Tenderness

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 Bad Behavior (1988)

  Daisy was silent and frail as a cattail, her fuzzy black mitten in Joey’s hand, her eyes anxiously scanning the street for David. She would say goodbye to him several times, but he would pull her back by her lapel as she turned to cross the street. After the second time he stopped her, she would sigh and look down, then begin to go through her pockets for scraps of unwanted paper, which she tore into snowflake pieces and scattered like useless messages in the garbage-jammed metal wastebasket under the street lamp, as if, trapped on the corner, she might as well do something useful, like clean her pockets. That day, when he finally let her go, he stood for a moment and watched her pat across the street, through the awful march of people. He walked half a block to a candy store with an orange neon sign, and bought several white bags of jelly beans. Then he caught a cab and rode home like a sultan. He ignored Diane’s bitter stare as he walked through the living room and shut himself up in the bedroom with his jelly beans. He thought of rescuing Daisy. She would be walking across the street, with that airy, unaware look on her face. A car would roar around a garbage- choked corner, she would freeze in its path, her pale face helpless as a crouching rabbit. From out of nowhere he would leap, sweeping her aside with one arm, knocking them both to the sidewalk, to safety, her head cushioned on his arm. Or she would be accosted by a hostile teenager who would grab her coat and push her against a wall. Suddenly he would attack. The punk’s legs would fly crazily as Joey slammed him against a crumbling brick wall. “If you hurt her, I’ll...” He sighed happily and got another pill and a handful of jelly beans. — “My mother couldn’t understand me or do anything for me,” he said. “She thought she was doing the right thing.” “She sounds like a bitch,” said Daisy. “Oh, no. She did what she could, given the circumstances. She at least recognized that I far surpassed her in intelligence.” “Then why did she let her boyfriend beat you up?” “He didn’t beat me up. He was just a fat slob who got a thrill out of putting a twelve-year-old in a half nelson and then asking how it felt.” “He beat you up.” They were in a small, dark bar. It had floors and tables made of old creaking wood, and a half-moon window of heavy stained glass in one wall. The tables were clawed with knifemarks, the french fries were large and damp. The waitresses carried themselves like dinosaurs with ungainly little hands and had purple veins on their legs, even though they were young. They were friendly though, and they looked right at you. Daisy and Joey came here for lunch and sat in the deep, high-backed booths.

• From Bad Behavior (1988)

  She was engaged to a handsome, smiling med student. She sent glorious twelve-page letters to her mother on multicolored stationery covered with purple or turquoise ink. She described her teachers and her friends. She wrote about how much she loved Kevin, how much she wanted to have children and a career. She recorded her dreams and the art exhibits she’d seen. Virginia imagined Camille sitting at her desk in class. Her legs were folded restfully before her, her body slouched with arrogant feminine ease, but her neck was erect and her large eyes watchful. She imagined her sitting at an outdoor café, her bony knees childishly tilted together under the table, her long hands draped on top of her warm coffee cup as she leaned forward, laughing with her friends. She saw Camille walking across campus with Kevin. His brown jacket was loose on her shoulders, protecting her. — Daniel and Charles grew up easily. They trooped around the house with noisy bunches of boys who all seemed to have light, swinging arms and stinging, nasty voices. At times their eyes were dull and brutish. They told cruel, violent jokes and killed animals. They were mean to other children. But they harbored a sweetness and vulnerability that became exposed at unexpected moments. And they were still her little boys. She could hear it in the way Charles called, “Mom?” when he couldn’t sleep at night. She would pass by his room and hear his voice float plaintively from the darkness. She would look in and see him sitting up in his gray-and-white pajamas, slim and spare against the headboard, his blond hair standing up in pretty spikes. She would sit on his bed for at least an hour. Sometimes she would lift up his pajama top and gently scratch his warm back. He loved that. — When Daniel was fifteen, he found a girlfriend. She was fourteen, she was very short and had dark hair and gentle hands. She had a round, sweet face and worried eyes. She worried about things like ecology. She sat in the kitchen with Daniel after school, eating Virginia’s sandwiches and talking about the EPA and whales. Her feet, in striped tennis shoes, barely touched the floor. Daniel admired her as he ate his sandwich. He stopped killing squirrels with BB guns. — When Charles was twelve, he was in a school play. He was one of the Lost Boys in the high school production of Peter Pan, a boy named Tootles. It was a small part, and he was nonchalant about it, but he loved to dress in his contrived rags and make his eyes fiendish with black eye paint. He came home from rehearsal that way.

• From Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption (2014)

  The first time I met Ms. Parks, I sat on Ms. Durr’s front porch in Old Cloverdale, a residential neighborhood in Montgomery, and I listened to the three women talk for two hours. Finally, after watching me listen for all that time, Ms. Parks turned to me and sweetly asked, “Now, Bryan, tell me who you are and what you’re doing.” I looked at Ms. Carr to see if I had permission to speak, and she smiled and nodded at me. I then gave Ms. Parks my rap. “Yes, ma’am. Well, I have a law project called the Equal Justice Initiative, and we’re trying to help people on death row. We’re trying to stop the death penalty, actually. We’re trying to do something about prison conditions and excessive punishment. We want to free people who’ve been wrongly convicted. We want to end unfair sentences in criminal cases and stop racial bias in criminal justice. We’re trying to help the poor and do something about indigent defense and the fact that people don’t get the legal help they need. We’re trying to help people who are mentally ill. We’re trying to stop them from putting children in adult jails and prisons. We’re trying to do something about poverty and the hopelessness that dominates poor communities. We want to see more diversity in decision-making roles in the justice system. We’re trying to educate people about racial history and the need for racial justice. We’re trying to confront abuse of power by police and prosecutors—” I realized that I had gone on way too long, and I stopped abruptly. Ms. Parks, Ms. Carr, and Ms. Durr were all looking at me. Ms. Parks leaned back, smiling. “Ooooh, honey, all that’s going to make you tired, tired, tired.” We all laughed. I looked down, a little embarrassed. Then Ms. Carr leaned forward and put her finger in my face and talked to me just like my grandmother used to talk to me. She said, “That’s why you’ve got to be brave, brave, brave.” All three women nodded in silent agreement and for just a little while they made me feel like a young prince. —

