Howards End: Chapters 1–5

Why did we settle that their house would be all gables and wiggles, and their garden all gamboge-coloured paths?

Their house was in Wickham Place, and fairly quiet, for a lofty promontory of buildings separated it from the main thoroughfare.

One had the sense of a backwater, or rather of an estuary, whose waters flowed in from the invisible sea, and ebbed into a profound silence while the waves without were still beating.

Though the promontory consisted of flats—expensive, with cavernous entrance halls, full of concierges and palms—it fulfilled its purpose, and gained for the older houses opposite a certain measure of peace.

The affections are more reticent than the passions, and their expression more subtle.

You would say the wrong thing; to a certainty you would. In your anxiety for Helen’s happiness you would offend the whole of these Wilcoxes by asking one of your impetuous questions—not that one minds offending them.

I understand it, but most good people would think you mad. Imagine how disconcerting for Helen!

But it was no moment to expound the personal nature of love.

Its very situation—withdrawn a little behind the facile splendours of St. Pancras—implied a comment on the materialism of life.

Most complacently did Mrs. Munt rehearse her mission.

It was before the passing of the Deceased Wife’s Sister Bill, so Mrs. Munt could without impropriety offer to go and keep house at Wickham Place.

Her own fortune was invested in Home Rails, and most ardently did she beg her niece to imitate her.

Without replying, he turned round in his seat, and contemplated the cloud of dust that they had raised in their passage through the village. It was settling again, but not all into the road from which he had taken it. Some of it had percolated through the open windows, some had whitened the roses and gooseberries of the wayside gardens, while a certain proportion had entered the lungs of the villagers.

Mrs. Munt tried to divest herself of her rugs.

She possessed to a remarkable degree the power of distorting the past, and before many days were over she had forgotten the part played by her own imprudence in the catastrophe.

She had liked giving in to Mr. Wilcox, or Evie, or Charles; she had liked being told that her notions of life were sheltered or academic; that Equality was nonsense, Votes for Women nonsense, Socialism nonsense, Art and Literature, except when conducive to strengthening the character, nonsense.

“I am swathed in cant,” she thought, “and it is good for me to be stripped of it.”

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 an equal opportunity.

Temperance, tolerance, and sexual equality were intelligible cries to them; whereas they did not follow our Forward Policy in Tibet with the keen attention that it merits, and would at times dismiss the whole British Empire with a puzzled, if reverent, sigh.

They were not “English to the back-bone,” as their aunt had piously asserted.

The more earnest members of his family never forgave him, and knew that his children, though scarcely English of the dreadful sort, would never be German to the back-bone.

Her brain darted up and down; it grew pliant and strong.

In character she resembled her sister, but she was pretty, and so apt to have a more amusing time.

He was now an intelligent man of sixteen, but dyspeptic and difficile.

It will be generally admitted that Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony is the most sublime noise that has ever penetrated into the ear of man.

Whether you are like Mrs. Munt, and tap surreptitiously when the tunes come—of course, not so as to disturb the others—or like Helen, who can see heroes and shipwrecks in the music’s flood; or like Margaret, who can only see the music; or like Tibby, who is profoundly versed in counterpoint, and holds the full score open on his knee...

Much did she censure the attenuated Cupids who encircle the ceiling of the Queen’s Hall, inclining each to each with vapid gesture, and clad in sallow pantaloons, on which the October sunlight struck. “How awful to marry a man like those Cupids!” thought Helen.

Much did she censure the attenuated Cupids who encircle the ceiling of the Queen’s Hall, inclining each to each with vapid gesture, and clad in sallow pantaloons, on which the October sunlight struck.

Much did she censure the attenuated Cupids who encircle the ceiling of the Queen’s Hall, inclining each to each with vapid gesture, and clad in sallow pantaloons, on which the October sunlight struck.

Applause, and a round of “wunderschoning” and pracht volleying from the German contingent.

Most ladies would have laughed, but Margaret really minded, for it gave her a glimpse into squalor. To trust people is a luxury in which only the wealthy can indulge; the poor cannot afford it.

He was just in time to catch them at the swing-door, and he received a pretty smile from the German girl and a fine bow from her cavalier.

The trust that they had reposed in him was trivial, but he felt that it cancelled his mistrust for them, and that probably he would not be “had” over his umbrella.

Oh, to be well informed, discoursing at ease on every subject that a lady started!

To the right the fantastic sky-line of the flats towered black against the hues of evening; to the left the older houses raised a square-cut, irregular parapet against the grey.

He took it from her, murmured a few words of thanks, and then fled, with the lilting step of the clerk.

“I dare say it is all for the best,” opined Mrs. Munt.

“Better that he had,” said Helen stoutly.

He warmed the teapot—almost too deftly—rejected the orange pekoe that the parlour-maid had provided, poured in five spoonfuls of a superior blend, filled up with really boiling water, and now called to the ladies to be quick or they would lose the aroma.

Bursts of disloyal laughter—you must remember that they are half German—greeted these suggestions, and Margaret said pensively, “How inconceivable it would be if the Royal Family cared about Art.”