Close-Reading the Rhythms of Two Passages from Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited

As a writer, I’ve always believed that rhythm is one of the most important craft skills, and I’ve written about it several times over the years. Teaching rhythm, however, is not easy, and I’ve found it often requires a specific level of close-reading and syntactical analysis that can be hard to do in a classroom lecture. In this essay, therefore, I want to break down some of the sentences of one of my favorite novels, Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited, and hopefully try and understand how Waugh successfully links rhythm to meaning so effectively.

Why Brideshead? Aside from my own personal taste, I think Waugh’s magnum opus possesses a certain classical spirit that makes it an ideal book through which to close-read syntax and rhythm. Waugh is not an experimental writer, and his sentences follow traditional grammatical rules, which means that his skill comes from a deeper and more subtle understanding of the way meaning is conveyed by the arrangement of clauses and modifiers.

More than that, the beauty of these traditional sentences reflects Waugh’s larger preoccupations in the novel, in which Charles Ryder, our protagonist, also comes to prefer old-fashioned ideas of beauty to modern aesthetic values. In a particularly evocative scene during which he dines with the boorish businessman Rex Motram, Charles describes the wine they’re drinking as “serene and triumphant, a reminder that the world was an older and better place than Rex knew, that mankind in its long passion had learned another wisdom than his.” Waugh’s own sentences, with their timeless elegance, reflect this same ancient wisdom.

The first sentence I want to look at occurs towards the beginning of the novel, in the first chapter, when Charles is remembering his time at Oxford:

Oxford — submerged now and obliterated, irrecoverable as Lyonnesse, so quickly have the waters come flooding in — Oxford, in those days, was still a city of aquatint. In her spacious and quiet streets men walked and spoke as they had done in Newman’s day; her autumnal mists, her grey springtime, and the rare glory of her summer days — such as that day — when the chestnut was in flower and the bells rang out high and clear over her gables and cupolas, exhaled the soft vapours of a thousand years of learning.

This sentence is a somewhat famous depiction of Oxford and conveys some of the nostalgia that makes Birdeshead so iconic. The first thing many people associate with the novel, after all, is this kind of lush, almost overwrought depiction of life at Oxford, even though most of the novel takes place after Charles has graduated. It is ultimately through sentences such as this one that Waugh is able to create such a memorable romanticized and nostalgic tone.

Let’s begin by looking at the opening sentence. If we shed the parenthetical modifiers, we’re left with this basic independent clause: “Oxford in those days was still a city of aquatint.” We’ll come back shortly to the modifying descriptions in the parenthetical phrase, since they are essential for the feel of the sentence, but for now let’s linger on the word “aquatint.” Technically, the term is a reference to an eighteenth-century printmaking technique, a method that had become obsolete even before the invention of photography, which already gives the description a nostalgic quality. But since our focus here is on rhythm, I want to underscore the sound of the word “aquatint.” “A city of aquatint.” Waugh could have chosen another word, another old printmaking technique, lithography perhaps, but listen to the difference in sound and rhythm. “A city of lithography.” It doesn’t have the same ring, does it? Part of it comes from the stresses on the word “aquatint” — a stressed syllable followed by two unstressed syllables, what in poetry is called a “dactyl.” Notice how this dactylic rhythm recurs in key places throughout this passage: LYonnesse, AQuatint, NEWman’s day, auTUMnal mists, SUMmer days, CUpolas. There is something about this three-syllable metrical foot that creates a different rhythm to the standard iambic pentameter of ordinary speech, something slightly heightened and musical that carries the mind up and back to an older time. When Waugh sinks into a lyrical mode, he often lengthens not just his sentences but also his syllables to create that more nostalgic sound. “Aquatint.” It is the perfect word for the tone he wants to strike.

Now let’s turn to the modifying phrase in between the dashes: “submerged now and obliterated, irrecoverable as Lyonnesse, so quickly have the waters come flooding in.” On the level of literal meaning, the phrase describes how Oxford for the older Charles is gone, much like Lyonnesse, the mythical kingdom from the story of Tristan and Iseult. The allusion of course heightens the romanticism of the sentence, associating Oxford with a kingdom from a story about tragic love and yearning, but more importantly notice how the structure of the sentence, the way this clause is inserted in the middle, reflects its content. Like Oxford and like mythical Lyonnesse, this modifying phrase is itself “submerged” in the sentence, flooded by the surrounding clause.

