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Church of Virus BBS   General   Arts & Entertainment   The Assassin's Cloak « previous next » Pages: 1 2 3 4 [5]      Author  Topic: The Assassin's Cloak  (Read 17592 times) Blunderov Archon Gender: Posts: 3160 Reputation: 8.91 Rate Blunderov "We think in generalities, we live in details" Re:The Assassin's Cloak « Reply #60 on: 2011-02-07 03:09:21 » 5 February 1798 Walked to Stowey with Coleridge, returned by Woodlands; a very warm day. In the continued singing of birds distinguished the notes of a blackbird or thrush. The sea over-shadowed by a thick dark mist, the land in sunshine. The sheltered oaks and beeches still retaining their own leaves. Observed some trees putting out red shoots. Query: What are they? ~ Dorothy Wordsworth 1809 At noon today, the 5th, I found Elisa in bed, I got in: fine thighs, but a face that looks stupid and lives up to its promise; twenty-four livres. ~ Stendhal 1882 Mr [John Everett] Millais is going to paint the portrait of one of the Duchess of Edinburgh's children. The Duchess is staying with Princess Mary, Kensington Palace. Mr Millais went to see her yesterday, doubtless very shy. She offended him greatly. She enquired where his `rooms' were, evidently doubtful whether a Princess might condescend to come to them. 'My rooms, ma'am, are, in Palace Gate [Kensington],' and he told papa afterwards, with great indignation, he daresay they were much better than hers. He is right proud of his house. He says she speaks English without the slightest accent, the Russians are wonderful at languages. They say the late Czar prided himself on his good English, till he found when he came to England that, having learnt from a Scotchman, he spoke Scotch. A pedestrian who had dropped half-a-crown before a blind person said, `Why, you're not blind'! 'Oh no sir, if the board says so, they've given me the wrong one, I'm deaf and dumb'! Queer thing how fast some blind folks can walk when no one is about! ~ Beatrix Potter' 1884 Today, at the Brebant dinner, we talked about the crushing of the minds of children and young men under the huge volume of things taught them. We agreed that an experiment was being carried out on the present generation of which it was impossible to predict the consequences. And in the course of the discussion somebody advanced the ironical idea that our present-day system of universal education might well deprive society of the educated man and endow it with the educated woman: not a reassuring prospect for the husbands of the future. ~ The Brothers Goncourt 1931 The mother-in-law of Davidson (who is making a bust of me and at whose house I lunch today), a charming old lady of eighty-four, when -- on the point of lighting a cigarette after the meal – I ask her if smoking bothers her, tells us that a similar question was put to her, before 18 70, by Bismarck, in a train between Paris and Saint-Germain in which she happened to be alone with him. To which she replied at once: `Sir, I do not know. No one has ever smoked in my presence! Bismarck immediately had the train stopped so that he could change to another compartment. ~ Andre Gide 1944 [Naples] There have been newspaper accounts of urban buses seen careering away into the remote fastness of the Apennines, there to be reduced in comfort to their component parts. Trams, left where they had come to a standstill when the departing Germans wrecked the generating station, have been spirited away in the night. A railway engine, stranded in open country owing to the looting of rails and sleepers, was driven off when these rails and sleepers were quite incredibly relaid, to a place more discreetly located for its demolition. No feat, according to the newspapers, and to public rumour, both of which dwell with great delight on such flamboyant acts of piracy, is too outrageous for this new breed of robber. In the region of Agropoli small ships left unguarded have been lifted out of the water and mysteriously transported away, and portions of their superstructures have later been discovered miles inland, hidden in orchards as if they had been carried there and left high and dry by some tidal wave. In revenge, said the newspaper reporting this case, a party of fishermen raided an isolated castle in the area and went off with tapestries which they used to repair their sails. Nothing has been too large or too small – from telegraph poles to phials of penicillin – to escape the Neapolitan kleptomania. A week or two ago an orchestra playing at the San Carlo to an audience largely clothed in Allied hospital blankets, returned from a five-minute interval to find all its instruments missing. A theoretically priceless collection of Roman cameos was abstracted from the museum and replaced by modern imitations, the thief only learning – so the reports go – when he came to dispose of his booty that the originals themselves were counterfeit. Now the statues are disappearing from the public squares, and one cemetery has lost most of its tombstones. Even the manhole covers have been found to have marketable value, so that suddenly these too have all gone, and everywhere there are holes in the road. ~ Norman Lewis 6 February 1769 I spent an hour with a venerable woman, near ninety years of age, who retains her health, her senses, her understanding, and even her memory, to a good degree. In the last century she belonged to my grandfather Annesley's congregation, at whose house her father and she used to dine every Thursday; and whom she remembers to have frequently seen in his study, at the top of the house, with his window open, and without any fire, winter or summer. He lived seventy-seven years, and would probably have lived longer, had he not begun water drinking at seventy. ~ John Wesley 1881 George Eshelby [local vicar] tells me that Mrs Travel's girl has been confined in her cottage of a stillborn child and that Williams [groom] has confessed that he is the father. Mrs Travel came with the same story. I blame her very much after the experience she had with her other girl that she permitted the daughter to come home from service without sending Williams away. The cottage is too small. Williams says it was no seeking of his. She laid on the top of him when he happened to drop asleep over his book. Even young Morris [footman] was found in equivocal positions with her. It appears to Williams she has tried to entrap him. ~ Dearman Birchall 1922 [Rome] Today the Pope was at last elected: Cardinal Ratti, now Pius XI. It rained. Consequently the crowd was smaller than yesterday and armed with umbrellas. Fifteen minutes before noon a wisp of smoke could indistinctly be seen rising from the stove-pipe, becoming thicker, then stopping altogether. 'E nero! E bianco! E fatto il Papa! E fatto il Papa!' Immediately there was a highly dangerous folding of umbrellas and a rush for the church doors. But they proved to have been suddenly closed and a file of soldiers was drawn up in front of them. As the pushing from behind continued, the crush amidst the re-opened umbrellas became almost intolerable. Excitement was at a peak. Everybody tried to keep an eye, between the spread umbrellas, on the loggia high up the faqade of St Peter's from where the name of the elected Pontiff would be announced. Almost three-quarters of an hour passed before there resounded abruptly cries of `Ombrelli, ombrelli!' and, in a breathless tension, umbrellas (several thousand umbrellas) were snapped to.The glass door of the loggia was opened, attendants stepped forward and laid over the parapet a large velvet carpet embroidered with armorial bearings. Then there could be caught sight of a big golden crucifix and above the edge of the parapet the head and gesticulating hands of a cardinal. Deathly silence. The cardinal proclaimed: His Eminence — he paused — the Most Venerable Archbishop of Milan, Cardinal Ratti, had been elected Pope and had adopted the name Pius XI. An immense jubilation broke out, hats and handkerchiefs were flourished, and shouts of E Viva! re-echoed. The cardinal and the monsignori made signs to the crowd to wait. There was still something to come. And after about ten minutes a big surprise occurred. For the first time since 1870 the Pope showed himself to the people of Rome assembled in the open square: Above the parapet of the loggia could be discerned a white arm moving in a gesture of blessing and rather full, not specially remarkable, scholar's features while at the same time there -could be heard a deep, melodious, slightly unctuous voice very clearly pronouncing blessing upon the crowd. The latter, whenever the voice halted, answered with a resonant 'Amen'. ~Count Harry Kessler 1941 [Holland] Today I wasn't in the best of moods. A little disappointed in myself. I went to visit Miep, who didn't go to school because she wasn't well. A friend of theirs has been arrested. We're all supposed to register, we can't postpone it any longer, and I guess we'll get a J stamped on our papers. Anyway. Whatever happens, happens. I don't want to think about it too much. Letter from Guus [her brother], dated December. He's so happy there, he's turning into a real American. Only he misses us, of course, but he says he thinks the country is even more beautiful and wonderful than our own lovely little country. Then it must be pretty special! He describes all sorts of domestic appliances, butter, tinned goods, advertisements, the bright lights, etc. and we meanwhile sitting here in the dark, simply drooling over his descriptions of the good life over there ... ~ Edith Velmans 7 February 1682 I continu'd ill for 2 fists after, and then bathing my leggs to the knees in Milk made as hot as I could endure it, and sitting so in it, in a deepe Churn or Vessell, covered with blanquets and drinking Carduus posses, then going to bed and sweating, I not onely missed that expected fit, but had no more. ~ John Evelyn 1856 Quarrelled with Turgenev, and had a wench at my place. ~ Leo Tolstoy 1943 Peter Blume — handsome, sweet, good, and, as a painter, the genius of our age — and his wife — also childishly good and devoted — had an enormous cocktail party. Two famous wits were present — James Thurber and S. J. Perelman — and this is the waggish dialogue that ensued, with me as a buffer. (Enter Perelman.) Perelman: Dawn, I hear your book is going like blazes. How many copies sold? Me: (lying) Why, I imagine around fifteen thousand. Perelman: Ah, here's Thurber. You know Dawn. Thurber: Hello, Dawn, how many copies did your book sell? Fifty thousand? Me: Well, more like twenty. Thurber: Understand you got $15,000 from the movies. Shoulda got more. Would've if you'd held out. Me: Well, it would still all be gone now no matter what I got. Thurber: (glancing around, though almost blind) Big party. Musts set Peter back about fifty bucks. What'd he get for his picture? Perelman: Do you realize that bastard Cerf takes 20 percent of my play rights, same as he did for 'Junior Miss'? Thurber: Shouldn't do it. Harcourt never took a cent off me. Had it in the contract. Perelman: I'd like to have lunch with you and discuss that, Jim. Jesus, Jim 20 percent! Thus does the wit flow from these two talented fellows. ~ Dawn Powell 1980 Just in time for Joyce Grenfell's Memorial Service. Westminster Abbey packed to the doors. What a well-loved lady she was; she had what the Zulus call 'shine'. How typical of her that she always referred to the side-duties of a celebrity — charity openings, bazaars and lunches — as 'fringe benefits' and worked as hard at them as her professional work. 'The lines', she used to say, quoting the Psalms, 'are fallen to me in pleasant places'. Bernard Levin and I (we the undersized) crouch behind two of the largest men I have ever seen. Bach, Mozart – her favourite composers – modest, touching tribute from her local vicar, a reading – disappointing unmoving – from Paul Scofield and then the rush for the West Door, waspishly envying those who seem entitled to chauffeurs (eg Peter Hall and Permanent Secretaries). Heavy establishment top-dressing but lovely to see so many less famous faces. Memorial services may be disliked by those they honour, but to those left behind they serve as a sort of surrogate encounter with death. ~ Sir Hugh Casson Report to moderator   Logged Blunderov Archon Gender: Posts: 3160 Reputation: 8.91 Rate Blunderov "We think in generalities, we live in details" Re:The Assassin's Cloak « Reply #61 on: 2011-02-10 10:23:21 » 8 February 1841 My Journal is that of me which would else spill over and run to waste, gleanings from the field which in action I reap. I must not live for it, but in it for the gods. They are my correspondents, to whom daily I send off this sheet postpaid. I am clerk in their counting-room, and at evening transfer the account from day-book to ledger. It is as a leaf which hangs over my head in the path. I bend the twig and write my prayers on it; then letting it go, the bough springs up and shows the scrawl to heaven. As if it were not kept shut in my desk, but were as public a leaf as any in nature. It is papyrus by the riverside; it is vellum in the pastures; it is parchment on the hills. I find it everywhere as free as the leaves which troop along the lanes in autumn. The crow, the goose, the eagle carry my quill, and the wind blows the leaves as far as I go. Or, if my imagination does not soar, but gropes in slime and mud, then I write with a reed. ~ H. D. Thoreau 1941 [Dresden] Lissy Meyerhof sent six pairs of secondhand socks, presumably originally belonging to Erich's sons – a mercy, since I am running around with holes and sore, dirty feet. The package age and the letter was accompanied by a note, translated from the Italian, from Hans Meyerhof, I was able to establish his concentration camp, on the Deserto ... Cohn, congenial Winter Aid man of the Jewish Community, whom I was this time unable to grant any additional donation, saw my completely torn carpet slippers and supported my application for a pair from the Jewish clothing store; I am to fetch them there on Monday. Yet another powerful Estreicher, with whom I clashed so violently in May because of the accommodation business. It was about reorganizing the billets, though we are spared. The Katzes on the ground floor are going to Berlin, in their place comes a homo novus, who appears to have given a very good bribe: He is not only to get two rooms just for himself, but a third one as well for his Aryan housekeeper ... On the fourth to Frau Kronheim for a touchingly nice short visit (real coffee, cake, a cigar) ... A woman of about sixty, widow of a straw hat manufacturer, evidently once affluent, probably a little even now. Large room in Bautzener Strasse, of course bed and washstand y todo in the same room, most furniture in storage. Conversations naturally always the same: Affidavit – will America enter the war? – Recently: What is going to happen to Italy? – Here the English recovery is tremendous. Only yesterday I saw the December issue of The Twentieth Century at the dentist's ... There the Italian offensive against and in (in.0 Egypt was discussed and there was a big map, and today Benghazi has already been taken. Will England succeed in defeating Italy? Hitler's speech on January 30 ('I shall force a decision this year') had a different tone from all the previous ones. Nothing more about a seven years' war, nothing more about friendship with Russia and the Balkans – now only: We are prepared for every eventuality, and submarine threat against the USA. The speech is supposed to have sounded like a cry of rage, his voice breaking. True security or Despair? – Rumors everywhere of new levies and troops sent eastward and motorization. ~ Victor Klemperer 1945 [Bergen-Belsen] I had hung my coat in a cupboard. Someone has stolen the buttons. ~ Abel  Herzberg 1948 Looked in on Tony and Violet Powell, and laughed much over Duke of Windsor's Memoirs and Americanisms in them – for instance, 'Fatty' instead of 'Tubby'. Wondered if Royal Family had been given advance copy, or if they opened Sunday Express each week apprehensively. ~ Malcolm Muggeridge 1983 [Dundee] A day off from filming An Englishman Abroad and I go to Edinburgh with Alan Bates. We climb the tower near the castle to see the camera obscura. The texture of the revolving bowl and the softness of the reflection convert the view into an eighteenth-century aquatint in which motor cars seem as delicate and exotic as sedan chairs. The traffic is also rendered more sedate and unreal for being silent. An element of voyeurism in it. The guide, a genteel Morningside lady, trains the mirror on some adjacent scaffolding where workmen are restoring a church. `I often wonder,' she muses in the darkened room, `if one were to catch them ... well, unawares. I mean, adds hastily, 'taking a little rest.' ~ Alan Bennett 9 February 1826 Methinks I have been like Burns's poor labourer So constantly in Ruin's sight The view o't gives me little fright.