Brideshead Revisited: Stage II — Oxford & Innocence

Hertford College Oxford - Old Quadrangle 1981 Viewed from outside the college chapel, the 19th-century buildings of Hertford College's original quadrangle are seen. Earlier in 1981, Granada TV had used this location extensively in filming Brideshead Revisited. The ground floor windows 2nd and 3rd to the right of the doorway, slightly left of centre, mark the room used for external and interior views of Charles Ryder's Oxford room. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license. Attribution: Whatlep Source Wikipedia

Charles Ryder Comes of Age

Last week, we opened Brideshead Revisited at the level of memory — an older man looking back, summoned by chance to a place that once meant everything to him. Over the next ten weeks, we are following Evelyn Waugh’s own structure: five parts, six stages, tracing not only a story, but a soul.

This week we step into Stage II — Oxford & Innocence, where the novel truly begins.

Here we meet Charles Ryder as a young man, newly arrived at Oxford, full of vague ambition, aesthetic hunger, and an undefined longing for beauty and belonging.

He does not yet know what he believes, or whom he loves, or what he is being prepared to lose. Like many young men, he thinks he has come to Oxford to study. In truth, he has come to be formed.

Oxford as Eden

Waugh’s Oxford is not merely a university; it is a garden of first delights — sunlit rooms, shared meals, late conversations, wine, poetry, and the intoxicating sense that life has suddenly opened outward. Time seems endless. Responsibility is distant. Pleasure feels permanent.

Charles’s rooms, his sketching, his walks through the quadrangles — all are described with a tenderness that signals something fragile. This is innocence not in the sense f moral purity, but of unawareness. Sin has not yet announced its cost. Grace has not yet revealed its necessity.

“I had then the first, fine, careless rapture of youth.”

— Evelyn Waugh, Brideshead Revisited

The line stands at the heart of this stage. It captures the sweetness of memory without sentimentality, and the recklessness of youth without judgment.

Waugh is not condemning this season; he is remembering it — lovingly, honestly, and with the ache that comes only when innocence is lost and cannot be recovered.

Sin has not yet announced its cost. Grace has not yet revealed its necessity.

Oxford, in Waugh’s hands, becomes an Eden before the Fall.

The Entrance of Sebastian

Into this world steps Sebastian Flyte — charming, wounded, luminous, and already marked by sorrow. Sebastian is the key that unlocks Charles’s imagination and heart. Through him, Charles gains access not only to pleasure, but to Brideshead itself, to aristocracy, to a Catholic world he does not yet understand.

Sebastian is joy and tragedy intertwined. He laughs easily, drinks freely, loves deeply — and flees pain instinctively. Charles is drawn to him not because he understands him, but because he feels alive in his presence.

Here, friendship becomes formative. Love awakens before it knows its name.

Innocence Without Roots

What makes this stage so poignant is that none of it can last.

There is no discipline here, no anchor, no God at the center — only beauty, companionship, and youth. Waugh allows us to linger because memory lingers. But he also lets us sense the fault lines beneath the surface.

Charles does not yet know that a life built on pleasure alone cannot sustain suffering. Sebastian does not yet know that flight is not freedom. And neither yet knows that grace, when it comes, often comes through loss.

Why This Stage Matters

Spiritually, this is the necessary beginning.

Before conviction comes innocence. Before repentance comes delight. Before grace is understood, it is resisted or ignored.

Waugh does not mock this stage. He honors it — even as he prepares to dismantle it.

For many readers, Oxford is where they fall in love with the novel. For others, it is where they recognize their own youth — that season when life seemed endlessly promising, and God seemed politely absent.

Looking Ahead

Next week, innocence will be tested. The friendships forged here will strain. The cracks we glimpse will widen.

And the question will begin to emerge — quietly at first:

What happens when beauty is not enough?

For now, we remain at Oxford, in the sunshine, with laughter in the air — unaware that the long road home has already begun.

Reader’s Note

To experience this stage in Waugh’s own language, readers may wish to read Book I: “Et in Arcadia Ego,” Chapters 1–2, which introduce Charles Ryder’s Oxford years, his friendship with Sebastian Flyte, and the “first, fine, careless rapture of youth” that defines this season of innocence.

NEXT: Week 3: Brideshead & First Love, with Julia’s shadow already forming