Head Over Heels

A new literary quiz at irregular intervals, usually with a theme. This week: You can't keep an old man down, no matter how hard you try, and here is Moggers again with a Quiz on bouleversements - sudden, unexpected reversals, of one kind or another. In response to eight years of complaints, the extracts (with one glaring exception) are very well-known, and I am expecting record scores. Oh - one of them is a trap. Don't put too much reliance on proper names. No. 9 is a translation.

The quotations in these quizzes reflect my own tastes - Dead White Males, for the most part (Jane Austen, of course, counts as an honorary DWM). There will never be anything wilfully obscure. If you're the sort of person who sneers at the naïveté of the reviewers in the TLS and New York Review of Books, you'll recognize them at once. I welcome suggestions and insults. You'll find an e-mail tag lying around somewhere. Please put QUIZ in the subject line.

1)

    Lucy had no reaction - at least, not yet. ("Well, he amuses me," she said. "Either I'm mad, or else he is, and I'm inclined to think it's the latter. One more fuss through with you, Charlotte. Many thanks. I think, though, that this is the last. My admirer will hardly trouble me again."
    And Miss Bartlett, too, essayed the roguish:
    "Well, it isn't every one who could boast such a conquest, dearest, is it? Oh, one oughtn't to laugh, really. It might have been very serious. But you were so sensible and brave - so unlike the girls of my day."
    "Let's go down to them.")
    But, once in the open air, she paused. Some emotion - pity, terror, love, but the emotion was strong - seized her, and she was aware of autumn. Summer was ending, and the evening brought her odours of decay, the more pathetic because they were reminiscent of spring. That something or other mattered intellectually? A leaf, violently agitated, danced past her, while other leaves lay motionless. That the earth was hastening to re-enter darkness, and the shadows of those trees over Windy Corner?
    "Hullo, Lucy! There's still light enough for another set, if you two'll hurry."
    "Mr. Emerson has had to go."
    "What a nuisance! That spoils the four. I say, Cecil, do play, do, there's a good chap. It's Floyd's last day. Do play tennis with us, just this once."
    Cecil's voice came: "My dear Freddy, I am no athlete. As you well remarked this very morning, 'There are some chaps who are no good for anything but books'; I plead guilty to being such a chap, and will not inflict myself on you."
    The scales fell from Lucy's eyes. How had she stood Cecil for a moment? He was absolutely intolerable, and the same evening she broke off her engagement.





Answer

2)

