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пятница, 25 марта 2011
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среда, 23 марта 2011
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A Note on British Titles of Rank With Special Reference to the Works of Evelyn Waugh, by Donald Greene:
All peerages are created by the sovereign (nowadays on advice of the prime minister). There are five grades of peers: in descending order of rank, duke, marquess (the spelling now preferred to the French “marquis”), earl, viscount, baron. Historically, there are five different peerages: those of England and of Scotland, creations before the union of those two kingdoms by the Act of Union of 1707, after which Englishmen and Scots raised to the peerage were peers of Great Britain; peers of Ireland, created before Ireland was united with Great Britain by the Act of Union of 1801. After that date, most new creations were peers of the United Kingdom, though a few creations of peers of Ireland still took place.
[…]
Most peerages descend by male primogeniture, but a few, mostly Scottish, together with ancient English baronies, may, in absence of a male heir, be inherited by a woman. These ladies are “peeresses in their own right.” By the Peerage Act, 1963, for the first time peeresses in their own right were permitted to sit and vote in the House of Lords, the upper house of Parliament.
[…]
Peers of England, Scotland, Great Britain, and the United Kingdom, not being minors, were entitled to membership in the House of Lords.
[…]
A peer’s wife (though referred to as a “peeress”) and children, unless they have acquired peerages in their own right, are legally commoners.
[…]
Courtesy titles. Nearly all dukes, marquesses, and earls hold other peerages of a lower grade, and their oldest surviving sons are “by courtesy” addressed by the title of the second-ranking peerage (which may not necessarily be the grade immediately below that of the head of the family). If there is more than one such subordinate peerage, the oldest son of the oldest son is addressed by the next senior title: thus the oldest son of the Duke of Devonshire is “by courtesy” Marquess of Hartington, and his oldest son is Earl of Burlington. The younger sons of dukes and marquesses are “Lord” with their given and family names. Nevertheless they remain commoners, and the actual peerage indicated by the courtesy title continues to be held by the head of the family. Many holders of courtesy titles have had successful careers in the House of Commons: for instance, the Marquess of Hartington, heir to the seventh Duke of Devonshire, who declined three offers of the prime ministry, normally held by a member of the House of Commons
[…]
Daughters of dukes, marquesses, and earls are “Lady” with their given and family names. If they marry a commoner, they substitute their husband’s family name for their own, but retain the “Lady Mary” or whatever it is. On marrying a peer, they take the normal designation of a peer’s wife.
[…]
Marquesses and marchionesses are “Most Honourable”; other peers and peeresses are “Right Honourable.” “Lord” and “Lady” may be used informally for peers of the rank of marquess and below (dukes and duchesses are never “Lord” or “Lady” So-and-so). Of course, among intimate friends, even these honorifics are dropped, and the Earl of Brideshead becomes merely “Brideshead” or “Bridey” (we are never told his first name), and Lady Julia Flyte “Julia.”
[…]
Peers, “courtesy” peers, and peeresses in their own right merely sign with their titles—e.g., “Marchmain,” “Brideshead.” Peeresses by marriage sign with their title preceded by their given name or initial—“Teresa Marchmain.” (She could never have been “Lady Teresa Marchmain.” Before her marriage, as the daughter of a high-ranking peerage family, she may have been “Lady Teresa Blank,” but on her marriage to the marquess she became “Lady Marchmain.”) “Courtesy” lords and ladies omit those titles from their signatures—“Sebastian Flyte,” “Celia Ryder”—as do ennobled actors and writers in playbills and on title pages of books
[…]
At the coronation of a sovereign, at the moment the crown is placed on his or her head, the peers and peeresses don their coronets. That of a duke is a gold circlet surmounted by stylized strawberry leaves; of marquesses by strawberry leaves alternating with balls; of earls, strawberry leaves alternating with balls raised on “points”; of viscounts, sixteen balls; of barons, eight balls. Waugh makes a slight slip when the villagers in Brideshead have to change the earl’s coronets on the bunting erected to celebrate Lord Brideshead’s marriage to a marquess’s, to celebrate Lord Marchmain’s homecoming, “obliterating the Earl’s points and stenciling balls and strawberry leaves” (Brideshead 2:5). The coronation robes of peers are scarlet, trimmed with, for dukes, four rows of ermine; for marquesses, three and a half; for earls, three; for viscounts and barons, two.
[…]
As well as the peers, the prefix “Lord” is attached to numerous official appointments. It is not a personal designation (except for Scottish judges): a Mr. Smith who is appointed, say, Lord Privy Seal remains Mr. Smith and does not become “Lord Smith.”
