The Magic Season

I finally managed to find a second hand copy of The Third Miss Symon's. There are two pages that a previous reader has turned down. Both of them mention Jane Eyre. (I'm intrigued why?) At the same time I read two really good posts on the Brontes. All this is really making me want to re read it in 2012.

'...Henrietta discovered that heroines after the sixteenth birthday are likely to be pestered with adorers. The heroines, it is true, were exquisitely beautiful, which, Henrietta knew she was not, but from a study of "Jane Eyre" and "Vilette" in the holidays, Charlotte Bronte was forbidden at school owing to an excess of passion, Henrietta realised that the plain may be adored too, so she had a modest hope that when the magic season of young ladyhood arrived, a Prince Charming would come and fall in love with her.' F.M. Mayor The Third Miss Symons
beauty

Do the books we read when 'the magic season of young ladyhood arrives' help or hinder us?

Princes Welcome

This passage reminds me of Anne at the concert, trying to catch Wentworth's eyes, annoyed at having to speak to Elliot and then the next day when she is overheard by Wentworth speaking to Captain Harville and he writes that letter.

'You've got to be responsible for your own happiness - you can't expect it to come flopping through the door like a parcel... People sit at home thinking Some Day My Prince Will Come. But that's no good unless you've got a sign up saying 'Princes Welcome'. Julian Barnes Talking it Over

welcome

And it works both ways in having a sign 'Princesses Welcome'
'for now I could at least put myself in the way of happiness... I could do something.' Jane Austen Persuasion

Polite and Cheery

Oh Anne and all the time she spends with her sister Mary, the lovely Mrs Smith. Surely she must have thought this sometimes? I know I did.

'I help little old ladies across the road. I'm polite and cheery... I don't leave litter. I give to charities. I don't lay music too loud. When mail is misdelivered, I promptly repost it... When I'm tired of clothes I take them clean and neatly folded to a charity shop... I give blood... I eat carefully... I'm told I'm attractive. I'm told I'm good company. I don't want to be rich. I don't want to be famous. I don't want to rule the country. I'm twenty-six and all I want, please is someone I can love.' Tibor Fischer The Collector Collector

waiting

You pierce my soul

Whilst rereading Persuasion I was reminded of favourite quotes from other books about waiting for love to arrive. Here follows a week of passages prompted by Persuasion. I've already posted some over the time of this blog. They're in the 'Threads of Thinking' cloud under 'desiring love', 'waiting' or 'painful love' if you were interested in reading more.

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

Why not make the most of being a girl?

Reviewing this Christmas with mum and we remembered the lovely sale shopping trips we used to have. We had them for many years, pre Warmth, when the time inbetween Christmas and New Year can sometimes seem slow. This quote sprung to mind, although Polly was a great deal younger than me when Aunt Sadie said this to her.

'...but since you have the whole of your life before you as a married woman why not make the most of being a girl? You'll never be one again.' Nancy Mitford Love in a Cold Cimate

Diorissimo 1956

This was one of my favourite images from the Rene Graus Dior Ilustrations exhibition. It felt appropriate in this post seeing that Nancy Mitford was a great admirer and wearer of Dior's 'New Look.'

Unknown Seas

Chatting with a dear friend at a party about 'when will I meet someone?' reminded me of these two quotes from Charles Dickens which comforted me. I tried to quote them to her but I'd drunk a little too much fizz.

'How can we tell what coming people are aboard the ships that may be sailing to us now from unknown seas?'

'Him who is coming to court and marry me'
'When is he coming?... Where is he coming from?'
'Why good gracious, how can I tell? He is coming from somewhere or other, I suppose, and he is coming some day or other, I suppose. I don't know any more about him at present.' Charles Dickens Our Mutual Friend

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Le Grand Meaulnes

Twin studied Le Grand Meaulnes for French 'A' Level and it was commonly known as 'Le Grand Moan' in our home. This had, unsurprisingly put me off reading it, but thankfully years later something prompted me, and I'm sure I must have been partly intrigued as to why Twin disliked it so much. I enjoyed it. Here's the one passage which stood out to me at that time. I think I wished I would maybe have the confidence to say this if the need arrived.

'If you feel you ought to go, if I came to you at a moment when nothing could make you happy, if it'd necessary for you to leave me now for a time and only come back when you've found peace, then it is I who ask you to go...' Alain Fournier Le Grand Meaulnes

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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.

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'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.

Love, Respect and Fancy

We went to Worthing Pier and played on the 2p slot machines.

Warmth had a turn on the fruit machines I thought of this quote.

'What did we want from a man, what were we looking for? What I wanted was someone I could love, respect and fancy. I thought that was what one should be aiming for,...And when I started with men it always seemed as difficult as getting three strawberries in a row on a fruit machine.' Julian Barnes Talking it Over

Intelligent Personable Men

"Do you think there are three intelligent personable men sitting around a table wondering where we are?'...
"Not likely" says Nikki, "they'll be talking about football." Tibor Fischer The Collector Collector

I read this book years ago. I can't remember much about it. I liked it. It's a bit weird. It's about a pot that's lived through history. It's a good read. It spoke to me at the time - about life, friendships and hoping for love.

