Admiration

Passages

Every passage tagged with this emotion in the Vela corpus. Search the body text, narrow by source or register, click through to a book’s profile to see how the passage sits with the rest of the work.

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• From My Life and Loves, Vol. 1 (of 4) (1922)

  “Aye, aye!” was all he said; but he read the half dozen sentences carefully, here and there correcting a word. I thanked him and said Professor Smith, an Editor of the “Press”, had sent me to get a word-for-word report of his speech for he purposed writing an article in the “Press” on Paine, whom he greatly admired. “Aye, aye!” ejaculated Whitman from time to time while his clear grey eyes absorbed all that I said. I went on to assure him that Smith had a profound admiration for him (Whitman), thought him the greatest American poet and regretted deeply that he was not well enough to come out that night and make his personal acquaintance. “I’m sorry, too”, said Whitman slowly, “for your friend Smith must have something large in him to be so interested in Paine and in me.” Perfectly simple and honest Walt Whitman appeared to me, even in his self-estimate—an authentic great man! I had nothing more to say, so hastened home to show Smith Whitman’s boyish signature and to give him a description of the man. The impression Whitman left on me was one of transparent simplicity and sincerity: not a mannerism in him, not a trace of affectation, a man simply sure of himself, most careful in speech; but careless of appearances and curiously, significantly free of all afterthoughts or regrets: a new type of personality which, strangely enough, has grown upon me more and more with the passing of the years and now seems to me to represent the very best in America, the large unruffled soul of that great people manifestly called and chosen to exert an increasingly important influence on the destinies of mankind. I would die happy if I could believe that America’s influence would be anything like as manful and true and clear-eyed as Whitman’s in guiding humanity; but alas!— It would be difficult to convey to European readers any just notion of the horror and disgust with which Walt Whitman was regarded at that time in the United States on account merely of the sex-poems in “Leaves of Grass.” The poems to which objection could be taken, don’t constitute five per cent of the book and my objection to them is that in any normal man, love and desire take up a much larger proportion of life than five per cent. Moreover the expression of passion is tame in the extreme: nothing in the “Leaves of Grass” can compare with half a dozen passages in the Song of Solomon: think of the following verse: “I sleep but my heart waketh: it is the voice of my beloved that knocketh, saying, Open to me, my sister, my love, my dove, my undefiled: for my head is filled with dew and my locks with the drops of the night.... “My beloved put his hand in by the hole of the door and my bowels were moved for him.”

• From My Life and Loves, Vol. 1 (of 4) (1922)

  He boarded with a pleasant Puritan family in whose house he had also got me a room and at once we resumed the old life. But now I kept constant watch on him and insisted on rigorous self-restraint, tying up his unruly organ every night carefully with thread, which was still more efficient (and painful) than the whipcord. I also put a lump of ice near his bed so that he could end at once any thrill of sex. But now he didn’t improve quickly: it was a month before I could find any of the old vigor in him; but soon afterwards the cough diminished and he began to be his bright self again. One of our first evenings I described to him the Bradlaugh lecture in much the same terms I have used in this narrative. Smith said: “Why don’t you write it? You ought to: the ‘Press’ would take it. You’ve given me an extraordinary, life-like portrait of a great man, blind, so to speak, in one eye, a sort of Cyclops. If he had been a Communist, how much greater he’d have been.” I ventured to disagree and we were soon at it, hammer and tongs. I wanted to see both principles realised in life, individualism and Socialism, the centrifugal as well as the centripetal force and was convinced that the problem was how to bring these opposites to a balance which would ensure an approximation to justice and make for the happiness of all. Smith on the other hand argued at first as an out-and-out Communist and follower of Marx; but he was too fair-minded to shut his eyes for long to the obvious. Soon he began congratulating me on my insight, declaring I had written a new chapter in economics. His conversion made me feel that I was at long last his equal as a thinker, in any field where his scholarship didn’t give him too great an advantage: I was no longer a pupil but an equal and his quick recognition of the fact increased, I believe, our mutual affection. Though infinitely better read he put me forward in every company with the rarest generosity, asserting that I had discovered new laws in sociology. For months we lived very happily together but his Hegelianism defied all my attacks: it corresponded too intimately with the profound idealism of his own character. As soon as I had written out the Bradlaugh story, Smith took me down to the “Press” office and introduced me to the chief editor, a Captain Forney: indeed the paper then was usually called “Forney’s Press” though already some spoke of it as “The Philadelphia Press.” Forney liked my portrait of Bradlaugh and engaged me as a reporter on the staff and occasional descriptive writer at fifty dollars a week, which enabled me to save all the money coming to me from Lawrence.