[…]
Titled Characters in Waugh
Marquesses. The best known, of course, is the Marquess of Marchmain in Brideshead Revisited, whose family provides a great deal of the novel’s plot. His oldest son and heir bears the courtesy title of Earl of Brideshead (we are never told his Christian name); after his father’s death he succeeds as Marquess. The other children, Lord Sebastian, Lady Julia, and Lady Cordelia, figure prominently in the novel. After her marriage to Mr. Rex Mottram, Lady Julia Flyte becomes Lady Julia Mottram, but after their divorce resumes her name of Lady Julia Flyte. Waugh apparently first planned to make the head of the family an earl, in which case the younger son would have been not “Lord” but “the Honourable” Sebastian Flyte, although Ladies Julia and Cordelia would retain those honorifics. Waugh may have been influenced by the Marquess of Steyne (stain?) in Thackeray’s Vanity Fair, whose family circumstances closely resemble those of Lord Marchmain’s: the Marquess a cynical, worldly, amoral man, estranged from his devoutly Catholic Marchioness, with two sons, the elder, the Earl of Gaunt, detesting and detested by his father, the younger, Lord George Gaunt, eventually becoming insane.
On his deathbed, Lord Marchmain reflects on the history of the peerages in his family. Speaking of the ancient family tombs, he remarks, “We were knights then, barons since [the battle of] Agincourt [1415]; the larger honours came with the [Protestant King] Georges. They came the last and they’ll go the first; the barony descends in the female line; when Brideshead is buried—he married late [1st edition; the 2nd substitutes, more accurately, “when all of you are dead”]—Julia’s son will be called by the name his fathers bore before the fat days” (Brideshead 2:5). An interesting point of peerage law: the Marquessate and Earldom, descending in the male line, will become extinct. If Julia and Cordelia survive the childless Brideshead, the ancient Barony will fall into abeyance between the two daughters; if Julia should survive Cordelia, she would become the Baroness Flyte (or whatever the title is) in her own right, and her son (by whom, one wonders) would inherit the Barony after her death.
Earls. Perhaps unexpectedly, a historical Earl has a tiny cameo role in Brideshead. Lord Marchmain, on his deathbed, having the daily newspaper read to him in 1939 and reminiscing, remarks “Irwin … I knew him—a mediocre fellow” (2:5). The reference is to Edward Wood (1881-1959), Earl of Halifax, foreign secretary in the Cabinet of Neville Chamberlain and a supporter of “appeasement,” Winston Churchill’s chief rival for the prime ministry in 1940, and later ambassador to the United States. Lord Marchmain contemptuously refers to him by his earlier title, Lord Irwin, conferred when he was appointed viceroy of India and through his actions created much controversy.
Viscounts. “Boy,” Viscount Mulcaster, and his sister Lady Celia, who marries Charles Ryder (their family name is not disclosed), are probably children of an earl (or conceivably duke or marquess). Mulcaster’s Viscountcy must be a courtesy title; if it were a substantive one and he were head of the family, his sister would not be “Lady Celia” but merely “the Honourable Celia.”
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A Kinder, Gentler Look at Rex Mottram, by Din Bittner:
In describing one of Rex’s good qualities, it occurs to me to turn to another of my favorite novels, The Razor’s Edge by Somerset Maugham, in which the character of Elliott Templeton is described by means of the French word “serviable.” Maugham says the equivalent word “serviceable” is archaic in English but that “serviable” is still a perfectly good French word, which means “helpful, obliging, and kind.” This is a good description of Rex.
"Lindsay-Hogg said, “Oh, to hell with it. Why don’t we just shoot the book?” So they scrapped..."
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“Lindsay-Hogg said, “Oh, to hell with it. Why don’t we just shoot the book?” So they scrapped Mortimer’s material and set about writing a new sсript from scratch.”
- The Inside Story of John Mortimer’s Brideshead sсript
Graham Lord, John Mortimer: The Devil’s Advocate, the Unauthorized Biography. 2005. London: Orion, 2006. 400 pp.
- The Inside Story of John Mortimer’s Brideshead sсript
Graham Lord, John Mortimer: The Devil’s Advocate, the Unauthorized Biography. 2005. London: Orion, 2006. 400 pp.
"Lady Into Fox (1922) was a popular novel by the writer David Garnett (1892-1981), and the..."