* ~ Sir Walter Scott *Burn's 'Twa Dogs', slightly adapted 1940 A letter came from Dan [her husband], dated January 29th: 'We have arrived and our official address is Notts Sherwood Rangers Yeomanry, Palestine. Letters by airmail take about a week.' I also had a letter from Whitaker [her husband's valet]. It was completely blacked out by a censor except for 'My Lady' at the top. I wonder what he wrote. Countess of Ranfurly 1941 [POW Camp, Germany] Last night's rumour of thousands of parcels was apparently true - except that they were all for Obermassfeld. But however disappointing it may be for us, I'm extremely glad this hospital is at last getting them, as they have had a rotten time. Wounds were taking twice as long to heal because the patients hadn't the food to build up on. Hunger must have cost hundreds of lives. However, tho' no food parcels we hear there are 21 smokes ones - and smoke is half the battle. It is extraordinary, looking round the room during meals the number of backs which are now rounded. Anybody sitting with a straight back looks enormous. I suppose due to hard benches and stools. How odd it will seem to sit in an armchair again. ~ Captain John Mansel 1991 `Iraqi morale wilts under allied onslaught'. Mine has rather wilted too. And the country has disappeared beneath a blanket of snow. ~ Gyles Brandreth 10 February 1661 (Lord's Day.) Took physique all day, and, God forgive me, did spend it in reading of some little French romances. ~ Samuel Pepys 1858 [New Orleans] As all my paintings are finished and my easel packed up I seem to have unlimited hours in the day, so I went to a Slave Auction. I went alone (a quarter of an hour before the time) and asked the auctioneer to allow me to see everything. He was very smiling and polite, took me upstairs, showed me all the articles for sale - about thirty women and twenty men, twelve or fourteen babies. He took me round and told me what they could do: 'She can cook and iron, has worked also in the fields.' etc., 'This one a No. 1 cook and ironer -' 'etc. He introduced me to the owner who wanted to sell them (being in debt) and he did not tell the owner what I had told him (that I was English and only came from curiosity), so the owner took a great deal of pains to make me admire a dull-looking mulatress and said she was an excellent servant and could just suit me. At twelve we all descended into a dirty hall adjoining the street big enough to hold a thousand people. There were three sales going on at the same time, and the room was crowded with rough-looking men, smoking and spitting, bad-looking set - a melee of all nations. I noticed one mulatto girl who looked very sad and embarrassed. She was going to have a child and seemed frightened and wretched. I was very sorry I could not get near to her to speak to her. The others were not sad at all. Perhaps they were glad of a change. Some looked round anxiously at the different bearded faces below them, but there was no great emotion visible. Before I went the young man of the house had said, 'Well, I don't think there is anything to see - they sell them just like so many rocking chairs. There's no difference' 'And that is the truest word that can be said about the affair. When I see how Miss Murray speaks of sales and separations as regretted by the owners and as disagreeable (that is her tone if not her words), I feel inclined to condemn her to attend all the sales held in New Orleans in two months. How many that would be one may guess, as three were going on the morning I went down. ~ Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon 1915 My neighbour talks for hours with the landlady. Both speak softly, the landlady almost inaudibly, and therefore so much the worse. My writing, which has been coming along for the past two days, is interrupted, who knows for how long a time? Absolute despair. Is it like this in every house? Does such ridiculous and absolutely killing misery await me with every landlady in every city? ~ Franz Kafka 1922 Not many remarks about art have so gripped one as Meier-Graefe's comment on Delacroix: 'This is a case of a hot heart beating in a cold person. ~ Bertolt Brecht 1947 In three days I'm leaving New York. I have a lot of shopping to do and business to take care of, and all morning long I stride along the muddy streets of the better neighborhoods. In their windows, candy stores display huge red hearts decorated with ribbons and stuffed with bonbons. Hearts are also ingeniously suspended in stationery stores and tie shops. It'll soon be Valentine's Day, the day when young girls give gifts to their boyfriends. There's always some holiday going on in America; it's distracting. Even private celebrations, especially birthdays, have the dignity of public ceremonies. It seems that the birth of every citizen is a national event. The other 'evening at a nightclub, the whole room began to sing, in chorus, 'Happy Birthday,' while a portly gentleman, flushed and flattered, squeezed his wife's fingers. The day before yesterday I had to make a telephone call; two college girls went into the booth before me. And while I was pacing impatiently in front of the door, they unhooked the receiver and intoned 'Happy Birthday' They sang it through to the very end. In shops they sell birthday cards with congratulations all printed out, often in verse. And you can `telegraph' flowers on one occasion or another. All the florists advertise in large letters, 'Wire Flowers.' ~ Simone de Beauvoir Report to moderator   Logged Blunderov Archon Gender: Posts: 3160 Reputation: 8.91 Rate Blunderov "We think in generalities, we live in details" Re:The Assassin's Cloak « Reply #62 on: 2011-02-11 03:40:49 » 11 February 1938 All the women in the region are excised. 'This' we are told, 'is to calm their lust and ensure their conjugal fidelity.' Immediately afterward we are told: 'You understand: since these women feel nothing, they give themselves to anyone whatever; nothing stops them ... Oh, of course, they never give themselves for nothing!' Obviously the two statements seem contradictory. One is forced to admit that if the aim were conjugal fidelity ... But no (it seems); rather this: keep the wife from making love for pleasure. For money, it's all right! And the husband congratulates himself on having a (or more than one) wife who produces income. This is one of the rare points on which all the Frenchmen, when questioned, agree. One among them, who has a great experience of the `moussos' of Guinea, asserts that he has never met a native woman who sought pleasure in the sexual act; he even went so far as to say, not one who knew voluptuous pleasure. ~ Andre Gide 1941 [Holland] `Seize the day,' says Mother. But I'm worried. At home everyone is so optimistic, but others are pessimistic. Many people are hanging around aimlessly in the streets, out of work. There are riots and demonstrations. It doesn't bode well for us. Enfin Let's hope that 'Alles sal reg kom' – soon! Actually, I'm an idiot to grumble on like this. I'm still enjoying my life as much as I can. ~ Edith Velmans 1975 Everyone agog at the news that Margaret Thatcher has been elected Tory leader with a huge majority. Surely no working man or woman north of the Wash is ever going to vote for her? I fear a lurch to the right by the Tories and a corresponding lurch to the left by Labour. To Buckingham Palace for the Queen's reception for the media, at least I suppose that's what we were. Newspaper editors; television controllers; journalists and commentators; Heath looking like a tanned waxwork; Wilson; Macmillan a revered side-show, an undoubted star; a few actors (Guinness, Ustinov, Finney); and all the chaps like me – John Tooley, George Christie, Trevor Nunn. And Morecambe and Wise. It was two and a half hours of tramping round the great reception rooms, eating bits of Lyons pate, drinking over-sweet warm white wine, everyone looking at everyone else, and that atmosphere of jocular ruthlessness which characterises the Establishment on its nights out. Wonderful paintings, of course, and I was shown the bullet that killed Nelson. As we were presented, the Queen asked me when the National Theatre would open. I said I didn't know. The Duke asked me when the National Theatre would open. I said I didn't know. The Prince of Wales asked me when the National Theatre would open. I said I didn't know. At least they all knew I was running the National Theatre. Home by 2 am with very aching feet. Who'd be a courtier? ~ Peter Hall Report to moderator   Logged Blunderov Archon Gender: Posts: 3160 Reputation: 8.91 Rate Blunderov "We think in generalities, we live in details" Re:The Assassin's Cloak « Reply #63 on: 2011-02-12 17:09:39 » 12 February 1927 But I am forgetting, after three days, the most important event in my life since marriage – so Clive [Bell, art critic] described it. Mr Cizec has bingled me. I am short haired for life. Having no longer, I think, any claims to beauty, the convenience of this alone makes it desirable. Every morning I go to take up [my] brush and twist that old coil round my finger and fix it with hairpins and then with a start of joy, no I needn't. In front there is no change; behind I'm like the rump of a partridge. This robs dining out of half its terrors. ~ Virginia Woolf 1938 [Nanking] It really is high time for me to get out of here. At 7 o'clock this morning, Chang brought in Fung, a friend from Tientsin, who is watching the house of an American here and whose wife is expecting a baby, which for three days now has been struggling to see the light of this mournful world, and you really can't blame him. The mother's life is apparently in danger. Birth definitely needs to be induced. And they come to me