Word: spinsterism
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...people who have written books about Bernard Shaw, or ever will, God-fearing Tory Blanche Patch, spinster daughter of a Church of England clergyman, had the best chance to observe her subject. For the last 30 years of his life, she was his private secretary. What gives her book its own rare fascination is the fact that, as Secretary Patch puts it herself, she was never "swept away...
...Victorian squire's spinster daughter will continue to go to church. But "no Labor people will go. . . because going to church means you are Conservative. The bell-ringers may continue because of the pleasure of ringing and because they admire Winston Churchill. The schoolmistress will not go . . . because being semi-educated and class-conscious, she has 'theories' about religion and regards the parson as too dogmatic...
...Bloomgarden) is a strikingly new kind of Lillian Hellman play. The plot is not at all striking and is secondary to the people; the people are pretty average people, neither vipers nor vixens. The scene is the South-an elegant summer boarding house run by a wellborn, middle-aged spinster. The guests are largely people of her own generation and kind-fiberless, frustrated people: a quiet, cynical drinker who has never married; a quiet-seeking general married to a fool; a confused young man halfheartedly about to marry the spinster's French niece...
Into this world after 23 years away from it, bursts the spinster's girlhood beau-a selfish, tinny charmer (Fredric March) who dabbles at art and meddles in lives-with the rich wife who knows him for what he is and even puts up with all he isn't. He buzzes, jollies, flirts, cajoles, tipsily involves the French niece in a minor small-town scandal. Though baseless in itself, the scandal manages to shake up the other people into auditing their close-to-bankrupt lives...
Died. Agnes Repplier, 95, leading U.S. woman essayist; in Philadelphia. A cat-loving, chain-smoking spinster, she began writing at 30. To U.S. readers, who never put much store by the polite, personal essay, she managed to convey the impression that she was from another country. But she acquired an audience that remained fond of her well-bred talent for taking graceful potshots at varied targets...