• From The Swimming-Pool Library (1988)

  It seemed disloyal to tell the truth so I said simply that I had met him at the Corry. ‘He doesn’t go there very often these days,’ said Bill, as if to imply that in that case I had been exceptionally lucky. ‘No, it was fortunate. The thing is, Bill, I would value your help—what you know about him. I would acknowledge it of course in the book.’ He appeared satisfied by this. ‘I suspect you may be a leading witness.’ ‘You make it sound like a trial or something,’ said Bill. I picked up my beer and looked at him interrogatively. ‘Do you want me to tell you now?’ he asked, clearly uncertain, as I was, about how biographers worked. ‘Not now,’ I smiled. ‘But I’d like it if we could get together soon. You’re not touching your drink.’ ‘I’m sorry, Will. I’d like to in a way, but I think with the mood I’m in tonight it wouldn’t be a good thing. It’s never a good thing, to be honest, when I go back on the booze. Somehow it always lands me in trouble.’ Looking at his ungainly muscularity, I wondered if it nursed and suppressed an instinct for violence. Perhaps his self-denial had been painfully learnt, and was the clue to a double life whose difficult side was all in the past. We walked together through bleak, twilit streets to the Underground, and rode into town on the Central Line. Over, or rather under, the noise of the train and in the near-emptiness of the carriage he confided in me. His confidences, though, were not about himself: they were the secrets and crises of others that he had observed. He told me feelingly about how the boy Alastair’s mother had died of leukaemia, and the struggles of the father to look after him properly. He said how Roy, at the Corry, had come off his motorbike and severed a tendon in his knee. Something more came out about the Nantwich Cup too—how Charles had created it in memory of a friend of his who had been killed, though Bill was vague about the details, and when I asked him how he had met Charles, assumed a kind of dignified obtuseness, as though so intimate and critical a subject could not be so lightly approached. Could there have been something between the two men? It was the recurrent problem of imagining them twenty, thirty years earlier—before I was born, when Charles was the age that Bill was now, and Bill was Phil’s age. He was looking forward then, building up his body like a store, a guarantee of his place in the future.

• From Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption (2014)

  I couldn’t see Joe’s face while all of this was going on, but I could hear him crying. He occasionally made a whining sound, and his shoulders jerked up and down. When the staff proposed turning the cage on its side, he moaned audibly. Finally, the prisoner trusties suggested lifting the cage and tilting it slightly, which everyone agreed to try. The two trusties lifted and tilted the heavy cage, while three officers yanked Joe’s chair with a violent pull that finally dislodged it. The guards gave each other high fives, the inmate trusties walked away silently, and Joe sat motionlessly in his chair in the middle of the room, looking down at his feet. I walked over to him and introduced myself. His face was tear-stained, and his eyes were red, but he looked up at me and began clapping his hands giddily. “Yeah! Yeah! Mr. Bryan.” He smiled and offered me both of his hands, which I took. I wheeled Joe to a cramped office for our legal visit. He continued cheering quietly and kept clapping his hands in excitement. I had to argue with the attending prison guard for permission to close the door and talk confidentially with Joe. The officer eventually relented. Joe seemed to relax when I closed the door. Despite the terrifying start to the visit, he was extremely cheerful. I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was talking to a young child. I explained to Joe how disappointed we were that the State had destroyed the biological evidence that might have allowed us to prove he was innocent through DNA testing. We had discovered that both the victim and one of his co-defendants had died. The other co-defendant would not say anything about what had really happened, making it extremely difficult for us to challenge Joe’s conviction. I then offered our new idea about challenging his sentence as unconstitutional, which might create another way for him to possibly go home. He smiled throughout my explanation, although it was clear he didn’t understand all of it. He had a legal pad on his lap, and when I finished he told me that he had prepared some questions for our visit. During the entire visit I kept thinking about how he was much more enthusiastic and excited than I had expected him to be, given his history. When he told me about the questions he had prepared for me, he was practically bubbling. He explained that if he ever got out of prison he might want to be a reporter so “I can tell people what’s really going on.” He spoke with great pride when he announced that he was ready to ask his questions. “Joe, I’ll be happy to answer your questions. Fire away.” He read with some difficulty. “Do you have children?” He looked up at me expectantly. “No, I don’t have children. I have nieces and nephews, though.” “What is your favorite color?” He once again smiled eagerly.

