Quotes from Angela Thirkell

How two such charming women as Mrs. Brandon and Peggy can tolerate such a bounder as Francis beats me. I don't mean there's anything wrong with him, but he looks so damned pleased with himself.

Doctors!" said Mr. Leslie, wiping the whole of the Royal College of Physicians off the face of the world with this withering remark.

The subject of money was not mentioned again at the time, but when Miss Todd began going to Mrs Morland as secretary, she insisted on having an account from Dr Ford, much to his annoyance. He persuaded, he blustered, he was almost pathetic, but Miss Todd stood firm. All he could do was talk to her in her front garden instead of in her drawing-romm, and put her fees, which she luckily paid in cash, into his safe, in an envelope marked Property of Miss Anne Todd left with me for safe keeping.

At first the baby was so transported with wrath, that it shrieked more loudly than before, but after a while nature asserted itself against imbecility and with one great heave and spasm of fury it suddenly became like the jelly smoother than the creamy curd, its vengeful limbs relaxed, and with long shuddering breaths it began to suck its bottle, both hands clutching the beloved object and an angry suspicious eye roving the nursery against the possible approach of milk-thieves.

Do you know what I think, mother?" said Edith, who was in her usual tidy way plumping up the cushions and generally putting things straight. "No, darling," said her mother. "What is it?" "Well, it's rather difficult to explain," said Edith. "It's about George and John-Arthur. I'd like to marry them both.

If he had been, say, the Count of Monte Cristo, he would have drawn from his pocket a small and exquisitely wrought phial, two drops from which would have brought the colour to her cheeks. Her dark eyes might then have rested with gratitude on her deliverer; she might have languidly extended her hand for him to kiss, a thought at which he was so overcome that he had to stop for a moment and recover himself.

Madame Boulle, in spite of her experiences among the highest English families, was amazed at the coolness shown by Lady Emily. A grandchild in danger of drowning, a young man in danger of a pneumonia and a bronchitis, and she was entirely calm, not even impressed by Pierre's bravery. Bravery in the face of danger, Madame Boulle explained, was the characteristic of her family.

Mrs. Leslie did not at all want to look at anyone's feet, for grown-up feet are seldom a really pleasant sight. It is one of life's little tragedies that the divine feet of babies, so soft and exquisitely rounded, "les pieds ronds" as our peculiar neighbours the Gauls say when they mean someone is tiddly or has had one over the eight, inevitably turn into the average human foot with all the knobs, corns, whelks, and bubukles that civilization brings.

Miss Starter said that she felt herself that quite enough was done for refugees and there was a woman psychopath in Surbiton who had done wonders for a friend of hers.

Mr Grant, who did not understand his cousin's peculiar devotion to this form of mental stimulus, was ready enough to ride on a cock two or three times, but felt a distinct uneasiness at the form of half a crown's worth of this exercise. However Delia looked so happy and so pretty, with the flush of excitement on her face, that he determined to endure as long as possible.

Francis, who was very well off, who found the comfort of his mother's house more attractive than a house of his own, who could use his mother's car but did not think of her need of it, who enjoyed gallivanting about the country and doing theatricals with Lady Cora (for so he put it not very kindly to himself) and at the same time demanded his wife's presence, who was not taking part, though a few years earlier it was she who was the theatrical star.

If it were in his destiny, which he felt it never would be, to love and be loved, he could imagine a way of love quite different from what he had just seen.

Mr. Fanshawe, who like most of his sex would enthusiastically neglect any woman, however charming, to talk to any man, however dull, at once engaged Mr. Tebben in conversation.

By this time the whole School was thoroughly out of hand. Mrs. Morland was having a good cry, as were several ex-parents. An ex-Solicitor-General, an Air Vice-Marshal, two Earls, an Admiral of the Fleet, and an old boy who had been in prison for fraud on an unprecedented scale, were blowing their noses and glaring defiantly at anyone who didn't think they had a cold, and Mr. Birkett felt more than ever Lawk-a-mercy on me, This is none of I.

Mr. Fanshawe, who like most of his sex would enthusiastically neglect any woman, however charming, to talk to any man, however dull, at once engaged Mr. Tebben in conversation. It

He had been so well brought up, first by an autocratic mother and then by an autocratic wife, not to speak of a black period during which he had been brought up by both ladies, who sometimes used him as a pawn against each other and at other times joined forces to crush him, that he had a feeling of guilt on those very rare occasions when he set out to enjoy himself in his own way.

The air for miles round Angkor Wat was thick with renunciation. Mrs. Rivers saw herself clearly in the moonlight outside the great ruins. Slim and alluring she stood in her riding-kit. No one would have taken her for forty-eight. Her intelligence, her mocking wit, her disillusionment with life, all these availed her naught against the overpowering passion of a late flowering love.

Rose's baby can't be confirmed for the next fifteen years and anything might happen before then," from which words it was perfectly clear to her hearers that she had courageously envisaged the beautiful and comforting thought that the present Bishop of Barchester might be dead by that time.

I absolutely agree with you, but unfortunately the Bishop doesn't. He has found a new hymn by a religious Atheist beginning: 'O God, although Thou art not there, Men sing to Thee as if Thou were,

In that hush between the dying gold in the northwest and the growing dusk all round him, with one star shining, he thought of a girl with dark hair and dark eyes who understood what one said. And who liked pigs. Oh love! oh fire!

Mrs. Brandon herself, in one of her moods of devastating truthfulness, had explained her own appearance as the result of a long and happy widowhood, and as, after a little sincere grief at the loss of a husband to whom she had become quite accustomed, she had had nothing of consequence to trouble her, it is probable that she was right.

A week or so later the Vicar rang up to ask if he could come and see Lady Graham. Most of us would at once have had a (quite unnecessary) attack of conscience and wondered if we had been accused of brawling in church or coveting our neighbour's maidservant (a sin which has now, by force of circumstances, become Common Usage).

As for the evacuee children all over the county, their loving and starving parents, having had nearly four happy months of freedom, and seeing no reason why their children shouldn't be lodged, fed, clothed, educated and amused at other people's expense for ever, saw no reason to do anything more about them and hoped that the same fate would overtake the new baby whom most of them had had or were expecting. So all the hostesses buckled to afresh.

Much as he loved his many daughters and his two sons, now all married, all with children, he sometimes, and especially at Christmas and during school holidays when his wife's exuberant grandmotherhood filled the Deanery with children and nurses and odd parents, echoed from his heart the cry, "Oh, for an hour of Herod.