Epistles 1.9 to Minicius Fundanus (Pliny the Younger, trans. adapted from Betty Radice)

Mirum est quam singulis diebus in urbe ratio aut constet aut constare videatur, pluribus iunctisque
non constet. Nam si quem interroges “Hodie quid egisti?,” respondeat: “Officio togae virilis interfui, sponsalia aut nuptias frequentavi, ille me ad signandum testamentum, ille in advocationem, ille in consilium rogavit.” Haec quo die feceris, necessaria, eadem, si cotidie fecisse te reputes, inania videntur, multo magis cum secesseris. Tunc enim subit recordatio: “Quot dies quam frigidis rebus absumpsi!” Quod evenit mihi, postquam in Laurentino meo aut lego aliquid aut scribo aut etiam corpori vaco, cuius fulturis animus sustinetur. Nihil audio quod audisse, nihil dico quod dixisse paeniteat; nemo apud me quemquam sinistris sermonibus carpit, neminem ipse reprehendo, nisi tamen me cum parum commode scribo; nulla spe nullo timore sollicitor, nullis rumoribus inquietor: mecum tantum et cum libellis loquor. O rectam sinceramque vitam! O dulce otium honestumque ac paene omni negotio pulchrius! O mare, o litus, verum secretumque μουσεῖον, quam multa invenitis, quam multa dictatis! Proinde tu quoque strepitum istum inanemque discursum et multum ineptos labores, ut primum fuerit occasio, relinque teque studiis vel otio trade. Satius est enim, ut Atilius noster eruditissime simul et facetissime dixit, otiosum esse quam nihil agere. Vale.

It is extraordinary how, if one takes a single day spent in Rome, one can give a more or less accurate account of it, but scarcely any account at all of several days put together. If you ask anyone “What did you do today?”, the answer would be: “I was present at a coming-of-age ceremony, a betrothal, or a wedding. I was called on to witness a will, to support someone in court or to act as assessor.” All this seems important on the actual day, but quite pointless if you consider that you have done the same sort of thing every day, and much more pointless if you think about it when you are out of town. It is then that the realisation comes to you, “How many days I have wasted in trivialities!” I always realise this when I am at Laurentum, reading and writing and finding time to take the exercise which keeps my mind fit for work. There is nothing there for me to say or hear said which I would afterwards regret, no one disturbs me with malicious gossip, and I have no one to blame—but myself—when writing doesn’t come easily. Hopes and fears do not worry me, and I am not bothered by idle talk; I share my thoughts with myself and my books. It is a good life and a genuine one, a seclusion which is happy and honourable, more rewarding than almost any business can be. The sea and shore are truly my private Mouseion, an endless source of inspiration. You should take the first opportunity yourself to leave the din, the futile bustle and useless occupations of the city and devote yourself to literature or to leisure. For it was wise as well as witty of our friend Atilius to say that it is better to have no work to do than to work at nothing. xx

from Boy, Goodbye School (Roald Dahl)

After that we spent months at the Head Office in London learning how the great company functioned from the inside.  I was still living in Bexley, Kent, with my mother and three sisters, and every morning, six days a week, Saturdays included, I would dress neatly in a sombre grey suit, have breakfast at seven forty-five and then, with a brown trilby on my head and a furled umbrella in my hand, I would board the eight-fifteen train to London together with a swarm of equally sombre-suited businessmen.  I found it very easy to fall into their pattern.  We were all very serious and dignified gents taking the train to our offices in the City of London where each of us, so we thought, was engaged in high finance and other enormously important matters.  Most of my companions wore hard bowler hats, and a few like me wore soft trilbys, but not one of us on that train in the year of 1934 went bareheaded.  It wasn't done.  And none of us, even on the sunniest days, went without his furled umbrella.  The umbrella was our badge of office.  We felt naked without it.  Also it was a sign of respectability.  Road-menders and plumbers never went to work with umbrellas.  Businessmen did.

I enjoyed it, I really did.  I began to realize how simple life could be if one had a regular routine to follow with fixed hours and a fixed salary and very little original thinking to do.  The life of a writer is absolute hell compared with the life of a businessman.  The writer has to force himself to work.  He has to make his own hours and if he doesn't go to his desk at all there is nobody to scold him.  If he is a writer of fiction he lives in a world of fear.  Each day demands new ideas and he can never be sure whether he is going to come up with them or not.  Two hours of writing fiction leaves this particular writer absolutely drained.  For those two hours he has been miles away, he has been somewhere else, in a different place with totally different people, and the effort of swimming back into normal surroundings is very great.  It is almost a shock.  The writer walks out of his workroom in a daze.  He wants a drink.  He needs it.  It happens to be a fact that nearly every writer of fiction in the world drinks more whisky than is good for him.  He does it to give himself faith, hope and courage.  A person is a fool to become a writer.  His only compensation is absolute freedom.  He has no master except his own soul, and that, I am sure, is why he does it.

from The Watsons (Jane Austen)

With much concern they took their seats - Lord Osborne near Emma, and the convenient Mr. Musgrave in high spirits at his own importance, on the other side of the fireplace with Elizabeth. He was at no loss for words; - but when Lord Osborne had hoped that Emma had not caught cold at the ball, he had nothing more to say for some time, and could only gratify his eye by occasional glances at his fair neighbour. 

