THE CHARACTER of CORDELIA in BRIDESHEAD REVISITED by John W
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EVELYN WAUGH NEWSLETTER AND STUDIES Volume 29, Number 3 Winter, 1995 THE CHARACTER OF CORDELIA IN BRIDESHEAD REVISITED By John W. Osborne (Rutgers University) Cordelia is wise about religious matters as Cara is knowing about worldly affairs. Cordelia is the only person who understands Sebastian, and her love for her brother is demonstrated throughout the novel. This love is deep, and she shames Ryder when she speaks of their joint love for Sebastian in the present tense, long after Ryder ceased to care deeply about his friend (p. 308). Years before, Ryder's last sight of Sebastian was when he left the sick man in squalid circumstances in North Africa, noting that nothing more could be done. But Cordelia visits Sebastian in the late 1930's and grasps the fact that while he was lost to his ancestral home he had found a curious peace as a hanger on in a religious community. Cordelia notes that neither she nor her brother, Sebastian, fit into either the secular world or a monastic community (her spell in a convent did not work out) (p. 308). In her soliloquy she tells a confused Ryder that Sebastian is holy and close to God. The still secular Ryder immediately thinks of ''the joyful youth with the Teddy-bear under the flowering chestnuts," and confesses that he never anticipated Sebastian's fate (p. 309). The religious outlook of Cordelia had always been a mystery to Ryder. Both he and Julia referred to Cordelia as odd (p. 221 and p. 300). Ryder finally changes his mind as Cordelia's wisdom penetrates his skepticism (p. 309). The scene ends with Cordelia getting the last word by describing the affair of Ryder and Julia as "thwarted passion." The loving Cordelia will remain single, spending her (in Ryder's words) "burning love" on good works and not on her children. She does not even get to care for Beryl's children. Her extraordinary compassion leads her to become a nurse in the Spanish Civil War, and also to understand the feeling of Jews toward their temple. The service in Spain is significant since Cordelia has told Ryder that people can't hate God (p. 221). Yet she volunteered to serve in Spain, where at least half the people seemed to hate God. Of course, her faith was not damaged by this experience. The end of the book finds her serving in Palestine during World War II. Waugh is skillful in showing us the childish goodness of Cordelia in the early and middle parts of the book. Cordelia is adorable, though her happy religious chatter is a mystery to Ryder. Her bubbly enthusiasm and habit of linking seemingly disparate trains of thought are characteristics of childhood. The letter to Ryder (p. 170) is perfectly expressed. It is also appropriate that she visits Nanny Hawkins as soon as she returns from Spain. But it is clear that Sebastian is the main person in her life. On page 220, the fifteen year old Cordelia informs Ryder that while Lord March main, Sebastian and Julia have left the faith, God will not let them go for long. Citing the Father Brown story which Lady Marchmain read out loud Cordelia says that a person may wander to the ends of the earth and still be brought back with a twitch upon an invisible line. Ryder makes no response, probably thinking this is another example of "convent chatter." This conversation, which takes place at dinner in the Ritz Hotel in London, ends with Ryder's unspoken bravado assertion that he was a man of the worldly Renaissance, with "my finger in the great, succulent pie of creation" (p. 222). For Waugh's judgment of the two points of view the reader of the book has only to glance at the next page, which is not part of the narrative, but says only "Book II, A Twitch Upon The Thread," which is a reference to the Father Brown story which Lady Marchmain had once read aloud. Ryder eventually learns that the world which he sought to master does not exist, but he is still a religious skeptic. Finally, Cordelia, who has just returned from Spain, instructs the much older but still obtuse Ryder about things which have eluded his understanding. While Sebastian is, next to God, Cordelia's great love, she is instrumental in helping to prepare Ryder for conversion. This is done over a period of many years. First her little girl prattle about religion both astonishes and amuses the agnostic Ryder, but finally her soliloquy (pp 303-309) -the longest passage in the book - moves him. Cordelia's moving soliloquy is a contrast with that of Anthony Blanche. - 2- That evening a sober Ryder recognizes that Julia may have a purpose in life other than to be attractive to