Wednesday, February 29, 2012

Cometh Up as a Flower by Rhoda Broughton (1867)

This concentrated, small-scene novel stands in sharp contrast to Broughton's other work from her inaugural year. Where Not Wisely, But Too Well seems a looking forward to the sprawling, hothouse works of the sensation novelists, this charming piece has a strong element of looking back to the unity and tightness of Jane Austen, among others. And charm is its strongest point - Broughton's humour and brightness of prose guarantee that. Eleanora Le Strange and her sister Dorothea are the head and the foil. Nelly is red-haired and passionate in a slightly unruly way, where Dolly is prettier and more calculating. The love of Nelly's life comes in the form of a penniless soldier; Dolly couldn't be more horrified at the prospect of her younger sister marrying no money, and engineers quietly behind the scenes for the problem to go away. What she doesn't calculate for, and can't because it's not in her nature, is that Nelly's love is all-consuming. Nelly is pushed, heartbroken, toward an ageing wealthy lord, only to realise Dolly's perfidy too late. The mid-Victorian scheme is then realised to the full with a quite un-Austenian conclusion; the star-crossed pair are doomed. Even this sadness charms, proving Broughton to be a skilled tensioner of tone.

Tuesday, February 28, 2012

The Prince by Niccolo Machiavelli (1513)

The core question about this book is...which came first? Machiavellianism or expediency? I come firmly down on the side of the latter. It seems to me that Machiavelli simply put political necessity as it was then understood into words. The other crucial point being that that necessity had probably had this face for a few hundred years, and had had more or less like ones since human political thought began. I don't find it all that illuminating, and put that down to one of two things: either I'm a 'natural' Machiavellian (! - watch out those enemies) or he doesn't write particularly convincingly or excitingly about the topic. There are also a lot of misfires locked away in this old text - all sorts of self-contradictions. It could be seen as an amateur attempt, both in a good and a bad way. Having said all that, there are mildly interesting things littered through it, if the reader is not particularly well-versed in Italian history, as I am not. Warlike popes and intrigue in powerful families, and all the mechanisms of the management of power have an innate interest.

Commonplace Book

'The idea that people thought he had done it on purpose haunted him. He was sure they spoke of it, thought of it, laughed at it. He imagined it rivalled Anzio as a topic. He would have liked to have been everywhere at once to have stopped this general conversation. If one of a group, he could not walk away alone, he had to stay till it broke up. If circumstances compelled him to leave then he dallied at the door on the fringe, trying to make the last words friendlier and friendlier, until he felt he could leave with impunity. But he never could. Once or twice his whipped look, his endless scavenging for respect - just a little respect - earned him some crushing abuse which turned him white after the first few syllables - the proof, the proof - he had known it all the time: he was a sort of leper.'

from A Share of the World by Hugo Charteris (Part One, Chapter 16)

Sunday, February 26, 2012

Commonplace Book

'...We return to our first ambitions, as to our first loves: not that they are dearer to us, - quit that delusion: our ripened loves and mature ambitions are probably closest to our hearts, as they deserve to be - but we return to them because our youth has a hold on us which it asserts whenever a disappointment knocks us down. Our old loves (with the bad natures I know in them) are always lurking to avenge themselves on the new by tempting us to a little retrograde infidelity.'

from Evan Harrington by George Meredith (Chapter XIV)

Commonplace Book

'...They who possess nothing on earth[,] have a right to claim a portion of the heavens. In resolute hands, much may be done with a star.'

from Evan Harrington by George Meredith (Chapter XIV)

Thursday, February 16, 2012

Commonplace Book

'"...I'm a bachelor, and a person - you're married, and an object..."'

from Evan Harrington by George Meredith (Chapter VIII)

Tuesday, February 14, 2012

Commonplace Book

'...That was why the sudden plight of war wrought such havoc. One part of "second nature" refused to take it in: would not bend to it and therefore often snapped. Only the deepest part of second nature admitted it, perhaps had been waiting for it, knew it of old as that IT which John tried vainly to see in terms of Hamburg clerks with wives, velocity of metal, flesh wound or painless death, but which remained IT, as vivid as though painted on the faces of the men in grey - not with the obliteration and night camouflage of modern burnt cork, but the bright leer and circle eyes and nodding head of the witch doctor's mask. IT under the whispering shells and the wobbling demoniac dancing shadows from a green flare falling at an indeterminable spot in an unknown land. "IT" was familiar as an old dream.'

from A Share of the World by Hugo Charteris (Part One, Chapter 12)

Confessions of Two Brothers by John Cowper Powys and Llewelyn Powys (1916)

These two efforts are quite different. John Cowper's reflects his inward obsession, his deeply enquiring mind, his fascination with revealing some aspects of the hidden animal within, and his burlesquings around the edges of others. It is powerfully argued for all its evasions and occasional inconsistencies, and worthy of considerable notice as a self-critical investigation of personal philosophy. Llewelyn's is typical of him. It reveals the strange islanded temper of the man: "most of you are blunt and lacking in vision and worthy only of contempt; I am somewhat insulted by having to deal with you," is the best summing up. He felt a kind of proprietary fervour when it came to passion, earthiness and truth which is quite off-putting, and particularly so when a species of blindness can be detected in it. It is a record, in the first instance, of a young teacher putting up with stupidity all around him in various temporary posts. It then hits deeper territory as a record of illness; his consumption hits and gathers pace. There are moments of poetry here. John Cowper was the more eccentric, sparking intelligence of the two. Llewelyn had a diffidence which didn't serve him well.