• From My Life and Loves, Vol. 1 (of 4) (1922)

  My breath was taken by his mere statement of the case and I thrilled to the passion in his voice and manner though even then I wasn’t wholly convinced. Whatever topic we touched on, he illumined; he knew everything, it seemed to me, German and French and could talk Latin and Classic Greek as fluently as English. I had never imagined such scholarship and when I recited some verses of Swinburne as expressing my creed he knew them too and his Pantheistic Hymn to Hertha, as well. And he wore his knowledge lightly as the mere garment of his shining spirit! And how handsome he was, like a Sun-god! I had never seen anyone who could at all compare with him. Day had dawned before we had done talking: then he told me he was the Professor of Greek in the State University and hoped I would come and study with him when the schools opened again in October. “To think of you as a cowboy” he said, “is impossible. Fancy a cowboy knowing books of Vergil and poems of Swinburne by heart; it’s absurd: you must give your brains a chance and study.” “I’ve too little money” I said, beginning to regret my loan to my brother. “I told you I am a Socialist,” Smith retorted smiling: “I have three or four thousand dollars in the Bank, take half of it and come to study” and his luminous eyes held me: then it was true, after all; my heart swelled, jubilant, there were noble souls in this world who took little thought of money and lived for better things than gold. “I won’t take your money”, I said, with tears burning: “every herring should hang by its own head in these democratic days; but if you think enough of me to offer such help, I’ll promise to come though I fear you’ll be disappointed when you find how little I know; how ignorant I am. I’ve not been in school since I was fourteen.” “Come, we’ll soon make up the time lost” he said. “By the bye where are you staying?” “The Eldridge House,” I replied. He brought me to the door and we parted; as I turned to go I saw the tall slight figure and the radiant eyes and I went away into a new world that was the old, feeling as if I were treading on air. Once more my eyes had been opened as on Overton Bridge to the beauties of nature; but now to the splendor of an unique spirit. What luck! I cried to myself to meet such a man! It really seemed to me as if some God were following me with divine gifts! And then the thought came: This man has chosen and called you very much as Jesus called his disciples:—Come, and I will make you fishers of men! Already I was dedicate heart and soul to the new Gospel.

• From My Life and Loves, Vol. 1 (of 4) (1922)

  I did not desire any such pedantic perfection. I make no pretension to scholarship of any sort and indeed learning of any kind leaves me indifferent unless it leads to a fuller understanding of beauty or that widening of the spirit by sympathy that is another name for wisdom. But what I wish to emphasize here is that in the first year with Smith I learned by heart dozens of choruses from the Greek dramatists and the whole of the “Apologia” and “Crito” of Plato, having guessed then and still believe that the “Crito” is a model short story, more important than any of even Plato’s speculations. Plato and Sophocles! it was worth while spending five years of hard labor to enter into their intimacy and make them sister-spirits of one’s soul. Didn’t Sophocles give me Antigone, the prototype of the new woman for all time, in her sacred rebellion against hindering laws and thwarting conventions, the eternal model of that dauntless assertion of love that is beyond and above sex, the very heart of the Divine! And the Socrates of Plato led me to that high place where man becomes God, having learned obedience to law and the cheerful acceptance of Death; but even there I needed Antigone, the twin sister of Bazaroff, at least as much, realising intuitively that my life-work, too, would be chiefly in revolt and that the punishment Socrates suffered and Antigone dared, would almost certainly be mine; for I was fated to meet worse opponents; after all, Creon was only stupid whereas Sir Thomas Horridge was malevolent to boot and Woodrow Wilson unspeakable! Again I am outrunning my story by half a century! But in what I have written of Sophocles and Plato the reader will divine, I hope, my intense love and admiration for Smith who led me, as Vergil led Dante, into the ideal world that surrounds our earth as with illimitable spaces of purple sky, wind-swept and star-sown! If I could tell what Smith’s daily companionship now did for me, I would hardly need to write this book; for like all I have written, some of the best of it belongs as much to him as to me. In his presence for the first year and a half, I was merely a sponge, absorbing now this truth, now that, hardly conscious of an original impulse. Yet all the time, too, as will be seen, I was advising him and helping him from my knowledge of life. Our relation was really rather like that of a small, practical husband with some wise and infinitely learned Aspasia! I want to say here in contempt of probability that in all our years of intimacy, living together for over three years side by side, I never found a fault in him of character or of sympathy, save the one that drew him to his death.

• From My Life and Loves, Vol. 1 (of 4) (1922)

  “Please go on,” I cried, “don’t be afraid, I can stand any criticism and profit by it—I hope.” “Your accent is a little English, isn’t it?” he said, “and that prejudices both judge and jury against you, especially the jury: if you had Barker’s accent, you’d be the best pleader in the State—” “I’ll get the accent,” I exclaimed, “you’re dead right: I had already felt the need of it; but I was obstinate, now I’ll get it: you may bet on that, get it within a week” and I did. There was a lawyer in the town named Hoysradt who had had a fierce quarrel with my brother Willie. He had the most pronounced Western American accent I had ever heard and I set myself the task every morning and evening of imitating Hoysradt’s accent and manner of speech. I made it a rule too, to use the slow Western enunciation in ordinary speech and in a week, no one would have taken me for any one but an American. Sommerfeld was delighted and told me he had fuller confidence in me than ever and from that time on our accord was perfect, for the better I knew him, the more highly I esteemed him: he was indeed able, hardworking, truthful and honest—a compact of all the virtues, but so modest and inarticulate that he was often his own worst enemy. [Illustration] ------------------------------------------------------------------------ WORK AND SOPHY. Chapter XIV. Now began for me a most delightful time. Sommerfeld relieved me of nearly all the office work: I had only to get up the speeches, for he prepared the cases for me. My income was so large that I only slept in my office-room for convenience sake, or rather for my lechery’s sake. I kept a buggy and horse at a livery stable and used to drive Lily or Rose out nearly every day. As Rose lived on the other side of the river, it was easy to keep the two separate and indeed neither of them ever dreamed of the other’s existence. I had a very soft spot in my heart for Rose: her beauty of face and form always excited and pleased me and her mind, too, grew quickly through our talks and the books I gave her. I’ll never forget her joy when I first bought a small bookcase and sent it to her home one morning, full of the books I thought she would like and ought to read. In the evening she came straight to my office, told me it was the very thing she had most wanted and she let me study her beauties one by one; but when I turned her round and kissed her bottom, she wanted me to stop: “You can’t possibly like or admire that”, was her verdict.