• From Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption (2014)

  Now that Walter’s case record was complete, appeal pleadings would be due soon, and time was critical. I should have returned to Montgomery directly from the prison, but Walter’s family wanted to meet, and since they were less than an hour from the prison I had promised to come to Monroeville. — Walter’s wife, Minnie Belle McMillian, and his daughter Jackie were waiting patiently when I pulled up to the McMillians’ dilapidated house in Repton, which was off the main road leading into Monroeville. Walter had told me I would know I was close when I passed a cluster of liquor stores on the county line between Conecuh and Monroe counties. Monroe County is a “dry county” where no alcoholic beverages can be sold; for the convenience of its thirsty citizens, several package stores marked the boundary with Conecuh County. Walter’s house was just a few miles from the county line. I pulled into the driveway and was surprised at the profound disrepair; this was a poor family’s home. The front porch was propped on three cinder blocks piled precariously beneath wood flooring that showed signs of rot. The blue window panes were in desperate need of paint, and a makeshift set of stairs that didn’t connect to the structure was the only access to the home. The yard was littered with abandoned car parts, tires, broken pieces of furniture, and other detritus. Before getting out of my car, I decided to put on my well-worn suit jacket, even though I had noticed earlier that it was missing buttons on both jacket sleeves. Minnie walked out the front door and apologized for the appearance of the yard as I carefully stepped onto the porch. She kindly invited me inside while a woman in her early twenties lingered behind her. “Let me fix something for you to eat. You been at the prison all day,” she said. Minnie looked tired but otherwise appeared as I had imagined—patient and strong—based on Walter’s descriptions and my own guesses from our phone conversations. Because the State had made Walter’s affair with Karen Kelly part of its case in court, the trial had been especially difficult for Minnie. But she looked like she was still standing strong. “Oh, no, thank you. I appreciate it, but it’s fine. Walter and I ate some things on the visitation yard.” “They don’t have nothing on that prison yard but chips and sodas. Let me cook you something good.” “That’s very kind, I appreciate it, but I’m really okay. I know you’ve been working all day, too.”

• From The Folding Star (1994)

  While he slept I kept watch over him—a smooth shoulder, the little pool of the clavicle, his neck, his extraordinary face, his hair muddled and pushed back. His lips were parted and dry, and I felt anxiously that I should wet them from a flask or with a soaked rag. It seemed mad to have him here and not be making love to him over and over, but I was consecrated to his repose: my mood became oddly chivalric. I remembered the old Altidorean legend—not as far as I knew espoused by Luc—which made him a direct descendant of the Virgin Mary, admittedly in her later, post-virginal phase. I'd known from early on that he had something unearthly about him—it was all more than likely. I lay back dazzled by his mere companionship, the trust he put in me to see him through the night. I thought of Ty's little agenda: get rid of Cherif—for the moment that seemed to be done, my thoughts didn't even track him as far as Matt's and whatever they were doing there; find the best in Rex Stout—I perhaps hadn't followed that to the letter, I'd been a lout; tell Luc you love him, or you will never have peace with yourself. So I said it into the air, not loud enough to wake him—I hardly heard it myself over the blow-heater's rattle and rumble next door, that might have been a ferry's trembling engines, heard from a cabin on a night crossing. I dreamt I had met a young man by the seaside. We went for long, energetic, rather tense walks, away from the sea and through a derelict industrial estate. I was very keen on him; he had curly dark hair and blue eyes and was astonishingly strong. He ripped a steel door off a windowless, bunker-like building, just to show me what he could do. I was exhilarated. I was too shy to ask, but I hoped he would do other such tricks. We sat down on a dusty doorstep, there was no one around, and he tugged his shirt off to show me his chest muscles and his biceps. I was calling him Luc, though I was almost certain that wasn't his name, and he took a slow, calculating moment or two to react to it. "Yes, I'm Luc," he said; "of course I am." And he lobbed a breeze-block through a window across the street as though to prove it. Luc stirred against me—the shattered glass's rhythmic tinkling was St Narcissus striking three. He sighed and burbled but seemed not to wake, or if he did he pretended sleep.

• From From Shame to Sin: The Christian Transformation of Sexual Morality in Late Antiquity (2013)

  F R O M S H A M E TO S I N response is tender. “Something human moved me, and I truly feared the god Eros too. . . . Th is would have to be reckoned not so much intercourse as a cure for an ailing soul. . . . Everything happened by the will of Eros.” In the dramatic fi nal act, Melite would indeed fi nd herself charged with adultery. Th e prosecutors note that one who corrupts a wedded wife steals what belongs to another man. Nevertheless, Achilles Tatius is humane, or subversive, enough to let Melite escape on a technicality, by vowing that she did not violate her marriage so long as she thought her husband was dead, when in fact she hurriedly cheated on him as soon as she learned that his return was imminent! Th e satisfaction of Melite demonstrates that sometimes eros transcended human rules, not that the rules were changing. Despite the episode’s undoubted charm, it cannot count as a winking ac know ledg ment of women’s liberation. Sometimes the Roman Empire is construed as a progressive moment in women’s history, rolled back in late antiquity by the regressive alliance of religion and patriarchy. Th e vociferous, if satirical, complaints about powerful wives, the frank depiction of feminine sexual plea sure in the visual arts, the greater presence of women in the public sphere— all of these are signs that point to a wider range of motion for the Roman matron. As with any such caricature, this one has only a certain admixture of truth. A number of structural factors worked in a woman’s favor. By the imperial era, older forms of marriage that placed the woman in the legal power of her husband had long fallen into desuetude. Roman rules that kept spousal property in separate funds meant that the woman’s dowry was, as men complained, a subtle source of leverage. Th e woman’s— or, more realisti- cally, the girl’s— consent was formally required for the marriage, and liberal laws of divorce allowed women to end marriages, unilaterally and virtually without cause. Th e Augustan social legislation created a path for women to achieve an exceptional legal competence, the ability to act without a male tutor, by bearing three children. Th e Roman woman is hardly a naive and feeble creature hopelessly under her husband’s thumb. At the same time, none of the basic rules had changed. Th e double standard reigned almost universally. Even Plutarch, whose sensible advice for husbands included not provoking their wives by smelling like other women, ultimately expected the wife to fi nd a way to cope with inevitable infi delities. “If he makes some little slip with a slave girl or hired lady, do not bear it too gravely, and consider that he wishes to spare you from his debauch-

