Ashenden quotes

This book is founded on my experiences in the Intelligence Department during the war, but rearranged for the purposes of fiction.

Fact is a poor storyteller.

It starts a story at haphazard, generally long before the beginning, rambles on inconsequently and tails off, leaving loose ends hanging about, without a conclusion.

“There’s just one thing I think you ought to know before you take on this job. And don’t forget it.

If you do well you’ll get no thanks and if you get into trouble you’ll get no help. Does that suit you?

”

It looked very like a trap. But nothing is so foolish as to ascribe profundity to what on the surface is merely inept; it is a pitfall into which many an ingenuous reviewer has fallen headlong.

Ashenden had a confident belief in the stupidity of the human animal, which in the course of his life had stood him in good stead.

It flashed across him that if the detective asked him such a question it was because he had no shadow of proof that he was engaged in any illegal practice.

The question was put so pleasantly that Ashenden felt it behoved him to be on his guard.

A police officer amiable is more dangerous to the wise than a police officer aggressive.

“I am writing a play,” said Ashenden.

“

One should do what one can to mitigate the rigours of war,

” remarked R. as he took the bottle and poured out a glass for himself and another for Ashenden.

This was far from being just the man in the street (whose tyranny we rail at but in the end submit to) and to the amateur of the baroque in human nature he was a rarity to be considered with delight.

He was a purple patch on two legs.

Notwithstanding his wig and his hairless big face, he had undoubtedly an air; he was absurd, but he did not give you the impression that he was a man to be trifled with. His self-complacency was magnificent.

“

Anyone can pull a trigger, but it needs a man to use a knife.

”

They sallied forth. The Mexican proposed that they should walk and in that quarter, at that hour, there would have been little chance of finding a cab; but the sky was starry. It was a summer night and the air was still.

The silence walked beside them like the ghost of a dead man.

When they neared the station the houses seemed on a sudden to take on a greyer, more rigid line, and you felt that the dawn was at hand. A little shiver trembled through the night.

At first Ashenden could not understand. He read it again. He shook from head to foot. Then, for once robbed of his self-possession, he blurted out, in a hoarse, agitated and furious whisper:

“You bloody fool, you’ve killed the wrong man.”

but it must be confessed that for the small fry like himself to be a member of the secret service was not as adventurous an affair as the public thought.

Ashenden’s official existence was as orderly and monotonous as a city clerk’s.

He saw his spies at stated intervals and paid them their wages; when he could get hold of a new one he engaged him, gave him his instructions and sent him off to Germany; he waited for the information that came through and dispatched it;

Ashenden watched him curiously. Luxury is dangerous to people who have never known it and to whom its temptations are held out too suddenly. R., that shrewd, cynical man, was captivated by the vulgar glamour and the shoddy brilliance of the scene before him.

Just as the advantage of culture is that it enables you to talk nonsense with distinction, so the habit of luxury allows you to regard its frills and furbelows with a proper contumely.

But when they had eaten their luncheon and were drinking their coffee Ashenden, seeing that R. was mellowed by the good meal and his surroundings, went back to the subject that was in his thoughts.

but all the same there was something pleasing in the prospect, an artless candour, like one of Mendelssohn’s Songs Without Words, that made Ashenden smile with complacency.

Lucerne reminded him of wax flowers under glass cases and cuckoo clocks and fancy work in Berlin wool.

So long at all events as the fine weather lasted he was prepared to enjoy himself. He did not see why he should not at least try to combine pleasure to himself with profit to his country.

“Come, Grantley, Mittagessen is ready, let us go into the dining-room.”

Ashenden admired goodness, but was not outraged by wickedness.

People sometimes thought him heartless because he was more often interested in others than attached to them, and even in the few to whom he was attached his eyes saw with equal clearness the merits and the defects.

Did she do all she could to prevent it or did she close her eyes to something she could not help?

How much easier life would be if people were all black or all white and how much simpler it would be to act in regard to them!

Was Caypor a good man who loved evil or a bad man who loved good? And how could such unreconcilable elements exist side by side and in harmony within the same heart? For one thing was clear, Caypor was disturbed by no gnawing of conscience;

And how could such unreconcilable elements exist side by side and in harmony within the same heart? For one thing was clear, Caypor was disturbed by no gnawing of conscience; he did his mean and despicable work with gusto.

He was a traitor who enjoyed his treachery.

Though Ashenden had been studying human nature more or less consciously all his life, it seemed to him that he knew as little about it now in middle age as he had done when he was a child. Of course R.

What a bit of luck! Major von P. was a man of culture and, rubbing his hands, he must surely have murmured: stultum facit fortuna quem vult perdere.

It was a trap of that devilish R. and the grim major at Berne had fallen into it.

Ashenden had done his work just by sitting still and doing nothing. He almost laughed as he thought what a fool R. had made of him.

He would end his career in Paris. That was evident. He was a man whom you could not but admire but whom it was not easy to like.

He was a diplomat of the school of those Victorian ambassadors to whom could confidently be entrusted great affairs

and whose self-reliance, sometimes it must be admitted tinctured with arrogance, was justified by its results.

Sir Herbert raised the glass to his nose and inhaled the fragrance. Then he looked at Ashenden.

He had a way of looking at people, when he was thinking of something else perhaps, that suggested that he thought them somewhat peculiar but rather disgusting insects.

“Have you ever seen the woman?” he asked.

“

I’m not sure if a man isn’t wiser to do what he wants very much to do and let the consequences take care of themselves.

”

It is more consuming than love. With advancing years, mercifully, you can snap your fingers at the terror and the servitude of love, but age cannot free you from the thraldom of vanity.

