71 … of the Ashringford Volunteers, was a bleak brick cottage, … … of the Ashringford Volunteers, to whom there was an explanatory tablet in St Cyriac’s which related, like a page torn from Achilles Tatius, how and where, and by whose manicured extremities he fell, was a bleak brick cottage, …
71 A short path bordered by mild, cow’s-breath-scented phlox, led up to the porticoed entrance, where a tree, like a stout cook waiting for orders, did its best to shut out the view. A short path with a twist like a lizard’s tail led up to the entrance, where an unremarkable tree with a long Latin name did its best to keep out the light.
72 … the unexpected behaviour of poor Aunt Nettie … … the unexpected behaviour of poor Aunt Nettle …
73 ‘With the morsels removed,’ Mrs Wookie announced, ‘I shall make, if I’m spared, something rather choice for the League of Patriots bazaar.’ ‘With the scraps of stuff I’ve taken,’ Mrs Wookie announced, ‘I can make four small pincushions; or two large ones.’
73 ‘… Freeport, or somewhere—’ ‘… Scheveningen, or somewhere—’
74 ‘In the ’sixties,’ she crooned, … ‘In the forties,’ she crooned, …
75 Mrs Wookie slipped a pink-clad hot water-bottle from under her back. Mrs Wookie joined her hands.
76 ‘But,’ Aurelia gulped an eyelash, ‘in the official portrait,’ she objected, ‘he appears such a little gasp of a man!’ ‘But in the official portrait,’ Aurelia objected, ‘he appears such a little gasp of a man!’
77 ‘… And Cardinal Pringle will appear …’ ‘… The Cardinal Pringle will appear …’
81 … a sumptuous sapphire, changing black … … a sumptuous sapphire, changing back …
84 ‘… A Dame, who, (for the next few weeks) prefers to remain unknown wishes to remove …’ ‘… The beautiful Mrs S, who (for the next few weeks) wishes to remain unknown, desires to remove …’
84 ‘… But the west window, the war window …’ ‘But the west window … the pre-Raphaelite window …’
84 ‘To remove the war window,’ the Bishop said, … ‘To remove the west window,’ the Bishop said, …
85 ‘Do you go often to the play?’
‘The last time,’ his lordship confessed, ‘I went was to see Mrs Kendall …’ ‘Do you often go to the play?’
‘The last time I went,’ his lordship confessed, ‘was to see Mrs Kendall …’
89 … surveying, meanwhile, the newly painted scene; … … surveying, meanwhile, the newly planted scene; …
90 ‘… something picked him up, and danced him round …’ ‘… something picked him up, and danced round him …’
96 ‘… But he’s not going to be stitched into a Vionnet model by eight …’ ‘… But he’s not going to be stitched into a Poiret model by eight …’
96 ‘Is that a Vionnet shimmering across the bed … ?’ ‘Is that a Poiret shimmering across the bed? …’
99 … equalled by her horror for the word flea … … equalled by her horror of the word flea …
100 ‘I’m quite certain … that Sir Victor would not require much pressing.’ ‘I’m quite certain … that Lord Blueharnis would not require much pressing.’
100 ‘… He is getting exactly like that preposterous effigy of King Edward the Last in the Public Gardens.’ ‘… He is getting exactly like that awkward effigy of the late Earl in the Public Gardens.’
101 ‘Mrs Barrow of Dawn vows it produces a romantic effect on her.’ ‘Mrs Barrow of Dawn vows she can fall in love with it a mile away.’
108 … Miss Valley fluted, as she followed Lady Anne towards the door. … Miss Valley murmured, as she followed Lady Anne towards the door.
109 There was no squeezing, fainting, crushing or trampling. There was no squeezing, fainting, crushing, or tramping.
110 ‘I’m certainly not surprised’.
‘Define Belief,’ Aurelia unsteadily quavered.
‘Intuition!’ ‘I’m certainly not surprised’.
‘He’s so worn,’ Miss Chimney observed critically, ‘and she’s so passée.’
Aurelia touched the tapestries with her thumb. ‘It’s probably only the stuff.’
