Noel Coward

“ Absinthe was her one consolation, together with a miniature of Louis in full regalia. Who is this haggard wretch with still the vestiges of her wondrous beauty discernible in her perfectly moulded features?—not La Belle Bibi! Oh, Fate—Destiny—how cruel are you who guided her straying feet through the mazes of life! Why could she not have died at her zenith—when her portrait was painted? ”

“ WHY is it that to some are vouchsafed such supreme gifts while other have perforce to drag out their lives in the hideous monotony of offices and banks and the like?
Jake D'Annunzio Spout—even he, Jake the glorious—Spout the magnificent—commenced his career behind the counter of a delicatessen on Ninth Avenue—and now—his name and glory have waved across America like a pennon of victory. ”

“ The unknown artist has caught the fleeting look of ineffable sadness, as though she entertained some inward premonition of her destiny and her spirit was rebelling dumbly against what was inevitable.
Esher in those days was but a tiny hamlet—a few houses clustered here, and a few more clustered there. London, then a graceful city set upon a hill, could be seen on a clear day from the northernmost point of Esher. On anything but a clear day it was, of course, impossible to see it at all. Esher is now, and always has been, remarkable for its foliage. ”

“ The wheel of circumstance had turned once more—and a few days later Julie changed her appartements for some on a higher landing.
What vice! What intrigue! What corruption! Versailles seemed but a vast conservatory sheltering the vile soil from which sprang the lilies of France—La Belle France, as Edgar Sheepmeadow so eloquently puts it. Did any single bloom escape the blight of ineffable depravity? No—not one! Occasionally some fresh young thing would appear at Court—appealing and innocent. ”

“ According to Sophie's diary, written by her every day with unfailing regularity for thirty-five years, she always just missed seeing Dick Turpin. This was apparently a source of great grief to her; often she would pause by the roadside and weep gently at the thought of him. Poor Sophie! One was to ride along that very road who was destined to mean much more to her than bold Dick Turpin. But we anticipate.
It was perhaps early autumn that saw Esher at its best—how brown everything was, and yet, in some cases, how yellow! ”

“ She had nothing—nothing but her beauty. What a woman's beauty can do for herself and her country is amply portrayed in the kaleidoscopic pageant of Anna Podd's life. The only existing picture of her (here reproduced) was discovered in Moscow after Ivan Buminoff's well-remembered siege, lasting seventeen years. Poor Anna! Destiny seemed ruthlessly determined to lead her so far and no further. A Tsar loved her, which is more than falls to the lot of some women, yet fate's unrelenting finger was forever placed upon the pulse of her career. ”

“ From the portrait by Baloona (early Spanish)
SPAIN has ever been the home of romance and beauty and fiery passion, but never in its whole history has it bred such a tremulously beautiful love story as that of Donna Isabella Angelica y Bananas. A romance of two passionate hearts in such a vivid setting cannot but fail to make the eye kindle and the pulses throb. Compared to it, Lancelot and Elaine become cardboard puppets, Dante and Beatrice figures of clay utterly devoid of life, while Paolo and Francesca appear merely idiotic. ”

“ Genius always has that to contend with. Every one has failings. Gretchen Lieberwurst zu Schweinen-Kalber made of Juliet a woman—a pulsating, human woman, with failings like the rest of us, the chief of which happened to be adenoids. [15]
To trace this soul-stirring actress to her obscure birth has indeed been a labour—but withal, a labour of love! For who could help experiencing exquisite joy at unearthing trinkets and miniatures and broken memories of such a radiant being? ”

“ CONTEMPORARY history tell us little of Sophie, later chronicles tell us still less, while the present-day historians know nothing whatever about her. It is only owing to concentrated research and indomitable patience that we have succeeded in unearthing a few facts which will serve to distinguish her from that noble band of unknown heroines who have lived, paid the price, and died, unnoted and unsung!
She was born at Esher. The name of her parents it has been impossible to discover, and as to what part of Esher she first inhabited we are also hopelessly undecided. ”

“ It is my desire to convey to the reader the real E. Maxwell Snurge shorn of tawdry trappings of party politics and the illusion and glamour of public idolatry—a man—just a man—but what a man!
To dwell on the widely circulated story of his life would be needless, and to follow his political career, merely futile. What is there left? you ask. And I answer you with extreme firmness, there is one aspect of E. Maxwell Snurge which has never been seriously analysed—his soul! ”

“ You all know of the massing of James' troops at Carlisle, and later at Glasgow, and later still at Aberdeen. Poor Prince Charlie—so sonsie and braw, a fugitive in his own land—he fled to Loch Morich, followed by Maggie McWhistle in her plaidie, carrying some haggis and baps to comfort him in his exile. History is rather hazy as to exactly what happened; but anyhow, Maggie, with the tattered banner of her country fast unfurling in her heart, decided to save her hero for the last time ”

“ The ordinary everyday novelist would at once have become bombastic and conceited at being the cause of such a universal upheaval—not so Spout. He retired quite quietly to his cosy kitchenette apartment in Harlem and wrote that charming and winsome essay in sentiment "Mollie's Holiday"—which in due course he followed with his celebrated treatise on reincarnation "A Drop of Blood" and "To Horse, to Horse" a stirring romance of the Civil War.
I will not seek with convincing falsehoods and unscrupulous sophistry to hide the fact that Jake D'Annunzio Spout was never quite a gentleman. ”

