Lady Anne Granard (or Keeping up Appearances) (1842) by Letitia Elizabeth Landon Lady Anne has fallen on hard times but the world must not see this. Also, she has five daughters, all of whom must be found husbands from the aristocracy. However, love intrudes where it should not and those daughters have minds of their own. Nevertheless, Lady Anne persists right to end in keeping up appearances. The first volume of this novel was received in New York shortly prior to the author's death. It was completed by another in accordance with the author's intentions but without those epigrammatic statements that were so much her territory. No one dies but some one is glad of it. Page 1 Opening line - a somewhat unfortunate one in the circumstances. Joy and sorrow are the inseparable companions of death. Page 1 The good and the generous action of which we feel incapable is a reproach when done by another. Page 1 Our own faults are those we are the first to detect, and the last to forgive, in others. Page 17 Nothing more indicates those tastes and habits which go so far towards both making and showing the character — as a person's sitting-room. Page 19 When we trace to their source the most important circumstances of our life, in what trifles have they originated! — a look, a word, are the ministers of fate. Page 33 There is a mania in every class to be mistaken for what it is not. Many things innocent, nay, even graceful in themselves, become injurious and awkward by unseasonable imitation. We follow, we copy; first comfort goes, and then respectability. A false seeming is mistaken for refinement, and half life is thrown away in worthless sacrifices to a set of hollow idols called appearances. Page 44 It is a notable fact that we keep ourselves most in the dark about ourselves. Page 61 Once set a strong mind thinking, and you have done all that it needs for its education. Page 64 Every one considers the world as made especially for their own purposes. Page 70 Nothing deceives its possessor like vanity. Page 71 Modern history might be told by a succession of dinners. Page 86 The first love-letter is an epoch in love's happy season — it makes assurance doubly sure — that which has hitherto, perhaps, only found utterance in sweet and hurried words, now seems to take a more tangible existence. A love-letter is a proof of how dearly, even in absence, you are remembered. Pages 106-107 Every age has its characteristic, and our present one is not behind its predecessors in that respect; it is the age of systems, every system enforced by a treatise. Page 112 Conjugal government requires its treatises. A young woman setting out in life lacks a printed guide. Her cookery-book, however, may afford some useful hints till one be actually directed to the important subject just mentioned. Many well-known receipts are equally available for a batterie de cuisine or du cœur. Your roasted husband is subdued by the fire of fierce words and fiercer looks — your broiled husband, under the pepper and salt of taunt and innuendo — your stewed husband, under the constant application of petty vexations — your boiled husband dissolves under the watery influences — while your confectionized husband goes through a course of the blanc mange of flattery, or the preserves and sweets of caresses and smiles. Page 113 Hope and experience take two different sides of an argument. Page 118 Whether wealth bring the curse of selfishness along with it, or that the leaven was in our nature, only dormant till called forth by circumstances, we are only too apt to misuse it, even as others have done before us. Page 122 Best intentions are not the best things in the world to marry upon. Page 148 While bills are being brought into the House of Commons to regulate every thing, from the sweeps crying "sweep," to "emancipation, vote by ballot, and free trade," is there no county member whose "time and talents" are devoted to "domestic policy," who will bring in a bill "for the better regulation of the marriage ceremony," and put the canonical hours later in the day? at all events, could there not be a special clause in favour of London? A spring morning there is the very reverse of Thomson's description; for "delicious mildness" read "a cutting east wind;" and for "veiled in roses" substitute "smoke and fog." The streets are given up to the necessities of life — to the milkman with his cans, the butcher with his tray, the baker with his basket; all belong to the material portion of existence. Now, marriage is (or ought to be) an affair of affections, sentiments, &c. The legislature ought to give it the full benefit of moonlight and wax-candles. Pages 158-9 Nothing is too unreasonable nor too unkind for selfishness, acted upon by vanity. Page 171 Those who have all their lives been accustomed to a cheerful and happy home, can scarcely understand the extent to which domestic tyranny is sometimes carried. Page 174 Now there is nothing that puts people out of their way more than a change from their usual sitting-room ; it is almost as bad as moving to a new house. Page 182 -- shopping ! one of the pleasant necessities in a young lady's case who is about to change her condition, filled up the morning. Page 183 But Mr. Gooch liked bright colours; and, without going the length of kindling yellow, most gentlemen like them too. I think it is the mere preference of personal vanity, on the principle of contrast, their taste is dictated by self-consideration; a woman in sombre hues does not sufficiently throw out their own dark dress. Page 187 ... the horizon of matrimony is only seen through a glass, and that darkly, if the experience of others be the glass by which we make our observations. Page 189 And no ring, if it does wither its circle, withers so utterly as a golden one. With only the false criterion of courtship to judge by, the wedded pair expect too much from each other ; and those who should make the most, make the least allowance. Tastes differ, tempers jar, trifles become important — as the grain of sand, which, nothing in itself, yet, gathered together, sweeps over the fertile plain, leaving no sign that there ever was blossom or fruit. The scar, which would soon pass, did distance or time intervene, can not heal from hourly irritation, One quarrel brings the memory of its predecessor, and grievances and mortifications are treasured up for perpetual reference. Too late, each finds out how utterly unsuited either is to the other ; they have not a feeling, a taste, or an opinion in common. Page 189 The power of young Joy, like that of young Love, does not travel far on the dusty road of life in general. Page 210 Alas! how seldom are any of us quite happy at the passing moment. Page 213 It is a very difficult thing for the most cunning, when they say one thing and mean another, to hide their wishes from one as practised as themselves ; and an awkward thing to commit yourselves in writing at all where a secret or a scheme is concerned. Page 216 The free pen, prone to pour out the suggestions of artless affection, vivid imagination, or domestic anecdote, is as much woman's especial instrument as the needle. Page 221 ... a disgust for political and fashionable society (which is, in fact, very generally to be found in those who are engaged in public offices, conscious that they do the work for which others are paid) Page 228 What a life for a free man, born to the use of dogs and horses, pure air, and wide-spreading moors! — no wonder that, although junior partner, and as modest as he was high-spirited, he trod his counting-house floor with a step vigorous and springy as the young captain of a man-of-war, for he felt that he was an emancipated slave; nay, more, a British merchant. If not "monarch of all he surveyed," he was certainly monarch of all he desired, which is probably more than any one of those mighty personages who rule mankind could have honestly asserted. Page 229 No person of fashion ever laughs out from the impulse of the heart, Page 241 The possession of beauty leads to an overweening admiration of it, and wealth gives a power of preserving this boon of nature in a manner forbidden to the poor, which will account fully for the extreme and perhaps blameable solicitude a few continue to feel on the subject. Page 245 ... everybody was much more pleased than people are in general with any lions, who are also exotics, to whom they condescend to be attentive, but refuse to be friendly; rejoicing when any little conventional informality reduces the genius, whose patent of nobility the Creator himself has bestowed, below the level of fashion, and substituting ridicule for admiration, the smile of the scorner for the approval of veneration. Page 252 ... old bachelors are fond of young girls, under the idea that they can manage them the best Page 257
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