The rhythmic effect of this sentence on a reader, meanwhile, is to force us to pause. The grammar of any sentence demands closure, demands a concluded independent clause with an active verb — but we don’t get the active verb until the end of the sentence, until the word “was.” This long parenthetical description, therefore, creates, rhythmically, a kind of arrested feeling, reflecting the arrested feeling Charles must be experiencing as he remembers his days at Oxford. Like Charles, we too are being held back as we read the sentence, held back by the memory of Oxford. The progress of the sentence stops for us just as time stops for Charles.

Additionally, let’s take note of the two multisyllabic words that follow one another: “obliterated, irrecoverable.” The rhythm of each word is similar, though not identical, and it creates an association — Oxford, Waugh suggests, is irrecoverable because it is obliterated. Of course, on a literal level Oxford is not obliterated: it’s still there today, with many of its buildings dating back to Medieval times. But of course, Waugh is not talking about the literal Oxford but instead the Oxford of his memory, the Oxford of aquatint, obliterated by the changing world. Look at that final clause, “so quickly have the waters come flooding in,” the way the words spill out after two shorter modifying phrases, mimicking the way Waugh felt his memory of Oxford was suddenly flooded by the change brought on by World War II.

The same kind of pause in overall momentum occurs in the second half of the second sentence of the passage: “her autumnal mists, her grey springtime, and the rare glory of her summer days — such as that day — when the chestnut was in flower and the bells rang out high and clear over her gables and cupolas, exhaled the soft vapours of a thousand years of learning.” The active verb in this sentence is “exhaled,” but notice that our subject is not a simple word but a series of more complex phrases. What “exhale[s] the soft vapors of a thousand years of learning?” The answer is Oxford’s “autumnal mists” and “grey springtime” and “the rare glory of her summer days.”

This list of subjects themselves is already quite lengthy and creates the same sing-song nostalgic rhythm we identified earlier — but beyond that, we also have another lengthy subordinate clause separating the subjects from their verb “exhaled.” The description of the chestnuts and the bells once again forces us to pause before we can conclude the sentence with the active verb — and it is thus as if we are there, noticing the flowering chestnuts and listening to the clear bells. The sentence’s grammar and rhythm force us to pause and experience Oxford as Charles experiences it.

This opening description therefore, introducing us to Charles’s Oxford, carries in the very structure of its clauses the nostalgia that suffuses this entire section of Waugh’s novel. That elevated, nostalgic, romantic tone isn’t created by accident but through a careful arrangement of the sentence’s syntax. Imagine, for example, if the held-back quality was absent from these sentences, if instead of forcing the reader to pause and hold in a breath before “exhaling,” the sentence was written more directly, with active verbs following closely after their subjects:

Oxford was submerged now and obliterated, irrecoverable as Lyonnesse, so quickly have the waters come flooding in, but in those days, it was still a city of aquatint. In her spacious and quiet streets men walked and spoke as they had done in Newman’s day; her autumnal mists, her grey springtime, and the rare glory of her summer days exhaled the soft vapours of a thousand years of learning, and on that day the chestnut was in flower and the bells rang out high and clear over her gables and cupolas.

I have simply rearranged the clauses here and added an active verb when necessary to eliminate the parenthetical and the subordinate clauses that divide the subjects of the second sentence from the verb exhaled. The sentences are still beautiful, of course, lyrical, lovely, since the images Waugh chose are still present — but notice how this simple rearrangement eliminates the tension from the sentences, the held-in quality that makes each phrase feel like in an intake of breath that you hold for an extra moment before the “exhale.” Nostalgia, after all, is not just pleasure but carries with it a little jolt of pain, and thus these sentences need that tension, that long inhale before the release. If they were simply beautiful and descriptive, as in the second example, they wouldn’t carry the same emotional weight.

Now, let’s turn to another sentence from the novel. Later in the first chapter, after Charles has been invited to Sebastian’s rooms for a luncheon party, we get the following description:

But I was in search of love in those days, and I went full of curiosity and the faint, unrecognized apprehension that here, at last, I should find that low door in the wall, which others, I knew, had found before me, which opened on an enclosed and enchanted garden, which was somewhere, not overlooked by any window, in the heart of that grey city.

Here we have what is known as a cumulative sentence: a sentence pattern in which the independent clause appears first and is followed by a trailing succession of modifiers and subordinate clauses. The rhythmic effect of many cumulative sentences is different from the held-back tension of parenthetical phrases and subordinate clauses and modifiers that interrupt an independent clause — instead, a good cumulative sentence creates a sense of expansion, a gradual widening out of scope and perspective as more and more details are added to the sentence.

In this sentence, we begin with a simple declaration that Charles “was in search of love in those days” and this frames the entire sentence around the concept of love and forces us to read what follows in the context of this desire. By this point in the novel, we may already have picked up on the subtle notes of homoerotic desire in Charles and Sebastian’s friendship, and whether we choose to read Charles as a gay character or not, we understand that he is different from others. Oxford, for all its charms, has not spoken to him as directly as he had hoped, and he is still searching for a truer experience of life than the ambitious striving of others around him.

