It was a day

But this is more the reality.

'It was colder, as the woman said. The wind came in little gusts. It was a day to be inside somewhere, cosseted and loved; by a warm fireside, with the clatter of friendly cups and saucers, a sleepy cat licking its paws, a cyclamen in a pot on the windowsill putting forth new buds.' Daphne Du Maurier The Parasites

cupsandsaucers

almond blossom in the garden

Let's daydream a little...

'When the first days of April come, something steals into the air and touches you upon the cheek, and the touch travels downwards to your body, and your body comes alive. The windows are flung open. The sparrows in St. John's Wood chatter, but the little sooty tree on the pavement opposite has a blackbird on its naked branch. Further down the road there is a house that has almond blossom in the garden. The buds are fat and luscious ready to burst.' Daphne Du Maurier The Parasites

spring

soft spring sunshine

The herald of spring is wonderful in so many countries. Reading these spring thoughts in Australia, could be spring thoughts in many other countries.

'Thus I sat in burning discontent and ill-humour until soothed by the scent of roses and the gleam of soft spring sunshine which streamed in through my open window. Some of the flower-beds in the garden were completely carpeted with pansy blossoms, all colours, and violets - blue and white, single and double. The scent of mignonette, jonquils, and narcissi filled the air. I revelled in rich perfumes, and these tempted me forth. My ruffled feelings gave way before the delights of the old garden. I collected a number of vases, and filling them with water, set them on a table in the veranda near one of the drawing-room windows. I gathered lapfuls of the blossoms, and commenced arranging them in the vases.' Miles Franklin My Brilliant Career

vases

How is spring in your corner of the globe?

gloriously, irresponsibly happy

A quote for Friday...

'However, to-day she was gloriously, irresponsibly happy. The stale rolls tasted delicious out here under the trees, the sun was warm on her hair, and a little bubble of pleasure burst in her throat...' Antonia White Frost in May

happy

Wishing you all moments, and more, of glorious, irresponsible happiness this weekend.

Magic and Lavender

This seems the perfect quote for a Friday when it's Paris in July.


'It was our favourite time of the day, this in-between time, and it always held and seemed to last longer than it should - a magic and lavender space unpinned from the hours around it, between worlds.' Paula McLain The Paris Wife

favourite time

Hope you have some magic and lavender this Friday.

toast-drinking

Whilst away I read The Paris Wife by Paula McLain about Hadley Richardson, Ernest Hemingway's first wife. It's made me look out my copy of Fiesta:The Sun Also Rises to see which pages are turned down.

'I say that is wine,' Brett held up her glass. 'We ought to toast something. "Here's to royalty".'
'This wine is too good for toast-drinking, my dear. You don't want to mix emotions up with wine like that. You lose the taste.' Ernest Hemingway Fiesta: The Sun Also Rises

toast

Do you like emotions with your drink? I know I want to mix memories with my drink, so I think that means I want emotions with it? 

A haze of loveliness

To counteract our thoughts of dowdiness some beauty.

haze

'But she could never escape from her beauty; it clung to her like a mist, like a skin, so that she seemed to move in a haze of loveliness. Everything she touched, every word she used took on this quality of grace; her very gloves and handkerchiefs were romantic.' Antonia White Frost in May

Wishing you all a haze of loveliness weekend.

Glorious spring days

A Hosepipe ban has been called and the heavens have opened with more than just April Showers. Maybe the weather will read this passage and bring back glorious sunny days, with rain during the night.


'However, in these glorious spring days the sense of life was too pleasant to be much clouded... The graceful wild clematis festooned the shrubbery along the creeks with great wreaths of magnificent white bloom, which loaded every breeze with perfume; the pretty bright green senna shrubs along the river-banks were decked in blossoms that rivalled the deep blue of the sky in brilliance;... The cry of the leather-heads was heard in the orchard as the cherry season approached. Oh it was good to be alive!' Miles Franklin My Brilliant Career

blossom

How has your spring been?

Her pearls, her satin train

It took me a long time to read The Ladies of Lyndon finally I finished it. There's alot about marriage in it and as it's the anniversary of our first date and engagement I thought we'd have these passages.

The silence in which she drove with her father to the church was comforting and lovely.

John, handsome and competent as ever, waited for her at the chancel steps, and at the sight of his cheerful self-possession she became more collected. While the clergyman was haranguing them about those carnal lusts of which the bride is supposed to know nothing, she reflected composedly that John ought really to be married as often as possible, he did it so well.

waiting

As she returned down the aisle Mendelson's triumph seemed to epitomise her own satisfaction in her beautiful behaviour. She had quitted the maiden state becomingly.

flowers

They had drawn up before the Cocks's door, triumphant with its gala awning and crimson carpet. It was flung wide by beaming maidservants and John handed Agatha and her lilies, her pearls, her satin train and lace veil, out of the car.

