Quotes from At Lady Molly's by Anthony Powell

 

 

 

‘Good evening, Smith,’ said Lovell, rather grandly.

‘’Evening,’ said Smith, speaking without the smallest suggestion of warmth.

‘How are you, Smith?’

Smith looked Lovell up and down as if he considered the enquiry not merely silly, but downright insulting. He did not answer.

‘Is her Ladyship upstairs?’

‘Where do you think she’d be—in the basement?’

. I am more and more coming to think that Smith is more trouble than he is worth. It’s convenient to have a manservant in the house, but I found this morning we were completely out of gin, and I know at least two inches remained in the bottle left when we went to bed last night.’

‘Sherry, m’lord?’

It was impossible to tell from Smith’s vacant, irascible stare whether he had never before been asked for sherry since his first employment at Thrubworth; or whether he had himself, quite simply, drunk all the sherry that remained.

Erridge’s voice admitted the exceptional nature of the enquiry. He asked almost apologetically. Even so, the shock was terrific. Smith started so violently that the coffee cups rattled on the tray. It was evident that we were now concerned with some far more serious matter than the earlier pursuit of sherry. Recovering himself with an effort, Smith directed a stare of hatred at Quiggin, at once revealed by some butler’s instinct as the ultimate cause of this unprecedented demand. The colourless, unhealthy skin of his querulous face, stretched like a pale rubber mask over the bones of his features, twitched a little.

 

‘Champagne, m’lord?’

 

the gayest of gay bachelors

Wouldn’t you like to meet Garbo, Alfred?’

‘Never heard of him,’ said Tolland.

Molly Jeavons Mildred Blaides—or rather Mildred Haycock finace Widmerpool

 

there is no greater sign of innate misery than a love of teasing.

 

He was wearing a new dark suit. Like a huge fish swimming into a hitherto unexplored, unexpectedly exciting aquarium, he sailed resolutely forward: yet not a real fish, a fish

The fact was that Widmerpool could hardly be described as ‘nice’. Energetic: able: successful: all kinds of things that had never been expected of him in the past; but ‘nice’ he had never been, and showed little sign of becoming. Yet, for some reason, I was quite glad to see him again. His reappearance, especially in that place, helped to prove somehow rather consolingly, that life continued its mysterious, patterned way. Widmerpool was a recurring milestone on the road; perhaps it would be more apt to say that his course, as one jogged round the track, was run from time to time, however different the pace, in common with my own. As an aspect of my past he was an element to be treated with interest, if not affection, like some unattractive building or natural feature of the landscape which brought back the irrational nostalgia of childhood. A minute later I found myself talking to him.

After the Gipsy Jones business, he had told me he would never again have anything to do with a woman who ‘took his mind off his work.’ I wondered whether Mrs. Haycock would satisfy that condition: whether he had proposed to her under stress of violent emotion, or had decided such a marriage would help his career. Perhaps there was an element of both motives; in any case, to attempt to disengage motives in marriage is a fruitless task

I abominate making plans

my acquaintance with Widmerpool, the General had entirely forgotten about that piece of information, for it now came to him as something absolutely new, and, for some reason, excruciatingly funny, causing him to fall into an absolute paroxysm of deep, throaty guffaws, like the inextinguishable laughter of the Homeric gods on high Olympus, to whose characteristic faults and merits General Conyers’s own nature probably approximated closely enough

‘But you couldn’t have been at school with him. No, no, you couldn’t have been at school with him.’

Truscott said Widmerpool was a terrible fellow. Couldn’t trust him an inch

Beauty, particularly, is a form of power of which, perhaps justly, men of action feel envious.

I’ve been reading something called Orlando,’’ said the General. ‘Virginia Woolf. Ever heard of it?’

‘I read it when it first came out.’

‘What do you think of it?’

‘Rather hard to say in a word.’

‘Odd stuff, Orlando,’ said the General, who was not easily shifted from his subject. ‘Starts about a young man in the fifteen-hundreds. Then, about eighteen-thirty, he turns into a woman. You say you’ve read it?’

‘Yes.’

‘Did you like it? Yes or no?’

‘Not greatly.’

‘You didn’t?’

‘No.’

Now, psychoanalysis. Ever read anything about that? Sure you have. That was what I was on over Christmas.’

‘I’ve dipped into it from time to time. I can’t say I’m much of an expert.’

‘Been reading a lot about it lately,’ said the General. ‘Freud—Jung—haven’t much use for Adler. Something in it, you know. Tells you why you do things. All the same, I didn’t find it much help in understanding Orlando.’

Alf Warminster.’

This, then, was the famous Erridge. It was easy to see how the rumour had gone round among his relations that he had become a tramp, even if actual experience had stopped short of that status in its most exact sense

Erridge himself: a conformadon that in him became a gauntness recalling Don Quixote.

Would it be too explicit, too exaggerated, to say that when I set eyes on Isobel Tolland, I knew at once that I should marry her?

Erridge’s essentially ascetic type of idealism, concerned with the mass rather than the individual, and reinforced by an aristocratic, quite legitimate desire to avoid vulgar display, had no doubt moved imperceptibly into that particular sphere of parsimony defined by Lovell as ‘upper-class stinginess’. To demand champagne was deliberately to inflame such responses in Erridge.

he whole notion of drinking champagne because your sister was engaged was, in itself, obviously alien to him; alien both to his temperament and ideals. Champagne no doubt represented to his mind a world he had fled.

Have you ever noticed at all how Widmerpool gets on with women?’

‘He never seemed to find them at all easy to deal with. I was surprised that he should be prepared to take on someone like Mrs. Haycock.’

 

‘So was I,’ he said. ‘So was I. Very surprised. And I did not take long to see that they were getting on each other’s nerves when they arrived at Dogdene.

Half the time he was being obsequious, behaving as if he was applying for the job as footman, the other half, he was telling Geoffrey Sleaford and myself how to run our own affairs. It was then I began to mark down his psychological type. I had brought the book with me.’

The fact was, Mildred did not think he was paying her enough attention. That was plain as a pikestaff. Mildred is a woman who expects a good deal of fuss to be made over her. I could see he was in for trouble,’

he is a typical intuitive extrovert—classical case, almost. Cold-blooded. Keen on a thing for a moment, but never satisfied. Wants to get on to something else. Don’t really know about these things, but Widmerpool seems to fit into the classification. That’s the category in which I’d place him, just as if a recruit turns up with a good knowledge of carpentry and you draft him into the Sappers. You are going to say you are a hard-bitten Freudian, and won’t hear of Jung and his ideas. Very well, I’ll open another field of fire.’

Widmerpool had been in her room the night before. Things hadn’t gone at all well. Made up her mind he wasn’t going to be any use as a husband. Mildred can be pretty outspoken when she is cross.’

the fellow had a touch of exaggerated narcissism. Is that Widmerpool’s trouble?’

‘It wouldn’t surprise me. As I said before, I’ve only dipped into these things

it was fear of castration?’ I asked.

Probably thought about it a great deal too much. Doesn’t do to think about anything like that too much. Need a bit of relaxation from time to time. Everlastingly talks about his work too. Hasn’t he any hobbies?’

You are an introvert, of course,’ he said.

‘I think undoubtedly.’

Introverted intuitive type, do you think? I shouldn’t wonder.’

‘Possibly.’