• From The Swimming-Pool Library (1988)

  I sat down and slid in beside him, observing him carefully, hovering over his face and catching again the childish smell of his breath. As I turned the light out, I felt him roll towards me, his huge hands digging under me almost as if he wanted to carry me away. I embraced him, and he gripped me more tightly, clung to me as if in danger. I murmured ‘Baby’ several times before I realised he was still asleep. My life was in a strange way that summer, the last summer of its kind there was ever to be. I was riding high on sex and self-esteem—it was my time, my belle époque —but all the while with a faint flicker of calamity, like flames around a photograph, something seen out of the corner of the eye. I wasn’t in work—oh, not a tale of hardship, or a victim of recession, not even, I hope, a part of a statistic. I had put myself out of work deliberately, or at least knowingly. I was beckoned on by having too much money, I belonged to that tiny proportion of the populace that indeed owns almost everything. I’d surrendered to the prospect of doing nothing, though it kept me busy enough. For nearly two years I’d been on the staff of the Cubitt Dictionary of Architecture , a grandiose project afflicted by delay and bad feeling. Its editor was a friend of my Oxford tutor, who was worried at my drifting unopposed into the routine of bars and clubs, saw me swamped with unwholesome leisure, and put in a word—one of those mere suggestions which, touching a nerve of guilt, take the force of a command. And so I had found myself turning up each day at St James’s Square and sitting in a little back office, disguising my hangover as a kind of wincing, aesthetic abstraction, and knocking box-folders of research material into shape. Volume One was to cover A to D, and I was allowed to work on some of the subjects that interested me most—the Adams, Lord Burlington, Colen Campbell. I edited the essays of repetitive pundits, was sent out to the British Library or Sir John Soane’s Museum to find plans and engravings; smaller subjects I was allowed to write up myself: I turned in an exemplary article on Coade Stone vases. But the Dictionary was a crackpot affair, a mismanaged business, an Escorial that turned into a Fonthill the longer we worked on it.

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

  3. Then took Mary a pound of ointment of spikenard, very costly, and anointed the feet of Jesus, and wiped his feet with her hair: and the house was filled with the odour of the ointment. 4. Then saith one of his disciples, Judas Iscariot, Simon’s son, which should betray him, 5. Why was not this ointment sold for three hundred pence, and given to the poor? 6. This he said, not that he cared for the poor; but because he was a thief, and had the bag, and bare what was put therein. 7. Then said Jesus, Let her alone: against the day of my burying hath she kept this. 8. For the poor always ye have with you; but me ye have not always. 9. Much people of the Jews therefore knew that he was there: and they came not for Jesus’ sake only, but that they might see Lazarus also, whom he had raised from the dead. 10. But the chief priests consulted that they might put Lazarus also to death: 11. Because that by reason of him many of the Jews went away, and believed on Jesus. ALCUIN. As the time approached in which our Lord had resolved to suffer, He approached the place which He had chosen for the scene of His suffering: Then Jesus six days before the passover came to Bethany. First, He went to Bethany, then to Jerusalem; to Jerusalem to suffer, to Bethany to keep alive the recollection of the recent resurrection of Lazarus; Where Lazarus was, which had been dead, whom He raised from the dead. THEOPHYLACT. On the tenth day of the month they took the lamb which was to be sacrificed on the passover, and from that time began the preparation for the feast. Or rather the ninth day of the month, i. e. six days before the passover, was the commencement of the feast. They feasted abundantly on that day. Thus we find Jesus partook of a banquet at Bethany: There they made Him a supper, and Martha served. That Martha served, shews that the entertainment was in her house. See the fidelity of the woman: she does not leave the task of serving to the domestics, but takes it upon herself. The Evangelist adds, in order, it would seem, to settle Lazarus’ resurrection beyond dispute, But Lazarus was one of them that sat at the table with Him. AUGUSTINE. (Tr. l. 5) He lived, talked, feasted; the truth was established, the unbelief of the Jews confounded. CHRYSOSTOM. (Hom. lxv) Mary did not take part in serving the guests generally, but gave all her attention to our Lord, treating Him not as mere man, but as God: Then took Mary a pound of spikenard, very costly, and anointed the feet of Jesus, and wiped His feet with her hair. AUGUSTINE. (Tr. l. 6) The word pistici seems to be the name of some place, from which this precious ointment came.

