Mrs. Tim Christie Quotes

“Some people travel all over the world and see nothing. They go about clad in a thick fog of their own making through which no impressions can penetrate.”
― D.E. Stevenson, Mrs Tim of the Regiment

“In the course of my wanderings I have started life anew in many places, and in every place the same thing happens: at first there is little to do, one knows nobody and life passes by like a pageant, then gradually the world breaks in and one becomes a part of the pageant instead of a mere spectator.”
― D.E. Stevenson, Mrs. Tim Flies Home

“Why do I always want to appear more clever than I really am when Nora is anywhere about? Am much distressed at this discovery, as I have just read an article in this morning’s paper saying that intellectual snobbery is snobbery in its worst form.)”
― D.E. Stevenson, Mrs Tim of the Regiment

“But is it?’ Guthrie says, waving his hands in the effort to explain. ‘We’re living in the twentieth century, of course, but are they?”
― D.E. Stevenson, Mrs Tim of the Regiment

“gaze at him in despair, for I have not been listening to a word, and have no idea what I think about it. I have been caught out in the reprehensible act of listening to other people’s conversation, and neglecting my own.”
― D.E. Stevenson, Mrs Tim of the Regiment

“These walls have sheltered joys, and sorrows, and hopes and fears innumerable; they have rung with the noise of revelry and the sound of grief; children have been born, and grown to manhood and died within their shelter – and now they are crumbling to ruin, fit only for the owl and the jackdaw to live in and build their nests.”
― D.E. Stevenson, Mrs Tim of the Regiment

“It was built sometime in the thirteenth century by one Dermid MacArbin,’ Tony replies. ‘The clan was here before that, of course, but just living in hovels or caves in the mountains. This Dermid was the second son, and therefore of little importance in the scheme of things, but, being of an ambitious turn of mind, he killed his elder brother, and threw his body into the loch, thereby becoming head of the clan. Dermid’s first act as chief was to set about the building of a stronghold – Castle Darroch. Some say he imported an Italian architect, others that he designed the place himself; in any case it is a very creditable piece of work, considering the primitive tools at his command. Every stone had to be hewn out of the solid rock, and carried up the cliff by human labour – of course, the whole clan toiled at it, and, I expect, they cursed old Dermid properly when his back was turned. Dermid must have been very proud of the castle – it must have been exciting watching it grow, day by day, and seeing his dream take – shape but he never lived to enjoy it, for the very day that it was finished his brother’s ghost rose up out of the loch and carried him off.’ The scene is so awe-inspiring that the story is easily believed – those dark green waters look as though they could hold many a fearsome secret.”
― D.E. Stevenson, Mrs Tim of the Regiment

“What would you say if I told you we were lost?’ says Guthrie suddenly, in a conversational tone. I reply instantly that I should be extremely angry, and cancel his pilot’s certificate. ‘Well, I told you the Little People would be angry,’ he says deprecatingly”
― D.E. Stevenson, Mrs Tim of the Regiment

“Mrs. Falconer smiles vaguely and repeats her conviction that it is all most intriguing, adding, that if she had a son, she would insist on his going into the navy just like dear Elspeth. Whereupon ‘dear Elspeth’ replies, uncompromisingly, that she did everything she could to prevent Guthrie from going into the navy, short of locking him in the tool shed.”
― D.E. Stevenson, Mrs Tim of the Regiment

“After about an hour she asks if we are nearly there, and I reply firmly that we shall not be there for hours and hours. ‘But we’ve been hours and hours already,’ she says, ‘and we were in Scotland when we started so we must be nearly there. Scotland’s quite small on the map.’ I”
― D.E. Stevenson, Mrs Tim of the Regiment

“Several aeroplanes are now seen which inspires Bryan to announce that he is going to be an ace in the next war. Reflect on the futility of all this talk anent disarmament in the face of the warlike spirit of the rising generation.”
― D.E. Stevenson, Mrs Tim of the Regiment

“There is a little silence which I dare not break, and then my hostess continues, more as if she were speaking to herself than to me, ‘It’s a queer thing how your life can fall to pieces about your head in a few minutes. It happened to me like that – at one moment I was a happy wife, loved and cosseted, without a care in the world, and five minutes later I was – alone”
― D.E. Stevenson, Mrs Tim of the Regiment

“Tim now takes up the paper and reads aloud a long article about the financial situation of Britain and the possibility of the country being reduced to beggary in three years. Feel so depressed about everything that I refuse marmalade. Tim is astonished at this, as my fondness for marmalade is a family joke. He wants to know if I am ill, or only trying to save the country from bankruptcy. Reply haughtily that if everyone in the country gave up something, the saving would be considerable. Tim laughs, and says that is so like a woman – to throw away seven guineas on a perfectly useless dress and save a halfpenny-worth of marmalade at breakfast.”
― D.E. Stevenson, Mrs Tim of the Regiment

“But it is no use putting this sane view of the matter before Grace in her present condition – Grace has only been married for a few months, whereas I have been married for twelve years. In twelve years one becomes inured to suggestions of exercise and Kruschen Salts, and even to laughter and talk in the presence of a headache. But what on earth am I to do with Grace? What on earth am I to say to her? I am so fond of them both that I must make things right somehow or other.”
― D.E. Stevenson, Mrs Tim of the Regiment

“I always feel uncomfortable when I do things forbidden by Tim. (A relic of Victorianism, I suppose.)”
― D.E. Stevenson, Mrs Tim of the Regiment

“Tim accompanies us to the gate, giving jocular advice to Betty as to her behaviour in school towards teachers and fellow scholars. Try to point out to Betty as we walk up the hill that of course it is ‘Only Daddy’s fun’, and she must be very good and quiet and do all she is told; to which Betty replies gaily, ‘Oh yes, I never take any notice of what he says.’ Feel that this is not quite the lesson I intended to impart, but am powerless to put my meaning into words.”
― D.E. Stevenson, Mrs Tim of the Regiment

“Left-hand neighbour turns to me and remarks, ‘I am always so sorry for army people – so dreadful to be moved away from a place when you are fond of it.’ Reply that there is some consolation in the fact that you are also moved away from places you are not fond of.”
― D.E. Stevenson, Mrs Tim of the Regiment

“I murmur faintly that Betty is very young, but Miss McCarthy treats this excuse with contempt, and decrees that Betty is to start on Thursday, ‘and not waste any more precious time’. She hands me a printed list of the school uniform, and bows me to the door – I emerge from the interview completely disillusioned as to my adequacy as a parent.”
― D.E. Stevenson, Mrs Tim of the Regiment

“young man gets into my compartment. Tim suggests in a whisper that I should move into a ‘Ladies Only’, next door, which already contains two women and three children. Refuse unconditionally to change, after which I worry all day in case anything should happen to Tim while I am away (he might be run over, or poisoned, or die of pneumonia – knowing the traffic in the streets, the food at Brown’s Hotel, and the peculiar climate of the neighbourhood, all three deaths seem possible) and I have refused his last request.”
― D.E. Stevenson, Mrs Tim of the Regiment

“Spend the whole day looking at houses each one more hopelessly unsuitable than the last. Tim admires and praises all he sees, and inspires the owners with the hope that we are on the point of settling with them. Impossible for me to tell what he really thinks of each house, which causes me untold anxiety. Can see myself being landed in totally uncongenial surroundings, not once but half a dozen times during the day. Speak of this fear to Tim en route from a baronial hall, whereupon he says mildly, ‘Don’t be a fool, Hester, you don’t suppose I would settle on a house without talking it over with you?’ Am somewhat comforted by this assurance”
― D.E. Stevenson, Mrs Tim of the Regiment