• From The Selected Works of Audre Lorde

  This refusal to be constrained was notably apparent in Zami: A New Spelling of My Name, which she called a “biomythography.” Biographer Alexis De Veaux describes Zami, in her definitive biography of Lorde, Warrior Poet: A Biography of Audre Lorde, as a book that “recovers from existing male-dominated literary genres (history, mythology, autobiography, and fiction) whatever was inextricably female, female-centered.” In Zami and much of her other work, Lorde expressed the radical idea that black women could hold the center, be the center, and she was unwavering in this belief. At her most vulnerable, Lorde gave the world some of her most powerful writing with her work in The Cancer Journals, which chronicled her life with breast cancer and having a double mastectomy. “But it is that very difference which I wish to affirm, because I have lived it, and survived it, and wish to share that strength with other women. If we are to translate the silence surrounding breast cancer into language and action against this scourge, then the first step is that women with mastectomies must become visible to each other.” With these words, she assumed as much control as she could over a body succumbing to disease and a public narrative that, until then, allowed a singular narrative about what it meant to live with illness. She made herself visible and gave other women permission to make themselves visible in a world that would prefer that they disappear, stay silent. In all of her writing, Audre Lorde offers us language to articulate how we might heal our fractured sociopolitical climate. She gives us instructions for making tools with which we can dismantle the houses of our oppressors. She remakes language with which we can revel in our sensual and sexual selves. She forges a space within which we can hold ourselves and each other accountable to both our needs and the greater good. Anthologies like this are so very necessary because, all too often, people misappropriate the words and ideas of black women. They do so selectively, using the parts that serve their aims, and abandoning those parts that don’t. People will, for example, parrot Lorde’s ideas about dismantling the master’s house without taking into account the context from which Lorde crafted those ideas. Lorde is such a brilliant and eloquent writer; she has such a way of shaping language that of course people want to repeat her words to their own ends. But her work is far more than something pretty to parrot. In this collection of Lorde’s prose and poetry, you will be able to appreciate the grace, power, and fierce intelligence of her writing, to understand where she was writing from and why, and to bear witness to all the unforgettable ways she made herself, and all black women, gloriously visible. PROSE Poetry Is Not a Luxury

• From The Selected Works of Audre Lorde

  When I read her books, I underlined and annotated avidly. I whispered her intimately crafted turns of phrase, enjoying the sound and feel of them in my mouth, on my tongue. Lorde was the first writer who actively demonstrated for me that a writer could be intensely concerned with the inner and outer lives of black queer women, that our experiences could be the center instead of relegated to the periphery. She wrote beyond the white gaze and imagined a black reality that did not subvert itself to the cultural norms dictated by whiteness. She valorized the body as much as she valorized the mind. She valorized nurturing as much as she valorized holding people accountable for their actions, calling out people and practices that decentered the black queer woman’s experience and knowledge. Most importantly, she prioritized the collective because, “without community there is no liberation, only the most vulnerable and temporary armistice between an individual and her oppression.” As a reader, it is gratifying to see the legacy Lorde has created and to see the genealogy of her work in the writing of the women who have followed in her footsteps. Without Lorde’s essay “The Uses of Anger,” we might never have known Claudia Rankine’s manifesto of poetic prose, Citizen. In one of her most fiery essays, “The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House,” Lorde asks, “What does it mean when tools of a racist patriarchy are used to examine the fruits of that same patriarchy,” and quickly answers her own question. “It means that only the most narrow perimeters of change are possible and allowable.” Lorde gave these remarks in 1979 after being invited to an academic conference where there was only one panel with a black feminist or lesbian perspective and only two black women presenters. Forty years later, such meager representation is still an issue in many supposedly feminist and inclusive spaces. The essay is pointed, identifying pernicious issues marginalized people face in certain oppressive spaces—having to be the sole representative of their subject position, having to use their intellectual and emotional labor to address oppression instead of any of their other intellectual interests as if the marginalized are only equipped to talk about their marginalization. This is a reality we often lose sight of when we surrender to assimilationist ideas about social change. There is, for example, a strain of feminism that believes if only women act like men, we will achieve the equality we seek. Lorde asks us to do the more difficult and radical work of imagining what our realities might look like if masculinity were not the ideal to which we aspire, if heterosexuality were not the ideal to which we aspire, if whiteness were not the ideal to which we aspire.

