March 2012
1 post
September 2011
1 post
August 2011
1 post
June 2011
4 posts
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‘Oh, this is a most reputable and old-established business,’ said Mr Bason. ‘They tell me that Queen Mary often used to pop in — in the old days, of course.’
‘That does sound reassuring,’ I said. ‘Any connection with royalty is that, don’t you think?’
‘With our royal family certainly,’ Mr Bason agreed, ‘though some one...
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Belinda moved towards him and introduced herself. ‘I don’t suppose you remember me,’ she said, smiling rather awkwardly. Nor did she remember him, if it came to that, for she could have sworn that she had never seen him in all her life. Could a beautiful curate have grown into this tall, stringy-looking man, with a yellow, leathery complexion? His expression reminded Belinda of a...
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The Dominion of the Birds
‘And that’s not the worst,’ she went on, rummaging in a small desk which stood open and seemed to be full of old newspapers. ‘Read this.’ She handed me a cutting headed OWL BITES WOMAN, from which I read that an owl had flown in through a cottage window and bitten a woman on the chin. ‘And this,’ she went on, handing me another cutting which told how a...
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The people sitting or standing around us were all in the fresh bloom of youth; they were the young people one saw and read about but seldom met. They made a person who was only ten or so years older feel very old indeed.
— A Glass of Blessings, chapter twenty one
May 2011
10 posts
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‘Quick, Edwin, go to her,’ said Daisy, ‘and see what you can do.’
Edwin hurried to where Sister Dew lay in a tumbled heap. In his veterinary practice he specialised in the treatment of small animals, and the sheer bulkiness of Sister Dew reminded him that his work had been with cats and pet dogs rather than with horses and cows, but he examined her ankle as best he could.
...
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‘Poor Mr. Driver — it seems unkind to leave him all alone this evening.’
‘Yes,’ Miss Doggett agreed. ‘One does feel that men need company more than women do. A woman has a thousand and one little tasks in the house, and then her knitting or sewing.’
Jane, who did not seem to have these things, made no answer.
— Jane & Prudence, chapter eleven
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‘Now if only he were a widower,’ mused Harriet.
‘But he isn’t,’ said Belinda stoutly.
‘No, and Agatha’s very tough in spite of her rheumatism,’ lamented Harriet.
— Some Tame Gazelle, chapter fourteen
New feature
On days when there is no new post, and on days when you need a little extra Pym, please avail yourself of the new Random button at the top of the screen. It will take you to a randomly selected old favorite. (Thanks to N8han for the coding help.)
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‘Then he’s been telling you that he’s very fond of you, and hinting that he wishes he’d married you instead of Agatha,’ went on Harriet, gallantly persevering.
‘Well, hardly that,’ ventured Belinda, growing a little more confidential, for the Ovaltine had loosened her tongue.
— Some Tame Gazelle, chapter fourteen
Dear Book Lover: Critically Acclaimed but Almost... →
Pym’s heroines are “churchy spinsters,” modest, unambitious, sensible women whose horizons end at the borders of their parish. Saul Bellow slighted another example of this genre—Elizabeth Taylor’s “Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont”—saying, “I seem to hear the tinkle of teacups.” But Pym’s women can be unsentimental—even uncharitable—observers of...
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‘You will hardly believe this, Miss — er — but I was sitting in the window this afternoon and as it was a fine day I had it open at the bottom, when I felt something drop into my lap. And do you know what it was?’ She turned and peered at me intently.
I said that I had no idea.
‘Unpleasantness,’ she said, almost triumphantly…
— Excellent Women, chapter sixteen
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‘Miss — Madam — come quickly!’ she cried. ‘The bees are swarming!’
‘But what can I do?’ I called out, looking around me helplessly. ‘I don’t know anything about bees. Isn’t the gardener here?’
‘Oh Madam, he’s digging a grave!’ came the agitated answer.
— A Glass of Blessings, chapter twenty
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‘Did you fall in love with him that evening at the parish hall?’ I asked. ‘It would be wonderful to think that love could blossom in such surroundings.’ I thought of the chipped Della Robbia plaques, the hissing of gas fires and tea urns and the curious smell of damp mackintoshes that seemed to pervade it, and perhaps all parish halls everywhere. Why, indeed,...
April 2011
18 posts
Readers: Barbara is taking a vacation with a bunch of nuns. There will be plenty of tea and inappropriate postcards. We’ll be back in early May.
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‘She came to my flat the other night after ten o’clock, alone, and stayed for nearly three hours talking, although I did everything I could to get her to go.’
I felt I could hardly ask what methods he had employed.
— Excellent Women, chapter sixteen
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It was not for the pleasure of my company that Everard Bone had asked me out this evening — or rather not even asked me and given me the chance of appearing better dressed and without my string bag, but had waylaid me in the street.
— Excellent Women, chapter sixteen
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‘You see, Wilmet, Marius has asked me to marry him — that’s what I’ve been wanting to tell you. Do you think it’s so very dreadful of him?’
I could hardly confess my first reaction to her news, which was the perhaps typically feminine one of astonishment that such a good looking man as Marius Ransome should want to marry anyone so dim and mousy as Mary Beamish.
— A...
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‘Now wouldn’t you like a nice cup of Ovaltine?’ she said, fussing round Belinda like a motherly hen.
‘Well, I don’t know, I think I would,’ said Belinda. Perhaps a nourishing milky drink was needed to bring her down to earth but it seemed an unromantic end to the evening.
— Some Tame Gazelle, chapter fourteen
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‘He must be about fifty-seven or fifty-eight,’ said Harriet, who seemed to have been doing a little calculation. ‘It will be nice to see dear Theo again.’
‘On the threshold of sixty,’ mused Dr. Parnell. ‘That’s a good age for a man to marry. He needs a woman to help him into the grave.’
— Some Tame Gazelle, chapter thirteen
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‘She is a vicar’s wife’s sister,’ Basil went on.
‘A vicar — what vicar?’ asked Miss Bede suspiciously.
‘The vicar of a north London parish.’
‘Oh, I see.’ Miss Bede nodded, obviously not quite satisfied.
— An Unsuitable Attachment, chapter fifteen
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‘Look,’ [Harriet] cried, for she had been so absorbed in her task of ‘strengthening’ a pair of corsets with elastic thread that she had not noticed the Archdeacon creeping up the drive. Neither had Belinda but she was less observant and sharp. — Some Tame Gazelle, chapter seven (submitted by Sheila Garforth)
Guest post from Mr. Trollope
It would be a calumny on Mrs. Proudie to suggest that she was sitting in her bedroom with her ear at the keyhole during this interview. She had within her a spirit of decorum which prevented her from descending to such baseness. To put her ear to a keyhole, or to listen at a chink, was a trick for a housemaid. Mrs. Proudie knew this, and therefore did not do it; but she stationed herself as near...
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‘There you are!’ she called out in a ringing tone. ‘I’ve been looking for you everywhere. You went out without your scarf and you know how treacherous these Italian nights are.’ She was brandishing in her hand what looked like a hand-knitted muffler in two shades of ecclesiastical purple.
— An Unsuitable Attachment, chapter fifteen
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Opposite the church there was a cottage which always interested her because its garden was crowded with derelict motor cars. The owner seemed to just deposit his old car when he bought a new one, like a snake shedding its skin.
— A Few Green Leaves, chapter fourteen
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‘I suppose I ought not to say this, but she was a bit keen on me at one time.’
Penelope smiled to herself at the old-fashioned phrase ‘a bit keen on me’. It seemed to make him rather ‘caddish’ in a way that men weren’t nowadays. She took a sip of brandy, wondering what he expected her to say. Then she realised that he was smiling at her indulgently and it...
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There may be an unlimited number of things that can happen to the ordinary person, but there are only a few twists to the man-woman story.
— A Few Green Leaves, chapter fourteen
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‘I wonder, when you are working here, have you ever given a thought to all those who have died in Bodley’s Library, or as a result of working there?’
Adam was forced to admit that he had not.
‘You should, you know, it is quite an education.’
‘It would surely do one more good to concentrate on one’s work,’ said Adam austerely.
‘That is my...
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‘Hope to see this fountain tonight and make a wish,’ was what she had written to John — the kind of message that might seem disastrous when remembered after posting. Emotion, or the too careful lack of emotion, recollected in tranquillity.