Time can assuage the pangs of love, but only death can still the anguish of wounded vanity.

Love is simple and seeks no subterfuge, but vanity cozens you with a hundred disguises. It is part and parcel of every virtue: it is the mainspring of courage and the strength of ambition; it gives constancy to the lover and endurance to the stoic;

“

It is vanity finally that makes man support his abominable lot.

”

I thought them rather showy.” She turned to Ashenden. “I hope you haven’t been bored all alone with my husband. What have you been talking about? Art and Literature?”

“No, its raw material,” said Ashenden.

Ashenden shrugged his shoulders; and now, recalling the conversation, he shrugged them again. They were all like that.

They desired the end, but hesitated at the means.

They were willing to take advantage of an accomplished fact, but wanted to shift on to someone else the responsibility of bringing it about.

Mr. Harrington’s study of American literature had taken him no further down the years than the period during which those eminent, but not precisely thrilling authors, flourished.

Mr. Harrington was a bore.

He exasperated Ashenden, and enraged him; he got on his nerves, and drove him to frenzy. But Ashenden did not dislike him. His self-satisfaction was enormous but so ingenuous that you could not resent it;

Harrington took his temperature, from his neatly packed valise extracted a whole regiment of tabloids and firmly doctored him; and he was touched by the trouble he gave himself to get from the dining-car the things that he thought Ashenden could eat.

He did everything in the world for him but stop talking.

It was only when he was dressing that Mr. Harrington was silent, for then his maidenly mind was singly occupied with the problem of changing his clothes before Ashenden without indelicacy. He was extremely modest.

I do it entirely for my own peace of mind. I should feel so terribly badly if I thought some man really was hungry and I’d refused to give him the price of a meal.”

Mr. Harrington was absurd, but lovable.

It was inconceivable that anyone should be rude to him, it would have seemed as dreadful as hitting a child;

She turned her face away and Ashenden saw that the heavy tears were coursing down her cheeks. He was much moved. For he had a soft heart and it was dreadful to think of poor Vladimir lying there with a bullet in his brain.

These Russians, what fun they have!

But when Anastasia Alexandrovna had mastered her emotion she turned to him gravely. She looked at him with her humid, round and slightly protuberant eyes.

Does it occur to you that they have hearts like yours, the same feelings and the same emotions? How can you be surprised that the proletariat are seething with discontent when the bourgeoisie like you are so monstrously selfish?”

“Do you really think that there’ll be a revolution in England if I have my eggs in Paris fried rather than scrambled?”

She tossed her pretty head in indignation.

“I’ve quite made up my mind. The experiment has justified itself. I’m willing to marry you whenever you like.”

But Ashenden saw himself eating scrambled eggs every morning for the rest of his life.

When he had put her in a cab, he called another for himself, went to the Cunard office and took a berth on the first ship that was going to America.

When he had put her in a cab, he called another for himself, went to the Cunard office and took a berth on the first ship that was going to America.

No immigrant, eager for freedom and a new life, ever looked upon the statue of Liberty with more heartfelt thankfulness than did Ashenden, when on that bright and sunny morning his ship steamed into the harbour of New York.

It gave him a momentary shock.

It is very hard for a man, however modest, to grasp the possibility that a woman who has once loved him may love him no longer

, and though of course he did not imagine that Anastasia Alexandrovna had languished for five years with a hopeless passion for him, he did think that by a heightening of colour, a flutter of the eyelashes, or a quiver of the lips she would …

She had a passion for intrigue and a desire for power. When he hinted that he had command of large sums of money she saw at once that through him she might acquire an influence in the affairs of Russia. It tickled her vanity.

She was immensely patriotic, but like many patriots she had an impression that her own aggrandisement tended to the good of her country.

When they parted they had come to a working agreement.

This, however, was not a matter on which Mr. Harrington was prepared to jest.

“I have never looked at a woman since I married Mrs. Harrington,” he said. “That husband of hers must be a bad man.”

“I could do with a plate of scrambled eggs,” said Ashenden, irrelevantly, for their breakfast consisted of a cup of tea without milk and a little jam instead of sugar.

“I have never looked at a woman since I married Mrs. Harrington,” he said. “That husband of hers must be a bad man.”

“I could do with a plate of scrambled eggs,” said Ashenden, irrelevantly, for their breakfast consisted of a cup of tea without milk and a little jam instead of sugar.

With Anastasia Alexandrovna to help him and Dr. Orth in the background, Ashenden set to work. Things in Russia were going from bad to worse.

Orth in the background, Ashenden set to work. Things in Russia were going from bad to worse. Kerensky, the head of the Provisional Government, was devoured by vanity and dismissed any minister who gave evidence of a capacity that might endanger his own position.

He made speeches. He made endless speeches.

At one moment there was a possibility that the Germans would make a dash for Petrograd. Kerensky made speeches. The food shortage grew more serious, the winter was approaching and there was no fuel. Kerensky made speeches.

“Anyhow you stopped still,” she giggled.

“What you want in this country is a little less art and a little more civilisation.”

“You are bourgeoisie, Mr. Harrington, you are not a member of the intelligentsia.”

“You are bourgeoisie, Mr. Harrington, you are not a member of the intelligentsia.”

“You are the first person who’s ever said that, Delilah. If I’m not a member of the intelligentsia I don’t know who is,” retorted Mr. Harrington with dignity.

Then one day when Ashenden was working in his room there was a knock at the door and Anastasia Alexandrovna stalked in followed somewhat sheepishly by Mr. Harrington. Ashenden saw that she was excited.