• From My Life and Loves, Vol. 1 (of 4) (1922)

  Once and once only I tried to hint to her that her sweetness to Smith might do him harm physically; but the suspicion of reproof made her angry and she evidently couldn’t or wouldn’t understand what I meant without a physical explanation, which she would certainly have resented. I had to leave her to what she would have called her daimon; for she was as prettily pedantic as Tennyson’s Princess, or any other mid-Victorian heroine. Her brother Ned, too, I came to know pretty well. He was a tall, handsome youth with fine grey eyes: a good athlete, but of commonplace mind. The father was the most interesting of the whole family, were it only for his prodigious conceit. He was of noble appearance: a large, handsome head with silver grey hairs setting off a portly figure well above middle height. In spite of his assumption of superiority, I felt him hide-bound in thought; for he accepted all the familiar American conventions, believing or rather knowing that the American people, “the good old New England stock in particular, were the salt of the earth, the best breed to be seen anywhere....” It showed his brains that he tried to find a reason for this belief. “English oak is good”, he remarked one day sententiously, “but American hickory is tougher still. Reasonable, too, this belief of mine”, he added, “for the last glacial period skinned all the good soil off of New England and made it bitterly hard to get a living and the English who came out for conscience sake were the pick of the Old Country and they were forced for generations to scratch a living out of the poorest kind of soil with the worst climate in the world, and hostile Indians all round to sharpen their combativeness and weed out the weaklings and wastrels.” There was a certain amount of truth in his contention; but this was the nearest to an original thought I ever heard him express and his intense patriotic fervor moved me to doubt his intelligence. I was delighted to find that Smith rated him just as I did: “a first-rate lawyer, I believe”, was his judgment, “a sensible, kindly man.” “A little above middle height”, I interpreted and Smith added smiling, “and considerably above average weight: he would never have done anything notable in literature or thought.” As the year wore on, Smith’s letters called for me more and more insistently and at length I went to join him in Philadelphia. * * * NEW EXPERIENCES. Emerson, Walt Whitman, Bret Harte. Chapter XIII.

• From My Life and Loves, Vol. 1 (of 4) (1922)

  As winter drew down and the bitter frost came, outdoor work almost ceased. I read from morning till night and not only devoured Mill, but saw through the fallacy of his Wage-Fund theory. I knew from my own experience that the wages of labor depended primarily on the productivity of labor. I liked Mill for his humanitarian sympathies with the poor; but I realized clearly that he was a second-rate intelligence, just as I felt pretty sure that Carlyle was one of the Immortals. I took Carlyle in small doses, for I wanted to think for myself. After the first chapters I tried to put down first, chapter by chapter, what I thought or knew about the subject treated, and am still inclined to believe that that is a good way to read in order to estimate what the author has taught you. Carlyle was the first dominant influence in my life and one of the most important: I got more from him than from any other writer. His two or three books learned almost by heart, taught me that Dell’s knowledge was skimpy and superficial and I was soon Sir Oracle among the men on all deep subjects. For the medical books, too, turned out to be excellent and gave me almost the latest knowledge on all sex-matters. I was delighted to put all my knowledge at the disposal of the boys, or rather to show off to them how much I knew. That fall brought me to grief: early in October I was taken by ague; “chills and fever” as it was called. I suffered miseries and though Reece induced me to ride all the same and spend most of the daytime in the open, I lost weight till I learned that arsenic was a better specific even than quinine. Then I began to mend, but, off and on, every fall and spring afterwards, so long as I stayed in America, I had to take quinine and arsenic to ward off the debilitating attacks. I was very low indeed when we started down on the Trail; the Boss being determined, as he said, to bring up two herds that summer. Early in May he started north from near St. Anton’ with some five thousand head, leaving Reece, Dell, Bob, Peggy the cook, Bent, Charlie and myself to collect another herd. I never saw the Boss again; understood, however, from Reece’s cursing that he had got through safely, sold the cattle at a good price and made off with all the proceeds, though he owed Reece and Dell more than one-half. Charlie’s love-adventure that ended so badly didn’t quiet him for long. In our search for cheap cattle we had gone down nearly to the Rio Grande and there, in a little half-Mexican town, Charlie met his fate.