110 ‘Were I being painted,’ Mrs Pontypool intensely remarked opening and closing her fan, ‘I’d be inclined to favour Roy Quilimane …’ ‘If I were getting painted,’ Mrs Pontypool announced, ‘again I’d try Mr White …’
110 ‘Anything nude,’ she said, ‘revolts me somehow so …’ ‘Anything nude, anything undressed, anything without a frill,’ she said, ‘revolts me somehow so …’
110 ‘We rang and rang,’ Miss Clara said. ‘We rang and we rang,’ Miss Clara said.
110 Lady Anne fetched a breath.
‘To be frank,’ she said dryly, ‘you might be stopping …’ ‘To be frank,’ Lady Anne said absently, ‘you might be stopping …’
111 … Even at a Poet’s dinner.
‘We were getting …’ … Even at a Poet’s dinner.
‘Now I know,’ she said, ‘exactly where to tie a necklace. On my arm.’
‘We were getting …’
111 ‘My publisher, at any rate, could be found,’ she said, ‘for I’ve had the same one always!’
To which Miss Valley answered:
‘… Pouf!’
‘But the … ‘My publisher, at any rate, could be found,’ she said. ‘I’ve had the same man always. Byron had him. And Coleridge had him. And Keats. I should be really ashamed to fluster from firm to firm like some of those things one sees … I simply couldn’t do it. And God looks after me! He has never abandoned me yet to sit up night after night in a public-house to libel His saints by Christmas.’
‘My dear, I congratulate you! To compose an essay on Self-Control when one is so strangely devoid of it oneself was an admirable tour de force.’
But the …
111 ‘Because a certain Signor Calixfontus,’ she said, … ‘That a certain Signor Calixfontus,’ she said, …
112 … the room bore some faint chronological trace … … it bore some faint chronological trace …
115 … a rather boring Louis XVI bedroom … … a rather boring Louis the Sixteenth bedroom …
119 … a room waiting ready to receive it … … a room ready waiting to receive it …
128 ‘… The other is one of those curious colour contrasts … So quickly.’ ‘… The other is one of those curious colour contrasts … So sickly …’
131 Monday.
Day Dawn.
The little turquoise flower … The little turquoise flower …
136 Mrs Calvally rippled.
‘I conclude it’s only the carpenter,’ she explained, … Mrs Calvally chuckled.
‘I conclude it’s only the carpenter,’ she explained, …
138 Since his arrival in Ashringford he had been at work on a Gilles de Rais, … Since his arrival in Ashringford he had been at work on a Gilles de Raie, …
140 ‘I hear everything.’
‘Whisper what you’ve heard.’ ‘I hear everything.’
‘Which, invariably, you exaggerate!’
‘It’s no crime to exaggerate. It’s a sign of vitality rather. Health …’
‘Whisper what you’ve heard.’
141 ‘… there would have been an end of them.’ ‘… there would have been an end to them.’
150 ‘… where Sir Victor, I believe …’ ‘… where Lord Blueharnis, I believe …’
152 … with a basket of cattleya orchids, … … with a basket of orchids, …
152 ‘Sometimes,’ Mrs Pet protested, ‘I have no loftier wish than to view the world with Kate Greenaway’s eyes!’ ‘Sometimes,’ Mrs Pet protested, ‘I have no loftier wish than to look upon the world with Kate Greenaway’s eyes!’
163 ‘He’s a true Cresswell.’ ‘He is a true Cresswell.’
163 ‘… “And I shall have a doll and a bird to talk to it.” ’ ‘…“And I shall have a doll and a bird and talk to it.” ’
1
68 And everywhere the stars sprang out like castanets … And everywhere the stars had sprung out like castanets …
174 There was the Primitive … And the Blessed Damozel … There was the Primitive … And a Blessed Damozel …
175 ‘Victor would still insist that you had saved the country.’ ‘Jack would insist still that you had saved the country.’
175–6 ‘He’s so enchanted with the window. He has got me to change our pew.’
‘When the sunlight comes it is too superb!’
‘Yes; and never a glare, dear – ; always tempered.’
‘Several young men in town …’ ‘He’s so enchanted with the window. He has got me to change our pew. “Poor Biddy,” he said to me, “she looks really royal. A kind of grandeur—” ’
‘Several young men in town …’
Appendix 2
Part II, Chapter IV, of the 1916 Edition of Inclinations
IV
The ‘intimate’ dinner arranged by Mrs Collins in honour of her daughter proved to be a large one.