of all people! `I'm not a doctor, Chang. And I'm not a kuei ma [midwife], either. I'm the "mayor", and I don't bring other people's children into the world. Get the woman to Kulou Hospital at once!' `Yes,'Chang says, 'that's all true; but you must come, otherwise won't work? otherwise woman not get into hospital, she die and baby, too. You must come, then everything good. Mother lives and baby, too!' And that puts an end to that – 'Idiots, the whole lot of you!' And so I had to go along, and who would believe it: As I enter the house, a baby boy is born, and the mother laughs, and the baby cries, and everyone is happy; and Chang, the monkey, has been proved right yet again. And the whole lark cost me ten dollars besides, because I had to bring the poor lad something. If this story gets around, I'm ruined. Just think, there are 250,000 refugees in this city! ~ John Rabe 1941 Early spring weather since yesterday. Grateful for every additional minute of daylight, for each degree of warmth, for each yard of ground that can be walked (this especially for Eva's sake). Eva has declined, lost weight, aged so very much – and yet, as my own body declines, I love her ever more ardently, d'amour say the French. Hopeful, although threatened by catastrophe. Charge because room not blacked out. That can mean a fine of so many  100M that I am forced to sell the house; it can also be disposed of with 20M. There are examples of both; I assumed the worst for a whole day, I am calmer now. It was truly a misfortune, liability through negligence, as can happen with a car. We are usually both extremely careful with regard to the blackout, on our evening walks we often grumble about illuminated windows, say the police should really do something. And now we ourselves are caught in the act. On the Monday (the tenth) all kinds of things came together, which made me lose the thread. During the day I usually return from shopping at about half past four. Unpacking, hauling coal, a glance at the newspaper, blackout, going out for supper. On Monday I found Frau Kreidl, whom both of us greatly dislike, here. She wanted to be consoled: The whole house had been inspected by the Gestapo – new tenants? Confiscation of the house? (Cupboards opened in our rooms also – there was rather too much tobacco in the house! But they saw only five packets, as a precaution four others are already with Frau Voss.) It grew late. So blackout after the meal. In the Monopol the food so bad that Eva didn't eat it. I wanted to get her something else at the station. Nothing there either. So I was very out of humor and distracted when we returned, immediately hurried into the kitchen to make tea. Against the night sky, once the light has been switched on, it is impossible to tell whether the shutters have been closed. When the policeman rang the doorbell at nine, we were quite unsuspecting, we led him to the window so that he could see for himself that it was blacked out. The man was courteous and sympathetic; he had to charge me because neighbours had reported the light. I had to state income and property: afterward 'the chief of police' will determine the level of the penalty. Until yesterday I was only expecting the worst; yesterday Frau Voss told me of a case in which someone had only paid 12M; admittedly the someone was the Aryan wife of a general, and I have a J on my identity card. Now I must wait, my mood going up and down. Victor Klemperer 1951 [writing East of Eden] Lincoln's Birthday. My first day of work in my new room. It is a very pleasant room and I have a drafting table to work on which I have always wanted — also a comfortable chair given me by Elaine [his wife]. In fact I have never had it so good and so comfortable. I have known such things to happen —the perfect pointed pencil — the paper persuasive — the fantastic chair and a good light and no writing. Surely a man is a most treacherous animal full of his treasured contradictions. He may not admit it but he loves his paradoxes. Now that I have everything, we shall see whether I have anything. It is exactly that simple. Mark Twain used to write in bed — so did our greatest poet. But I wonder how often they wrote in bed — or whether they did it twice and the story took hold. Such things happen. Also I would like to know what things they wrote in bed and what things they wrote sitting up. All of this has to do with comfort in writing and what its value is. I should think that a comfortable body would let the mind go freely to its gathering. But such is the human that he might react in an opposite way. Remember my father's story about the man who did not dare be comfortable because he went to sleep. That might be true of me too. Now I am perfectly comfortable in body. I think my house is in order. Elaine, my beloved, is taking care of all the outside details to allow me the amount of free untroubled time every day to do my work. I can't think of anything else necessary to a writer except a story and the will and the ability to tell it. ~John Steinbeck 1962 Had supper at the Savoy. Ted Heath was of the party. A complete bachelor, with great qualities. I wonder whether he could become Prime Minister one day — he is one of those mentioned. He has a funny schoolboyish habit of giggling and shaking his shoulders up and down when he laughs — rather endearing, but odd. Yet perhaps no odder than Rab's [Butler] strange hooting. Cynthia Gladwin Report to moderator   Logged Blunderov Archon Gender: Posts: 3160 Reputation: 8.91 Rate Blunderov "We think in generalities, we live in details" Re:The Assassin's Cloak « Reply #64 on: 2011-02-15 15:43:02 » 13 February 1684 Dr. Tenison communicating to me his intention of Erecting a Library in St. Martines parish, for the publique use, desird my assistance with Sir Chr: Wren about the placing and structure thereof a worthy and laudable designe: He told me there were 30 or 40 Young Men in Orders in his Parish, either, Governors to young Gent: or Chaplains to Noble-men, who being reprov'd by him upon occasion for frequenting Taverns or Coffe-houses, told him, they would study and employ their time better, if they had books: This put the pious Doctor upon this designe, which I could not but approve of, and indeede a grease reproach it is, that so great a Citty as Lond: should have never a publique Library becoming it: There ought to be one at St Paules, the West end of that Church, (if ever finish'd), would be a convenient place ... ~ John Evelyn 1874 Yesterday I spent the whole day in the studio of a strange painter called Degas. After a great many essays and experiments and trial shots in all directions, he has fallen in love with modern life, and out of all the subjects in modern life he has chosen washerwomen and ballet-dancers. When you come to think of it, it is not a bad choice. It is a world of pink and white, of female flesh in lawn and gauze, the most delightful of pretexts for using pale, soft tints. He showed me, in their various poses and their graceful foreshortening, washerwomen and still more washerwomen ... speaking their language and explaining the technicalities of the different movements in pressing and ironing. Then it was the turn of the dancers. There was their green-room with, outlined against the light of a window, the curious silhouette of dancers' legs coming down a little staircase, with the bright red of a tartan in the midst of all those puffed-out white clouds, and a ridiculous ballet-master serving as a vulgar foil. And there before one, drawn from nature, was the graceful twisting and turning of the gestures of those little monkey-girls. An original fellow, this Degas, sickly, neurotic, and so ophthalmic that he is afraid of losing his sight; but for this very reason an eminently receptive creature and sensitive to the character of things. Among all the artists I have met so far, he is the one who has best been able, in representing modern life, to catch the spirit of that life. ~ The Brothers Goncourt 1902 Before me on my table there are Christmas roses in a chased metal bowl.  