Now, as the sentence continues, notice the way it creates and then releases tension just as Charles finds the “low door in the wall” that leads him to the “enchanted garden” — “and I went full of curiosity and the faint, unrecognized apprehension that here, at last, I should find that low door in the wall…” The phrase “full of curiosity” is a complete phrase, and the clause could end there and be grammatically sound — but the sentence continues, and here the rhythm adds a bit of tension. In addition to curiosity, Charles is full of “the faint, unrecognized apprehension that here, at last…” In these words, tension builds, because the clause is not complete. Remember, rhythmic tension in a sentence can be built by holding back the conclusion of a clause, the final word that would mark the end of the predicate; by delaying that ending, Waugh is building some tension in what has, up to this point, been a relatively balanced sentence. And how does this tension resolve and release? After the phrase “at last,” two little words that lengthen the sentence just a little bit longer and build just a little more tension, suggesting a climactic release will follow, he comes upon a “low door in the wall.” Now the grammar of the clause is complete, and rhythmically the tension is released. We could end the sentence here if we wanted.

Instead, however, at this point, the cumulative aspect of the sentence begins. Now, Waugh starts to add clauses and modifiers to his description of the metaphorical “low door in the wall” — and in doing so, he creates a rhythmic effect that mirrors Charles crouching down, entering the low door, and then emerging into a vast new space, the metaphorical “enchanted garden” that stands for everything he will experience because of his meeting with Sebastian — a new aesthetic view of things, a rarefied sense of life, and of course, love, the thing he has been searching for. What Charles finds behind that door is something too vast and significant to fully describe, and instead Waugh opts for the metaphor of an enchanted garden, a metaphor so full of Biblical and Arcadian meaning. Rhythmically, meanwhile, Waugh allows us to feel the scope and size of what Charles finds on the other side of the low door by keeping the sentence going, by adding new clauses and modifiers, all structured around three “which” statements: “which others, I knew, had found before me, which opened on an enclosed and enchanted garden, which was somewhere, not overlooked by any window, in the heart of that grey city.”

First, “which others, I knew, had found before me” — a simple phrase, with simple words, nothing multisyllabic and complex here but instead direct, clear, perhaps matching the clarity of what Charles is feeling, the simple but profound experience of realizing that you are not the first to have a certain experience. Is this a veiled reference to Charles’ sexuality? Perhaps. Or perhaps it is simply Charles reflecting on the rarefied aesthetic world he is about to enter. He knows he is part of a tradition of others who have made a similar discovery and conveys that self-awareness as simply as he can.

Second, “which opened on an enclosed and enchanted garden” — the key clause of the whole sentence, the clause that brings meaning to the whole thing. There is at first a seeming paradox in this clause, tension between the word “opened” and “enclosed.” “Opened” suggests vastness and mirrors the way the sentence opens after Charles goes through the door, whereas “enclosed” suggests something contained and limited. But in a way, you could argue that this is a description of all long sentences — any sentence that is longer than average can be thought of as an “enclosed” garden that you nevertheless “open” yourself into. A sentence is enclosed because there is of course a limit, somewhere down the road you know the period will come, but until then, you can revel in the open space of the clauses and modifiers. Like a garden, a sentence is an “enchanted” space. Our experience of this sentence thus mirrors Charles’ experience of the metaphorical garden — an Arcadian paradise that in the second half of the novel will become a symbol of something lost, a symbol of a feeling he’s longing to recover.

Lastly then, “which was somewhere, not overlooked by any window, in the heart of that grey city” — an interesting clause, because we seem to zoom out now, beyond the confines of the garden, as if Waugh’s sentence is a camera pulling back and reminding us of the larger setting. The use of the word “somewhere” is telling partly for its vagueness — as if Charles is acknowledging that he doesn’t know exactly where this metaphorical enchanted garden is located, and if pressed, he may have difficulty finding it again. The phrase “not overlooked by any window” meanwhile, confirms the secretive, hidden nature of the world Charles has discovered, this new friendship and all it signifies. And then of course, the modifying phrase to conclude the long sentence, “in the heart of that grey city,” a final string of simple monosyllables to underscore the clarity of feeling Charles is experiencing. It is no accident that we return to the word “heart” and all its connotations of love, because as Charles indicated at the beginning of the sentence, he was searching for love. Perhaps, the sentence suggests, he has found it now, as he moves through the low door and into the garden.

How far we have come in a single sentence — beginning with a quest for love and ending in the heart.