Emma was not inclined to give herself much trouble for his entertainment - and after hard labour of mind, he produced the remark of its being a very fine day, and followed it up with the question of, 'Have you been walking this morning?'

'No, my lord.  We thought it too dirty.'

'You should wear half-boots.' - After another pause, 'Nothing sets off a neat ankle more than a half-boot; nankin galoshed with black looks very well. - Do not you like half-boots?'

'Yes - but unless they are so stout as to injure their beauty, they are not fit for country walking.'

'Ladies should ride in dirty weather. - Do you ride?'

'No my lord.'

'I wonder every lady does not. - A woman never looks better than on horseback. -'

'But every woman may not have the inclination, or the means.'

'If they knew how much it became them, they would all have the inclination, and I fancy Miss Watson - when once they had the inclination, the means would soon follow.'

'Your lordship thinks we always have our own way. - That is a point on which ladies and gentlemen have long disagreed. - But without pretending to decide it, I may say that there are some circumstances which even women cannot control. Female economy will do a great deal my Lord, but it cannot turn a small income into a large one.'

from My Family and Other Animals, The Return (Gerald Durrell)

Our mountain of possessions was arranged in the Customs shed, and Mother stood by it jangling an enormous bunch of keys. Outside in the brilliant white sunlight the rest of the family talked with Theodore and Kralefsky, who had come to see us off. The Customs officer made his appearance and wilted slightly at the sight of our mound of baggage, crowned with a cage from which the Magenpies peered malevolently. Mother smiled nervously and shook her keys, looking as guilty as a diamond smuggler. The Customs man surveyed Mother and the luggage, tightened his belt, and frowned. 

'Theese your?' he inquired, making quite sure.

'Yes, yes, all mine,' twittered Mother, playing a rapid solo on her keys. 'Did you want me to open anything?'

The Customs man considered, pursing his lips thoughtfully.

'Hoff yew any noo clooes?' he asked.

'I’m sorry?' said Mother.

'Hoff yew any noo clooes?'

Mother cast a desperate glance round for Spiro.

'I’m so sorry. I didn’t quite catch ...'

'Hoff yew any noo clooes ... any noo clooes?'

Mother smiled with desperate charm.

'I’m sorry I can’t quite ...'

The Customs man fixed her with an angry eye.

'Madame,' he said ominously, leaning over the counter, 'do yew spik English?'

'Oh, yes,' exclaimed Mother, delighted at having understood him, 'yes, a little.'

She was saved from the wrath of the man by the timely arrival of Spiro. He lumbered in, sweating profusely, soothed Mother, calmed the Customs man, explained that we had not had any new clothes for years, and had the luggage shifted outside on to the quay almost before anyone could draw breath. Then he borrowed the Customs man’s piece of chalk and marked all the baggage himself, so there would be no further confusion.

from 'On Keeping a Notebook' (Joan Didion)

It all comes back. Perhaps it is difficult to see the value in having one’s self back in that kind of mood, but I do see it; I think we are well advised to keep on nodding terms with the people we used to be whether we find them attractive company or not. Otherwise they turn up unannounced and surprise us, come hammering on the mind’s door at 4 a.m. of a bad night and demand to know who deserted them, who betrayed them, who is going to make amends. We forget all too soon the things we thought we could never forget. We forget the loves and the betrayals alike, forget what we whispered and what we screamed, forget who we were. I have already lost touch with a couple of people I used to be; one of them, a seventeen­ year-old, presents little threat, although it would be of some interest to me to know again what it feels like to sit on a river levee drinking vodka-and­-orange-juice and listening to Les Paul and Mary Ford and their echoes sing “How High the Moon” on the car radio. (You see I still have the scenes, but I no longer perceive myself among those present, no longer could even improvise the dialogue.) The other one, a twenty-three-year-old, bothers me more. She was always a good deal of trouble, and I suspect she will reappear when I least want to see her, skirts too long, shy to the point of aggravation, always the injured party, full of recriminations and little hurts and stories I do not want to hear again, at once saddening me and angering me with her vulnerability and ignorance, an apparition all the more insistent for being so long banished.

It is a good idea, then, to keep in touch, and I suppose that keeping in touch is what notebooks are all about.

from Letters from Father Christmas (J.R.R. Tolkien)

Cliff House,

North Pole,

Christmas 1943

My dear Priscilla

            A very happy Christmas!  I suppose you will be hanging up your stocking just once more: I hope so for I have still a few little things for you.  After this I shall have to say "goodbye", more or less: I mean, I shall not forget you.  We always keep the old numbers of our old friends, and their letters; and later on we hope to come back when they are grown up and have houses of their own and children.

    My messengers tell me that people call it "grim" this year.  I think they mean miserable: and so it is, I fear, in very many places where I was specially fond of going; but I am very glad to hear that you are still not really miserable.  Don't be!  I am still very much alive, and shall come back again soon, as merry as ever.  There has been no damage in my country; and though my stocks are running rather low I hope soon to put that right.