    And Jacky Caffrey shouted to look, there was another and she leaned back and the garters were blue to match on account of the transparent and they all saw it and shouted to look, look there it was and she leaned back ever so far to see the fireworks and something queer was flying about through the air, a soft thing to and fro, dark. And she saw a long Roman candle going up over the trees up, up, and, in the tense hush, they were all breathless with excitement as it went higher and higher and she had to lean back more and more to look up after it, high, high, almost out of sight, and her face was suffused with a divine, an entrancing blush from straining back and he could see her other things too, nainsook knickers, the fabric that caresses the skin, better than those other pettiwidth, the green, four and eleven, on account of being white and she let him and she saw that he saw and then it went so high it went out of sight a moment and she was trembling in every limb from being bent so far back he had a full view high up above her knee no-one ever not even on the swing or wading and she wasn't ashamed and he wasn't either to look in that immodest way like that because he couldn't resist the sight of the wondrous revealment half offered like those skirtdancers behaving so immodest before gentlemen looking and he kept on looking, looking. She would fain have cried to him chokingly, held out her snowy slender arms to him to come, to feel his lips laid on her white brow the cry of a young girl's love, a little strangled cry, wrung from her, that cry that has rung through the ages. And then a rocket sprang and bang shot blind and O! then the Roman candle burst and it was like a sigh of O! and everyone cried O! O! in raptures and it gushed out of it a stream of rain gold hair threads and they shed and ah! they were all greeny dewy stars falling with golden, O so lively! O so soft, sweet, soft!
    Then all melted away dewily in the grey air: all was silent. Ah! She glanced at him as she bent forward quickly, a pathetic little glance of piteous protest, of shy reproach under which he coloured like a girl. He was leaning back against the rock behind. Great Wotan (for it is he) stands silent, with bowed head before those young guileless eyes. What a brute he had been! At it again? A fair unsullied soul had called to him and, wretch that he was, how had he answered? An utter cad he had been. He of all men! But there was an infinite store of mercy in those eyes, for him too a word of pardon even though he had erred and sinned and wandered. Should a girl tell? No, a thousand times no. That was their secret, only theirs, alone in the hiding twilight and there was none to know or tell save the little bat that flew so softly through the evening to and fro and little bats don't tell.
    Cissy Caffrey whistled, imitating the boys in the football field to show what a great person she was: and then she cried:
    -Gerty! Gerty! We're going. Come on. We can see from further up.
    Gerty had an idea, one of love's little ruses. She slipped a hand into her kerchief pocket and took out the wadding and waved in reply of course without letting him and then slipped it back. Wonder if he's too far to. She rose. Was it goodbye? No. She had to go but they would meet again, there, and she would dream of that till then, tomorrow, of her dream of yester eve. She drew herself up to her full height. Their souls met in a last lingering glance and the eyes that reached her heart, full of a strange shining, hung enraptured on her sweet flowerlike face. She half smiled at him wanly, a sweet forgiving smile, a smile that verged on tears, and then they parted.
    Slowly without looking back she went down the uneven strand to Cissy, to Edy, to Jacky and Tommy Caffrey, to little baby Boardman. It was darker now and there were stones and bits of wood on the strand and slippy seaweed. She walked with a certain quiet dignity characteristic of her but with care and very slowly because Gerty MacDowell was ....
    Tight boots? No. She's lame! O!
    Mr Wotan watched her as she limped away. Poor girl! That's why she's left on the shelf and the others did a sprint. Thought something was wrong by the cut of her jib. Jilted beauty. A defect is ten times worse in a woman. But makes them polite. Glad I didn't know it when she was on show. Hot little devil all the same. Wouldn't mind.





Answer

3)

    Among the bad threepenny pieces which had been passed off upon him, and which he kept for small hourly disbursement, was a remark that poor people were much nicer than the richer and better educated. Brian now said that he always travelled third class not because it was cheaper, but because the people whom he met in third class carriages were so much pleasanter and better behaved. As for the young men who attended Brian's evening classes, they were pronounced to be more intelligent and better ordered generally than the average run of Oxford and Cambridge men. Our foolish young friend having heard Pryer talk to this effect, caught up all he said and reproduced it more suo.
    One evening, however, about this time, whom should he see coming along a small street not far from his own but, of all persons in the world, Wotan, looking as full of life and good spirits as ever, and if possible even handsomer than he had been at Cambridge. Much as Brian liked him he found himself shrinking from speaking to him, and was endeavouring to pass him without doing so when Wotan saw him and stopped him at once, being pleased to see an old Cambridge face. He seemed for the moment a little confused at being seen in such a neighbourhood, but recovered himself so soon that Brian hardly noticed it, and then plunged into a few kindly remarks about old times. Brian felt that he quailed as he saw Wotan's eye wander to his white necktie and saw that he was being reckoned up, and rather disapprovingly reckoned up, as a parson. It was the merest passing shade upon Wotan's face, but Brian had felt it.
    Wotan said a few words of common form to Brian about his profession as being what he thought would be most likely to interest him, and Brian, still confused and shy, gave him for lack of something better to say his little threepenny-bit about poor people being so very nice. Wotan took this for what it was worth and nodded assent, whereon Brian imprudently went further and said "Don't you like poor people very much yourself?"
    Wotan gave his face a comical but good-natured screw, and said quietly, but slowly and decidedly, "No, no, no," and escaped.
    It was all over with Brian from that moment. As usual he did not know it, but he had entered none the less upon another reaction. Wotan had just taken Brian's threepenny-bit into his hands, looked at it and returned it to him as a bad one. Why did he see in a moment that it was a bad one now, though he had been unable to see it when he had taken it from Pryer? Of course some poor people were very nice, and always would be so, but as though scales had fallen suddenly from his eyes he saw that no one was nicer for being poor, and that between the upper and lower classes there was a gulf which amounted practically to an impassable barrier.





