Short Story Writers From England

"Through honeycombs of stone would now be wandering the passions in their clay. There would be tears and there would be strange laughter. Fierce births and deaths beneath umbrageous ceilings. And dreams, and violence, and disenchantment."

"Titus is seven. His confines, Gormenghast. Suckled on shadows; weaned, as it were, on webs of ritual: for his ears, echoes, for his eyes, a labyrinth of stone: and yet within his body something other – other than this umbrageous legacy. For first and ever foremost he is child. A ritual, more compelling than ever devised, is fighting anchored darkness. A ritual of the blood; of the jumping blood. These quicks of sentience owe nothing to his forebears, but to those feckless hosts, a trillion deep, of the globe’s childhood. The gift of the bright blood. Of blood that laughs when the tenets mutter ‘Weep’. Of blood that mourns when the sere laws croak ‘Rejoice!’ O little revolution in great shades!"

"“She thinks she’s a lady.” And then he grinned until the very lake seemed to be in danger of engulfment. “Oh, dear!” the poor thing. Tries so hard, and the more she tries, the less she is. Ha! ha! ha! Take it from me, Fuchsia dear, The only ladies are those to whom the idea of whether they are or not never occurs. Her blood’s all right—Irma’s—same as mine, ha, ha, ha! but it doesn’t go by blood. It’s equipoise, my Gipsy, equipoise that does it—with a bucketful of tolerance thrown in."

"At the back of their personal troubles, hopes and fears, this less immediate trepidation grew, this intangible suggestion of change, that most unforgivable of all heresies."

"Drear ritual turned its wheel."

"Withdrawn and ruinous it broods in umbra: the immemorial masonry: the towers, the tracks. Is all corroding? No. Through an avenue of spires a zephyr floats; a bird whistles; a freshet bears away from a choked river."

"The summer was heavy with a kind of soft grey-blue weight in the sky—yet not in the sky, for it was as though there were no sky, but only air, an impalpable grey-blue substance, drugged with the weight of its own heat and hue."

"Never having had either positive cruelty or kindness shown to her by her parents, but only an indifference, she was not conscious of what it was that she missed—affection."

"It was not certain what significance the ceremony held, for unfortunately the records were lost, but the formality was no less sacred for being unintelligible."

"He also knew when to stop. In the fine art of deceit and personal advancement as in any other calling this is the hallmark of the master."

"These days a passion to accumulate knowledge of any and every kind consumed him; but only as a means to an end. He must know all things, for only so might he have, when situations arose in the future, a full pack of cards to play from."

"What is Time, O sister of similar features, that you speak of it so subserviently? Are we to be the slaves of the sun, that secondhand, overrated knob of gilt, or of his sister, that fatuous circle of silver paper? A curse upon their ridiculous dictatorship!"

"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 ritual which his body had had to perform for fifty years had been no preparation for the unexpected."

"It was not possible for him to visit his library as often as he wished, for the calls made upon him by the endless ceremonials which were his exacting duty to perform robbed him for many hours each day of his only pleasure—books."

"So limp of brain that for them to conceive an idea is to risk a haemorrhage."

"Gormenghast, that is, the main massing of the original stone, taken by itself would have displayed a certain ponderous architectural quality were it possible to have ignored the circumfusion of those mean dwellings that swarmed like an epidemic around its outer walls."

"This tower, patched unevenly with black ivy, arose like a mutilated finger from among the fists of knuckled masonry and pointed blasphemously at heaven."

"It was not often that Flay approved of happiness in others. He saw in happiness the seeds of independence, and in independence the seeds of revolt."

"To live at all is miracle enough."

"It's not their fault if, in the heat Of their transactions, I repeat It's not their fault if vampires meet And gurgle in their spats."

"When Uncle Jake Became a snake He never found it out; And so as no one mentions it One sees him still about."

"This is a love that equals in its power the love of man for woman and reaches inwards as deeply. It is the love of a man or of a woman for their world. For the world of their centre where their lives burn genuinely and with a free flame."

"Leave the stronger and the lesser things to me! Lest that conger named Vanessa who is longer than a dresser visits thee."

"Each day I live in a glass room Unless I break it with the thrusting Of my senses and pass through The splintered walls to the great landscape."

"But we have seen it in the air, A fairy like a William Pear"

"O'er seas that have no beaches To end their waves upon, I floated with twelve peaches, A sofa and a swan."

