I was one of those people who was completely dead-set against Kindles and all digital readers.  I love BOOKS.  Their smell — whether crisp and fresh, or old and moist — gives me a cozy, comforting feeling inside.  The fact that e-readers were directly leading to bookstores shutting down one after another made me especially hostile toward them.  Then my mom bought me a Kindle. And I get it now. I’m a traitor. I LOVE my Kindle.

One reason why I love my Kindle is the free books one can download from Amazon. This includes many books which may now be out of print and difficult, if not impossible, to find in actual, physical written word.   Tons of books have moved into the public domain and are up for grabs as digital publications, including many of the classics — such as Jane Eyre, one of my personal favorites and one e-book I downloaded immediately.

Not surprisingly, some of these now-free digital books written by authors now long-dead are virtually unknown nowadays by the great majority of people. In certain cases, this is a travesty.

One such travesty has to do with the virtually-unknown British authoress named Mary Cholmondeley (1859-1925).

Mary Cholmondeley 1859-1925

Rather than share her story right now, I am instead going to share some of the passages I’ve highlighted (yes, “virtually” highlighted) from the five or six novels of Mary Cholmondeley’s that I’ve read so far, starting with Red Pottage, her most successful novel — it was even made into a silent film in 1918.

Let me just say, these passages can in NO WAY aptly summarize this woman’s phenomenal writing abilities.  There were many, many times where I almost highlighted entire pages at a time.  These are the very bare bones of the incredible wealth of beautiful prose enveloped in Cholmondeley’s lovely, lovely, poetic stories.

I will change the names in the passages, JUST IN CASE you are going to do yourself the favor of checking out her work for yourself. Don’t want to be one of those people who ruins surprises.

 

From Red Pottage (Published in 1899):

“He had never spoken to her till this moment, but yet he felt that her eyes were old friends, tried to the uttermost and found faithful in some forgotten past.”

“Sarah had not yet wholly recovered from the overwhelming passion of love which, admitted without fear a few years ago, had devastated the little city of her heart, as by fire and sword, involving its hospitable dwellings, its temples, and its palaces in one common ruin.”

“…[instead she offered him] the paper money of her friendship.”

Someone in the book, in speaking about clergy who preach their own interpretation of the Bible: “‘As often as not texts are like bags, and a man crams all his own rubbish into them, and expects you to take them together.'”

“Only a shallow nature believes that resemblance in two cups mean they both contain the same wine.”

“‘But the sword that pierced your heart forced an entrance for angels, who had been knocking where there was no door — until then.'”

“To grow stout (fat) is not necessarily to look common, but if there is an element of inherent commonness in man or woman, a very little additional surface will make it manifest, as an enlarged photograph manifests its own defects.” (this one made me chuckle)

“The tears were in Helen’s eyes, but the eyes themselves were as flint seen through water.”

“To the end of life, Sarah never forgot Mr. Tristan, any more than the amber forgets its fly.”

“Some, in the night of their desolation, can take comfort when they see the morning-star shuddering white in the east, and can say, ‘Courage, the day is at hand.’ But others never realize that their night is over till the sun is up… The message writ large for her comfort in the stars that the night was surely waning had not reached her, bowed, as she thought, beneath God’s hand.”

“But memory only gave lurid glimpses, as of lightning across darkness.”

“There had been wind all day, a high, dreadful wind, which had accompanied all the nightmare of the day as a wail accompanies pain.”

“Hope came next, shyly, silently, still pale from the embrace of her sister Despair, trimming anew her little lamp, which the laboring breath of Despair had wellnigh blown out. She held the light before Henry, shading it with her veil, for his eyes were dazed with long gazing into darkness. She turned it faintly upon the future and he looked where the light fell. And the light grew.”

“There was a home ready made in Sarah’s faithful, dog-like eyes, which at once appealed to the desire of expansion of empire in the heart of the free-born Briton.” 

“Hope and Love and Enthusiasm never die. We think in youth that we bury them in the graveyards of our hearts, but the grass never yet grew over them. How, then, can life be sad, when they walk beside us always in the growing light toward the Perfect Day.”

 

I will stop here for now and continue another time with my highlights from the next book of Mary Cholmondeley’s that I read — Diana Tempest, which I loved just as much, if not more, than Red Pottage.

In case you are interested in reading a bit about this remarkable author, here are a couple of places to do so:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Cholmondeley

http://www.marycholmondeley.com/