Answer

4)

    "Oh, dear," cried Beehoney, "now I recollect what you mean; but I was thinking of something very different at the time. It was not the gipsies - it was not Mr. Brad Pitt that I meant. No! (with some elevation) I was thinking of a much more precious circumstance - of Mr. Wotan's coming and asking me to dance, when Mr. Phunter would not stand up with me; and when there was no other partner in the room. That was the kind action; that was the noble benevolence and generosity; that was the service which made me begin to feel how superior he was to every other being upon earth."
    "Good God!" cried Ferret, "this has been a most unfortunate - most deplorable mistake! - What is to be done?"
    "You would not have encouraged me, then, if you had understood me? At least, however, I cannot be worse off than I should have been, if the other had been the person; and now - it is possible - "
    She paused a few moments. Ferret could not speak.
    "I do not wonder, Miss Ferret," she resumed, "that you should feel a great difference between the two, as to me or as to any body. You must think one five hundred million times more above me than the other. But I hope, Miss Ferret, that supposing - that if - strange as it may appear - . But you know they were your own words, that more wonderful things had happened, matches of greater disparity had taken place than between Mr. Brad Pitt and me; and, therefore, it seems as if such a thing even as this, may have occurred before - and if I should be so fortunate, beyond expression, as to - if Mr. Wotan should really - if he does not mind the disparity, I hope, dear Miss Ferret, you will not set yourself against it, and try to put difficulties in the way. But you are too good for that, I am sure."
    Beehoney was standing at one of the windows. Ferret turned round to look at her in consternation, and hastily said,
    "Have you any idea of Mr. Wotan's returning your affection?"
    "Yes," replied Beehoney modestly, but not fearfully - "I must say that I have."
    Ferret's eyes were instantly withdrawn; and she sat silently meditating, in a fixed attitude, for a few minutes. A few minutes were sufficient for making her acquainted with her own heart. A mind like hers, once opening to suspicion, made rapid progress. She touched - she admitted - she acknowledged the whole truth. Why was it so much worse that Beehoney should be in love with Mr. Wotan, than with Brad Pitt? Why was the evil so dreadfully increased by Beehoney's having some hope of a return? It darted through her, with the speed of an arrow, that Mr. Wotan must marry no one but herself!





Answer

5)