— An Unsuitable Attachment, chapter fifteen
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But there was something humiliating about the idea of wooing James in this way, like an animal being enticed back into its cage. Even if he had a favourite wine, Leonora did not think she could have brought herself to produce it. Yet the sherry they were drinking now seemed actively hostile in its dryness, inhibiting speech and even feeling.
— The Sweet Dove Died, chapter twenty-five
March 2011
20 posts
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I tried to make myself useful but there was very little for me to do. The weather was glorious, but it seemed wanton to be lying in a deckchair in the mornings while Mary was arranging things for the coming retreat, so I took an upright canvas chair, or sat on a hard wooden seat of the kind that looks as if it might have been given in memory of someone.
— A Glass of Blessings, chapter twenty
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‘What would you like to drink?’
‘Beer,’ I said uncertainly.
‘What kind of beer?’
‘Oh, bitter, I think,’ I said, hoping that it wasn’t the kind that tasted like washing-up water, but not being certain.
When it came I found that it was and I was a little annoyed to see that Everard himself had a small glowing drink that looked much more...
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Tears, thought by some to be a woman’s most powerful weapon, did not of course move him, but he was good at comforting weeping women. There had been quite a number of them in his life, from his mother to older women and young girls who had been foolish enough to expect more than he was prepared to give. He had seen with distaste many a red face working and blotched with tears…Older...
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‘Leonora, I’m sure you read Henry James, he’s so very much your kind of novelist.’
‘Of course one has read James.’ Leonora tucked the embroidered handkerchief she had been clutching into her sleeve and stood up. ‘Goodbye, Ned.’
— The Sweet Dove Died, chapter twenty-four
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That day the four of them went to the library, though at different times. The library assistant, if had noticed them at all, would have seen them as people who belonged together in some way. They each in turn noticed him; with his shoulder-length golden hair. Their disparaging comments on its length, its luxuriance, its general unsuitability — given the job and the circumstances — were no doubt...
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When they saw St Peter’s foot, worn away by the devotion of countless pilgrims, she had a superstitious desire to kiss it, as if doing so could bring her good luck, but when the moment came she couldn’t do it. She became fiercely hygienic and Protestant and held back.
— An Unsuitable Attachment, chapter fifteen
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The only thing that was settled was that we should go for a holiday in August, staying at the hotel in Cornwall which James and Hilary Cash had recommended. It seemed that Rodney had been extremely fortunate in getting accommodation there — only the mention of James’s name had made it possible — and I foresaw that we should be carrying with us a burden of gratitude, having to exclaim...
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One evening a few days later I was coming out of my office at six o’clock when I noticed Everard Bone…I was thinking of hurrying past him as I was not very well dressed that day — I had had a ‘lapse’ and was hatless and stockingless in an old cotton dress and a cardigan. Mrs. Bonner would have been horrified at the idea of meeting a man in such an outfit. One should always...
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‘Mind if I wash first?’
‘No — you do. I won’t look,’ said Sister Dew coyly.
‘Oh, I don’t mind. After all we’re all made alike.’
‘Well, not quite, Miss Pettigrew.’
‘No — male and female created He them, more or less, or as near as makes no matter,’ said Daisy. ‘But you and I are too old to have any false...
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‘Oh, Mother is very well, thank you,’ said Edward. ‘Full of beans as usual,’ he added, his tone losing a little of its joviality. He knew that it was wicked and unfilial of him, but he sometimes wished that Mother was not quite so full of beans.
— Crampton Hodnet, “Spring, the Sweet Spring”
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At the same time the big stuffed eagle in the hall — from which the hotel took its name — was given its annual cleaning with one of the Hoover attachments. The fierce-looking king of birds submitted himself to various indignities at the hands of a bustling woman.
— No Fond Return of Love, chapter sixteen
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Sister Dew lay in bed, uncertain whether to get up or to pretend that she was not yet awake. She turned over to look at her watch on the table between the two beds. Twenty past seven. Daisy was taking up more than her share of the table with a guide-book, a Bible, two novels, and a large bottle of Kitzymes, which Sister Dew happened to know were yeast tablets for cats. Surely she didn’t...
