Classic Pastoral Quotes

Question 1

Full of a multitude of sweet and natural and long forgotten sounds

Answer 1

Multitude = religious connotations

Polysendeton and elongated vowel sounds allow the reader to delight in Charles and Sebastian’s sensual pleasure.

Question 2

With Sebastian on a cloudless day in June, the ditches were creamy with meadowsweet and the air heavy with the scents of summer

Answer 2

Sibilance used emphasises the pleasure of their Arcadia and the pathetic fallacy further presents the idea of a Golden Age.
Looks at the senses of sight, touch and smell

Question 3

On a sheep cropped knoll under a clump of elms we ate the strawberries and drank the wine …we lit fat Turkish cigarettes

Answer 3

Classic pastoral animal locates Brideshead within the genre. The ‘golden wine’ is a classical pastoral symbol and this sees Charles and Sebastian revelling in the pleasures of otium cum dignitate. It also shows Sebastian’s relationship with alcohol before his dipsomania.

Question 4

At Sebastian’s approach these grey figures seemed quietly to fade into the landscape and vanish, like highland sheep into the misty heather

Answer 4

Firstly, Sebastian’s appearance is more flamboyant than the ‘middle course’ friends that Charles had acquired (who run the course between aesthetes and proletarian scholars). The use of sheep again locates them within the classic pastoral genre and adds a sense of innocence. Charles loses his flock and gains Sebastian.

Question 5

Opened on an enclosed and enchanted garden

That enchanted palace

Answer 5

The idea of the garden is Edenic and shows Charles’ retreat into a prelapsarian, childish and innocent epoch in his own life.

Question 6

Under the spell of Sebastian

I can see he has completely captivated you, my dear Charles.

Answer 6

Sebastian is captivating and magical, though this does make Charles’ narrative unreliable as he is clearly influenced by Sebastian’s nature - thus there is a bias that comes through in the text and the Golden Age presented is more flawed than Charles lets on.

Question 7

Below us, half a mile distant, grey and gold amid a screen of boskage, shone the dome and columns of an old house.

Answer 7

Brideshead is able to mould into the landscape and cooperate with it in order to appear beautiful. The ‘grey and gold’ also hints at the mixing of urban and the pastoral and is reminiscent of Oxford’s buildings.

Question 8

The altar steps had a carpet of grass green, strewn with white and gold daisies.

Answer 8

Man’s relationship with God is presented as being in line with the aestheticism of Waugh’s youth - the chapel is a ‘monument of art nouveau’ and the decoration of the chapel places it within the classic pastoral genre.

Question 9

The windows were open to the stars and the scented air, to the indigo and silver, moonlit landscape of the valley and the sound of water falling in the fountain.

Answer 9

These long, sensory passages that are comprised os complex, lyrical sentences allow the reader to indulge in Charles’ Arcadian pleasure. The fountain is a constant for Charles, and its decay in the prologue signifies the decline of the aristocracy.

Question 10

I believed myself very near heaven, during those languid days at Brideshead.

Answer 10

Man’s relationship with God is present as a theme. Makes Charles and Sebastian’s summer at Brideshead seem like a paradise (or more accurately a Golden Age). Languid also has connotations of otium cum dignitate

Question 11

If it could only be like this always — always summer, always alone, the fruit always ripe, and Aloysius in a good temper

Answer 11

Repetition of ‘always’ elongates the sentence and mirrors how Sebastian wishes to hold onto this moment with Charles. However, by acknowledging the passage of time, Waugh shows how fleeting their youth is. Summer, ripe fruit and the teddy bear (childhood) all have ties to the classic pastoral.

Question 12

Sebastian supine on the sunny seat

Answer 12

The sibilance emphasises his languor and his indulgence in otium cum dignitate. Makes a contrast to the presentation of Sebastian in the shadows later in the novel.

Question 13

I felt a whole new system of nerves alive within me, as though the water that spurted and bubbled among its stones, was indeed a life-giving spring.

Answer 13

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Question 14

And we would leave the golden candlelight of the dining-room for the starlight outside and sit on the edge of the fountain, cooling our hands in the water and listening drunkenly to its splash and gurgle over the rocks.

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Question 15

Preparations had been going on for a week. My brother will be here. He’s a big part of the Agricultural Show.

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Question 16

I think you’d better come with me to Venice… and so we went

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Question 17

The fortnight at Venice passed quickly and sweetly — perhaps too sweetly; I was drowning in honey, stingless.

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Question 18

The garden-room became a rival to the nursery

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Question 19

It was touching to see the faith which everybody put in the value of a day’s hunting.

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Question 20

It seemed a, reminder that the world was an older, and better place than Rex knew

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Question 21

As Sebastian in his sharp decline seemed daily to fade and crumble, so much the more did Julia stand out clear and firm

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Question 22

She brought a moment of Joy, such as strikes deep to the heart on the river’s bank when the kingfisher suddenly flares across the water.

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Question 23

Figures passed silently, robed in white, on soft slippers or hard, bare soles; where the air was scented with cloves and incense and wood smoke

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Question 24

The dark water keeping pace with us, in the green shade, with the great trees towering above us and the monkeys screeching in the sunlight, high overhead among the flowers on the roof of the forest

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Question 25

Rises like a fresh young trout to the hypodermic injection of a new culture

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Question 26

My wife’s softness and English reticence, her very white, small regular teeth, her neat rosy fingernails, her schoolgirl air of innocent mischief and her schoolgirl dress… her motherly heart

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Question 27

Our two lives, so long widely separate, now being knit to one

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Question 28

A wide and golden sky, and she was thrown forward on my heart

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Question 29

The sweets of luxury; they would come, in their season, with the swallow and the lime flowers.

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Question 30

I suddenly realized that she was powerless to hurt me any more… My cuckold’s horns made me lord of the forest.

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Question 31

I have the fancy for rather spicy things, you know, not for the shade of the cedar tree, the cucumber sandwich, the silver cream-jug

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Question 32

‘Do you remember’, said Julia, in the tranquil, lime-scented evening

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Question 33

We found the world transformed; the sun had emerged; the wind had fallen to a soft breeze which gently stirred the blossom in the limes and carried its fragrance, fresh from the late rains

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Question 34

Glorifying the head and golden shoulders of the woman beside me.”

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Question 35

‘the stone balustrade of the terrace might have been the Trojan walls, and in the silent park might have stood the Grecian tents where Cressid lay that night.

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Question 36

I had not forgotten Sebastian. He was with me daily in Julia; or rather it was Julia I had known in him, in those distant Arcadian days.

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Question 37

He’s in a very beautiful place you know by the sea — white cloisters, a bell tower, rows of green vegetables

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Question 38

His intention, in view of the international situation, of returning to England and passing his declining years, in his old home

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Question 39

I had first seen it with Sebastian, the secluded valley, the lakes falling away one below the other, the old house in the foreground, the rest of the world abandoned and forgotten

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