Biographers From England

"In truth there is no bodily or mental evil to which flesh is heir which this author cannot describe most feelingly—The evils consequent upon ever manufacturing or over population or both conjoined and acting as cause and effect—the misery and the hateful passions engendered by the love of gain and the accumulation of riches, and the selfishness and want of thought and want of feeling in master manufacturers are most admirably described and the consequences produced on the inferior class of employed or unemployed workmen are most ably shewn in action."

"[P]eople on Turkey carpets, with their three meat meals a-day, are wondering, forsooth, why working men turn Chartists and Communists. Do they want to know why? Then let them read Mary Barton. Do they want to know why poor men, kind and sympathising as women to each other, learn to hate law and order, Queen, Lords and Commons, country-party, and corn-law leaguer, all alike—to hate the rich, in short? Then let them read Mary Barton. Do they want to know what can madden brave, honest, industrious North-country hearts, into self-imposed suicidal strikes, into conspiracy, vitriol-throwing, and midnight murder? Then let them read Mary Barton. Do they want to know what drives men to gin and opium, that they may drink and forget their sorrow, though it be in madness? Let them read Mary Barton. Do they want to get a detailed insight into the whole ‘science of starving,’—‘clemming,’ as the poor Manchester men call it? Why people ‘clem,’ and how much they can ‘clem’ on; what people look like while they are ‘clemming’ to death, and what they look like after they are ‘clemmed’ to death, and in what sort of places they lie while they are ‘clemming;’ and who looks after them, and who—oh, shame unspeakable!—do not look after them while they are ‘clemming;’ and what they feel while they are ‘clemming,’ and what they feel while they see their wives and their little ones ‘clemming’ to death round them; and what they feel, and must feel, unless they are more or less than men, after all are ‘clemmed’ and gone, and buried safe out of sight, never to hunger, and wail, and pine, and pray for death any more forever? Let them read Mary Barton. Lastly, if they want to know why men learn to hate the Church and the Gospel, why they turn sceptics, Atheists, blasphemers, and cry out in the blackness of despair and doubt, ‘Let us curse God and die,’ let them read Mary Barton."

"Mrs. Gaskell likewise published some sketches of life in a small country town, which were contributed to Household Words under the title of Cranford; it is the purest piece of humoristic description that has been added to British literature since Charles Lamb."

"Madame George Sand said, some months ago, in conversation with an English friend, "Mrs. Gaskell has done what neither I nor other female writers in France can accomplish—she has written novels which excite the deepest interest in men of the world, and which every girl will be the better for reading.""

"Talk of the "imperial decay" of your invalid port. "Its gracious withdrawal from perfection, keeping a hint of former majesty withal, as it hovers between oblivion and the divine Untergang of infinite recession.""

"A good general rule is to state that the bouquet is better than the taste, and vice versa."

""Yes, but not in the South", with slight adjustments, will do for any argument about any place, if not about any person."

"How to be one up - how to make the other man feel that something has gone wrong, however slightly."

"In our small chess community in Marylebone it would be mock modesty on my part to deny that I have built up for myself a considerable name without ever actually having won a single game. Even the best players are sometimes beaten, and that is precisely what happens to me."

"There are those who believe that the sole duty of the poker gamesman is to build up his reputation for impenetrability and toughness by suggesting that he last played poker by the light of a moon made more brilliant by the snows of the Yukon, and that his opponents were two white slave traffickers, a ticket-of-leave man and a deserter from the Foreign Legion. To me this is ridiculously far-fetched, but I do believe that a trace of American accent – West Coast – casts a small shadow of apprehension over the minds of English players."

"The theory and practice of gamesmanship; or, The art of winning games without actually cheating."

"Riches is not what we have, but what we enjoy."

"The spider-men came first, and presented her Majesty with a table full of mathematical points, lines and figures of all sorts of squares, circles, triangles, and the like; which the Empress, notwithstanding that she had a very ready wit, and quick apprehension, could not understand; but the more she endeavoured to learn, the more was she confounded"

"If Atomes are as small, as small can bee, They must in quantity of Matter all agree."

