Commonplace Book

'"Personally I am a pagan. Christians waste too much time in professing to be miserable sinners, which generally results in their being merely miserable and leaving some of the best sins undone..."'

from a play entitled The Watched Pot(Act III), in The Square Egg and other sketches by Saki

Commonplace Book

'"You ought to marry."

"You think that would improve matters?"

"It would elevate you. Suffering is a great purifier."'

from a play entitled The Watched Pot (Act II), in The Square Egg and other sketches by Saki

Commonplace Book

'"...We usually set out on these affairs with the intention of devoting a certain amount of patient effort in making the natives reasonably glad at the introduction of mission work; then we find ourselves involved in a much bigger effort to make them reasonably sorry for having killed the missionaries."'

from a play entitled The Watched Pot (Act I), in The Square Egg and other sketches by Saki

Commonplace Book

'"I've lost my mother."

"Do I understand you to mean that your mother is dead?"

"Oh, nothing so hackneyed. I don't think my mother will ever die as long as she can get credit. She was a Whortleford, you know, and the Whortleford's never waste anything..."'

from a play entitled The Watched Pot (Act I), in The Square Egg and other sketches by Saki

Commonplace Book

'...One can never repeat too often to oneself that it is one's most simple-hearted impulses which are likely to get one a bad name.'

from Despoiling Venus by Jack Lindsay (first part)

The Hunchback of Notre-Dame by Victor Hugo (1831)

The main concerns here are repetition and romance. By repetition I mean that some of the central relationships go through tests over and over again; same motivation, same result, nothing learnt. By romance I mean that tendency toward blushing inaccuracy - events often occur at the height of possibility: Paris squares are so littered with dead that they are impassable (even though a remnant escape from within them, a soldiery invade them to counter), blood flows in rivers, corpses are piled up, injuries so sickeningly significant etc etc in such a way that one would swear, if Hugo were being attentive to actuality, there could be no more action. Yet somehow, an impassable square is traversed, the invaders don't get blood-soaked trouser-cuffs, and the horrifically injured resurrect magnificently and fight on very effectually. Now, I'm not saying that some tendency of this kind isn't par for the course in adventuresome nineteenth century fiction; it's just that Hugo takes it to a completely new level, and it does get a bit tiresome nearing the end. The repetition is also patience-testing. Quite how many experiences of brick-wall-hitting confrontation Claude Frollo would have needed to finally understand that Esmeralda didn't want him, given that he had stayed alive, is anyone's guess. I guess it's a mercy for him, and us, that he dies. I certainly don't think I could have abided yet another puzzled, insight-lacking attempt to convince her. I won't retail a great deal about the plot, but I think it's worthwhile to comment on what seems to be one of Hugo's main concerns - what Paris was like in the late fifteenth century. I'm guessing that this is a part of this book which would get a lot of negative attention; we get a lot on architecture, layout, social systems within those, which is unapologetically essayesque in construction, and which I didn't mind on the whole. The colour is phenomenal and the action is dramatic; both are over-egged. A reasonably enjoyable, if somewhat frustrating, hyperbolic panorama.

Commonplace Book

'"Hortensia under existing circumstances is like a permeating dust-storm, which you can't possibly get away from or pretend that it's not there. Living with a comparatively modest establishment at the dower-house, she would be merely like Town in August or the bite of a camel - a painful experience which may be avoided with a little ordinary prudence."'

from a play entitled The Watched Pot (Act I), in The Square Egg and other sketches by Saki