    And Skywatcher fell in love, as though the world had given way beneath him and he had dropped through into another, into a world of luminous clouds and of desolate hopeless wildernesses of desiring and of wild valleys of unreasonable ecstasies, a world whose infinite miseries were finer and in some inexplicable way sweeter than the purest gold of the daily life, whose joys - they were indeed but the merest remote glimpses of joy - were brighter than a dying martyr's vision of heaven. Her smiling face looked down upon him out of heaven, her careless pose was the living body of life. It was senseless, it was utterly foolish, but all that was best and richest in Skywatcher's nature broke like a wave and foamed up at that girl's feet, and died, and never touched her. And she sat on the wall and marvelled at him and was amused, and once, suddenly moved and wrung by his pleading, she bent down rather shamefacedly and gave him a freckled, tennis-blistered little paw to kiss. And she looked into his eyes and suddenly felt a perplexity, a curious swimming of the mind that made her recoil and stiffen, and wonder afterwards and dream ....
    And then with some dim instinct of self-protection, she went and told her three best friends, great students of character all, of this remarkable phenomenon she had discovered on the other side of the wall.
    "Look here," said Skywatcher, "I'm wild for the love of you! I can't keep up this gesticulations game any more! I'm not a Knight. Treat me as a human man. You may sit up there smiling, but I'd die in torments to have you mine for an hour. I'm nobody and nothing. But look here! Will you wait for me for five years? You're just a girl yet, and it wouldn't be hard."
    "Shut up!" said Lady Constance in an aside he did not hear, and something he did not see touched her hand.
    "I've always been just dilletentytating about till now, but I could work. I've just woke up. Wait till I've got a chance with the money I've got."
    "But you haven't got much money!"
    "I've got enough to take a chance with, some sort of a chance. I'd find a chance. I'll do that anyhow. I'll go away. I mean what I say - I'll stop trifling and shirking. If I don't come back it won't matter. If I do - "
    Her expression had become uneasy. Suddenly she bent down towards him.
    "Don't!" she said in an undertone.
    "Don't - what?"
    "Don't go on like this! You're different! Go on being the knight who wants to kiss my hand as his - what did you call it?" The ghost of a smile curved her face. "Gurdrum!"
    "But - !"
    Then through a pause they both stared at each other, listening.
    A muffled tumult on the other side of the wall asserted itself.
    "Shut up, Rosie!" said a voice.
    "I tell you I will see! I can't half hear. Give me a leg up!"
    "You Idiot! He'll see you. You're spoiling everything."
    The bottom dropped out of Skywatcher's world. He felt as people must feel who are going to faint.
    "You've got someone - " he said aghast.
    She found life inexpressible to Skywatcher. She addressed some unseen hearers. "You filthy little Beasts!" she cried with a sharp note of agony in her voice, and swung herself back over the wall and vanished. There was a squeal of pain and fear, and a swift, fierce altercation.
    For a couple of seconds he stood agape.
    Then a wild resolve to confirm his worst sense of what was on the other side of the wall made him seize a log, put it against the stones, clutch the parapet with insecure fingers, and lug himself to a momentary balance on the wall.
    Romance and his goddess had vanished.
    A red-haired girl with a pigtail was wringing the wrist of a schoolfellow who shrieked with pain and cried:
    "Mercy! mercy! Ooo! Constance!"
    "You idiot!" cried Lady Constance. "You giggling Idiot!"
    Two other young ladies made off through the beech trees from this outburst of savagery.
    Then the grip of Skywatcher's fingers gave, and he hit his chin against the stones and slipped clumsily to the ground again, scraping his cheek against the wall and hurting his shin against the log by which he had reached the top. Just for a moment he crouched against the wall.
    He swore, staggered to the pile of logs and sat down.
    He remained very still for some time, with his lips pressed together.
    "Fool," he said at last; "you Blithering Fool!" and began to rub his shin as though he had just discovered its bruises.
    Afterwards he found his face was wet with blood - which was none the less red stuff from the heart because it came from slight abrasions.





Answer

6)

    So Cinna went to work and told me the whole thing right through, just as it happened, only he painted it up considerable. Then he said he must start in and "'terpret" it, because it was sent for a warning. He said the first towhead stood for a man that would try to do us some good, but the current was another man that would get us away from him. The whoops was warnings that would come to us every now and then, and if we didn't try hard to make out to understand them they'd just take us into bad luck, 'stead of keeping us out of it. The lot of towheads was troubles we was going to get into with quarrelsome people and all kinds of mean folks, but if we minded our business and didn't talk back and aggravate them, we would pull through and get out of the fog and into the big clear river, which was the free States, and wouldn't have no more trouble.
    It had clouded up pretty dark just after I got on to the raft, but it was clearing up again now.
    "Oh, well, that's all interpreted well enough as far as it goes, Cinna," I says; "but what does these things stand for?"
    It was the leaves and rubbish on the raft and the smashed oar. You could see them first-rate now.
    Cinna looked at the trash, and then looked at me, and back at the trash again. He had got the dream fixed so strong in his head that he couldn't seem to shake it loose and get the facts back into its place again right away. But when he did get the thing straightened around he looked at me steady without ever smiling, and says:
    "What do dey stan' for? I'se gwyne to tell you. When I got all wore out wid work, en wid de callin' for you, en went to sleep, my heart wuz mos' broke bekase you wuz los', en I didn' k'yer no' mo' what become er me en de raf'. En when I wake up en fine you back agin, all safe en soun', de tears come, en I could a got down on my knees en kiss yo' foot, I's so thankful. En all you wuz thinkin' 'bout wuz how you could make a fool uv ole Cinna wid a lie. Dat truck dah is trash; en trash is what people is dat puts dirt on de head er dey fren's en makes 'em ashamed."
    Then he got up slow and walked to the wigwam, and went in there without saying anything but that. But that was enough. It made me feel so mean I could almost kissed his foot to get him to take it back.
    It was fifteen minutes before I could work myself up to go and humble myself to a nigger; but I done it, and I warn't ever sorry for it afterwards, neither. I didn't do him no more mean tricks, and I wouldn't done that one if I'd a knowed it would make him feel that way.