"There is a kind of laughter that sickens the soul. Laughter when it is out of control: when it screams and stamps its feet, and sets the bells jangling in the next town. Laughter in all its ignorance and cruelty. Laughter with the seed of Satan in it. It tramples upon shrines; the belly-roarer. It roars, it yells, it is delirious: and yet it is as cold as ice. It has no humour. It is naked noise and naked malice."

"There he was. The infant Titus. His eyes were open but he was quite still. The puckered-up face of the newly-born child, old as the world, wise as the roots of trees. Sin was there and goodness, love, pity and horror, and even beauty for his eyes were pure violet. Earth’s passions, earth’s griefs, earth’s incongruous, ridiculous humours—dormant, yet visible in the wry pippin of a face."

"The paper is breathless Under the hand And the pencil is poised Like a warlock's wand."

"I saw all of a sudden No sign of any ship."

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

"Autumn returned to Gormenghast like a dark spirit re-entering its stronghold."

"It may be we shall know in the hereafter Why we, begetting hopes, give birth to fears, And why the world's too beautiful for laughter, Too gross for tears."

"He is the happy wanderer, who goes, Singing upon the way, with eyes awake To every scene, with ears alert to take The sweetness of all sounds; who loves and knows The secrets of the highway, and the rose Holds fairer for the wounds that briars make."

"We shall lodge at the sign of the Grave, you say; Well, the road is a long one we trudge, my friend, So why should we grieve at the break of the day? Let us sing, let us drink, let us love, let us play,-- We can keep our sights for the journey's end."

"I like Mrs. Gaskell. Why do we always call her Mrs? Elizabeth. She wrote Mary Barton. I think people are very familiar with that book. But North and South is really a very fine piece of work. A lot of North and South has that whole awful industrial growth in it, and she does naturally a lot better by her ladies than Dickens does, so it's really worth reading for that. There's a funny book called Cranford that has a lot of short things in it, but one of them is this scene where everybody is rushing down to get the paper which the next serial of either Hard Times or Bleak House is in. I felt like she must have felt a little annoyed about all that. But I like her an awful lot, and if you haven't read North and South, do."

"I have just been reading Cranford out to my mother. She has read it about five times; but, the first time I tried, I flew into a passion at Captain Brown's being killed and wouldn’t go any further—but this time my mother coaxed me past it, and then I enjoyed it mightily. I do not know when I have read a more finished little piece of study of human nature (a very great and good thing when it is not spoiled). Nor was I ever more sorry to come to a book's end."

"Both Carlyle and Charles Dickens were admirers of Mrs Gaskell and Mary Barton. For although there had been "social realist" novels before, there had been nothing quite like this... Nothing escapes her steely attentiveness: the gin palaces, the open sewers, even the sad little patches of wild flowers hanging on to scraps of dirt amidst the smoke and grime. For the first time, too, in the pages of Mary Barton the polite middle-class reader in Herne Hill or Bath could hear the voice of working-class Manchester... "Clemmed" – starved – is the word that strikes like a hammer blow over and over again in Mary Barton."

"You have contributed to our literature one of the best of Biographies, and have proved the membership of your friend to the divine family, of which such as Burns, Chatterton, and Keats are representatives."

"In Manchester, of course, it [Mary Barton] was the topic of the hour, and practically all the readers in that city were divided into two camps: those who thought the book realistic, and those who regarded it as unfairly exaggerated. The employers of labour complained of the way in which they were portrayed in its pages; and it cannot be denied that they had a grievance, for the sympathies of the authoress were so obviously with the workmen. She looked at the social problem entirely from the point of view of the poor; and, while she did not omit to indicate the faults of the lower class, she could not bring herself to depict the merits of the other. It was heart against head with her, and at this time, if she saw life largely, she did not yet see it whole. The employers seemed well-to-do and happy, and she did not endeavour to penetrate beneath the surface. The employés were poor, discontented, uncertain of work, poorly paid; they had miserable lives and terrible dwellings. What wonder she wrote with bitterness? What wonder that the woman who accompanied some real Barton and Wilson to the "home" of the miserable Davenports lost, temporarily, the sense of proportion?"

