This selection of quotes from L. P. Hartley’s novel can be used as a research resource to direct you to some key aspects of the text. The quotes are often ‘tagged’to identify character, theme, motif etc. You can search (control & F) the page for words/phrases, characters, themes, symbols or the many motifs. My ‘tagging’ is not exhaustive but should help to some extent. Click here for some questions on the novel. The page numbers refer to my old copy of the text (Heinemann 1986).
Prologue: pp9-24. Ch1: pp25-35. Ch2 pp35-43. Ch3: pp44-52. Ch4: pp53-65. Ch5: pp66-72. Ch6: pp73-81. Ch7: pp82-96. Ch8: pp97-108. Ch 9: pp109-118. Ch 10: pp110-127. Ch11: pp128-140. Ch12: pp141-149. Ch13: pp150-162. Ch14: pp163-173. Ch15: pp174-189. Ch16: pp190-196. Ch17: pp197-207. Ch18: pp208-219. Ch19: pp220-230. Ch 20: pp231-243. Ch21: pp244-255. Ch22: pp256-266. Ch23: pp267-277. Epilogue: p278 – end.
| 9 | The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there. |
| 11 | Astrology: First year of the century Signs of the zodiac |
| 11 | Ted: the lion epitomised imperious manhood 24 own name Leo |
| M: the Virgin, the one distinctively female figure in the galaxy. My imagination was passionately hierarchical | |
| 12 | The dawn of Golden Age |
| 12 / 13 | Zodiac: The Archer and The Water Carrier. |
| 13 | Perhaps I was jealous of them. I then had the virgin to myself. |
| 15 | Morality: Sneaking would have been ‘against our code’ |
| 18 | It never occurred to that because I suffered there was something wrong with the system, or with the human heart |
| 22 | The past: The explanation of me lay there. Why have you grown up such a dull dog? |
| 23 | They belonged to your zodiac |
| 25 | He was … a snob |
| 27 | Maudsley: has a savoir-faire |
| 28 | Maudsley: well mannered, sure of himself |
| 37 | Class: 296 Brandham Hall the southwest prospect of the hall. The façade has faded from my mind. (the good side of The Hall) |
| 40 | Croquet, white flannels, hats like windmills, blond, looked so much alike |
| 40 | Mr Maudsley: trail of gold |
| M: beautiful. small curved nose … hawklike. Sudden burst of blue | |
| 42 | Deadly Nightshade : the picture of evil. Poisonous beautiful. |
| 44 | Heat: Thermometer 82 |
| 45 | Clothes: Eton collar, bow tie, Norfolk jacket |
| 46 | Class: only cads wear their school clothes in the holidays. It isn’t done. You oughtn’t really to be wearing the school band round your hat. You mustn’t come down to breakfast in your slippers. It’s the sort of thing bank clerks do. |
| 47 | Class: You must leave [clothes] wherever they happen to fall – the servants will pick them up – that’s what they’re for. |
| 47 | Hello Leo, still feeling hot? Jackets were not lightly discarded. |
| 48 | I was acutely aware of social inferiority |
| 49 | Let me take him into Norwich tomorrow |
| 50 | Hugh: going to Goodwood |
| 51 | Jealous of him |
| 51 | Marian & Mrs M: Two steel threads crossing each other |
| 52 | Marian: all soft and flouncy |
| 52 | Class / Money: how beautifully they are mended. |
| 52 | Marian & Leo: Delighting in the shared secret |
| 53 | Clothes: look well rather than wear well |
| 53 | Norwich was a turning point |
| 54 | Marian & Leo: Talk: impression of wings and flashes. … of swooping and soaring …. |
| 54 | My spiritual transformation took place in Norwich. Like an emerging butterfly. |
| 55 | I was made to stand on a chair and revolve like a planet. |
| 55 | Clothes: Robin Hood. I saw myself roaming the greenwood with masid Marian |
| 55 | Leo: I feel quite another person. 83 One felt another person, one was another person. |
| 55 | Mrs M: caught like a moth in the beam from her eye, that black searchlight. 81 A beam of that black ray. |
| 56 | I had been given the freedom of the heat |
| Long for the release of casting [notions of decency] of with my clothes, and being like a tree or a flower, with nothing between me and nature. | |
| 57 | Class / money: the expenditure had been godlike |
| 58 | Neither of [the bathing costumes], I ruefully realised, made many concessions to nakedness |
| 58 | Bathing was a pastime of the few |
| 58 | Surrendering oneself to an alien and potentially hostile element. Though my knowledge was to be only vicarious. |
