Disappointment

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 Little Sister: A Memoir (2019)

  Sister Catherine was my godmother, and at the Center each godparent played a special role in the life of his or her godchild. But because Sister Catherine seldom came to visit us behind the red fence, I missed out on much of that bonding. I accepted the fact that she must be too busy running the Center with Father to spend time with me, but I longed for that personal attention. So I was thrilled when one Saturday morning, Sister Catherine invited me, along with Mariam and Rene, the two oldest Little Sisters, to spend the day at her office. This meant a trip beyond the red fence, a rare treat. We played quietly while she worked, and as morning became early afternoon, I found myself getting hungry. Sister Catherine had not offered us lunch, and there was no food in sight. Maybe if I tell Sister Catherine I’m hungry, she’ll take us out to eat , I thought to myself. Excitement over the idea of an excursion into Harvard Square grew faster than my hunger. At the age of eight, I’d never been to a restaurant. The picture in my mind’s eye took shape—Sister Catherine would take me by the hand and off we’d go, down the stairs and out into the bright sunlight, up the street and into a restaurant, where we’d sit down and have a sandwich and a glass of milk. Gathering up my nerve, because I was not used to asking for a special favor like this one, I walked to the entrance to her office and said, “Sister Catherine, I’m hungry. Could I please have something to eat?” Her response came as a shock. Rising from her desk chair, she strode past me and into the living room where we’d been playing. “Very well, then,” she said in a stern, cold voice, her nearly six-foot frame towering over me. “If you’re hungry, you can head right back to St. Francis Xavier’s House. Come, the car is here.” We followed her down the stairs, where she instructed Brother David to take us back home. With neither a kiss, nor even a wave goodbye, we were ushered out. I sat in numb silence during the short car ride back to life behind the red fence, stunned by Sister Catherine’s reaction and devastated by the failure of my ploy. What did I do wrong? I wondered. Did she think I was complaining? Or did she see through me and could tell I was angling for an excursion into the “real world”? I beheld my godmother in a new light—no longer the charming, smiling, grandmotherly figure, but an enigma. It was a few months later when Sister Catherine made another appearance in St. Francis Xavier’s yard, this time with Father. I was wary. Father spoke. “Come,” he said, motioning to me, and to Mariam, Rene, Peter, and Leonard. Then, turning on his heel, he headed through the maze of houses to our enclosed parking lot.

• From Little Sister: A Memoir (2019)

  But my moment of joy was ephemeral as I remembered Sister Catherine’s words to Father a few days earlier: “Oh, no, she is not going to Vassar.” The entire college application process—the testing, the interview, and my essay about why I so wanted to attend—had been part of Sister Catherine’s game plan to attain state accreditation of our school. I had been the ammunition in this battle and had completed my mission with success. Although the prize lay in the palm of my hand, I was now to relinquish it. Sister Catherine would never allow me to go to Vassar—or any other college. One more duty remained; I must now write the already-crafted letter of refusal to both Vassar and Bates. With a sense of resignation and bitterness, and in my best penmanship, I wrote on the simple white stationery: April 1966 Miss Jean L. Harry, Director of Admissions Dear Miss Harry, Thank you very much for accepting me at Vassar. Unfortunately, it is necessary that I attend school nearer to home this year, so I regret that I will not be attending Vassar College this fall. Very gratefully yours, Mary Patricia Walsh Vassar was now in my past, but it was the Center’s crown jewel in their application for accreditation. The school certainly now would be saved. How could it not receive its accreditation when one of its students was accepted at Vassar? The Center’s school had a future. I was the one without a future, without a plan, without the ability to capitalize on my accomplishment. The irony of that juxtaposition did not escape me. Nor, on the other hand, did it evoke a sense of outrage or betrayal. Perhaps that was one of the blessings that came from living within a community that was truly my family. In due course, the much-coveted accreditation of the Center school was indeed issued by the State of Massachusetts. 50 Family Reunion 1966 W ithout the distraction of applying to Vassar and Bates, I now reverted to my prior state of anguish. Worry was my constant companion, gnawing at me more each day as graduation approached. Despite Sister Catherine’s promise that she would always love me and pray for me, and although I desperately wanted to believe her, I mistrusted her platitudes. I was sure that once I was gone, she would deride me to the rest of the community for failing to live up to the vocation I’d been called to by God. She’d done that with everyone else who’d left or been kicked out. Why would I be treated any differently? I conjured up images of my family out in the world, particularly my mother’s relatives, about whom I knew so little. It occurred to me to ask Sister Elizabeth Ann if I might visit them, now that I was leaving the Center. But I held back until one afternoon when she and I nearly collided in the small hallway off the kitchen.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  Like Richard the Lion-hearted, Louis did not look upon Jerusalem. The sultan of Damascus offered him the opportunity and Louis would have accepted it but for the advice of his councillors,475 who argued that his separation from the army would endanger it, and pointing to the example of Richard, persuaded the king that it would be beneath his dignity to enter a city he could not conquer. He set sail from Acre in the spring of 1254. His queen, Margaret, and the three children born to them in the East, were with him. It was a pitiful conclusion to an expedition which once had given promise of a splendid consummation. So complete a failure might have been expected to destroy all hope of ever recovering Palestine. But the hold of the crusading idea upon the mind of Europe was still great. Urban IV. and Clement III. made renewed appeals to Christendom, and Louis did not forget the Holy Land. In 1267, with his hand upon the crown of thorns, he announced to his assembled prelates and barons his purpose to go forth a second time in holy crusade. In the meantime the news from the East had been of continuous disaster at the hand of the enemy and of discord among the Christians themselves. In 1258 forty Venetian vessels engaged in conflict with a Genoese fleet of fifty ships off Acre with a loss of seventeen hundred men. A year later the Templars and Hospitallers had a pitched battle. In 1263 Bibars, the founder of the Mameluke rule in Egypt, appeared before Acre. In 1268 Antioch fell.