• From Heptaméron (1559)

  princess like her, who had been educated in the commu- nion of Rome, where nothing has been talked of for many ages but fagots and gibbets for those who err. Family prejudices strongly fortified all the obstacles which educa- tion had laid in the way of this princess ; for she entirely loved the king her brother, an implacable persecutor of those they called heretics, a people whom he caused to be burned without mercy wherever the indefatigable vigilance of informers discovered them. I cannot conceive by what method this Queen of Navarre raised herself to so high a pitch of equity, reason, and good sense ; it was not through an indifference as to religion, since it is certain she had a great degree of piety, and studied the Scriptures with sin- gular application. It must, therefore, have been the excel- lence of her genius, and the greatness of her soul, that dis- covered a path to her which scarcely anyone knows. It will be said, perhaps, that she needed only to consult the primitive and general ideas of order, which most clearly show that involuntary errors hinder not a man who entirely loves God, as he has been able to discover him after all possible inquiries, from being reckoned a servant of the true God, and that we ought to respect in him the rights of the true God. But I might immediately answer that this maxim is of itself subject to great disputes, so far is it from being clear and evident ; besides that these primitive ideas hardly ever appear to our understanding without limitations and modifications which obscure them a hundred ways, ac- cording to the different prejudices contracted by education. The spirit of party, attachment to a sect, and even zeal for orthodoxy, produce a kind of ferment in the humours of our body ; and hence the medium through which reason ought to behold those primitive ideas is clouded and ob- scured. These are infirmities which will attend our reason as long as it shall depend on the ministry of organs. It is the same thing to it as the low and middle region of the air, the seat of vapours and meteors. There are but very few persons who can rise above these clouds, and place them" QUEEN OF NAVARRE. Xxxiii selves in a true serenity. If anyone could do it, we must say of him what Virgil said of Daphnis : " Candidus insuetum miratur lumen Olympi, Sub pedibusque videt nubes et sidera Daphnis."

• From The Selected Works of Audre Lorde

  A great deal of Lorde’s writing was committed to articulating her worldview in service of the greater good. She crafted lyrical manifestos. The essay “Poetry Is Not a Luxury” made the case for the importance of poetry, arguing that poetry “is a vital necessity of our existence. It forms the quality of light within which we predicate our hopes and dreams toward survival and change, first made into language, then into idea, then into more tangible action.” In “Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power,” Lorde examines women using their erotic power to benefit themselves instead of benefiting men. She notes that women are often vilified for their erotic power and treated as inferior. She suggests that we can rethink and reframe this paradigm. This is what is so remarkable about Lorde’s writing—how she encourages women to understand weaknesses as strengths. She writes, “As women, we need to examine the ways in which our world can be truly different. I am speaking here of the necessity for reassessing the quality of all aspects of our lives and our work, and how we move toward and through them.” In this, she offers an expansive definition of the erotic, one that goes well beyond the carnal to encompass a wide range of sensate experiences. Rethinking and reframing paradigms is a recurring theme in Lorde’s writing. As the child of immigrants who came to the United States for their American dream only to have that dream shattered by the Great Depression, Lorde understood the nuances of oppression from an early age. It was poetry that gave her the language to make sense of that oppression and to resist it, and she was a prolific poet with several collections to her name including The First Cities, Cables to Rage, From a Land Where Other People Live, Coal, and The Black Unicorn. Her work took other forms—teaching, cofounding Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press, public speaking, and a range of advocacy efforts for women, lesbians, and black people. During her time in Germany, she gave rise to the Afro-German movement—helping black German women use their voices to join the sisterhood she valued so dearly. She also demanded that white German women confront their whiteness, even when it made them defensive or uncomfortable. In an essay about Lorde’s time in Germany, Dagmar Schultz wrote that “many white women learned to be more conscious of their privileges and more responsible in the use of their power.” Lorde was not constrained by boundaries. She combined the personal and the political, the spiritual and the secular. As an academic she fearlessly wrote about the sensual and the sexual even though the academy has long disdained such interests. Her erotic life was as valuable as her intellectual life and she was unabashed in making this known.

• From My Life and Loves, Vol. 1 (of 4) (1922)

  Smith, I found, had got books for me, Latin and Greek-English dictionaries, a Tacitus too and Xenophon’s Memorabilia with a Greek grammar: I insisted on paying for them all and then he began to talk. Tacitus he just praised for his superb phrases and the great portrait of Tiberius—“perhaps the greatest historical portrait ever painted in words.” I had a sort of picture of King Edward the Fourth in my romantic head, but didn’t venture to trot it out. But soon, Smith passed to Xenophon and his portrait of Socrates as compared with that of Plato. I listened all ears while he read out a passage from Xenophon, painting Socrates with little human touches: I got him to translate every word literally and had a great lesson, resolving when I got home, I’d learn the whole page by heart. Smith was more than kind to me: he said I’d be able to enter the Junior Class and thus have only two years to graduation. If Willie gave me back even five hundred dollars, I’d be able to get through without care or work. Then Smith told me how he had gone to Germany after his American University: how he had studied there and then worked in Athens at ancient Greek for another year till he could talk classic Greek as easily as German. “There were a few dozen Professors and students” he said, “who met regularly and talked nothing but classic Greek: they were always trying to make the modern tongue just like the old.” He gave me a translation of “Das Kapital” of Marx, and in fifty ways inspired and inspirited me to renewed effort. I came back to the Gregorys for dinner and discussed in my own mind whether I should go to Mrs. Mayhew’s as I had promised or work at Greek: I decided to work and then and there made a vow always to prefer work, a vow more honored in the breach, I fear, than in the observance. But at least I wrote to Mrs. Mayhew excusing myself and promising her the next afternoon. Then I set myself to learn by heart the two pages in the “Memorabilia.” That evening I sat near the end of the table; the head of it was taken by the University Professor of Physics, a dull pedant! Every time Kate came near me I was ceremoniously polite: “Thank you very much! It is very kind of you!” and not a word more. As soon as I could, I went to my room to work. Next day at three o’clock I knocked at Mrs. Mayhew’s: she opened the door herself: I cried, “how kind of you” and once in the room drew her to me and kissed her time and time again: she seemed cold and numb.

