Beverley Nichols Quotes

Let us be honest: most of us rather like our cats to have a streak of wickedness. I should not feel quite easy in the company of any cat that walked around the house with a saintly expression.

Long experience has taught me that people who do not like geraniums have something morally unsound about them. Sooner or later you will find them out; you will discover that they drink, or steal books, or speak sharply to cats. Never trust a man or a woman who is not passionately devoted to geraniums.

We both know, you and I, that if all men were gardeners, the world at last would be at peace.

Do you ever find yourself bursting into a sort of lunatic laughter at the sheer prettiness of things?

A garden without cats, it will be generally agreed, can scarcely deserve to be called a garden at all...much of the magic of the heather beds would vanish if, as we bent over them, there was no chance that we might hear a faint rustle among the blossoms, and find ourselves staring into a pair of sleepy green eyes.

Marriage is a book in which the first chapter is written in poetry and the remaining chapters in prose.

To be overcome by the fragrance of flowers is a delectable form of defeat.

When one thinks of all the people who support or have supported Fascism, one stands amazed at their diversity. What a crew! Think of a programme which at any rate for a while could bring Hitler, Petain, Montagu Norman, Pavelitch, William Randolph Hearst, Streicher, Buchman, Ezra Pound, Juan March, Cocteau, Thyssen, Father Coughlin, the Mufti of Jerusalem, Arnold Lunn, Antonescu, Spengler, Beverley Nichols, Lady Houston, and Marinetti all into the same boat! But the clue is really very simple. They are all people with something to lose, or people who long for a hierarchical society and dread the prospect of a world of free and equal human beings. Behind all the ballyhoo that is talked about ‘godless’ Russia and the ‘materialism’ of the working class lies the simple intention of those with money or privileges to cling to them. Ditto, though it contains a partial truth, with all the talk about the worthlessness of social reconstruction not accompanied by a ‘change of heart’. The pious ones, from the Pope to the yogis of California, are great on the’ change of heart’, much more reassuring from their point of view than a change in the economic system.

Well, I love geraniums, and anybody who does not love geraniums must obviously be a depraved and loathsome person.

They came on one of April's most brilliant days--a day as sparkling as a newly-washed lemon...a day when even the shadows were a melange of blue and orange and jade, like the shadows that poured from the tipsy brush of Monet.

Often, when I have been feeling lonely, when a book as been thrust aside in boredom [...] I have lain back and stared at the shadows on the ceiling, wondering what life is all about [...] and then, suddenly, there is the echo of the swinging door, and across the carpet, walking with the utmost delicacy and precision, stalks Four or Five or Oscar. He sits down on the floor beside me, regarding my long legs, my old jumper, and my floppy arms, with a purely practical interest. Which part of this large male body will form the most appropriate lap? Usually he settles for the chest. Whereupon he springs up and there is a feeling of cold fur [...] and the tip of an icy nose, thrust against my wrist and a positive tattoo of purrs. And I no longer wonder what life is all about.

For a garden is a mistress, and gardening is a blend of all the arts, and if it is not the death of me, sooner or later, I shall be much surprised.

...a cyclamen that looks like a flight of butterflies, frozen for a single, exquisite moment in the white heart of Time...

I think it is silly to be amateur about anything when one has an opportunity of learning.

The one thing of which we are certain, in an uncertain universe, is that energy is never lost. It is transformed, but it never disappears.

I want to wear out,' he [Oldfield] said very softly. 'To wear out. Not to rust out.

One of the many reasons why gardens are increasingly precious to us in this day and age is that they help us to escape from the tyranny of speed. Our skies are streaked with jets, our roads have turned to race-tracks, and in the cities the crowds rush to and fro as though the devil were at their heels. But as soon as we open the garden gate, Time seems almost to stand still, slowing down to the gentle ticking of the Clock of the Universe.

Why do insurance companies, when they want to describe an act of God, invariably pick on something which sounds much more like an act of the Devil? One would think that God was exclusively concerned in making hurricanes, smallpox, thunderbolts, and dry rot. They seem to forget that He also manufactures rainbows, apple-blossom, and Siamese kittens. However, that is, perhaps, a diversion.

Where the piano is, there is one's treasure, as far as I am concerned....nothing, surely, is more delightful than sitting down at the piano on a summer day, and playing Chopin or Debussy while the natural sunlight drifts over one's shoulders through the vines outside, creating a filigree of shadow in the printed page...a shifting pattern of ghostly leaf and blossom that dances to the mood of the music.

There are a thousand 'greatest' melodies, just as there are a thousand 'greatest' poems and a thousand 'greatest' pictures, because there are a thousand moods in the mind of man when a certain note rings with the most clarity--when a certain design is most sharply silhouetted against the changing curtain of his mind.