• From The Girls (2016)

  12 As soon as I’d packed my duffel, the guest room already looked like no one had ever stayed there—my absence quickly absorbed, which was maybe the point of rooms like that. I’d figured Tamar and my father had already left for work, but when I came into the living room, my father grunted from the couch. “Tamar’s buying orange juice or some stupid thing,” he said. We sat together and watched television. Tamar was gone a long time. My father kept rubbing his freshly shaven jaw, his face seeming undercooked. The commercials embarrassed me with their strident feeling, how they seemed to mock our awkward quiet. My father’s nervous measurement of the silence. How I would have been, a month ago, tense with expectation. Dredging my life for some gem of experience to present to him. But I couldn’t summon that effort anymore. My father was both more knowable to me than he had ever been, and at the same time, more of a stranger—he was just a man, sensitive to spicy foods, guessing at his foreign markets. Plugging away at his French. He stood up the moment he heard Tamar’s keys fussing in the door. “We should have left thirty minutes ago,” he said. Tamar glanced at me, reshouldered her purse. “Sorry.” She cut him a tight smile. “You knew when we had to go,” he said. “I said I was sorry.” She seemed, for a moment, genuinely sorry. But then her eyes drifted helplessly to the television, still on, and though she tried to click back to attention, I knew my father had noticed. “You don’t even have any orange juice,” he said, his voice flickering with hurt. —

• From The Girls (2016)

  to help me with my bag, but I’d already hefted it into the backseat before he reached me. “Thanks, though,” I said, trying to smile. His hands spread at his sides, and when he smiled back, it was with the helpless apology of a foreigner who needed directions repeated. My brain, to him, was a mysterious magic trick that he could only wonder at. Never bothering to puzzle out the hidden compartment. As we took our seats, I could sense that he was gathering himself to invoke the parental script. “I don’t have to lock you in your room, do I?” he said. His halting laugh. “No breaking in to anyone’s house?” When I nodded, he visibly relaxed. Like he’d gotten something out of the way. “It’s a good time for you to visit,” he went on, as if this were all voluntary. “Now that we’re settled. Tamar’s real particular about the furniture and stuff.” He started the ignition, already beyond any mention of trouble. “She went all the way to the flea market in Half Moon Bay to get this bar cart.” There was a brief moment I wanted to reach for him across the seat, to draw a line from myself to the man who was my father, but the moment passed. “You can pick the station,” he offered, seeming as shy to me as a boy at a dance. — The first few days, all three of us had been nervous. I got up early to make the bed in the guest room, trying to heft the decorative pillows back into completion. My life was limited to my drawstring purse and my duffel of clothes, an existence I tried to keep as neat and invisible as possible. Like camping, I thought, like a little adventure in self-reliance. The first night, my father brought home a cardboard tub of ice cream, striated with chocolate, and scooped free heroic amounts. Tamar and I just picked at ours, but my father made a point of eating another bowl. He kept glancing up, as if we could confirm his own pleasure. His women and his ice cream. Tamar was the surprise. Tamar in her terry shorts and shirt from a

• From The Letter to the Hebrews (The New Daily Study Bible) (2002)

  Even if the sermon is poor and the worship uninspiring, the church service still gives us the chance to show to others what side we are on. (b) They may not go because they are over-particular. They may shrink from contact with people who are ‘not like them’. There are congregations which are as much clubs as they are churches. There may be congregations where a form of social snobbery is practised. We must never forget that there is no such thing as a ‘common’ person in the sight of God. It was for all, not only for the ‘respectable’ classes, that Christ died. (c) They may not go because of conceit. They may believe that they do not need the Church or that they are intellectually beyond the standard of preaching there. Social snobbery is bad, but spiritual and intellectual snobbery is worse. The wisest person is a fool in the sight of God; and the strongest person is weak in the moment of temptation. There is no one who can live the Christian life and neglect the fellowship of the Church. If people feel that they can do so, let them remember that they come to church not only to get but also to give. If they think that the Church has faults, it is their duty to come in and help to correct them. (3) We must encourage one another. One of the highest of human duties is that of encouragement. There is a regulation in the Royal Navy which says: ‘No officer shall speak discouragingly to another officer in the discharge of duties.’ Eliphaz unwillingly paid Job a great tribute. As Moffatt translates it: ‘Your words have kept men on their feet’ (Job 4:4). The writer J. M. Barrie somewhere wrote to Cynthia Asquith, the wife of the Liberal statesman: ‘Your first instinct is always to telegraph to Jones the nice thing Brown said about him to Robinson. You have sown a lot of happiness that way.’ It is easy to laugh at people’s ideals, to pour cold water on their enthusiasm, to discourage them. The world is full of discouragers; we have a Christian duty to encourage one another. So many times, words of praise or thanks or appreciation or cheer have kept people on their feet. Blessed are those who speak such words. Finally, the writer to the Hebrews says that our Christian duty to each other is all the more pressing because the time is short. The day is approaching. He is thinking of the second coming of Christ when things as we know them will be ended. The early Church lived in that expectation. Whether or not we still do, we must realize that none of us knows when the summons to rise and go will come to us also.