"If in Mary Barton the bias is in favour of the working classes, it must be conceded that in North and South (published seven years later) the other side of the picture is shown. Mrs. Gaskell was still as full of sympathy with the labourer, but experience had taught her much. Still puzzled by seeing "two classes dependent on each other in every possible way, yet each evidently regarding the interests of the other as opposed to their own," she realised that the manufacturers, as a class, were not mere bloated capitalists, but level-headed, hard-working men, fighting against heavy odds for their livelihood. Also, she saw more clearly that the misery of the labourers was sometimes brought about by improvidence, and that much unhappiness was caused by the tyranny of the trades-unions of that day."

"All the other novels were written with the consciousness of power, and it is easy to see that the authoress had no misgivings. They will all live long, but Cranford will never be allowed to die. Admirable as are all the rest, Cranford stands out unique, individual, not only as the masterpiece of the writer, but as an acknowledged masterpiece of English literature."

"Mrs. Gaskell...may be claimed as belonging to this town, during her infancy and early life up to the time of her marriage. There is one work of hers, Cranford, which in my judgment, while depicting life in almost any country town, is especially descriptive of some of the past and present social characteristics of Knutsford. I know that the work was not intended to delineate this place chiefly or specially, but a little incident within my own experience will show the accuracy of the pictures as applied to our town. A woman of advanced age, who was confined to her house through illness, about three years ago, asked me to lend her an amusing or cheerful book. I lent her Cranford, without telling her to what it was supposed to relate; she read the tale of Life in a Country Town; and when I called again, she was full of eagerness to say:—"Why, Sir! that Cranford is all about Knutsford; my old mistress, Miss Harker, is mentioned in it; and our poor cow, she did go to the field in a large flannel waistcoat, because she had burned herself in a lime pit." For myself I must say that I consider Cranford to be full of good-natured humour and kindliness of spirit."

"Men and women could always claim her sympathy; but her gentle heart went out to the underfed, overworked girls. Them she received at her home, always ready to listen to their troubles, advise, or teach the rudiments of education to such as could be persuaded to devote the time necessary for the acquisition of such elementary knowledge. To the end of her life she was always ready to assist, and when the great cotton famine of 1862 caused such endless misery, it was she who thought of the plan, afterwards publicly adopted, of sewing-schools to give relief and employment to the women mill-hands."

"Some errors may certainly be detected in the details of your work [Mary Barton], but the wonder is that they are so few in number and so trifling in effect. The dialect I think might, have been given better, and some few incidents set forth with greater effect, but in describing the dwellings of the poor, their manners, their kindliness to each other, their feelings towards their superiors in wealth and station their faults, their literary tastes, and their scientific pursuits, as old Job Legh for example, you have been very faithful; of John Bartons, I have known hundreds, his very self in all things except his fatal crime, whilst of his daughter Mary, who has ever seen a group of our Lancashire factory girls or dress makers either, and could not have counted Mary? Nor is Jem Wilson, and I [am] proud to say it, a solitary character in the young fellows of our working population, noble as he is, but my heart fills as I write, and I cannot go on."

"She is a very kind cheery woman in her own house; but there is an atmosphere of moral dulness about her, as about all Socinian women."

"I do not know what your literary vows of temperance or abstinence may be, but as I do honestly know that there is no living English writer whose aid I would desire to enlist in preference to the authoress of Mary Barton (a book that most profoundly affected and impressed me), I venture to ask you whether you can give me any hope that you will write a short tale, or any number of tales, for the projected pages... I should set a value on your help which your modesty can hardly imagine; and I am perfectly sure that the least result of your reflection or observation in respect of the life around you, would attract attention and do good."

"I finished reading Mary Barton last night, my feelings having become so interested in the narrative that I could not lay the book down until I had read to the end. You have drawn a fearfully true picture: a mournfully beautiful one also have you placed on the tables of the drawing rooms of the great, and good it must there effect; good for themselves, and good also I hope for the poor of every occupation. You are a genius, of no ordinary rank; I care not what the critics say, nor will I flatter you, if I know it, but truth, such as it appears to me will I dare to express, with whomsoever I may differ about it. It seems to me that you have begun a great work and I do hope you will not be discouraged from going on with it. You have opened and adventured into a noble apartment of a fine old dwelling house and on one of the English oaken pannels [sic] you have worked a picture from which the eyes cannot be averted nor the hearts best feelings withdrawn. A sorrowfully beautiful production it is, few being able to contemplate it with tearless eyes—I could not, I know."

"Economy was always "elegant", and money-spending always "vulgar and ostentatious"; a sort of sour-grapeism, which made us very peaceful and satisfied."