Novelists From England

"Seriously, Frank Churchill, it's time you began to look after a wife. In our profession, especially, it's the greatest blessing to have some one to care for and to be petted by in the intervals of business-strife. There used to be a notion that a literary man required to be perpetually 'seeing life,' which meant 'getting drunk, and never going home;' but that's exploded, and I believe that our best character-painters owe half their powers of delineation to their wives' suggestions. Women,—by Jove sir!—women read character wonderfully."

"I look back to the six years which I passed at the with very little pleasure. The headmaster, Dr. Dyne was a capable pedagogue enough, not more than usually narrow-minded, priggish, and conventional. He was a type of the old-fashioned pedantic school, which looked upon Oxford as the "hub of the universe," thought the study of Latin and the primary object of our creation, despised modern languages and foreign countries, and believed thoroughly in the virtues of corporal punishment."

"Gone is , with its very wide open pens and cattle-hutches; and gone with it is a good deal of the scandal of driving the wretched beasts through the streets, and whacking and torturing them in the most dreadful fashion. Enormous hordes of cattle for Smithfield Monday market, then—not as now, sent up by rail, bur driven long tedious journeys—used to arrive at on the Saturday, and pass the Sunday in the fields let out for the purpose."

"In those days, too, we used to lunch at places which seem entirely to have disappeared. The is not so frequently met with as it was thirty years ago. The "alehouses" were, in fact, small shops fitted with a and a counter; they had been established by Mr. Crowley, a brewer of , on finding the difficulty of procuring ordinary public-houses for the sake of his beer; and at them was sold nothing but beer, es, bread and cheese, but all of the very best."

"But far the best of all these panoramic shows was the series exhibited at the in , called "The Overland Route," and representing all the principal places between Southampton and Calcutta. This was the work of those admirable scene-painters, and William Telbin, and was executed in their painting-rooms in , , a notorious thieves' quarter. The human figures were by , the animals by and . Such a combination of excellence had never seen, and a clear, concise, and most pleasantly delivered descriptive comment on the passing scene by , an author and journalist of the day, enhanced the success, which was tremendous."

"In the five centuries since Columbus discovered the New World, savagery has been part of American life. There has been the violence of conquest and resistance, the violence of racial difference, the violence of civil war, the violence of bandits and gangsters, the violence of lynch law, all set against the violence of the wilderness and the city."

"One can only hope … that the countryman will say to the townsman, Go on making your laws and systems of education for your own children, who will live as you do indoors; while I shall devise a different one for mine, one which will give them hard muscles and teach them to raise the and pork and cultivate the potatoes and cabbages on which we all feed."

"… A friend once confessed to me that he was always profoundly unhappy at sea during long voyages, and the reason was that his sustaining belief in a superintending Power and in immortality left him when he was on that waste of waters, which have no human associations. The feeling, so intense in his case, is known to most if not all of us; but we feel it faintly as a disquieting element in nature of which we may be but vaguely conscious."

"... The gardener is usually attended by a friendly robin, and when he turns up the soil the bird will come down close to his feet to pick up the small grubs and worms. Is it not probable that the tameness of the tame young robin so frequently met with is, like that of the robin who keeps company with the gardener or woodman, an acquired habit; that the young bird has made the discovery that when a person is moving about among the plants, picking fruit perhaps, lurking insects are disturbed at the roots and small spiders and s shaken from the leaves? We are to the robin what the cow is to the and the sheep to the —a food finder."

"The has the distinction of being the smallest British bird; it is also one of the most widely distributed, being found throughout the United Kingdom. Furthermore, it is a resident throughout the year, is nowhere scarce, and in many places is very abundant. Yet it is well known only to those who are close observers of bird life. The gold crest is not a familiar figure, owing to its smallness and restlessness, which exceed that of all the other members of this restless family of birds, and make it difficult for the observer to see it well. Again, it is nearly always concealed from sight by the foliage, and in winter it keeps mostly among the evergreens, and at all times haunts by preference pine, fir, and yew trees. In the pale light of a winter day, more especially in cloudy weather, it is hard to see the greenish, restless little creature in his deep green bush or tree. Standing under, or close to, a wide-spreading old yew, half a dozen gold crests flitting incessantly about among the foliage in the gloomy interior of the trees look less like what they are than the small flitting shadows of birds."

"From the distance at intervals came the piercing cries of the ... sounding like bursts of hysterical laughter. ... This bird, which is about as large as a , selects a low thorny bush with stout wide-spreading branches, and in the center of it builds a domed nest of sticks, perfectly spherical and four or five feet deep. The opening is at the side near the top, and leading to it there is a narrow arched gallery resting on a horizontal branch, and about fourteen inches long. So compactly made is this enormous nest that I have found it hard to break one up. I have also stood upright on the dome and stamped on it with my boots without injuring it at all."

