Some Do Not … quotes

Perhaps he would even have written to the Times.

Their class administered the world, not merely the newly-created Imperial Department of Statistics under Sir Reginald Ingleby.

If they saw policemen misbehave, railway porters lack civility, an insufficiency of street lamps, defects in public services or in foreign countries, they saw to it, either with nonchalant Balliol voices, or with letters to the Times, asking in regretful indignation:

For the basis of Christopher Tietjens’ emotional existence was a complete taciturnity—at any rate as to his emotions.

As Tietjens saw the world, you didn’t “talk.” Perhaps you didn’t even think about how you felt.

And, indeed, his wife’s flight had left him almost completely without emotions that he could realise, and he had not spoken more than twenty words at most about the event.

“Damn him.” He added: “He’s probably right though.” He then said: “Thanks. That’s all I want to know.

A certain discredit has always attached to cuckolds. Very properly. A man ought to be able to keep his wife.

”

It was awkward introducing him—not to mention her—in your drawing-room. All sorts of awkwardnesses. Everyone knew the younger children weren’t Conder’s. A fellow married the youngest daughter and took over the hounds. And not a soul called on her. It wasn’t rational or just.

But that’s why society distrusts the cuckold, really. It never knows when it mayn’t be driven into something irrational and unjust.

”

“I saw it in the rack myself. I misdoubted it.” He added: “Oh dear, oh dear! After all we’ve talked about it; now it’s come.”

Mrs. Satterthwaite said:

“I’ve been a wicked woman myself as these things are measured; but …”

“I’d rather you didn’t say that, Father.

Sylvia would have evil thoughts in any place.

”

“Then,” Father Consett said, “if ye know him so well, Sylvia Satterthwaite, how is it ye con’t get on with him better? They say: Tout savoir ç’est tout pardonner.”

“It isn’t,” Sylvia said. “To know everything about a person is to be bored⁠ ⁠… bored⁠ ⁠… bored!”

“And how are ye going to answer this telegram of his?” the Father asked. “Or have ye answered it already?”

“Was it necessary to threaten her with that? You know best, of course. It seems rather strong to me.”

“It’s a hair from the dog that’s bit her,” the priest said.

“She’s a silly girl. She’s been playing at black masses along with that Mrs. Profumo and the fellow who’s name I can’t remember. You could tell that. They cut the throat of a white kid and splash its blood about.

“Do you mean to say,” Mrs. Satterthwaite said, “that Sylvia would do anything vulgar?”

“Doesn’t every woman who’s had a man to torture for years when she loses him?” the priest asked. “The more she’s made an occupation of torturing him the less right she thinks she has to lose him.”

Mrs. Satterthwaite looked gloomily into the dusk.

…

It was in that way his mind worked when he was fit: it picked up little pieces of definite, workmanlike information.

When it had enough it classified them: not for any purpose, but because to know things was agreeable and gave a feeling of strength, of having in reserve something that the other fellow would not suspect. … He passed a long, quiet, abstracted afternoon.

you formed them into a Government or a club and at once, with oppressions, inaccuracies, gossip, backbiting, lying, corruptions and vileness, you had the combination of wolf, tiger, weasel and louse-covered ape that was human society. And he remembered the words of some Russian:

“Cats and monkeys. Monkeys and cats. All humanity is there.”

Tietjens and Mrs. Waterhouse spent the rest of the evening together.

“Oh, no, Valentine,” she said, using her deeper tones. “There’s something beautiful, there’s something thrilling about chastity. I’m not narrow-minded. Censorious! I don’t condemn! But to preserve in word, thought and action a lifelong fidelity. … It’s no mean achievement. …”

“You mean like an egg and spoon race,” Miss Wannop said.

“It isn’t,” Mrs. Duchemin replied gently, “the way I should have put it. Isn’t the real symbol Atalanta, running fast and not turning aside for the golden apple? That always seemed to me the real truth hidden in the beautiful old legend. …”

an obvious equal in the surroundings of quite good people; small, but well-shaped and healthy; immense blue eyes fixed without embarrassment on his own. …

“By Jove⁠ ⁠…” he said to himself: “It’s true! What a jolly little mistress she’d make!”

