, which contributed to the fact that Julia and Charles were constantly alone with each other, for they were the only ones who did not suffer from seasickness, they realized that they loved each other. After the exhibition, immediately organized in London and having a huge success, Charles informed his wife that he would no longer live with her, which she was not very upset with, and soon acquired a new adorer. Charles filed for divorce. Julia did the same. In Brideshead they lived together for two and a half years and were about to get married. she decided to return home. On the ship during the storm, which contributed to the fact that Julia and Charles were constantly alone with each other, for they were the only ones who did not suffer from seasickness, they realized that they loved each other. After the exhibition, immediately organized in London and having a huge success, Charles informed his wife that he would no longer live with her, which she was not very upset with, and soon acquired a new adorer. Charles filed for divorce. Julia did the same. In Brideshead they lived together for two and a half years and were about to get married. she decided to return home. On the ship during the storm, which contributed to the fact that Julia and Charles were constantly alone with each other, for they were the only ones who did not suffer from seasickness, they realized that they loved each other. After the exhibition, immediately organized in London and having a huge success, Charles informed his wife that he would no longer live with her, which she was not very upset with, and soon acquired a new adorer. Charles filed for divorce. Julia did the same. In Brideshead they lived together for two and a half years and were about to get married. immediately organized in London and had a huge success, Charles told his wife that he would no longer live with her, which she was not very upset, and soon acquired a new adorer. Charles filed for divorce. Julia did the same. In Brideshead they lived together for two and a half years and were about to get married. immediately organized in London and had a huge success, Charles told his wife that he would no longer live with her, which she was not very upset, and soon acquired a new adorer. Charles filed for divorce. Julia did the same. In Brideshead they lived together for two and a half years and were about to get married.
Julia’s older brother, Brideshead, married Beryl, the widow of an admiral with three children, a debauld to a lady of about forty-five, whom, at first sight, Lord Markmain disliked returning to the family estate because of the outbreak of hostilities outside of England. In this regard, Beryl and her husband could not get over there, as she expected, and besides, the lord bequeathed the house of Julia, who was planning to marry Charles,
In Brideshead, Cordelia, Julia’s younger sister, returned with whom Charles had not met for fifteen years. She worked in Spain as a nurse, but now she had to leave. On her way home she visited Sebastian, who moved to Tunisia, who again turned to faith and now worked as a minister at one monastery. He was still very afflicted, for he was deprived of his own dignity and will. Cordelia even saw in him something of a saint.
Lord Marchmain came to Brideshead very old and deadly sick. Before his death, there was a clash between Julia and Charles about whether or not to disturb the father with the last communion. Charles, as an agnostic, did not see the meaning in it and was against it. Nevertheless, before his death, Lord Marchmain acknowledged his sins and sunk himself with the sign of the cross. Julia, already long tormented by the fact that she lived with Rex in sin first, and now deliberately intended to repeat the same with Charles, preferred to return to the bosom of the Catholic Church and part with her lover.
Now the thirty-nine-year-old infantry captain Charles Ryder, standing in the Brideshead chapel and looking at the burning candle on the altar, realizes its fire as a connecting link between the epochs, something extremely significant and just as burning in the hearts of modern soldiers far from home, souls of ancient knights.
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