    Polar Bear - too "tired" to write himself (so he says) - 

I am, reely

sends a special message to you: love and a hug!  He says: do ask if she still has a bear called Silly Billy, or something like that; or is he worn out?

    Give my love to the others: John and Michael and Christopher - and of course to all your pets that you used to tell me about.

    As I have not got very many of the things you usually want, I am sending you some nice bright clean money - I have lots of that (more than you have, I expect; but it is not very much use to me, perhaps it will be to you).  You might find it useful to buy a book with that you really want.

    Very much love from your old friend,

            Father Christmas.

from Grimble, chapter 1, Monday (Clement Freud)

At school he got lunch; that was the orderly part of his life. Shepherd's pie or sausages and mashed potatoes on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday; and on Fridays, fish fingers. This was followed by chocolate spodge – which is a mixture between chocolate sponge and chocolate sludge, and does not taste of anything very much except custard – which the school cook poured over everything.

from a letter to Cassandra Austen, 8-9 September 1816 (Jane Austen)

How good Mrs West could have written such books and collected so many hard works, with all her family cares, is still more a matter of astonishment!  Composition seems to me impossible with a head full of joints of mutton and doses of rhubarb.

Blackberry-Picking (Seamus Heaney)

for Philip Hobsbaum

Late August, given heavy rain and sun
For a full week, the blackberries would ripen.
At first, just one, a glossy purple clot
Among others, red, green, hard as a knot.
You ate that first one and its flesh was sweet
Like thickened wine: summer's blood was in it
Leaving stains upon the tongue and lust for
Picking. Then red ones inked up and that hunger
Sent us out with milk cans, pea tins, jam-pots
Where briars scratched and wet grass bleached our boots.
Round hayfields, cornfields and potato-drills
We trekked and picked until the cans were full,
Until the tinkling bottom had been covered
With green ones, and on top big dark blobs burned
Like a plate of eyes. Our hands were peppered
With thorn pricks, our palms sticky as Bluebeard's.

We hoarded the fresh berries in the byre.
But when the bath was filled we found a fur,
A rat-grey fungus, glutting on our cache.
The juice was stinking too. Once off the bush
The fruit fermented, the sweet flesh would turn sour.
I always felt like crying. It wasn't fair
That all the lovely canfuls smelt of rot.

Each year I hoped they'd keep, knew they would not.

from Augustine and the Fundamentalist's Daughter, chapter 5, Staying Is Nowhere (Margaret R. Miles)

After my first divorce, when I was poor and alone, I learned to console myself by thinking of people who were rich and happy in love.  Remembering this condition, recognizing its actual existence somewhere in the world, made me happy too.  To imagine those feelings was to participate in them.  That learning, over forty years ago, still helps me when I feel anguish over my inability to help my son, and suffer from the irony that I have spent my life teaching other people's children.  But I can help others' children, and so I do.  And I hope that, in the broader generosity of the universe, there will be someone who can help my son.  I endeavor to rest in the knowledge of this"enough", enough to go around, enough for all, if we will only cease trying to stipulate from whom/where it must come, but simply wait with confidence and accept with gratitude.

from Brideshead Revisited, book I, Et in Arcadia Ego, chapter eight (Evelyn Waugh)

'They've closed the chapel at Brideshead, Bridey and the Bishop; Mummy's requiem was the last mass said there. After she was buried the priest came in - I was there alone. I don't think he saw me - and took out the altar stone and put it in his bag; then he burned the wads of wool with the holy oil on them and threw the ash outside; he emptied the holy water stoup and blew out the lamp in the sanctuary and left the tabernacle open and empty, as though from now on it was always to be Good Friday. I suppose none of this makes any sense to you, Charles, poor agnostic. I stayed there till he was gone, and then, suddenly, there wasn't any chapel there any more, just an oddly decorated room. I can't tell you what it felt like. You've never been to Tenebrae, I suppose?'

'Never.'

'Well, if you had you'd know what the Jews felt about their temple. Quomodo sedet sola civitas ... it's a beautiful chant. You ought to go once, just to hear it.'

from The Long Winter, chapter 30, It Can't Beat Us

Winter had lasted so long that it seemed it would never end. It seemed that they would never really wake up.

In the morning Laura got out of bed into the cold. She dressed downstairs by the fire that Pa had kindled before he went to the stable. They ate their coarse brown bread. Then all day long she and Ma and Mary ground wheat and twisted hay as fast as they could. The fire must not go out; it was very cold. They ate some coarse brown bread. Then Laura crawled into the cold bed and shivered until she grew warm enough to sleep.

Next morning she got out of bed into the cold. She dressed in the chilly kitchen by the fire. She ate her coarse brown bread. She took her turns at grinding wheat and twisting hay. But she did not ever feel awake. She felt beaten by the cold and the storms.

She knew she was dull and stupid but she could not wake up.

There were no more lessons. There was nothing in the world but cold and dark and work and coarse brown bread and winds blowing. The storm was always there, outside the walls, waiting sometimes, then pouncing, shaking the house, roaring, snarling, and screaming in rage.

