The Certainty Principle

'To know and love one other human being is the root of all wisdom.'

Evelyn Waugh, Brideshead Revisited (1945)

Great Fireplace

Arches

China Landing

Aloysius et Sebastiane: adversus mundi

'It seemed as though I was being given a brief spell of what I had never known, a happy childhood, and though its toys were silk shirts and liqueurs and cigars and its naughtiness high in the catalogue of grave sins, there was something of nursery freshness about us that fell little short of the joy of innocence.'

Brideshead Revisited, Evelyn Waugh (1945)

Crimson Dining Room

Long Gallery

Private Chapel

Evelyn Waugh on Wine

'...It is a little shy wine like a gazelle.'

'Like a leprechaun.'

'Dappled, in a tapestry meadow.'

'Like a flute by still water.'

'A prophet in a cave.'

'...And this is a necklace of pearls on a white neck.'

'Like a swan.'

'Like the last unicorn.'

'Ought we to be drunk every night?' Sebastian asked one morning.

'Yes, I think so.'

'I think so too.'

‘Won’t you dine with me?’

‘Won’t you dine with me?’

‘Yes. Where?’

‘I usually go to Ciro’s.’

‘Why not Paillard’s?’

‘Never heard of it. I’m paying you know.’

‘I know you are. Let me order dinner.’

‘Well, all right. What’s the place again?’ I wrote it down for him. ‘Is it the sort of place you see native life?’

‘Yes, you might call it that.’

‘Well it’ll be an experience. Order something good.’

‘That’s my intention.’

I was there twenty minutes before Rex. If I had to spend an evening with him, it should, at any rate, be my own way. I remember the dinner well – soup oseille, a sole quite simply cooked in white-wine sauce, a caneton à la presse, a lemon soufflé.

At the last minute, fearing that the whole thing was too simple for Rex, I added caviar aux blinis. And for wine I let him give me a bottle of 1906 Montrachet, then at its prime, and, with the duck, a Clos de Bèze of 1904.

Living in France was easy then; with the exchange rate as it was, my allowance went a long way and I did not live frugally. It was very seldom, however, that I had a dinner like this, and I felt well disposed to Rex, when at last he arrived and gave up his hat and coat with the air of not expecting to see them again. He looked round the sombre little place with suspicion as though hoping to see apaches or a drinking party of students. All he saw were four senators with napkins tucked under their beards eating in absolute silence. I could imagine him telling his commercial friends later: ‘…interesting fellow I know; an art student living in Paris. Took me to a funny little restaurant – sort of place you’d pass without looking at – where there was some of the best food I ever ate. There were half a dozen senators there, too,which shows you it was the right kind of place. Wasn’t at al cheap either.

‘Any sign of Sebastian? He asked.

‘There won’t be,” I said, ‘until he needs money.’

‘It’s a bit thick, going off like that. I was rather hoping that if I made a good job of him, it might do me a bit of good in another direction.’

He plainly wished to talk of his own affairs; they could wait, I thought, for the hour of tolerance and repletion, for the cognac; they could wait until the attention was blunted and one could listen with half the mind only; now in the keen moment when the maitre d’hotel was turning the blinis over in the pan, and, in the background, twohumbler men were preparing the press, we would talk of myself.

‘Did you stay long at Brideshead? Was my name mentioned after I left?’

‘Was it mentioned?I got sick of the sound of it, old boy. The Marchioness got what she called “bad conscience” about you. She piled it on pretty thick, I gather, at your last meeting.’

‘“Callously wicked”, “wantonly cruel”.’

‘Hard words.’

‘“It doesn’t matter what people call you unless they call you a pigeon pie and eat you up.”’

‘Eh?’

‘A saying.’

‘Ah.’ The cream and hot butter mingled and overflowed, separating each glaucous bead of caviar from its fellows capping it in white and gold.

‘I like a bit of chopped onion with mine,’ said Rex. ‘Chap-who-knew told me it brought out the flavour.’

‘Try it without first,’ I said. ‘And tell me more news of myself.’

The sole was so simple and unobtrusive that Rex failed to notice it. We ate to the music of the press – the crunch of the bones, the drip of blood and marrow, the tap of the spoon basting thin slices of breast. There was a pause here of a quarter of an hour, while I drank the first glass of the Close de Béze and Rex smoked his first cigarette. He leaned back, blew a cloud of smoke across the table,and remarked, ‘You know, the food here isn’t half bad; someone ought to take up this place and make something of it.’

After the duck came a salad of watercress and chicory in a faint mist of chives. I tried to think only of the salad. I succeeded for a time thinking only of the soufflé. Then came the cognac and the proper hour for these confidences.

The cognac was not to Rex’s taste. It was clear and pale and it came to us in a bottle free from grime and Napoleonic cyphers. It was only a year or two older than Rex and lately bottled. They gave it to us in very thin tulip-shaped glasses of modest size.

‘Brandy’s one of those things I do now a bit about,’ said Rex. ‘This is a bad colour. What’s more, I can’t taste it in this thimble.’

They brought him a balloon the size of his head.He made them a warm spirit lamp. Then he rolled the splendid spirit around,buried his face in the fumes, and pronounced it the sort of stuff he put in soda at home.

So, shamefacedly, they wheeled out of its hiding place the vast and mouldy bottle they kept for people of Rex’s sort.

‘That’s the stuff,’ he said, tilting the treacly concoction till it left dark rings round the sides of the glass. ‘They’ve always got some tucked away, but they won’t bring it out unless you make a fuss. Have some.’

‘I’m quite happy with this.’

‘Well, it’s a crime to drink it, if you really don’t appreciate it.’

He lit a cigar and sat back at peace with the world; I, too, was at peace in another world to his. We were both happy.

