Henry Handel Richardson

Name: The Getting of Wisdom — Chapter XVIII
Author: Henry Handel Richardson

The Getting of Wisdom — Chapter XVIII (1910)

Summary

“The Getting of Wisdom — Chapter XVIII”, published in 1910, is a work by Henry Handel Richardson. It explores elements such as Laura, fiction and liar.

Quotes from The Getting of Wisdom — Chapter XVIII (Henry Handel Richardson)

Henry Handel Richardson, The Getting of Wisdom — Chapter XVIII (1910)

“ Mary was rectitude in person: and it cannot be denied that, to Laura, this was synonymous with hard, narrow, ungracious. Not quite a prig, though: there was fun in Mary, and life in her; but it was neither fun nor vivacity of a kind that Laura could feel at ease with. Such capers as the elder girl cut were only skin-deep; they were on the surface of her character, had no real roots in her: just as the pieces of music she played on the piano were accidents of the moment, without deeper significance. To Mary, life was already serious, full of duties. ”

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Henry Handel Richardson, The Getting of Wisdom — Chapter XVIII (1910)

“ And never was a child so spurred and uplifted by praise as Laura. Without it, her nature tended to be wary and unproductive; and those in touch with her, had they wished to make the most of her, would no more have stinted with the necessary incentive, that one stints a delicate rose tree in aids to growth. Laura could swallow praise in large doses, without becoming over-sure. ”

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Source: Wikisource

Henry Handel Richardson, The Getting of Wisdom — Chapter XVIII (1910)

“ Strachey on his chair in the middle of the floor, perpetually nimming with his left leg. And, as she pictured the familiar scene to herself, she shivered with a sudden sense of isolation: behind each well-known face lurked a possible enemy.
If it had only not been M. P.!—that was the first thought that crystallised. Anyone else! . . . from any of the rest she might have hoped for some mercy. But Mary Pidwall was one of those people—there were plenty such—before whom a nature like Laura’s was inclined, at the best of times, to shrink away, keenly aware of its own paltriness and ineffectualness. ”

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Source: Wikisource

Henry Handel Richardson, The Getting of Wisdom — Chapter XVIII (1910)

“ I hate the very name of it,” cried Laura, maddened.—And retreating to a lavatory, which was the only private place in the school, she wept her full.
They all, every girl of them, understood white lies, and practised them. They might also have forgiven her a lie of the good, plain, straightforward, thumping order. What they could not forgive, or get over, was the extraordinary circumstantiality of the fictions which with she had gulled them: to be able to invent lies with such proficiency meant that you had been born with a criminal bent.—And as a criminal she was accordingly treated. ”

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Source: Wikisource

Henry Handel Richardson, The Getting of Wisdom — Chapter XVIII (1910)

“ And one afternoon when the four were twitting her, and things were looking very black, Laura was incited by some devil to throw them, not, it is true, the savoury incident their mouths watered for, but a fresh fiction—just as the beset traveller throws whatever he has at hand, to the ravenous wolves that press round the sledge. ”

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Source: Wikisource

Henry Handel Richardson, The Getting of Wisdom — Chapter XVIII (1910)

“ She wakened with a scream, and Marina, her bedfellow, rose on one elbow and lighted the candle. Crumpled and dishevelled, Laura lay outside the sheet that should have covered her; and her pillow had slipped to the floor.
“What on earth’s the matter? Dreaming? Then depend on it you’ve eaten something that’s disagreed with you.”
How she dragged her legs back to school that morning, Laura never knew. At the sight of the great stone building her inner disturbance was such that she was nearly sick. Even the unobservant Marina was forced to a remark. ”

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Source: Wikisource

Henry Handel Richardson, The Getting of Wisdom — Chapter XVIII (1910)

“ She’s as poor as dirt.”
“Wants her bottom smacked—that’s what I say!”
Thus Maria, and, with her, Kate Horner.
Tilly was cooler and bitterer. “I was a dashed fool ever to believe a word. I might have known her little game. She? Why, when I took her out to see my cousin Bob, she couldn’t say bo to a goose. He laughed about her afterwards like anything; said she ought to have come in a perambulator, with a nurse.—YOU make anyone in love with you—you!” And Tilly spat, to show her disdain.
“What have they been saying to you, Laura?” whispered Chinky, pale and frightened. “Whatever is the matter?” ”

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Source: Wikisource

Henry Handel Richardson, The Getting of Wisdom — Chapter XVIII (1910)

“ She would have to confess to her fabrications—that was plain. M. P.‘s precise mind would bring back a precise account of how matters stood in the Shepherd household: not by an iota would the truth be swerved from. ”

Henry Handel Richardson

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Quotes from The Getting of Wisdom — Chapter XVIII (Henry Handel Richardson)

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