| 58 | Heat: The renewed assault of the heat  |
| 59 | There was a black thing ahead of us, all bars and spars and uprights, like a gallows. |
| 60 | Ted: He … He …. He … as if to give himself more freedom. For a moment I thought he was naked. Stretched himself into an arc. |
| 60 | The river came out of the shadow of the belt of trees, Green, bronze and golden it flowed through weeds and rushes; the gravel glinted, I could see the fishes darting in the shallows. Below the sluice it broadened out into a pool that was aas bblue as the sky. Not a weed marred the surface, only one thing broke it: the intruder’s bobbing head. |
| 61 | Class: for a farmer.We don’t know him socially, of course, but he mustn’t think us stuck-up. |
| 61 | Ted: clung … haul …crouching … looked as though he would be impaled … grasped a ring |
| 62 | Ted: dark footprint on each step |
| 62 | Class: I shouldn’t put on a bathing dress if you’re not going to bathe. |
| 62 | It was disappointing to see them so fully clad. … their dresses began to cling to them and take on the soft outlines of their bodies |
| 63 | Ted: muscles bunched … powerful body …he stretched himself on the warm brickwork. … he gave himself up to being alone with his body. … the hairs of his forearm … glinted in the sun. copper breastplate. Smile … had the effect of a feather on a tiger. |
| 63 | Leo: I was suddenly confronted by maturity. |
| 64 | Marian: the Virgin of the zodiac. holding the long coil of hair in front of her. Has that man gone? |
| 65 | Leo: A labour of love it truly was, the first I had ever done. Anxious to be something to her. My thoughts enveloped her, they entered into her. I was her drying hair, I was the wind that dried it. I felt my cup was full. |
| 68 | She opened her blue eyes for him as she rarely did for anyone except, at times, for me. |
| 71 | Heat: The sun was blazing down |
| 72 | ‘Trimingham’s coming after us’, as if he were as disease or a misfortune, or the police |
| 74 | What had happened to the fifth Viscount? |
| 74 | The Maudsleys were the inheritors of the Trimingham renown. … And if they, so did their guests, including myself. [A glory] began to identify itself with the zodiac, my favourite religion. |
| 76 | Life was meant to test a man, bring out his courage, initiative, resource; and I longed, I thought, to be tested: I did not want to fall on my knees and call myself a miserable sinner. |
| 76 | I saw [goodness] as something bright and positive and sustaining like the sunshine, something to be adored, but from afar. |
| 78 | He was a lord first and a human being … long, long after. |
| 78 | Marian: a ripping girl. I’d do anything for her. 79 carry things and take messages. |
| 79 | Leo: His first message is for Trimingham. Hugh/phew/you/who |
| 80 | I couldn’t have told whether I liked the Viscount or the man |
| 82 | Class: To be in tune with all that Brandham Hall meant, I must increase my stature, I must act on a grander scale. |
| 83 | Leo: I was crossing the rainbow bridge from reality to dream. I now felt I belonged to the zodiac …. My dream had become my reality. |
| 83 | In the heat the senses the mind, the heart, the body all told a different tale. One felt another person, one was another person. |
| 83 | Heat: How best to explore the heat … how best to feel its power and be at one with it. |
| 84 | It frightened me … some suggestion of drowning …I mounted the black scaffold, which was almost too hot to touch, and looked down into the mirror which had been shattered by the farmer’s dive. How flawless it was now; a darker picture of the sky. |
| 85 | Ted: a pail of water in each hand |
| 86 | Ted: his manner changed completely. ‘Then you are from the Hall.’ |
| 87 | Class: I did not despise him for changing his tune when he knew where I came from. I carried my hierarchical principles into my notions of morality. |
| 87 | Ted: Im a working [farmer] |
| 88 | Class: I was glad to have got in the ‘mister’ |
| 88 | Message 2. |
| 89 | Heat: All the heat of the afternoon seemed to be concentrated where we stood. |
| 88 | Ted: he always seemed to speak with his whole body. 90 the physical threat that his presence always implied seemed to vibrate through the room |
