Commonplace Book

'...Nothing can be more dismal than the stiff and regular decorations produced by machinery. The beauty of Chinese vases, and, indeed, of Chinese work in general, is attributable to that capricious air of spontaneity which the human hand alone can impart to its work. Grace, freedom, boldness, the unexpected, and even ingenuous awkwardness are, in decoration, elements of charm which we are losing day by day, as we depend more and more upon the resources of machinery and looms.'

from The Piccinino by George Sand (Chapter I)

Evan Harrington by George Meredith (1861)

This novel is both graced and encumbered by its complexity. Meredith's famous curlicued style is an intriguing mixture. It wafts and drifts around the plot and can't help but fascinate. His plotting in this one is particularly intricate also, and this is where he comes a little unstuck. There is a strong feeling that much of the toing-and-froing of the piece is simply manoeuvring. Whether this was because he wanted to communicate a complex reality (the good excuse) or whether perhaps he was wandering, trying to find a way out of his tangle he was happy with (the bad excuse) is difficult to decide, though I must admit I tend to the latter idea. This is the story of class, seen from the point of view of an individualist. The Harringtons have significant notions of grandeur; father Mel (known as The Great Mel), a tailor, who dies at the beginning, has schooled his children to think highly of themselves, and has himself hobnobbed with the nobility, slightly audaciously. His wife is tougher and more practical, with a no-nonsense dignity. Evan, their son, is well-educated and dreamy after bigger things than his inheritance of his father's tailoring business would predicate. Just back from Portugal, where he stayed with his sister Louisa, who has married well and become a countess, he reconnects with a young aristocrat he fell in love with there who has also returned. He has neglected to mention his humble background! In her country house, with his sister engineering for all she is worth, the scene is set for a comedy of matchmaking and class-deception. Under the comedy is some autobiography I think, which is oblique in its referencing of Meredith's own tailoring family. The story is also ballasted with some fine writing about love. A novel which teems with characters and situations in what seems an endless intricate web.

Commonplace Book

'"...Of course the English are very eccentric, you don't know that, Sosthene, you have never crossed the Channel, but you can take it from me that they are all half mad, a country of enormous, fair, mad atheists..."'

from The Blessing by Nancy Mitford (Part I, Chapter Five)

Commonplace Book

'"There grows the wealth of the Valhubert family."

"D'you mean that vegetable? But what is it? I was wondering."

"Vegetable indeed! Have you never been in the country in France before? How strange. These are vineyards."

"No!" said Grace. She had supposed all her life that vineyards were covered with pergolas, such as, in Surrey gardens, support Miss Dorothy Perkins, heavy with bunches of hot-house grapes, black for red wine, white for champagne. Naboth's vineyard, in the imagination of Grace, was Naboth's pergola, complete with crazy paving underfoot.'

from The Blessing by Nancy Mitford (Part I, Chapter Four)

Commonplace Book

'...you can't just pull love out, like a hair of your head.'

from The Diplomat, a piece in The Woman in the Case and other stories by Anton Chekhov

Commonplace Book

'...misery is wanton, and will pull all down to it.'

from Evan Harrington by George Meredith (Chapter XLV)

The Romance of Zion Chapel by Richard le Gallienne (1898)

I'm torn by this book, as I am in general by Gallienne's style. His contradiction is built around appearing quite erudite and rich on the page and yet incurring an overwhelming feeling of thinness and insubstantiality in the memory. This novel ostensibly covers the irruption into a depressed neighbourhood of a charismatic young preacher at its local chapel, his falling in love with a sweet and humble local girl, and his being subsequently overcome romantically by a visiting reciter. He and the reciter realise that their love is of the deepest kind, but decide, through their mutual love and respect for the local girl, that their ways will part. Theophilus the preacher and Isabel the reciter embrace in the chapel before her last performance as a last goodbye, but unfortunately they are seen by the girl, Jenny. Isabel leaves, Theophilus is none the wiser, but Jenny begins to decline. Eventually she tells him what she saw. The last third of the book is concerned with death. Jenny's first, with all its implications of guilt. Then Theophilus himself starts to droop. In his last hours he calls out to his great love, Isabel. She rushes to him, and we hear for the first time of their pact of dying together, which duly comes to pass with a mutual suicide. All this is finely written, and its classical tones are heightened discursively and given Aesthetic period richness. So why does Gallienne feel so thin in retrospect? The answer is in fullness of prose, rather than rounding out of character. No wonder, then, that his reputation is far stronger as an essayist.