Her Heart

'Her heart - is given him, with all it's love and truth. she would joyfully die with him, or better than that die for him. She knows he has failings, but she thinks they have grown up through his being like one cast away, for the want of something to trust in, and care for, and think well of." Charles Dickens Our Mutual Friend

love

Re reading this passage I'm not so sure about what I think. Dying for someone? If I love you I want you to be with me through life. What do you think?

Never let him go

In amongst all that angst there was the hope of this....

'But some day I'm going to find somebody and love him and love him and never let him go.' F. Scott Fitzgerald Tender is the Night
ruffled

Different Scents

I've joined a new book club, friends from printmaking invited me. Tonight we're discussing The Glass Room by Simon Mawer
This is my favourite quote from the book.

'Love seems a relative quality, not a unitary thing that can exist independent of an object. Love for, love of, never just love. There are different grades of love, different shades of love, different scents and tastes of love. It is not like happiness or misery, qualities that seem dull and limited. Love is limitless, she feels. You can love one person one way and another person another way and your store of love, all the different loves, is never diminished.' Simon Mawer The Glass Room

love

A Partnership of Delight

Four years ago today Warmth and I had our first date...

'In the weeks that followed, Molly walked into another life. There was then, and there was now. Her entire past self seemed like someone else. a person who had been fine, who had been content enough, but also quite ignorant, who did not know. Now, she was the person who knew, who knew how it was to be one of two, half of a partnership of delight, who knew the exquisite pleasure of anticipating the phone call, the uprush of joy when you saw him coming down the street or stepping off a train, or looking at you from the bed.' Penelope Lively Consequences

are so happy

Wallis Simpson

A while ago we had a week of not used wedding passages. I decided on a winter week as we had a summer wedding - but oh how lovely to have a winter wedding. We had a country wedding yet we live in London - but oh how lovely to have experienced marrying in a city.

So the theme of this week is my imagination and planning a second wedding same man daydream.

The Confirmation

Yes, yours, my love, is the right human face.

I in my mind had waited this long,

Seeing the false and searching for the true,

Then found you as a traveller finds a place

Of welcome suddenly amid the wrong

Valleys and rocks and twisting roads. But you,

What shall I call you? A fountain in a waste,

A well of water in a country dry,

Or anything that's honest and good, an eye

That makes the whole world bright. Your open heart,

Simple with giving, gives the primal deed,

The first good world, the blossom, the blowing seed,

The hearth, the steadfast land, the wandering sea.

Not beautiful or rare in every part.

But like yourself, as they were meant to be.

Edwin Muir

An alternative dress, Wallis Simpson - no idea if it would suit me but I love it.

David Fielden

Julie Kim

And a real bride wearing it.

The Princess Bride

Somehow I discovered that over here is a readalong to The Princess Bride. We had one of my favourite quotes when honeymoon recapping and here's another one I saved.

'There is no room in my body for anything but you. My arms love you, my ears adore you, my knees shake with blind affection.' William Goldman The Princess Bride

wedding
ps. Someone somewhere is hosting a Dr Zhivago readalong in December.... Do you know which blog it is?

Bathroom of the Vanities

Warmth bought me Christopher Reid's A Scattering for my birthday, it's a collection of poems he wrote after his wife died. Here's part of my favourite one, which seems appropriate as we pack up our flat. Thankfully we're packing up under very different circumstances to this poem.

Bathroom of the Vanities

The model mask, the mannequin moue,

the face I loved to catch her pulling

after sundry perfecting dabs

and micro-adjustments in front of the mirror

will never be seen, by me or the mirror, again.

......

Odd bottles in an orderly queue -

Issey Miyake, Parum, Tea Rose, the eternal billing

doves of L'Air du Temps - keep their caps

on, converse their last drops of essence and aura

and wait for no one.

Christopher Reid

@

How poignant thinking about all our lotions, potions, scents which we will leave behind.

The memories scents evoke...