"Finally, a word about liturgy. It is natural to the Germans to make a row. The torchlight, vociferous assemblies of the Hitler Youth expressed a national passion. It is well that this should be canalized into the life of the Church. But it is essentially un-English. We seek no "Sieg Heils". We pray in silence. "Participation" means God hearing our voices. Only He knows who is "participating" at Mass. I believe, to compare small things with great, that I "participate" in a work of art when I study it and love it silently. No need to shout. Anyone who has taken part in a play knows that he can rant on the stage with his mind elsewhere. If the Germans want to be noisy, let them. But why should they disturb our devotions?"

"Father Sheerin suggests that Catholic conservatism is the product of the defensive policy necessary in the last century against the nationalistic-masonic secularism of the time. I would ask him to consider that the function of the Church in every age has been conservative—to transmit undiminished and uncontaminated the creed inherited from its predecessors."

"The distinction between Catholicism and Romanità has already been stressed in the American journal Commonweal. Of course it is possible to have Faith without Romanità and to have Romanità without the Faith, but as a matter of recorded history the two have kept very close. "Peter has spoken" remains the guarantee of orthodoxy."

"George Orwell wrote in 1942 at the height of his revulsion from what he regarded as the feeble hypocrisy of English socialist journalism. If he were alive today he would no doubt derive much ironic amusement from the changed position in popular esteem of the Boers in this half-century from that of the gallant little people fighting for their homesteads and way of life to that of the villains of apartheid."

"I go to Rome for Easter (Grand Hotel) to avoid the horrors of the English liturgy."

"When I first came into the Church I was drawn, not by splendid ceremonies but by the spectacle of the priest as a craftsman. He had an important job to do which none but he was qualified for. He and his apprentice stumped up to the altar with their tools and set to work without a glance to those behind them, still less with any intention to make a personal impression on them. "Participate" – the cant word – does not mean to make a row as the Germans suppose. One participates in a work of art when one studies it with reverence and understanding."

"A typical triumph of modern science to find the only part of Randolph that was not malignant and remove it.""

"The Eastern Uniate Churches retain ancient habits of worship which are dear to them, and liturgies which in many cases are unintelligible to the faithful. Is not the time to seek similar privileges for Roman Catholics? Will you promote an appeal to the Holy See for the establishment of a Uniate Latin Church which shall observe all the rites as they existed in the reign of Pius IX?"

"I think it great cheek of the Germans to try & teach the rest of the world anything about religion. They should be in perpetual sackcloth & ashes for all their enormities from Luther to Hitler."

"One can write, think and pray exclusively of others; dreams are all egocentric."

"Manners are especially the need of the plain. The pretty can get away with anything."

"Of children as of procreation— the pleasure momentary, the posture ridiculous, the expense damnable."

"Don't hold your parents up to contempt. After all, you are their son, and it is just possible that you may take after them."

"Don't give your opinions about Art and the Purpose of Life. They are of little interest and, anyway, you can't express them. Don't analyze yourself. Give the relevant facts and let your readers make their own judgments. Stick to your story. It is not the most important subject in history but it is one about which you are uniquely qualified to speak."

"A lady in Hempstead, N.Y, asks me whether I consider my characters “typical.” No, Mrs. Schultz, I do not. It is horrible of you to ask. A novelist has no business with types; they are the property of economists and politicians and advertisers and the other professional bores of our period. The artist is interested only in individuals. The statesman who damned the age with the name “the Century of the Common Man” neglected to notice the simple, historical fact that it is the artists, not the statesmen, who decide the character of a period. The Common Man does not exist. He is an abstraction invented by bores for bores. Even you, dear Mrs, Schultz, are an individual. Do not ask yourself, when you read a story, “Is this the behavior common to such and such an age group, income group, psychologically conditioned group?” but, “Why did these particular people behave this particular way?” Otherwise you are wasting your time in reading works of imagination at all."

