Private Enterprise Quotes

“At the same moment old Propett, who had only been reassembling his wits and his strength, opened his eyes and said quite distinctly, “Don’t give her no gin, sir. She’s an old sinner. Calls herself Mrs. Propett, she does, but I never married her. More nor sixty years we’ve been living together, but the parson didn’t have nothing to do with it. Old Mr. Benson he never meddled with me, nor me with him. Don’t you give her gin, sir. You bring another nice bottle of port like you did before and old Propett’ll drink your health and your good lady’s.”
― Angela Thirkell, Private Enterprise

“And after that the talk shifted to the war, and old Robinson in the dug-out was discussed and everyone felt better for the backward glimpse into a world where England’s name had stood high, though she only thought of grumbling her way through what had to be done. But at least one could look forward then. Now, except for the brave-new-worlders who were perfectly happy with prefabs, plastics, cinemas, wireless and several million too many people wherever one went, one had to look back to recapture some kind of content, for looking forward might daunt the stoutest courage.”
― Angela Thirkell, Private Enterprise

“As Mrs. Crawley said to Mr. Birkett she was afraid they might all have been had up before Convocation for lése-episcopacy, if there was such a phrase, in which case her husband would probably be ungaitered and turned into a perpetual curate. To which Mrs. Morland, who had been getting her hair tidy again after her ecclesiastical excursion, said it must be exactly like being sent to the galleys for life to be a perpetual curate and she never could understand how the Dean’s grandfather, who was perpetual curate of Hogglestock, managed to escape and be Vicar of St. Ewold’s. But a judgment fell upon her for such ignorance, for the School Chaplain who had been rather afraid of joining in the foregoing conversation in case the Bishop came to hear of it, made up for his silence by giving Mrs. Morland a great deal of information about the various kinds of living in the Church of England, very little of which that worthy creature could understand, but somehow it all seeped through into the writing part of her mind and was used with great effect in her next but one book where Madame Koska was abducted by a Russian disguised as a commercial traveller for a French silk firm and rescued by a perpetual curate who married one of her beautiful but pure mannequins: and the Guardian and the Church Times applauded the deep moral lesson of Mrs. Morland’s new book and her profound knowledge of church matters, so rare among even the most intelligent of the laity in these troublous times.”
― Angela Thirkell, Private Enterprise

“Rose’s baby can’t be confirmed for the next fifteen years and anything might happen before then,” from which words it was perfectly clear to her hearers that she had courageously envisaged the beautiful and comforting thought that the present Bishop of Barchester might be dead by that time.”
― Angela Thirkell, Private Enterprise

“By this time the whole School was thoroughly out of hand. Mrs. Morland was having a good cry, as were several ex-parents. An ex-Solicitor-General, an Air Vice-Marshal, two Earls, an Admiral of the Fleet, and an old boy who had been in prison for fraud on an unprecedented scale, were blowing their noses and glaring defiantly at anyone who didn’t think they had a cold, and Mr. Birkett felt more than ever Lawk-a-mercy on me, This is none of I.”
― Angela Thirkell, Private Enterprise (Angela Thirkell Barsetshire Series) by Angela Thirkell (1-Jun-1997) Paperback