Novelists From England

"If you have a sloppy religion you get a sloppy atheism."

"I suppose there has been no subtler attack upon the Christian faith devised by its enemies in these last hundred years than the attack made in the name of "comparative religion". If you pick up a book on "Atonement", and plough your way through ideas of atonement among primitive tribes, pagan ideas of atonement, Jewish ideas of atonement, Christian ideas of atonement, you will find by the end of it that atonement, for the author's mind, has ceased to have any meaning. And he has been successful, in so far as he has managed to infect your mind with the wooliness which is the leading characteristic of his own. Comparative religion is an admirable recipe for making people comparatively religious."

"It doesn't do to say that heresy produces the development of doctrine, because that annoys the theologians. But it is true to say that as a matter of history the development of doctrine has been largely a reaction on the Church's part to the attacks of heresy."

"He who travels in the Barque of Peter had better not look too closely into the engine room."

"The prevailing attitude of the speakers was one of heavy disagreement with a number of things which the reader had not said."

"Only those of us, I think, who were born under Queen Victoria know what it feels like to assume, without questioning, that England is permanently top nation, that foreigners do not matter, and that if the worst comes to the worst, Lord Salisbury will send a gunboat."

"Words are living things, full of shades of meaning, full of associations; and, what is more, they are apt to change their significance from one generation to the next. The translator who understands his job feels, constantly, like Alice in Wonderland trying to play croquet with flamingoes for mallets and hedgehogs for balls; words are for ever eluding his grasp."

"A loud noise at one end and no sense of responsibility at the other."

"It is so stupid of modern civilization to have given up believing in the devil, when he is the only explanation of it."

"There once was a man who said: "God Must think it exceedingly odd If he finds that this tree Continues to be When there's no one about in the Quad.""

"Only man has dignity; only man, therefore, can be funny."

"Sir Max Beerbohm and Mgr Ronald Knox; each stands at the summit of his own art. They differ in scope. Where they attempt the same tasks, in parody, they are equal and supreme over all competitors. Sir Max has confined himself to the arts; Mgr Knox goes higher, to the loftiest regions of the human spirit. His Enthusiasm should be recognized as the greatest work of literary art of the century."

"When suave politeness, temp'ring bigot zeal Corrected I believe to One does feel."

"There is no magic when one no longer believes."

"Magic. Magic had happened to him. He knew it would one day. He had always believed in magic, even whe the others had laughed at him, laughed because he was the eldest and ought to know better."

"Magic doesn't happen often — not once in a blue moon … I expect there isn't another magic ship like this one in the whole world."

"Earth and fire and water and air We solemnly promise, we solemnly swear Not a word, not a hint, not a sound to declare Earth and fire and water and air!"

"I was a lonely child though there were children in plenty on our land. But my nurse forbade me to play with them. She guarded my dignity; more than my mother, indeed, who being so great a lady took dignity for granted. But in any case there was little time for them to play. There was work for even the smallest upon our land; some of our peasants had run away, tempted by ever-rising wages. Wages fixed by law were certainly low; but, like many another ruined in the French wars, we had no money to pay a penny more than the law laid down. All over the country men were running away from their masters and the land lost as many laborers as by the Black Death itself."

"I think hawking is the nearest thing to flying in this world. There you sit high up and poised light as air, the horse swift beneath you. You unhood your bird, let the jesses go and watch your falcon, its bells a-jingle, like some wild spirit take the air … and your own spirit goes with it."

"When she saw the children jumping first upon one bare foot and then upon the other, she envied them and wished that she, too, could run barefooted for a little while. For a little while. She was a royal child. She knew that golden shoes pinch and there is no escaping them."

"Nobody seemed to know where the King was. He was at Windsor choosing new furnishings for the little Queen's rooms; he was hunting at Eltham; he was at Leeds Castle; he was at Havering. He was here, he was there, restless as quicksilver. Certainly I never set eyes on him. I was disappointed. And yet I was relieved, too. It was common talk that the King's moods shifted this way and that you never knew what to expect."

"Why think of anything at all but the pretty, gentle child sitting high upon the white horse! So women holding up their children to see her pass cried blessings on her head, the easy blessings of a crowd, that may turn at any moment to curses. And there were wenches in plenty, who, seeing the little Queen in cloth of gold and the King at her side, handsome Richard, wished themselves, no doubt, in her place."

"There is an immeasurable distance between submission to the cross and acceptance of it."

"Onward, Christian soldiers, marching as to war, with the cross of Jesus going on before. Christ, the royal Master, leads against the foe; forward into battle see his banners go!"

"Jesus, give the weary Calm and sweet repose. With Thy tend'rest blessing May our eyelids close."

"Walking about? With a hole in his forehead full of maggots" "Aye. It were like a damn fisherman's tub."

"Did you not think of burying them?" Walter snorted in a quite ordinary way."

"Oh Walter en't been the same man, you know...slow, very slow since he came back."

"My message to the businessmen of this country when they go abroad on business is that there is only one thing above all they can take with them to stop them catching AIDS - and that is the wife..."

"The suggestion that the prime minister had been flirting with one of the senior women cabinet ministers made me laugh every time I saw it, and I thought, "if you only knew!" Perhaps they should have pushed it a bit harder."

"Good Christian people who wouldn't dream of misbehaving will not catch AIDS."