-- Evelyn Waugh, Brideshead Revisited

Brideshead Revisited: Taking the Sun

Brideshead Revisited (Documentary)

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II

III

IV

V

To Aloysius, With Love

Aloysius the Brideshead bear
By Ewan Fletcher
02 June 2007

During his Oxford days, Lord Sebastian Flyte was seldom seen without a teddy bear firmly clasped to his richly waistcoated chest as he hurried from one drinking den to the next.

Seen by millions in the classic 1981 serialisation of Brideshead Revisited, that bear, Aloysius, became as much of a star as the effete leading men Anthony Andrews and Jeremy Irons.

In his Brideshead days with Jeremy Irons and Anthony Andrews
But now, with a big-budget, feature-length version soon to commence filming, an extraordinary hullabaloo has scattered the pigeons from literature's hushed cloisters.

One of the new film's scriptwriters, Andrew Davies, announced last week: "There will be no Aloysius. He's out."

John Mortimer, who adapted Evelyn Waugh's novel for the 1981 series, was horrified.

"Aloysius is remembered by everyone," he said. "He's an integral character to the book. Waugh wouldn't have put Aloysius in there unless he thought he was an appropriate symbol of Sebastian not growing up. I would never have dropped him."

Possibly fearing a mass boycott before filming had even started, Davies's co-writer Jeremy Brock then issued a statement saying that Aloysius would in fact make at least a brief cameo appearance.

And yet, as the rumpus raged, the ursine actor kept his head down.
Indeed, the great bear has not been seen in any of the usual celebrity haunts for many years.

While his co-star Anthony Andrews went on to forge a glittering career on the stage and small screen, and Jeremy Irons, who played Charles, became a Hollywood leading man with an Oscar under his belt, Aloysius simply disappeared.

Theories abounded as to his whereabouts. Some said he had followed his old master to Morocco where he drank himself to an early grave.

He was reportedly spotted walking arm in arm with an equally camp teddy in the Bois de Boulogne in Paris.

There was even a rumour that he'd spent his small fortune on plastic surgery to give him the assets of a polar bear.

But after an exhaustive search, The Mail on Sunday tracked him down, finding him safe and well and happily living out his retirement in the Teddy Bears Of Witney shop and museum - barely a dozen miles from his old Oxford stomping grounds.

I went to meet him, dressed suitably for the occasion in my grandfather's three-piece Savile Row tweed suit.

It does seem preposterous that Aloysius, who has just celebrated his 100th birthday, shouldn't at least be asked to reprise his role in the new film.

But age is catching up with him and he does look a bit threadbare.

He possibly wouldn't want to repeat the scene in the 1981 production when, already aged 74, he was thrown by Sebastian from an overturning wheelchair - unless, of course, a stunt double could be found.

Neither does he need the money.

Aloysius's life story is a complicated one. Made in 1907 by the Ideal Toy Company in America, he lived quietly in Maine with Euphemia Ladd, sitting for four decades on a shelf in her grocery store.

It was only when the swinging Sixties were almost over that he had his first taste of show business.

The actor Peter Bull, most famously the Russian Ambassador in Dr Strangelove, wrote a book in 1969 about his passion for teddy bears called Bear With Me.

On seeing an accompanying TV plug, Miss Ladd, who was closing down her shop, sent Bull her faithful teddy.

Aloysius, though, is really just a stage name.

For the ten years he was with Bull he was known as Delicatessen - after Miss Euphemia's profession.

But the role of Aloysius so defined him that the name stuck.

It was through his association with Bull that he was offered his careerdefining part.

The director Derek Granger was looking for "a large and rumpled bear".

He knew of Bull's collection and contacted him. The rest is televisual history.

Granger was more than pleased with his choice. He said: "Aloysius was marvellous. He was never late on set, he never bumped into other actors and was never drunk.

"Actually he continued to work when he was quite ill.

"At one stage during the 21 months of filming he bled a little straw and had to be rushed to hospital.

"Not the first time an actor has come apart at the seams."

Aloysius required still more repairs while promoting the film and, to cover his many patches, Anthony Andrews's wife Georgina, a Daks Simpson heiress, gave him one of her company's scarves, which he still wears.

After Bull's death in 1984 and a spell treading the boards of the Stratford Teddy Bear Museum, Aloysius was bought by wealthy American collectors and recrossed the Atlantic.

However, with Hollywood proving difficult to crack, his new owners - Rosemary and Paul Volpp -realised that his true home was among the dreamy spires of Oxford.

They decided to repatriate him and agreed to a $50,000 (£25,000) private sale to his present owner, Ian Pout.

Pout, a former stockbroker, whose teddy bear shop and museum was the first in the country, said: "It was a lot of money but I was very fortunate.

"Had he been sold at auction, I probably couldn't have afforded him. He is probably the best known real teddy bear in the world.

"I do love him because he is pretty battered and bruised.

"A bit of love gives bears extra character. It has with him. He looks a bit sad now but he has so much character."

However, Pout feels that the casting director of the new Brideshead should find a younger actor to play the role.

"Aloysius just wouldn't fill the part any more," he said.

"He's too fragile and I fear he wouldn't have the strength. He's an old man now."

Http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-459461/Found-Aloysius-Brideshead-bear.html#ixzz0TPqLt86z

Brideshead Revealed: Evelyn Waugh and the Secrets of Brideshead

Aloysius

Aloysius at home with Tweed scarf, biscuit tin, and bottle of Moët & Chandon. He looks as if he is just itching to commit acts of extreme naughtiness and debauchery. What do you think?

Various Wines

"I trust that you will forgive my friend. The wines were too various. It was neither the quality nor the quantity that was at fault; it was the mixture. Grasp that and you have the very root of the matter. To understand all is to forgive all."

Brideshead Revisited, Evelyn Waugh