A dinner of twenty at a table to hold eighteen.
As course succeeded course came the recurring pressure of a forward footman’s knee.
Half asleep holding a shell-shaped spoon Miss Dawkins explored a sauce-boat as though it had been an Orient liner.
‘Yes Mr Collins.’
‘No Mr Collins.’
‘Aha Mr Collins.’
(‘Thanks!’)
‘Yes, God is Love, Mr Collins, and I’m sure they couldn’t help it!’ she said at last.
‘Già! Già!’ the Countess struck in, allegro, across a bank of flowers.
‘Well, here’s health, old girl. The very best!’
‘And success to you … and may the gods permit you to find them!’
‘If you ask me, I think it silly to find people,’ the Countess’s former inamorato declared. ‘I don’t want to find anybody! …’
‘No doubt you’ve tried clairvoyance?’ the Member for Bovon asked.
‘Indeed. And palmistry, and phrenology, and cards, and sand …’
‘Well?’
‘Oh well …’ Miss Dawkins said, ‘I was warned I’d marry a septuagenarian within the forbidden degrees and never know it! … Helios, Mene, Tetragrammaton!’
‘Have you looked by the Rhine at all?’
‘Where haven’t I?’
‘Courage!’ the Countess crooned.
‘I’ve a presentiment they’re in India. Somehow I connect my mother’s fair hair with Bombay …’
Mr Collins raised his glass.
‘Then here’s to Bombay!’
‘Oh, nectar, Mr Collins! Show me the cork – I always like to see the cork—! And my dear father was like me there. “The cork, Ola,” he’d say. “A bottle of wine is nothing without the cork.” ’
‘The Count!’ Napier Fairmile with generosity proposed.
The Countess shrugged her shoulders.
‘I’d a letter from Italy this morning,’ she said. ‘It appears in Rome all the roads are up.’
‘Up?’
‘There’s no getting by the Corso at all. Persons going to the Villa Borghese have to pass by the Via Babuino. Oh, good gracious! And my friend says the heat! It’s a grill. Everyone is away still, of course, in villegiatura. But even so! At the Baths at Lucca she says she hears they’re burning …’
‘Well, it was pretty warm, dear, in Greece,’ Miss Dawkins said. ‘The day of the accident I shall never forget how very hot it was!’
‘At Salamis …’
‘Ah, don’t.’
‘Was there ever such a misfortune?’
‘There seems to have been some inexcusable carelessness.’
‘There are certain things we shall never know,’ the Countess murmured, ‘but I’ve sometimes thought that shot was aimed at me!’
Mrs Collins shook her fan.
‘The crazy people Mabel met in Greece!’
‘Both Dorinda, Lady Gaiheart and Mrs Arbanel are parting from their husbands, so I understand.’
‘Poor Lady Dorinda! I fear she has fallen between two stools,’ the Member for Bovon said.
‘And a piano. And a waste-paper basket, if reports are true,’ the Countess replied.
‘Did you meet the Viviotts at all?’
‘There was a Mrs Viviott,’ Miss Dawkins said – ‘a nervy, pretty thing. She and a Mrs Erso-Ennis … Inseparable. And always quarrelling.’
‘They’re reconciled again. And are gone to live at Birdingbury – quite near us – because it sounds Saxon …’
‘Really, Viola?’
Mrs Newhouse, née Neffal, nodded.
‘Anything fair!’ the Countess crooned. ‘Even a dancer.’
‘La Tasajara? I saw her one night. I believe it was at Astrea Fortri’s house in Pall Mall …’
‘Such a little starved-soul ghost-face. Like a little thin-pale-pinched St John,’ the Countess critically said.
‘In the end she became indispensable to Miss O’Brookomore,’ Miss Dawkins stated.
‘With Gerald?’
‘Oh, that woman.’ Mrs Collins shuddered.
‘They tell me she’s to chaperon an Eton boy straight to Tibet.’
Miss Dawkins became abstracted.
‘She evidently likes them young and fresh!’ she observed.
The Countess started.
‘What is it?’ she asked.
‘Come quickly!’ her sister said. ‘The child’s in her cups.’
‘Bianca is?’
‘What have you been giving her?’
