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Mild, kindly looks and spectacles, thought Jane; this was what it all came to in the end. The passion of those early days, the fragments of Donne and Marvell and Jane’s obscurer seventeenth-century poets, the objects of her abortive research, all these faded away into mild, kindly looks and spectacles.
There came a day when one didn’t quote poetry to one’s husband any more. When had that day been?
‘What doth my she-advowson fly Incumbency?’
http://www.bartleby.com/332/45.html#note45.1
William Stanley Braithwaite, ed. The Book of Restoration Verse. 1910.
To Julia to Expedite Her Promise
By John Cleveland (1613–1658)
SINCE ’tis my doom, Love’s undershrieve,
Why this reprieve?
Why doth she my advowson fly
Incumbency?
Panting expectance makes us prove 5
The antics of benighted love,
And withered mates when wedlock joins,
They’re Hymen’s monkeys, which he ties by the loins
To play alas! but at rebated foins. 1
‘But, darling, there isn’t Spam any more. It came from America during the war and we don’t get it now.’
Jane put on an old tweed coat which hung in the hall—the kind of coat one might have used for feeding the chickens in—and they went out together.
Nicholas accepted his two eggs and bacon and the implication that his needs were more important than his wife’s with a certain amount of complacency, Jane thought. But then as a clergyman he had had to get used to accepting flattery and gifts gracefully; it had not come easily to him in the early stages. Being naturally of a modest and retiring nature, he had not been able to see why he should be singled out.
Fabian Driver, doing his pre-lunch drinking in the bar of the Golden Lion, looked out and saw Nicholas and Jane walking home. He had a confused feeling of irritation and envy as he watched them. It must have been Jane’s smiling up at her husband and the awful old coat she was wearing, the kind of coat a woman could wear only in her husband’s presence, he thought. For a moment he was tempted to call out to them, to invite them in for a drink, even. But the moment passed, and anyway it was half-past one, time for Fabian to go home to what he called his ‘solitary meal’.
There was nobody left in the bar now except Fabian. He sat idly, contemplating his reflection in the looking-glass framed with mahogany and surrounded by bottles.
Here he came to the large Methodist Chapel, but of course one couldn’t go there; none of the people one knew went to chapel, unless out of a kind of amused curiosity.
Fabian often imagined a tablet to himself put up in the church, though he never stopped to consider who should put it up or why.
Miss Doggett he knew, of course, but Miss Morrow had appeared always in her shadow, a thing without personality of her own, as neutral as her clothes. Lately, however, he had become more conscious of her, though he could not have said exactly why or in what particular way. She did not seem to speak to him more than she ever had, but when he was with her he felt uncomfortable, as if she were laughing at him, or even as if she knew things about him that he didn’t want known.
The shock of it all had upset him considerably, and although there had been several women eager to console him, he had abandoned all his former loves, fancying himself more in the role of an inconsolable widower than as a lover. Indeed, it was now almost a year since he had thought of anybody but himself. But now he felt that he might start again.
It was almost like a room in a Victorian novel, where nothing belonging to the departed had been touched, but it was laziness and lack of enterprise rather than sentiment which had left clothes still hanging in the wardrobes and the silver-backed brushes and mirror still on the dressing-table.
People don’t realise the importance of the body nowadays—oh, I know the seventeenth-century poets did,’ she added hastily, ‘but not quite in the way I mean.’
‘No, not quite,’ said Nicholas, darting a fearful glance at her, for indeed he was not sure what she
might quote, and with Flora in the room one must draw t...
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Victoria sandwich cake,
Victoria Sandwich Cake
https://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/1997/classic-victoria-sandwich
‘I do hope my daughter has been entertaining you,’ said Jane easily. ‘I was suddenly called away,’ she added, thinking as she said it that this was the kind of thing some clergy wrote in parish magazines when people had died. Called away or called home, they said.
His voice when he read the Lessons sounded different from when he was talking about the Parochial Church Council in the afternoon. She was reminded of a poem she had once read somewhere, something about my devotion more secure, woos thy spirit high and pure….If she could find it, she would copy it out into her diary.
Arthur Quiller-Couch, comp. The Oxford Book of Victorian Verse. 1922.
Spiritual Love
By William Caldwell Roscoe (1823–1859)
WHAT care I tho’ beauty fading
Die ere Time can turn his glass?
What tho’ locks the Graces braiding
Perish like the summer grass?
Tho’ thy charms should all decay, 5
Think not my affections may!
For thy charms—tho’ bright as morning—
Captured not my idle heart;
Love so grounded ends in scorning,
Lacks the barb to hold the dart. 10
My devotion more secure
Woos thy spirit high and pure.
