Beyond Rivalry

From The Pursuit of Love (1945)

"'Oh, you are the cousin I hear so much about,' she said. 'You'll want to see the baby.'

"She went away and presently returned carrying a Moses basket full of wails.

"'Poor thing,' Linda [the child's mother] said indifferently. 'It's really kinder not to look.'...

"I did look, and deep down among the frills and lace, there was the usual horrid sight of the howling orange in a fine black wig."

"'Isn't she sweet,' said the Sister. 'Look at her little hands.'

"I shuddered slightly and said, 'Well, I know it's dreadful of me, but I don't much like them as small as that; I'm sure she'll be divine in a year or two.'

"The wails now entered on a crescendo, and the whole room was filled with hideous noise.

"'Poor soul,' said Linda. 'I think it must have caught sight of itself in a glass.'"

"Christian always assumed that people were all right unless they told him to the contrary, when, except in case of destitute, coloured, oppressed, leprous or otherwise unattractive strangers, he would take absolutely no notice. He was really only interested in mass wretchedness, and never much cared for individual cases, however genuine their misery, while the idea that it is possible to have three square meals a day and a roof and yet be unhappy or unwell, seemed to him intolerable nonsense."

[This, when I read it, brought immediately to mind the line from Hair's "Easy to Be Hard": "Do you only care about the bleeding crowd? / How about a needing friend?"]

From Love in a Cold Climate  (1949)

"She had all the sentimentality of her generation, and this sentimentality, growing like a green moss over her spirit, helped to conceal its texture of stone, if not from others, at any rate from herself. She was convinced that she was a woman of profound sensibility."

"First of all we talked about the wedding. Lady Montdore was wonderful when it came to picking over an occasion of that sort. With her gimlet eye nothing escaped her, nor did any charitable inhibitions tone down her comments on what she had observed."  

 

"The many dislikers of Lady Montdore said that she kept [her daughter] Polly too much in the background, and this was not fair because, although it is true to say that Lady Montdore automatically filled the foreground of any picture in which she figured, she was only too anxious to push Polly in front of her, like a hostage, and it was not her fault if she was forever slipping back again."

 

"The success or failure of all human relationships lies in the atmosphere each person is aware of creating for the other."