Novelists From England

"M——, having called to see him, and affectionately asking what sort of night he had passed, Sydney Smith replied, "Oh, horrid, horrid, my dear fellow! I dreamt I was chained to a rock, and being talked to death by Harriet Martineau and Macaulay.""

"What a dark world—who knows?— Ours to inhabit is! One touch and what a strange Glory might burst on us, What a hid universe!"

"I hope you have contradicted the story of my writing to Miss Martineau. I cannot understand how it originated except in some communication of yours to Miss M. which you intended to be serviceable to me. You must have made this communication in a moment of hallucination as to Miss M's character. Amongst her good qualities we certainly cannot reckon zeal for other people's reputation. She is sure to caricature any information for the amusement of the next person to whom she turns her ear-trumpet."

"After all, she is a trump—the only Englishwoman that possesses thoroughly the art of writing."

"Only a little over a quarter of a century ago women were allowed to enter very few remunerative occupations. In 1840, when Harriet Martineau visited this country to study its institutions, that she might be able to forecast the type of civilization to be evolved from them, she especially investigated the position of women in the young republic. She was surprised to find the occupying a very subordinate position in a country calling itself free, and to find they had entered only seven paying occupations. They were allowed to teach, to be seamstresses, which included tailoring, dress-making, and millinery; they could keep boarding-houses, enter domestic service, become operatives in factories, compositors in printing offices, and folders and stitchers in book binderies."

"The past is our cradle, not our prison, and there is danger as well as appeal in its glamour. The past is for inspiration, not imitation, for continuation, not repetition."

"An Edward's England spat us out - a band Foredoomed to redden Vistula or Rhine, And leaf-like toss with every wind malign. All mocked the faith they could not understand."

"How full and rich a world Theirs to inhabit is— Sweet scent of grass and bloom, Playmates’ glad symphony, Cool touch of western wind, Sunshine’s divine caress. How should they know or feel They are in darkness? But, oh, the miracle! If a Redeemer came, Laid finger on their eyes— One touch and what a world, New-born in loveliness!"

"Oh, for the simple life, For tents and starry skies!"

"America is God's Crucible, the great Melting-Pot where all the races of Europe are melting and re-forming!"

"The Labour Party are going to bring in a law that means you can go everywhere you want in the country. I have checked this with two people and they both said it was true. People will be able to walk into your garden and pick your flowers. It is absurd. My garden is a blaze of flowers. I don't want anyone In there."

"Like many other young girls in wartime, I read Barbara Cartland's Ronald Cartland, the life of her brother, a young, idealistic Conservative MP, who had fought appeasement all the way and who was killed at Dunkirk in 1940. In many ways her most romantic book, it was a striking testament to someone who had no doubt that the war was not only necessary but right, and whose thinking throughout his short life was "all of a piece", something which I always admired."

"No Jew was ever fool enough to turn Christian unless he was a clever man."

"I will be voting for John Major. He is getting better and better every year. He is very, very good. He now speaks far better than he did. He's a brilliant speaker. He is learning to be a real leader. He really does speak out. Look around and who else is like the old leaders like Winston? I knew Winston when he was a little boy. He gradually got stronger and stronger. John Major came to lunch with me when he got in. He asked me what he should be doing. I said take England back to what it was. We really want lo be led, and John Major is leading as he has never before."

"Scratch the Christian and you find the pagan — spoiled."

"No... the real American has not yet arrived. He is only in the Crucible, I tell you—he will be the fusion of all races, perhaps the coming superman."

"I have always found women difficult. I don't really understand them. To begin with, few women tell the truth."

"The great majority of people in England and America are modest, decent and pure-minded and the amount of virgins in the world today is stupendous."

"The right diet directs sexual energy into the parts that matter."

"France is the only place where you can make love in the afternoon without people hammering on your door."

"You are the first person who has been able to illustrate the book adequately since Tenniel, though I still argue as I think I argued with you years ago that your Alice is a little bit too much of a gamin."

"Change and growth cannot be halted, time must run on. That is the whole moral of the three books."

"[Peake's books] are actual additions to life; they give, like certain rare dreams, sensations we never had before, and enlarge our conception of the range of possible experience."

"Words were shapes and sounds to him. He saw them, as if he were listening to an unknown language, in shapes."

"“Let him play,” whispered Cheeta. “Let him make believe that he’s alive again.”"

"Once there were islands all a-sprout with palms: and coral reefs and sands as white as milk. What is there now but a vast shambles of the heart? Filth, squalor, and a world of little men."

"There was a library and it is ashes. Let its long length assemble." These words made me a writer. When I was in middle school, my mother brought home a used paperback copy of Mervyn Peake’s Gormenghast…Reading this at the age of 13, I understood that fantasy, the place I was looking for, is not to be found in dragons, ghosts, or magic wands. It resides in language. Fantasy is death by owls. It’s mourning through gesture. It’s music, incantation in half-light. An inverted heart."

