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.

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)

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)

Commonplace Book

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

from Evan Harrington by George Meredith (Chapter VIII)

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)