• From The Letter to the Hebrews (The New Daily Study Bible) (2002)

  There are Christians in whose faith there has been no development for thirty or forty or fifty or sixty years. There are Christians who have deliberately refused to try to understand the advances that biblical scholarship and theological thought have made. They are grown men and women, and yet they insist on remaining content with the religious development of children. They are like surgeons who refuse to use the new techniques of surgery, refuse to use the new anaesthetics, refuse to use any new equipment and say: ‘What was good enough for Lister in the nineteenth century is good enough for me.’ They are like a physician who refuses to use any of the new drugs and says: ‘What I learned as a student fifty years ago is good enough for me.’ In religious matters, it is even worse. God is infinite; the riches of Christ are unsearchable; and to the end of the day we should be moving forward. (2) There are people who have never grown up in behaviour. It may be forgivable in a child to sulk or to throw fits of temper, but there are many adults who are just as childish in their behaviour. A case of arrested development is always pathetic to see; and the world is full of people whose religious development has been arrested. They stopped learning years ago, and their conduct is that of a child. It is true that Jesus said the greatest thing in the world is the childlike spirit; but there is a tremendous difference between the childlike and the childish spirit. Peter Pan makes a charming play on the stage, but the person who will not grow up makes a tragedy in real life. Let us take care that we do not remain in the religion of childhood when we should have reached the faith of maturity. AT HOME WITH THE WORLD AND WITH GOD Hebrews 5:1–10 Every high priest who is chosen from among men is appointed on men’s behalf to deal with the things which concern God. His task is to offer gifts and sacrifices for sins, in that he himself is able to feel gently to the ignorant and to the wandering because he himself wears the garment of human weakness. By reason of this very weakness it is incumbent upon him, just as he makes sacrifice for the people, so to make sacrifice for sins on his own behalf also. No one takes this honourable position to himself, but he is called by God to it, just as Aaron was. So it was not Christ who gave himself the glory of becoming high priest; but it was God who said to him: ‘You are my beloved Son; today I have begotten you.’ Just so, he says also in another passage: ‘You are a priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek.’

• From The Girls (2016)

  the divorce. It was my father’s idea—until he left, my mother wasn’t social, and I could sense a deep agitation in her during parties or events, a heave of discomfort she willed into a stiff smile. It had been a party to celebrate the investor my father had found. It was the first time, I think, that he’d gotten money from someone other than my mother, and he got even bigger in the heat of that, drinking before the guests arrived. His hair saturated with the dense fatherly scent of Vitalis, his breath notched with liquor. My mother had made Chinese ribs with ketchup and they had a glandular sheen, like a lacquer. Olives from a can, buttered nuts. Cheese straws. Some sludgy dessert made from mandarin oranges, a recipe she’d seen in McCall’s. She asked me before the guests arrived if she looked all right. Smoothing her damask skirt. I remember being taken aback by the question. “Very nice,” I said, feeling strangely unsettled. I’d been allowed some sherry in a cut pink glass: I liked the rotted pucker and snuck another glass. The guests were my father’s friends, mostly, and I was surprised at the breadth of his other life, a life I saw only from the perimeter. Because here were people who seemed to know him, to hold a vision of him informed by lunches and visits to Golden Gate Fields and discussions of Sandy Koufax. My mother hovered nervously around the buffet: she’d put out chopsticks, but no one was using them, and I could tell this disappointed her. She tried to urge them on a heavyset man and his wife, and they shook their heads, the man making some joke I couldn’t hear. I saw something desperate pass over my mother’s face. She was drinking, too. It was the kind of party where everyone was drunk early, a communal haze slurring over conversation. Earlier, one of my father’s friends had lit a joint, and I saw my mother’s expression downshift from disapproval to patient indulgence. Certain lines were getting dim. Wives staring up at the pass of an airplane, arcing toward SFO. Someone dropped a glass in the pool. I saw it drift slowly to the bottom. Maybe it was an ashtray. I floated around the party, feeling like a much younger child, that desire for invisibility coupled with a wish to participate in an adjacent way. I was happy enough to point out the bathroom when asked, to parcel into a napkin buttered nuts that I ate by the pool, one by one, their salty

• From Austerlitz (2001)

  benches outside the houses, apparently in perfect contentment, letting the children play a little longer, one man reading a book, a woman talking to her neighbor, many of them just taking their ease at their windows, arms folded, in a way once common at the onset of dusk. At first I could get none of these images into my head; they merely flickered before my eyes as the source of continual irritation or vexation, which was further reinforced when, to my horror, it turned out that the Berlin cassette inscribed with the original title of Der Flihrer schenkt den Juden eine Stadt had on it only a patchwork of scenes cobbled together and lasting some fourteen minutes, scarcely more than an opening sequence in which, despite the hopes I had entertained, I could not see Agata anywhere, however often I ran the tape and however hard I strained to make her out among those fleeting faces. In the end the impossibility of seeing anything more closely in those pictures, which seemed to dissolve even as they appeared, said Austerlitz, gave me the idea of having a slow-motion copy of this fragment from Theresienstadt made, one which would last a whole hour, and indeed once the scant document was extended to four times its original length, it did reveal previously hidden objects and people, creating, by default as it were, a different sort of film altogether, which I have since watched over and over again. The men and women employed in the workshops now looked as if they were toiling in their sleep, so long did it take them to draw needle and thread through the air as they stitched, so heavily did their eyelids sink, so slowly did their lips move as they looked wearily up at the camera. They seemed to be hovering rather than walking, as if their feet no longer quite touched the ground. The contours of their bodies were blurred and, particularly in the scenes shot out of doors in broad daylight, had dissolved at the edges, resembling, as it occurred to me, said Austerlitz, the frayed outlines of the human hand shown in the fluidal pictures and electrographs taken by Louis Draget in Paris around the turn of the century. The many damaged sections of the tape, which I had hardly noticed before, now melted the image from its center or from the edges, blotting it out and instead making patterns of bright white sprinkled with black which reminded me of aerial photographs taken in the far north, or a drop of water seen under the microscope. Strangest of all, however, said Austerlitz, was the transformation of sounds in this slow-motion version. In a brief sequence at the very beginning, showing red-hot iron being worked in a smithy to shoe a draft ox, the merry polka by some Austrian operetta composer on the sound track of the Berlin copy had become a funeral march dragging along at a grotesquely sluggish pace, and the rest of the musical pieces accompanying the film, among which I could identify only the can-can from La Vie Parisienne and the scherzo from Mendelssohn’s Midsummer Night’s Dream, also moved in a kind of

• From Austerlitz (2001)

  and Joseph, nor the child Jesus, nor the ass, but only a tiny flicker of fire in the middle of the gleaming black varnish of the darkness which, said Austerlitz, he could see in his mind’s eye to this day.—But where, he continued, shall I take up my story? When I came back from France I bought this house for what today is the positively ridiculous sum of nine hundred and fifty pounds, and then I taught for almost thirty years until I took early retirement in 1991, partly, said Austerlitz, because of the inexorable spread of ignorance even to the universities, and partly because I hoped to set out on paper my investigations into the history of architecture and civilization, as had long been my intention. I might perhaps, Austerlitz said to me, have had some idea since our first conversations in Antwerp of the extent of his interests, the drift of his ideas, and the nature of his observations and comments, always made extempore or first recorded in provisional form, but eventually covering thousands of pages. Even in Paris, said Austerlitz, I had thought of collecting my fragmentary studies in a book, although I constantly postponed writing it. The various ideas I entertained at different times of this book I was to write ranged from the concept of a systematically descriptive work in several volumes to a series of essays on such subjects as hygiene and sanitation, the architecture of the penal system, secular temples, hydrotherapy, zoological gardens, departure and arrival, light and shade, steam and gas, and so forth. However, even a first glance at the papers I had brought here from the Institute to Alderney Street showed that they consisted largely of sketches which now seemed misguided, distorted, and of little use. I began to assemble and recast anything that still passed muster in order to re-create before my own eyes, as if in the pages of an album, the picture of the landscape, now almost immersed in oblivion, through which my journey had taken me. But the more I labored on this project over several months the more pitiful did the results seem. I was increasingly overcome by a sense of aversion and distaste, said Austerlitz, at the mere thought of opening the bundles of papers and looking through the endless reams I had written in the course of the years.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  In time, the history of the Franciscans followed the usual course of human prosperity.856 They fell from their first estate. With honors and lands came demoralization. They gained an unsavory reputation as collectors of papal revenues. Matthew Paris’ rebukes of their arrogance date back as far as 1235, and he said that Innocent IV. turned them from fishers of men into fishers of pennies. At the sequestration of the religious houses by Henry VIII., the Franciscan convent of Christ’s Church, London, was the first to fall, 1532.857 § 72. St. Dominic and the Dominicans. Literature.—The earliest Life by Jordanus, Dominic’s successor as head of the order: de principiis ordinis praedicatorum in Quétif-Echard, who gives five other early biographies (Bartholomew of Trent, 1244–1251, Humbert de Romanis, 1250, etc.), and ed. by J. J. Berthier, Freib., i. Schw., 1892.—H. D. Lacordaire, d. 1861: Vie de S. Dominique, Paris, 1840, 8th ed. 1882. Also Hist. Studies of the Order of S. Dom. 1170-1221, Engl. trans., N. Y., 1869.—E. Caro: S. Dom. et les Dominicains, Paris, 1853.—A. T. Drane: Hist. of St. Dom., Founder of the Friar Preachers, London, 1891.—Balme et Lelaidier: Cartulaire ou hist. diplomatique de S. Dom., Paris, 1892.—J. Guiraud: S. Dom., Paris, 2d ed., 1899.—For titles of about thirty lives, see Potthast, II. 1272.—Quétif-Echard: Script. ord. Praedicatorum, 2 vols. Paris, 1719–1721.—Ripoll and Bermond: Bullarium ord. Praed., 8 vols. Rome, 1737 sqq.—Mamachi: Annal. ord. Praed., Rome, 1756.—Monumenta ord. fratrum Praed. hist., ed. by B. M. Reichert, Louvaine and Rome, 10 vols., 1897–1901. Vol. III. gives the acts of the general chapters of the order, 1220–1308.—A. Danzas: Etudes sur les temps primitifs de l’ordre de S. Dom., Paris, 1873–1885.—*Denifle: Die Constitutionen des Predigerordens vom Jahre 1228, and Die Constitutionen des Raymunds von Peñaforte 1238–1241 in Archiv für Lit. und Kirchengesch., 1885, pp. 165–227 and 1889, 530–565.—Helyot: Bel. Orders.—Lea: Hist. of Inquisition, I. 242–304, etc. Wetzer-Welte, art. Dominicus, III. 1931–1945.—W. Lescher: St. Dominic and the Rosary, London, 1902.—H. Holzapfel: S. Dom. und der Rosenkranz, Munich, 1903. The Spaniard, Dominic, founder of the order of preachers, usually called the Dominicans,858 lacks the genial personal element of the saint of Assisi, and his career has little to correspond to the romantic features of his contemporary’s career. Dominic was of resolute purpose, zealous for propagating the orthodox faith, and devoted to the Church and hierarchy. His influence has been through the organization he created, and not through his personal experiences and contact with the people of his age. This accounts for the small number of biographies of him as compared with the large number of Francis.