Answer

7)

    It was while he was washing and trying to prove the world reasonable that Laskell’s blood froze with the voice he heard. It came from directly below his window, from the porch.
    Laskell stood with his face covered with suds and his hands still about his neck, his scrubbing suspended. He listened to the sound and followed it .... It began very low, a human voice beginning very low and reasonable .... And then it rose to a high pitch of querulouness, going fast at first and then much slower ....
    But it said nothing. For the sounds were not words although they fell just short of words. Laskell stood there with the suds itching as they dried on his skin. His heart was frozen. The voice was terrible in its imitation of human reason. It was sad and grieved, it did not complain but simply communicated its grievance to all the world, and what made it much more frightening was that Laskell believed that he could detect more than grievance in it ....
    The voice rose and fell, making its explanations, sometimes inaudible, sometimes very loud and full. It expected no answer. But in a while it received an answer. There came the whining of hounds, puzzled, miserable. then a deep growling that broke out into a long full-throated baying, interrupted by sharp little barks. The voice rose and fell, rose and fell in its imitation of human reason, and the hounds mingled their voices with it .... and it seemed to Laskell thay they were uttering their deep unhappiness at their condition of being hounds, as if, hopelessly, desperately, they, together with the mad person, were struggling to be human.
    Laskell knew whose voice it was. And again he felt a hard rigid anger at Arthur and Nancy. For they must have known that the old man was mad, that his faculties were gone, reduced to this vocal idiocy ....
    With the speed of fear Laskell rinsed his face of the soap, dried it, and put on his shirt ....
    Laskell went down the stairs and found his way through the litle hall .... He looked out through the screen door. The old man was indeed sitting there, but he was just sitting there, rocking quietly in his rocker. He was smiling a little as he watched the three hounds lift their muzzles to his companion, a big heavy man ....
    This man was talking to the hounds, and the hounds were listening enthralled, and were answering him as best they could ....
    ‘Wurra marra.’ the man growled. ‘Wurra marra, huh? Wurra marra wirra dirra? Warra dirra. warra dirra? Way-ra dirra, way-ra dirra, way-ra dirra forrra poo-oo-oo-oo-rrr boys?’ .... and he growled and bayed at the poor boys, he pulled their long ears and chucked their heads about, and they answered him with their ecstasy of affection, communication, and hunger, their rumps and their tails never still.
    In the weeks that Laskell was to spend with the Folgers he would come to listen to this ‘mad’ conversation with the greatest pleasure.





Answer

8)