| 91 | Class: sofas |
| 91 | Give her something … sounded like a disease. |
| 92 | Class: I was rather shocked that it was not a proper inkstand |
| 92 | I was a born intriguer |
| 92 | Ted: he kept it under his clenched fist, like a lion guarding something with his paw. 94 He was sweating |
| 94 | Marian: hooded, hawk-like look |
| 95 | The water trickled down my leg deliciously cool |
| 95 | Deadly Nightshade?: I welcomed the chance to revisit the rubbish heap, that grateful touch of squalor in all the magnificence. |
| 98 | Leo: Mercury. The messenger of the gods. & 99 |
| 99 | Trimingham: gave me a feeling of security |
| 100 | Like a sweet taste in my mouth.The outhouses … bathing place … straw stack … rubbish heap … were places which appealed to me in an intimate way. |
| 100 | Class: I enjoyed our triumphal progress |
| 103 | Thermometer: ninety-four. I was myself the mercury. |
| 105 | Marian: My footsteps took me round the house, away from its noble and imposing aspects … along the track that led to the abandoned outhouses. And it was there that I met her. |
| 106 | Marian: Words turned to pearls as they fell from her lips. |
| 107 | Leo: Respect of degree was in my blood |
| 107 | Marian: an enchanting smile |
| 109 | Ted: riding on the reaper. Standing with his gun. The colour of the corn between red and gold. |
| 109 | I thought tht this last stronghold would be stuffed with game; but I was wrong. |
| 110 | Ted: he was a sheaf the reaper had forgotten and that it would come back for him. A long smear of blood appeared on the envelope. |
| 110 | Leo: there was a part of me that accepted the blood and even rejoiced in it as part of a man’s life into which I should one day be initiated. I took my duties as a Mercury very seriously. I felt I was doing for Marian something that noone else could. |
| 111 | Heat: if it was not an interest in thetemperature, it might be something that corresponded in the adult mind to such an interest. |
| 113 | Leo: my fantasy of myself as Robin Hood and his sister as Maid Marian. |
| 114 | Class: the house was peppered with writing tables |
| 115 | Leo with Marian: a love scene. Rumour has it she spoons with you. |
| 115 | Heat: the thermometer stood at ninety. It might still go up. Passionately I willed it to, and seemed to feel around me the unspoken response of Nature to my plea. |
| 117 | Leo: For a time I struggled in the unfamiliar toils of moral casuistry (arguments). |
| 119 | Leo: Not Adam and Eve … could have been more upset than I was. My world of high intense emotions collapsing around me. |
| 119 | Marian: the Virgin of the Zodiac. |
| 120 | Leo & Nature: the sun caught me in its fierce embrace. The stalks … showed a band of dirt yellow where the sun had scorched them. The water was almost lost to view beneath the trailing weeds. Water lilies stuck up awkwardly. The sun had … changed the colour of my thoughts. |
| 121 | Leo: Pity … was a way of looking down on people and I wanted to look up. |
| 125 | So spooning was natural! |
| 127 | Ted & Marian: I recognised [the] strength [of] the force that drew them together. |
| 127 | Leo: the straw stack … seemed to stand for something I had outgrown. |
| 128 | Nature: clouds came up |
| 128 | Class & Ted: he’s just a hitter |
| 129 | Leo: I was a stickler for codes |
| 131 | Marian: She pricked her finger on the thorn of a white rose |
| 134 | Class: being only a school cap people might think you were putting on ‘side’ |
| 135 | Cricket: as if a battle were in prospect |
| 135 | Class & Cricket: the butler, the footman, the coachman, the gardener and the pantry-boy seemed completely on an equality with us.The village team distressed me by their nondescript appearance. Perhaps the village team were like the Boers. |
| 137 | Class Trimingham & hierarchy: The word captain had a halo for me. The glory of Brandham Hall – its highest potentialities for a rhapsody of greatness – centred in him. Unconscious elegance of bearing that mad such a poignant contrast with his damaged face. |
| 139 | Mrs Maudsley: searchlight beam |
| 140 | Mr Maudsley: ascendancy of brain over brawn. |
| 142 | Ted: rather unorthodox |