He blamed Campion, Sandbach and the club gossips for the form the thought had taken. For the cruel, bitter and stupid pressure of the world has yet about it something selective;

Best climate in the world! No day on which man may not go abroad!” Tietjens paused and aimed with his hazel stick an immense blow at a tall spike of yellow mullein with its undecided, furry, glaucous leaves and its undecided, buttony, unripe lemon-coloured flower.

The structure collapsed, gracefully, like a woman killed among crinolines!

“Now I’m a bloody murderer!” Tietjens said. “Not gory! Green stained with vital fluid of innocent plant … And by God! Not a woman in the country who won’t let you rape her after an hour’s acquaintance!” He slew two more mulleins and a sow-thistle!

Her emotion vexed him, for it seemed to establish a sort of fraternal intimacy that he didn’t at the moment want.

Women do not show emotion except before their familiars.

He said drily:

Wannop,’ he said. … And …” She drifted for a moment. But she made another effort: “My dear boy,” she whispered, bending down her head to get it near his ear: “My dear boy; it doesn’t matter; it doesn’t really matter. You’ll live it down.

The only thing that matters is to do good work.

Believe an old woman that has lived very hard; ‘Hard lying money’ as they call it in the navy. It sounds like cant, but it’s the only real truth. … You’ll find consolation in that. And you’ll live it all down. Or perhaps you won’t;

on both sides! … But, positively, she and Sylvia were the only two human beings he had met for years whom he could respect: the one for sheer efficiency in killing: the other for having the constructive desire and knowing how to set about it.

Kill or cure! The two functions of man.

If you wanted something killed you’d go to Sylvia Tietjens in the sure faith that she would kill it: emotion: hope: ideal: kill it quick and sure. If you wanted something kept alive you’d go to Valentine:

On Tuesday it would close in again, beginning with the meeting of his wife’s maid at Dover. …

He was to have, above all, a holiday from himself and to take it like other men; free of his conventions, his strait waist-coatings.⁠ ⁠…

“I’m coming up now! I’ve found out something. …” He watched intently the place where she must appear; it would give him pointers about the impenetrability of mist to the eye.

She looked at him for a long time.

“You’re not so dreadfully ugly, really,” she said.

Rising out of the mist on a fantastically green knoll, a quarter of a mile away, was an unnoticeable place of worship: an oak shingle tower roof that shone grey like lead: an impossibly bright weathercock, brighter than the sun.

The horse, trembling, was looking down, its nostrils distended, at the blood pooling from its near foot. The cut was just on the shoulder. He put his left arm right over the horse’s eyes. The horse stood it, almost with a sigh of relief. …

A wonderful magnetism with horses. Perhaps with women too? God knew.

He was almost certain she had said “Dear.”

A long time afterwards he said:

“Damn all principles!” And then:

“But one has to keep on going. … Principles are like a skeleton map of a country—you know whether you’re going east or north.”

she wavered a little to one side and, with a circular motion of her hand, let the whole contents fly at Tietjens’ head. She placed the plate on the table and drifted slowly towards the enormous mirror over the fireplace.

“I’m bored,” she said. “Bored! Bored!”

Tietjens had moved slightly as she had thrown: the cutlets and most of the salad leaves had gone over his shoulder.

She looked at Tietjens now with a sort of gloating curiosity. How was it possible that the most honourable man she knew should be so overwhelmed by foul and baseless rumours?

It made you suspect that honour had, in itself, a quality of the evil eye.

…

He considered that he was dull-minded, heavy, ruined, and so calumniated that at times he believed in his own infamy, for it is impossible to stand up forever against the obloquy of your kind and remain unhurt in the mind.

If you hunch your shoulders too long against a storm your shoulders will grow bowed.⁠ ⁠…

His mind stopped for a moment and his eyes gazed dully at Sylvia’s letter which lay open on the tablecloth. His thoughts came together, converging on the loosely-written words:

“Then … betting!” Port Scatho said.

“I never put a penny on a horse in my life,” Tietjens said. “I know too much about them.”

Port Scatho looked at the faces first of Sylvia, then of Tietjens. Sylvia, at least, was his very old friend. She said:

“You’ve no right to be bewildered,” Sylvia said.

“You’re worrying your mind for expedients to save the reputation of your bank. We know your bank is more to you than a baby. You should look after it better, then.”

