Salterton Trilogy
From BillionQuotes
From the series of novels by Robertson Davies.
Tempest-Tost
"Wet", said he. Classics was his subject, and he sometimes affected a classical simplicity in social conversation.
"Children, don't speak so coarsely," said Mr Webster, who had a vague notion
that some supervision should be exercised over his daughters' speech, and that
a line should be drawn, but never knew quite when to draw it. He had allowed
his daughters to use his library without restraint, and nothing is more fatal
to maidenly delicacy of speech than the run of a good library.
But Freddy was not in a mood to be satisfied with herself, and as she put on
her pyjamas and jumped into bed she wondered what Daddy would say if she
suggested that in a year or two she should become a postulant in an Anglican
nunnery. Somewhat illogically she broke off this train of reflection to read
the large illustrated Rabelais which she had abstracted from the library. She
found it very good fun, and made a mental list of several abusive terms to use
in her next quarrel with Griselda.
In her latest speech she had scored a double; she had condemned Griselda's legs
because they were beautiful, and sneered at poor Pearl Vambrace's because they
were not. Mrs Bridgetower had indeed benefited from higher education.
Students today are a pretty solemn lot. One of the really notable achievements
of the twentieth century has been to make the young old before their time.
Pass the buck. It's the secret of life. You can't fight every battle and dry
every tear. Whenever you're dealing with something that you don't really care
about, pass the buck. You've got me to do your music; that's what you wanted,
isn't it? Very well then, let Mrs Forrester clean up the mess.
"I am full of holy joy and free booze," said Cobbler. "I feel moved to sing. It
is very wrong to resist an impulse to sing; to hold back a natural evacuation
of joy is as injurious as to hold back any other natural issue. It makes a man
spiritually costive, and plugs him up with hard, caked, thwarted merriment.
This, in the course of time, poisons his whole system and is likely to turn him
into that most detestable of beings, a Dry Wit. God grant that I may never be a
Dry Wit. Let me ever be a Wet Wit! Let me pour forth what mirth I have until I
am utterly empty -- a Nit Wit."
"A pretty girl is like a melody," hummed Roger.
"Excuse me," said Cobbler, turning toward him, "but I must contradict you. A
pretty girl is nothing of the kind. A melody, if it is any good, has a
discernible logic; a pretty girl can exist without the faintest vestige of
sense."
"Curiosity killed the cat," said Hector, who was a little embarrassed by the
turn the conversation had taken; nevertheless, he wanted to show himself a
man's man, and something witty seemed called for.
"I deny that," said Cobbler; "the cat probably died a happy martyr to
research."
Purcell! What a genius! And lucky, too. Nobody has ever though to blow him up
into a God-like genius, like poor old Bach, or a Misunderstood Genius, like
poor old Mozart, or a Wicked and Immoral Genius, like poor old Wagner. Purcell
is just a nice, simple Genius, rollicking happily through Eternity. The boobs
and the gramophone salesmen and the music hucksters haven't discovered him yet
and please God they never will. Kids don't peck and mess at little scraps of
Purcell for examinations. Arthritic organists don't torture Purcell in chapels
and tin Bethels all over the country on Sundays, while the middle classes are
pretending to be holy. Purcell is still left for people who really like music.
"Oho, now I know what you are. You are an advocate of Useful Knowledge."
"Certainly."
"You say that a man's first job is to earn a living, and that the first task of
education is to equip him for that job."
"Of course."
"Well, allow me to introduce myself to you as an advocate of Ornamental
Knowledge. You like the mind to be a neat machine, equipped to work
efficiently, if narrowly, and with no extra bits or useless parts. I like the
mind to be a dustbin of scraps of brilliant fabric, odd gems, worthless but
fascinating curiosities, tinsel, quaint bits of carving, and a reasonable
amount of healthy dirt. Shake the machine and it goes out of order; shake the
dustbin and it adjusts itself beautifully to its new position."
"As a mathematician I can hardly agree with you that disorder is preferable to
order."
"Mathematician my foot! Do you know anything about linear algebra? How are you
on Diophantine equations? Could you tell me, in a few words, what Bertrand
Russell has added to modern mathematical concepts? You are a mathematician in
the way that a teacher of beginners on the piano is a musician!"
She herself was a victim of that lust for books which rages in the breast like
a demon, and which cannot be stilled save by the frequent and plentiful
acquisition of books. This passion is more common, and more powerful, than most
people suppose. Book lovers are thought by unbookish people to be gentle and
unworldly, and perhaps a few of them are so. But there are others who will lie
and scheme and steal to get books as wildly and unconscionably as the
dope-taker in pursuit of his drug. They may not want the books to read
immediately, or at all; they want them to possess, to range on their shelves,
to have at command. They want books as a Turk is thought to want concubines --
not to be hastily deflowered, but to be kept at their master's call, and
enjoyed more often in thought than in reality. Solly was in a measure a victim
of this unscrupulous passion, but Freddy was wholly in the grip of it.
The young are often accused of exaggerating their troubles; they do so, very
often, in the hope of making some impression upon the inertia and the
immovability of the selfish old.
A slovenly action repeated thrice has become a habit.
She was a short, stout woman, shaped like a cottage loaf. A nubbin, with a
twist of whispy hair on it, formed her head; a larger nubbin comprised her bust
and upper reaches; the largest nubbin of all was formed by her spreading hips.
She must have had legs, but her skirts concealed them. She had little to say,
and it is doubtful that her mental processes could be called thought; they
consisted of a series of dissolving views, mostly of possible disasters and
misfortunes which might overtake her and her family.
Leaven of Malice
The letter was marked "Urgent -- Print This At Once". Wearily, Ridley laid it aside. This was, perhaps, the voice of the people, and the voice of the people, no editor is ever permitted to forget, is the voice of God. It was a pity, he reflected, that God's utterances needed such a lot of editorial revision.
Oh, Wally, never go to law for simple vengeance; that's not what law is for.
Redress, yes; vengeance, no.
Life, as he conceived of it, was a long decline from a glorious past, and if a
reader approaches a newspaper in that spirit, he can find much to confirm him
in his belief, particularly if he has never examined any short period of the
past in day-to-day detail.
"What would you do if you were me?"
Cobbler pondered for a moment. "Well," he said, "I suppose if I were you --
that's to say a somewhat inert chap, half content to be the football of fate --
I'd go right on doing whatever I was doing at the moment, and hope the whole
thing would blow over."
People who talk a lot about their troubles never commit suicide; talk's the
greatest safety-valve there is. I always laugh at that bit in Hamlet
where he pretends to despise himself because he unpacks his heart with words,
and falls a-scolding like a very drab; that's why the soliloquy about suicide
is just Hamlet putting on intellectual airs. A chatterbox like that would never
pop himself off with a bare bodkin. No, the suicides are the quiet ones, who
can't find the words to fit their misery.
"Fool!" said the Professor, who had been growing very hot, and was now at the
boil. "Do you imply that the sins of the mind are trivial and the sins of the
flesh important? What kind of an idiot are you?"
I am increasingly reminded of Oedipus. Do you not recall that in that tragic
history, Oedipus met a Sphinx? The Sphinx spoke in riddles -- very terrible
riddles, for those who could not guess them died. But Oedipus guessed the
riddle, and the chagrin of the Sphinx was so great that it destroyed itself. I
am but a poor shadow of Oedipus, I fear, and you, Mr. Yarrow, but a puny kitten
of a Sphinx. But you are, like many another Sphinx of our modern world, an
undereducated, brassy young pup, who thinks that gall can take the place of the
authority of wisdom, and that a professional lingo can disguise his lack of
thought. You aspire to be a Sphinx, without first putting yourself to the
labour of acquiring a secret.
Most hearts of any quality are broken on two or three occasions in a lifetime.
They mend, of course, and are often stronger than before, but something of the
essence of life is lost at every break.
"Nitwit!", said Cobbler, "Your first book won't be a success. Don't make
marriage conditional on the success of a book, or your mother dying, or
anything unlikely of that sort. Put first things first. Get married, and plunge
into all the uproar of baby-raising, and loading yourself up with insurance and
furniture and all the frowsy appurtenances of domestic life, as soon as you
can. You'll survive. Millions do. And deep down under all the trash-heap of
duty and respectability and routine, you may, if you're among the lucky ones,
find a jewel of happiness. I know all about it, and I assure you on my sacred
honour that it's worth a try."
A Mixture of Frailties
Art is wine and experience is the brandy we distill from it.
