Are the shades of Pemberley to be thus polluted?

[BeaAndBen]

I’ve been enjoying P&P yet again, and reached the absolute delight of Chapter 56.

Lady Catherine’s visit to Longbourn is something I look forward to each time. She’s so utterly ghastly, and Elizabeth so resolute and devastating in her replies, that I grin through the entire section.

Are there bits of favourite books that particularly stand out to people?

Miss Pettigrew getting her makeover -“England expects….” makes me laugh every time - or maybe Anne Elliot reading Captain Wentworth’s letter?
The concept of Angels as explained to Moist von Lipwig?

Yes to most of your examples!

I love the bit in The Farthest Shore when Ged says "I knew him first". The play performances in Autumn Term and End of Term. When Fanny realises she is going back to Mansfield Park and she is so happy despite what causes her return.

Oh and description of Valency moving to the island after she and Barney marry.

The whole section in The Goldfinch where Theo and Boris are holed up in Vegas, drinking and smoking and eating crap.

The bit towards the start of The Secret History when Richard is falling in love with all the group and Bunny takes him to lunch and he gets to see Francis's house.

All the scenes in the advertising agency in Murder Must Advertise.

The scene in The Great Gatsby where Daisy comes over to meet Gatsby again.

The scene in Brideshead Revisited where Cordelia tells Charles what has happened to Sebastian and what his future will be like.

The scene in the Jeeves and Wooster stories where Bertie overhears Jeeves describe him as “mentally negligible”.😆

The scene in Bleak House where Joe, the little ragged orphan, sweeps the grave of a dead drug addict because he was so nice to him and because it’s all Joe can do (I am literally welling up just describing that scene - Dickens, you old magician, no one on earth makes me bawl like you do).

The scene in Jude the Obscure where Jude feels sorry for the birds and so lets them eat the corn and is beaten by the farmer for doing so.

The scene in D H Lawrence’s Rainbow where the farmer drowns. It’s grim, but it’s an astonishing bit of writing.

The opening to Wilde’s Dorian Gray, where Lord Henry and the painter discuss art.

The scene in Edward St Aubyn’s Melrose books where Patrick dines alone in New York and is having an imaginary conversation with his nanny.

The scene in Aldous Huxley’s Chrome Yellow where Mr Scogan rips Dennis’s novel to pieces.

Also the chapter in East of Eden where he tells the story of Cathy's early life and describes how beautiful she is, yet also a monster.

Not a speech but mum looked forward to Mr Darcy's cold dip in the lake (on DVD) and every time she fell asleep before it came about. Eventually she saw it and was happy!!!

Lots of quotes I cannot remember now but I loved the Georgette Heyer book The Unknown Ajax. The language was very descriptive especially the other characters describing one man who was a bit of a dandy (and clearly could not pull it off!).

I have come late to historical romances but really like them now (gone soft in old age!!!),

"We Woosters do not lightly forget. At least, we do—some things—appointments, and people’s birthdays, and letters to post, and all that—but not an absolute bally insult like the above. I brooded like the dickens".

“Our Claud,” the failed Pink of the Ton with his opera cloak as daywear. And Hugo getting broader Yorkshire the more they look down on him. Vincent’s outrage when he finds out Hugo went to Harrow.

It’s a great one, I re read it just the other week.

For another catastrophic attempt at dandyism from Heyer, can I suggest Sylvester? Sir Nugent, richest man in Britain, makes Claud look positively restrained.

I will spare you my rant about Andrew Davies ruining Darcy by throwing him in the lake. I assure you it is lengthy and emphatic.

I love Newland Archer's impulsive dash to Boston to see Ellen Olenska in The Age of Innocence, and their boat trip with the school teachers when they both declare themselves and part, not knowing when or if they will see one another again. Also their later carriage ride from the New Jersey terminus.

Meaulnes' account of the costumed ball at the mysterious chateau in Le Grand Meaulnes

As someone else said, all the advertising agency scenes in Murder Must Advertise -- I thought the actual murder plot was a mildly irritating distraction from banter and inventing slogans!

the Donwell Abbey strawberry picking party and the Box Hill trip in Emma

Lucy Snowe's burial of the letters in Villette

'Calypso' in Ulysses

The unintentional houseparty in Iris Murdoch's The Sea, the Sea

The averted suttee in The Far Pavilions

I thought the actual murder plot [in MMA] was a mildly irritating distraction from banter and inventing slogans!