Port Scatho, who had already fallen two paces away from the table, now fell two paces back, almost on top of it. Sylvia’s nostrils were dilated.

“You spent it on women? Or where do you get the money that you spend on women?”

“I never spent a penny on a woman in my life.”

They crossed Holborn and went by the backways towards Fleet Street.

he couldn’t see how Tietjens otherwise got the money to support Mrs. Wannop, Miss Wannop and her child, and to maintain Mrs. Duchemin and Macmaster in the style they affected, Mrs. Duchemin being the mistress of Christopher. He simply could see no other solution.

It is, in fact, asking for trouble if you are more altruist than the society that surrounds you.

Ruggles, however, hadn’t any pointers as to whether or no or to what degree he had really damaged his roommate’s brother.

“Good God! Why to him?” Mark ejaculated.

“Oh, because he was Swipes, of Cullercoats,” Christopher said, “and asked for it. He’d have had more, only that was enough for him to drink himself to death on.”

“I suppose you don’t give money to every fellow that asks for it?”

“I suppose you don’t give money to every fellow that asks for it?”

“I do. It’s a matter of principle.”

“It’s lucky,” Mark said, “that a lot of fellows don’t know that. You wouldn’t have much brass left for long.”

With the same air of finding Christopher Tietjens fit in exactly to an expected landscape she turned on him. Her face was blue-white and distorted. She ran upon him and exclaimed:

“Look at this horror! And you in that foul uniform can support it!”

The sheets of paper beneath the green roof were laterally striped with little serrated lines: each line meant the death of a man, for the day.

“Look at this horror! And you in that foul uniform can support it!”

The sheets of paper beneath the green roof were laterally striped with little serrated lines: each line meant the death of a man, for the day.

Tietjens had fallen a step back off the curb of the pavement that ran round the quadrangle. He said:

“There’ll be a bit for you, if you like,” Mark said, “or perhaps Christopher won’t let you. He’s ratty with me. And something for your brother to buy a doctor’s business with.” He asked: “You haven’t fainted, have you?” She said:

“No. I don’t faint. I cry.”

“That’ll be all right,” he answered. He went on: “That’s your side of it. Now for mine. I want Christopher to have a place where he’ll be sure of a mutton-chop and an armchair by the fire. And someone to be good for him.

They’ve got me out, with all sorts of bad marks against me. They’ll pursue me, systematically. … You see in such a world as this, an idealist—or perhaps it’s only a sentimentalist—must be stoned to death. He makes the others so uncomfortable.

He haunts them at their golf.

… No; they’ll get me, one way or the other. And some fellow—Macmaster here—will do my jobs. He won’t do them so well, but he’ll do them more dishonestly. Or no. I oughtn’t to say dishonestly. He’ll do them with enthusiasm and righteousness.

“I’ve probably been a low cad,” he said, “wringing your heart with my doubts. But I wanted to see where our similarities come in. We’ve always been—or we’ve seemed always to me—so alike in our thoughts. I daresay I wanted you to respect me. …”

“Oh, I respect you! I respect you!” she said. “You’re as innocent as a child.”

“And I wanted to get some thinking done. It hasn’t been often of late that one has had a quiet room and a fire and … you! To think in front of. You do make one collect one’s thoughts.

Valentine had felt a queer, queer sensation. She was not sure afterwards whether she had felt it before she had realised that Sylvia Tietjens was looking at them.

She stood there, very erect, a queer smile on her face.

Valentine could not be sure whether it was kind, cruel, or merely distantly ironic;

but she was perfectly sure it showed, whatever was behind it, that its wearer knew all that there was to know of her, Valentine’s, feelings for Tietjens and for Tietjens’ feelings for her. …

It was like being a woman and man in adultery in Trafalgar Square.

Behind Sylvia’s back, their mouths agape, were the two staff officers. Their dark hairs were too untidy for them to amount to much, but, such as they were, they were the two most presentable males of the assembly—and Sylvia had snaffled them.

Edward would be dead drunk. She had fifteen shillings for the taxi. … If she gave a few coppers more it seemed generous. … What a day to look forward to still!

Some days were lifetimes!

She would rather die than let Tietjens pay for the cab!