Status Updates From The Day of Small Things

Perhaps it’s rather impertinent to want to be kind to people, but there are a lot of women in the world who need comforting—

Oh, Nicole, come here—look at this book-case full of all the books I like best; books of my girlhood that I always meant to read again but couldn’t lay my hands on. I shall have a feast.’

👆what Heaven will be like 👆📚

…‘And stop there?’ said Nicole. ‘I think you’re right: these books finish a period. . . . I do like living with a writer till I become soaked in the atmosphere she—or he—creates. How much do you read at night? Only a chapter or two? Then these books will keep you happy all the summer nights;

I love books that refer to other books.

‘Just now,’ said Esmé, ‘my bed book is Elizabeth’s German Garden. I haven’t read it for years, and I’m adoring it. I love her “happy struggles and failures,” and the gardener who gave notice regularly on the first of every month! When I finish it I’ll begin the Solitary Summer, then Elizabeth in Rügen, then Fräulein Schmidt.’

Yes, I’ve got wandering in my blood. All the time I’m away I think how beautiful my home is and what a fool I am to be missing the loveliness of each succeeding season on Tweedside, and when I am at home I think of the swiftness of the passing years and how wide the world is, how much there is to see while it is still day. I

Refers to ‘The Letters of Dorothy Osbourne’. It’s a real book. Love letters.

…her mind full of homely things, details of housekeeping, of garden-making, of half-remembered sayings . . . and know nothing until she awoke to morning light. After her weary years she could not get used to the wonder of it; she never ceased to be grateful.

All the more wonderful now, she found it, to think with pleasure of bed—to undress slowly, luxuriously, to read some pleasant book for half an hour or so, click out the light, turn over on her right side, her mind full of homely things, details of housekeeping, of garden-making, of half-remembered sayings . . . and know nothing until she awoke to morning light.

It was delightful to have a house of one’s own, to order the sort of meals that agreed with one, to go to bed when one felt sleepy, in short, to have no one to consider but oneself. And the house was ceasing to be merely a house, with a certain number of rooms, each filled with so many articles of furniture, it was becoming a home, acquiring an individuality of its own.

‘She was very good friends with herself, and never minded being alone, but she was keenly interested in her neighbours.’

‘Parents must give themselves if they want to mean anything to their children.’

‘Ah, but I love a routine. It doesn’t bore me to do the same thing at the same time every day. And I like to fiddle in the house and play myself in the garden and read by the fire at nights, but that is only pleasing myself. I’d love to help a little.’

‘…I’ve always wanted a place to settle down in and now I’ve got it. If people are nice to me I shall be grateful, but I feel it won’t be very amusing for them to come here. I dare say I shall have a certain number of people staying with me, but I’m afraid I’ve got rather to like living alone.’

Me too!

‘To you and to me this is the day of small things—. Who said that? Some one in the Bible, wasn’t it? And the small things keep you going wonderfully: the kindness of friends; the fact of being needed; nice meals; books; interesting plays; the funny people in the world; the sea and the space and the wind—not very small, are they, after all?’