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Angela Thirkell

Angela Thirkell Biography

Novelist

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“There are some names that one can't even say in a normal voice because they lay open some nerve. I was frightfully in love with a woman once. Her name was Susan and she came from Norwich and she lived with her husband in Ovington Square. I fell out of love with her, and I haven't seen her or heard of her for years, but if I read or hear the words Susan, or Norwich, or Ovington, I go all queer.”

HumorNamesNostalgia
Book:O, These Men, These Men
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“That admirable woman thought so humbly of her own potboiling that to hear it stigmatised by a critic of Stoker’s mental powers as rubbishy stuff didn’t depress her in the least. If she could have made it more rubbishy, and so sold more thousands of copies than she did, she would willingly have done so, but the artist in her, on whose existence George Knox and Adrian always insisted, kept her standard up, firmly if spasmodically.”

Humility
Book:The Demon in the House
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“Henry, you mustn’t mind. It is really a kindness to have him.’ ‘Well, I do mind, Emily,’ said Mr Leslie, getting up. ‘Kindness is one thing and your family is another. You treat this house as if it were the Ark, Emily, inviting everyone in.’ ‘At least she doesn’t ask them in couples, sir,’ said David. ‘A female Holt would be appalling.’ ‘That’s enough,’ said his father. ‘If Mr Holt comes into this house, I go out of it.’ He took a cigar from the sideboard and went out, almost slamming the door.”

HumorHumour
Book:Wild Strawberries
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“Tony went upstairs with an expressionless face, undressed, folded his clothes neatly, washed his face and hands, and got into bed. He was full of resentment against the world. People made one dive when one could really dive quite well if one had a proper diving board. If one killed a wasp people seemed to be annoyed instead of being grateful. People didn't even want one to bark like a dog, he thought, remembering earlier grievances. Girls were simply a nuisance and he was glad he had burst Dora's pig. People who said "nyang, nyang" like that deserved to have their pigs burst.”

ChildhoodHumour
Book:The Demon in the House
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“The historical sequence is quite simple, really," she continued, warming to her theme. "The first catastrophe was the Reformation. The Reformation led to the Industrial Revolution. The Industrial Revolution created the British Empire. The British Empire necessitated the Public Schools. The Public Schools engendered the Class System. The Class System made Socialism inevitable. And Socialism - which by bad luck arrived just as it couldn't be afforded - brought about the collapse of the economy." "I shall vote Liberal next time," said Angela virtuously.”

SocialismBritish EmpireClass WarfarePostwar Britain
Book:High Rising
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“Your great-uncle the bishop, Oriel, married some time in the ’sixties one of Squire Gresham’s daughters whose name for the moment escapes me. His wife’s brother, Frank Gresham, the present man’s great-grandfather, married Mary Thorne who was the illegitimate niece of the Dr. Thorne who married Miss Dunstable whose money came from a patent Ointment of Lebanon. Dr. Thorne was only a distant cousin of the Ullathorne Thornes, to whom old Lady Pomfret belonged, but the connection is there all right, though I couldn’t give the precise degree.”

Trollope
Book:The Headmistress
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“The iron has entered my soul,' announced George Knox impressively. 'Let me tell you, my dear Laura, that when I lay here weak and ill, unable to raise a hand in my own defence, I begged for a nurse, a hireling who would do her day-labour as a machine, and not worry a sick, ageing man. But even this was denied. Miss Grey, all kindness and sympathy and, I must say, Laura, an infernal bore, insisted on nursing me herself. Degrading enough in any case but the worst you have not heard. Could I ask my secretary to shave me? No. As a matter of fact, I did, but she wouldn't, or couldn't. Imagine me, Laura, becoming more like a pard day by day prickly and revolting to myself, mortified beyond words to be seen in this this condition, but helpless.' 'Why didn't you get the gardener to do it? Or use a safety razor?' 'My dear Laura,' said George Knox in a hurt voice, 'you do not seem to realise how weak I was, how very weak. For two days my temperature had been over a hundred, and when the fever had left me I lay powerless, as a new-born babe, and the woman triumphed over me. She would not let me shave, she fed me on slops, she would not even give me clean pyjamas till the third day.”

HumourIllnessSatireNurseShave
Book:High Rising
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“A most unsuitable match was that Miss Barton for either of them, and Mrs. Rivers felt that a week-end of dodging from side to side, protecting Julian and Mr. Foster against Alice, pushing Phoebe towards Mr. Foster and now, too annoying, having to see that Phoebe didn’t spend all her time with that Miss Barton’s brother, was more than she could stand. And all the time she wanted to get on with her Work, but what with arranging the games and unsuccessfully chivying the young people, her heroine was still wandering, guide-book in hand, at Angkor Wat, only too conscious that her heart was blossoming at the sound of the Corsican savant’s voice.”

Match Making
Book:Pomfret Towers
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“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.”

Novelists And Crtics
Book:Private Enterprise
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“It is true that christian-naming is so common as almost to have done away with the use of surnames, especially we regret to say, among men, but among the older generation the formality of title is less easily set aside, as Lydia with unusual perception had noted in the case of Lady Waring. In ordering Philip and Leslie to drop the prefix she had but done what anyone would do to contemporaries, probably thinking, if she did think about it, that she had eased their path. And indeed she would have eased it, or they would quite possibly have dropped into first names by themselves before long, had not each been touched in the heart by the other. To say Philip or Leslie offhand was to each, though they were not consciously aware of it, a faint impropriety, a pulling open of rose-petals which might hurt the rose, a digging up of the plant to see how it was growing.”

Social Dilemmas
Book:Growing up
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“It has been noticed that people who are not parents often have a peculiar fondness for children. This is sometimes attributed to a very beautiful nostalgia for a gift denied to them - dream-children, flowers that have only bloomed in imagination - but we think it is rather because they have not the faintest idea how dreadful children are.”

PeopleThinkingChildrenHas BeensIdeasSometimesDreamBeautifulParentImaginationFlowerNostalgiaPeculiarDeniedVery BeautifulFondness
Author:Angela Thirkell
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“I suppose everybody has a mental picture of the days of the week, some seeing them as a circle, some as an endless line, and others again, for all I know, as triangles and cubes. Mine is a wavy line proceeding to infinity, dipping to Wednesday which is the colour of old silver dark with polishing and rising again to a pale gold Sunday. This day has a feeling in my picture of warmth and light breezes and sunshine and afternoons that stretch to infinity and mornings full of far-off bells.”

KnowsFeelingsLightLinesDarkMorningSeeingWeekMinesGoldCirclesEndlessRisingColourSilverSunshineSundayThis DayWarmthInfinityAfternoonBellsPaleBreezeProceedingWednesdayCubesTrianglesDays Of The WeekRising Again
Author:Angela Thirkell
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