"“When can we expect another Brideshead Revisited?” Dear ladies, never. I can never hope to engage your attention again in quite the same way. I have already shaken off one of the American critics, Mr. Edmund Wilson, who once professed a generous interest in me. He was outraged (quite legitimately by his standards) at finding God introduced into my story. I believe that you can only leave God out by making your characters pure abstractions. Countless admirable writers, perhaps some of the best in the world, succeed in this. Henry James was the last of them. The failure of modern novelists since and including James Joyce is one of presumption and exorbitance. They are not content with the artificial figures which hitherto passed so gracefully as men and women. They try to represent the whole human mind and soul and yet omit its determining character—that of being God's creature with a defined purpose. So in my future books there will be two things to make them unpopular: a preoccupation with style and the attempt to represent man more fully, which, to me, means only one thing, man in his relation to God."

"When I gadded, among savages and people of fashion and politicians and crazy generals, it was because I enjoyed them. I have settled down now because I ceased to enjoy them and because I have found a much more abiding interest—the English language. My father, who was a respected literary critic of his day, first imbued me with the desire to learn this language, of which he had a mastery. It is the most lavish and delicate which mankind has ever known. It is in perpetual danger of extinction and has survived so far by the combination of a high civilized society, where it was spoken and given its authority and sanctity, with a thin line of devotees who made its refinement and adornment their life's work. The first of these is being destroyed; if the thing is to be saved it will be by the second."

"My father taught me that it was flagitious to leave a letter of any kind unanswered. (Indeed his courtesy was somewhat extravagant. He would write and thank people who wrote to thank him for wedding presents and when he encountered anyone as punctilious as himself the correspondence ended only with death.)"

"No.3 Commando was very anxious to be chums with Lord Glasgow, so they offered to blow up an old tree stump for him and he was very grateful and said don't spoil the plantation of young trees near it because that is the apple of my eye and they said no of course not we can blow a tree down so it falls on a sixpence and Lord Glasgow said goodness you are clever and he asked them all to luncheon for the great explosion. So Col. Durnford-Slater DSO said to his subaltern, have you put enough explosive in the tree?. Yes, sir, 75lbs. Is that enough? Yes sir I worked it out by mathematics it is exactly right. Well better put a bit more. Very good sir. And when Col. D Slater DSO had had his port he sent for the subaltern and said subaltern better put a bit more explosive in that tree. I don't want to disappoint Lord Glasgow. Very good sir. Then they all went out to see the explosion and Col. DS DSO said you will see that tree fall flat at just the angle where it will hurt no young trees and Lord Glasgow said goodness you are clever. So soon they lit the fuse and waited for the explosion and presently the tree, instead of falling quietly sideways, rose 50 feet into the air taking with it ½ acre of soil and the whole young plantation. And the subaltern said Sir, I made a mistake, it should have been 7½ not 75. Lord Glasgow was so upset he walked in dead silence back to his castle and when they came to the turn of the drive in sight of his castle what should they find but that every pane of glass in the building was broken. So Lord Glasgow gave a little cry and ran to hide his emotions in the lavatory and there when he pulled the plug the entire ceiling, loosened by the explosion, fell on his head. This is quite true."

"I had warned my father that my viva might mean a second. It meant a third, and I was overcome with regret, not, I am ashamed to say, for the giddy nights, but for the sober ones. I had not done much work, but I had done some. Had I known I was only to get a third I would not have wasted my time."

"I believe we are in danger of a...stultifying use of the word "Fascist"... When rioters are imprisoned it is described as a "Fascist sentence"; the Means Test is Fascist; colonization is Fascist; military discipline is Fascist; patriotism is Fascist; Catholicism is Fascist; Buchmanism is Fascist; the ancient Japanese cult of their Emperor is Fascist; the Galla tribes' ancient detestation of theirs is Fascist; fox-hunting is Fascist... Is it too late to call for order?"