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

  ORIGEN. (t. xxxii. 13.) Or, at first he beckoned, and then not content with beckoning, spake: Who is it of whom he speaks? He then lying on Jesus’ breast, saith unto Him, Lord, who is it? AUGUSTINE. (Tr. lx. 4) On Jesus’ breast; the same as in Jesus’ bosom. Or, he lay first in Jesus’ bosom, and then ascended higher, and lay upon His breast; as if, had he remained lying in His bosom, and not ascended to lie on His breast, our Lord would not have told him what Peter wanted to know. By his lying at last on Jesus’ breast, is expressed that greater and more abundant grace, which made him Jesus’ special disciple. BEDE. That he lay in the bosom, and upon the breast, was not only an evidence of present love, but also a sign of the future, (non occ.). viz. of those new and mysterious doctrines which he was afterwards commissioned to reveal to the world. AUGUSTINE. (Tr. lxi. 6) For by bosom what else is signified but secret? Here is the hollow of the breast, the secret1 chamber of wisdom. CHRYSOSTOM. (Hom. lxxii. 1) But not even then did our Lord expose the traitor by name; Jesus answered, He it is, to whom I shall give a sop when I have dipped it. Such a mode of declaring him, should itself have turned him from his purpose. Even if a partaking of the same table did not shame him, a partaking of the same bread might have. And when He had dipped the sop, He gave it to Judas Iscariot, the son of Simon. AUGUSTINE. (Tr. lxii. 3) Not as some careless readers think, that then Judas received singly Christ’s body. For our Lord had already distributed the sacraments of His body and blood to all of them, while Judas was there, as Luke relates; and after this He dipped the sop, as John relates, and gave it to the traitor; the dipping of the bread perhaps signifying the deep dye of his sin; for some dipping cannot be washed out again; i. e. when things are dipped, in order to receive a permanent dye. If however this dipping meant any thing good, he was ungrateful for it, and deserved the damnation which followed him; And after the sop, Satan entered into him. ORIGEN. (t. xxxii. 14.) Observe, that at first Satan did not enter into Judas, but only put it into his heart to betray his Master. But after the bread, he entered into him. Wherefore let us beware, that Satan thrust not any of his flaming darts into our heart; for if he do, he then watches till he gets an entrance there himself. CHRYSOSTOM. (Hom. lxii. 1) So long as he was one of the twelve, the devil did not dare to force an entrance into him; but when he was pointed out, and expelled, then he easily leaped into him,

• From The Swimming-Pool Library (1988)

  I pictured the old boy’s determined, naked totterings around the changing-room. He was terribly vulnerable, I now saw. A few days before, when I ran into him and he invited me to tea, he was feebly trying to open the wrong locker (it was the old confusion between 16 and 91). He clearly had no recollection of where he had left his clothes, and was wholly dependent on the little disc attached to his key. As he fumbled and muttered to himself the tenant of 16 came up, a trim little student I’d seen around. ‘No dear, you’re 91 and I’m 16,’ he said impatiently, and found himself equipped with a joke—‘give or take a year or two.’ Charles didn’t understand at first, and as 16 propelled him away I felt an unusual upsurge of kindness for him as against the sexy complicity with the boy that I would normally have encouraged. I came to Charles’s rescue, suspecting he would allow me to be gently protective. When he didn’t, at first, even recognise me, I knew that it was necessary. ‘I suppose the place must have changed a lot?’ I blandly hazarded. But he wasn’t with me; he even screwed up his eyes as he stared through me, perhaps reliving some hurtful episode. I let a few moments pass, looked over the spines of black-bound art folios—Donatello, Sandro Botticelli, Giovanni Bellini—which lay on the table beside me. My grandfather had them too, in the library at Marden, and I recalled childhood afternoons looking at their fine-toned sepia plates; they must have been a special series in the Thirties. ‘You’re not cold, are you, William?’ Charles suddenly asked. I assured him I was fine, though the sunless room was surprisingly cool after the glare of the streets. ‘We don’t get any sun here—only in the attic. Those houses block it out. We’re very cut off here, of course.’ It was an odd remark to make of a house almost in the precincts of St Paul’s Cathedral, but as I looked out of the window I knew what he meant. The ear picked up a constant faint rumble of traffic, but the little clock sounded far louder; no one passed by outside and it was hard to imagine a breeze ruffling the papers strewn about in the rich stuffy air of the room where we sat. ‘It’s a shady little street,’ he added. ‘In the old days it was known as Gropecunt Lane, where the lightermen and what-have-you used to come up for the whores. There’s a reference to it in Pepys—I can’t find it now.’ ‘It’s a beautiful house.’

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

  AUGUSTINE. (Quæst. Ev. ii. 19.) The binding up of wounds is the checking of sins; oil is the consolation of a good hope, by the pardon given for the reconciliation of man; wine is the incitement to work fervently in spirit. AMBROSE. Or, He binds up our wounds by a stricter commandment, as by oil he soothes by the remission of sin, as by wine he pricks to the heart by the denunciation of judgment. GREGORY. (20. Moral. c. 8.) Or in the wine he applies the sharpness of constraint, in the oil the softness of mercy. By wine let the corrupt parts be washed, by oil let the healing parts be assuaged; we must then mix gentleness with severity, and we must so combine the two, that those who are put under us be neither exasperated by our excessive harshness, nor be relaxed by too much kindness. THEOPHYLACT. Or else, intercourse with man is the oil, and intercourse with God is the wine which signifies divinity, which no one can endure unmixed unless oil be added, that is, human intercourse. Hence he worked some things humanly, some divinely. He poured then in oil and wine, as having saved us both by His human and His divine nature. CHRYSOSTOM. (Hom. in loc.) Or, he poured in wine, that is, the blood of His passion, and oil, that is, the anointing of the chrism, that pardon might be granted by His blood, sanctification be conferred by the chrism. The wounded parts are bound up by the heavenly Physician, and containing a salve within themselves, are by the working of the remedy restored to their former soundness. Having poured in wine and oil, he placed him upon His beast, as it follows, and placing him upon his beast, &c. AUGUSTINE. (de Quæst. Ev. ii. q. 19.) His beast is our flesh, in which He has condescended to come to us. To be placed on the beast is to believe in the incarnation of Christ. AMBROSE. Or, He places us on His beast in that He bears our sins, and is afflicted for us, (Isai. 53:4, LXX) for man hath been made like to the beasts, (Ps. 49:12) therefore He placed us on His beast, that we might not be as horse and mule, (Ps. 32:9.) in order that by taking upon Him our body, He might abolish the weakness of our flesh. THEOPHYLACT. Or He placed us on His beast, that is, on His body. For He hath made us His members, and partakers of His body. The Law indeed did not take in all the Moabites, and the Ammonites shall not enter into the Church of God; (Deut. 23:3.) but now in every nation he that feareth the Lord is accepted by Him, who is willing to believe and to become part of the Church. Wherefore He says, that he brought him to an inn.