Out of bed in the morning to hurry down and dress by the fire. Then work all day to crawl into a cold bed at night and fall asleep as soon as she grew warm. The winter had lasted so long. It would never end.

from Peter Duck, chapter XVI, The Madeiras at Dusk (Arthur Ransome)

There was always something to see. And, besides, there was always something to do. Susan and Peggy were busy from morning to night with their cooking and housekeeping. 'Shipkeeping, it ought to be called,' as Roger pointed out one day when Susan said she was too busy housekeeping to knit a stocking cap for Gibber. Gibber, by the way, got his stocking cap all right, but it was knitted by Peter Duck when he had finished darning his socks. He knitted it from blue wool, on the pattern of his own, and Susan, when she saw it, let shipkeeping go hang while she made a red woollen tassel to go on the top of it.

Every day the main water tank had to be filled up from the small screw-top tanks that were stored under the flooring down below. In this way Susan was able to keep count of exactly how much water they were using. She never had been very good at sums, and neither had Peggy, but long before the end of that voyage nobody could have found fault with their additions and subtractions and divisions. They were calculating all the time, and often Susan would wake up in the early morning thinking that one of the sums had gone wrong, and then she would sit up in her bunk and work it out again, and tell Titty about it, and Titty, in the bunk below, would also have a go with pencil and paper, trying to help. Inside the deckhouse door there was a card, and every time one of those tins from down below was emptied into the main tank, Susan used to tick it off on this card, so that Captain Flint, too, was able to keep an eye on the way the water was going. They were very careful about the water, doing most of their washing in salt water, using special salt-water soap. It did not make much of a lather, and it left them feeling rather sticky, but anything was better than running short of drinking water. And in the end, Captain Flint said that it was all due to Susan that things went off so well. If she had not been so careful with the water they could never have done what they did.

from Anne of Green Gables, chapter 18, Anne to the Rescue (L.M. Montgomery)

Just as Anne emerged triumphantly from the cellar with her plateful of russets came the sound of flying footsteps on the icy board walk outside and the next moment the kitchen door was flung open and in rushed Diana Barry, white-faced and breathless, with a shawl wrapped hastily around her head. Anne promptly let go of her candle and plate in her surprise, and plate, candle, and apples crashed together down the cellar ladder and were found at the bottom embedded in melted grease, the next day, by Marilla, who gathered them up and thanked mercy the house hadn’t been set on fire.

“Whatever is the matter, Diana?” cried Anne. “Has your mother relented at last?”

 “Oh, Anne, do come quick,” implored Diana nervously. “Minnie May is awful sick—she’s got croup. Young Mary Joe says—and Father and Mother are away to town and there’s nobody to go for the doctor. Minnie May is awful bad and Young Mary Joe doesn’t know what to do—and oh, Anne, I’m so scared!”

Matthew, without a word, reached out for cap and coat, slipped past Diana and away into the darkness of the yard.

“He’s gone to harness the sorrel mare to go to Carmody for the doctor,” said Anne, who was hurrying on hood and jacket. “I know it as well as if he’d said so. Matthew and I are such kindred spirits I can read his thoughts without words at all.”

“I don’t believe he’ll find the doctor at Carmody,” sobbed Diana. “I know that Dr. Blair went to town and I guess Dr. Spencer would go too. Young Mary Joe never saw anybody with croup and Mrs. Lynde is away. Oh, Anne!”

“Don’t cry, Di,” said Anne cheerily. “I know exactly what to do for croup. You forget that Mrs. Hammond had twins three times. When you look after three pairs of twins you naturally get a lot of experience. They all had croup regularly. Just wait till I get the ipecac bottle—you mayn’t have any at your house. Come on now.”

The two little girls hastened out hand in hand and hurried through Lovers’ Lane and across the crusted field beyond, for the snow was too deep to go by the shorter wood way. Anne, although sincerely sorry for Minnie May, was far from being insensible to the romance of the situation and to the sweetness of once more sharing that romance with a kindred spirit.

The night was clear and frosty, all ebony of shadow and silver of snowy slope; big stars were shining over the silent fields; here and there the dark pointed firs stood up with snow powdering their branches and the wind whistling through them. Anne thought it was truly delightful to go skimming through all this mystery and loveliness with your bosom friend who had been so long estranged.

Minnie May, aged three, was really very sick. She lay on the kitchen sofa feverish and restless, while her hoarse breathing could be heard all over the house. Young Mary Joe, a buxom, broad-faced French girl from the creek, whom Mrs. Barry had engaged to stay with the children during her absence, was helpless and bewildered, quite incapable of thinking what to do, or doing it if she thought of it.

Anne went to work with skill and promptness.

“Minnie May has croup all right; she’s pretty bad, but I’ve seen them worse. First we must have lots of hot water. I declare, Diana, there isn’t more than a cupful in the kettle! There, I’ve filled it up, and, Mary Joe, you may put some wood in the stove. I don’t want to hurt your feelings but it seems to me you might have thought of this before if you’d any imagination. Now, I’ll undress Minnie May and put her to bed and you try to find some soft flannel cloths, Diana. I’m going to give her a dose of ipecac first of all.”

Minnie May did not take kindly to the ipecac but Anne had not brought up three pairs of twins for nothing. Down that ipecac went, not only once, but many times during the long, anxious night when the two little girls worked patiently over the suffering Minnie May, and Young Mary Joe, honestly anxious to do all she could, kept up a roaring fire and heated more water than would have been needed for a hospital of croupy babies.

It was three o’clock when Matthew came with a doctor, for he had been obliged to go all the way to Spencervale for one. But the pressing need for assistance was past. Minnie May was much better and was sleeping soundly.

“I was awfully near giving up in despair,” explained Anne. “She got worse and worse until she was sicker than ever the Hammond twins were, even the last pair. I actually thought she was going to choke to death. I gave her every drop of ipecac in that bottle and when the last dose went down I said to myself—not to Diana or Young Mary Joe, because I didn’t want to worry them any more than they were worried, but I had to say it to myself just to relieve my feelings—‘This is the last lingering hope and I fear ’tis a vain one.’ But in about three minutes she coughed up the phlegm and began to get better right away. You must just imagine my relief, doctor, because I can’t express it in words. You know there are some things that cannot be expressed in words.”

“Yes, I know,” nodded the doctor. He looked at Anne as if he were thinking some things about her that couldn’t be expressed in words. Later on, however, he expressed them to Mr. and Mrs. Barry.

“That little redheaded girl they have over at Cuthbert’s is as smart as they make ‘em. I tell you she saved that baby’s life, for it would have been too late by the time I got there. She seems to have a skill and presence of mind perfectly wonderful in a child of her age. I never saw anything like the eyes of her when she was explaining the case out to me.”

Anne had gone home in the wonderful, white-frosted winter morning, heavy eyed from loss of sleep, but still talking unweariedly to Matthew as they crossed the long white field and walked under the glittering fairy arch of the Lovers’ Lane maples.

“Oh, Matthew, isn’t it a wonderful morning? The world looks like something God had just imagined for His own pleasure, doesn’t it? Those trees look as if I could blow them away with a breath—pouf! I’m so glad I live in a world where there are white frosts, aren’t you? And I’m so glad Mrs. Hammond had three pairs of twins after all. If she hadn’t I mightn’t have known what to do for Minnie May. I’m real sorry I was ever cross with Mrs. Hammond for having twins.”

from Still Life, chapter 12, Behold the Child (A.S. Byatt)

It was agreed that Stephanie should have some time to herself, to work.  It was agreed, largely by Daniel, that Daniel's Mum and Marcus would mind William whilst she did an hour or two in Blesford public library ... Stephanie felt that she was being accused of desertion by some powerful representative of motherhood ...

Stephanie found it physically hard to pedal her bicycle away from the house.  She felt held as by a long linen binder, such as mill children had worn to work machinery, to the shape of her son in his woven basket, one fist in his small ear.  She seemed to hear, to feel, to smell powerful calling sounds, rufflings of the air, odours, which wanted her back, insisted that she must return.  She put down rational foot after rational foot, with difficulty.

-

In the library, Stephanie laid out her books.  Never before had she attempted to work without the outside sanction of an essay to write, an exam to pass, a class to prepare ...

She decided to read the 'Immortality Ode', just to read, clearly ... She felt panic.  She had with some pain cleared this small space and time to think in and now thought seemed impossible.  She remembered from what now seemed the astonishing free and spacious days of her education the phenomenon of the first day's work on a task.  One had to peel one's mind from its run of preoccupations: coffee to buy, am I in love, the yellow dress needs cleaning, Tim is unhappy, what is wrong with Marcus, how shall I live my life?  It took time before the task in hand seemed possible, and more before it came to life, and more still before it became imperative and obsessive.  There had to be a time before thought, a wool-gathering time when nothing happened, a time of yawning, of wandering eyes and feet, of reluctance to do what would finally become delightful and energetic.  Threads of thought had to rise and be gathered and catch on other threads of old thought, from some unused memory store.  She had snatched from Marcus and Daniel's Mum, worse, from William whose physical being filled her inner eye and almost all her immediate memory, barely time for this vacancy, let alone for the subsequent concentration.  She told herself she must learn to do without the vacancy if she was to survive.  She must be cunning.  She must learn to think in bus queues, in buses, in lavatories, between table and sink.  It was hard.  She was tired.  She yawned.  Time moved on.

-

... And yet her mind lifted: she had thought, she had seen clearly the relation between the parts played by the child-player and the confinement and depth.  She felt a moment of freedom, looked at her watch, saw that there was no more time to write this down or work it out ...

-

Stephanie, her mind on the platonic aspects of the 'Immortality Ode', her body extremely anxious about William, came through the front door.

There was a terrible silence and then Stephanie, books flung down, had scooped up her still son, who, simply winded, began to scream ...

-

Stephanie kissed the graze and wept.  There is something peculiarly distressing about the first wound on new skin.

from Gaudy Night, chapter 11 (Dorothy L. Sayers)

The only member missing from the Senior Common Room was Mrs Goodwin, whose small son (a most unfortunate child) had come out with measles immediately upon his return to school and again required his mother's nursing.