"[1935] is a year which must always be a memory of bitter humiliation to Englishmen of every shade of political colour. Never, since the American War of Independence, has our prestige in the world fallen so low. The lessons of that year have been emphasized often enough; that popular sympathies have no place in diplomacy; that a private, ironically called a "free" press, of the kind which flourishes in France, England and the United States...is the worst possible guide to popular sympathies; that law without force is no law at all; that justice capriciously applied is no justice. A detailed examination of the events of that year reveals every weakness in the present political situation. The results of English diplomacy are already apparent. Italy and Germany who in 1934 seemed irreconcilable opponents are now in close and formidable alliance and England is left to seek her friends among nations distracted to the point of impotence by internal dissension... We all see the result and are appalled; few trouble to probe farther and enquire into the false ideas which have exposed us to shame. We prefer to harbour a grievance and vent our rage in moral lessons to our neighbours, eagerly accepting any extravagant report which will confirm our belief that foreigners as usual have behaved like cads."

"I know Spain only as a tourist and a reader of the newspapers. I am no more impressed by the "legality" of the Valencia Government than are English Communists by the legality of the Crown, Lords and Commons. I believe it was a bad Government, rapidly deteriorating. If I were a Spaniard I should be fighting for General Franco. As an Englishman I am not in the predicament of choosing between two evils. I am not a Fascist nor shall I become one unless it were the only alternative to Marxism. It is mischievous to suggest that such a choice is imminent."

"1910–11 was a time of the wildest uncertainty and political ferment. True, those good old politicians who still figure in the cartoons were already with us, but in what different guise! Our die-hard Mr Winston Churchill was the radical Home Secretary; Mr Ramsay MacDonald was preaching class war with something very near to verbal coherence; Mr Lloyd George, whom frequent photographs have endeared to us as a benevolent landed proprietor, was inveighing against the privileges of the gentry in terms which might have been translated direct from Danton or Robespierre."

"It is one of the facts of history that it is impossible for two peoples of widely different culture to live peaceably side by side. Sooner or later one must absorb the other. It is not necessarily the highest culture which survives. It is the more virile. Early history is full of records of advanced and fine cultures being absorbed by barbarians. Lately – but only very lately, in the last two centuries – the tale has been reversed and we have seen, one by one, the lower civilizations falling to the higher. We have come to accept this as a universal law, when, in point of fact, it is due to the accident that our own civilization has taken the form, that invention has given new physical strength to counterbalance the loss in virility."

"William Wilberforce was inflated by the true nineteenth-century arrogance of thinking that a little local uplift could reverse the development of centuries. Slave raiding has from remotest times been the hobby of the warrior tribes of Africa: slave ownership has been one of the postulates of every civilization. British wealth and British sentiment were strong enough to upset a system which, like any other, had abuses but also many redeeming virtues, but British intelligence was not up to anticipating the problem it created."

"It is not the state of slavery so much as the process of enslavement that is intolerable: and it is worth noting that the European slave trade was principally for the transport of people already enslaved. That is to say, the traders purchased captives from the warrior tribes. Undoubtedly the trade stimulated the raiding, but free blacks first captured other free blacks and then sold them to the whites."

"None of the great movements of the nineteenth century is more typical of its age than that for the freeing of the slaves. It depended on all those fallacies that are being abandoned today: the idea of a perfectible evolutionary man, of a responsible democratic voter, of the beneficial effect of mechanization, and, above all, on sentimental belief in the basic sweetness of human nature."