• From Reading Biblical Literature: Genesis to Revelation (2016)

  Reading Biblical Literature: Genesis to Revelation62 the soldiers of Israel want God to support them, they take the Ark of the Covenant into battle. But in a stunning turn of events, God’s judgment unfolds by allowing Israel’s army to suffer defeat. In battle, the ark of is captured by the Philistines, and the corrupt priesthood at the sanctuary is brought to an end. Act 2: Saul’s Rise to Power ‹ By the end of Act I, the old era has reached its end, and Samuel has begun to serve as a fair and honest judge for the people. But soon, Samuel’s sons fall into corruption, and it becomes clear that the old patterns will persist. Act II begins in chapter 8, where the people tell Samuel that they no longer want the old system of leadership by judges. They want a king in order to be like other nations. ‹ This request is an enormous misstep. It is a point of conflict between human desire and the purposes of God. The people assume that a king will give them prestige, status, and security, yet Samuel warns that kingship will bring the opposite—oppression, abuse of power, heavy taxation, and more. In the face of their insistent demand, however, Samuel discerns God’s response to let them have a king. Here, we can see the dimension of human responsibility emerging more clearly. The new phase begins when God gives in to human demand, and their misguided intentions set the course of events. ‹ In chapter 9, we are introduced to a young man named Saul, who seems to have considerable promise as a leader. Indeed, Samuel discerns that Saul is to be the new king over Israel. Samuel performs a symbolic action—anointing—that will enable Saul to rise to the heights of royal power. After Saul is anointed, he is filled with God’s spirit, which empowers him for leadership. ‹ Saul then encounters his first major challenge as king. The crisis involves a town on the eastern side of the Jordan River that is under attack from a neighboring warlord. The people of the town send messengers to Saul, pleading for help. Saul responds with a show of strength that saves the city. His triumph establishes his reputation as a leader.

• From Reading Biblical Literature: Genesis to Revelation (2016)

  Reading Biblical Literature: Genesis to Revelation 148 164 B.C., three years after Judah’s return, the restored sanctuary was ready for dedication. The festivities lasted for eight days, and the celebration was known as Hanukkah (Hebrew: “dedication”). In later times, people began telling the story of the lamp oil that miraculously lasted for eight days on the first Hanukkah, but that’s not part of the narrative in 1 Maccabees. ‹The Maccabean resistance movement eventually forced the Seleucids to halt their attempt at suppressing Jewish practice. In chapter 5, the Maccabees achieve a series of military victories that extend their influence over much of the country. Then, in chapter 6, the success of the Maccabees is contrasted with the failure of Antiochus, who tries to plunder other cities but cannot do so. According to the author of 1 Maccabees, Antiochus becomes sick with disappointment and dies full of regret. His successors agree to lift the ban on Jewish religious practice in the interests of peace. Judah Maccabee would earn his nickname by “hammering” the Seleucid armies with his victories on the battlefield.

