Ivy and Anthony

"Ivy Compton-Burnett embodied a quite unmodified pre-1914 personality. Her jewellery managed never to look like jewellery but, on her, seemed hieratic insignia." —Anthony Powell

(Via LM Thos.)

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And Levi has some thoughts on the Anthony Powell Society...Apparently there's a collection of writings on AP's Dance by high school students(!). Here's what Nick Birns has to say:

But reading Dance so early will give these young women and men important gifts to have at their disposal throughout their lives, a gift that will never stop giving. They will have a stock of archetypes with which to associate acquaintances. When they have to talk about current politics as a way of breaking the social ice, they will reap the humour of the resemblance to uttering “It seems the nationalists have reached Peking” in 1928. They will learn how to deal unflappably with the wide range of preposterous situations, all the while facing melancholy ones with poise and resolution, having been partially made immune to the depredations of the world’s Blackheads and Widmerpools and Pamelas and Murtlocks, and made receptive to the joys of the world’s Stringhams, Morelands, Barnbys, and Umfravilles.