"There are always honourable exceptions in any general racial condemnation, and, heaven knows, the white people of the north have not made such a success of their own civilization that they can afford any extravagance of phrase. But it is not too much to say that in general character the descendants of the Negro slaves in the British Empire are a thriftless and dissolute lot. It is an unexpected development from the simple, woolly-headed, golden-hearted Bible-reading old darky that was held up as an example to European subscribers – the good old Uncle Tom who was to grow in the air of freedom into an educated, prudent and pious family man and citizen. The sugar plantations have been ruined or mechanized, and the Negroes, instead of following the example of the indentured coolies and becoming small proprietors, working long hours in the country, drift to the intermittent employment of the towns. They have proved quite unfit for retail trade: they are clumsy mechanics, a superstitious and excitable riff-raff hanging round the rum shops and staring listlessly at the Chinese, Madeiran and East Indian immigrants, who outstrip them in every branch of life. In Liberia, where they have been put in political power, they have erected a rigid racial bar between the immigrant and the aboriginal Negroes, and have introduced a system of forced labour more onerous than the slavery from which they were themselves freed."

"In fact, the real problem with the thesis of A Genealogy of Morals is that the noble and the aristocrat are just as likely to be stupid as the plebeian. I had noted in my teens that major writers are usually those who have had to struggle against the odds — to "pull their cart out of the mud," as I put it — while writers who have had an easy start in life are usually second rate — or at least, not quite first-rate. Dickens, Balzac, Dostoevsky, Shaw, H. G. Wells, are examples of the first kind; in the twentieth century, John Galsworthy, Graham Greene, Evelyn Waugh, and Samuel Beckett are examples of the second kind. They are far from being mediocre writers; yet they tend to be tinged with a certain pessimism that arises from never having achieved a certain resistance against problems."

"Certainly one receives few impressions of any spontaneous gaiety or sweetness of nature, for which his friends remember him best, and which obviously made him such an agreeable companion. Similarly there have been few glimpses of the kindliness, or the sudden disarming gentleness, which members of his family most particularly remember."

"If future generations want to know what the second world war was like for English people, they can safely turn to Sword of Honour by Evelyn Waugh (1965), the greatest work of a great English novelist."

"The real motive force of neo-Toryism, giving it its nationalistic character and differentiating it from ordinary Conservatism, is the desire not to recognize that British power and influence have declined. Even those who are realistic enough to see that Britain’s military position is not what it was, tend to claim that ‘English ideas’ (usually left undefined) must dominate the world. All neo-Tories are anti-Russian, but sometimes the main emphasis is anti-American. The significant thing is that this school of thought seems to be gaining ground among youngish intellectual, sometimes ex-Communists, who have passed through the usual process of disillusionment and become disillusioned with that. The anglophobe who suddenly becomes violently pro-British is a fairly common figure. Writers who illustrate this tendency are F. A. Voigt, Malcolm Muggeridge, Evelyn Waugh, Hugh Kingsmill, and a psychologically similar development can be observed in T. S. Eliot, Wyndham Lewis, and various of their followers."

"Examples of his deft use of the snob-joke could be multiplied almost indefinitely. It can be said indeed that if he were not a snob, if he were not the type of man who refers frequently to "the lower orders" (as he does in Labels) and objects to the presence of natives in first-class railway carriages (as he does in Waugh in Abyssinia) he could not have written such funny books. This is an unpleasant fact; it means that the countless liberal newstatesmanish people who have laughed over these books share unconsciously these prejudices."

"The lady said, "It's no good trying to buy a paper here. That Sir William Beveridge is going to abolish want, so all the papers were sold out". Later that day or the next day I asked him to come to lunch. I was meeting with Evelyn Waugh, an old friend and famous writer. They did not get on at all well. Evelyn Waugh said to him at the end, "How do you get your main pleasure in life, Sir William?" He paused and said, "I get mine trying to leave the world a better place than I found it". Evelyn Waugh said, "I get mine spreading alarm and despondency" — this was in the height of the war — "and I get more satisfaction than you do". So he did not meet with universal acclamation, but nearly everyone admired Beveridge at that time. He was a wonderful man."

"It is impossible to imagine getting a letter from Evelyn Waugh, unless it were of the "Mr Waugh deeply regrets that he is unable to do what is so kindly proposed" sort. In the first place, one would have to have a nursery nickname and be a member of White's, a Roman Catholic, a high-born lady or an Old Etonian novelist."