Oh gosh yes. Those office scenes are so hilarious and so so true. The nonsense with LPW dressed up as a harlequin and the whole dope thing is not great, but worth it for the scene where LPW demos googlies with a tin of Tomboy toffee, or when he comes up with Whiffling or the scene where one of the typists puts on a big jumper in a huff, or the opening scene when they are organising the sweep and then try to hide it from the boss.

Just shows you should write what you know (ofc Sayers worked in such an agency for many years). Also still rings true in so many offices. The argument over the tea and who has a cake and who just wants a biscuit :)

The bit that jumped into my mind was in The Beautiful and Damned when Gloria has a tantrum over her salad. Also when Anthony develops a fear of ghosts.

The closing line from Joyce's The Dead - utterly beautiful....

A few light taps upon the pane made him turn to the window. It had begun to snow again. He watched sleepily the flakes, silver and dark, falling obliquely against the lamplight. The time had come for him to set out on his journey westward. Yes, the newspapers were right: snow was general all over Ireland. It was falling on every part of the dark central plain, on the treeless hills, on the Bog of Allen and, farther westward, softly falling into the dark mutinous Shannon waves. It was falling, too, upon every part of the lonely churchyard on the hill where Michael Furey lay buried. It lay thickly drifted on the crooked crosses and headstones, on the spears of the little gate, on the barren thorns. His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.

It's a kids' book but I do love the scene in the Shrieking Shack in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban where you realise there's a bigger story arc across the series. I reread that scene so many times before book 4 was published.

Yes, I think all those Harlequin scenes used to make me roll my eyes because it's one of those places where 'Peter as monocled sleuth who can't pick out his own socks without Bunter' clashes with the 'Peter as brilliant athlete doing daring feats of strength and agility', which just all sounds deeply unlikely.

I mean, since when is Peter some kind of impressive athlete? He's a very good amateur cricketer and presumably rides well, but is there any indication anywhere else that he's unusually athletic, or has a 'lovely body' (according to Diane de Momerie)? Even Harriet, who is in love with him, thinks dispassionately that he 'strips better than I expected' in Have his Carcase, when he's less skinny than she expects in his swimming costume.😀

Back to Whiffling, I say.

Ahhhh @GlacialLook another LPW fan!! so many people have literally never heard of the books!

Tbf he has clearly kept his slim physique despite all the gorgeous food he eats. But yes, his effortless athleticism when he swings himself up onto the fountain is a bit overdone. He's about 42 fgs!

I do love the cricket match in MMA – I have seen it referred to as "well you can miss that bit out as all it shows is that Tallboy has great aim" but I love to read about Brotherhood’s demon spinner and Wedderburn's desperate bid to get the runs needed.

(I am a MASSIVE rereader which my bookclub tells me off for, and frankly LPW is totally my go-to)

lovely thread.

There are some great scenes in the Mapp and Lucia books. I love the scene where Lucia is widowed so can't perform in the Elizabeth 1 pageant but eventually is offered the part of Raleigh's Wife and Georgie says "Raleigh's wife! You might as well have offered her "confused noise without""

I also love the scene in The Last Chronicle of Barset where Mrs Proudie interferes in Bishop Proudie's interview with Mr. Crawley and Mr. Crawley says "Peace woman!" and the Bishop starts at hearing the wife of his bosom thus addressed. I love all of that book but the scene where Archdeacon Grantley sets off to warn off Miss Crawley from his son (against the advice of his wife) and ends up half in love with her and assuring her she would be his daughter if things went well and has to return sheepishly to his wife.

I think the opening of Barchester Towers where Archdeacon Grantley is at his father's deathbed, knowing the government is about to fall and that if his father lingers, the bishopric will be gone from him, is masterfully written.

My favourite Woodhouse line is when wooster says something like that time in my life when aunt called to aunt like mastodons across a primaeval swamp.

This part from Pride and Prejudice always makes me laugh.

”I should like balls infinitely better,' she replied, 'if they were carried on in a different manner; but there is something insufferably tedious in the usual process of such a meeting. It would surely be much more rational if conversation instead of dancing were made the order of the day.”

”Much more rational, my dear Caroline, I dare say, but it would not be near so much like a ball.”

I am ALL in favour of rereading.