“The house seems quite hopeful, and we are on the point of taking it for six months when it becomes known that Tim is an officer in His Majesty’s Army. This immediately precludes any possibility of the house being let to us, and we are shown out of the door with all possible dispatch. I am too cold and wet to be really angry, but Tim is boiling with rage. Conversation too lurid to record.”
― D.E. Stevenson, Mrs Tim of the Regiment

“Tim admires everything he sees and waxes more and more enthusiastic as we proceed from room to room. I become more and more depressed at the prospect of trying to keep the place moderately clean with two maids.”
― D.E. Stevenson, Mrs Tim of the Regiment

“I switch on the light beside my bed and the old, beautiful room takes shape – the four-poster with its carved oak pillars, the dark oak chest, the dressing table with its prude petticoat of spotted muslin, the low, uneven ceiling, the wavy oak floor. How many hundreds and thousands of people have awakened in this room; awakened to their sorrows and their joys, their hopes and their fears? Strange that I should have slept so well, untroubled by the haunting of their thoughts!”
― D.E. Stevenson, Mrs Tim of the Regiment

“I switch on the light beside my bed and the old, beautiful room takes shape – the four-poster with its carved oak pillars, the dark oak chest, the dressing table with its prude petticoat of spotted muslin, the low, uneven ceiling, the wavy oak floor. How many hundreds and thousands of people have awakened in this room; awakened to their sorrows and their joys, their hopes and their fears?”
― D.E. Stevenson, Mrs Tim of the Regiment

“I laugh. The child is evidently on her way to a fancy-dress ball and is acting up to the character of her dress. ‘We are companions in misfortune,’ I tell her. ‘Oh,’ she cries, clasping her hands, ‘are you, too, snowbound and unable to proceed? But it is not so disastrous for you as for me. You are with your father and a day spent here is of small account to you but I ’ She stops a moment and blushes a rosy red. And suddenly it all seems clear to me and quite natural somehow. I know that she is the girl in the picture and she is eloping to Gretna Green with the young gentleman in the highwayman’s coat.”
― D.E. Stevenson, Mrs Tim of the Regiment

“There is a passage here I want to find for you. Give me that book, child. R. L. S. has said what I mean better than I could think it.’ She turns over the pages as if she loved them and reads in her soft, husky voice: ‘ “The strangest thing in all man’s travelling is that he should carry about with him incongruous memories. There is no foreign land; it is the traveller only who is foreign, and now and then, by a flash of recollection, lights up the contrasts of the earth.”
― D.E. Stevenson, Mrs Tim of the Regiment

“Mrs. Parsons says, ‘I know exactly what you mean but I envy you all the same. I envy you going to new places every few years – meeting new people and making new friends. It is such an interesting thing to study people, to get inside their skins and see life from their point of view. And you can do it. Some people travel all over the world and see nothing. They go about clad in a thick fog of their own making through which no impressions can penetrate”
― D.E. Stevenson, Mrs Tim of the Regiment

“She smiles and says I only think so because my standard has gone up. Reply that she really does not know me, I am a rebel at heart. ‘The only people who are not rebels are vegetable marrows,’ says Mrs. Parsons. Reply that it would be rather nice to be a vegetable marrow never to be discontented or miserable without any reason for being so. Mrs. Parsons laughs and says ‘Perhaps but how dull never to be joyful and happy without any reason for being so!”
― D.E. Stevenson, Mrs Tim of the Regiment

“Very pretty walk across the fields, church bells in the distance play hymns slightly out of tune. Find that Lady M. was donor of bells (fortunately before I remarked upon their dissonance).”
― D.E. Stevenson, Mrs Tim of the Regiment

“Sit down beside Sir Abraham who remarks, ‘You women are never satisfied. Why can’t you be content to sit down with a paper in the evening? This world would be a nice quiet place to live in, if it were not for you women.’ Reply defensively that it is no use to blame women for being women. We were born that way and can’t help it any more than a mosquito can help being born a mosquito and addicted to its annoying habits of biting people and giving them malaria. It is merely doing what it was born to do.”
― D.E. Stevenson, Mrs Tim of the Regiment