I saved this quote never imagining that I'd fall in love and marry a man who'll be watching The World Cup. But yet. I remember our first date. Warmth walking me back to the tube station. We started talking about books. He was reading Orhan Pahmuk. I remember thinking I'd like to go on a second date with this man to talk books and reading. We started our second date talking about books and we continue talking about books.

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This is my idea of playing with a round shaped object.....

It couldn't have happened a day before it did.

Writing yesterday about being the perfect age and sometimes wishing that I'd met Warmth sooner made me reflect back on this quotation.

'You are the other half of my soul. I can't bear that I wasted all those years before I met you.'
'I wasn't ready for you. It couldn't have happened a day before it did. My life was leading to that point.'
Sebastian Faulks On Green Dolphin Street

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Kept a bit of myself back

'It's odd, but all through everything it's as if I'd known about you. I always kept a bit of myself back, because I knew that it wasn't the ultimate thing - that I still had to find you.' ...I always knew God had something special up his sleeve. There I was, going round with a whole lot of love to unload on to you, and I dumped it on to one or two of the wrong people on the way, by mistake, that's all.' Monica Dickens Mariana

I read this novel on a great sunny summer holiday with two close girlfriends. It was when I was still hoping, waiting for 'the ultimate thing'. It summed up how I felt and how I'd lived. Keeping 'a bit of myself back'. Somehow I knew they didn't love me so therefore I couldn't give myself in total and utter love to them.
I imagined myself sitting under a fabulous sun hat on a great sunlounger and hopefully sipping on champagne from huge saucers.

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.

I believed...

'I believed that one day I would find a young man with whom I could talk far into the night without tiring; talking on and on we would come to realise that we saw things in the same way, that we felt the same emotions. So love would be born, a love based on friendship, on respect...' Susanna Tamaro Follow Your Heart

I'd always imagined this place of talking being bed but then I saw this picture and decided here would be a great place too. Its outside, but there's a fire. It's late in the evening. There are two glasses of wine, and nobody about. It's perhaps at the end of a day on holiday, when the conversations you start today really can continue tomorrow. There is no need to think what the time is. Time can wait. Is on your side.

Happy Talking x

The Enchanted April

Have you read this novel? Oh it is Enchanting. It's uplifting and brimming with life. It gives one hope that things will get better. It's about the strength of female friendships and how we so often wish for someone elses life and all along they're wishing for our life. The passage below doesn't necessarily show this but it reflects how we sometimes feel after a relationship has finished. It struck a note with me when I read it. It took a long time to meet Warmth and find that love. Looking through my books of quotations so many are about relationships ending, or maybe not even getting off the ground but they represent my thoughts and hopes, at that stage in life. And the glory of this book? The bigger picture of although these relationships may end life can still be enchanting whoever we share it with, and sometimes it's the surprises in life which bring the greatest moments of happiness.

'How passionately she longed to be important to somebody again – not important on platforms, not important as an asset in an organisation, but privately important, just to one other person, quite privately, nobody else to know or notice. It didn't seem much to ask in a world so crowded with people, just to have one of them, only one out of all the millions to oneself. Somebody who needed one, who thought of one, who was eager to come to one – oh, oh how dreadfully one wanted to be precious.' Elizabeth von Armin The Enchanted Apri

I have a few more favourite passages to post from this truly enchanting book but this is where I'd like to be sitting reading it now.

A Little Unique

'And she did not want him to think her quite mad, only a little unique, only containing within her just that measure of the unexpected sufficient to make her irreplaceable.'
Rose Tremain Music and Silence

I've always loved this sentence. Is it something about the female creature? I think it's there in our modern female characters - Meg Ryan in When Harry Met Sally, Bridget Jones and surely Carrie Bradshaw. But yet isn't it also there in Elizabeth Bennett? We like to be unique - but not too much hence the importance of the word 'little'. If we're too unique who will dig deep enough to get to know us? Will our eccentricity put others off? But a little unique is that something we all desire to be on occasions?
The two things which reminded me of this...
I've been experimenting with perfume and although this next bit is by no means unique, it is unique to Warmth. I've been layering my scent with his Paul Smith. It's not me using his scent, he never wears it, but it's the 'woman wearing a man's scent' thing. And that is also what's appealing about being a little unique - it's different to everyone. My 'little uniqueness' to you is somebody elses 'quite normal'.
Secondly, as we get to know others more we reveal our thoughts, hopes, daydreams and sometimes daft thoughts. That moment of 'What are you thinking?' and it's something really random. Do you pretend it was erudite or do you just think 'Oh let's go with the truth.' Warmth looked at me and laughed when the other day I shared this thought.
'I was so busy thinking about what I was going to wear that I forgot to put my bra on.' What makes this unique for me is not the thinking of what to wear but that I don't have the bust of someone who ever goes without their bra, even in a small flat. What makes it unique to him is that anyone could think of what to wear that much to be forgetful.

So what's your 'little uniqueness' in this world?

Keeping the house warm

'These loves were strong and painfully delicious; they occupied all our thoughts but I think we all realised they would be superceded in time by real people. They were to keep the house warm... for its eventual occupants.'

Nancy Mitford The Pursuit of Love

I think one of the reasons I enjoy reading novels is for the moment when you read something and it fits your life, clarified an experience, puts words where it had just been a feeling. This is one of those times.

Fireplace by Heals