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  But her calls at his office were not always fruitless: ‘Any letters for me?’ ‘Yes, miss, there’s just one.’ He would look at her with a paternal expression, glad enough to think that her young man had written; and Stephen, divining his thoughts from his face, would feel embarrassed and angry. Snatching her letter she would hurry to the beach, where the rocks provided a merciful shelter, and where no one seemed likely to look paternal, unless it should be an occasional seagull. But as she read, her heart would feel empty; something sharp like a physical pain would go through her: ‘Dear Stephen. I’m sorry I’ve not written before, but Ralph and I have been fearfully busy. We’re having a positive social orgy up here, I’m so glad he took this large shoot. . . .’ That was the sort of thing Angela wrote these days—perhaps because of her caution. However, one morning an unusually long letter arrived, telling all about Angela’s doings: ‘By the way, we’ve met the Antrim boy, Roger. He’s been staying with some people that Ralph knows quite well, the Peacocks, they’ve got a wonderful old castle; I think I must have told you about them.’ Here followed an elaborate description of the castle, together with the ancestral tree of the Peacocks. Then: ‘Roger has talked quite a lot about you; he says he used to tease you when you were children. He says that you wanted to fight him one day—that made me laugh awfully, it’s so like you, Stephen! He’s a good-looking person and rather a nice one. He tells me that his regiment’s stationed at Worcester, so I’ve asked him to come over to The Grange when he likes. It must be pretty dreary, I imagine, in Worcester. . . .’ Stephen finished the letter and sat staring at the sea for a moment, after which she got up abruptly. Slipping the letter into her pocket she buttoned her jacket; she was feeling cold. What she needed was a walk, a really long walk. She set out briskly in the direction of Newquay.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  But in 950 he was utterly defeated by the emperor, Otto I., and compelled not only to admit the Christian priests into the country, but also to rebuild the churches which had been destroyed, and this misfortune seems actually to have changed his mind. He now became, if not friendly, at least forbearing to his Christian subjects, and, during the reign of his son and successor, Boleslav the Mild, the Christian Church progressed so far in Bohemia that an independent archbishopric was founded in Prague. The mass of the people, however, still remained barbarous, and heathenish customs and ideas lingered among them for more than a century. Adalbert, archbishop of Prague, from 983 to 997,130 preached against polygamy, the trade in Christian slaves, chiefly carried on by the Jews, but in vain. Twice he left his see, disgusted and discouraged; finally he was martyred by the Prussian Wends. Not until 1038 archbishop Severus succeeded in enforcing laws concerning marriage, the celebration of the Lord’s Day, and other points of Christian morals. About the contest between the Romano-Slavic and the Romano-Germanic churches in Bohemia, nothing is known. Legend tells that Methodius himself baptized Borziwai and Ludmilla, and the first missionary, work was, no doubt, done by Slavic priests, but at the time of Adalbert the Germanic tendency was prevailing. Also among the Poles the Gospel was first preached by Slavic missionaries, and Cyrillus and Methodius are celebrated in the Polish liturgy131 as the apostles of the country. As the Moravian empire under Rastislaw comprised vast regions which afterward belonged to the kingdom of Poland, it is only natural that the movement started by Cyrillus and Methodius should have reached also these regions, and the name of at least one Slavic missionary among the Poles, Wiznach, is known to history. After the breaking up of the Moravian kingdom, Moravian nobles and priests sought refuge in Poland, and during the reign of duke Semovit Christianity had become so powerful among the Poles, that it began to excite the jealousy of the pagans, and a violent contest took place. By the marriage between Duke Mieczyslav and the Bohemian princess Dombrowka, a sister of Boleslav the Mild, the influence of Christianity became still stronger. Dombrowka brought a number of Bohemian priests with her to Poland, 965, and in the following year Mieczyslav himself was converted and baptized. With characteristic arrogance he simply demanded that all his subjects should follow his example, and the pagan idols were now burnt or thrown into the river, pagan sacrifices were forbidden and severely punished, and Christian churches were built. So far the introduction of Christianity among the Poles was entirely due to Slavic influences, but at this time the close political connection between Duke Mieczyslav and Otto I. opened the way for a powerful German influence. Mieczyslav borrowed the whole organization of the Polish church from Germany. It was on the advice of Otto I.