"I expect eternal life, not as a reward of merit, but a pure act of bounty. Detesting myself in every view I can take, I fly to the righteousness and atonement of my great Redeemer for pardon and salvation; this is my only consolation and hope. "Enter not into judgment, O Lord, with Thy servant; for in Thy sight shall no flesh be justified.""

"As the Creator and Preserver of men, Thou art gloriously manifest; butO! how much more gloriously art Thou revealed as reconciling ungrateful enemies to Thyself by the blood of Thy eternal Son. Here Thy beneficence displays its brightest splendor; here Thou dost fully display Thy most magnificent titles; THE LORD, THE LORD GOD, merciful and gracious, long-suffering and abundant in goodness. How unsearchable are Thy ways, and Thy paths past finding out!"

"Blessed God, pity the soul whose extremest horror is the doom of an eternal departure from Thee. Draw my spirit into the holiest and the nearest union with Thyself that is possible while it dwells in this flesh! And let me here commence that delightful residence and converse with God, which nor death, nor judgment shall ever destroy, nor shall a long eternity ever put a period to it."

"Have you noticed anything strange about him? Strange? We humans insist on inhabiting a charnel ground - isn't that strange enough for spiritual creatures without splitting hairs? He seems to be two different men. His personality switches from moment to moment. Only two? Perhaps there is something wrong with your eyes. Look more closely and you will see he changes with every exhalation. So do I. So do you.""

"Have you seen anything strange about him? Strange? He insists on inhabiting an melting earth - isn't that strange enough without splitting hairs? He seems to be two different people. His personality switches from second to second. I heard something about it a long time ago.....what was it again?"

"When you notice light seeping into your coffin, it's hard to go on pretending that you're still dead."

"When a man who is drinking neat gin starts talking about his mother he is past all argument."

""I did not ask for objections, but for comments, or helpful suggestions. I looked for more loyalty from you, Captain Hornblower." That made the whole argument pointless. If Leighton only wanted servile agreement there was no sense in continuing."

"The lucky man is he who knows how much to leave to chance."

"Many of the Hornblower books were superb examples of their craft, and Forester remains unequaled for dynamism of narrative and precision of encounter: his single ship actions are surely the best ever described."

"They are no longer the same because I myself am no longer the same. India always changes people, and I have been no exception."

"Richard Aldington has always been accepted in Russia, and still is, as a many-sided figure, a rounded personality. Articles have been written about him as a poet and a novelist, a translator and a critic, a man and a writer; the content of his works has been discussed and also their form, his works as a whole and individual books, and articles, studies, reviews and notices about him have appeared in works published in Moscow and Leningrad, in journals and in newspapers published in other cities. Papers have been read about him, lectures given, and students have written essays on him. His books have reached every part of our large country. And—what is even more important—his books are read. Our older and younger generations know Richard Aldington. He lives in our memory."

"Richard Aldington is exactly the same inside, murder, suicide, rape—with a desire to be raped very strong—same thing really—just like you—only he doesn't face it, and gilds his perverseness."

"I well remember that first meeting. We had lunch together and then strolled up Charing Cross Road, looking at the bookshops and talking about our literary enthusiasms. Aldington looked very handsome in his uniform and I was immediately captivated by the brightness and candour of his features—a boyishness, one might call it, which he retained perhaps all his life, certainly until he left Europe. He was one of the most stimulating friends I have ever had—easy in conversation and very frank, full of strange oaths (mostly in French), his mind darting about rapidly from one aspect of a subject to another."

"Over thirty years, large numbers of copies of Richard Aldington's works have been printed. In 1935, Death of a Hero and in 1937 All Men are Enemies ran to 10,000 copies. In the second half of the fifties and at the beginning of the sixties, the situation changed dramatically. The number of copies printed of the 1961 edition of Death of a Hero was ten times as large (100,000 copies). All Men are Enemies ran to 225,000 copies (Goslitizdat) and was also published in Smerdlovsk, by a local publishing house which printed around 100,000 copies. These books did not lie round in the bookshops—they were sold literally in a few days, and now it is impossible to find them in the shops—not one reader has offered to sell to a second-hand bookseller, evidently because people do not want to part with them. When Richard Aldington's friend, Mr. Alister Kershaw, asked me to send him old Russian editions of the writer and I tried to get them from the second-hand booksellers, I was told, "There are neither old ones nor new ones to be had.""

"Patriotism is a lively sense of collective responsibility. Nationalism is a silly cock crowing on its own dunghill."

"I began to write what I called 'rhythms' ie unrhymed pieces with no formal metrical scheme where the rhythm was created by a kind if inner chant..Later I was told I was writing 'free verse' or Vers libre."

"Death of a Hero is a very angry novel; virulent is perhaps a better adjective... There is nothing Aldington does not view in hellish images. One has the impression of reading the testimony of a madman."

"I have little to say in favour of Pinorman, and nothing in defence of the book about Lawrence. But Aldington wrote a book about the other Lawrence which is first-class. Death of a Hero was not the first of the books proclaiming the disillusion of the generation which fought the First World War but it was in the vanguard. And a man who has written such other novels as All Men are Enemies and Women Must Work; whose poems include A Fool i' the Forest and A Dream in the Luxembourg; who has one of the best single volumes on Voltaire to his credit; and whose other work ranges from French Studies and Reviews to translations of Alcestis and Fifty Romance Lyric Poems cannot be dismissed so easily."