| 143 | The struggle between order and lawlessness, between obedience and tradition and defiance of it, between social stability and revolution, between one attitude to life and another. |
| 143 | Marian: Her eyes were bright, her cheeks were flushed and her lips trembled. |
| 145 | I came to rest in a fairy ring |
| 147 | Clutching the ball to me, as though it was a pain that had started in my heart. |
| 149 | ‘ “c. sub.” Is correct,’ he said, ‘Besides I want to keep this card clean, and it wouldn’t be if your name was on it.’ |
| 151 | Leo Colston, who slew the Goliath of Black Farm |
| 152 | Marian: As from a throne, she looked down on us. Amused and a little mocking. In spite of the perpetual sunshine she hd managed to keep [her fingers] white |
| 153 | When other lips and other heart / Their tales of love shall tell |
| 154 | Leo: I sat in ecstasy as though listening to the music of the spheres. |
| Ted & Marian: if it wasn’t for the difference, what a handsome pair they’d make | |
| 156 | Marian: she smiled a starry smile. She was my land of song. I could … imagine not one, but a whole series of deaths which I should die for her. |
| 158 | Together we soared to our apotheosis |
| 159 | Marian: She was not of our clay, she was a goddess, and we must not think that by worshipping her we could lower her to our level. |
| 160 | The plebs. 161 that stink in the hall |
| 163 | Leo: I was free from all my imperfections and limitations; I belonged to another world, the celestial world. I was one with my dream life. |
| 163 | Marian’s facvour had been the Jacob’s ladder of my ascent |
| 164 | Ted: his mere physical presence cast a spell on me. He was, I felt, what a man ought to be. I was jealous of him, jealous of his power over Marian. He was my companion of the greenwood, a rival, an ally, an enemy, afriend |
| 165 | Leo & Ted: my catch would be remembered when his sparkling innings was forgotted. His songs of love … brought hi plenty of applause … fro a personal not a musical success. my songs of death …had captured the imaginations as well as the emotions of the audience. I had killed him, he was dead. |
| 165 | Leo: the farmyard had lost its magic the straw stack was a puerile occupation |
| 166 | Marian: the trail of gold followed her too |
| 167 | Heat: the temperature, I knew, was rising: the weather hadn’t broken after all. |
| 167 | Leo: I could not find a flaw in the universe |
| 168 | Class: why should the race of Triminghams eve`r die out? |
| 170 | Class: [Fifth Viscount] killed in a duel |
| 171 | Something of the sadness of human life came through to me, its indifference to our wishes |
| 172 | Class & gender: Nothing is ever a lady’s fault |
| 173 | The Boer’s not a bad feller |
| 175 | Marian: kindness to her old nurse |
| 175 | Heat: I felt the sun could do still better |
| 176 | Leo: the scaffolding of my life seemed to collapse. |
| 177 | Marian: her eyes blazed. She came a step forward and stood over me, her nose hawk-like, her body curved to pounce. |
| 177 | Leo: I stared at her in terror |
| 178 | Leo: You little Shylock |
| 179 | Marian: she was a fairy princess. With one wave of her wand she had transformed him. She had created him, I felt, because she loved him. Ecnchantress. She had pretended to be fond of me |
| 180 | Nature: the surface of the pool was still blue, but many more boulders than before showed ghostly, corpse-like, at the bottom. And on the other side, the shallow side, the change was greater. Before, it had been untidy, now it weas a scenee of mad disorder: a tangled mass of water-weeds, all high and dry, and sticking out form ythem, mounds of yellow gravel, like bald patches on a head |
| 180 | Marian’s duplicity |
| 182 | Ted: (cleaning his gun) the barrel was pressed against his naked chest. Well, that’s the end of him,’ said ted, and taking it by the claws, he so alive, the bird so dead |
| 185 | Ted: I don;t suppose I’ll ever make another fifty |
| 186 | Ted once more imposed himself on me with his gun, his cricket bat, his self-sufficiency, his panoply of masculine endowments and accomplishments. |
| 189 | Ted: He towered above me, as hard and straight and dangerous as the gun. |
