Israel Zangwill

“ The tears were in Lillie's eyes as Miss Eustasia Pallas concluded her affecting recital.
"But don't you think," said the President, conquering her emotion, "that with such an awful example in your memory, you could never yourself sink into such a serfage, even if you married?"
"I dare not trust myself," said Eustasia. "I have seen the fall of too many other women. Why should I expect immunity from the general fate? I think myself strong—but who can fathom her own weakness. Why, I have actually been talking servants to you all the time. Think how continuous is the temptation, how subtle. ”

“ All the blood had left Lillie's cheek—she trembled and caught hold of Lord Silverdale's arm.
"I shan't have you now, Philip," the creaking tones of the old lady continued after a pause. "The rules will not allow it, will they, Miss Dulcimer? It is not enough that I am young and beautiful, I must reject somebody—and I have nobody else to reject but you, Philip. You are the only man I have ever loved. Oh my Philip! My poor Philip!"
She began to wring her hands. Lillie pressed closer to Lord Silverdale and her grasp on his arm tightened. ”

“ Will you tell me, Miss Jack, what marriage has to offer to a woman like me?"
"Nothing," replied Miss Jack.
"Aha! You admit it!" cried Miss Nimrod triumphantly. "Why should I embrace a profession to which I feel no call? Marriage has practically nothing to offer any independent woman except a trousseau, wedding presents, and the jealousy of her female friends. But what are these weighed against the cramping of her individuality? Perhaps even children come to fetter her life still more and she has daughters who grow up to be younger than herself. ”

“ It is a breach of etiquette towards the other sex. A woman must do credit to the man who stakes his reputation for good taste by being seen in her society. She must achieve beauty for his sake, and should no more leave her boudoir without it than if she were an actress leaving her dressing-room."
"That the man expects the woman to make his friends envy him is true," answered Lillie, "and I have myself expressed this in yonder epigram, It is man who is vain of woman's dress. But were we created merely to gratify man's vanity?" ”

“ She merely fumes," said Wee Winnie, laughing as if she had made a joke. "She was raving against the infidelity of men. Poor Guy! How his ears must have tingled. He has sent her a long explanation, but she laughs it to scorn. I persuaded her to let you see it—it is so quaint."
"Have you it with you?" asked Lillie eagerly. Her appetite for tales of real life was growing by what it fed upon.
"Yes—here is his letter, several quires long. But before you can understand it, you must know how the breach came about."
"Lord Silverdale, pass Miss Nimrod the chocolate creams. ”

“ To me style is everything. Style alone is literature, whether it be the man or not."
"Oh, then you are of the school of Addiper?"
"Ah, have you heard of that? I am. I admire Addiper and agree with him. Form is everything—literature is only a matter of form. And a book is only a form of matter."
"I see," she said, smiling. "But I adore Addiper myself, though I regret the future seems likely to be his. I have read all he has written. Every line is so lucid. The form is exquisite. But as for the matter——!"
"No matter!" summed up John Beveridge, laughing heartily. ”

“ Why should he not become "the English Shakespeare?" True, it was a heavy burden to sustain, but what will a man not dare or suffer for the woman he loves? Moreover, was he not responsible for Fladpick's being, and thus for all the evil done by his Frankenstein? He had employed Fladpick for his own amusement and the Employers' Liability Act was heavy upon him. The path of abnegation, of duty, was clear. He saw it and he went for it then and there—went, like a brave young Englishman, to meet his marriage. ”

“ If I see a young gentleman to the train, I always get his ticket for him and help him into the carriage. If I convey him to a ball, I bring him a button-hole, compliment him upon his costume and say soft nothings about his moustache, while if I go to a dance alone I stroll in about one in the morning, survey mankind through my eyeglass, loll a few minutes in the doorway, then go downstairs to interview the supper, and having sated myself with chicken, champagne and trifle return to my club. ”

“ The more I think of marriage the less I think of it. I have not kept my eyes open for nothing. I am sure it wouldn't suit me. Husbands are anything but the creatures a young girl's romantic fancy pictures. They have a way of disarranging the most careful toilettes. They ruffle your hair and your temper. They disorder the furniture—and put their feet on the mantelpiece. They scratch the fenders, read books and stretch themselves on the most valuable sofas. If they help in the household they only make more work. The trail of tobacco is over all you prize. ”

“ I did not know that I loved now—for that discover only came later when I found myself wandering nightly to the other side of the parallelogram, listening for the Voice. Rarely, very rarely, was my pilgrimage rewarded, but twice or thrice a week the Square became an enchanted garden, full of roses whose petals were music. Round that baritone Voice I had built up an ideal man—tall and straight-limbed and stalwart, fair-haired and blue-eyed and noble-featured, like the hero of a Northern Saga. His soul was vast as the sea, shaken with the storms of passion, dimpled with smiles of tenderness. ”