'Of course she can't help it,' said the Dean, 'but it's a very great nuisance, just at the beginning of the Summer Term.  If I'd only known, I could have come back earlier.'

'I don't see,' observed Miss Hillyard, grimly, 'what else you can expect, if you give jobs to widows with children.  You have to be prepared for these perpetual interruptions.  And for some reason, these domestic pre-occupations always have to be put before the work.'

'Well,' said the Dean, 'one must put work aside in a case of serious illness.'

'But all children get measles.'

'Yes; but he's not a very strong child, you know.  His father was tubercular, poor man - in fact, that's what he died of - and if measles should turn to pneumonia, as it so often does, the consequences might be serious.'

'But has it turned to pneumonia?'

'They're afraid it may.  He's got it very badly.  And, as he's a nervous little creature, he naturally likes to have his mother with him.  And in any case, she'd be in quarantine.'

'The longer she stays with him, the longer she'll be in quarantine.'

'It's very tiresome, of course,' put in Miss Lydgate, mildly.  'But if Mrs Goodwin had isolated herself and come back at the earliest possible moment - as she very bravely offered to do - she would have been suffering a great deal of anxiety.'

'A great many of us have to suffer anxiety in one way or another,' said Miss Hillyard, sharply.  'I have been very anxious about my sister.  It is always an anxious business to have a first baby at thirty-five.  But if the event had happened to occur in term-time, it would have had to take place without my assistance.'

'It is always difficult to say which duty one should put first,' said Miss Pyke.  'Each case must be decided individually.  I presume that, in bringing children into the world, one accepts a certain responsibility towards them.'

'I'm not denying it,' said Miss Hillyard.  'But if the domestic responsibility is to take precedence of the public responsibility, then the work should be handed over to someone else to do.'

'But the children must be fed and clothed,' said Miss Edwards.

'Quite so.  But the mother should not take a resident post.'

'Mrs Goodwin is an excellent secretary,' said the Dean.  'I should be very sorry to lose her.  And it's nice to think that we are able to help her in her very difficult position.'

Miss Hillyard lost patience.

'The fact is, though you will never admit it, that everybody in this place has an inferiority complex about married women and children.  For all your talk about careers and independence, you all believe in your hearts that we ought to abase ourselves before any woman who has fulfilled her animal functions.'

'That is absolute nonsense,' said the Bursar.

'It is natural, I suppose, to feel that married women lead a fuller life,' began Miss Lydgate.

'And a more useful one,' retorted Miss Hillyard.  'Look at the fuss that's made over "Shrewsbury grandchildren"!  Look how delighted you all are when old members get married!  As if you were saying "Aha! education doesn't unfit us for real life after all!  And when a really brilliant scholar throws away all her prospects to marry a curate, you say perfunctorily, "What a pity!  But of course her own life must come first."'

'I've never said such a thing,' cried the Dean indignantly.  'I always say they're perfect fools to marry.'

'I shouldn't mind,' said Miss Hillyard, unheeding, 'if you said openly that intellectual interests were only a second-best; but you pretend to put them first in theory and are ashamed of them in practice.'

'There's no need to get so heated about it,' said Miss Barton, breaking in upon the angry protest of Miss Pyke.  'After all, some of us may have deliberately chosen not to marry.  And, if you will forgive my saying so -'

At this ominous phrase, always the prelude to something quite unforgiveable, Harriet and the Dean broke hastily into the discussion.

'Considering that we are devoting our whole lives -'

'Even for a man, it is not always easy to say -'

Their common readiness confronted their good intention.  Each broke off and begged the other's pardon, and Miss Barton went on unchecked:

'It is not altogether wise - or convincing - to show so much animus against married women.  It was the same unreasonable prejudice that made you get that scout removed from your staircase -'

'I object,' said Miss Hillyard, with a heightened colour, 'to preferential treatment.  I do not see why we should put up with slackness on duty because a servant or a secretary happens to be a widow with children.   I do not see why Annie should be given a room to herself in the Scouts' Wing, and charge over a corridor, when servants who have been here for longer than she has have to be content to share a room.  I do not -'

'Well,' said Miss Stevens, 'I think she is entitled to a little consideration.  A woman who has been accustomed to a nice home of her own -'

'Very likely,' said Miss Hillyard.  'At any rate, it was not my lack of consideration that led to her precious children being placed in the charge of a common thief.'

'I was always against that,' said the Dean.

'And why did you give in?  Because poor Mrs Jukes was such a nice woman and had a family to keep.  She must be considered and rewarded for being fool enough to marry a scoundrel.  What's the good of pretending that you put the interests of the College first, when you hesitate for two whole terms about getting rid of a dishonest porter, because you're so sorry for his family?'

'There,' said Miss Allison, 'I entirely agree with you.  The College ought to come first in a case like that.'

'It ought always to come first.  Mrs Goodwin ought to see it, and resign her post if she can't carry out her duties properly.'  She stood up.  'Perhaps, however, it is as well that she should be away and stay away.  You may remember that, last time she was away, we had no trouble from anonymous letters or monkey-tricks.'