| 195 | Leo: Foe the first time in my life I had a strong sense of obligation in a matter that didn’t really concern me – a sense of ought and ought not. |
| 198 | Marian is the only one he has seen on the path to the Deadly Nightshade overcome by an irrational dread |
| 202 | Leo: I saw how green I must look to her |
| 204 | Deadly Nightshade: its beauty … was too bold for me. … the bold black burnished berries offered me something I did not want |
| 209 | Marian: I had always been a little frightened of her |
| 227 | Ted: Once he had reminded me of a cornfield ripe for reaping; now he was like corn that had been cut and left in the sun.He looked dried up.287 the young Lord Trimingham: has colouring ‘like a cornfield; a ripe cornfield in the month of May’ |
| 238 | Marian: Her beautiful eyes searched me for a weak spot and found it |
| 243 | Marian of the zodiac, Marian whom I loved |
| 248 | What an Eden Brandham Hall had been before this serpent entered it |
| Temperature | |
| Class: unique splendour of their separate entities, stars of varying magnitudes, but each with its appointed place in the heavens | |
| 254 | Deadly Nightshade: |
| 255 | Deadly Nightshade: delenda est belladonna |
| 250 | In any case order would have been restored: social order, universal order. |
| 260 | Marian: She had made me feel that she depended on me |
| 261 | Leo: I didn’t want to be taken for Robin Hood. 81 Then, a Robin Hood in Lincoln green, with a tingling sense of imminent adventure |
| Class: Mrs Maudsley: the smile broke against my face like a cool wave | |
| 264 | Class: Trimingham can wear anything.It is a made up tie … be careful … not to look like a cad |
| 266 | Class: wrapping me in the cotton-wool of his society manner |
| 270 | Marian: Magnolia with a pink blush. This always reminds me of Marian |
| 271 | Class: Has noone ever told you not to stand with you hands in your pockets? |
| Class: Unchivalrous. Marian’s cavalier. Trimingham looks at his watch, a symbol of conventional control | |
| 277 | Love and the zodiac: The Virgin and the Water-Carrier Ted Burgess had gone home and shot himself.  |
| 281 | Class & Love: the actors in my drama had been immortals, inheritors of the summer and of the coming glory of the twentieth century. |
| 282 | Class & personality: It hadn’t occurred to me that just as we changed our language and vocabulary when we went into polite society, so we changed our natures – or at least our expression of them. |
| ? The outhouse as you call it | |
| 287 | Ted: the young Lord Trimingham: has colouring ‘like a cornfield; a ripe cornfield in the month of May’ |
| 288 | Class: Lord Trimingham was a charming man |
| Class: (Ted?) nothing is ever a lady’s fault | |
| 291 | Marian: more prominent and hawk-like nose. Had developed a great deal of manner |
| 292 | Class: I was Lady Trimingham, you see, I still am. … or 293 people might not have been as nice to me as they were. |
| 294 | Love: our love was a beautiful thing wasn’t it? … 295 the child of so much happiness and beauty |
| 295 | Leo: Another errand of love |
| 296 | Love: there’s no spell or curse except an unloving heart. A foreigner in the world of emotions, ignorant of their language |
Chapter 1
—oOo—
You are free:
- to Share — to copy, distribute and transmit the work
- to Remix — to adapt the work
Under the following conditions:
- Attribution — You must attribute the work in the manner specified, as above, by the author or licensor (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work).
- Noncommercial — You may not use this work for commercial purposes.
With the understanding that:
- Waiver — Any of the above conditions can be waived if you get permission from the copyright holder.
- Public Domain — Where the work or any of its elements is in the public domain under applicable law, that status is in no way affected by the license.
- Other Rights — In no way are any of the following rights affected by the license:
- Notice — For any reuse or distribution, you must make clear to others the license terms of this work. The best way to do this is with a link to this web page.
MR HENNEMAN'S ENGLISH LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE 