Belloc liked to aver that you belonged to the flower of the bourgeoisie if you knew the maiden names of your four great-grandmothers.In that respect, but in no other, I belong to the flower of the bourgeoisie — the maiden names of my four great-grandmothers are Hannah Sophia Dahmann and Malinda A. Matthews (paternal side), Grace Albina Racine and Marie Louise Benoit (maternal side).
"A peculiar anthologic maze, an amusing literary chaos, a farrago of quotations, a mere olla podrida of quaintness, a pot pourri of pleasant delites, a florilegium of elegant extracts, a tangled fardel of old-world flowers of thought, a faggot of odd fancies, quips, facetiae, loosely tied" (Holbrook Jackson, Anatomy of Bibliomania) by a "laudator temporis acti," a "praiser of time past" (Horace, Ars Poetica 173).
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Saturday, August 31, 2024
The Flower of the Bourgeoisie
A.N. Wilson, Hilaire Belloc (New York: Athenaeum, 1984), p. 6: