Historical Novelists

"Hope of course is nothing more than desire with a telescope, magnifying distant matters, overlooking near ones; opening one eye on the objects, closing the other to all objections. And if hope be the future tense of desire, the future of fear is religion—at least with too many of us."

"“Now what will ye please to eat?” she asked, with a lively glance at the size of my mouth: “that is always the first thing you people ask, in these barbarous places.” “I will tell you by-and-by,” I answered, misliking this satire upon us; “but I might begin with a quart of ale, to enable me to speak, madam.” “Very well. One quevart of be-or;” she called out to a little maid, who was her eldest child, no doubt. “It is to be expected, sir. Be-or, be-or, be-or, all day long, with you Englishmen!” “Nay,” I replied, “not all day long, if madam will excuse me. Only a pint at breakfast-time, and a pint and a half at eleven o'clock, and a quart or so at dinner. And then no more till the afternoon; and half a gallon at supper-time. No one can object to that.”"

"But now, at Dulverton, we dined upon the rarest and choicest victuals that ever I did taste. Even now, at my time of life, to think of it gives me appetite, as once and awhile to think of my first love makes me love all goodness. Hot mutton pasty was a thing I had often heard of from very wealthy boys and men, who made a dessert of dinner; and to hear them talk of it made my lips smack, and my ribs come inwards."

"But whatever lives or dies, business must be attended to; and the principal business of good Christians is, beyond all controversy, to fight with one another."

"The lanes and fields between Charing Cross and the village of Kensington, are, or were at that time, more than reasonably infested with footpads and with highwaymen. However, my stature and holly club kept these fellows from doing more than casting sheep's eyes at me. For it was still broad daylight, and the view of the distant villages, Chelsea, Battersea, Tyburn, and others, as well as a few large houses, among the hams and towards the river, made it seem less lonely."

"Although a man may be as simple as the flowers of the field; knowing when, but scarcely why, he closes to the bitter wind; and feeling why, but scarcely when, he opens to the genial sun; yet without his questing much into the capsule of himself—to do which is a misery—he may have a general notion how he happens to be getting on."

"Now this may seem very strange to us who live in a better and purer age—or say at least that we do so—and yet who are we to condemn our fathers for teaching us better manners, and at their own expense?"

"But a sigh is not (like a yawn) infectious; and we are all more prone to be sent to sleep than to sorrow by one another. Not but what a sigh sometimes may make us think of sighing."

"Women who are (beyond all doubt) the mothers of all mischief, also nurse that babe to sleep, when he is too noisy."

"If I cared for influence—which means, for the most part, making people do one's will, without knowing it—my first step toward it would be to be called, in common parlance, “slow but sure.”"

"In the hour of death, after this life’s whim, When the heart beats low, and the eyes grow dim, And pain has exhausted every limb— The lover of the Lord shall trust in Him. For even the purest delight may pall, And power must fail, and the pride must fall, And the love of the dearest friends grow small— But the glory of the Lord is all in all."

"She was altered by time, as much as I was. The slight and graceful shape was gone; not that I remembered anything of her figure, if you please; for boys of twelve are not yet prone to note the shapes of women."

"Because I rant not, neither rave of what I feel, can you be so shallow as to dream that I feel nothing?"

"The motives of mankind are plainer than the motions they produce."

"If you have not the faith of assurance, practise at least the faith of adherence. That, at least, is in your own power. Cleave to God exactly as if you were certain of being accepted by Him at last; and thus, fulfilling his own conditions, you will be accepted by Him whether you are assured of it beforehand or not."

"The first thing about science is asking questions; the next—and this includes the bulk of what is called scientific work—is measuring the knowledge and finding new standards of measurement; and the final thing is putting all this knowledge together."

"... Obviously my chief authority is Xenophon's ; if I can induce anyone to read this (the Loeb translation is very vivid on the whole) and get as much pleasure out of it as I did, then I shall be — as the good books say — amply rewarded. For actual history I have gone to Cavaignac or . ... 's The Greek Commonwealth is a good book to begin on."

"My father was writing one paper after another in conjunction with various people, , , Butterfield, , and others, but especially ..."

"... readers, remember that my account of what was happening in Sparta or Athens or even Egypt, is all based on real history, but the view was moulded by what I—and many another person—was thinking in the Europe of those days, with Mussolini and his fascists in Italy and already the shadow of Hitler in Germany. If I was writing this book now I might treat my characters and my story differently. But I cannot be certain, even of that."

"It occurred to the writer, a year ago, in thinking about modern Ireland, to wonder what light the record of Cæsar’s Gallic wars might throw on the causes of the present discontents. , , —were these leaders of the Gauls like the leaders of the Gael to-day? Did they feel the same blinding passion of nationalism? Were they, too, distracted by feuds and harassed by jealousies? Is the Celtic temper an undeviating possession of the centuries ; and is the character of a stock inherited as surely and as inevitably as the colour of eyes and hair ? To find an answer to these questions it would have been necessary to read those later books of the , to which (however skilled we may become in the structure of the bridge which Cæsar threw over the Rhine) few, if any, of us ever attain in our schoolboy days. For such reading no opportunity occurred; but the fortunate chance of an old friendship brought another solution. I was privileged to read the manuscript of Mrs. Mitchison’s work, and the answer came, irradiated by an historical imagination, and animated by a living sympathy, as I read."

"Mrs. Mitichison brings on her stage, and gives one the feeling of that bleak and terrible greatness. The impression which Cæsar has left on history is just the impression he made on his contemporaries. The shadow of a vastness had fallen coldly across them. Mrs. Mitchison knows how to make it fall across us. She has, as it were by miracle, got back into the air and mood of the time she writes about: she creates, and recreates. The splendor and the mystery come easy to her."

"Time, like a flurry of wild rain, Shall drift across the darkened pane!"

"When the Sleepy Man comes with the dust on his eyes (Oh, weary, my Dearie, so weary!) He shuts up the earth, and he opens the skies. (So hush-a-by, weary my Dearie!)"

"O wild, dark flower of woman, Deep rose of my desire, An Eastern wizard made you Of earth and stars and fire."

"You tell me then that I must perish like the flowers that I cherish. Nothing remaining of my name, nothing remembered of my fame? But the gardens I planted still are young— the songs I sang will still be sung!"

"To command respect and deference and privileges reserved for the nobility, I need only dare to be a noble."

"Your Most Lofty Majesty has earlier bidden your chaplain to secure "writings, tablets, or other records" to substantiate the tales told in these pages. But we assure you, Sire, that the Aztec exaggerates wildly when he speaks of writing and reading, drawing and painting. These savages never created or possessed or preserved any mementos of their history aside from some plicate paper folders, skins and panels bearing multitudes of primitive figures such as children might scribble."

"Surely my life awaits, whichever way I go from here, and whether I go alone or not." The cacao man smiled too, but ironically. "Yes, at your age, many possible lives await. Go whichever way you choose. Go alone or in company. The companions may walk with you a long way or a little. But at the end of your life, no matter how crowded were its roads and its days, you will have learned what all must learn. And that will be too late for any starting over, too late for anything but regret. So learn it now. No man has ever yet lived out any life but one, and that one his chosen own, and most of that alone."

"No man ever took better care of his life. He lived only to go on living." I waited for more, but he said no more, so I asked, "What became of him, Master Cuachic?" "He died." "That is all?" "What else ever becomes of any man? I no longer remember even his name. No one remembers anything at all about him, except that he lived and then he died."

"Your Astute Majesty can hardly have failed to notice that the earlier pages have treated—casually, without remorse or repentance—of such sins as homicide, prolicide, suicide, anthropophagy, incest, harlotry, torture, idolatry, and breach of the Commandment to honor father and mother. If, as it has been said, one's sins are wounds of one's soul, this Indian's soul is bleeding at every pore."

"The gods supposedly know all our plans, and know their ends before their beginnings. The Gods are mischievous, and they delight to potter with the plans of men. They usually prefer to complicate those plans, as they might snarl a fowler's net, or to frustrate them so the plans come to no result whatever. Very seldom do the gods intervene to any worthier purpose. But I do believe, that time, they looked at my plan and said among themselves, "This dark scheme contrived by Dark Cloud, it is so ironically good, let us make it ironically even better.""

"Think, imagine, picture yourself, Your Excellency, as that tree of great shade. See in your mind its immensity, its mighty boughs and the birds among them, the lush foliage, the sunlight upon it, the coolness it casts upon a house, a family, the girl and boy who were my sister and myself. Could Your Excellency compress that tree of great shade back into the acorn which Your Excellency's father once thrust between your mother's legs? Yya ayya, I have displeased Your Excellency and dismayed your scribes. Forgive me, Your Excellency. I should have guessed that the white men's private copulation with their white women must be different—of more delicacy—than I have seen them perform forcibly upon our women in public. And assuredly the Christian copulation that produced Your Excellency must have been even moreYes, yes, Your Excellency, I desist."

"Your Most Lofty Majesty's royal cédula specifies that we, in providing the chronicle, shall inform ourself "from ancient Indians." This has necessitated something of a search, inasmuch as the total destruction of this city by Captain-General Hernán Cortés left us very few ancient Indians from whom to seek a credible oral history. Even the workers currently rebuilding the city consist mainly of women, children, the dolts and dotards who were unfit to fight in the sige, brute peasants conscripted form the outlying lands. Oafs, all of them."

"My life has been long, as ours is measured. I did not die in infancy, as so many of our children do. I did not die in battle or in holy sacrifice, as so many have willingly done. I did not succumb to an excess of drinking, or to the attack of a wild beast, or to the creeping decay of The Being Eaten by the Gods. I did not die by the contracting one of the dread diseases that came with your ships, and of which so many thousands upon thousands have perished. I have outlived even the gods, who forever had been deathless and who forever would be immortal. I have survived for more than a full sheaf of years, to see and do and learn and remember much. But no man can know everything of even his own time, and this land's life began immeasurably long ages before my own. It is only of my own that I can speak, only my own that I can bring back to shadow life of your rusty black ink...."

"I have heard you Christians complain of our "multitudes" of gods and goddesses, who held dominion over every facet of nature and of human behavior. I have heard you complain that you never can sort out and understand the workings of our crowded pantheon. However, I have counted and compared. I do not believe that we relied on so many major and minor deities as you do—the Lord God, the Son Jesus, the Holy Ghost, the Virgin Mary—plus all those other Higher Beings you call Angels and Apostles and Saints, each of them the governing patron of some single facet of your world, your lives, your tónaltin, even every single day in the calendar. In truth, I believe we recognized fewer deities, but we charged each of ours with more diverse functions."

"That we may be better acquainted with our colony of New Spain, of its peculiarities, its riches, the people who possessed it, and the beliefs, rites, and ceremonies which they heretofore held, we wish to be informed of all matters appertaining to the Indians during their existence in that land before the coming of our liberating forces, ambassadors, evangels, and colonizers."

"The building themselves, from the distance, were dark and indistinct of contour, but the lights, ayyo, the lights! Yellow, white, red, jacinth, all the various colors of flame—here and there a green or blue one, where some temple's altar fire had been sprinkled with salt or copper filings. And every one of those shining beads and clusters and bands of light shone twice, each having its brilliant reflection in the lake. Even the stone causeways that vault from the island to the mainland, even those wore lanterns on posts at intervals along their reach across the water. From our acáli, I could see only the two causeways jeweled chain across the throat of night, with the city displayed between them, a splendid bright-jeweled pendant on the night's bosom. "Tenochtítlan, Cem-Anáhuac Tlali Yolóco," murmured my father. "It is truly The Heart and Center of the One World." I had been so transfixed with enchantment that I had not noticed him join me at the forward edge of our freighter. "Look long, son Mixtli. You may experience this wonder and many other wonders more than once. But, of first times, there is always and forever only one.""

"If, in the course of their stray amours, they conceived a son, he was brought up in the temple-enclosure in the contemplation of the perfect form and in the service of its divinity. If they were brought to bed of a daughter, the child was consecrated to the goddess.On the first day of its life, they celebrated its symbolic marriage with the son of Dionysos, and the Hierophant deflowered it herself with a little golden knife; for virginity is displeasing to Aphrodite. Later on, the little girl entered the Didascalion, a great monumental school situated behind the temple, and where the theory and practice of all the erotic arts were taught in seven stages: the use of the eyes, the embrace, the motions of the body, the secrets of the bite, of the kiss, and of glottism."

"“From the point of view of love, woman is a perfect instrument. From head to foot she is constructed, solely, marvellously, for love. She alone knows how to love. She alone knows how to be loved. Consequently, if a couple of lovers is composed of two women, it is perfect; if there is only one woman, it is only half as good; if there is no woman at all, it is purely idiotic. That is all I have to say.”"

"King Pausole dispensed justice from under a cherry tree, for, he was wont to say, that tree gives just as much shade as any other, and has the advantage over the traditional oak that in the summer it bears delightful fruit."

"Human love is to be distinguished from the rut of animals only by two divine functions: the caress and the kiss."

"Pausole could not walk, seat himself nor even raise his head without touching a naked sleeper. A suspended net united two and pressed one against the other. Those who were troubled by the heat slept in the shallow pool, and with their heads on the marble border, stretched their legs under the water as far as the central mermaid’s figure: pistil of an open tulip formed by their radiant bodies."

"Stripped of my clothes, naked, I climbed into a tree. My bare thighs in a close embrace pressed the smooth damp bark. My sandals trod upon the branches.Almost at the top, but still under the leaves in the shadow from the heat, I put myself astride of a projecting branch, my legs dangling in the air.The rain came, and cool drops fell upon me and ran over my skin. My hands were soiled with moss, and my toes were red with the juice of crushed flowers.I felt the life of the beautiful tree when the wind blew through its branches. Then I pressed my thighs together in an ecstasy, and laid my open lips against the hairy nape of a limb."

"When he returned, I hid my face with my two hands. He said to me: "Fear nothing. Who has seen our kissing?" — "Who has seen us? The night and the moon."And the stars and the first dawn. The moon looked at her face in the lake and has told it to the water under the willows. The water of the lake has told it to the oar.And the oar has told it to the boat, and the boat to the fisher. Helas! Helas! if that were all! But the fisher has told it to a woman.The fisher has told it to a woman. My father and my mother, and my sisters, and all Hellas will know it."

"He presses me so closely that he will crush me, poor little girl that I am. But when he is within me, I know nothing more in the world, and they might cut off my limbs without recalling me from my ecstasy."

"She lay upon her bosom, with her elbows in front of her, her legs wide apart and her cheek resting on her hand, pricking, with a long golden pin, small symmetrical holes in a pillow of green linen.Languid with too much sleep, she had remained alone upon the disordered bed ever since she had awakened, two hours after mid-day.The great waves of her hair, her only garment, covered one of her sides.This hair was resplendently opaque, soft as fur, longer than a bird’s wing, supple, uncountable, full of life and warmth. It covered half her back, flowed under her naked belly, glittered under her knees in thick, curling clusters. The young woman was enwrapped in this precious fleece. It glinted with a russet sheen, almost metallic, and had procured her the name of Chrysis, given her by the courtesans of Alexandria.It was not the sleek hair of the court-woman from Syria, or the dyed hair of the Asiatics, or the black and brown hair of the daughters of Egypt. It was the hair of an Aryan race, the Galilæans across the sands."

"I will leave the bed as she has left it, unmade and rumpled, the covers wrinkled, in order that the imprint of her form may remain by the side of mine.Until to-morrow I will not go to the bath, I will not wear my clothing, and I will not comb my hair, for fear lest I efface one of her caresses.I will eat neither this morning nor this evening, and upon my lips I will put neither rouge nor powder, in order that her kisses may remain.I will leave the shades closed, and I will not open the door, for fear lest the memory she has left behind should fly away on the wind."

"“At Ephesos, in our country, when two virgins of nubile age like Rhodis and me love one another, the law allows them to be united in marriage. They both go to the temple of Athena and sacrifice their double girdle; thence to the sanctuary of Iphinoë, where they offer a lock of their hair, interwined; and finally to the peristyle of Dionysios, where the more male of the two receives a little knife of sharp-edged gold, and a white linen cloth to stanch the blood. In the evening, the “fiancee” is conducted to her new home in a flowered chariot between her husband and the paranymph, escorted by torch-bearers and flute-girls. And thenceforth they have the rights of married people; they may adopt little girls and associate them in their intimate life. They are respected. They have a family. That is the dream of Rhodis. But it is not the custom here.”"

"An enormous fig tree let fall its flat leaves and its lilac coloured fruit like a carpet over the balustrade. On the left the park was massed with its magnolias which had already lost their flowers, its shuddering eucalyptus, its squat Japanese palms, its magnificent lunar sago trees. A hedge of aloes hemmed in the dark garden and the plain stretched beyond, to the Stars."

"Mother inexhaustible, incorruptible, creatrix, first-born, self-conceived, self-created, enjoyed of thyself alone and issue of thyself, Astarte!Oh, perpetually fecund, oh, virgin and nurse of all, chaste and lascivious one, pure and wanton, ineffable, nocturnal, soft, breather of fire, foam of the sea!Thou who accordest thy grace in secret, thou who unitest, thou who lovest, thou who fillest the unending races of savage beasts with furious desire, and joinest the sexes in the forests!Oh, Astarte irresistible, hear me ; take me, possess me, oh. Moon, and thirteen times each year draw from my privities the libation of my blood."