- [First lines]
- Narrator: [Voice over] In the long summer of 1890 a young lady decided to write her first novel.
- [the face of a young child appears on the screen as she sits up in the grass]
- Narrator: She wrote a chapter a day between breakfast and bath time and delivered it to her parents in a stout tuppenny exercise book exactly twelve days later. The young lady's name was Daisy Ashford and she was nine years old.
- Ethel Monticue: [wondering if they should tip the footman loading their luggage into the carriage] Do we tipple, Alf?
- Ethel Monticue: So many ancestors, Bernard!
- Lord Bernard Clark: And many more of the same ilk scattered throughout my domaine.
- Ethel Monticue: How glorious to have so many ancestors all of the same ilk!
- Lord Bernard Clark: I'd give anything to be the real thing, like you, Bernard - to merge and mingle with people of rank, to levitate to the proper level.
- Sign on door: To the privite compartments.
- Daisy Ashford: [Voice over] As Mr Salteena ascended towards his heart's desire, Bernard thought he would show Ethel his... gloomy pile, and they spent a merry morning so doing.
- Earl of Clincham: [to the Prince of Wales] The... the gentleman before you is... is most desirous g... gaining a place on the right side of the blanket, you see.
- Daisy Ashford: [Voice over] And so, after their joyous marriage, Bernard and Ethel went on their honeymoon where they mated very well, and returned with a son and heir, a nice fat baby called Ignatius Bernhard, and six more children, four boys and three girls, some of which were twins. And Bernard loved Ethel to the bitter end, even as she grew rather a bulgy figure.
- Ethel Monticue: [in an OUTRAGEOUSLY low and throaty voice, after Bernard threatens suicide] Bernard, I implore you, don't!
- Lord Bernard Clark: Oh, tell me you love me also, Ethel!
- Ethel Monticue: I do love you also, Bernard. I love you madly. I love you with passion. You are to me like a heathen god, with your manly form and your handsome, flashing face.