Nicholas sighed. ‘Yes, one does rather long for the talk of intelligent people sometimes—people of one’s own kind, I mean.’ Jane laughed. ‘Oh, that would be too much! Besides, we might not be equal to it now.’
musquash
Musquosh=muskrat
‘I often wonder whether people born into his station of life can really know how others live,’ said Jane thoughtfully. ‘I’m always reminded of that verse in We are Seven—something about a little child that lightly draws its breath, what can it know of death? Do you see what I mean?’
We Are Seven
BY WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
———A simple Child,
That lightly draws its breath,
And feels its life in every limb,
What should it know of death?
I met a little cottage Girl:
She was eight years old, she said;
Her hair was thick with many a curl
That clustered round her head.
She had a rustic, woodland air,
And she was wildly clad:
Her eyes were fair, and very fair;
—Her beauty made me glad.
“Sisters and brothers, little Maid,
How many may you be?”
“How many? Seven in all,” she said,
And wondering looked at me.
“And where are they? I pray you tell.”
She answered, “Seven are we;
And two of us at Conway dwell,
And two are gone to sea.
“Two of us in the church-yard lie,
My sister and my brother;
And, in the church-yard cottage, I
Dwell near them with my mother.”
“You say that two at Conway dwell,
And two are gone to sea,
Yet ye are seven! I pray you tell,
Sweet Maid, how this may be.”
Then did the little Maid reply,
“Seven boys and girls are we;
Two of us in the church-yard lie,
Beneath the church-yard tree.”
“You run about, my little Maid,
Your limbs they are alive;
If two are in the church-yard laid,
Then ye are only five.”
“Their graves are green, they may be seen,”
The little Maid replied,
“Twelve steps or more from my mother’s door,
And they are side by side.
“My stockings there I often knit,
My kerchief there I hem;
And there upon the ground I sit,
And sing a song to them.
“And often after sun-set, Sir,
When it is light and fair,
I take my little porringer,
And eat my supper there.
“The first that died was sister Jane;
In bed she moaning lay,
Till God released her of her pain;
And then she went away.
“So in the church-yard she was laid;
And, when the grass was dry,
Together round her grave we played,
My brother John and I.
“And when the ground was white with snow,
And I could run and slide,
My brother John was forced to go,
And he lies by her side.”
“How many are you, then,” said I,
“If they two are in heaven?”
Quick was the little Maid’s reply,
“O Master! we are seven.”
“But they are dead; those two are dead!
Their spirits are in heaven!”
’Twas throwing words away; for still
The little Maid would have her will,
And said, “Nay, we are seven!”
Edward Lyall’s
‘Ah, the other things,’ said Miss Doggett obscurely. ‘Of course, we never saw anything of those. We knew that it went on, of course—in London, I believe.’ ‘Yes, it seems suitable that things like that should go on in London,’ Jane agreed. ‘It is in better taste somehow that a man should be unfaithful to his wife away from home. Not all of them have the opportunity, of course.’ ‘Poor Constance was left alone a great deal,’ said Miss Doggett. ‘In many ways, of course, Mr. Driver is a very charming man. They say, though, that men only want one thing—that’s the truth of the matter.’ Miss Doggett
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She knew that the pride of even young spinsters is a delicate thing and that Prudence was especially sensitive. There must be no hint that she was trying to ‘bring them together’.
‘Yes—you said something about him eating the hearts of his victims,’ said Prudence, equally casual. She realised that Jane might have some absurd idea in her mind about ‘bringing them together’, but determined not to let her see that she suspected or that she entertained any hopes herself. So they were both satisfied and neither
was really deceived for...
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Miss Trapnell and Miss Clothier were in their places, their appointed places it seemed, like something in a hymn, or the wise virgins in the Bible. Not much hope of them sparing any oil from their lamps. O, happy servant he, In such a posture found, thought Prudence with irritation, noticing Miss Clothier’s casual glance at her watch.
https://hymnary.org/hymn/CHCS1898/105?highlight=&media=text
Prudence thanked him, experiencing that feeling of contrition which comes to all of us when we have made up our minds to dislike people for no apparent reason and they then perform some kind action.
‘How lovely it is to see you and how lovely you smell. What is it?’ Prudence murmured the name a little self-consciously, for she knew that her French accent was not good and the name was of an amorous kind that sounded a little ridiculous when said out loud. Anyway, it would convey nothing to Jane. She gritted her teeth for Jane’s peal of laughter, which came almost before she had finished speaking.
It reminds me of that poem about two men looking out through prison bars, one seeing mud and the other stars—do you know it?’
Two men look out the same prison bars; one sees mud and the other stars.
Frederick Langbridge
(1849—1922)
‘Well, perhaps not, but it conveys the general idea. Obviously you see him quite differently from me—I’d imagined a big, tall, dark man, a sort of Mr. Rochester.’
Jane Eyre
Some hollow in the temple or a square inch of flesh on the wrist that’s all it need be, really….’