• From My Life and Loves, Vol. 1 (of 4) (1922)

  “Now, young man”, he said, “you’ll have many opportunities later, so give me my place”, and forthwith turned him out of his place and took his seat by the Vicereine, though she would barely speak to him. At length Tom Connolly said to her: “I wouldn’t have thought it of you, for you’re so kind. Fancy blaming a poor young girl the first time she yields to a man!” This response made the whole table roar and established Connolly’s fame for impudence throughout Ireland. Everyone was talking of him and I went about after him all through the gardens and whenever he spoke, my large ears were cocked to hear any word of wisdom that might fall from his lips. At length he noticed me and asked me why I followed him about. “Everybody says you can win any woman you like, Mr. Connolly”; I said half-ashamed: “I want to know how you do it, what you say to them.” “Faith, I don’t know”, he said, “but you’re a funny little fellow. What age are you to be asking such questions?” “I’m fourteen”, I said boldly. “I wouldn’t have given you fourteen, but even fourteen is too young; you must wait.” So I withdrew but still kept within earshot. I heard him laughing with my eldest brother over my question and so imagined that I was forgiven, and the next day or the day after, finding me as assiduous as ever, he said: “You know, your question amused me and I thought I would try to find an answer to it and here is one. When you can put a stiff penis in her hand and weep profusely the while, you’re getting near any woman’s heart. But don’t forget the tears.” I found the advice a counsel of perfection; I was unable to weep at such a moment; but I never forgot the words. There was a large barracks of Irish Constabulary in Ballybay and the Sub-Inspector was a handsome fellow of five feet nine or ten named Walter Raleigh. He used to say that he was a descendant of the famous courtier of Queen Elizabeth and he pronounced his name “Rolly” and assured us that his illustrious namesake had often spelt it in this way, which showed that he must have pronounced it as if written with an “o.” The reason I mention Raleigh here is that his sisters and mine were great friends and he came in and out of our house almost as if it were his own. Every evening when Vernon and Raleigh had nothing better to do, they cleared away the chairs in our back parlor, put on boxing gloves and had a set-to. My father used to sit in a corner and watch them: Vernon was lighter and smaller; but quicker; still I used to think that Raleigh did not put out his full strength against him.

• From Blue Nights (2011)

  If a car or an interviewer failed to show up at the appointed time on this trip she had known what to do: check the schedule and “call Wendy,” Wendy being the publicity director at Simon & Schuster. She knew which bookstores reported to which best-seller lists and she knew the names of their major buyers and she knew what a green room was and she knew what agents did. She knew what agents did because before she was four, on a day when my schedule for household help had fallen apart, I had taken her with me to a meeting at the William Morris office in Beverly Hills. I had prepared her, explained that the meeting was about earning the money that paid for the triple lamb chops from room service, impressed on her the need for not interrupting or asking when we could leave. This preparation, it turned out, was entirely unnecessary. She was far too interested to interrupt. She accepted a glass of water when one was offered to her, managed the heavy Baccarat glass without dropping it, listened attentively but did not speak. Only at the end of the meeting did she ask the William Morris agent the question apparently absorbing her: “But when do you give her the money?” When we noticed her confusions did we consider our own? I still have the “Sundries” box in my closet, marked as she marked it. 18 I do not know many people who think they have succeeded as parents. Those who do tend to cite the markers that indicate (their own) status in the world: the Stanford degree, the Harvard MBA, the summer with the white-shoe law firm. Those of us less inclined to compliment ourselves on our parenting skills, in other words most of us, recite rosaries of our failures, our neglects, our derelictions and delinquencies. The very definition of success as a parent has undergone a telling transformation: we used to define success as the ability to encourage the child to grow into independent (which is to say into adult) life, to “raise” the child, to let the child go. If a child wanted to try out his or her new bicycle on the steepest hill in the neighborhood, there may have been a pro forma reminder that the steepest hill in the neighborhood descended into a four-way intersection, but such a reminder, because independence was still seen as the desired end of the day, stopped short of nagging. If a child elected to indulge in activity that could end badly, such negative possibilities may have gotten mentioned once, but not twice.

