Manchurian Books

Everybody who is not actually in
the shadow of a Bladesover is as it were perpetually seeking after
lost orientations. We have never broken with our tradition, never even
symbolically hewed it to pieces, as the French did in quivering fact
in the Terror. But all the organizing ideas have slackened, the old
habitual bonds have relaxed or altogether come undone. And America
too, is, as it were, a detached, outlying part of that estate which
has expanded in queer ways. George Washington, Esquire, was of the
gentlefolk, and he came near being a King. It was Plutarch, you know,
and nothing intrinsically American that prevented George Washington
being a King....
IV
I hated teatime in the housekeeper's room more than anything else at
Bladesover. And more particularly I hated it when Mrs. Mackridge and
Mrs. Booch and Mrs. Latude-Fernay were staying in the house. They were,
all three of them, pensioned-off servants.
Old friends of Lady Drew's had rewarded them posthumously for a
prolonged devotion to their minor comforts, and Mrs. Booch was also
trustee for a favourite Skye terrier.


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