Commonplace Book

'But Sapphira was inclined to argue. "Quite nice men eat walnuts," she said.

"Well, all I can say is, that if they do, they won't be nice for long; for there is nothing so upsetting to the digestion as walnuts, and nothing so upsetting to the temper as the digestion. It is not the slightest use telling a man to love his wife and not be bitter against her, as long as you allow him to eat walnuts: because it isn't in human nature that he can obey you."'

from Kate of Kate Hall by Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler and Alfred Laurence Felkin (Chapter II)

Commonplace Book

'...Fortunately for herself - and still more fortunately for Lord Claverley - she was married before it became the fashion for a woman to regard her husband merely as an interesting and instructive social problem, requiring a purely intellectual solution; she belonged to that blessed generation of women who regarded their husbands in very much the same way as men of science regard the great forces of nature - as dimly comprehended powers, mighty and terrible when uncontrolled, but capable, under proper guidance and management, of being adapted to the most ordinary and domestic uses.'

from Kate of Kate Hall by Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler and Alfred Laurence Felkin (Chapter I)

Baldwin by Richard Barham (1820)

This was published under a pseudonym, namely 'An Old Bachelor', and considerably anticipated Barham's great success with The Ingoldsby Legends. So much so, that it has generally been completely forgotten, as has his other novel, and he is regarded as a one-trick pony. On the basis of this, that verdict seems very unfair. This novel is an unusual amalgam, though less so given its era, of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. It has not only the flavour of its own post-Napoleonic era, but also that of Smollett and Fielding. It begins with the discovery one morning in the snow of the body of a lonely man who'd left a coach near his home the night before. Then his lawyer discovers that his fortune is not as has been reputed; his young son and heir is nowhere near so well off as expected. These parts are marked with some ramshackle humour. Then the story progresses into one of love in the local village, where an almost Austenian tone prevails of gentle farce. There is also in this part a diversion to Oxford and the university, and some more rumbunctious wit. The endgame comes with an assignation in a summer-house, and a belatedly discovered murder in which young Baldwin, the heir, is almost uncounterably implicated. Barham takes the reader right up to the point of his hanging before a last minute reprieve in the form of the confession of an as yet unknown other. He then slowly relates a backstory to explain how the murder occurred, and to fully flavour young Baldwin's history and the reason for his diminution of fortune. Moments of wit and satire punctuate the good majority of all this, making a colourful feast of variety and event. The print-on-demand edition I read has the usual faults of very poor photocopying and so on; there are also a few missing pages. One can only hope that this book will get a proper republication, and Barham's reputation a boost which it thoroughly deserves, sooner rather than later.

Commonplace Book

'The two men composing most of us at the outset of actual life began their deadly wrestle within him, both having become awakened. If they wait for circumstance, that steady fire will fuse them into one, who is commonly a person of some strength; but throttling is the custom between them, and we are used to see men of murdered halves. These men have what they fought for: they are unaware of any guilt that may be charged against them, though they know that they do not embrace Life; and so it is that we have vague discontent too universal. Change, O Lawgiver! the length of our minority, and let it not end till this battle is thoroughly fought out in approving daylight. The period of our duality should be one as irresponsible in your eyes as that of our infancy. Is he we call a young man an individual - who is a pair of alternately kicking scales? Is he educated, when he dreams not that he is divided?..'

from Sandra Belloni by George Meredith (Chapter XXX)

Commonplace Book

'...the mistakes committed by ignorance in a virtuous disposition would never be of such fatal consequence to the public weal as the practices of a man whose inclinations led him to be corrupt, and had great abilities to manage and multiply and defend his corruptions.'

from Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift (Part One, Chapter 6)