• From Heptaméron (1559)

  " It is true," replied Geburon, " that I have all my life long held a quite different language ; but as my teeth are bad, and I can no longer chew venison, I warn the poor deer against the hunters, that I may make amends in my old age for the mischiefs I have desired in my youth." " Thank you, Geburon, for your warning," retorted Nomerfide, " but after all, we doubt that we have much reason to be obliged to you ; for you did not speak in that way to the lady you loved so much, therefore it is a proof that you do not love us, or yet wish that we should love. Yet we believe ourselves to be as prudent and virtuous as those you so long chased in your young days. But it is a common vanity of the old to believe that they have always been more discreet than those who come after them." * The hero of this novel is again Admiral de Bonnivet, as we learn from Brantome. 164 THE HEPTAMERON OF THE [JVovel 16. " When the cajolery of one of your wooers," retorted Geburon, " shall have made you acquainted with the nature of men, you will then believe, Nomerfide, that I have told you the truth." " To me it seems probable," observed Oisille, " that the gentleman whose intrepidity you extol so highly must rather have been possessed by the fury of love, a passion so violent that it makes the greatest poltroons undertake things which the bravest would think twice of before attempting." " If he had not believed, madam," said Saffredent, " that the Italians are readier with their tongues than with their hands, methinks he must have been fright- ened." " Yes," said Oisille, " if he had not had a fire in his heart which burns up fear." " Since you did not think the courage of this gentle- man sufficiently laudable," said Hircan, "I presume you know of some other instance which seems to you more worthy of praise." " It is true that this gentleman's courage deserves some praise," said Oisille, " but I know an instance of intrepidity that is worthy of higher admiration." " Pray tell us it then, madam," said Geburon. " If you so much extol," said Oisille, " the bravery of a man who displayed it for the defence of his own life and of his mistress's honour, what praise is too great for another, who, without necessity, and from pure valour, behaved in the manner I am about to relate ? " Second day.] QUEEN OF NAVARRE. 165 NOVEL XVII. How King Francis gave proof of his courage in the case of Count Guillaume, who designed liis death.

• From Heptaméron (1559)

  princess like her, who had been educated in the commu- nion of Rome, where nothing has been talked of for many ages but fagots and gibbets for those who err. Family prejudices strongly fortified all the obstacles which educa- tion had laid in the way of this princess ; for she entirely loved the king her brother, an implacable persecutor of those they called heretics, a people whom he caused to be burned without mercy wherever the indefatigable vigilance of informers discovered them. I cannot conceive by what method this Queen of Navarre raised herself to so high a pitch of equity, reason, and good sense ; it was not through an indifference as to religion, since it is certain she had a great degree of piety, and studied the Scriptures with sin- gular application. It must, therefore, have been the excel- lence of her genius, and the greatness of her soul, that dis- covered a path to her which scarcely anyone knows. It will be said, perhaps, that she needed only to consult the primitive and general ideas of order, which most clearly show that involuntary errors hinder not a man who entirely loves God, as he has been able to discover him after all possible inquiries, from being reckoned a servant of the true God, and that we ought to respect in him the rights of the true God. But I might immediately answer that this maxim is of itself subject to great disputes, so far is it from being clear and evident ; besides that these primitive ideas hardly ever appear to our understanding without limitations and modifications which obscure them a hundred ways, ac- cording to the different prejudices contracted by education. The spirit of party, attachment to a sect, and even zeal for orthodoxy, produce a kind of ferment in the humours of our body ; and hence the medium through which reason ought to behold those primitive ideas is clouded and ob- scured. These are infirmities which will attend our reason as long as it shall depend on the ministry of organs. It is the same thing to it as the low and middle region of the air, the seat of vapours and meteors. There are but very few persons who can rise above these clouds, and place them" QUEEN OF NAVARRE. Xxxiii selves in a true serenity. If anyone could do it, we must say of him what Virgil said of Daphnis : " Candidus insuetum miratur lumen Olympi, Sub pedibusque videt nubes et sidera Daphnis."

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  Reply to Objection 1: In some respects virgins experience a greater conflict in remaining continent; and in other respects, widows, other things being equal. For virgins are inflamed by concupiscence, and by the desire of experience, which arises from a certain curiosity as it were, which makes man more willing to see what he has never seen. Sometimes, moreover, this concupiscence is increased by their esteeming the pleasure to be greater than it is in reality, and by their failing to consider the grievances attaching to this pleasure. In these respects widows experience the lesser conflict, yet theirs is the greater conflict by reason of their recollection of the pleasure. Moreover, in different subjects one motive is stronger than another, according to the various conditions and dispositions of the subject, because some are more susceptible to one, and others to another. However, whatever we may say of the degree of conflict, this is certain—that the virgin’s victory is more perfect than the widow’s, for the most perfect and most brilliant kind of victory is never to have yielded to the foe: and the crown is due, not to the battle but to the victory gained by the battle. Reply to Objection 2: There are two opinions about this. For some say that the Blessed Virgin has not an aureole in reward of her virginity, if we take aureole in the proper sense as referring to a conflict, but that she has something more than an aureole, on account of her most perfect purpose of observing virginity. Others say that she has an aureole even in its proper signification, and that a most transcendent one: for though she experienced no conflict, she had a certain conflict of the flesh, but owing to the exceeding strength of her virtue, her flesh was so subdued that she did not feel this conflict. This, however, would seem to be said without reason, for since we believe the Blessed Virgin to have been altogether immune from the inclination of the fomes on account of the perfection of her sanctification, it is wicked to suppose that there was in her any conflict with the flesh, since such like conflict is only from the inclination of the fomes, nor can temptation from the flesh be without sin, as declared by a gloss [*St. Augustine, De Civ. Dei xix, 4] on 2 Cor. 12:7, “There was given me a sting of my flesh.” Hence we must say that she has an aureole properly speaking, so as to be conformed in this to those other members of the Church in whom virginity is found: and although she had no conflict by reason of the temptation which is of the flesh, she had the temptation which is of the enemy, who feared not even Christ (Mat. 4).

