Muriel Spark, 1918-2006

From A Far Cry from Kensington, here are Mrs. Hawkin’s reflections upon the upper and the ordinary classes:

I will say, now, that I learned a lot about upper class habits while I was with Mackintosh & Tooley. In the end I concluded that it was better to belong to the ordinary class. For the upper class could not live, would disintegrate, without the ordinary class, while the latter can get on very well on its own.

On the power of a pair of well-worn shoes, also, from A Far Cry from Kensington:

The sadness of these last gatherings of personal effects, the sifting and sorting and parcelling-up, is more inexpressible than the funeral, where at least there is a fixed rite, there are words, the coffin has a shape and the grave a certain depth, and even the sorrow of the mourners has some silent eloquence if only conveyed and formally interpreted by their standing still. But the grief which is latent in relics like Wanda’s pair of worn shoes has no equivalent at all.

For a rumination on the peculiar force of groups in Muriel Spark’s books, see Caleb Crain’s “Group and Church.”

The Guardian’s obituary: Dame Muriel Spark