Blame it or praise it, there is no denying the wild horse in us. To gallop intemperately; fall on the sand tired out; to feel the earth spin; to have - positively - a rush of friendship for stones and grasses, as if humanity were over, and as for men and women, let them go hang - there is no getting over the fact that this desire seizes up pretty often.
Virginia Woolf - 'Jacob's Room'
Quotes
"Nobody sees any one as he is...they see a whole—they see all sorts of things—they see themselves...It is no use trying to sum people up. One must follow hints, not exactly what is said, nor yet entirely what is done"
"...and who shall deny that this blankness of mind, when combined with profusion, mother wit, old wives' tales, haphazard ways, moments of astonishing daring, humour, and sentimentality—who shall deny that in these respects every woman is nicer than any man?"
"Every inch was rained upon. Every blade of grass was bent by rain. Eyelids would have been fastened down by rain"
"The child's bucket was half-full of rainwater; and the opal-shelled crab slowly circled round the bottom, trying with its weakly legs to climb the steep side; trying again and falling back, and trying again and again"
"Tulips burnt in the sun. Numbers of sponge-bag trousers were stretched in rows. Purple bonnets fringed soft, pink, querulous faces on pillows in bath chairs."
"...a profound, impartial, and absolutely just opinion of our fellow-creatures is utterly unknown. Either we are men, or we are women. Either we are young, or growing old. In any case life is but a procession of shadows, and God knows why it is that we embrace them so eagerly, and see them depart with such anguish, being shadows."
"No one can count on [beauty] or seize it or have it wrapped in paper"
"perhaps it is beauty alone that is immortal"
"Every face, every shop, bedroom window, public-house, and dark square is a picture feverishly turned—in search of what? It is the same with books. What do we seek through millions of pages?
(after Jacob experiences a shock) "...What people go through...[b]ut nothing could save him. These events are features of our landscape. A foreigner coming to London could scarcely miss seeing St. Paul's...
"When a child begins to read history one marvels, sorrowfully, to hear him spell out in his new voice the ancient words."
"The worn voice of clocks repeated the fact of the hour all night long"
(after extended descriptions) "the observer is choked with observations. Only to prevent us from being submerged by chaos, nature and society between them have arranged a system of classification which is simplicity itself; stalls, boxes, amphitheatre; galley. The moulds are filled nightly. There is no need to distinguish details. But the difficulty remains—one has to choose...[n]ever was there a harsher necessity! or one which entails greater pain, more certain disaster; for wherever I seat myself, I die in exile... (unable to narrate from other perspectives)
"Each had his own business to think of. Each had his past shut in him like the leaves of a book known to him by heart; and his friends could only read the title...and the passengers going the opposite way could read nothing at all—save 'a man with a red moustache,' 'a young man in grey smoking a pipe.'
(describing the moors) "quiet at midday, except when the hunt scatters across it; quiet in the afternoon, save for the drifting sheep; at night hte moor is perfectly quiet"
"It is not a country in which one walks after tea. For one thing there is no grass...Italy is all fierceness, bareness, exposure, and black priests shuffling along the roads"
"This gloom, this surrender to the dark waters which lap us about, is a modern invention"
"the Greek myth...everything appropriate to manly beauty...caring for the body as much as for the face. And the Greeks could paint fruit so that birds pecked at it...however...we have been brought up in an illusion
Vocab/Notes
dandy: a man who dressed fashionably & cared a lot about his appearance
perambulator = BrE for "baby carriage"
hoarding = BrE for "billboard"
sponge bag trousers: pants named for their lined fabric which resembled toiletry bags at the time (toiletry bags = "sponge" bags, as travellers would use natural sponges to freshen up
serge = a type of fabric with diagonal lines
furze/gorse = "toxo" in Galician
fulvous = reddish yellow
teasel = a plant that resembles a thistle
verdigris: a blue-green layer that forms on copper, brass, & bronze
butterflies: Painted Lady, Peacock, White Admiral, Comma
stout: fat, solid-looking, esp. around the waist
burnished: smooth/shiny from having been polished
A.B.C. shop = a bakery-turned-tea-shop chain which was the first big chain store
insoluble = insolvable
a finger bowl = used to rinse one's fingers after having eaten finger food at a formal meal, sometimes with a flower in it
to wire a flower: done to support/control a flower's stem for floral arrangements
an ice = an ice-cream, esp. from a shop
Esq. = Esquire; a title added after a man's name on envelopes & official documents
akimbo: arms/legs stretched out fully
Lucretius: Roman poet/philosopher
William Wycherly: English playwright who wrote plays deemed by some at the time as "lewd" and too sexual/explicit
gate-leg table: a type of table which has a fixed section which can extend the tabletop or be folded down to hang vertically when not in use
billycock hat = Bowler hat
pierrot = Italian stock character who sometimes wears a white conical hat with pom poms
crumpet: a small, round type of bread with holes in one side that is eaten hot with butter
Swan & Edgar: a department store at Piccadilly Circus until 1982
flyblown: covered w/ the marks of flies/their eggs
Henry Fielding: English writer of Tom Jones (a comic novel said to be one of the first "novels" in England; published in 1749)
Jean Simépn Chardin: French painter famous for his still lifes
expostulate: to disagree
The Globe: London newspaper (1803-1921); had "turnovers" (articles that extended beyond one page and you'd have to cut the joined page to continue reading it
ordure: poop
Britannia: a helmeted woman with a shield and trident who is a symbol of Britain
Elgin Marbles: Greek sculptures from the Parthenon and Acropolis of Athens, essentially stolen from Greece
Phaedrus: a work by Plato which is a dialogue between Socrates & Phaedrus (an aristocrat associate of Socrates)
Horatio Nelson: British naval admiral, a hero in Britain, buried in St. Paul's Cathedral
pollard: to prune a tree at the top so that it grows a series of branches; common in European cities for space reasons
Richard Walpole: a "first Prime Minister" of sorts
Arthur Wellesley (Duke of Wellington), had a hooked nose
hothouse: a place where there's a lot of a particular activity
doff: to remove one's hat out of respect
Tristan: Cornish knight/Iseult or Isolde: Irish princess
Carlyle: Scottish essayist
mezzotint: monochrome printmaking process
a sovereign: a British gold coin (1817-1914); worth 1 pound
Catallus: poet from the Roman Republic
Julian the Apostate: non-Christian Roman Emperor
pilchard: a small sea fish
Land's End: a landmark, most SW point of England; granite cliffs
George Finlay: Scottish historian
verger: a Church official who keeps the inside of a church clean and orderly
Herbert Henry Asquith: Prime Minister of the UK from 1908-1916
Edward Gibbon: British essayist; wrote The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
Xenophon: Greek philosopher & military leader
cadge: to (try to) get sth from sb else without paying for it
voluble: speaking a lot, with confidence and enthusiasm
Baedeker: travel guides (pioneers in the genre)
Piraeus = port city within the Athens Urban Area
chintz: cotton cloth, usually with a pattern of flowers
bumpkin: an awkward/stupid person from the countryside
fain: willingly; happily
credulous: gullible
Edward Grey: British Foreign Secretary; convinced the Liberal Party that Britain had to join WWI to defend France
continent: able to control one's sexual desires
Whitehall: street in London where the UK government has many important buildings
quiescence: being temporarily quiet & inactive
dyspepsia: indigestion
Gaiety Theater: former theater popular for its musical comedies
