Chapter 1
Helen – Much love. Moderate love to Tibby. Love to Aunt Juley; how good of her to come and keep you company, but what a bore. Burn this
Helen – I never saw anything like her steady unselfishness, and the best of it is that the others do not take advantage of her
Chapter 2
If her aunt couldn’t see why she must go down, she was not going to tell her
affections are more reticent that the passions, and their expression more subtle
Chapter 4
It is so easy for an Englishman to sneer at these chance collisions of human beings. To the insular cynic and the insular moralist they offer and equal opportunity. It is so easy to talk of “passing emotion,” and how to forget how vivid the emotion was ere it passed. Our impulse to sneer, to forget, is at root a good one. We recognize that emotion is not good enough, and that men and women are personalities capable of sustained relations, not mere opportunities for an electrical discharge. Yet we rate the impulse too highly. We do not admit that by collision of this trivial sort the doors of heaven may be shaken open
Margaret – It’s one of the most interesting things in the world. The truth is that there is a greater outer life that you and I have never touched—a life in which telegrams and anger count. Personal relations, that we think supreme, are not supreme there. There love means marriage settlements, death, death duties. So far I am clear. But here my difficulty. This outer life, tough obviously horrid, often seems the real one—there’s grit in it. It does breed character. Do personal relations lead to sloppiness in the end?
In their own fashion they cared deeply about politics, though not as politicians would have us; they desired that pubic life should mirror whatever is good in the life within
Uncle Ernst – You use the intellect, but you no longer care about it. That I call stupidity […] you have learned men, who collect more facts than do the learned men of England. They collect facts, and facts, and empires of facts. But which of them will rekindle the light within?
the younger was more apt to entice people, and, in enticing them, to be herself enticed; the elder went straight ahead, and accepted an occasional failure as part of the game
Chapter 5
Helen would have exclaimed: “So did I. I love the gallery,” and thus have endeared herself to the young man. Helen could do these things. But Margaret had an almost morbid horror of “drawing people out,” of “making things go.” She had been to the gallery at Covet Garden, but she did not “attend” it, preferring the more expensive seats; still less did she love it. So she made no reply
Mrs. Munt – I do not go in for being musical. I only care for music—a very different thing
Margaret – She says I’m dense; I say she’s sloppy. Now, doesn’t it seem absurd to you? What is the good of the arts if they’re interchangeable? What is the good fo the ear if it tells you the same as the eye? Helen’s one aim is to translate tunes into the language of a painting, and pictures into the language of music. It’s very ingenious, and she says several pretty things in the process, but what’s gained, I’d like to know?
“I suppose my umbrella will be all right,” he was thinking. “I don’t really mind about it. I will think about the music instead. I suppose my umbrella will be all right.” Earlier in the afternoon he had worried about seats. Ought he to have paid as much as two shillings? Earlier still he had wondered: “Shill I try to do without a programme?” There had always been something to worry him every since he could remember, always something that distracted him in the pursuit of beauty
Margaret – he would trust strangers again, and if they fooled him he would say: “It’s better to be fooled than to be suspicious”—that the confidence trick is the work of men, but the want-of-confidence trick is the work of the devil
Chapter 6
Obscurely wounded in his pride, he tried to would them in return
Chapter 7
Margaret – I wrote a letter to Mrs. W., and apologized for the trouble that Helen had given them. She didn’t answer it.
Mrs. Munt – How very rude!
Margaret – I wonder. Or was it sensible?
Mrs. Munt – No, Margaret, most rude.
Margaret – In either case, one can class it as reassuring
She could not explain in so many words, but she felt that those who prepare for all the emergencies of life beforehand may equip themselves at the expense of joy. It is necessary to prepare for an examination, or a dinner-party, or a possible fall in the price of stock: those who attempt human relations must adopt another method, or fail. “Because I’d soon risk it,” was her lame conclusion
who collected new ideas as a squirrel collects nuts, and was especially attracted by those that are portable
Margaret – It is so firm beneath our feet that we forget its very existence. It’s only when we see someone near us tottering that we realize all that an independent income means
The remark would be untrue, but of the kind which, if stated often enough, may become true; just as the remark, “England and Germany are bound to fight,” renders war a little more likely each time that it is made, and is therefore made the more readily by the gutter press of either nation. Have the private emotions also their gutter press? Margaret thought so, and feared that good Aunt Juley and Frieda were typical specimens of that. They might, by continual chatter, lead Helen into a repetition of the desires of June. Into a repetition—they could not do more; they could not lead her into lasting love. They were—she saw it clearly—Journalism; her father, with all his defects and wrongheadedness, had been Literature
Chapter 8
Margaret sat by him, thinking. Her mind darted from impulse to impulse, and finally marshalled them all in review. The practical person, who knows what he wants at once, and generally knows nothing else, will accuse her of indecision. But this was the way her mind worked
To be humbled and kind, to go straight ahead, to love people rather than pity them, to remember the submerged—well, once can’t do all these things at once, worse luck, because they’re so contradictory. It’s then that proportion comes in—to live by proportion. Don’t begin with proportion. Only prigs do that. Let proportion come in as the last resource, when they better things have failed, and a deadlock
Chapter 9
There was no bitterness in Mrs. Wilcox; there was not even criticism; she was lovable, and no ungracious or uncharitable word had passed her lips. Yet she and daily life were out of focus: one or the other must show blurred. And at lunch she seemed more out of focus than usual, and nearer the line that divides daily life from a life that may be of greater importance
no law—not public opinion, even—punishes those who coquette with friendship, though the dull ache that they inflict, the sense of misdirected effort and exhaustion, may be as intolerable
Chapter 10
She mistrusted the periods of quiet that are essential to true growth
Margaret – I have all that money can buy. I want more people, but no more things
Mrs. Wilcox – I should like to give you something worth your acquaintance, Miss Schlegel, in memory of your kindness to me during my lonely fortnights. It has so happened that I have been left alone, and you have stopped me from brooding. I am too apt to brood.
Margaret – If that is so, if I have happened to be of use to you, which I didn’t know, you cannot pay me back with anything tangible.
Mrs. Wilcox – I suppose not, but one would like to
Chapter 11
Her innocence! That wonderful innocence that was hers by the gift of God. Ruth knew no more of worldly wickedness and wisdom than did the flower in her garden or the grass in her field. Her idea of business—“Henry, why do people who have enough money try to get more money?” Her idea of politics—“I am sure that if the mothers of various nations could meet, there would be no more wars”
Poor Mrs. Charles sat between her silent companions, terrified at the course of events, and a little bored. She was a rubbishy little creature, and she knew it. A telegram had dragged her from Naples to the deathbed of a woman whom she had scarcely known. A word from her husband had plunged her into mourning. She desired to mourn inwardly as well, but she wished that Mrs. Wilcox, since fated to die, could have died before the marriage, for then less would have been expected of her
they avoided the personal note in life. All Wilcoxes did. It did not seem to them of supreme importance. Or it may be as Helen supposed: they realized its importance, but were afraid of it. Panic and emptiness, could one glance behind. They were not callous, and they left the break-fast table with aching hearts
When people wrote a letter, Charles always asked what they wanted. Want was to him the only cause of action
All his affection and half his attention—it was what he granted her throughout their happy married life
Evie’s fox terrier, who had passed for white, was only a dirty grey dog now, so intense was the purity that surrounded him. He was discredited, but the blackbirds that he was chasing glowed with Arabian darkness, for all the conventional colour of life had been altered
The problem is too terrific, and they could not even perceive a problem
The practical moralist may acquit them absolutely. He who strives to look deeper may acquit them—almost. For one hard fact remains. They did neglect a personal appeal. The woman who had died did say to them: “Do this,” and they answered: “We will not”
The incident made a most painful expression on them. Grief mounted into the brain and worked their disquietingly. Yesterday they had lamented: “She was a dear moth, a true wife: in our absence she neglected her health and died.” Today they thought: “She was not as true, as dead, as we supposed.” The desire for a more inward light had found expression at last, the unseen had impacted on the seen, and all that they could say was “Treachery”
Charles and his father sometimes disagreed. But they always parted with an increased regard for another, and each desired no doughtier comrade when it was necessary to voyage for a little past the emotions. So the sailors of Ulysses voyaged past the Sirens, having first stopped another’s ears with wool
Chapter 12
They were not “her sort,” they were often suspicious and stupid, and deficient where she excelled; but collision with them stimulated her, and she felt an interest that verged into liking, even for Charles. She desired to protect them, and often felt that they could protect her, excelling where she was deficient. Once past the rocks of emotion, they knew so well what to do, whom to send ford; their hands were on all the ropes they had grit as well as grittiness, and she valued grit enormously. They left a life that she could not attain to—the outer life
To Margaret, this life was to remain a real force. She could not despise it, as Helen and Tibby affected to do. It fostered such virtues as neatness, decision, and obedience, virtues of the second rank, no doubt, but they have formed our civilization. They form character, too; Margaret could not doubt it: they kept the sold form becoming sloppy. How dare Schlegels despise Wilcoxes, when it takes all sorts to make a world?
How quickly a situation changes! In June she had been in a crisis; even in November she could blush and be unnatural; now it was January, and the whole affair lay forgotten. Looking back on the past six months, Margaret realized the chaotic nature of our daily life, and its difference form the orderly sequence that has been fabricated by historians. Actual life is full of false clues and sign-posts that lead nowhere. With infinite effort we nerve ourselves for a crisis that never comes. The most successful career must show a waste of strength that might have removed mountains, and the most unsuccessful is not that of the man who is taken unprepared, but of him who has prepared and is never taken. On a tragedy of that kind our national morality is duly silent. It assumes that preparation against danger is in itself a good, and that men, like nations, are the better for staggering through life fully armed. The tragedy of preparedness has scarcely been handled, save by the Greeks. Life is indeed dangerous, but not int eh way morality would have us believe. It is indeed unmanageable, but the essence of it is not a battle. It is unmanageable because it is a romance, and its essence is romantic beauty.
Margaret hoped that for the future she would be less cautious, not more cautious, than she had been in the past
Chapter 14
He knew that this fellow would never attain to poetry and didn’t want to hear him trying
Leonard – I’m glad I did it, and yet at the time it bored me more than I can say. And besides—you can believe me or not as you choose—I was very hungry […] I never thought that walking around would make such a difference […] Looking back, it wasn’t what you might call enjoyment. It was more a case of sticking to it. I did stick. I-I was determined. Oh, hang it all! what’s the good—I mean, the good of living in a room for ever? There one goes on day after day, same old game, same up and down to town, until you forget there is nay other game. You ought to see once in a way what’s going on outside, if it’s only nothing particular after all
No disrespect to these great names. The fault is there, not ours. They mean us to use them for signposts, and are not to blame if, in our weakness, we mistake the sign-post for the destination
Within his cramped little mind dwelt something that was greater than Jefferies’s books—the spirit that led Jefferies to write them
“Then you don’t think I was foolish?” he asked, becoming again the naïve and sweet-tempered boy for whom Nature had intended him
“do, do come round again and have a talk.”
“Yes, you must—do,” echoed Margaret.
Leonard, with extreme sentiment, replied: “No, I shall not. It’s better like this.”
“Why better?” asked Margaret.
“No, it is better not to risk a second interview. I shall always look back on this talk with you as one of the finest things in my life. Really. I mean this. We can never repeat. It has done me real good, and there we had better leave it.”
“That’s rather a sad view of life, surely.”
“Things so often get spoiled.”
“I know,” flashed Helen, “but people don’t.”
He could not understand this. He continued in a vein which mingled true imagination and false. What he said wasn’t wrong, but it wasn’t right, and a false note jarred
He did not want Romance to collide with the Porphyrion, still less with Jacky, and people with fuller, happier lives are slow to understand this. To the Schlegels, as to the undergraduate, hew as an interesting creature, of whom they wanted to see more. But they to him were denizens of Romance, who much keep the corner he had assigned them, pictures that must not walk out of their frames
Chapter 15
Margaret – Are we really going to follow up Mr. Bast?
Helen – I don’t know.
Margaret – I think we won’t.
Helen – As you like.
Margaret – It’s not good, I think, unless you really mean to know people. The discussion brought that home to me. We get on well enough with him in a spirit of excitement, but think of rational intercourse. We mustn’t play at friendship. No, it’s no good
Margaret – I believe we shall come to care about people less and less, Helen. The more people one knows, the easier it becomes to replace them
She had always maintained that Mr. Wilcox had a charm. In time of sorrow or emotion his inadequacy had pained her, but it was pleasant to listen to him now
Margaret – He doesn’t want more books to read, but to read books rightly
Chapter 16
Margaret – Just horrible, corroding suspicion. One touch of thought or of goodwill would have brushed it away. Just the senseless fear that does make men intolerable brutes
Margaret – His brain is filled with husks of books, culture—horrible; we want him to wash out his brain and go to the real thing
Margaret – either some very dear person or some very dear place seems necessary to relieve life’s daily gray, and to show that it is grey. If possible, one should have both
Some of her words ran past Mr. Wilcox. He let them run past. Others he caught and criticized with admirable lucidity
Mr. Wilcox – Miss Schlegel, excuse me, but I know the type.
Margaret – I said before—he isn’t a type
“He’s very clever, isn’t he?” said Evie, who had met and detested Tibby at Oxford
Helen – Poor dear Mr. Bast! he wanted to talk literature, and we would talk business. Such a muddle of man, and yet so worth pulling through. I like him extraordinarily
Chapter 17
Mr Wilcox – You do admit that, if wealth was divided up equally, in a few years there would be rich and poor again just the same. The hard-working man would come to the to, the wastrel sink to the bottom.
Margaret – Everyone admits that.
Mr. Wilcox – Your socialists don’t.
Margaret – My Socialists do. Yours mayn’t; but I strongly suspect yours of being not Socialists, but ninepins which you have constructed for your own amusement
Chapter 18
Some twenty years her senior, he preserved a gift that she supposed herself to have already lost—not youth’s creative power, but its self-confidence and optimism. He was so sure that it was a very pleasant world
Mr. Wilcox – Self-denial is all very well as a means of strengthening the character. But I can’t stand people who run down comforts. They have usually some axe to grind
Others had loved her in the past, if one may apply to their brief desires so grave a word, but those others had been “ninnies”—young men who had nothing better to do, old men who could find nobody better. And she had often “loved,” too, but only so far as the facts of sex demanded: mere yearnings for the masculine, to be dismissed for what they were worth, with a smile. Never before had her personality been touched
the idea that Mr. Wilcox loved, obsess her before she came to love him in return
She would come to no decision yet […] Premonitions are not preparation. She must examine more closely her own nature and his; she must talk it over judicially
She, in his place, would have said “Ich liebe dich,” but perhaps it was not his habit to open his heart. He might have done it if she had pressed him—as a matter of duty, perhaps
Chapter 19
Margaret – You know—at least, I know in my own case—when a man has said to me: ‘So-and-so’s a pretty girl,’ I am seized with a momentary sourness against So-and-so, and long to tweak her ear. It’s a tiresome feeling, but not an important one, and one easily manages it
It is pleasant to analyze feelings while they are still only feelings, and unembodied in a social fabric
Helen – I knew it was impossible, because personal relations are the important thing for ever and ever, and not this outer life of telegrams and anger
Chapter 20
The breezy Wilcox manner, though genuine, lacked the clearness of vision that is imperative for truth. When Henry lived in Ducie Street, he remembered the mews; when he tried to let, he forgot; and if anyone had remarked that the mews must be either there or not, he would have felt annoyed, and afterwards have found some opportunity of stigmatizing the speaker as academic
Henry – It isn’t meant as a compliment, my dear. I just won’t have you going about in the dark
A younger woman might have resented his masterly ways, but Margaret had too firm a grip of life to make a fuss. She was, in her own way, as masterly
He supposed her as “clever as they make ‘em,” but no more, not realizing that she was penetrating to the depths of his soul, and approving of what she found there
Chapter 22
Mr. Wilcox – You’re not to blame. No one’s to blame.
Helen – Is no one to blame for anything?
Mr. Wilcox – I wouldn’t say that, but you’re taking it far too seriously. Who is this fellow?
Helen – We have told you about him twice already. You have even met the fellow
Mr. Wilcox – there will always be rich and poor. You can’t deny it, and you can’t deny that, in spite of all, the tendency of civilization has on the whole been upward
Chapter 23
Helen in those days was over-interested in the subconscious self. She exaggerated the Punch and Judy aspect of life, and spoke of mankind as puppets whom an invisible showman twitches into love and war. Margaret pointed out that if she dwelt on this she, too, would eliminate the personal
something a little unbalance in the mind that so readily shed the invisible. The business man who assumes that life is everything, and the mystic who asserts that it is nothing, fail, on this side and on that, to hit the truth. “Yes, I see dear; it’s about halfway in between,” And Juley had hazarded in earlier years. No; truth, being alive, was not halfway between anything. It was only to be found by continuous excursions into either realm, and thought proportion was the final secret, to espouse it at the outset is to insure sterility
There are moments when the inner life actually “pays,” when years of self-scrutiny, conducted for no ulterior motive, are suddenly of practical use
Chapter 24
her mind trembled towards a conclusion which only the unwise have put into words
Chapter 25
she connected, though the connection might be bitter, and she hoped that some day Henry would do the same
her senses were awake and watching, and though Oniton was to prove one of her innumerable false starts, she never forgot it, nor the things that happened there
Nothing could have exceeded the kindness of the two men. They raised windows for some ladies, and lowered them for others, they rang the bell for the servant, they identified the colleges as the train slipped past Oxford, they caught books or bag-purses in the act of tumbling on to the floor. Yet there was nothing finicky about there politeness; it has the Public School touch, and, though sedulous, was virile
Charles was absolutely honest. He described what he believed to have happened
His father accepted this explanation, and neither knew that Margaret has artfully prepared the way for it. It fitted in too well with their view of the feminine nature
“Everyone for himself,” he repeated—a maxim which had cheered him in the past, but which rang grimly enough
Chapter 26
Her surface would always respond to his without contempt, thought all her deeper being might be yearning to help him
She knew why not, but said that she did not know.
He then announced that, unless she had anything special to say, he must visit the wine cellar
Chapter 27
Margaret - I believe in personal responsibility? Don't you? And in personal everything
Chapter 28
But she crossed out “I do understand”; it struck a false note. Henry could not bear to be understood. She also crossed out “It is everything or nothing.” Henry would resent so strong a grasp of the situation
They had behaved as if nothing had happened, and her deepest instincts told her that this was wrong. For his own sake, some explanation was due
Should refuse him because his outer life corresponded. Perhaps. Perhaps, if the dishonor had been done to her, but it was done long before her day. She struggled against eh feeling. She told herself that Mrs. Wilcox’s wrong was her own. But she was not a barren theorist
When men like us, it is for our better qualities, and however tend their liking, we dare not be unworthy of it, or they will quietly let us go. But unworthiness stimulates a woman. It brings out her deeper nature, for good or for evil
Chapter 29
Expelled from his old fortress, Mr. Wilcox was building a new one. He could not longer appear respectable to her, so he defend himself instead in a lurid past. It was not a true repentance
Henry – Cut off from decent society and family ties, who do you supposed happened to thousands of young fellows overseas? Isolated. No one near. I know by bitter experience
She knew that Henry was not so much confessing his soul as pointing out the gulf between the male and the female, and she did not desire to hear him on this point
“I have”—he lowered his voice—“I have been through hell."
