pympass

Favorite Barbara Pym passages

'Ah, yes. Do you remember when I used to read Milton to you?' he said, his thoughts going back to the days when Belinda's frank adoration had been so flattering. By this time he had forgotten how bored he had been by her constancy. Agatha never asked him to read aloud to her when they were alone together in the evenings. 'Do you remember the magnificent opening lines of Samson Agonistes?' he asked, warming to his subject and looking dangerously on the brink of reminding her of them. Indeed, the first words were already out of his mouth when Belinda interrupted him and directed his attention to the matter in hand. There was of course nothing she would have liked better than to hear dear Henry reciting Milton, but somehow with Agatha outside and so much to be done it didn't seem quite the thing. Also, it was morning and it seemed a little odd to be thinking about poetry before luncheon.

Barbara Pym, Some Tame Gazelle (London: Jonathan Cape Ltd., 1950; New York: E.P. Dutton, Inc., 1983; Perennial Library, Harper & Row, 1984), pp. 26-27.

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It did not seem then as if our lives could ever touch at any point beyond a casual meeting on the stairs and of course the sharing of a bathroom.

The last idea may have occurred to her too, for when I was halfway up the stairs to my own flat she called out, 'I think I must have been using your toilet paper. I'll try and remember to get some when it's finished.'

'Oh, that's quite all right,' I called back, rather embarrassed. I come from a circle that does not shout aloud about such things, but I nevertheless hoped that she would remember. The burden of keeping three people in toilet paper seemed to me rather a heavy one.

'The fatherless and widow,' said Julian in what seemed a rather fatuous way.

'Is she fatherless too?'

'Yes, she is an orphan,' he said solemnly.

'Well, of course, a lot of people over thirty are orphans. I am myself,' I said briskly. 'In fact I was an orphan in my twenties. But I hope I shan't ever be a widow. I'd better hurry up if I'm going to be even that.'

'And I had better hurry into Evensong,' said Julian, for the bell had now stopped. 'Are you coming or do you feel it would upset you?'

'Upset me?' I saw that it was no use trying to convince Julian that I was not heartbroken at the news of his engagement. 'No, I don't think it will upset me.' Perhaps the consciousness that I was already an orphan and not likely to be a widow was enough cause for melancholy, I thought, as I put my basket down on the pew beside me. . . .

After the service I went home and cooked my fish. Cod seemed a suitable dish for a rejected one and I ate it humbly without any kind of sauce or relish.

Barbara Pym, Excellent Women (London: Jonathan Cape, Ltd., 1952; New York: E.P. Dutton, Inc., 1978; Perennial Library, Harper & Row, 1980), pp. 10, 133-134.

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'What are we having for supper?' asked her husband.

'Flora is in the kitchen unpacking some of the china. We could open a tin,' added Jane, as if this were a most unusual procedure, which it most certainly was not. 'Indeed, I think we shall probably have to, but I know we've got some coffee somewhere if only we can find it in time. Will he be bringing Mrs. Lomax with him?'

'No, he is not married as far as I know,' said Nicholas vaguely, 'though it is some time since we've met. Our conversation yesterday was mostly about parish matters. I remember at Oxford he rather tended towards celibacy.'

'I dare say he was a spectacled young man with a bad complexion,' said Jane. 'He may have thought there was not much hope for him, so he became High Church.'

'Now we must have something nice to eat,' said Fabian, studying the menu. 'What would you like, my dear?'

Prudence chose what she would have, perhaps more carefully than a woman truly in love would have done, and Fabian made his choice, which was equally deliberate and not quite the same as hers.

The chicken will have that wonderful sauce with it, thought Prudence, looking into Fabian's eyes.

Barbara Pym, Jane and Prudence (London: Jonathan Cape, Ltd., 1953; New York: E.P. Dutton, Inc., 1981; Perennial Library, Harper & Row, 1982), pp. 16, 101-102.

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'Most African tribes are very fond of meat when they can get it,' said Tom.

'Yes, and many of them relish even putrescent meat,' said Alaric solemnly.

'Do they understand the principles of cooking as we know it?' asked Rhoda.

'Oh, yes, a good many of them do,' said Alaric. 'In some very primitive societies, though, they would just fling the unskinned carcase on the fire and hope for the best.'

'Yes, like that film of the Australian aborigines we saw at the Anthropology Club,' said Deirdre. 'They flung a kangaroo on the fire and cooked it like that.'

'Now who would like some potato salad?' said Rhoda, feeling that there was something a little unappatizing about the conversation. She had imagined that the presence of what she thought of as clever people would bring about some subtle change in the usual small talk. The sentences would be like bright jugglers' balls, spinning through the air and being deftly caught and thrown up again. But she saw now that the conversation could also be compared to a series of incongruous objects, scrubbing-brushes, dish-cloths, knives, being flung or hurtling rather than spinning, which were sometimes not caught at all but fell to the ground with resounding thuds.

'I wrote to you for your birthday last year -- did you get it?'

'Oh, yes, thank you.' He remembered now, such a very long letter, full of the daily trivia which can be so fascinating or so tedious according to the feelings of the recipient towards the writer.

'You didn't answer, so I wondered. I expect you were busy.'

'Yes, there was the election of a new chief and trouble among the plantation workers, and we were cut off by the rains for six weeks -- oh, and various other things.'