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  Violet was going to be married in September, they would then live in London, for Alec was a barrister. Their house, it seemed, was already bespoken: ‘A perfect duck of a house in Belgravia,’ where Violet intended to entertain largely on the strength of a bountiful parent Peacock. She was in the highest possible fettle these days, invested with an enormous importance in her own eyes, as also in those of her neighbours. Oh, yes, the whole world smiled broadly on Violet and her Alec: ‘Such a charming young couple,’ said the world, and at once proceeded to shower them with presents. Apostle teaspoons arrived in their dozens, so did coffee-pots, cream-jugs and large fish slices; to say nothing of a heavy silver bowl from the Hunt, and a massive salver from the grateful Scottish tenants. On the wedding day not a few eyes would be wet at the sight of so youthful a man and maiden ‘joined together in an honourable estate, instituted of God in the time of man’s innocency.’ For such ancient traditions—in spite of the fact that man’s innocency could not even survive one bite of an apple shared with a woman—are none the less apt to be deeply moving. There they would kneel, the young newly wed, ardent yet sanctified by a blessing, so that all, or at least nearly all, they would do, must be considered both natural and pleasing to a God in the image of man created. And the fact that this God, in a thoughtless moment, had created in His turn those pitiful thousands who must stand for ever outside His blessing, would in no way disturb the large congregation or their white surpliced pastor, or the couple who knelt on the gold-braided, red velvet cushions. And afterwards there would be plentiful champagne to warm the cooling blood of the elders, and much shaking of hands and congratulating, and many kind smiles for the bride and her bridegroom. Some might even murmur a fleeting prayer in their hearts, as the two departed: ‘God bless them!’ So now Stephen must actually learn at first hand how straight can run the path of true love, in direct contradiction to the time-honoured proverb. Must realize more clearly than ever, that love is only permissible to those who are cut in every respect to life’s pattern; must feel like some ill-conditioned pariah, hiding her sores under lies and pretences. And after those visits of Violet Antrim’s, her spirits would be at a very low ebb, for she had not yet gained that steel-bright courage which can only be forged in the furnace of affliction, and which takes many weary years in the forging. 2 The splendid new motor arrived from London, to the great delight and excitement of Burton. The new suits were completed and worn by their owner, and Angela’s costly gold bag was received with apparent delight, which seemed rather surprising considering her erstwhile ban upon presents.

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  So Stephen wished them both a good night, promising to come again very soon; and Williams hobbled out to the path which was now quite golden from border to border, for the door of the cottage was standing wide open and the glow from the lamp streamed over the path. Once more she found herself walking on lamplight, while Williams, bareheaded, stood and watched her departure. Then her feet were caught up and entangled in shadows again, as she made her way under the trees. But presently came a familiar fragrance—logs burning on the wide, friendly hearths of Morton. Logs burning—quite soon the lakes would be frozen—‘and the ice looks like slabs of gold in the sunset, when you and I come and stand here in the winter . . . and as we walk back we can smell the log fires long before we can see them, and we love that good smell because it means home, and our home is Morton . . . because it means home and our home is Morton. . . .’ Oh, intolerable fragrance of log fires burning! CHAPTER 231A ngela did not return in a week, she had decided to remain another fortnight in Scotland. She was staying now with the Peacocks, it seemed, and would not get back until after her birthday. Stephen looked at the beautiful ring as it gleamed in its little white velvet box, and her disappointment and chagrin were childish. But Violet Antrim, who had also been staying with the Peacocks, had arrived home full of importance. She walked in on Stephen one afternoon to announce her engagement to young Alec Peacock. She was so much engaged and so haughty about it that Stephen, whose nerves were already on edge, was very soon literally itching to slap her. Violet was now able to look down on Stephen from the height of her newly gained knowledge of men—knowing Alec she felt that she knew the whole species. ‘It’s a terrible pity you dress as you do, my dear,’ she remarked, with the manner of sixty, ‘a young girl’s so much more attractive when she’s soft-don’t you think you could soften your clothes just a little? I mean, you do want to get married, don’t you! No woman’s complete until she’s married. After all, no woman can really stand alone, she always needs a man to protect her.’ Stephen said: ‘I’m all right—getting on nicely, thank you!’

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  The seat of sin is the intention, which is the root, bearing good and bad fruit.1387 Desire or concupiscence is not sin. This intention, intentio, is not the simple purpose, say, to kill a man in opposition to killing one without premeditation, but it is the underlying purpose to do right or wrong. In this consciousness of right or wrong lies the guilt. Those who put Christ to death from a feeling that they were doing right, did not sin, or, if they sinned, sinned much less grievously than if they had resisted their conscience and not put him to death. How then was it that Christ prayed that those who crucified him might be forgiven? Abaelard answers by saying that the punishment for which forgiveness was asked was temporal in its nature. The logical deduction from Abaelard’s premises would have been that no one incurs penalty but those who voluntarily consent to sin. But from this he shrank back. The godless condition of the heathen he painted in darkest colors. He, however, praised the philosophers and ascribed to them a knowledge through the Sibylline books, or otherwise, of the divine unity and even of the Trinity.1388 Bernard wrote to Innocent II. that, while Abaelard labored to prove Plato a Christian, he proved himself to be a pagan. Liberal as he was in some of his doctrinal views, he was wholly at one with the Church in its insistence upon the efficiency of the sacraments, especially baptism and the Lord’s Supper. Because Abaelard stands outside of the theological circle of his day, he will always be one of the most interesting figures of the Middle Ages. His defect was in the lack of moral power. The student often finds himself asking the question, whether his statements were always the genuine expression of convictions. But for this lack of moral force, he might have been the Tertullian of the Middle Ages, whom he is not unlike in dash and original freshness of thought. The African Father, so vigorous in moral power, the Latin Church excludes from the number of the saints on account of his ecclesiastical dissent. Abaelard she cannot include on account of moral weakness.1389 Had he been willing to suffer and had he not retracted all the errors charged against him, he might have been given a place among the martyrs of thought.1390 As it is, his misfortunes arouse our sympathy for human frailties which are common; his theology and character do not awaken our admiration. § 101. Younger Contemporaries of Abaelard. Literature: For Gilbert (Gislebertus) of Poictiers. His Commentaries on Boethius, De trinitate are in Migne, 64. 1266 sqq. T he De sex principiis, Migne, 188. 1250–1270. For his life: Gaufrid of Auxerre, Migne, 185. 595 sqq.—Otto of Freising, De gestis Frid., 50–57.—J. of Salisbury, Hist. pontif., VIII.—Poole, in Illustr. of the Hist. of Med. Thought, pp. 167–200. Hefele, V. 503–508, 520–524.—Neander-Deutsch, St. Bernard, II. 130–144.