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“
- Adam and Evelyn: “The Balance”, The Temple at Thatch, and 666
by Simon Whitechapel
Lady Into Fox (1922) was a popular novel by the writer David Garnett (1892-1981), and the undergraduate reading it is Charles Ryder in Waugh’s novel Brideshead Revisited. Earlier in the novel, when Cousin Jasper is engaged in his “Grand Remonstrance”, a crвne or skull is among the litany of his complaints about Charles’s extravagance:
‘Is that paid for? … or that peculiarly noisome object?’ (a human skull lately purchased from the School of Medicine, which, resting in a bowl of roses, formed, at the moment, the chief decoration of my table. It bore the mottoe ‘Et in Arcadia Ego’ inscribed on its forehead.)[12]
This “mottoe” mentioned so fleetingly in parenthesis in fact gives its name to the entire first section of Brideshead and has been significant in mysticism and the occult for centuries. The French painter Nicolas Poussin (1594-1665), for example, used it in 1630 and 1640 for paintings of classical figures examining a mysterious tomb. The latter painting is also known as Les Bergers d’Arcadie, or The Shepherds of Arcadia, and the tomb it shows was traced, before its recent demolition, to those heterodox regions of southern France in which various popular works have located descendants of Jesus Christ and even his mummified corpse.[13] The Knights Templar are always involved in these theories about Christ and secret societies, and is it fanciful to see some reference to them in the title of Waugh’s lost novel?
”- Adam and Evelyn: “The Balance”, The Temple at Thatch, and 666
by Simon Whitechapel
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Cousin Jasper: The Right Stuff:
Stephen Moore as Cousin Jasper in the Granada Television production of Brideshead Revisited does the character perfect justice, every inch a real “John Bull” type.
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Taking a Stroll down Tobacco Road
by David Bittner
When I took a course in Jane Austen in college, my professor said literary research had reached the heights of triviality in such topics as pipes in Dickens. This recently started me thinking that it might be good for a laugh to consider Brideshead Revisited, one of my favorite novels, in terms of smoking paraphernalia. I watched the PBS presentation all the way through and counted how many times each of the characters lit pipes, cigars, and cigarettes.
As may be no surprise, Charles Ryder set the record as the most habitual smoker. He smoked 41 cigarettes and 10 cigars and lit pipes 13 times. He was followed by Sebastian Flyte, who smoked 25 cigarettes and six cigars. Julia lit four cigarettes, Rex smoked one cigarette and six cigars, Boy Mulcaster smoked a cigar, Brenda Champion smoked two cigarettes, Ma Mayfield smoked a cigarette, Mr. Samgrass smoked a cigar, Sebastian’s French doctor smoked a cigarette, Celia smoked two cigarettes, and even the pious Father Mowbray smoked a cigarette, not to be outdone by the equally pious Bridey, who smoked a pipe once.
It’s interesting that three scenes in the novel involve smoking materials in some rather substantial way. The first occurs as Charles watches the blue-grey smoke rising from Sebastian’s fat Turkish cigarette to the blue-green shadows of foliage and smells the “sweet scents” around them. The second occurs when Charles lights a cigarette for Julia and catches a “thin bat’s squeak of sexuality.” The third occurs after Sebastian’s automobile accident as Rex tries to bribe a police officer by giving him a cigar.
One wonders how the Flytes and their friends and relatives could live such religious lives, yet live so dangerously as to be constantly polluting their lungs, to say nothing of drinking alcoholic beverages almost ritually too. So, if the family that prays together stays together—at least in spirit, and with a twitch upon the thread—I suppose it is just as true that the family that soaks together smokes together.
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Wights Errant: Suffixal Sound Symbolism in the Novels of Evelyn Waugh
by Simon Whitechapel
He who hesitates is lost. Particularly in the novels of Evelyn Waugh, where little serves to damn a character as readily as hesitation and uncertainty. In the prologue to Brideshead Revisited (1945), for example, Charles Ryder accompanies his C.O. on an inspection of the camp:
‘Look at that,’ said the commanding officer. ‘Fine impression that gives to the regiment taking over from us.’
‘That’s bad,’ I said.
‘It’s a disgrace. See that everything there is burned before you leave camp.’
‘Very good, sir. Sergeant-major, send over to the carrier-platoon and tell Captain Brown that the C.O. wants this ditch cleared up.’
I wondered whether the colonel would take this rebuff; so did he. He stood irresolutely prodding the muck in the ditch, then he turned on his heel and strode away.1
‘That’s bad,’ I said.
‘It’s a disgrace. See that everything there is burned before you leave camp.’
‘Very good, sir. Sergeant-major, send over to the carrier-platoon and tell Captain Brown that the C.O. wants this ditch cleared up.’
I wondered whether the colonel would take this rebuff; so did he. He stood irresolutely prodding the muck in the ditch, then he turned on his heel and strode away.1
The C.O. is never named, perhaps because Waugh had already bestowed his favorite suffix of contempt on another character in the prologue, Hooper, who accordingly joins Beaver, Trimmer, Atwater, Dr Messinger, Mulcaster, Corker, Salter, Lord Copper, Peter Pastmaster, Box-Bender, Pennyfeather, and Ryder among what might be called Waugh’s wights errant. The last two characters, who are partly autobiographical, prove that Waugh did not spare himself: Paul Pennyfeather, the hero of Decline and Fall (1928), suffers misfortune after misfortune because he is too trusting and unassertive, and Charles Ryder, the narrator of Brideshead, though perhaps partly shielded by his patrician “y”, is still worthy of serious blame for his behavior. After months away painting “unhealthy pictures” in South America, he returns home to continue a love-affair he has begun in mid-Atlantic with Julia Mottram of the aristocratic family who own Brideshead:
‘I’m going there tonight.’
