Status Updates From The Adventures of Philip

Very happy to have the Pendennises back as narrators, but what was really surprising in the way of continuity (I never read anybody mentioning it, perhaps because Philip is so little read) is that this is the de facto continuation of Thackeray's unfinished "A Shabby Genteel Story"

In a word, until they gave him a peerage, he saw very little hope for the cabinet or the country.

The Duke of Double-Glo'ster I know is much richer than you are; but if he were to offer to make you a present of half-a-crown, I doubt whether you would be quite pleased.

The present lord of Ringwood was a Whig. It is surprising how liberal the Twysdens grew in the course of a fortnight's after-dinner conversation and pheasant-shooting talk at Ringwood.

Suppose that you and I, strongly inclined to do a mean action, get a good, available and moral motive for it?

Of what use keeping letters? I say, Burn, burn, burn. No heart-pangs. No reproaches. No yesterday. Was it happy, or miserable? To think of it is always melancholy. Go to!

I was reading this in an unwieldy complete Thackeray for Kindle, but have now found that there is a much better free download from Gutenberg Australia, which is in a nicer font and has a table of contents, making it much easier to keep track of where I am in the book.

When Mrs. Firmin was alive, the two poor sisters had had to regulate their affections by the marital orders, and to be warm, cool, moderate, freezing, according to their husbands’ state for the time being. I wonder are there many real reconciliations? Dear Tomkins and I are reconciled, I know. We have met and dined at Jones’s . And ah! how fond we are of each other! Oh, very!

But you see her prosperity has brought virtues into evidence, which people did not perceive when she was poor. Could people see Cinderella's beauty when she was in rags by the fire, or until she stepped out of her fairy coach in her diamonds?