Commonplace Book

'"...The theory that Hell is in serious need of population is a thing of the past. Why, to take your family alone, there are any number of Bidderdales on our books, as you may discover later. It is part of our system that relations should be encouraged to live together down here. From observations made in another world we have abundant evidence that it promotes the ends we have in view..."'

from a piece entitled The Infernal Parliament, in The Square Egg and other sketches by Saki

Commonplace Book

'...There must, by the way, be one considerable advantage in being a child in a war-zone village; no one can attempt to teach it tidiness. The wearisome maxim, "A place for everything and everything in its proper place" can never be insisted on when a considerable part of the roof is lying in the backyard, when a bedstead from a neighbour's demolished bed-room is half-buried in the beetroot pile, and the chickens are roosting in a derelict meat safe because a shell has removed the top and sides and front of the chicken-house.'

from a piece entitled The Square Egg, in The Square Egg and other sketches by Saki

The Art of the Publisher by Roberto Calasso (2013)

This little book both irritated and inspired me. It is a collection of essays and short non-fictional bits by a noted author whom I've not read before. Calasso is also the publisher of Adelphi Edizioni, one of Italy's major literary publishers. I have to mention here that I am also a publisher on a very small scale, so I can be expected to have an inherent interest in this meditation, and do. Calasso is both perspicacious and woolly. He will match a splendidly pithy statement on the world's current dumbness to considerations of quality, for example, with an artfully vague portrait of a world swathed in zeroes and ones, boggled with them, if our current interest in technology continues. He'll match a fascinating comment on the relatability of some concept, in intriguing fact many concepts, in the philosophical framework behind publishing and books, to a precept which is represented in the Vedic texts to a seemingly inanely incorrect statement that the notion of a series is an obsolete one, or that it's shocking that the page is "a neutral and standard element". The constant counter-reminder in reading this that the author has enormous reach, and a contrasting startling limitation, can be a bit lurchy and stomach-churning. I still can't quite make out how he happily combines both tendencies; perhaps he's just more honest than most of us in fully explicating his contradictions? I'm not convinced he knows them to be that. Anyway, I can't say that I wasn't entertained. Perhaps the only other thing which needs mentioning is that some of the negative elements derive from what I would loosely call self-absorption; his natural Adelphi-centredness / Italy-centredness means that exceptions or contrary examples which might have provided balance were not cased. An intriguing, niggling, very personal set of studies on the current state of play in a neglected art.

Commonplace Book

'...There are about seven men in every hut who are expecting important letters that never seem to reach them, and there are always individuals who glower at you and tell you that they invariably get a letter from home on Tuesday; by Thursday they are firmly convinced that you have set all their relations against them. There was one young man in Hut 3 whose reproachful looks got on my nerves to such an extent that at last I wrote him a letter from his Aunt Agatha, a letter full of womanly counsel and patient reproof, such as any aunt might have been proud to write. Possibly he hasn't got an Aunt Agatha; anyhow the reproachful look has been replaced by a puzzled frown.'

from a piece by Saki in The Bystander, dated June 1915, quoted in the section entitled Biography of Saki by Ethel M Munro, in The Square Egg and other sketches by Saki

In Subjection by Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler (1906)

There are two main considerations in appreciating this novel. One is its look to a reader of this era - its depiction of the place of a woman in marriage and the relations between the sexes is not ours. The other is more the province of the connoisseur - it's about the change coming over Fowler as her career progresses. I've said before that by modern standards Fowler is frankly ludicrous: her idea, which began with her magnificently successful first novel, was that a novel with a strong Christian element could also be engagingly witty. Her works, on the whole, are also something else which modern readers find enormously unpalatable - they're comfortable, and very assured in their own rightness of attitude. This attitude is an echo of the Establishment feeling of her times in its profound conservatism; something interpretable today as Empire smugness. The irritation caused by that tends to obscure what she actually achieves, which is a brilliant even flow, and much pretension-pricking humour - she's not afraid of sending up stuffy nonsense (as seen from the perspective of her times), and in the process gives us a taste of her independence of mind. This book takes the story of the main character of Concerning Isabel Carnaby, that first novel, forward a good few years. Isabel is married happily to Paul Seaton, aware of his deficiencies, but loving him absolutely. This is an interesting trope in fiction of this time, and echoes the tolerance displayed by Edith Ottley toward her husband Bruce in Ada Leverson's trilogy, though Paul is nowhere near as mortifyingly stupid as Bruce Ottley. Isabel and Paul welcome a 'project' from India, a wealthy young Anglo-Indian woman, Fabia Vipart, who needs to find a husband. She's not a cipher, rather a headstrong character, easily bored by British reserve. Fowler's treatment of Fabia illustrates her middle-position in terms of enlightenment on racial subjects. Fabia's breadth of character testifies well, her typification as elemental and slightly godless not so well. We follow as Isabel and Fabia cross swords, and forge into new arrangements and liaisons, surrounded by a cast of some humour. There is an inexplicable disappearance, an initially disastrous marriage, an unexpected impersonation, and a revelation, when the disappearance is solved, which stretches credibility enormously. There is also much philosophic talk about the right subjection of the female in the marriage contract, with Fowler saying that the compensations as she sees them are more than adequate for the loss of personal power. But Fowler's sang froid keeps the nonsense humming. In thinking about this book, one other conclusion is inescapable: it is that the author's epigrammatic power is waning - it's impossible not to feel, I think, how "comfy" she is becoming, and how much less we are treated to caustic and sharp observations, compared to prior works. They are not absent - they are diminished. Despite her disadvantages, and the lack of hope for modern readers to bother with her, I would wish her the regaining of that cut- through.

Commonplace Book

'...For my part, I know but two things, and those two things make a simple precept: to love mankind and pay no heed to its prejudices...'

from The Snow Man by George Sand (Chapter VI)

Commonplace Book

'...it is the things which we cannot do that we are called upon to do in this life - not the things which we can. How often we notice that sickness is sent to those who lay unnecessary stress upon the advantage of bodily health, and poverty to those who set undue store upon the possession of riches; while such as exaggerate the happiness of human companionship are doomed to a solitary life, and such as crave inordinately for fame and distinction are condemned to ineffective obscurity.'

from In Subjection by Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler (Chapter XXIV)