• From The Swimming-Pool Library (1988)

  My James was so movingly practical over all this, not repelled, even slightly in his element, somehow vindicated. Deliberately or not, he kept making me laugh, which I could hardly bear, with my bludgeoned head, cracked ribs, and the bruises and contusions on my side and my legs. I had always had such good health—never a broken bone, never a filling, all the household ailments checked off in childhood—that James had had no occasion to prescribe to me for more than a hangover. Because we were always so private with each other he seemed almost to be play-acting when he sounded me and felt me expertly with his still mottled, childish hands, and took my pulse and gave me tiny, painkilling pills. I surrendered to his doctoring, since it resembled the special kindnesses and attentions of an intimate, done for our mutual pleasure. At the same time I knew he was judging me physically and professionally, despite his look of doleful pride at having such a dangerous friend. Phil came too, each afternoon, fresh from his lunchtime breakfast. Though still hot, the weather had turned rainy and bothersome, and he wore a blue showerproof jacket with a hood. He would look lightly flushed when he came in and took it off, and he concealed his initial dismay at my appearance with a preoccupied, evasive manner. For ten days or so I hardly went out and he sweetly brought me food—tinned soups, fruit juice, bread and milk—which he unpacked on the kitchen table for me to see. But I didn’t have much appetite. His catering, out of a baffled desire to make everything better, was over-generous, and I twice found myself throwing bread away—guilty about it as I never would be about throwing out overripe fruit, an unpicked carcass of partridge or grouse. Despite the pleasant passivity of being a patient, a condition ministered to as by some perverse kind of luxury, I was profoundly shocked by what had happened. I was constantly reliving the sudden sickening panic of it. James gave me things to help me sleep, which left me drowsy and dozing through the morning, running in and out of horrible, sour little dreams. I hated it when Phil had to leave for work, and longed for him to arrive the following day.

• From Memoirs of Hadrian (1951)

  I held you by the hand during the sacrifice which took place that year on the bank of the Tiber, and with tender amusement watched your childish face (you were only five years old at the time), frightened by the cries of the immolated swine, but trying bravely to imitate the dignified demeanor of your elders. I concerned myself with the education of this almost too sober little boy, helping your father to choose the best masters for you. Verus, the Most Veracious: I used so to play on your name; you are perhaps the only being who has never lied to me. I have seen you read with passion the writings of the philosophers, and clothe yourself in harsh wool, sleeping on the bare floor and forcing your somewhat frail body to all the mortifications of the Stoics. There is some excess in all that, but excess is a virtue at the age of seventeen. I sometimes wonder on what reef that wisdom will founder, for one always founders: will it be a wife, or a son too greatly beloved, one of those legitimate snares (to sum it up in a word) where overscrupulous, pure hearts are caught? Or will it be more simply age, illness, fatigue, or the disillusion which says to us that if all is vain, then virtue is, too? I can imagine in place of your candid, boyish countenance your weary visage as an older man. I am aware that your severity, so carefully acquired, has beneath it some sweetness, and some weakness, perhaps; I divine in you the presence of a genius which is not necessarily that of the statesman; the world will doubtless be forever the better off, however, for having once seen such qualities operating in conjunction with supreme authority. I have arranged the essentials for your adoption by Antoninus; under the new name by which you will one day be designated in the list of emperors you are now and henceforth my grandson. I believe that I may be giving mankind the only chance it will ever have to realize Plato's dream, to see a philosopher pure of heart ruling over his fellow men. You have accepted these honors only with reluctance; your rank obliges you to live in court; Tibur, this place where to the very end I am assembling whatever pleasures life has, disturbs you for your young virtue.

