Close Quarters Quotes

“But the youngest grandson committed it all to memory so that he could show off in the literature lesson at school—which he did with such a horrid affection of angelic innocence that his long-suffering form-master could not find an outwardly valid excuse for keeping him in. But he evened the score by putting in the term’s report that Crawley, S. A. (Septimus Arabin) would do better if he did not try to be funny.”
― Angela Thirkell, Close Quarters: A Novel

“Mrs. Parkinson, always ready to help in a good cause, took possession of the Ambassadress, who, to put it vulgarly, never got a look in. Mrs. Parkinson, with the kindest manner, tanked right over Her Excellency, and gave her a great deal of practical and useful information about organized life in a small urban community and whenever Gradka showed signs of wishing to speak, paid no attention at all. And as Mrs. Parkinson had a pleasant voice and an air of effortless authority, we think that the Mixo-Lydian Ambassadress began to realize, for almost the first time, the immense power behind the throne in English country life as organized today— and also its value.”
― Angela Thirkell, Close Quarters: A Novel

“Mrs. Leslie did not at all want to look at anyone’s feet, for grown-up feet are seldom a really pleasant sight. It is one of life’s little tragedies that the divine feet of babies, so soft and exquisitely rounded, “les pieds ronds” as our peculiar neighbours the Gauls say when they mean someone is tiddly or has had one over the eight, inevitably turn into the average human foot with all the knobs, corns, whelks, and bubukles that civilization brings.”
― Angela Thirkell, Close Quarters