The Pursuit of Love (Radlett and Montdore #1)

by Nancy Mitford

I think Linda realized there and then what it took me years to learn, that the behaviour of civilized man really has nothing to do with nature, that all is artificiality and art more or less perfected.

(I have often noticed that when women look at themselves in every reflection, and take furtive peeps into their hand looking-glasses, it is hardly ever, as is generally supposed, from vanity, but much more often from a feeling that all is not quite as it should be.)

reject this observation, she might be on a Hot Girl Walk

I wish his buddies would either brighten up their parties a bit or else stop giving them, because I don’t see the point of sad parties, do you? And Left-wing people are always sad because they mind dreadfully about their causes, and the causes are always going so badly.

She felt no particular apprehensions about the coming war, she was essentially a person who lived in the present.

Anyhow, no woman really minds hearing of the past affairs of her lover, it is the future alone that has the power to terrify.

“Linda goes off and has this glorious time in Paris, and comes back covered with rich furs, while you and I—what do we get for sticking all our lives to the same dreary old husbands? Three-quarter-length shorn lamb.”

I have seen too many children brought up without Nannies to think this at all desirable. In Oxford, the wives of progressive dons did it often as a matter of principle; they would gradually become morons themselves, while the children looked like slum children and behaved like barbarians.