“ I am Addiper, the writer you admire so much, the man with whose school, you were pleased to say, the future lies."
"Addiper!" she said again. "Impossible! why you said you did not get your living by art of any kind."
"Of course I don't!" he said. "Books like mine—all style, no sentiment, morals or theology—never pay. Fortunately I am able to publish them at my own expense. I write only for writers. That is why you like me. Successful writers are those who write for readers, just as popular painters are those who paint for spectators." ”

“ It is not because it would be necessary to have a husband and a home of one's own, that I object to marriage, but because it would be impossible to do without servants. While a girl lives at home, she can cultivate her soul while her mother attends to the ménage. But after marriage, the higher life is impossible. You must have servants. You cannot do your own dirty work—not merely because it is dirty, but because it is the thief of time. You can hardly get literature, music, and religion adequately into your life even with the whole day at your disposal ”

“ I am going to marry Lord Silverdale."
"Bless ye, my children!" said the millionaire. "You are a woman, Lillie, and it is a woman's privilege to change her mind. But I am a man and have no such privilege. I must marry all the same."
"But Miss Nimrod has changed her mind, too," said Lillie, quite losing her temper. "And she is not a woman." ”

“ Myself I see no difference between a fainting fit and death except that one attack of the latter is fatal."
"As to that," answered Lillie. "I consider we die every night and dream we are alive. To fall asleep is to die painlessly. It is, perhaps, a pity we are resurrected to tea and toast and toilette. However, I am glad you did not really die. I feared I was in for a tale of re-incarnation or spooks or hypnotism or telepathy or astral bodies. One hears so many marvellous stories, now that we have left off believing in miracles. Really, man's credulity is the perpetual miracle." ”

“ I claim the right of every woman to lead her own life in her own toilettes."
"And a pretty life you have led!"
"I have, indeed!" cried Miss Nimrod, goaded almost to oratory by Miss Jack's taunts. "Not the ugly, unlovely life of the average woman. I have exhausted all the sensations which are the common guerdon of youth and health and high spirits, and which have for the most part been selfishly monopolized by man. The splendid audacity of youth has burnt in my veins and fired me to burst my swaddling clothes and strike for the emancipation of my sex. ”

“ A Jewess will be an extremely valuable element of the Club, for her race exalts marriage even above happiness, and an old maid is even more despised than among us. The lovely Miss Radowski will be an eloquent protest against the prejudices of her people."
Lillie Dulcimer shook her head quietly. "The racial accident which makes her seem a desirable member to you, makes me regard her as impossible."
"How so?" cried Silverdale in amazement. "You surely are not going to degrade your Club by anti-Semitism."
"Heaven forefend! But a Jewess can never be a whole Old Maid." ”

“ There was always a whiff of fish—a blend of mackerel and crabs and mullet—striking up from the beach, but the salt in the air kept the odoriferous atoms fairly fresh. Everything in Trepolpen was delightfully archaic, and even the far-away suggestions of antiquity about the prevailing piscine flavor seemed in poetic keeping with the spirit of the primitive little spot.
In a village of one street it is impossible not to live in it, unless you are a coastguard, and then you don't live in the village. This was why John Beveridge was a neighbor of Ellaline's. ”

“ Suddenly he heard the pit-pat of light feet running down the hill, and the next moment two little white hands peeping out of white cuffs were gripping the net at the side of his own fleshy brown ones. For some thirty seconds he was content to divine the apparition from the hands. There was a flutter of sweet expectation about his heart, a stirring of the sense of romance.
The day was divine. The sky was a brooding blue; the sea was a rippling play of light on which the seine-boat danced lightly. One little brown sail was visible far out in the bay, the sea-gulls hovering about it. ”

“ Why should I give up my freedom and the comforts of my club and saddle myself with a husband who would want to monopolize my society and who would be jealous of my bachelor friends and want me to cut them, who would hanker to read my letters, who would watch my comings and goings, and open my parcels of cosmetics marked confectionery? ”

“ I know quite well I am not as other women. What is the use of paltering with one's consciousness!"
Still the same delicious candor shone in the gray eyes. John Beveridge, not at all grasping his dismissal, felt an unreasoning impulse to kiss them.
"Well, supposing I am a genius," he said instead. "Where's the harm?"
"No harm till you propose to yoke me with it! I never will marry a genius."
"Oh, don't be so absurd, Ellaline!" he said. "You've been reading the foolish nonsense about the geniuses necessarily making bad husbands. ”

“ Did Robinson, though the edition was sold out the day after? Did I, though you had just called me a modern Buddhist with the soul of an ancient Greek and the radiant fragrance of a Cingalese tea-planter? I know these phrases take the public and I try to be patient."
"Owen is right," Harry Robinson put in emphatically. "When you said I was a cross between a Scandinavian skald and a Dutch painter, I bore my cross in silence." ”