My only interest in insufferable LPW is that Harriet loves him, and that DLS herself was clearly enamoured of him and considered him a type of ideal man. Though I'm also interested in how he morphs from Bertie Wooster-ish posh twit about town into a masterful athlete, lover, historian, linguist, diplomat, natural squire and leader of men, shellshock victim etc etc over the course of all the novels he appears in... [ETA And BELLRINGER, with no practice!)

I confess to never having understood the rules of cricket, which means I read that section, and the culminating cricket match in Antonia Forest's brilliant End of Term, with respectful puzzlement. Could a 'late cut' (whatever that is) really be so 'exceedingly characteristic' that an old man has remembered it for decades and recognises it on someone with a different name?

I've thought of another bit. It's quite grim, but so emotional. It's from La Bete Humaine by Emile Zola. Flore has done something terrible and so she marches to her death:

"And once in the tunnel, on she walked, and walked, always forward. But this was not like the previous week, she was no longer afraid of turning round and forgetting which direction she was going in. Her head wasn't pounding with tunnel madness, that sudden moment of panic when everything-objects, time, space-becomes a blur amidst the thundering echoes and crushing sides of the vault. What did she care! She wasn't thinking rationally, she wasn't even thinking, she simply had this one fixed resolve: to walk, to walk straight ahead, for as long as no train came, and then still to walk, straight towards its headlamp, as soon as she saw it blazing through the darkness.

"Flore was nevertheless surprised, for she felt as though she had been walking along like this for hours. How distant it was, this death which she desired! She despaired for a moment at the idea that it might not come to her, that she might go on and on for miles and never meet it face to face. Her feet were growing tired. Would she have to sit down, to stretch out across the rails and wait for it? But that seemed unworthy; her instincts as a warrior virgin told her that she must keep on walking right to the end, that she must die standing. And when, far away in the distance, she saw the headlamp of the express, like a tiny lone star twinkling in an inky sky, her energy returned, pushing her forward once more. The train had not yet entered the tunnel, no sound heralded its approach; there was just this light, so bright and cheerful, which was growing and growing. Drawing herself up to her full height, like a lithe statue, and swinging along on her strong legs, she now lengthened her stride, but still without running, as though she were going to meet a friend and wanted to spare her some part of the journey. But the train had just entered the tunnel, and the dreadful roar was coming closer and closer, making the ground shake with a stormy blast of air; while the star had become an enormous eye, getting bigger and bigger, as though bursting from a socket of darkness. Then, in response to some mysterious prompting, perhaps in order to be quite alone at the moment of death, she emptied her pockets, without pausing in her stubborn, heroic stride, and deposited a whole collection of articles beside the track, a handkerchief, keys, some string, two knives; she even removed the scarf round her neck, and left her bodice unbuttoned, half hanging off her shoulders. The eye was turning into a brazier, into the mouth of a furnace spewing fire, and the panting breath of the monster was coming closer, already warm and moist, amidst a rumble of thunder that became more and more deafening. And on she strode, straight towards this furnace, so that the engine should not miss her, like a bewitched moth drawn to a flame. And in the horrendous impact of collision, at the moment of embrace, she drew herself up once more as though the fighter in her had wanted, in one last effort of resistance, to seize the colossus in her arms and hurl it to the ground. Her head had collided directly with the lamp, which went out."

excellent @GlacialLook

Yes he does develop doesn't he - he's a bit of a foolish fop in Whose Body but by the end of Gaudy Night he is all one could wish for.

A late cut is a specific way of hitting the ball (cutting it away to deceive the fielders) (LPW is batsman rather than bowler or fielder) but I imagine that a real cricket fan would be able to recall is 20 years later. LPW was after all the Great Flim in his day.

DH and I first bonded over our love of Sayers and Wodehouse, but for many years (actually decades) he was totally oblivious to the delights of Georgette Heyer, despite all my cherished copies being freely available. (The green ones!!).

Of course my DDs were brung up proper so when DH was bored one evening, babysitting a grandchild, all he could find to read was Devil's Cub. He brought it back home to finish😀

Ah, the slippery slope....I gave him a copy of Cotillion to read and he was doomed.

Sherlock Holmes:

"He is one of those men who have overshot their true generation... so far down Queer Street that he may never find his way back again.".

I live all the references to queer, hi h of course had a different meaning then. Stephen Fry who narrated the audiobook must have found it delicious reading!