When Mrs. Pattern first came into my life, she was gossiping in the lane with a nursemaid who was wheeling a perambulator containing a baby of exceptional repulsiveness.Babies, as all bachelors will agree, should not be allowed at large unless they are heavily draped, and fitted with various appliances for absorbing sound and moisture. If young married persons persist in their selfish pursuit of populating the planet, they should be compelled to bear the consequences. They should be shut behind high walls, clutching the terrible bundles which they have brought into the world, and when they emerge into society, if they insist on bringing these bundles with them, they should see that they are properly cloaked, muted, sealed up and, above all, dry. They should not wave them about in the streets to the alarm of sensitive persons who are used to the company of Siamese cats.

The seed of a blue lupin will usually produce a blue lupin. But the seed of a blue-eyed man may produce a brown-eyed bore...especially if his wife has a taste for gigolos.

On and on we wander in these pages--and we never reach the point because, happily, there is no point to reach.

If these are the achievements of man, give me the achievements of geraniums.

There is something dead about a lawn which has never been shadowed by the swift silhouette of a dancing kitten.

The low lintels of the cottage have many disadvantages, but they have one supreme advantage. They afford an immediate topic of conversation. They make things start, quite literally, with a bang.

By the way, the best place to find names for fictional characters, if you are ever foolish enough to write a novel, is in a Bradshaw or an ABC. All the nicest people always sound like railway stations.

...If you are picking a bunch of mixed flowers, and if you happen to see, over in a corner, a small, sad, neglected-looking pink or paeony that is all by itself and has obviously never had a chance in life, you have not the heart to pass it by, to leave it to mourn alone, while the night comes on. You have to go back and pick it, very carefully, and put it in the centre of the bunch among its fair companions, in the place of honour.

It seemed to me that a great many fences had been put up all over the world, in the long course of history, that were not necessary. Fences round nations, fences round property. They were supposed to be symbols of security, but they were cheating symbols. They had a precisely opposite effect from that which was intended. They did not prevent crime, they incited it; they led not to peace but to war. A world without fences would be a better world.

Into the room, with great dignity, stalked One and Four. They had mud on their paws, and they naturally decided to sit on my lap. They smelt of moss and loam, and they both set up a slow, tranquil purr. Cats, I thought, are the best.

Some people find importance in the photographs of those titanic mushrooms of atomic poison which are periodically exploded over the world's deserts; I find greater importance in one very small mushroom which mysteriously springs up in the shadow of the tool-shed.

The Oldfields of the future are beyond hearing; they are shut up in the factories and the workshops, leading a rackety and mechanical existence, to the damage of their bodies and the peril of their souls, for the sake of an extra pound or so a week, which they promptly spend on mental or physical narcotics.

Whenever I arrive in my garden, I Make The Tour. Is this a personal idiosyncrasy, or do all good gardeners do it? It would be interesting to know. By Making The Tour, I mean only that I step from the front window, turn to the right, and make an infinitely detailed examination of every foot of ground, every shrub and tree, walking always over an appointed course. There are certain very definite rules to be observed when you are Making The Tour. The chief rule is that you must never take anything out of its order. You may be longing to see if a crocus has come out in the orchard, but it is strictly forbidden to look before you have inspected all the various beds, bushes and trees that lead up to the orchard. You must not look at the bed ahead before you have finished with the bed immediately in front of you. You may see, out of the corner of your eye, a gleam of strange and unsuspected scarlet in the next bed but one, but you must steel yourself against rushing to this exciting blaze, and you must stare with cool eyes at the earth in front, which is apparently blank, until you have made certain that it is not hiding anything. Otherwise you will find that you rush wildly round the garden, discover one or two sensational events, and then decide that nothing else has happened. Which means that you miss all the thrill of tiny shoots, the first lifting of the lids of wallflowers, the first precious gold of the witch-hazel, the early spear of the snowdrop.

It makes me happy to think that not one single suggestion of Our Rose's has ever been adopted. Needless to say, when the water garden was eventually made, she claimed that it was all her own idea, merely because of the 'gleam' which she had 'seen,' out on the bare earth, that desolate day in January. She even suggested that she should be photographed with it, stretching out her hands for a lily. But if Our Rose is ever photographed with my pool, she will be well inside it, and she will be stretching out her hands for help.

Having obtained your design, and buried your rocks, your next task is to exercise phenomenal restraint about the things which you put in. I have always been a fervent advocate of birth-control, but since I have been the owner of a rock garden my fervour has increased a hundred-fold. The prolificacy of the common saxifrage is positively embarrassing. The speed with which the rock rose reproduces itself brings a blush to the cheek. Violas appear to have absolutely no self-control, and as for the alyssum . . . well, if we behaved like the alyssum, Australia would be over-populated before the year is out.