From Shadow to Sunlight

I've chosen this quote for today as it links to Friday's quote about believing and hopefully the scars do heal...

'One day you find it' repeated Rodolphe; one day, quite suddenly, just when hope seems lost. And the horizon opens up it's like a voice crying 'Behold'. You feel you must tell this person the secrets of your life, give them everything, sacrifice everything for them. Nothing is actually said, you just know. You have seen each other in your dreams. There it is at last, the treasure you have sought so long, there right in front of you; shining, sparkling. Though you still have doubts, you dare not believe it; you stand there dazed, just as if you stepped from shadow to sunlight.' Gustav Flaubert Madame Bovary

sunlight

I have a little bit of a moral dilema. It happens with Anna Karenina too. Saving quotes about passion and love when the couple are having an affair. Hurting others. Does it decrease their love? Or does it just mean that for us the reader, reading it out of context it's bittersweet. And oh I have so many love quotes that are between lovers should I then not use them? What are your thoughts?

Know me, look at me

Warmth wanted to read a new book. He wanted suggestions. I suggested Suite Francaise. He loved it. It's brought back my memories. He cried on the tube at the end. That's one of the many reasons I love him.

'Not a word of their true feelings was spoken; they didn't kiss. There was simply silence. Silence followed by feverish passionate conversations about their own countries, their families, music, books... They felt a strange happiness, an urgent need to reveal their hearts to each other - the urgency of lovers, which is already a gift, the very first one, the gift of the soul before the body surrenders. Know me, look at me. This is who I am. This is how I have lived, this is what I have loved. And you? What about you my darling?' Irene Nemirovsky Suite Francaise

lovers

Great acts of Love

One day I shall read this novel. One day when I go on a very long holiday. Until then here's a snippet that was read at a friend's wedding and I squirreled away.

@
'You can give without loving, but you can never love without giving. The great acts of love are habitually performing small acts of kindness. Love is knowing that even when you are alone, you will never be lonely again. And the great happiness of life is the conviction that we are loved. Loved for ourselves. And even loved in spite of ourselves.' Victor Hugo Les Miserables

How can we have Paris in July without some of the greats of French literature. There shall be more. Madame Bovary is waiting in the wings.

and yet each day she did

I've just finished reading Seventh Heaven by Alice Hoffman. It fits in quite well with all the Mad Men we've been watching as it's set in America at tail end of the '50's very early '60's, however it's small town.
Nora is trying to settle in there with no husband and a young family. I loved this thought she had one day.

'Whenever he stumbled into Nora's arms she would think it wasn't possible for her to love him any more than she did, and yet each day she did; she loved him so much that she discovered that her hands and feet had grown a little larger to make room inside her for all that she felt...' Alice Hoffman Seventh Heaven

@

Rain

All the rain we had last week made me search out a rain quote....

'These moments of silent meditation took away all his cares, made up for all his pain. Once again, love entered his heart like rain falling on dry ground, first drop by drop, fighting to carve a path through the pebbles, then in a long cascade straight to his heart.' Irene Nemirovsky Suite Francaise

path, Torrential,

Here's hoping for a sunnier, drier week...

A Man and A Woman

A man and a woman sit near each other, and they do not long

At this moment to be older, or younger or born

In any other nation, or any other time, or any other place.

They are content to be where they are, talking or not talking.

Their breaths together feed someone who we do not know.

The man sees the way his fingers move;

He sees her hands close around a book she hands to him.

They obey a third body that they share in common.

They have promised to love that body.

Age may come; parting may come; death will come!

A man and a woman sit near each other;

As they breathe they feed someone we do not know,

Someone we know of, whom we have never seen.

Robert Bly

@, @

How do I love thee?

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.

I love thee to the depth and and breadth and height

My soul can reach....

I love thee to the level of everyday's

Most quiet need, by sun and candle light.

Elizabeth Barret Browning Sonnets from the Portuguese

ethereal flowergirls

So, I thought this week we'd have a Wedding Week of quotes and poems which we didn't use but I love. My favourite line is 'most quiet need'.