She was already rather tired of hearing her new name.

bride

John twitched her train into becoming folds round her feet and assumed the posture of happy groom at her side.

happy

"I've not crushed your flowers," he murmured in her ear as a bevvy of bridesmaids flocked into the room. "Isn't that exemplary in a bridegroom?" Margaret Kennedy The Ladies of Lyndon

crushed

Like nothing on earth

"I never was in Agatha's bedroom," said Hubert wistfully, "What was it like?"
"Like nothing on earth. A wonderful Elizabethan bed, all hung with old Italian tapestries... And a Louis Quinze dressing-table, and a crystal jug and basin from somewhere in Hungary. And, by way of pictures, a Gainsborough portrait, and a landscape... And a good deal of carved jade and ivory lying around. It was just like all the other rooms in the house, only she had seized on the very best things." Margaret Kennedy The Ladies of Lyndon

I'm not sure Agatha's bedroom would be my idea of nothing on earth, but this one might be... And when we gather ourselves to decorate our bedroom well then that shall be Like nothing on earth.

bedroom

How would you like your dream bedroom to be?

An alarum clock

"That's not an alarum clock going off upstairs?" she cried. "It must be late! I can't bear to think of people getting up already; I need to recruit a lot of energy before I can even think of a new day." Margaret Kennedy The Ladies of Lyndon

clocks

Do you need an alarm or do your have your own internal alarm clock? I need an alarm clock and a cuddle from Warmth to wake me...

A dash of yellow

Let's brighten things up. Shake the possible January gloom away and think of flowers.
'Lady Slane liked them [his little offerings] best when they took the form of flowers... He would make daring and surprising combinations of colour and form, till the result was more like a still-life painting than like a bunch of living flowers, yet informed with a life that no paint could rival. Set upon their window-sill, luminous in the sun... he would produce a bunch as garish as a gipsy, all blue and purple and orange, but next week a bunch discreet as a pastel, all rose and grey with a dash of yellow..' Vita Sackville-West All Passion Spent

yellow

Oceans are moving

"A whole year passed, unremarkable, one of those periods of consolidation in change when one is growing and filling out into the spaces of a life the shape of which has been set but not yet seen: the time will come to stop shout, and look, up and around at the walls, the ceilings, the staircases leading from here to there, that one has built around oneself out of daily dabs of mud. Or the year was like a ship; inside it seems much the same town you have always lived in... But beneath the patterned carpet oceans are moving past your feet; and you yourself have determined this with a ticket you bought months back." Nadime Gordimer The Lying Days

For us 2011 definately wasn't like a ship - we knew we'd moved...
@
What was 2011 for you a staircase or a ship? And how would you like 2012 to be?

Women and the War

Having had Virago Reading Week and Persephone Reading Weekend so far this year and Tuesday being International Women's Day. A passage about Women, home and wartime from A House in the Country, by the ever wise Tori.

"Everyone speaks of the test of war, which takes many different forms. For women there is the test of courage, to go with men into danger, bear hardship and discomfort, to work all days in factories, to be tired and perhaps afraid. But for me I think that to stay at home, to be unnoticed, to do the same things, to be bored, to be tired by work which no one sees, to live in the same way that you have always lived, with only the difference that it is upon you that all the work will now fall, there, I think, is the most severe test of all." Jocelyn Playfair A House in the Country

The Clapping of Wings

Virago Reading week may be over but what I like about blog events is that they live on. Carolyn wrote, like all the Virago posts, a wonderful thought provoking post. This sentence really spoke to me 'I don't want to spend another year just reading comfort books' . This was partly the reason why when I found Union Street in the second hand bookshop I picked it up and bought it. And now why I'm posting this.

It's the story of seven girls/women who live on Union Street. It is definately not a comfort read. This is real poverty. Not the 'we used to be rich but now we're living in a tumbling pile, at least we have Granny's fur stole to keep us warm' type poor. This is 'thank my lucky stars I hopefully will never live like this and what can I do to make sure other people don't too' type poverty.

There's young Kelly Brown having the childhood which makes me want to scoop her up and away from it. Yet she still finds moments of pleasure.

'Suddenly she came out on to a field of brilliant, white light. There were seagulls there, hundreds of them, standing motionless in pools of reflected cloud.... Then with a shout of joy, she ran towards them.
One by one with the clapping of wings, and then in a whole flock, they rose up and burst like spray in the air above her head.' Pat Barker Union Street

birds

There are young mothers in loveless, aggressive marriages where the husband drinks all the money and wonders if he'll ever get another job. There is still the space for the profound, holding her new daughter, staring out of the hospital window.