‘Not tonight, Charles; you can’t go there tonight. You’re expected at home. You promised, as soon as the exhibition was ready, you’d come home. Johnjohn and Nanny have made a banner with “Welcome” on it. And you haven’t seen Caroline yet.’2
‘Not tonight, Charles; you can’t go there tonight. You’re expected at home. You promised, as soon as the exhibition was ready, you’d come home. Johnjohn and Nanny have made a banner with “Welcome” on it. And you haven’t seen Caroline yet.’2
Caroline is Ryder’s own new-born daughter and Ryder, not yet a convert to Catholicism, is condemning himself out of his own mouth. This is why he is not an exception to the rule that, in the novels of Evelyn Waugh, characters whose surnames end in “-er” are never positive ones: there is always something contemptible or ridiculous or in some way blameworthy about them. […]
Beside marking pauses for thought, “er” in English is also an agentive suffix: butcher, baker, candlestick-maker. Perhaps that is part of why Waugh uses it as he does: it’s appropriate for those who have to work (or, in Beaver’s case, grub) for a living. Atwater is a commercial traveller; Trimmer was a ladies’ hairdresser; Charles Ryder is a painter. Ryder’s surname is also close to “writer”, Waugh’s own profession (and in American English, it’s very close or identical).
But lack of direction and purpose are much less reprehensible in women and perhaps this is yet another condemnation of the erring men, because in one sense their names are feminine too:
M[ale] & masculine, female & feminine, are used to distinguish rhymes & line-endings having a final accented syllable (m[ale] or masculine: Now is the winter of our disconte’nt) from those in which an unaccented syllable follows the last accented one (female or feminine: To be or not to be, that is the que’stion).7
Trimmer, Beaver, Hooper, and Atwater are all feminine rhymes.
Hooper, in Brideshead Revisited, does not even rise to the dignity of effeminacy, being more like an ape than a man:
So far as he had changed at all, he was less soldierly now than when he had arrived from his OCTU [Officer Cadets Training Unit]. This morning, laden with full equipment, he looked scarcely human. He came to attention with a kind of shuffling dance-step and spread a wool-gloved hand across his forehead. … Hooper came sidling up and greeted me with his much-imitated but inimitable salute. His face was grey from his night’s vigil and he had not yet shaved.11
Mulcaster, appearing later in Brideshead, is aristocratic but absurd, and he too is often uncertain about what to do:
‘Do you think,’ asked Mulcaster, when our hostess had left us, ‘that it might be witty to give the fire alarm?’
‘Yes, Boy, run away and ring it.’
‘Might cheer things up, I mean.’
‘Exactly.’
So Mulcaster left us in search of the telephone.12
‘Yes, Boy, run away and ring it.’
‘Might cheer things up, I mean.’
‘Exactly.’
So Mulcaster left us in search of the telephone.12
[…]
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“Gay Catholic toffs –
what else to expect from a
man named Evelyn?”
- David Bader’s One Hundred Great Books in Haiku (Viking, 2005)
what else to expect from a
man named Evelyn?”
- David Bader’s One Hundred Great Books in Haiku (Viking, 2005)
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In the Autumn 2005 issue of the Newsletter, a reader inquired about the cognac served to Charles Ryder and Rex Mottram in Paris in Brideshead Revisited (1945), particularly Rex’s reasons for refusing the first bottle. Robert Murray Davis replies: “It seems obvious that Rex chooses by reputation or label rather than by substance, as he does with Julia. The cognac he desires is old, therefore good, like, in his mind, the Marchmain lineage. The modern bottle, without the image of Napoleon, and the seals, seems in his mind inferior. To put it as briefly as possible, Rex has no taste.”
David Bittner quotes a friend “who knows something about the culinary arts”: “Cognac, as it ages in the cask, absorbs the flavor of the wood, so generally it becomes darker with age. Some of the alcohol also tends to seep out of the cask and evaporates, making the brandy thicker and more concentrated (hence ‘treacly’). The reference to Napoleon simply means that Rex prefers an older cognac that has been in a cask from around the time of Napoleon. Currently many brandies are labeled ‘Napoleon’ as a gimmick. They have nothing to do with Napoleon, nor are they aged more than six years or so. They are often of inferior quality.”