Arthur Machen

“ It is not a case of master creeping into a young girl's room at dead of night, with a Bible under his arm—the said Bible being used with grotesque skill to show that 'master's' wishes must be at once complied with under pain of severe punishment, not only in this world, but in the world to come. Every Sunday, you must remember, the girl has seen 'master' perhaps crouching devoutly in his pew, perhaps in the part of sidesman or even church-warden, more probably supplementing the gifts of the pastor at some nightmarish meeting-house. 'Master' offers prayer with wonderful fervour ”

“ Yes, I walk down these long ways on Sunday afternoons, when they are at their best. Sometimes, if you choose the right hour, you may look into one 'breakfast room'—an apartment half sunken in the earth—after another, and see in each one the table laid for tea, showing the charming order and uniformity that prevail. ”

“ Suppose the child severely reprimanded at the mere mention of bread and butter, whipped and shut up in a dark room for the offence of reading a recipe for making plum pudding; suppose, I say, a whole society organised on the strict official understanding that no decent person ever is or has been or can be conscious of the physical want of food; that breakfast, lunch, tea, dinner and supper are orgies only used by the most wicked and degraded wretches, destined to an awful and eternal doom? ”

“ What plots, what pictures, what characters are ready for his cunning hand, what splendid matter lies unknown, useless, and indeed offensive, which, in the artist's crucible, would be transmuted into golden and exquisite perfection. Do you know that I can never penetrate into the regions where these people dwell without a thrill of wonder and a great desire that I might be called to execute the masterpieces I have hinted at? ”

“ It will always be bright in my mind, that picture—the low room with the oak beams, the glittering tankards, the hops hanging from the ceiling, and Nelly sitting before me sipping the scented drink from a green glass. It was the last night of gaiety, and even then gaiety was mixed with odd patterns—the Frenchman's talk about martyrdom, and the statue of the saint pointing to the marks of his passion, standing in that dyed vesture with his rapt, exultant face ”

“ It was time for the curtain to be rung down on our comedy.
"The one cigarette had become three or four when Nelly began to tell me her history; the wine and the rejoicing had got into her head also. She described the first things that she remembered: a little hut among wild hills and stony fields in the west of Ireland, and the great sea roaring on the shore but a mile away, and the wind and the rain always driving from across the waves. She spoke of the place as if she loved it, though her father and mother were as poor as they could be, and little was there to eat even in the old cabin. ”

“ You know a certain class of plot—novelists are rather fond of using it—in which the hero's happiness is blasted because he finds out that the life of his wife or his sweetheart has not always been spotless as the snow. Why should it be spotless as the snow? What is the hero that he should be dowered with the love of virgins of Paradise? I call it cant—all that—and I hate it; I hope Angel Clare was eventually entrapped by a young person from Piccadilly Circus—she would probably be much too good for him! So, you see, I was hardly likely to have put any very searching questions to Nelly ”

“ Nelly went among these Manichees. She had been to the world beyond the Venetians, the white muslin curtains and the india-rubber plant, and she told me her report. They talk about the morality of the theatre, these swine! In the theatre—if there is anything of the kind—it is a case of a wastrel and a wanton who meet and part on perfectly equal terms, without deceit or false pretences. ”

“ Yes, it is a hideous world enough, isn't it? And isn't it a pleasant thought that you and I practically live under the government of these people? 'Master' is the 'man in the street,' the 'hard-headed, practical man of the world,' 'the descendant of the sturdy Puritans,' whose judgment is final on all questions from Poetics to Liturgiology. We hardly think that this picture will commend itself to the 'man in the street'—a course of action that is calculated to alienate practical men. ”

“ The fact is, of course (to use a simple analogy) , man, by his nature, is always hungry, and, that being the case, he will sometimes eat too much dinner and sometimes he will get his dinner in odd ways, and sometimes he will help himself to more or less unlawful snacks before breakfast and after supper. ”

“ I never have had a clearer light thrown on the curious and disgusting manners of the lower middle-class in England—the class that prides itself especially on its respectability, above all, on what it calls 'Morality'—by which it means the observance of one particular commandment. ”

“ The worst of that miserable school discipline is is that it makes one take an insane and quite disproportionate enjoyment in little things, in the merest trifles which ought really to be accepted as a matter of course. ”

“ A hedgehog is a rough and prickly fellow—better his prickles than the reptile's poisonous slime. The tales that yet await the novelist who has courage (what is his name, by the way?) , who has the insight to see behind those Venetian blinds and white curtains, who has the word that can give him entrance through the polished door by the encaustic porch! ”

“ But suppose a society in which the fact of hunger was officially denied, in which the faintest hint at an empty stomach was considered the rankest, most abominable indecency, the most detestable offence against the most sacred religious feelings? ”

“ In such a world, I think, you would discover some very striking irregularities in diet. Facts are known to be stubborn things, but if their very existence is denied they become ferocious and terrible things. ”

“ I believe I should have liked a hard chair to sit in of my own free will, if one of our old fools—Palmer—had not always been gabbling about the horrid luxury of some boys who had arm-chairs in their studies. ”

“ Then I would doze off again and wake up at intervals—eight, nine, ten—and chuckle to myself with ever-increasing enjoyment. It was just the same with smoking. I don't suppose I should have touched a cigarette for years if smoking had not been one of the mortal sins in our Bedlam Decalogue. I don't know whether smoking is bad for boys or not; I should think not, as I believe the Dutch—who are sturdy fellows—begin to puff fat cigars at the age of six or thereabouts ”

“ You know the class I mean: the brigade of the shining hat on Sunday, of the neat little villa with a well-kept plot in front, of the consecrated drawing-room, of the big Bible well in evidence. It is more often Chapel than Church, this tribe, but it draws from both sources. It is above all things shiny—not only the Sunday hat, but the furniture, the linoleum, the hair and the very flesh which pertain to these people have an unwholesome polish on them; and they prefer their plants and shrubs to be as glossy as possible this gens lubrica.
"To these tents poor Nelly went as a slave ”