“ There for many years she lived in almost complete seclusion, writing her books which were the inspired outpourings of a tortured soul: "Lilith: the Story of a Woman"; "The Hopeless Quest," an allegorical tale of the St. Malo sand-dunes, then unexplored; and "The Pig-Sty," a biting satire on life at Court.
Then the storm-cloud of the revolution broke athwart the length and breadth of fair France, relentless, and indomitable and irredeemable. Julie was arrested while blackberrying in a Dolly Varden hat. With a brave smile, Ben-Hepple tells us, she flung the berries away. "I am ready!" ”

“ Poor woman, no wonder the grave claimed her so soon, for like the bass—like Democracy, her vitality was exhausted by the destructive and constructive force of Snurge. Only unlike the bass she couldn't swim well, and unlike Democracy she had the man to contend with as well as the politician. ”

“ Then came Maggie's well-known answer, also in Scotch.
"Know you not that this is a manse?"
History has it that the man fell back as though struck, and one by one, awed by the still purity of the white-faced girl, the legions departed into the night whence they had come. Thus Maggie McWhistle proved herself the saviour of Bonnie Prince Charlie for the first time.
There were many occasions after that in which she was able to prove herself a heroine for his sake. She would conceal him up the chimney or in the oven at the slightest provocation. ”

“ Half an hour later Anna was flung into a dungeon, preceding her long and tiring journey to Siberia."
Thus Klick describes for us the pulsating horror of perhaps one of the most pitiful nights in Russian history.
In those days the journey to Siberia was infinitely more wearisome than it is now. Poor Anna! She was conveyed so far in a litter, and so far in a sleigh, and when the prancing dogs grew tired she had perforce to walk. Heaven indeed have pity on those unfortunate women from whom the eye of an Emperor has been removed. ”

“ It was here that the enraged Pedro caught up with them and killed Enrique with a look. Isabella Angelica was then taken against her will to join the Court. At last at Madrid. For two years, Dr. Polata tells us, her heart was numb with anguish; then gradually the life at Court, still at Madrid, began to take effect on her malleable character. She became intensely vicious: much of the sweetness portrayed in Enrique's portrait vanished, leaving her expression cross and occasionally even sullen. All the world knows of her meeting with the Infanta, so we will not dwell upon it. ”

“ Thus it was that, knowing no hand of motherly authority, the child perforce ran wild throughout her dazzling adolescence.
The trees were her playmates, the twittering of the birds her music—all the wild things of the forest loved her, specially dogs and children. She knew every woodcutter for miles round by his Christian name. "Why, here's Madcap Moll!" they would say, as the beautiful girl came galloping athwart her mustang, untamed and headstrong as she herself. ”

“ Poor Maggie—perchance she is finding in heaven the peaceful rest which was so lacking in her life on earth. For legend hath it that she never had two consecutive nights' sleep for fifteen years, so busy was she saving Bonnie Prince Charlie. ”

“ It says much for Isabella Angelica's charm and personality that the populace, in spite of their knowledge of her deeds, one and all adored her—to the end of her life the unstinting love and adulation of all who came in contact with her was hers irretrievably. ”

“ The boy Rupert, then aged two years and a fortnight, exercised a fiercely dominant influence upon the ground charts, plans, etc., for the new palatial residence which was soon to rear its mighty pillars and porticos not so very far from the ivy-grown cottage which in the past had on several occasions sheltered the wistful personality of Harriet Beecher Stowe.
The inherent passion for beauty thus crystallized in the mellowing virility of the boy's finely wrought temperament went far toward satisfying his deep-rooted and well-nigh insatiable yearning for city splendour. ”

“ From the world-famous portrait by Sir Oswald Cronk, Bart.
NOBODY who knew George I. could help loving him—he possessed that peculiar charm of manner which had the effect of subjugating all who came near him into immediate slavery. Madcap Moll—his true love, his one love (England still resounds with her gay laugh) —adored him with such devotion as falls to the lot of few men, be they kings or beggars.
They met first in the New Forest, where Norman Bramp informs us, in his celebrated hunting memoirs "Up and Away," the radiant Juniper spent her wild, unfettered childhood. ”

“ Many of the greatest men in the world have bitten their nails, and if we are to believe contemporary biographers, even the gloriously verbose Carlyle was known to expectorate frequently and with the utmost abandon while writing his world-famed fantasy "The French Revolution."
Jake Spout was perhaps twenty-six when he met H. Mackenzie Kump the philanthropic millionaire whose intimate study "Spout, as I Knew Him" met with such a brilliant success last year. Kump it was who cajoled and eventually almost by force persuaded Jake to make a tour of the world. ”

“ Pipper's imaginative description ends too abruptly to be really satisfactory; but one fact about the life of Jabez Puffwater will remain emblazoned on America's history for time immemorial—that if he had only possessed the rhetoric of a Proon—the presence of a Hooter—the education of a Floop—the racial understanding of a Bogtoe and the mentality of a Snurge—he would not only have proved himself invaluable to the home constituency of Oggsville, Ken. but have been an entirely different man altogether. ”

“ As another means of locomotion the Elevated possesses a rugged charm which is all its own, the serene pleasure of gazing into frowsy bedroom windows at elderly coloured ladies in bust bodices and flannel petticoats, being only equalled by the sudden thrill you experience when the two front carriages hurtle down into the street in flames. ”