Miss Hillyard put down her coffee-cup and stalked out of the room.  Everybody looked uncomfortable.

'Bless my heart!' said the Dean.

'Something very wrong there,' said Miss Edwards, bluntly.

'She's so prejudiced,' said Miss Lydgate.  'I always think it's a very great pity she never married.' 

Miss Lydgate had a way of putting into language that a child could understand things which other people did not say, or said otherwise.

'I should be sorry for the man, I must say,' observed Miss Shaw; 'but perhaps I am showing an undue consideration for the male sex.  One is almost afraid to open one's mouth.'

'Poor Mrs Goodwin!' exclaimed the Bursar.  'The very last person!'

She got up angrily and went out.  Miss Lydgate followed her.  Miss Chilperic, who had said nothing, but looked quite alarmed, murmured that she must get along to work.  The Common Room slowly cleared, and Harriet was left with the Dean.

'Miss Lydgate has the most terrifying way of hitting the nail on the head,' said Miss Martin; 'because it is obviously much more likely that -'

'A great deal more likely,' said Harriet.

Odes 4.7 (Horace, trans. A.E. Housman)

diffugere nives, redeunt iam gramina campis 
arboribusque comae;
mutat terra vices et decrescentia ripas
flumina praetereunt;

Gratia cum Nymphis geminisque sororibus audet
ducere nuda choros.
immortalia ne speres, monet annus et almum
quae rapit hora diem.

frigora mitescunt Zephyris, ver proterit aestas,
interitura simul
pomifer autumnus fruges effuderit, et mox
bruma recurrit iners.

damna tamen celeres reparant caelestia lunae:
nos ubi decidimus
quo pater Aeneas, quo dives Tullus et Ancus,
puluis et umbra sumus.

quis scit an adiciant hodiernae crastina summae
tempora di superi?
cuncta manus avidas fugient heredis, amico
quae dederis animo.

cum semel occideris et de te splendida Minos
fecerit arbitria,
non, Torquate, genus, non te facundia, non te
restituet pietas;

infernis neque enim tenebris Diana pudicum
liberat Hippolytum,
nec Lethaea valet Theseus abrumpere caro
vincula Pirithoo.

The snows are fled away, leaves on the shaws
And grasses in the mead renew their birth,
The river to the river-bed withdraws,
And altered is the fashion of the earth.

The Nymphs and Graces three put off their fear
And unapparelled in the woodland play.
The swift hour and the brief prime of the year
Say to the soul, Thou wast not born for aye.

Thaw follows frost; hard on the heel of spring
Treads summer sure to die, for hard on hers
Comes autumn with his apples scattering;
Then back to wintertide, when nothing stirs.

But oh, whate’er the sky-led seasons mar,
Moon upon moon rebuilds it with her beams;
Come we where Tullus and where Ancus are
And good Aeneas, we are dust and dreams.

Torquatus, if the gods in heaven shall add
The morrow to the day, what tongue has told?
Feast then thy heart, for what thy heart has had
The fingers of no heir will ever hold.

When thou descendest once the shades among,
The stern assize and equal judgment o’er,
Not thy long lineage nor thy golden tongue,
No, nor thy righteousness, shall friend thee more.

Night holds Hippolytus the pure of stain,
Diana steads him nothing, he must stay;
And Theseus leaves Pirithous in the chain
The love of comrades cannot take away.

from Three Men in a Boat, chapter II (Jerome K. Jerome)

Harris said: 

'How about when it rained?'

You can never rouse Harris. There is no poetry about Harris—no wild yearning for the unattainable. Harris never 'weeps, he knows not why.' If Harris’s eyes fill with tears, you can bet it is because Harris has been eating raw onions, or has put too much Worcester over his chop.

from Little Dorrit, Book the First - Poverty, chapter X, Containing the whole Science of Government (Charles Dickens)

The Circumlocution Office was (as everybody knows without being told) the most important Department under Government. No public business of any kind could possibly be done at any time without the acquiescence of the Circumlocution Office. Its finger was in the largest public pie, and in the smallest public tart. It was equally impossible to do the plainest right and to undo the plainest wrong without the express authority of the Circumlocution Office. If another Gunpowder Plot had been discovered half an hour before the lighting of the match, nobody would have been justified in saving the parliament until there had been half a score of boards, half a bushel of minutes, several sacks of official memoranda, and a family-vault full of ungrammatical correspondence, on the part of the Circumlocution Office.
 
This glorious establishment had been early in the field, when the one sublime principle involving the difficult art of governing a country, was first distinctly revealed to statesmen. It had been foremost to study that bright revelation and to carry its shining influence through the whole of the official proceedings. Whatever was required to be done, the Circumlocution Office was beforehand with all the public departments in the art of perceiving - HOW NOT TO DO IT.

Through this delicate perception, through the tact with which it invariably seized it, and through the genius with which it always acted on it, the Circumlocution Office had risen to overtop all the public departments; and the public condition had risen to be - what it was.