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

  Whether the Son of God in human nature ought to have assumed defects of body?Objection 1: It would seem that the Son of God ought not to have assumed human nature with defects of body. For as His soul is personally united to the Word of God, so also is His body. But the soul of Christ had every perfection, both of grace and truth, as was said above ([4017]Q[7], A[9]; Q[9], seqq.). Hence, His body also ought to have been in every way perfect, not having any imperfection in it. Objection 2: Further, the soul of Christ saw the Word of God by the vision wherein the blessed see, as was said above ([4018]Q[9], A[2]), and thus the soul of Christ was blessed. Now by the beatification of the soul the body is glorified; since, as Augustine says (Ep. ad Dios. cxviii), “God made the soul of a nature so strong that from the fulness of its blessedness there pours over even into the lower nature” (i.e. the body), “not indeed the bliss proper to the beatific fruition and vision, but the fulness of health” (i.e. the vigor of incorruptibility). Therefore the body of Christ was incorruptible and without any defect. Objection 3: Further, penalty is the consequence of fault. But there was no fault in Christ, according to 1 Pet. 2:22: “Who did no guile.” Therefore defects of body, which are penalties, ought not to have been in Him. Objection 4: Further, no reasonable man assumes what keeps him from his proper end. But by such like bodily defects, the end of the Incarnation seems to be hindered in many ways. First, because by these infirmities men were kept back from knowing Him, according to Is. 53:2,3: “[There was no sightliness] that we should be desirous of Him. Despised and the most abject of men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with infirmity, and His look was, as it were, hidden and despised, whereupon we esteemed Him not.” Secondly, because the de. sire of the Fathers would not seem to be fulfilled, in whose person it is written (Is. 51:9): “Arise, arise, put on Thy strength, O Thou Arm of the Lord.” Thirdly, because it would seem more fitting for the devil’s power to be overcome and man’s weakness healed, by strength than by weakness. Therefore it does not seem to have been fitting that the Son of God assumed human nature with infirmities or defects of body. On the contrary, It is written (Heb. 2:18): “For in that, wherein He Himself hath suffered and been tempted, He is able to succor them also that are tempted.” Now He came to succor us. hence David said of Him (Ps. 120:1): “I have lifted up my eyes to the mountains, from whence help shall come to me.” Therefore it was fitting for the Son of God to assume flesh subject to human infirmities, in order to suffer and be tempted in it and so bring succor to us.

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

  CHRYSOSTOM. As much as to say; How do you accuse me for reforming sinners? Therefore in this you accuse God the Father also. For as He wills the amendment of sinners, even so also do I. And He shews that this that they blamed was not only not forbidden, but was even by the Law set above sacrifice; for He said not, I will have mercy as well as sacrifice, but chooses the one and rejects the other. GLOSS. (ap. Anselm.) Yet does not God contemn sacrifice, but sacrifice without mercy. But the Pharisees often offered sacrifices in the temple that they might seem to men to be righteous, but did not practise the deeds of mercy by which true righteousness is proved. RABANUS. He therefore warns them, that by deeds of mercy they should seek for themselves the rewards of the mercy that is above, and, not overlooking the necessities of the poor, trust to please God by offering sacrifice. Wherefore, He says, Go; that is, from the rashness of foolish fault-finding to a more careful meditation of Holy Scripture, which highly commends mercy, and proposes to them as a guide His own example of mercy, saying, I came not to call the righteous but sinners. AUGUSTINE. (ubi sup.) Luke adds to repentance, which explains the sense; that none should suppose that sinners are loved by Christ because they are sinners; and this comparison of the sick shews what God means by calling sinners, as a physician does the sick to be saved from their iniquity as from a sickness: which is done by penitence. HILARY. Christ came for all; how is it then that He says He came not for the righteous? Were there those for whom it needed not that He should come? But no man is righteous by the law. He shews how empty their boast of justification, sacrifices being inadequate to salvation, mercy was necessary for all who were set under the Law. CHRYSOSTOM. Whence we may suppose that He is speaking ironically, as when it is said, Behold now Adam is become as one of us. (Gen. 3:22.) For that there is none righteous on earth Paul shews, All have sinned, and need glory of God. (Rom. 3:23.) By this saying He also consoled those who were called; as though He had said, So far am I from abhorring sinners, that for their sakes only did I come. GLOSS. (ap. Anselm.) Or; Those who were righteous, as Nathanael and John the Baptist, were not to be invited to repentance. Or. I came not to call the righteous, that is, the feignedly righteous, those who boasted of their righteousness as the Pharisees, but those that owned themselves sinners.

• From From Shame to Sin: The Christian Transformation of Sexual Morality in Late Antiquity (2013)

  Th e lovers are noble in blood and mien, their passion is pure and true. Even the men are usually faithful, physically; emotionally, it is imperative that they remain committed. Th e mutual attraction between two lovers, married or about to be so, represented a new space for literate cultural idealism around domestic bliss and private fulfi llment. Th e social and moral logic that underwrites the genre is shared between texts, even if the individual authors regard it with diff erent levels of reverence. Th e social logic of the romances transcends the genre; the raw material of the romance is preliterary, essentially folkloric.  Structurally the romances are stories of adversity and adventure that re- solve happily in marriage. In the prelude to the fi nal book of his romance, Chariton signaled the shift from misadventure to resolution in revealing terms: “No longer shall we have piracy and slavery, trials and battles, grisly suicide, war or captivity, but righ teous passions and legitimate marriages.” Th roughout the narrative the heroine faces grave dangers that call into question her status. Th e heroine of romance is a recognizable social type; her essence precedes her individuality. She is beautiful, of free and noble birth, and in the prime of her marriageable years. Preferably the heroine is superlatively beautiful and impeccably wellborn. Callirhoe, for instance, was the daughter of the leading citizen of Syracuse, and she was the “glory  FROM SHAME TO SIN of all Sicily,” with a “beauty that was not human but divine.” Anthia, at fourteen, was “in the very bloom of her body’s beauty,” a beauty that “was an astonishment, far beyond all the other virgins.” In Leucippe and Clito- phon, we fi rst encounter Leucippe through the eyes of her lover, Clitophon, who dilates on the experience of such superhuman beauty. In Daphnis and Chloe, the drama revolves around the fact that the protagonists were exposed as infants and raised by simple peasants; Chloe, even as a sheepherder, is supremely if naively charming, but it is only in the very last sequence of the story that her true identity, as a daughter of the town’s gentry, was revealed. In fact, once she was literally scrubbed of her rural grime and properly dressed, it was indisputably obvious that her rustic parents did not in reality produce “such a maiden as that.”  Th e heroine is free, but her status is not merely an external attribute de- scribing her current condition. Th ough the heroine is routinely subjected to enslavement, she retains her free nature.