‘It’s only the little hiccoughs …’
‘Remember you weren’t to come in till dessert.’
‘During the Stratford mulberries papa said I might. You’ve had them.’
‘Just look at her waist!’
‘Now I’m here, mayn’t I stop?’
‘If you like to display your natural gifts,’ Mr Collins murmured, ‘you may.’
‘You can’t do much on an empty stomach.’
‘You can recite, I suppose,’ the Countess said.
‘Recite? It’s always an effort for me to recite … I feel struck dumb in society.’
‘Remember Rome!’ the Countess warned. ‘We’ve no use for shyness there.’
‘On his tombstone in the grass,
Record of him he was an ass,
He stretched out his neck and he flicked up his ears
And bid farewell to this valley of tears.
He lay himself down on a bed to die,
Right in a flower-bed himself he lay,
He stiffened his back and he whisked round his tail
And bid farewell to this earthly vale.
– On his tombstone in the grass,
Record of him he was an Ass.’
‘Charming!’
‘How very, very, very, very vulgar!’ the Countess frowned.
‘Was it the devil, my dear?’
Mrs Collins rose.
‘Gentlemen,’ she murmured, ‘à tout à l’heure!’
‘Let’s all go into the garden, Mabsey.’
‘There’s no moon.’
‘There are stars.’
Miss Dawkins peered out.
‘It’s dark and like Gethsemane,’ she said.
Appendix 3
‘Ronald Firbank’ (1936) by E. M. Forster1
To break a butterfly, or even a beetle, upon a wheel is a delicate task. Lovers of nature disapprove, moreover the victim is apt to reappear each time the wheel revolves, still alive, and with a reproachful expression upon its squashed face to address its tormentor in some such words as the following: ‘Critic! What do you? Neither my pleasure nor your knowledge has been increased. I was flying or crawling, and that is all that there was to be learnt about me. Impossible to anatomize and find what breeds about my heart. Dissect the higher animals if you like, such as the frog, the cow, or the goose – no doubt they are full of helpful secrets. By all means write articles on George Eliot. Review from
every point of view Lord Morley of Borley’s autobiography. Estimate Addison.2 But leave me in peace. I only exist in my surroundings, and become meaningless as soon as you stretch me on this rack.’
The insect plaint is unanswerable, and if critics had not their living to get they would seldom handle any literary fantasy. It makes them look so foolish. Their state of mind is the exact antithesis of that of the author whom they propose to interpret. With quiet eyes and cool fingers they pass from point to point, they define fantasy as ‘the unserious treatment of the unusual’ – an impeccable definition, the only objection being to it that it defines. A gulf between the critical and the creative states exists in all cases, but in the case of a fantastical creation it is so wide as to be grotesque. And in saying a few words about our butterflies and beetles we must not unmindful of the remarks which, if they felt it worth while, they might pass upon us.
Butterflies and beetles are not always identical, and are sometimes dragon-flies, etc., too. For instance, in the paragraph above, when the phrase ‘Lord Morley of Borley’ slipped in, a beetle was speaking. No butterfly would probe so far. And when a Mrs Shamefoot says, in one of Ronald Firbank’s novels, ‘The world is disgracefully managed, one hardly knows to whom to complain’, she, again, is a beetle. But when she says ‘I adore the end of summer, when a new haystack appears on every hill’, she has hovered from wittiness to charm. And: ‘Nearer, hither and thither, appeared a few sleepy spires of churches, too sensible to compete with the Cathedral, but possibly more personal, like the minor characters in repertoire that support the star’ – well here we get both, the coloured glint, the naughty tweak. And when a gentleman who is married to a fox dreams all night of public schools for the children, and cannot think why Eton will not quite do, nor Harrow, nor Winchester, nor even Rugby, and then wakes up and thinks ‘Ah! A private tutor is the solution’, yet still feels dissatisfied, and finally remembers, and bursts into tears – here, again, we get something different, something downy and mothlike brushing the cheek, something at once countrified and sophisticated which pervades all the work of another fantast, Mr David Garnett.3 It is indeed impossible to decide where one insect stops and another starts; they are metamorphosed behind a rafter or in full flight, or in the calyx of a single flower, even on the very wheel of criticism, and there is only one quality that they all share in common: the absence of a soul.
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