Gravely she considered this claim. Had he? Had he suffered tortures of remorse, or had it been, “There! That’s over. Now for the respectable life again”? The latter, if she read him rightly. A man who has been through hell does not boast of his virility. He is humble and hides it, if, indeed, it still exists
Chapter 32
He bore with Miss Avery as with Crane—Because he could get good value out of them. “I have patience with a man who knows his job,” he would say, really having patience with the job, and not the man. Paradoxical as it may sound, he had something of an artist about him; he would pass over an insult to his daughter sooner than lose a good charwoman for his wife
Chapter 33
To define it was difficult, but Margaret knew what it was not
connect without bitterness until all men are brothers. But her thoughts were interrupted by the return of Miss Avery’s nice, and were so tranquilizing that she suffered the interruption gladly
Chapter 34
One death may explain itself, but it throws no light upon another: the groping inquiry must begin anew. Preachers or scientists may generalize, but we know that no generality is possible about those whom we love; not one heaven awaits them, not even one oblivious
Margaret – I was meaning that when she was eccentric in the past, one could trace it back to the heart in the long run. She behaved oddly because she cared for someone, or wanted to help them. There’s no possible excuse for her now. She is grieving us deeply, and that is why I am sure that she is not well
Henry – And scruples are all very well. I am as scrupulous as any man alive, I but, but when in a case like this
Margaret – I deny it’s madness.
Henry – You said just now.
Margaret – It’s madness when I said it, but not when you say it
Chapter 35
She said not a single word: he was only treating her as she had treated Helen, and her rage at his dishonesty only helped to indicate what Helen would feel against them. She thought: “I deserve it. I am punished for lowering my colours.” And she accepted his apologies with a calmness that astonished him
How dare these men label her sister! What horrors lay ahead! What impertinences that shelter under the name of science!
Chapter 36
“You need us, Mrs. Wilcox, and we need you”
“Quite so,” said Henry.
“I do not need you in the least,” said Margaret.
The two men looked at each other anxiously
He had a vague feeling that he must stand firm and support the doctor. He himself might need support
Chapter 37
Something had come between them […] They could find no meeting-place. Both suffered acutely, and were not comforted by the knowledge that affection survived
Helen – I knew we should have nothing to say
Chapter 38
Margaret – Men like you use repentance as a blind, so don’t repent. Only say to yourself: ‘What Helen has done, I’ve done’”
Chapter 39
They had nothing in common but the English language, and tried by its help to express what neither of them understood
Chapter 42
“You go on as if I don’t know my own mind,” said Mr. Wilcox fretfully. Charles hardened his mouth. “You young fellows’ one idea is to get into a motor. I tell you, I want to walk: I’m very fond of walking”
As he watched his father shuffling up the road, he had a vague regret—a wish that something had been different somewhere—a wish (though he did no express it thus) that he had been taught to say “I” in his youth. He meant to make up for Margaret’s defection, but knew that this father was very happy with her until yesterday. How had she done it?
Chapter 43
Now that she had time to think over her own tragedy, she was unrepentant. She neither forgave him for his behaviour nor wished to forgive him. Her speech to him seemed perfect. She would not have altered a word. It had to be uttered once in a life, to adjust the lopsidedness of the world
Though he would build up his life without hers, she could not apologize. He had refused to connect, on the clearest issue that can be laid out before a man, and their love must take the consequence.
No there was nothing to be done. They had tried not to gov over the precipice, but perhaps the fall was inevitable: cause and effect would go jangling forward to some goal doubtless, but to none that she could imagine. At such moments, the soul retires within […] Alas! that Henry should fade away as reality emerged, and only her love for him should remain clear, stamped with his image like the cameos we rescue out of dreams
With unfaltering eye she traced his future. He would soon present a healthy mind to the world again, and what did he or the world care if he was rotten at the core? He would grow into a rich, jolly old man, at times a little sentimental about women, but emptying his glass with anyone. Tenacious of power, he would keep Charles and the rest dependent, and retire from business reluctantly at an advanced age. He would settle down—though she did not realize this. In her eyes Henry was always moving, and casing others to move, until the ends of the earth met. But in time he must et too tired to move, and settle down. What next. The inevitable word. The release of the soul
HOWARDS END: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/38374795-howards-end
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