'You always have such grand excuses, much grander than anybody else's,' she smiled. 'You didn't really need the "various other things", did you, Tom?'

He marvelled, as he had done before, at the sharpness of even the nicest women.

Barbara Pym, Less Than Angels (London: Jonathan Cape, Ltd. 1955, 1978; New York: E.P. Dutton, Inc., 1980; Perennial Library, Harper & Row, 1982), pp. 146-147, 183.

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Keith now began to open his heart to me, to tell me his life history from the early days in Leicester up to the present moment. The little flat voice went relentlessly on, hardly allowing me even a formal murmur of sympathy or astonishment.

I began to feel a little drowsy -- I may even actually have closed my eyes -- but really it was better to keep them open, for only by resting them on the beauty of Keith's face could I forget that he was really rather a bore. Yet the recognition of this fact was a kind of solace, and seemed to bring Piers's world nearer to my own, where people seldom looked like Keith but were often as boring.

'You could give us the general gist of the conversation,' said Piers, 'though such accounts are usually improved by an imaginative retelling.'

'Oh, there will be no necessity for that, I can assure you!' said Mr. Bason, his voice becoming shrill with indignation. 'I heard every word, as I could hardly have failed to. Father Thames likes his glass of Tio Pepe before dinner -- as who does not? And I was about to take the decanter in to him, having cleaned it -- not washed it, I hasten to add -- during his holiday, when I became aware of voices coming through the open door of the study.'

'Whereupon you became rooted to the spot, as one naturally would,' Rodney suggested.

'Well, I could hardly move, could I, or my presence would have become known and general embarrassment would have ensued. I had to stand there outside the door with the decanter in my hand. Ransome must have slipped into the room without my realizing it, for the first thing I heard was his voice saying, "Father, I feel I ought to tell you that I have decided to get married." Father Thames is a little deaf in the right ear, you know, and Ransome's tone was of such a loudness that I judged him to be standing on Father Thames's right. "Married, did you say?" Father Thames repeated. "Yes," said Ransome. Then there was silence for a moment, during which Father Thames must have made some movement of surpise or disgust, for he then said, "Well, Ransome, this is a shock, I must say. No sooner is my back turned than this happens. It is really too bad. First it was the South India business and doubts about the validity of Anglican Orders, and now this. Oh, it is too bad, too bad." ' Mr. Bason paused and waited as if for applause.

I felt he had been rather overacting the part of Father Thames, though I could believe that the conversation had in general been faithfully reported.

Barbara Pym, A Glass of Blessings (London: Jonathan Cape, Ltd., 1958; New York: E.P. Dutton, Inc., 1980; Perennial Library, Harper & Row, 1981), pp. 217, 237-238.

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'It will be a relief to get away from here,' Viola said. 'I find it painful being so near him.'

Dulcie suddenly wished that she had brought her knitting. There was that look about Viola that presaged the outpouring of confidences. It would have added a cosiness to the occasion -- hot coffee, purring gas-fire, women knitting and talking. Or, rather, one talking while the other knitted in a kind of wildness and desperation, yet with the satisfaction of seeing a sleeve grow.

There was a young woman sitting at a table with catalogs spread out on it and a visitors' book open. Dulcie noticed the names of one or two art critics, but not, as she had hoped, that of Aylwin Forbes. And indeed why should he be here? He had no particular interest in modern art, as far as she knew. The young woman seemed a more elegant version of herself, rather as Dulcie might have looked if some woman's magazine had taken her in hand. The fair hair was elegantly folded into kind of a pleat at the back of the head, the eyes shadowed with blue, and the fingernails painted with a pearly pink varnish. Dulcie turned away and sighed. It was a little upsetting to see what one might have been.

Barbara Pym, No Fond Return of Love (London: Jonathan Cape, Ltd., 1961; New York: E.P. Dutton, Inc., 1982; Perennial Library, Harper & Row, 1984), pp. 57, 85-86.

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'Reading, were you?' Rupert picked up the book which lay on the little table by the fire. It turned out to be the poems of Tennyson, bound in green morocco. Could she really have been reading that? he wondered, looking around for the novel stuffed behind a cushion.

'Yes, but I was just going to make some coffee,' said Ianthe. 'Would you like some?'

How convenient women were, Rupert thought, accepting her offer, the way they were always 'just going' to make coffee or tea or perhaps had just roasted a joint in the oven or made a cheese souffle.

'What will your husband think?' Ianthe asked tentatively.

'Mark? Oh, he probably won't notice. He is not of this world, you know, in some ways we're so far apart. I'm the sort of person who wants to do everything for the people I love and he is the sort of person who's self-sufficient, or seems to be....' she paused. 'Then there's Faustina.'

Faustina? Ianthe was puzzled for a moment. Oh the cat, she thought but, perhaps wisely, didn't say it. Instead she remarked that cats were usually considered to be particularly self-sufficient sort of animals.

'But they aren't always,' said Sophia. 'I feel sometimes that I can't reach Faustina as I've reached other cats. And somehow it's the same with Mark.'

'Oh dear,' Ianthe heard herself saying, perhaps feebly, she felt, but it was difficult to know how best to express her sympathy.

Barbara Pym, An Unsuitable Attachment (London: Macmillan Publishers, 1982; New York, E.P. Dutton, Inc., 1982; Perennial Library, Harper & Row, 1983), pp. 87, 99.

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