Monday, February 13, 2012

Commonplace Book

'...A purpose wedded to plans may easily suffer shipwreck; but an unfettered purpose that moulds circumstances as they arise, masters us, and is terrible. Character melts to it, like metal in the steady furnace. The projector of plots is but a miserable gambler and votary of chances. Of a far higher quality is the will that can subdue itself to wait, and lay no petty traps for opportunity. Poets may fable of such a will, that it makes the very heavens conform to it...'

from Evan Harrington by George Meredith (Chapter VII)

Sunday, February 12, 2012

Commonplace Book

'...it is, I am told, a finer test to embellish much gentleman-apparel, than to walk with dignity totally unadorned. This simply tries the soundness of our faculties: that tempts them in erratic directions. It is the difference between active and passive excellence.'

from Evan Harrington by George Meredith (Chapter VI)

Commonplace Book

'...Ill-natured he friends have christened the three Miss Coxes "Free and Easy," "Freer and Easier," "Freest and Easiest;" Violet is "Freest and Easiest." Violet smokes Regalias, and calls men by their surnames to their faces. Lily smokes cigarettes, and Amaryllis does not smoke at all, because it makes her sick.'

from Cometh Up as a Flower by Rhoda Broughton (Chapter XXVI)

Saturday, February 11, 2012

Commonplace Book

'"It's Susan," said a whisper.

"Susan!"

"Yes, I...I had to ask you something."

She had to ask him something. Susan. A trapeze of moonlight lay under the open window, and he realised he had felt blindness. He could see her black hair on the shoulders of pale pyjamas.

"Susan," he said, stabilising, extricating, calling the roll of reason, turning on the lights of the mind and driving back to the wainscot the dream-rats already vanishing, leaving the shadow, the feeling of their invisible population.'

from A Share of the World by Hugo Charteris (Part One, Chapter 11)

Saturday, February 4, 2012

Commonplace Book

'...Indeed, he came limping in with an army Prayer Book, and having prayed, walked out as though beyond the door lay another wound and another war. All "his year" in the eleven had been killed. Reliability, he used to say, was the first virtue. And indeed it was easy to understand his selection - for in circumstances of danger, or manners toward woman, or fair play within the status quo, his behaviour could be predicted as certainly as a tide; or a dawn or a season. But why - all these things considered - did he often look as if he might suddenly start screaming and then be unable to stop?'

from A Share of the World by Hugo Charteris (Part One, Chapter 9)

Commonplace Book

'January 28th

The Hamadryad has been taken ill. I am sorry, as I have found her wild and wilful personality strangely fascinating. I was quite surprised to discover how startled I was this morning by coming across her name written in the snow; it was like finding the foot-print of a drowned child on the sea-shore.

[...]

February 8th

The Hamadryad is dead. It was her they were carrying away last night. The death of a guest is never announced in a sanatorium until the corpse has been removed. It is necessary to diminish the startled shock such news give[s] to others. When a day or two has elapsed, like silly sheep in a butcher's field, they can be reassured.'

from Confessions by Llewelyn Powys (Chapter IV), in Confessions of Two Brothers by John Cowper Powys and Llewelyn Powys

Thursday, February 2, 2012

At the Sign of the Reine Pedauque by Anatole France (1893)

This vigorous piece is France emulating the general mood of literature in the late nineteenth century in his country, albeit with his own swing on it. This is the story of an innocent, Jacques Menetrier, aka Jacques Tournebroche, and his emergence into a world of warring philosophies and approaches to life. A Capuchin monk's angle is disposed of in favour of a wandering Abbe's teachings. A young viol-player in whom he's interested is revealed as a little too free with her favours, and replaced by Catherine, a lace-maker, and then Jael, a young Jewess, all of whom are eventually revealed as unreliable. At the same time Monsieur d'Astarac arrives on the scene. Jacques and his Abbe are hired to translate arcane texts for him, and France's greatest satiric target is introduced. Astarac is the alchemist, sequestered away in an old chateau, mixing elements according to old recipes, and associating with Sylphs and Salamanders for love, at least in his own mind. He tries to encourage Jacques on the same path. What emerges as one reads is that the philosophies at war are not all equal in France's mind. His Abbe Coignard, Jacques' second teacher, a roisterer, fighter on street corners, wine-thief and probable alcoholic, is very clearly approved. The lack of balance in this harms this one for me - it could have been great, if Jacques had been able to see through them all, and find his own way. As it stands, highly doubtful Coignard is highly dubious hero.