"July 2nd 1902 DEAR GARNETT Thanks for writing—also for " envying " me. I'm in a cloud of by day in the woods, and the result is I smart and burn and tingle and itch all night. Are these the " delights " you would like to have! But I mix myself up in the private affairs of weasels, s, squirrels, s, s, s, s, &c. &c. and I get my pleasures that way and it more than compensates me for the pain. ..."

"... the fruit-growers remind us in each recurring spring that it would be an immense advantage to the country if the village children were given one or two holidays each in March and April, and sent out to hunt and destroy s, every wasp brought in to be paid for by a bun at the public cost. That the wasp, an eater of ripe fruit, is also for six months every year a greedy devourer of caterpillars and flies injurious to plant live, is a fact the fruit-grower ignores."

"... it is impossible for us not to love whatever is lovely, and of all living things birds were made most beautiful."

"In Greece just after the Second World War, Patrick Leigh Fermor was on a lecture tour for the British Council. The lecture was supposed to be on British culture, but he had been persuaded to talk about his wartime exploits on Crete. Leigh Fermor took sips from a large glass as he spoke and when it was nearly finished, he topped it up from a carafe of water. The liquid turned instantly cloudy: he had added water to a nearly empty tumbler of neat ouzo. A roar of appreciation went up from the audience at this impromptu display of leventeia. A quality prized in Greece, leventeia indicates high spirits, humour, quickness of mind and action, charm, generosity, the love of living dangerously and a readiness for anything. Sir Patrick Michael Leigh Fermor had leventeia in spades."

"Oh, I did enjoy myself at Kardamyli. Of course that big room, as I've written to Paddy, is one of the rooms of the world."

"I say, what gloomy tidings about the CRABS! Could it be me? I'll tell you why this odd doubt exists, instead of robust certainty one way or the other: just after arriving back in London from Athens, I was suddenly alerted by what felt like the beginnings of troop-movements in the fork, but on scrutiny, expecting an aerial view of general mobilisation, there was nothing to be seen, not even a scout, a spy, or a despatch rider. Puzzled, I watched and waited and soon even the preliminary tramplings died away, so I assumed, as the happy summer days of peace followed each other, that the incident, or the delusive shudder through the chancelleries, was over. While this faint scare was on, knowing that, thanks to lunar tyranny, it couldn't be from you, I assumed (and please spare my blushes here!) that the handover bid must have occurred by dint of a meeting with an old pal in Paris, which, I'm sorry to announce, ended in brief carnal knowledge, more for auld lang syne than any more pressing reason. On getting your letter, I made a dash for privacy and thrashed through the undergrowth, but found everything almost eerily calm: fragrant and silent glades that might never have known the invaders' tread. The whole thing makes me scratch my head, if I may so put it. But I bet your trouble does come from me, because the crabs of the world seem to fly to me, like the children of Israel to Abraham's bosom, a sort of ambulant Canaan. I've been a real martyr to them. What must have happened is this. A tiny, picked, cunning and well-camouflaged commando must have landed while I was in Paris and then lain up, seeing me merely as a stepping stone or a springboard to better things, and, when you came within striking distance, knowing the highest when they saw it, they struck (as who wouldn't?) and then deployed in force, leaving their first beachhead empty. Or so I think! (Security will be tightened up. They may have left an agent with a radio who is playing a waiting game . . . )........."

"Many thanks for both letters, which arrived two days running, a tremendous treat for Kalamata, a town nobody writes to. I think people are subconsciously repelled by the letter K. It's the reverse of the letter X, which always goes to people's heads. Perhaps if sex were spelt seks or segs there wouldn't be half so much fuss about it: nothing very glamorous about segs kittens or seksual intercourse but write `sex killer slays six' and you're in business . . ."

"All this is going on under a rush mat shelter with a table where I write at 11.00 on Sunday morning with lots of cicadas grinding away and Joan's voice up above calling to her cats — two different sets of kittens, with their clans, who are not allowed to meet, so the house is sundered by a sort of cats' Berlin Wall, dividing the house into two mews flats, as Johnny C[raxton] (or I) might say."

"I constantly find myself saying `I must write — or tell — that to Joan', then suddenly remember that one can't, and nothing seems to have any point."

"It was a time of anxiety and danger; and for our captive, of hardship and distress. During a lull in the pursuit, we woke up among the rocks just as a brilliant dawn was breaking over the crest of Mount Ida. We had been toiling over it, through snow and then rain, for the last two days. Looking across the valley at this flashing mountain-crest, the general [Kriepe] murmured to himself:Vides ut alta stet nive candidum, Soracte..."

"Germany! . . . I could hardly believe I was there. For someone born in the second year of World War I, those three syllables were heavily charged. Even as I trudged across it, early subconscious notions, when one first confused Germans with germs and knew that both were bad, still sent up fumes; fumes, moreover, which the ensuing years had expanded into clouds as dark and baleful as the Ruhr smoke along the horizon and still potent enough to unloose over the landscape a mood of - what? Something too evasive to be captured and broken down in a hurry."

"It was one of the ones I knew! I continued from where he had broken off:nec jam sustineant onus, Silvae laborantes, geluque, Flumina constiterint acuto"

"When our President first telephoned to Greece and suggested that I should have the great honour of saying a ‘few words’ on this important anniversary, I was rather alarmed; and, for several nights afterwards, between sleeping and waking, I had some nightmarish visions, curiously entangled with the adjuncts and impedimenta of SOE. I saw myself sneaking into a Special Forces Club whose appearance and atmosphere had subtly but completely changed from the snug and welcoming haven we all know: it was entirely different, too from the Royal and Ducal precincts where we are feasting tonight. The place had become a daunting and shadowy Valhalla, a club only fit for primordial heroes to drink in, and it was guarded by ogreish janitors. I sneaked in with trepidation, almost forgetting the password as I did so, leaving my coat in a grim cloak-and-dagger room and, at last, with misgiving found my place at a very unusual dining table with a commando-knife on one side of my place, a gelignite plunger on the other and a stick of plastic instead of a roll. The menu was written on a one-time pad in disappearing ink and just as well perhaps; because, between dagger and plunger lay an unappetising Teller mine with limpets and clams to follow….. The cocktails were all Molotoff; the wine glasses were abrim with hair-dye and knock-out drops; and instead of polished wood or peerless napiery, the dolefully groaning board was partly laid with old and tattered parachute material and partly with the blown-up maps of enemy-occupied territory that used to be sewn into the pre-infiltration outfits of agents about to be dropped in the dark……But worse was to come. An intimidating assembly of nightmare veterans were gathered and, as they subsided into their chairs round the eerie banquet, all the cutlery, sinister enough already, started to shift and gravitate in a hair-raising, concerted and centrifugal movement: there was a clinking and clattering. What on earth was going on? Suddenly revelation descended: everything metallic on the table had come simultaneously under siege from the scores of escapecompasses transformed into magnetic trouser-buttons as the guests sat down…….And it is only now, gazing round at fellow-members and seeing that they are not nightmare veterans at all, but friendly contemporaries, a few of them a bit older and a great many very much young than I, that these early misgivings are exorcized. There was nothing to be alarmed about at all."

"[the sale of his two trunks from the Harrods Depository] 'still aches sometimes, like an old wound in wet weather'"

"and so on, through the remaining five stanzas to the end. The general's blue eyes had swivelled away from the mountain-top to mine — and when I'd finished, after a long silence, he said: `Ach so, Herr Major!' It was very strange. As though, for a long moment, the war had ceased to exist. We had both drunk at the same fountains long before; and things were different between us for the rest of our time together."

"Here's a riddle to change the subject: what English catch-phrase, indicating someone is better than he seems, would also apply to a yacht owner whose vessel is even more dangerous than the inlet in which she is anchored? - His barque is worse than his bight."

"Meanwhile, the kittens - downholsterers and interior desecrators to a kitten - demolish all."

"THE INTERNATIONAL PRIMATE PROTECTION LEAGUE. This came, usual thing asking for money. Poor Archbishops, I thought, feeling the pinch. But it turned out to be monkeys."

"A propos of Dr Oblivion, did I ever send you my first hint of untimely forgetfulness? One is at sea, and at the same instant that one forgets something, a German submarine with a skull-and-crossbones flag surfaces, and fires a shot across one's bows. Then the lid of the conning-tower opens and the top of an admiral, with monocle and fencing scars, sticks out smiling, salutes and says, `Gut morning! That is just a sighting shot. I am Admiral von Alzheimer. Ve vill meet again!', salutes, and sinks ..."

"This day relenting God Hath placed within my hand A wondrous thing; and God Be praised. At his command, Seeking His secret deeds With tears and toiling breath, I find thy cunning seeds, O million-murdering Death. I know this little thing A myriad men will save, O Death, where is thy sting? Thy victory, O Grave?"

"Other shot forth theyr Boltes, and wyth theyr Prouerbes proceedyng from their malicious Mouthes thwited the pore Women at their pleasure."

"The common prouerbe sayth, that he which counteth before his hoste, must recken twice."

"The unhappy Baron... that Nyght had Neyther Breade nor Broth, and therefore he fared accordynge to the Prouerbe: He that goeth to bed supperlesse, lyeth in his Bed restlesse."

"Some writer has described Melbourne as Glasgow, with the sky of Alexandria; and certainly the beautiful climate of Australia, so Italian in its brightness, must have a great effect on the nature of such an adaptable race as the Anglo-Saxon. In spite of the dismal prognostications of Marcus Clark regarding the future Australian, whom he describes as being "a tall, coarse, strong-jawed, greedy, pushing, talented man, excelling in swimming and horsemanship," it is more likely that he will be a cultured, indolent individual, with an intense appreciation of the arts and sciences, and a dislike to hard work and utilitarian principles. Climatic influence should be taken into account with regard to the future Australian, and our posterity will be no more like us than the luxurious Venetians resembled their hardy forefathers, who first started to build on those lonely sandy islands of the Adriatic."

"... the Common Prouerb may be applied: the common Courtier’s life is like a golden misery, and the faithfull seruant an Asse perpetuall."

"It was Saturday morning, and of course all fashionable Melbourne was doing the Block. With regard to its "Block," Collins Street corresponds to New York's Broadway, London's Regent Street and Rotten Row, and to the Boulevards of Paris. It is on the Block that people show off their new dresses, bow to their friends, cut their enemies, and chatter small talk."

"Young men, not bein' old men," she replied, cautiously, "and sinners not bein' saints, it's not nattral as latch keys should be made for ornament instead of use, and Mr. Fitzgerald bein' one of the 'andsomest men in Melbourne, it ain't to be expected as 'e should let 'is latch key git rusty, tho', 'avin' a good moral character, 'e uses it with moderation."

"I don't like Latin," said Miss Frettlby, shaking her pretty head. "I agree with Heine's remark, that if the Romans had had to learn it they would not have found time to conquer the world."

"History was being manufactured at the rate of a sensation a week."

""Whatever you do, don’t go on to the beaches at dusk," was all he said. Then he vanished."

"Young men of the present day are very fond of running down women, and think it a manly thing to sneer at them for their failings; but God help the man who, in time of trouble, has not a woman to stand by his side with cheering words and loving smiles to help him in the battle of life."

"Raki is bad enough, but it's nectar compared with pulque."

"I was not myself on that night. The wine was in and the wit was out."

"Diplomacy," said Calton, to one young aspirant for legal honours, "is the oil we cast on the troubled waters of social, professional, and political life; and if you can, by a little tact, manage mankind, you are pretty certain to get on in this world."

"However healthy a love one may have of civilization and all its fleshpots, the best thrill of the year is when one leaves them all behind, and sets off for the unknown with a lot of lumpy luggage that contains hardly any clothes at all. It is good to feel that one has left one's little niche in the every­day world, where each one of us is assessed and tabulated to a nicety; to slough off one's everyday accepted self, and to loose oneself in the anonymity of a strange country and people, among whom one has to make good solely by the leverage of one's personality and will to win. The thrill increases till the last vestige of civilization is gone and one is at grips with the unknown, when it comes down to earth, and settles into a hard absorbing fight with primitive conditions; with the problems of health and climate and transport, with the daily struggle for food, water and trans­port, and the groping after understanding of the strange and sometimes antagonistic people one is among. All the complexities of life disappear, and one is reduced to the state, mental and physical, of a healthy animal. As long as one's "tummy" is reasonably full, and there is a prospect of somewhere safe and dry to sleep, one is perfectly, almost stupidly happy. The creature comforts of life no longer matter. For the first few days one misses one's bath most terribly, but in a short time, I am ashamed to say, one doesn't mind if one never had a bath again! Cleanliness may be next to godliness, but in the wilds it comes a long way after food and sleep, or even a good camel."

"Cease your humming; The case is "on"; Defendant's Cumming, Plaintiff's—gone!"

"Shelley styles his new poem "Prometheus Unbound," And 'tis like to remain so while time circles round; For surely an age would be spent in the finding A reader so weak as to pay for the binding!"

"An arch wag has declar'd, that he truly can say Why the Prince did not lay the first stone t'other day: The Restrictions prevented — the reason is clear; The Regent can't meddle in making a pier."

"When Anacreon would fight, as the poets have said, A reverse he display'd in his vapour, For while all his poems were loaded with lead, His pistols were loaded with paper. For excuses, Anacreon old custom may thank, Such a salvo he should not abuse, For the cartridge, by rule, is always made blank, That is fired away at Reviews."