Learning to read you...

Saturday's Carol Ann Duffy poem prompted me to seek out this poem by U.A. Fanthorpe. It's about a couple who've been together for a long time but are still learning to read each other. I found it through a great anthology 101 Happy Poems edited by Wendy Cope.

7301 U.A. Fanthrope

Learning to read you, twenty years ago.

Over the pub lunch cheese-and-onion rolls.

The rest of our lives, the rest of our lives

Doing perfectly ordinary things together - riding

In buses, walking in Sainsbury's, sitting

In pubs eating cheese-and-onion rolls.

All those tomorrows. Now twenty years after.

We've had seventy-three hundred of them, and

(If your arithmatic's is right, and our luck) we may

Fairly reckon on seventy-three hundred more.

I hold them crammed in my arms, colossal crops

Of shining tomorrows that may never happen,

But may they! Still learning to read you,

To hear what it is you're saying, to master the code.

Fonder and Fonder

'Whatever happens,' she says, 'please make us fonder and fonder of each other - forever and ever.' Does that sound mistrustful? It isn't really; but one should never make the mistake of asking for less than one hopes, and means to get.' Denis Mackail Greenery Street

Endpaper Greenery Street

Secure

'It would always be like this now. Secure. Never again that feeling of solitude in a crowd that made one sometimes begin to think furtively of escape. It was fun to be among people with him and lovely to leave them afterwards and go out alone together.' Monica Dickens Mariana

Will this week turn into an introspection week? I can go to parties alone. I like meeting new people. I had gotten a little weary of always being 'by myself' even if you've gone with frineds. I love going to parties with Warmth. It feels like the best of both worlds. To be out and about. Socialising. Laughing. Talking. Secure. We leave together.

source

Persephone Reading Week

So along at The B Files and Paperback Reader a Persephone Reading Week has been organised. The book I've chosen is Lady Rose and Mrs Memmary by Ruby Ferguson. I've planned a week of Persephone quotes, a little like Nancy Mitford Week in February, in this little blog space.
The quotes are in the order which I read the books. My first thought.
My first Persephone book was, like many others before me, 'Miss Pettigrew Lives for the Day' which I did love and have enjoyed re-reading, (it's one of my go-to books when I'm ill.) However, I have no favourite passages to share from it. Do you find that happens you can love a book but no passages speak out and sometimes don't really enjoy the story but lots of passages speak to you?
The order of the quotes, even though across two books (Mariana and Greenery Street) just happen to make a story. A story of hoping to meet love, then meeting love, then the first flush of marriage and then the thought of what your joint future holds together - will you grow as a unit?
Anyway enough of me onto the quotes.

Endpaper from Lady Rose and Mrs Memmary

Admiration

So the last day of April and our last Enchanted April quote.
'It had been funny and delightful, that little interlude of admiration... How warm, though, things like admiration and appreciation made one feel, how capable of really deserving them, how different, how glowing... She still buzzed, she still tingled, just at the remembrance. What fun it had been, having an admirer even for that little while. No wonder people liked admirers. They seemed in some strange way, to make one come alive. Although it was all over she still glowed with it and felt more exhilarated, more optimistic.' Elizabeth von Arnim The Enchanted April

Some beautiful Italian villas to gaze upon, to relax, to make one tingle and glow, to come alive...

To wake from a restful, peaceful sleep with a day ahead of nothing...

Oh to eat a leisurely breakfast with a warm breeze through the doors...

To walk through these cool arches. Whose feet have walked here before me?

To rest in the shade.

To swim in the pool. admire the landscape.

DayDream... Admire...

kitchen and bedroom arch garden pool

Wishing you an Enchanted May too.

Election Thursday Three

'In love, unlike politics, caution is not usually a virtue.' Nelson Mandela Long Walk to Freedom

It's short and sweet but I felt we had to have one from Nelson Mandela. Would we like our politicians to throw a little caution to the wind? Or only if it will be to my advantage. Would we risk it for others?