'Now she held her daughter in her arms. And the thought that inside that tiny body was a womb like hers with eggs waiting to be released, caused the same fear, the same wonder. She walked across to the window holding the child in her arms.
My daughter.'

There's the mother who takes her own daughter to a back street to see the lady who 'help[s] girls out of a jam', knowing that in doing she's risking her life.

And then there's Alice. Alice Bell. Eats nothing, wraps herself in newspaper so that she has enough money for a proper funeral, not a pauper's funeral. Alice who the neighbours care for, but whose son and wife don't. Alice whose story speaks to my heart and soul.

'Inside herself, she was still sixteen. She had all the passion, all the silliness.'

Have you read this book? What did you think of it?

Please if you read no more just read Alice Bell's story.

Love

After yesterday's post on painful love let's end Virago Week with

our hope for, our experience of a stronger love.

'Christopher loved her with the passion of youth, of imagination, of poetry, of all the fresh beginnings of wonder and worship that have been since Love first lit his torch and made in the darkness a great light.'

Elizabeth von Arnim Love

love

Thank you Carolyn and Rachel for hosting Virago Reading week. I've really enjoyed it.

Scarcely Breathing

Virago celebrates love and strong, good relationships yet they also aren't afraid to look at when relationships aren't quite how we hope. Be they between lovers

'At first I clutched at anything I thought might hold together the torn and tearing garment of our relationship; but while I snatched the edges together with a comfort or a promise to myself in one place, the seams burst, the thread raveled out somewhere else. So in the end I did what so many other women, all through time have done in situations beyond them. I became afraid to move inside that garment. It was torn in so many places, that the seams strained so frailly everywhere, that it seemed only by keeping quite still, scarcely breathing, would it hold together.' Nadine Gordimer The Lying Days

or family

'When her mother seemed to have finished, she put down the half-eaten slice of bread and made towards the door. She had to pass her mother to get to it. They looked at each other. Each at that moment expected, and perhaps wanted, an embrace.' Pat Barker Union Street

reflecting

Tilted saucers filled with flowers

Ah the frippery side of Virago - but yet always surrounded and linked to deeper thoughts and feelings.

'Mrs Blenkinsop at once replies that, for her part, she has never given up all those little feminine touches that make All the Difference. A ribbon here, a flower there.' E.M. Delafield The Diary of a Provincial Lady

feminine

'How sweet of you,' she had said, 'but darling, I don't wear hats any more, except on Sunday. And I've got my -'
'No,' he said firmly, 'I shall buy you a new hat...'
And to-day, on his way to lunch with someone at Boodle's, he had kept a sharp eye open for women wearing pretty hats. Extraordinary things they were, he thought, like tilted saucers filled with flowers...' Mollie Panter-Downes One Fine Day

hats

Hoping you have a 'tilted saucers filled with flowers' day.

The Edible Woman

So after yesterday's quote from sixteen year old me. These two Virago quotes about how we change seem appropriate.

'It was one thing to be admired because one was lovely, and quite another thing to be admired because one was still so lovely. She did not belong to the sort of woman who, half-way through her life, can change her manner and inaugarate a new existence;' Vita Sackville-West The Edwardians 1930

'Whatever was going to happen to Clara had already happened: she had turned into what she was going to be... She only wanted to know what she was becoming, what direction she was taking, so she could be prepared.' Margaret Atwood The Edible Woman 1969

woman
I've mentioned before that many of the quotes I save refer to travelling through life. Do we stay the same, how do we change? I've changed alot since I was sixteen yet yesterday's quote still strikes a chord with me.
Virago, or indeed books in general, speak to the teenager, the young adult, the adult and journey with us as we mature and beyond.

Which Virago has travelled with you through your changing life?

Little Rays of Light

I think that this, apart from Jane Austen, was probably my first Virago. This quote is on page four of my original book of quotes, so probably around the time I was 16... This passage spoke to me then and speaks to me now...

'However dark things may seem little rays of light and understanding will break through. Perhaps this is all there will ever be, all we have the right to expect. But so long as we are open to receive them that is all that matters. Whatever happens we must never shrug our shoulders and say
"Well, I had such dreams and nothing came of them, but things haven't been so bad, I've got along somehow."
You must never do that to yourself. Delve into your despair and rage against it, rather than that. But never subscribe to the littleness of life.' Mary Hocking Welcome Strangers.

rays of light

Aren't Virago novels all about not 'subscribing to the littleness of life', whatever that may mean for our situation?