Prudence shivered. She was wondering if there would be a glass of sherry or a drop of gin waiting; she was so used to that little comfort at the end of a day’s work and one seemed to need it even more in strange surroundings.
There were a few books on a little table by the bed, but no reading lamp, Prudence noticed quickly, just a light hanging rather too high up in the middle of the room.
‘I’ve been such a failure as a clergyman’s wife,’ Jane lamented, ‘but at least I don’t drink; that’s the only suitable thing about me.’
Jane flashed him a look which Prudence caught. She supposed that marriage must be full of moments like this.
‘Flora is shaping very well as a cook,’ said Nicholas. ‘I don’t know where she gets her talent—certainly not from either of us. She will make a good wife for somebody one of these days.’ ‘But men don’t want only that,’ said Jane, ‘though perhaps the better ones think they do. I was talking to Miss Doggett in the train the other day…’ Her sentence trailed off vaguely, for perhaps she too had difficulty in remembering what it was that men wanted.
Husbands took friends away, she thought, though Jane had retained her independence more than most of her married friends. And yet even she seemed to have missed something in life; her research, her studies of obscure seventeenth-century poets, had all come to nothing, and here she was, trying, though not very hard, to be an efficient clergyman’s wife, and with only very moderate success.
Compared with Jane’s life, Prudence’s seemed rich
and full of promise. She had her work, her independence, her life in London and her love for Arthur Grampian. But tomorrow, if she wanted to, she could give it all up and fall in love with somebody else. Lines of eligible and delightful men seemed to stretch before he...
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‘Oh, yes, that would be the thing,’ said Jane quickly, with her head bent. She found herself quite unable to look at Prudence, whose eyelids were startlingly and embarrassingly green, glistening with some greasy preparation which had little flecks of silver in it. Was this what one had to do nowadays when one was unmarried? she wondered. What hard work it must be, always remembering to add these little touches; there was something primitive about it, like the young African smearing himself with red cam-wood before he went courting.
The odd and rather irritating thing about it was, though, that Nicholas was gazing at Prudence with admiration; it was quite noticeable. So it really did work. Jane studied her own face in the looking-glass above the sideboard and it looked to her just the same as when Nicholas used to gaze at it with admiration.
Would he look at her with renewed interest if she had green eyelids? she wondered, but her thoughts were interrupted by his voice asking about the glass of sherry. Were they going to have one or not? ‘I’ve got it here,’ said F...
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‘I suppose the villagers will be there already,’ said Prudence, glancing at her watch. ‘Yes, the old order hasn’t changed that much. Edward Lyall isn’t one of these new-fangled Members of Parliament. His ancestors have represented this place for generations.’
And slowly answer’d Arthur from the barge:
“The old order changeth, yielding place to new, And God fulfils himself in many ways,
Lest one good custom should corrupt the world.
—Tennyson, from The Passing of Arthur
Looking around her, Prudence realised at once that she was overdressed. Her green-and-gold shot taffeta cocktail party dress was out of place here, where most of the women were in long-sleeved wool or even coats and skirts. Her fur cape was the only one in the little cloakroom where they hung their coats.
Refreshments now began to be offered and many ladies came up to him with plates of sandwiches and other delicacies. Jane saw Mrs. Mayhew offer a plate rather furtively and heard her say in a low voice, ‘Oyster patties—specially for you. I know how much you like them.’ The situation interested and amused her; there was something so familiar about it and yet for a moment or two she could not think what it was. The hall, the trestle tables, the good-looking young man, the ladies surrounding him…where had she seen all this before? Then it came to her. It was usually curates who were accorded such
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‘Perhaps a nourishing milk drink would be best at a time like that?’ suggested Mrs. Crampton. ‘Benger’s or Ovaltine…’ ‘Or a more drastic remedy,’ said Miss Doggett boldly. ‘Brandy, perhaps?’
So this is Fabian Driver, thought Prudence, putting on a rather cool social manner. She had a natural distrust of good-looking men, though they seemed to offer a challenge which she was never unwilling to accept. Fabian’s glance when they shook hands was so penetrating that something of her poise deserted her. She had often enough had men look at her like that, and perhaps it is a thing that women cannot have too much of. She returned his glance and held it.
Jane, watching from the side, thought ‘Oh, goody,’ in a childish sort of way. It was going to be all right. The way he had looked at her was most promising. By our first strange and fatal interview…she said to herself.
ELEGY XVII.
ELEGY ON HIS MISTRESS.
by John Donne
By our first strange and fatal interview,
By all desires which thereof did ensue,
By our long starving hopes, by that remorse
Which my words masculine persuasive force
Begot in thee, and by the memory
Of hurts, which spies and rivals threaten'd me,
I calmly beg. But by thy father's wrath,
