Manchurian Books

... Eh, dear! those old quarrels, how pitiful they
were, how trivial! And how sorrowful they are to recall! I think they
grow more sorrowful as I grow older, and all the small passionate
reasons for our mutual anger fade and fade out of memory.
The impression that Beckenham company has left on my mind is one of
a modest unreality; they were all maintaining a front of unspecified
social pretension, and evading the display of the economic facts of the
case. Most of the husbands were "in business" off stage, it would have
been outrageous to ask what the business was--and the wives were
giving their energies to produce, with the assistance of novels and the
illustrated magazines, a moralised version of the afternoon life of the
aristocratic class. They hadn't the intellectual or moral enterprise
of the upper-class woman, they had no political interests, they had no
views about anything, and consequently they were, I remember, extremely
difficult to talk to. They all sat about in the summer-house and in
garden-chairs, and were very hatty and ruffley and sunshady.


Pages:
384 385 386 387 388 389 390 391 392 393 394 395 396 397 398 399 400 401 402 403 404 405 406 407 408