A Companion to Brideshead Revisited

As anyone who's read this blog for a while knows, we are big fans of Brideshead Revisited  here. I am not using the royal or papal "we"; I'm referring to others as well as myself--for instance, Janet Cupo, who has pointed out to me this wonderful site. It is an exhaustive companion to the novel, basically a set of extremely precise annotations explaining...well, just about everything that might be outside the everyday knowledge of the average reader, especially the American reader (along with some that are not, but that's ok).

For instance, on page twenty-one of the American edition of Brideshead, which is the opening of Chapter One, we find a reference to female visitors to Oxford drinking "claret cup." When I encounter this sort of thing I wonder only briefly what a claret cup is; I gather it's a drink containing claret, and go on reading. The Companion, however, not only explains what it is but gives us a recipe:

21 claret cup
an iced summer drink made principally from claret, brandy, citrus, and sugar. A typical recipe of the time was : 
1 quart Bordeaux wine, 2 tablespoons brandy, half a cup of Curaçao, sugar to taste, 1 quart mineral water, mint leaves, a third of a cup of orange (or orange and lemon) juice, cucumber rind, 12 strawberries. Mix all the ingredients except the mineral water, using enough sugar to sweeten to taste. Stand on ice to chill, and add the chilled mineral water just before serving.
The original idea was to hand the cup round "with a clean napkin passed through one of the handles, that the edge of the cup may be wiped after each guest has partaken of the contents thereof." (Mrs Beeton)

If I counted correctly, there are sixteen entries for page twenty-one. Some are things most people would know--for instance, what a gable is. Others are things of which one might have a vague notion, which can now be clarified: fools-parsley and meadowsweet are plants, obviously, but what sort of plants? And some things were for me almost totally obscure, like Eights Week, when the claret cup drinkers run wild.

I stand in awe of the labor and erudition on display here. There are even entire separate sets of annotations for the English and American editions. I have only one small complaint: it's rather unattractive, looking like a typical site created with FrontPage or something of that sort from the early days of the web. But that's insignificant in comparison to what it has to offer. The author's name is David Cliffe. I haven't been able to discover on the site anything more about him than that. But I thank him for this wonderful resource, and Janet for pointing it out to me.

Comments

[Dale Nelson]

It was only with the help of Mr. Cliffe's exhaustive notes that I was able to read Waugh's Sword of Honour trillogy.

[Mac]

Which I haven't read yet, but I'll definitely keep this in mind when I do. It's really a Waugh site, not just Brideshead--there's a button somewhere that goes to the top level.)

[Janet]

If I had seen this recipe in time I could have prepared this for our book club discussion of Brideshead last night.

AMDG

[Mac]

English sangria. Sounds really good except for the typically weird English touch: cucumber rind?!?

[Stu]

Waugh visited Spring Hill College some time back in the 50s or 60s. I'm trying to remember who told me this story, it was either John Hafner or Michael Kaffer, but it involves Waugh showing up to the reading here mildly intoxicated...

[Mac]

I think there was a piece in the paper about that a few years ago. Not so much specifically about SHC but about Waugh's visit to Mobile. I'm sure he loathed it.

[Paul]

Strangely, the Companion makes me more nostalgic for Oxford than the book itself.