• From From Shame to Sin: The Christian Transformation of Sexual Morality in Late Antiquity (2013)

  Th e most direct parallel, and the only rival to the Ephesian Tale in the transparency of its conventionality, survives in the pop u lar History of Apollonius, King of Tyre. Th e History of Apollonius is a family romance rather than an erotic romance, but the pattern of separation, endurance, and reunion is structurally parallel. In this story, which survives in Latin, it is the protagonist’s daughter, Tar- sia, who has been cast on the cruel winds of fate and endures lurid threats to her virginal purity. In the climactic scene of the History, Tarsia, like Anthia, is placed for sale in a slave market. Th e prince of the city and the town’s most notorious procurer enter a bidding war for the beautiful girl, with equally prurient interests. As the price escalates, the prince reckons that the pur- chase of this one creature would force him to sell off a number of his other slaves. With the dispassionate logic of a cost- cutting accountant, he reasons that he can let the pimp buy her, then pay to be the fi rst customer for just a fraction of the girl’s sale price. “I’ll go in fi rst and snatch the knot of her  FROM SHAME TO SIN virginity at a low price and it will be the same as if I had bought her.” Th e deep material and ideological connection between the fl esh trade and the sex trade was rarely exposed to such direct view. Th e demand for sex was a major impetus behind the circulation of human chattel in the Roman world.  Th e pimp in this story, a monochromatic villain, ignores Tarsia’s pleas for compassion. “Don’t you know that supplications and tears have no force with pimps and executioners?” Like the executioner, the pimp is an agent of death. He sends her to the brothel. Th e prince, with his face covered, en- tered fi rst. Tarsia prostrated herself at his feet and in the most desperate terms begged for his pity. “Listen to the misfortune that brought me to this unhappy state, weigh the fact of my respectable ancestry.” Th e prince was startled into compassion. He, too, had a virgin daughter, for whom he might fear a similar fate. He abandoned his lustful intentions and told Tar- sia to implore future customers with the same sad recital, until she had earned enough to buy her own freedom. A train of suitors follows, and all are so moved by Tarsia’s story that they refrained from impairing her chastity. She endured, inviolate, until she was re united with her father, who promised Tar- sia to the noble prince as a bride (and incited the people of Mytilene to burn the merciless pimp alive). Tarsia’s preservation of her chastity was less elabo- rately contrived than Anthia’s. She relied on the bare compassion of strang- ers.

• From The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce: A 25-Year Landmark Study (2000)

  “Of the dark. Of going upstairs. Of being alone. I try to take care of him. I go into his room every night, so he won’t cry.” Many young girls voluntarily move to fill the vacuum created by parents who collapse emotionally, and sometimes physically, after divorce. The caregiver child’s job, as she defines it, is to keep the parent going by acting in whatever capacity is needed—mentor, adviser, nurse, confidante. The range is wide depending on the parent’s need and the child’s perception. One ten-year-old in this group got up regularly with her insomniac mother at midnight to watch television and drink beer. She frequently stayed home from school to make sure that her mother would not become depressed and suicidal or take the car out when she was drinking. A father told me how his twelve-year-old daughter had packed his clothing, helped him to find an apartment, and arranged to do his shopping. She called him nightly to make sure that he had gotten home safely, and to beg him to stop smoking. Although most caregivers are girls, we’ve seen several dramatic instances of boys who undertook similar roles. One fourteen-year-old boy, whose mother abandoned the family, stopped going to school and undertook all of his mother’s responsibilities, including shopping, cooking, cleaning, and caring for his father who was in a state of collapse. Such children soon sacrifice their friends, school activities, and, most important, their sense of being children—childhood itself. In return, they gain a sense of pride and the feeling that they have saved a parent’s life. When there are siblings at home, the caretaker child moves forthrightly into the parental role and takes charge of running the house, making dinners, seeing that homework is done, putting little ones to bed, cleaning bathrooms late at night. Karen was well suited for this caretaking job and quickly learned to keep her own feelings under tight control. To her great credit, Karen had enormous compassion for both of her parents and was especially comforting to her mother, who in turn acknowledged how much she depended on her ten-year-old. With no hint of embarrassment, Mrs. James told me, “Karen takes care of me. She understands me without words.” Like most parents who come to rely heavily on their children, she had little or no awareness of the child’s heavy sacrifice of her own playtime and friendships. She wasn’t aware of the fact that Karen was missing school and not paying attention to classroom work. Instead, she spoke as if Karen were an adult or even a much older person. “When she sees me sitting alone in the evening, she knows that I feel sad and she puts her arms around me. She is also very wise. She told me to get rid of my boyfriend. ‘He will only hurt you,’ she said. I’ve learned to listen to her.”