men, or even a purpose greater than her relationship with him. This is followed by the image of an avalanche crushing the arctic hut. Cordelia had made the first penetration of Ryder's hitherto invincible armor of disbelief and prepared the way for what was to follow. These silent reflections of Ryder on pages 310-311 are very important to his future conversion, and they owe everything to Cordelia. Service to others was Cordelia's purpose in life, and perhaps the greatest example of this was her preparing the way for Ryder to be brought to God. EVELYN WAUGH'S COPY OF THE WORKS OF MR. ALEXANDER POPE (1717, 1735) By Thomas Jemielity (University of Notre Dame) In Memoriam Anton C. Masin Congratulating Douglas Woodruff on his fiftieth birthdayi 8 May 1947, Evelyn Waugh writes:" ... here is a birthday present Maurice gave to Venetia [Montagu], from her as wedding present to Randolph [Churchill], bought from him by me at the break up of his domestic iiie, 2 now to you-a varied history. Nours I Evelyn[.]" Mark Amory's edition of the Letters, however, doesn't identify Waugh's gift. In his diaries, Waugh notes only, for the same day: "Douglas Woodruff's 50th birthday dinner. I expected a grim evening but it was quite agreeable."3 A serendipity in the Department of Special Collections at the University of Notre Dame, home of a fine collection of first, early, and important editions of Evelyn Waugh, proves that Waugh's gift to Douglas Woodruff was the two-volume set of The Works of Mr Alexander Pope, (Volume 1: London: Bernard Lintot, 1717; Volume II: London: Lawton Gilliver, 1735). As part of research on Pope's Punciad, I had occasion to check Notre Dame's copy of the 1735 Works for any further revisions in the poem. I had no good reason, of course, to check the 1717 first volume. But if Miss Mouse saw no ghosts at the Anchorage House party thrown by the Duke and Duchess of Stayle, was it a ghost from Stinkers who urged me to look at the volume anyhow, no Punciad notwithstanding? As I turned to the flyleaf, there it was: "For Douglas, on his 50th birthday I from I Evelyn /1947." The "Evelyn" was unmistakable. 4 Laura Fuderer, Rare Books Librarian, kindly made available several autographed titles by Waugh which confirmed the identification. A problem, however, immediately presented itself. Both volumes are graced by a bookplate, designed by Hilaire Belloc, for the library of Maurice Baring. Might the inscription at the top center right ("Venice I from I Maurice-/ Xmas -1924: -) have been Baring's? Mark Amory's index to the letters 5 clearly identifies the Maurice in this case as Maurice Bowra. A second serendipity came into play. A Jesuit friend, Fr. Alvaro Ribeiro, was spending the summer at Oxford. In a phone conversation he suggested sending him faxed copies of the "Maurice" signature which he would pass on to Clifford Davies, Tutor for Graduates at Wadham College and familiar with Bowra's signature. For purposes of comparison, Laura Fuderer added several copies of Baring's signature from the Notre Dame collection. Although Davies had no specimens of Bowra's hand from the '20s, our facsimile struck him as "very similar.'~ In addition, he mentioned that Maurice Bowra did visit Venice in the twenties and that he wasa friend of the Asquiths, which would explain the Venetia Montagu connection. So Amory's identification of this Maurice as Bowra seems correct. One question, of course, remains: when did this set pass into Maruice Baring's hands? Waugh's account of the set does not allow for any date after 1924. The time of Bowra's ownership of the Pope poses a problem I cannot resolve. "A varied history," indeed. Even more varied, however, are the contents of Volume II, because a sizable part of the volume includes near a dozen pieces published after 1735.6With minor variations, Volume II should contain the Essay on Man; the Epistles to Several Persons·7 four Imitations, two of Horace (Satires, II, i and ii) and two of John Donne's Satires II and IV. The Epitaphs are then followed by the Punciad in Three Books, except that for the 1735 edition Pope transfers the many footnotes to the section immediately following the text. The Newberry Library's copy of Volume II, for example, conforms to this pattern. Griffith attributes "irregularities in signatures and pagination" to two causes: the use of remainders and new sheets for this volume, and the expected publication in 1736 of another edition of Pope's works. 8 -3- But neither explanation resolves the striking irregularities in the Waugh copy, the presence of those many items published after 1735 and the missing Imitations of the two satires by Horace and the two by Donne.