No—uh—no, I’m good.” I hold up a sleeve of crackers. “You were right, Paige isn’t feeling well. I thought I’d get her something to eat.” Lame lame lame lame. She’s going to see right through this whole cracker ploy for what it is. Attempts to settle her pregnant daughter’s stomach. Mrs. Nichols lets out an audible sigh as her brow puckers in sympathy. “Poor thing. Those cramps have always been such a nightmare. For that reason alone, I wish she’d remained on the Pill.” For the second time in as many days, everything stops. My breathing. My heart. And I’m pretty sure the couple seconds it takes for her words to register and their meaning to sink in, time grinds to a halt too. Paige’s mother chokes back a laugh as she takes in my expression. “Oh dear, weren’t you supposed to know that I knew my daughter was on the Pill? Or is it me talking about a woman’s cycle that embarrassed you?” she asks, a smile tugging at the corners of her mouth. I

It was not till I experimented with seeds plucked straight from a growing plant that I had my first success...the first thrill of creation...the first taste of blood. This, surely, must be akin to the pride of paternity...indeed, many soured bachelors would wager that it must be almost as wonderful to see the first tiny crinkled leaves of one's first plant as to see the tiny crinkled face of one's first child.

Chapter Four   Mitch   The following day, I arrive at Paige’s house shortly before eleven in the morning. When Mrs. Nichols answers the door and ushers me in, she’s all big smiles and warm greetings. It’s obvious she still doesn’t know I knocked up her only daughter. As

You cannot have too many aconites. They cost, as I said before, about fifty shillings a thousand. A thousand will make a brave splash of colour, which lasts a month. If you can afford ten thousand, you are mad not to buy them. There are so many exciting places you can put them. . . in the hollow of a felled tree, by the border of a pond, in a circle round a statue, or immediately under your window, so that you can press your nose against the glass, when it is too cold to go out, and stare at them, and remember that spring is on its way.

The one thing with which you must not adorn [syllabub] is a bottled cherry. Bottled cherries are the quintessence of nastiness in whatever form they are served, tasting of mouth-wash and recalling the lipsticks of undesirable barmaids.

...the Indian boy is the result of a curious convolution of branches in an old chestnut; there are two perfectly formed legs, a long slim body, a small knotted head, and two branching arms... The only drawback is that in order to [see him] you have to be lying in the bath. Unless you are in a prone position, gazing out of one particular window, he refuses to materialize.... Very few other people have seen him. You cannot ask people to come up to the bathroom and lie flat on their backs in order to see the little Indian boy. It would make them gloomy and suspicious, particularly if they were females. 'If you come up and lie down in the bathroom I will show you my little Indian boy....' No. Definitely not. Out.

It is rather his mind has so wide a range, and so rich a retention, that he simply cannot understand that ordinary folk do not always follow him. 'I little imagined,' he said, 'that I should find you in the posture of Sir Isaac Newton.' Oh dear, I thought, here it comes again. What on earth was the meaning of *that*? So I just said No... and went fiddling with the oil-squirter, trying to remember things about Newton.

We have already noticed two of Our Rose's most irritating affectations - her trick of calling inanimate objects 'he' or 'she,' and the way in which she says 'we' when she means 'you.' To these must now be added a third - her habit of looking rapturously into space and saying 'I see' this or that when, in fact, there is nothing there for her to see at all.

...There are all sorts of people who will tell you that worms do not mind being cut in half at all because both halves go on living - that the worms laugh it off with an airy shrug of the shoulders, exclaiming 'Oh look! This funny man has cut me in half! How amusing! Now I can go away for a weekend with myself!

If I see a scraggly lupin, I like to pass well out of its hearing before delivering any adverse comments on it. For how do we know what tortures it may be suffering? It surely can be no more pleasant for a lupin to have to appear with tarnished petals than for a woman to be forced to walk about with a spotty face. One does not say `Oh look at that awful girl covered with pimples!' Why then, should one stand over flowers and hurl insults at them? Besides, the flowers' condition may be all your own fault, which cannot be said of the girl's complexion, unless she is a particular friend of yours and you have been keeping her up too late at nights.

...He was succeeded by a gentleman who gazed at the Brussels sprouts and asked if the funny little knobs on the stalks were a form of disease. I told him yes. Eczema.

...A thing that is worth doing at all is worth doing badly... le mieux est l'ennemi du bien.

I fell to wondering if it would feel very terrible to burn one's own logs, or if the excitement of it would make up for the feeling that a tree had died? If it was a favourite tree, surely one could never burn it? To burn a branch which has whispered to you on summer nights--which has sheltered you, which you have caressed...no, that would be impossible. Besides--it is much more fun to climb the hedge that leads to your neighbours' fields, and creep round at dusk, to the old ash that was blown down last March, and gather a great bundle of wood which doesn't belong to you.

Every leaf that taps against the attic window, every thorn that nestles against the bricks, is part of a barrier that keeps the twentieth century at bay. I have always taken a dim view of the twentieth century, so that I consider this to be a laudable amibition.