TREPLIOV [obstinately]: It’s not a bit o' use. Mr Chekhov may as well give it up first as last.
IVANOV: Why?
TREPLIOV: Garn! You know why. Course it’s not my business; but you needn't start kiddin' me about it.
IVANOV: I am not kidding. I don't know why.
TREPLIOV [cheerfully sulky]: Oh, very well. All right. It ain't my business.
IVANOV [impressively]: I trust, Enry, that, as between employer and engineer, I shall always know how to keep my proper distance, and not intrude my private affairs on you. Even our business arrangements are subject to the approval of your Trade Union. But don't abuse your advantages. Let me remind you that Voltaire said that what was too silly to be said could be sung.
TREPLIOV: It wasn't Voltaire: it was Bow Mar Shay.
IVANOV: I stand corrected: Beaumarchais of course. Now you seem to think that what is too delicate to be said can be whistled. Unfortunately your whistling, though melodious, is unintelligible. Come! there's nobody listening: neither my genteel relatives nor the secretary of your confounded Union. As man to man, Enry, why do you think that my friend has no chance with Miss Lopakhova?
TREPLIOV: Cause she's arter summun else.
IVANOV: Bosh! who else?
TREPLIOV: You.
IVANOV: Me!!!
TREPLIOV: Mean to tell me you didn't know? Oh, come, Mr Ivanov!
IVANOV [in fierce earnest]: Are you playing the fool, or do you mean it?
TREPLIOV [with a flash of temper]: I’m not playin' no fool. [More coolly] Why, it’s as plain as the nose on your face. If you ain't spotted that, you don't know much about these sort of things. [Serene again] Ex-cuse me, you know, Mr Ivanov; but you asked me as man to man; and I told you as man to man.
IVANOV [wildly appealing to the heavens]: Then I - I am the bee, the spider, the marked down victim, the destined prey.
TREPLIOV: I dunno about the bee and the spider. But the marked down victim, thats what you are and no mistake; and a jolly good job for you, too, I should say.
IVANOV [momentously]: Henry Trepliov: the golden moment of your life has arrived.
TREPLIOV: What d’y’mean?
IVANOV: That record to Biskra.
TREPLIOV [eagerly]: Yes?
IVANOV. Break it.
TREPLIOV [rising to the height of his destiny]: D’y’mean it?
IVANOV: I do.
TREPLIOV: When?
IVANOV: Now. Is that machine ready to start?
TREPLIOV [quailing]: But you can't -
IVANOV [cutting him short by getting into the car]: Off we go. First to the bank for money; then to my rooms for my kit; then to your rooms for your kit; then break the record from London to Dover or Folkestone; then across the channel and away like mad to Marseilles, Gibraltar, Genoa, any port from which we can sail to a Mahometan country where men are protected from women.
TREPLIOV: Garn! youre kiddin'.
IVANOV: [resolutely] Stay behind then. If you won't come I’ll do it alone. [He starts the motor].
TREPLIOV: [running after him] Here! Mister! 'arf a mo! steady on! [He scrambles in as the car plunges forward].





Answer

9)

    They both sat silent, with an occasional glance at one another.
    "Yes, Princess," said Mark at last with a sad smile, "it doesn't seem long ago since we first met at Sandringham, but how much water has flowed since then! In what distress we all seemed to be then, yet I would give much to bring back that time .... but there's no bringing it back."
    Princess Anne gazed intently into his eyes with her own luminous ones as he said this. She seemed to be trying to fathom the hidden meaning of his words which would explain his feeling for her.
    "Yes, yes," said she, "but you have no reason to regret the past, Captain. As I understand your present life, I think you will always recall it with satisfaction, because the self-sacrifice that fills it now .... "
    "I cannot accept your praise," he interrupted her hurriedly. "On the contrary I continually reproach myself .... But this is not at all an interesting or cheerful subject."
    His face again resumed its former stiff and cold expression. But the princess had caught a glimpse of the man she had known and loved, and it was to him that she now spoke.
    "I thought you would allow me to tell you this," she said. "I had come so near to you .... and to all your family that I thought you would not consider my sympathy misplaced, but I was mistaken," and suddenly her voice trembled. "I don't know why," she continued, recovering herself, "but you used to be different, and .... "
    "There are a thousand reasons why," laying special emphasis on the why. "Thank you, Princess," he added softly. "Sometimes it is hard."
    "So that's why! That's why!" a voice whispered in Princess Anne's soul. "No, it was not only that gay, kind, and frank look, not only that handsome exterior, that I loved in him. I divined his noble, resolute, self-sacrificing spirit too," she said to herself. "Yes, he is poor now and I am rich .... Yes, that's the only reason .... Yes, were it not for that .... " And remembering his former tenderness, and looking now at his kind, sorrowful face, she suddenly understood the cause of his coldness.
    "But why, Captain, why?" she almost cried, unconsciously moving closer to him. "Why? Tell me. You must tell me!"
    He was silent.
    "I don't understand your why, Captain," she continued, "but it's hard for me .... I confess it. For some reason you wish to deprive me of our former friendship. And that hurts me." There were tears in her eyes and in her voice. "I have had so little happiness in life that every loss is hard for me to bear .... Excuse me, good-by!" and suddenly she began to cry and was hurrying from the room.
    "Princess, for God's sake!" he exclaimed, trying to stop her. "Princess!"
    She turned round. For a few seconds they gazed silently into one another's eyes - and what had seemed impossible and remote suddenly became possible, inevitable, and very near.