• From My Life and Loves, Vol. 1 (of 4) (1922)

  Next morning I awoke rested but very weak: the Doctor came in and sponged me in warm water and changed my linen: my nightshirt and a great part of the sheet were quite brown. “Can you make water?” he asked, handing me a bed-dish: I tried and at once succeeded. “The wonder is complete!!” he cried, “I’ll bet, you have cured your lumbago too”, and indeed I was completely free of pain. That evening or the next my father and I had a great, heart-to-heart talk. I told him all my ambitions and he tried to persuade me to take one hundred pounds a year from him to continue my studies. I told him I couldn’t, though I was just as grateful. “I’ll get work as soon as I am strong”, I said; but his unselfish affection shook my very soul and when he told me that my sister, too, had agreed he should make me the allowance, I could only shake my head and thank him. That evening I went to bed early and he came and sat with me: he said that the doctor advised that I should take a long rest. Strange colored lights kept sweeping across my sight every time I shut my eyes: so I asked him to lie beside me and hold my hand. At once he lay down beside me and with his hand in mine, I soon fell asleep and slept like a log till seven next morning. I awoke perfectly well and refreshed and was shocked to see that my father’s face was strangely drawn and white and when he tried to get off the bed, he nearly fell. I saw then that he had lain all the night through on the brass edge of the bed rather than risk disturbing me to give him more room. From that time to the end of his noble and unselfish life, some twenty-five years later, I had only praise and admiration for him.

• From Heptaméron (1559)

  It was chiefly during her frequent and long residences in her principality of Beam that the Queen of Navarre had op- portunities of conferring with the advocates of the Reforma- tion, and there many of them, including Andrew Melanchthon, Ge'rard Roussel, Lefevre d'Etaple, Pierre Calvi, Charles de Sainte Marthe, and Calvin himself, found a refuge with her from persecution. The question whether or not Margaret ever seriously entertained the thought of abjuring the Church of Rome has been much debated by historians ; but that she very much inclined to the opinions of the Reformers is not disputed either by Protestant or Catholic writers ; both sides confess the fact. Florimond de Remond says, in his History of the Birth and Progress of Heresy: "It is particularly ob- served by all the historians of both parties that this princess was the sole cause, without designing any ill, of the pres- ervation of the French Lutherans, and that the church which afterwards took the name of Reformed, was not stifled in its cradle ; for, besides that she lent an ear to their dis- courses, which at first were specious, and not so bold as after- wards, she, with a good intention, maintained a great many of them in schools at her own expense, not only in France, but also in Germany. She took a wonderful care to preserve and secure those that were in danger for the Protestant religion, and to succour the refugees at Strasburg and Geneva. Thither she sent to the learned at one time a benefaction of four thousand livres. ... In short, this good-natured princess had nothing more at heart for those nine or ten years than to procure the escape of such as the king exposed to the rigour of justice. She frequently talked to him of it, and by little touches endeavoured to impress on his soul some pity for the Lutherans. XXX MEMOIR OF MA RGARET,

• From Heptaméron (1559)

  which are preserved in the libraries of France, her last editors infer that her beauty, so much celebrated by the poets of her time, consisted chiefly in the dignity of her deportment, and the sweet and cheerful expression of her countenance. Her eyes, nose, and mouth were large. She retained no marks of the small-pox with which she was at- tacked before middle age, and she preserved the freshness of her complexion to a late period. Like her brother, to whom she bore a strong likeness, she was tall and stately ; but her imposing air was tempered by extreme affability and a merry humour. Her enthusiastic panegyrist, Sainte Marthe, says of her, " Seeing her humanely receive every- body, refuse none, and patiently listen to each, thou wouldst have promised thyself an easy access to her; but if she cast her eyes on thee, there was in her face I know not what divinit}^, that would have so confounded thee that thou wouldst have been unable, I do not say to walk one step, but even to stir one foot to approach her." Though conforming on special occasions to her brother's sumptuous tastes, Margaret's personal habits were remarkably simple. She dressed plainly, and, after the loss of her infant son, almost always in black. Brantome, speaking of the ex- travagant pomp displayed by Caesar Borgia when he visited France, remarks that the great Queen of Navarre never had more than "three sumpter mules and six for her litters, though she had three or four chariots for her ladies." Her biographers have generally assert J that this frugality was imposed on Margaret by the precarious state of her fortune ; but it is rather to be attributed to her sober character and her munificent charity. The supposition that her means were inadequate to her rank is manifestly erroneous ; for at the very time when they are said to have been lowest, we find her declining to receive from Henry H. payment, of a considerable sum lent iive-and-twenty years before to his predecessor in a moment of financial difficulty, and de- siring that the amount should be given to the sisters of her first husband, the Duke d'Alenyon. Q UEEA ' OF NA J 'A RRE. XXXV