It is true that How not to do it was the great study and object of all public departments and professional politicians all round the Circumlocution Office. It is true that every new premier and every new government, coming in because they had upheld a certain thing as necessary to be done, were no sooner come in than they applied their utmost faculties to discovering How not to do it. It is true that from the moment when a general election was over, every returned man who had been raving on hustings because it hadn't been done, and who had been asking the friends of the honourable gentleman in the opposite interest on pain of impeachment to tell him why it hadn't been done, and who had been asserting that it must be done, and who had been pledging himself that it should be done, began to devise, How it was not to be done. It is true that the debates of both Houses of Parliament the whole session through, uniformly tended to the protracted deliberation, How not to do it. It is true that the royal speech at the opening of such session virtually said, My lords and gentlemen, you have a considerable stroke of work to do, and you will please to retire to your respective chambers, and discuss, How not to do it. It is true that the royal speech, at the close of such session, virtually said, My lords and gentlemen, you have through several laborious months been considering with great loyalty and patriotism, How not to do it, and you have found out; and with the blessing of Providence upon the harvest (natural, not political), I now dismiss you. All this is true, but the Circumlocution Office went beyond it.

Because the Circumlocution Office went on mechanically, every day, keeping this wonderful, all-sufficient wheel of statesmanship, How not to do it, in motion. Because the Circumlocution Office was down upon any ill-advised public servant who was going to do it, or who appeared to be by any surprising accident in remote danger of doing it, with a minute, and a memorandum, and a letter of instructions that extinguished him. It was this spirit of national efficiency in the Circumlocution Office that had gradually led to its having something to do with everything. Mechanicians, natural philosophers, soldiers, sailors, petitioners, memorialists, people with grievances, people who wanted to prevent grievances, people who wanted to redress grievances, jobbing people, jobbed people, people who couldn't get rewarded for merit, and people who couldn't get punished for demerit, were all indiscriminately tucked up under the foolscap paper of the Circumlocution Office.

Numbers of people were lost in the Circumlocution Office. Unfortunates with wrongs, or with projects for the general welfare (and they had better have had wrongs at first, than have taken that bitter English recipe for certainly getting them), who in slow lapse of time and agony had passed safely through other public departments; who, according to rule, had been bullied in this, over-reached by that, and evaded by the other; got referred at last to the Circumlocution Office, and never reappeared in the light of day. Boards sat upon them, secretaries minuted upon them, commissioners gabbled about them, clerks registered, entered, checked, and ticked them off, and they melted away. In short, all the business of the country went through the Circumlocution Office, except the business that never came out of it; and its name was Legion.

Sometimes, angry spirits attacked the Circumlocution Office. Sometimes, parliamentary questions were asked about it, and even parliamentary motions made or threatened about it by demagogues so low and ignorant as to hold that the real recipe of government was, How to do it. Then would the noble lord, or right honourable gentleman, in whose department it was to defend the Circumlocution Office, put an orange in his pocket, and make a regular field-day of the occasion. Then would he come down to that house with a slap upon the table, and meet the honourable gentleman foot to foot. Then would he be there to tell that honourable gentleman that the Circumlocution Office not only was blameless in this matter, but was commendable in this matter, was extollable to the skies in this matter. Then would he be there to tell that honourable gentleman that, although the Circumlocution Office was invariably right and wholly right, it never was so right as in this matter. Then would he be there to tell that honourable gentleman that it would have been more to his honour, more to his credit, more to his good taste, more to his good sense, more to half the dictionary of commonplaces, if he had left the Circumlocution Office alone, and never approached this matter. Then would he keep one eye upon a coach or crammer from the Circumlocution Office sitting below the bar, and smash the honourable gentleman with the Circumlocution Office account of this matter. And although one of two things always happened; namely, either that the Circumlocution Office had nothing to say and said it, or that it had something to say of which the noble lord, or right honourable gentleman, blundered one half and forgot the other; the Circumlocution Office was always voted immaculate by an accommodating majority.

Such a nursery of statesmen had the Department become in virtue of a long career of this nature, that several solemn lords had attained the reputation of being quite unearthly prodigies of business, solely from having practised, How not to do it, as the head of the Circumlocution Office. As to the minor priests and acolytes of that temple, the result of all this was that they stood divided into two classes, and, down to the junior messenger, either believed in the Circumlocution Office as a heaven-born institution that had an absolute right to do whatever it liked; or took refuge in total infidelity, and considered it a flagrant nuisance.

from Conversations with Friends, part two, chapter 24 (Sally Rooney)

The next day, I received an email from Melissa.  I was sitting in the library, typing up a page of notes, when her email arrived.  I decided that before reading it I would take a walk around the library desks.  Slowly I arose from my seat and began my walk.  Inside, everything was very brown.  Out of the windows I could see a rattle of wind making its way through the trees.  On the cricket green a woman in shorts was running with her elbows working up and down like small pistons.  I cast a glance back at my own library desk to ensure my laptop was still there.  It sat glowing ominously into the nothingness.  I walked halfway around the room before looping back to my own seat, as if this circuit around the library desks was actually a physical endurance test of some kind.  Then I opened the email.