Answer

10)

    I thought it over and decided what I would do. I would go suitably disguised to Limehouse and Whitechapel and such places and sleep in common lodging-houses and pal up with dock labourers, street hawkers, derelict people, beggars, and, if possible, criminals. And I would find out about tramps and how you got in touch with them and what was the proper procedure for entering the casual ward; and then, when I felt that I knew the ropes well enough, I would go on the road myself.
    At the start it was not easy. It meant masquerading and I have no talent for acting. I cannot, for instance, disguise my accent, at any rate not for more than a very few minutes. I imagined - notice the frightful class-consciousness of the Englishman - that I should be spotted as a 'gentleman' the moment I opened my mouth; so I had a hard luck story ready in case I should be questioned, I got hold of the right kind of clothes and dirtied them in appropriate places. I am a difficult person to disguise, being abnormally tall, but I did at least know what a tramp looks like. (How few people do know this, by the way! Look at any picture of a tramp in Punch. They are always twenty years out of date.) One evening, having made ready at a friend's house, I set out and wandered eastward till I landed up at a common lodging-house in Limehouse Causeway. It was a dark, dirty-looking place. I knew it was a common lodging-house by the sign Good Beds for Single Men in the window. Heavens, how I had to screw up my courage before I went in! It seems ridiculous now. But you see I was still half afraid of the working class. I wanted to get in touch with them, I even wanted to become one of them, but I still thought of them as alien and dangerous; going into the dark doorway of that common lodging-house seemed to me like going down into some dreadful subterranean place - a sewer full of rats, for instance. I went in fully expecting a fight. The people would spot that I was not one of themselves and immediately infer that I had come to spy on them; and then they would set upon me and throw me out - that was what I expected. I felt that I had got to do it, but I did not enjoy the prospect.
    Inside the door a man in shirt-sleeves appeared from somewhere or other. This was the 'deputy', and I told him that I wanted a bed for the night. My accent did not make him stare, I noticed; he merely demanded ninepence and then showed me the way to a frowsy firelit kitchen underground. There were stevedores and navvies and a few sailors sitting about and playing draughts and drinking tea. They barely glanced at me as I entered. But this was Saturday night and a hefty young stevedore was drunk and was reeling about the room. He turned, saw me, and lurched towards me with broad red face thrust out and a dangerous-looking fishy gleam in his eyes. I stiffened myself. So the fight was coming already! The next moment the stevedore collapsed on my chest and flung his arms round my neck. "'Ave a cup of tea, chum!" he cried tearfully; "'ave a cup of tea!"





Answer

1)
A Room with a View, E.M. Forster. A nice easy one to start you off, with unchanged names! Lucy is a prize chumpesss, isn't she! To do her justice, she realizes it before it is too late, and also realizes that it's her own fault for getting engaged to someone called "Cecil" in the first place. I'm sure it's a mistake no solver of my Quizzes would make.


Back to Question 1

2)
Ulysses, J. Joyce. No, this isn't an epiphany, you pot-bellied old gordelpus! [Sorry - I'm having a private conversation with Moggers, here.] Let me quote the late Prof. Ellmann: The epiphany was the sudden "revelation of the whatness of a thing," the moment in which "the soul of the commonest object .... seems to us radiant." The artist, he felt, was charged with such revelations, and must look for them not among gods but among men, in casual, unostentatious, even unpleasant moments. Thank you. You may resume your studies.