"Mervyn Peake is a finer poet than Edgar Allan Poe, and he is therefore able to maintain his world of fantasy brilliantly through three novels. It (Gormenghast trilogy) is a very, very great work … a classic of our age."

"His mind fell asleep. His wits fell awake. His cock trembled like a harp-string."

"“There’s something else, Mr. Muzzlehatch.” “I’m sure there is. In fact there is everything else.”"

"“Let go of my arm, or I will scream for God.” “He never helped you. Have you forgotten?”"

"“So you thought you’d come back, my wicked one. Where have you been?” “In hell,” said Titus. “Swigging blood and munching scorpions.” “That must have been great fun, my darling.” “Not so,” said Titus, “hell is overrated.”"

"An aching to be once again in the land from which he grew gave him no rest. There is no calm for those who are uprooted. They are wanderers, homesick and defiant. Love itself is helpless to heal them though the dust rises with every footfall—drifts down the corridors—settles on branch or cornice—each breath an inhalation from the past so that the lungs, like a miner’s, are dark with bygone times. Whatever they eat, whatever they drink, is never the bread of home or the corn of their own valleys. It is never the wine of their own vineyards. It is a foreign brew."

"Pompous as only failures can be."

"The host of specifically religious suggestions and images, in a story that until now has been devoid of such concern, suggests very strongly that Peake is here referring to the Christian religion as a debasing influence. Peake’s treatment of Gormenghast’s ritual shows that he dislikes any system of values imposed on the individual from outside, offering him nothing directly relevant for himself and encouraging him in whatever weakness he possesses. So, here, the Lamb can break down but not build; despite his worshipper’s praise, he does not really understand how to keep his creatures alive. Still the Lamb glories in his power. True, in changing men he has destroyed them, denying them freedom to develop for themselves; to the Lamb, however, that is incidental to his own gratification."

"What was important, now, with her eyes bent upon him, and the shadow of a branch trembling across her breast, was the immemorial game of love: no less a game for being grave. No less grave for being wild. Grave as a great green sky. Grave as a surgeon’s knife."

"“I am a beggar.” “You are a travesty,” said Titus, “and when you die the earth will breathe again.”"

"And yet, though his eyes shone with the thrill of his discovery, he suffered at the same time a pang of resentment—a resentment that this alien realm should be able to exist in a world that appeared to have no reference to his home and which seemed, in fact, supremely self-sufficient."

"“Life must be various, incongruous, vile and electric. Life must be ruthless and as full of love as may be found in a jaguar’s fang.” “I like the way you talk, young man,” said Grass, “but I don’t know what you’re saying.”"

"“There is no point in erecting a structure,” said Muzzlehatch, taking no notice of Titus’s question, “unless someone else pulls it down. There is no value in a rule until it is broken. There is nothing in life unless there is death at the back of it. Death, dear boy, leaning over the edge of the world and grinning like a boneyard.”"

"His days were full of meaningless ceremonies whose sacredness appeared to be in inverse ratio to their comprehensibility or usefulness."

"It was when he saw the great walls looming above him that he began to run. He ran as though to obey an order. And this was so, though he knew nothing of it. He ran in the acknowledgement of a law as old as the laws of his home, the law of flesh and blood. The law of longing. The law of change. The law of youth. The law that separates the generations, that draws the child from his mother, the boy from his father, the youth from both. And it was the law of quest. The law that few obey for lack of valour. The craving of the young for the unknown and all that lies beyond the tenuous skyline."

"Art should be artless, not heartless."

"He was as young as twenty years allowed, and as old as it could make him."

"What had his memory done to her that he should now be seeing a creature so radically at variance with the image that had filled his mind?"

"He had learned that there were other ways of life from the ways of his great home. He had completed an experience. He had emptied the bright goblet of romance; at a single gulp he had emptied it. The glass of it lay scattered on the floor. But with the beauty and the ugliness, the ice and the fire of it on his tongue and in his blood he could begin again."

"The lives of the Outer Dwellers had become almost normal again. Bitterness was their bread and rivalry their wine."

"He was meaner, more irritable, more impatient for the ultimate power which could only be his through the elimination of all rivals; and if he had ever had any scruples, any love at all for even a monkey, a book, or a sword-hilt, all this, and even this, had been cauterized and drowned away."

"“You have a rough manner,” said Titus. “But you have saved me twice. Why are you helping me?” “I have no idea,” said Muzzlehatch. “There must be something wrong with my brain.”"

"For Peake, the weight of moral standards comes from their being part of a tradition, and any tradition lies outside the individual’s potential and needs. Thus adherence to a morality impedes development of the whole self and denies real maturity."