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  3The autumn passed, giving place to the winter, with its short, dreary days of mist and rain. There was now little beauty left in Paris. A grey sky hung above the old streets of the Quarter, a sky which no longer looked bright by contrast, as though seen at the end of a tunnel. Stephen was working like some one possessed, entirely re-writing her pre-war novel. Good it had been, but not good enough, for she now saw life from a much wider angle; and moreover, she was writing this book for Mary. Remembering Mary, remembering Morton, her pen covered sheet after sheet of paper; she wrote with the speed of true inspiration, and at times her work brushed the hem of greatness. She did not entirely neglect the girl for whose sake she was making this mighty effort—that she could not have done even had she wished to, since love was the actual source of her effort. But quite soon there were days when she would not go out, or if she did go, when she seemed abstracted, so that Mary must ask her the same question twice—then as likely as not get a nebulous answer. And soon there were days when all that she did apart from her writing was done with an effort, with an obvious effort to be considerate. ‘Would you like to go to a play one night, Mary?’ If Mary said yes, and procured the tickets, they were usually late, because of Stephen who had worked right up to the very last minute. Sometimes there were poignant if small disappointments when Stephen had failed to keep a promise. ‘Listen, Mary darling—will you ever forgive me if I don’t come with you about those furs? I’ve a bit of work here I simply must finish. You do understand?’ ‘Yes, of course I do.’ But Mary, left to choose her new furs alone, had quite suddenly felt that she did not want them. And this sort of thing happened fairly often. If only Stephen had confided in her, had said: ‘I’m trying to build you a refuge; remember what I told you in Orotava!’ But no, she shrank from reminding the girl of the gloom that surrounded their small patch of sunshine. If only she had shown a little more patience with Mary’s careful if rather slow typing, and so given her a real occupation—but no, she must send the work off to Passy, because the sooner this book was finished the better it would be for Mary’s future. And thus, blinded by love and her desire to protect the woman she loved, she erred towards Mary.

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  She did not look at the girl as she said it—that she could not do, perhaps out of something that, for her, was the nearest she would ever come to pity. There ensued a long, almost breathless silence, while Angela waited with her eyes turned away. A leaf dropped, and she heard its minute, soft falling, heard the creak of the branch that had let fall its leaf as a breeze passed over the garden. Then the silence was broken by a quiet, dull voice, that sounded to her like the voice of a stranger: ‘No—’ it said very slowly, ‘no—I couldn’t marry you, Angela.’ And when Angela at last gained the courage to look up, she found that she was sitting there alone. CHAPTER 201F or three weeks they kept away from each other, neither writing nor making any effort to meet. Angela’s prudence forbade her to write: ‘Litera scripta manet’—a good motto, and one to which it was wise to adhere when dealing with a firebrand like Stephen. Stephen had given her a pretty bad scare, she realized the necessity for caution; still, thinking over that incredible scene, she found the memory rather exciting. Deprived of her anodyne against boredom, she looked upon Ralph with unfriendly eyes; while he, poor, inadequate, irritable devil, with his vague suspicions and his chronic dyspepsia, did little enough to divert his wife—his days, and a fairly large part of his nights as well, were now spent in nagging. He nagged about Tony who, as ill luck would have it, had decided that the garden was rampant with moles: ‘If you can’t keep that bloody dog in order, he goes. I won’t have him digging craters round my roses!’ Then would come a long list of Tony’s misdeeds from the time he had left the litter. He nagged about the large population of green-fly, deploring the existence of their sexual organs: ‘Nature’s a fool! Fancy procreation being extended to that sort of vermin!’ And then he would grow somewhat coarse as he dwelt on the frequent conjugal excesses of green-fly. But most of all he nagged about Stephen, because this as he knew, irritated his wife: ‘How’s your freak getting on? I haven’t seen her just lately; have you quarrelled or what? Damned good thing if you have. She’s appalling; never saw such a girl in my life; comes swaggering round here with her legs in breeches. Why can’t she ride like an ordinary woman? Good Lord, it’s enough to make any man see red; that sort of thing wants putting down at birth, I’d like to institute state lethal chambers!’