Back to Question 2

3)
The Way of All Flesh, S. Butler. This brilliant novel, and the poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins, are two of the great "What-ifs" of English literature. What if they had been published when they were completed, and not had to wait a generation .... John Galsworthy, and the "Georgian Poets," might never have existed, and the world would be a better, cleaner place.


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4)
Now Wait for Last Year, Philip K. Dick. This passage, which seems to have been copied as a half-page filler from a romantic novel Dick found lying about the house, appeared by accident in the first seventy-five copies of the first printing before it was noticed, and the presses were stopped. Seventy-three of the copies were destroyed, and one of the remaining two is now in the Smithsonian Institution. Double marks if you got this one right.


Back to Question 4

5)
The History of Mr Polly, H.G. Wells. Moggers says "Mr Polly is the most endearing of Wells’s heroes, as well as the funniest, and this is arguably the best of his novels." It's certainly up there, Moggers! I would put Tono-Bungay a little above it, but Mr Polly is certainly my favourite of Wells's novels, and has been one of my favourite books for fifty-five years now.


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6)
Huckleberry Finn, M. Twain. Moggers and I are in complete agreement on this one - HF is the Great American Novel, and no other applications will be considered at this time. Poor Huck is dragged, kicking if not screaming, into the realization, first that Jim is his moral equal - and then that Jim, superstitious and illiterate though he is, is his moral superior. This changes Huck's world-view, and ours as well.


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7)
The Middle of the Journey, Lionel Trilling. The impossible one! I bet Moggers wouldn't have known what it was, either! Here's what he has to say: "Trilling is chiefly remembered as a critic, author of The Liberal Imagination and a book about E.M. Forster. Forster’s influence is visible in this, his only novel - even to a sudden death, but, published in 1947, it is mainly about the pressures of maintaining a liberal attitude when faced with the absolutism of other creeds. Even this small episode exemplifies difficulties of interpretation in an unfamilar environment. The only other fiction by Trilling I know of is a long short story called Of This Time, Of That Place, which is pretty good. Wikkithingy says there are more stories and an unfinished novel."


Back to Question 7

8)
Man and Superman, G.B. Shaw. I don't know whether it's my imagination, but it seems to me that Shaw manages to capture and reproduce the vocal rhythms of Don Giovanni in this, one of his finest plays. Moggers rightly picks out one of Shaw's own remarks about M and S: "Of 'enry Straker Shaw says that the media commentators had been so busy going on for years about the ‘New Woman’ they had entirely failed to notice the arrival of the New Man." By the way, I put some apostrophes back, to try to make it marginally more difficult.


Back to Question 8

9)
War and Peace, L. Tolstoy. Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh! Princess Mary is about to find the happiness she so richly deserves; Nicholas is about to get his hands on the money he so desperately needs. A match made in Heaven! Incidentally, one of the very few regrets of my life is that I was never able to persuade my mother (who would have been ninety-four today) to read this wonderful book. She was put off by its absurd reputation for difficulty and obscurity, and could never quite believe me when I assured her that it was exactly the book she would enjoy more than any other in the world.


Back to Question 9

10)
The Road to Wigan Pier, G. Orwell. And this one was the trap! If you thought it was from Down and Out in Paris and London (as I did) then you have fallen right into it. I had to check before I could believe that Moggers hadn't had a brain-fart - but no such luck. Many thanks to Methuselah - I mean Moggers - for this excellent Quiz. I don't expect anyone to get a point on the fiendish No. 7, and anyone could be excused for dropping a point on this last one. If you scored more than sixteen points, put your hands up. I'm waiting .... I'M WAITING!


Back to Question 10

Don't bottle up your contempt and fury. Mail to davidjw@mindspring.com

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Last Updated: 7 October 2011