Although this clearly sounds a very stylish note and though I have always imagined it as something very pretty I feel nothing, nothing at all. And it's the second day that the Christmas roses have stood before me. ~ Robert Musil 1926 [Berlin] At one o'clock, just as my dinner-party guests were gone, a telephone call from Max Reinhardt. He was at [Karl Gustav] Vollmoeller's and they wanted me to come over because Josephine Baker was there and the fun was starting. So I drove to Vollmoeller's harem on the Pariser Platz. Reinhardt and Huldschinsky were surrounded by half a dozen naked girls, Miss Baker was also naked except for a pink muslin apron, and the little Landshoff girl was dressed up as a boy in a dinner-jacket. Miss Baker was dancing a solo with brilliant artistic mimicry and purity of style, like an ancient Egyptian or other archaic figure performing an intricate series of movements without ever losing the basic pattern. This is how their dancers must have danced for Solomon and Tutankhamen. Apparently she does this for hours on end, without tiring and continually inventing new figures like a child, a happy child, at play. She never even gets hot, her skin remains fresh, cool, dry. A bewitching creature, but almost quite unerotic. Watching her inspires as little sexual excitement as does the sight of a beautiful beast of prey. ~ Count Harry Kessler 1951 It must be told that my second work day is a bust as far as getting into the writing. I suffer as always from the fear of putting down the first line. It is amazing the terrors, the magics, the prayers, the straightening shyness that assails one. It is as though the words were not only indelible but that they spread out like dye in water and colour everything around them. A strange and mystic business, writing. Almost no progress has taken place since it was invented. The Book of the Dead is as good and as highly developed as anything in the 20th century and much better than most. And yet in spite of this lack of a continuing excellence, hundreds of thousands of people are in my shoes – praying feverishly for relief from their word pangs. And one thing we have lost – the courage to make new words or combinations. Somewhere that old bravado has slipped off into a gangrened scholarship. Oh! you can make words if you enclose them in quotation marks. This indicates that it is dialect and cute. ~John Steinbeck 1965 [Singapore] At 21:00 the whole of our party went to the fantastic home of Run Me Shaw, the brother of Run Run Shaw of Hong Kong. The story goes that the elder brother used to hang about for messages, saying 'Run run?', and when he had been sent on a message the younger brother would say 'Run me?' At all events they are both multi-millionaire magnates now. The house is set in an elaborate garden with a large swimming pool, fountains, etc., with continually changing lighting systems. We were shown into an immense private cinema and then with evident pride he said to Patricia, Solly and me,'Now I will show you my wonderful pink Toyland.' Solly and I expected to see a display of toys, but in fact it was the most luxurious ladies' loo imaginable with two pink WCs at the far end, indeed a pink toilet. ~ Earl Mountbatten of Burma 14 February 1752 This being Valentine Day gave to 52 Children of this parish, as usual 1 penny each 0. 4. 4. Gave Nancy this morning 1. 1. 0. ~ The Rev. James Woodforde 1941 [POW camp, Germany] How sick and tired I am of the nightly visitors' excited entry with 'What's the news?' As if we knew any. To make matters worse I heard somebody in the room talking defeatism – 'if we lose' and 'when we lose'. Slaving in salt mines in Silesia, etc. Hell, one tries to think of home, etc., to keep cheerful if possible, but it would drive one permanently mental if one had to contend with defeatism. Actually, I think half of us, if not the majority, are slowly going mental – tho' we think we're sane. ~ Captain John Mansel 1980 [Dusseldorf] We had to take Hans Mayer's car and drive out to the country to a small town to photograph a German butcher. His company is called Herta, it's one of the biggest sausage companies in Germany. He was a cute guy. He had this interesting building.You could see all the employees. He had my Pig on the wall. junk everywhere. A lot of toys. A lot of stuffed cows, stuffed pigs. Pigs, pigs, pigs all over the place. And there was art. There were funny things hanging from the ceiling. There were water-dripping paintings. He buys alot of art, he said they sell more sausages that way because the people are very happy. Then he gave us a white smock and white hat. We went through and watched the ladies make the sausages. It was really fun. You could smell the sauerkraut cooking, but they didn't give us any hot dogs there. He had the whole portfolio of Picasso that I did the Picasso print of Paloma in. We looked at that, then we had to look at more pigs-,and more salamis and more hams and more ham art. Then we took Polaroids for the portrait and had some tea. And his wife came by. They didn't offer us lunch. Then all of a sudden he asked us if we'd like to try one of his hot dogs. They cooked some up and we had two apiece. They were really good. He said he had to go have lunch back at the lunch room. We had to go off without lunch which we thought was really strange. We got in the car and drove to a restaurant in a place called Bottrop. As soon as we came in they told us it was this crazy day where all the women chase the men. They cut off your ties. But since we knew that was happening – we saw these drunken ladies running round – we took our ties off and hid them in our pockets. But then they got my shirt tail and they cut it off and it was my good shirt and I was so mad. These women were really bullies. We got back in the car and drove back to Hans's gallery. I was so tired, and I was really upset about my shirt. ~ Andy Warhol 1983 ST VALENTINE'S DAY Got four cards: one from Pandora [his girlfriend], one from Grandma, one from my mother and one from Rosie [his baby sister]. Big, big deal! I got Pandora a Cupid card and a mini pack of 'After Eights'. My parents didn't bother this year, they are saving their money to pay for the solicitor's letter. ~ Adrian Mole 15 February 1869 I was in London. Saw Siamese twins. Born in Siam – visited England 1829. They are farmers in North Carolina, and are here to repair their loss of fortune by American war. All the surgeons concur in advising them not to attempt an operation. Chang has 6 girls and 3 boys. Hang has 6 boys and 3 girls. They have a melancholy cast of countenance but brighten up when spoken  to. They walk with arms folded in what looks a painful position but is described as being perfectly comfortable'. ~ Dearman Birchall 1913 Tried to kiss her in a taxi-cab on the way home from the Savoy – the taxicab danger is very present with us – but she rejected me quietly, sombrely. I apologised on the steps of the Flats and said I feared I had greatly annoyed her. `I'm not annoyed,'   said, `only surprised' – in a thoughtful, chilly voice. We had had supper in Soho, and I took some wine, and she looked so bewitching it sent me in a fever, thrumming my fingers on the seat of the cab while she sat beside me impassive. Her shoulders are exquisitely modelled and a beautiful head is carried poised on a tiny neck. ~ W N P Barbellion 1915 We both went up to London this afternoon; L[eonard, her husband] to the Library, and I to ramble about the West End, picking up clothes. I am really in rags. It is very amusing. With age too one's less afraid of the superb shop women. These great shops are like fairies' palaces now. I swept about in Debenham's and Marshall's and so on, buying, as I thought, with great discretion. The shop women are often very charming, in spite of their serpentine coils of black hair. Then I had tea, and rambled down to Charing Cross in the dark, making up phrases and incidents to write about. Which is, I expect, the way one gets killed. I bought a ten and elevenpenny blue dress, in which I sit at this moment. ~ Virginia Woolf 1943 Hester the cook has a daughter, Elsie, who is the wife of a colored letter-carrier and the mother of two children. Some time ago I endorsed her application for a job at the Edgwood Arsenal, and she got it. She was graded as an unskilled laborer, and paid $3.60 a day. This morning Hester told me that she had been promoted to the rank of spray painter, and her pay lifted to $5.76 a day. It is amazing, with such opportunities open to colored women, that any of them go on working as domestic servants. Hester herself is probably too old for a government job; moreover she is lame. But Emma Ball, the maid, could get one easily, and be sure of rapid promotion, for she writes a good hand and is pretty intelligent. I am paying her $17 a week, which is considerably above the scale for housemaids in Baltimore. In addition, I give her a bonus of $ 150 a year, a present of $20 at Christmas and another of $20 when she begins her annual vacation of two weeks. Hester is paid $22 a week, with the same bonus and presents. Thus Emma receives $ 1,074 a year, besides her meals, and Hester $1,334. They have Thursday and Sunday afternoons and evenings off, and do not come to work until noon on Saturday. When I am out of town in August I often let them off all day. They eat precisely what I eat. ~ H. L. Mencken Report to moderator   Logged Blunderov Archon Gender: Posts: 3160 Reputation: 8.91 Rate Blunderov "We think in generalities, we live in details" Re:The Assassin's Cloak « Reply #65 on: 2011-02-16 02:54:16 » 16 February 1798 Went for eggs into the Coombe, and to the bakers; a hail shower; brought home large burthens of sticks, a starlight evening, the sky closed in, and the ground white with snow before we went to bed. ~ Dorothy Wordsworth 1912 12.5m. Lunch Temp. +6.1°; Supper Temp. +7°. A rather trying position. Evans has nearly broken down in the brain, we think. He is absolutely changed from his normal self-reliant self. This morning and this afternoon he stopped the march on some trivial excuse. We are on short rations, but not very short, food spins out till tomorrow night. We cannot be more than 10 or 12 miles from the depot, but the weather is all against us. After lunch we were enveloped in a snow sheet, land just looming. Memory should hold the events of a very troublesome march with more troubles ahead. Perhaps all will be well if we can get to our depot tomorrow fairly early, but it is anxious work with the sick man. But it's no use meeting troubles halfway, and our sleep is all too short to write more. ~ Captain Robert Falcon Scott 1932 [after the death of her partner, Lytton Strachey] At last I am alone. At last there is nothing between us. I have been reading my letters to you in the library this evening. You are so engraved on my brain that I think of nothing else. Everything I look at is part of you. And there seems no point in life now you are gone. I used to say: `I must eat my meals properly as Lytton wouldn't like me to behave badly when he was away.' But now there is no coming back. No point in 'improvements'. Nobody to write letters to. Only the interminable long days which never seem to end and the nights which end all too soon and turn to dawns. All gaiety has gone out of my life and I feel old and melancholy. All I can do is to plant snow drops and daffodils in my graveyard! Now there is nothing left. All your papers have been taken away. Your clothes have gone. Your room is bare. In a few months no traces will be left. Just a few book plates in some books and never again, however long I look out of the window, will I see your tall thin figure walking across the path past the dwarf pine past the stumps, and then climb the ha-ha and come across the lawn. Our jokes have gone for ever. There is nobody now to make 'dismattas' with, to laugh over our particular words. To discuss the difficulties of love, to read Ibsen in the evening. And to play cards when we were too 'dim' for reading. These mouring sentinels that we arranged so carefully. The shiftings to get the new rose Corneille in the best position. They will go, and the beauty of our library 'will be over'.  I feel as if I was in a dream, almost unconscious, so much of me was in you. And I thought as I threw the rubbish on the bonfire. 'So that's the end of his spectacles. Those spectacles that have been his companions all these years. Burnt in a heap of leaves.' And those vests the 'bodily companions' of his days now are worn by a carter in the fields. In a few years what will be left of Nun? A few books on some shelves, but the intimate things that I loved, all gone. And soon even the people who knew his pale thin hands and the texture of his thick shiny hair, and grisly beard, they will be dead and all remembrance of him will vanish. I watched the gap close over others but for Lytton one couldn't have believed (because one did not believe it was ever possible) that the world would go on the same. [She shot herself on 11 March.] ~ Dora Carrington 1947 [staying in College accommodation while on a lecture tour] Upon waking, I wonder just why I'm staying here in this sanatorium. The room is white. and fluffy, like the one at Vassar. With nurselike attention, a woman has placed a breakfast platter beside me. Last evening, to spare me any fatigue, they brought my dinner to my room. Without leaving my bed, I drink the orange juice, eat the crusty rolls, and savor the charms of convalescence in the cafe au laic. Nothing is stranger to me than these restrained pleasures. Amid such attentive care I feel so fragile and precious I almost frighten myself. Perhaps I've undertaken a detox cure; no alcohol, no noise, no movies, no music, no fever. I draw an armchair up to the table. I've stayed here today to write an article before hurrying back to New York and going north. But I like to nurse the illusion that I'm restrained by force and working to distract myself. There's nothing more restful on a trip than to imagine you're in prison. ~ Simone de Beauvoir Report to moderator   Logged Blunderov Archon Gender: Posts: 3160 Reputation: 8.91 Rate Blunderov "We think in generalities, we live in details" Re:The Assassin's Cloak « Reply #66 on: 2011-02-19 15:16:52 » 17 February 1763 I dined at the Chaplain's table upon a roasted Tongue and Udder. N.B. I shall not dine on a roasted Tongue and Udder again very soon. ~ Rev. James Woodforde 1888 Today a dinner was given in Rodin's honour by his friend and admirers, a dinner at which I presided, with a draught in my back. I found myself sitting next to Clemenceau with his round Kalmuck head, and he told me some anecdotes about the peasants in his province and how they would stop him out in the open during his tours of the department to consult him about their illnesses. He described one huge woman who, just as the horses of his brake were about to gallop away from some place or other, leaned on their cruppers and called out: `Oh, Monsieur, I suffer from wind something awful!' To which the Radical deputy, giving his horses a crack of the whip which sent them on their way, replied: `Then fart, my good woman, fart!' ~ The Brothers Goncourt 1912 A very terrible day. Evans looked a little better after a good sleep, and declared, as he always did, that he was quite well. He started in his place on the traces, but half an hour later worked his ski shoes adrift, and had to leave the sledge. The surface was awful, the soft recently fallen snow clogging the ski and runners at every step, the sledge groaning, the sky overcast, and the land hazy. We stopped after about one hour, and Evans came up again, but very slowly. Half an hour later he dropped out again on the same plea. He asked Bowers to lend him a piece of string. I cautioned him to come on as quickly as he could and he answered cheerfully as I thought. We had to push on, and the remainder of us were forced to pull very hard, sweating heavily. Abreast the Monument Rock we stopped, and seeing Evans a long way astern, I camped for lunch. There was no alarm at first, and we prepared tea and our own meal, consuming the latter. After lunch, and Evans still not appearing, we looked out, to see him still afar off. By this time we were alarmed, and all four started back on ski. I was first to reach the poor man and shocked at his appearance; he was on his knees with clothing disarranged, hands uncovered and frost-bitten, and a wild look in his eyes. Asked what was the matter, he replied with a slow speech that he didn't know, but thought he must have fainted. We got him on his feet, but after two or three steps he sank down again. He showed every sign of complete collapse. Wilson, Bowers, and I went back for the sledge, whilst Oates remained with him. When we returned he was practically unconscious, and when we got him into the tent quite comatose. He died quietly at 12.30 a.m. On discussing the symptoms we think he began to get weaker just before we reached the Pole, and that his downward path was accelerated first by the shock of his frost-bitten fingers, and later by falls during rough travelling on the glacier, further by his loss of all confidence in himself. Wilson thinks it certain he must have injured his brain by a fall. It is a terrible thing to lose a companion in this way, but calm reflection shows that there could not have been a better ending to the terrible anxieties of the past week. Discussion of the situation at lunch yesterday shows us what a desperate pass we were in with a sick man on our hands so far from home. At  1 a.m. we packed up and came down over the pressure ridges, finding our depot easily. ~ Captain Robert Falcon Scott 1931 Finished reading The Intimate Journals of Paul Gauguin. Very fresh mind – he at once joins the company of those whom we wish we could have met. Such a distinctive French book makes a Scot feel that he is rather a dog-collared dog. We cannot recall Mary Stuart without seeing the shadow of Knox at her back. William Soutar 18 February 1814 Is there any thing beyond? – who knows? He that can't tell. Who tells that there is? He who don't know. And when shall he know? Perhaps, when he don't expect it, and, generally when he don't wish it. In this last respect, however, all are not alike; it depends a good deal upon education, – something upon nerves and habits – but most upon digestion. ~ Lord Byron 1852 I have a commonplace-book for facts and another for poetry, but I find it difficult always to preserve the vague distinction which I had in my mind, for the most interesting and beautiful facts are so much the more poetry and that is their success. They are translated from earth to heaven. I see that if my acts were sufficiently vital and significant, – perhaps transmuted more into the substance of the human mind, – I should need but one book of poetry to contain them all. ~ H. D. Thoreau 1867 Mist. Steamer to Yarmouth. Flags flying. The (Queen expected from Osborne, coming to take a look at this part of the island. I say to Tennyson, 'Perhaps the Queen will visit you to-day.' He thinks it possible. `Then I had better go?' `No, stay by all means.' Talking of the Queen, when Tennyson was at Osborne Her Majesty said to him, 'Cockneys don't annoy us,' to which Tennyson rejoined, 'If I could put a sentry at each of my gates I should be safe.' `She was praising my poetry; I said, "Every one writes verses now. I daresay Your Majesty does." She smiled and said, "No! I never could bring two lines together!"' The Queen, I find, has steamed past Yarmouth, landed at Alum Bay, and lunched there at the hotel. ~ William Allingham 1925 [while teaching at Arnold House school, Wales] On Sunday I started on an awful thing called week's duty. It means that I have no time at all from dawn to dusk so much to read a postcard or visit a water-closet. Already – today is Tuesday, Shrove Tuesday – my nerves are distraught. Yesterday I beat a charming boy called Clegg and kicked a hideous boy called Cooper and sent Cooke to the proprietor. Yesterday afternoon I had my first riding lesson and enjoyed it greatly. It is not an easy sport or a cheap one but most agreeable. No letter from Olivia. Yesterday in a history paper the boy Howarth wrote: 'In this year James II gave birth to  a son but many people refused to believe it and said it had been brought to him in a hot water bottle: ~ Evelyn Waugh 1947 [during miners' stoppages crisis] Another arctic day, colder than ever. I went to shop in Harrods, knowing that they generate their own electricity. At the centre of Harrods is a large hall with rows of armchairs, in which a posse of weary elderly people had come to roost, to spend the hours in comparative warmth by a by a glimmering light. What were they thinking of us inthis twiligh? I suppose of past comforts , of houses with servants who answered and put coals on the fire drew the blinds and curtains when dusk fell, and brought tea, and polished silver. But now they were grateful for this refuge, where it was too dark even to read. I returned home, put on my best hat, and armed with a bicycle lamp against the black-out, set out to see Sybil Colefax. Rose Macaulay was there today. She said it was monstrous that the BBC had cut the Third Programme because of the fuel crisis, as it is the one good thing we get, and only broadcasts from six to eleven in the evenings. We all urged her to take the matter up. [V S.] Pritchett was there, at a loose end because the New Statesman, like other periodicals, has been suspended. ~ Cynthia Gladwyn 19 February 1665 At supper, hearing by accident of my mayds letting in a rogueing Scotch woman to helpe them to washe and scoure in our house, I fell mightily out, and made my wife, to the disturbance of the house and neighbours, to beat our little girle, and then we shut her down into the cellar, and there she lay all night. Samuel Pepys 1860 Sitting by his fireside, Flaubert told us the story of his first love. He was on his way to Corsica. Till then he had done no more than lose his innocence with his mother's chambermaid. He happened on a little hotel in Marseilles where some women from Lima had arrived with sixteenth-century ebony furniture inlaid with mother-of-pearl at which everyone who saw it marvelled. Three women in silk dressing-gowns falling in a straight line from the back to the heels, together with a little Negro dressed in nankeen and wearing only Turkish slippers: for a young Norman who had hitherto travelled only from Normandy to Champagne and from Champagne to Normandy, all this was very tempting and exotic. It conjured up visions of a patio full of tropical flowers, with a fountain singing in the middle. One day, coming back from a bathe in the Mediterranean and bringing with him all the life of that Fountain of Youth, he was invited into her bedroom by one of the women, a magnificent woman of thirty-five. He gave her one of those kisses into which one puts all one's soul. The woman came to his room that night and started making love with him straight away. There followed an orgy of delight, then tears, then silence. He has gone back to Marseilles several times since then, but nobody has ever been able to tell him what became of these women. The last time he went through, on his way to Tunis to collect material for his Carthaginian novel, he went as usual to have a look at the house, but could not find it. He looked for it, hunted for it, and finally noticed that it had been turned into a toyshop, with a barber's on the first floor. He went upstairs, had himself shaved, and recognized the wallpaper of the bedroom. The Brothers Goncourt 1932 Ellery Sedgwick, editor of the Atlantic Monthly, was here for dinner last night. Later in the evening Paul Patterson, Hamilton Owens, and John W Owens dropped in. When Sedgwick left, along about midnight, Patterson and John Owens remained, and I finally got to bed a little after two o'clock. Sedgwick was full of curious anecdotes. He told about being at a dinner party with the late Moorfield Storey. The name of Hearst came up, and Storey said: 'Hearst married a prostitute, and then gradually dragged her down to his own level.' ~ H. L. Mencken 1981 In the evening I distributed the prizes at the Prendergast School in Lewisham. The school, with nearly six hundred girls, is in the process of changing from grammar to comprehensive and has a high academic reputation, which the young, vital and very pretty headmistress has no intention of allowing to decline. I predict a brilliant career for her. She told me hair-raising stories of threats to the staff in her last school. The headmaster was pursued with a gun. She was visited by two thuggish-looking men, who said that they had come to 'do' her because of the way she had treated one of their relatives. She informed them coolly that there was a policeman in the next room (by some lucky chance, but perhaps not entirely by coincidence, there was). The two thugs took to their heels. I distributed a number of prizes to black girls and asked the headmistress why they seemed to be specially applauded. Did the other girls feel sorry for them? No, I was told, it's because they are such good athletes. I am not an observant person, but I had noticed their long graceful limbs. 'The athletes and the naughty ones are always cheered the loudest.' ~ Lord Longford Report to moderator   Logged Blunderov Archon Gender: Posts: 3160 Reputation: 8.91 Rate Blunderov "We think in generalities, we live in details" Re:The Assassin's Cloak « Reply #67 on: 2011-02-20 14:05:04 » 20 February 1841 When I am going out for an evening, I arrange the fire in my stove so that I do not fail to find a good one when I return though it would have engage* my frequent attention. So that, when I know I am to be at home, I sometimes make believe that I may go out, to save trouble. And this is the art o living, too, – to leave our life in a condition to go alone, and not to require a constant supervision. We will then sit down serenely to live, as by the side of a stove. ~ H. D. Thoreau 1890 K. told me these two tales when she was here. On her way North she overheard at the table a father and mother and two daughters talking. Father `It's delightful to be in a hotel where you can eat dinner without  gloves on.' Daughter –'Why, Father, I think it's quite rulable to do so when the family is alone.' Father – 'Your mother doesn't think so. I always have to eat my dinner and play whist with my gloves on.' This she actually heard, so there must exist a gloved and `rulable' race somewhere in the broad land. Kath. also told me that she was on one of the big Mississippi steam-boats. In the evenings they used to have a hop in the saloon off which the state-rooms opened. At the doors of their rooms the Mammas sat matronizing their daughters; as they grew tired, they gradually 'retired,' put themselves in their berths, re-opened their doors and continued their duties from that vantage point! ~ Alice James 1898 [India] Today we went to visit the Maharajah, for when he is well enough he likes to see his English guests. The palace is squalor itself and a labyrinth of narrow dark passages; I think nearly all royal palaces are that except those in the large cities. We were ushered into a room that was darker than any of them and in the centre, in the dim light, the Rajah sat, a tiny being, in the very middle of a plain charpoy [bedstead] with various nondescript people in attendance; round three sides of the room were small wooden cages of canaries whose voices made those of any other created being inaudible. The Maharajah is a dwarf, a cripple and paralysed in his legs, but his disabilities have not prevented him being a good ruler and loved by his subjects. He sat like some strange, half human creature with wholly human eyes, shaking hands with us all before we took our seats on the four chairs, two on either side of His Highness. Close to him sat the heir, a boy of perhaps eleven years old who is his nephew, very grandly dressed. It was rather trying, for the Maharajah said nothing after some mumbled civilities and we could not think what to say and some of us were not able to say it even if we could. Captain Stewart seemed nonplussed; the Bankwallah's sister knew no word of Hindustani, except perhaps how to ask for hot water, I, very little and that not of a sort to suit Maharajahs. The Bankwallah made some effort but His Highness' replies were hardly audible; I thought I ought to do something to try to relieve, the strain, so, having carefully spread it out in my mind, I lifted up my voice and said, 'Ap ka misag~aisa hai, Maharajah Sahib? [How is your health, Sir Maharajah?] There was a kind of murmur and silence fell again. By this time I was flattened out by embarrassment and the pathos of the sad little figure on the charpoy and the loneliness and gloom of it all. We felt at our wits' end and I think the feeling ran round us like hysteria. Then, without the smallest warning the youthful heir, who had not uttered, prompted I suppose by some satellite behind the Maharajah, raised a piercingly shrill voice and screamed (there is no other word for it) in one long, sustained breath 'Howdoyoudomadam!' It was as sudden as the stab of an assassin's knife and almost as fatal, and we could not imagine what this cryptic cry could mean till it dawned on us that it was a belated acknowledgement of my words to the lad's uncle. After this we took our leave and, as we left, His Highness gave me and Miss K. each a couple of silver bangles and we were wreathed with jasmine and tinsel garlands. We were all rather shattered. We knew that the old man liked visits and took them as a compliment and we had meant to please him, and felt at the same time that such a posse of fools as we must  have seemed could please nobody. It was Captain Stewart's fault for he knew the language well and was the responsible person among us. The Maharajah drives every day in the same direction along the road past the guest home but at a certain point he turns back because a few paces further on would bring him in sight of the cenotaphs of his forebears and he considers that unlucky. ~ Violet Jacob 1902 Four days ago a group of us went off sledding to Kiritein. Besides Herma, Hauer and Hannak were in my sledge. Return journey pretty. Fir branches against. the bright night sky; singing in the telegraph wires. Because of the cold, drank a lot of schnapps and Herma got tired. Hauer recited all kinds of verse fragments. Herma and I were princess and prince. She lay in my arms with her eyes shut like a little child. A kiss - fleeting - secret - positively unnerving. ~ Robert Musil 1934 Am I wise to embrace a parliamentary career - can I face the continued strain? James Willoughby told me that he nearly gave up his parliamentary campaign in November, as he- just could not stand the ordeal of speaking: when he confessed this to his agent, the man replied, 'Don't let not speaking well dishearten you: I have known candidates who could not even read!' ~ `Chips' Channon 1967 A party to meet our new Leader, Jeremy Thorpe. A huge crowd came and drank much champagne. Paul Hislop took Yehudi Menuhin for a Liberal candidate; David Frost kissed Violet Bonham Carter; Lord Gardiner, who looks so impressive when dressed in his Lord Chancellor's robes, came; but neither George Brown nor the Prime Minister did - just as well, I thought. Jeremy won't be as good as Jo [Grimond], whose wonderful looks, voice, and integrity, were a tremendous asset to the Party, especially on television. Jeremy is a bit of an actor; in fact, he would have made a marvellous actor. His imitations of Harold Macmillan, Harold Wilson, even Jo, are terrifyingly funny; and best of all is that of Ted Heath saying, 'Out of the House'. Admittedly Ted has behaved rudely to Jeremy, walking 'out of the House' when Jeremy took his place there as Liberal Leader. ~ Cynthia Gladwyn Report to moderator   Logged Blunderov Archon Gender: Posts: 3160 Reputation: 8.91 Rate Blunderov "We think in generalities, we live in details" Re:The Assassin's Cloak « Reply #68 on: 2011-02-22 01:40:24 » 21 February 1826 Corrected the proofs of Malachi this morning - it may fall dead and there will be a squib lost; it may chance to light on some ingredients of national feeling and set folk's beards in a blaze and so much the better if it does - I mean better for Scotland - not a whit for me. Attended the hearing in P. House till near four o'clock so I shall do little to-night for I am tired and sleepy. One person talking for a long time, whether in pulpit or at the bar or anywhere else, unless the interest be great and the eloquence of the highest character, always sets me to sleep. I impudently lean my head on my hand in the Court and take my nap without shame - The Lords may keep awake and mind their own affairs - Quae supra nos nihil ad nos ['What is above us is nothing to do with us']. These Clerks' stools are certainly as easy seats as are in Scotland, those of the Barons of Exchequer always excepted. ~ Sir Walter Scott 1885 I saw a most extraordinary tricycle pass today. A bath chair made of wicker work in which reclined a smart lady, and behind, where one should push, a gentleman treadling, puffing and blowing and looking very sheepish. I wonder any one will make such an exhibition of themselves. How the bicycles swarm now, and yet a few years since, everyone turned round to stare at a velocipede! ~ Beatrix Potter 1902 Went to the variety theater with Jacques and Hannak. Jacques — what a character — no one could beat him. One of the chanteuses wasn't bad-looking. Underwear all in grey. After the performance, however, we decided against inviting anybody. Flirted a little with the girl with grey underclothes who had her mother with her. If she had come to our table I'd certainly have behaved decently toward her. Because of that. While I was deep in conversation with Hannak, Jacques beckoned to her and went outside. In the garden he had his way with her — genius! ~ Robert Musil 1904 [Paris] This afternoon, Lamoreax concert, to hear, chiefly, Richard Strauss's Life of a Hero. It came at the end of an exhausting programme, but I was much impressed by its beauty. I heard it under difficulties, for the audience grew restive, talked and protested. One old man insisted on going out. There is a rule about not entering or leaving during a piece, but this old man cried so loud and shook the doors so that the pompiers were obliged to let him through. Applause and hisses at the end, from a full audience. One more exhibition of the betise of an audience when confronted by something fresh, extravagant and powerful. It would be absurd to condemn this or any other particular audience, for, all audiences are alike. The sarcastic and bitter opposition must be taken as a tribute to the power of the art. Was not Tannhauser simply laughed off the stage at the first performance? I like the piece better than I thought I should — a great deal. The first thing of Richard Strauss that I have heard. Twelve thousand five hundred words written this week. ~ Arnold Bennett 1970 Last night in Birmingham, giving a political speech to the local Monday 'Club. They were professional people, the chairman a very able young barrister of twenty-seven, one of the women a doctor, another a solicitor. The woman who sat on one side of me at dinner told me she busied herself collecting money for the Conservative Party and it was made clear to her that the businessmen of Birmingham looked to Powell more than to Heath. One man said she could have a cheque for $5 for the Conservatives but $1000 if it was for Enoch. She said the racial feeling in Birmingham is very ugly. She had a small accident because she was driving while painting her nails! The car she ran into was driven by a coloured man and immediately about twenty people collected including a policeman and accused the coloured man of causing the accident. She had some difficulty in convincing them that she was entirely to blame. ~ Cecil King 1989 I finished Roy Jenkins's European Diary. An entertaining picture of the EEC world. There are some convincing portraits, notably Giscard [d'Estang], a somewhat unattractive figure, who, one feels, could well be accommodated in fiction. At first I was unable to put a finger on which novelist (for Giscard) when I wrote to Roy. Giscard's alleged affair with the Sorbonne student suggests perhaps a potential Stavrogin [character in Dostoevsky's The Possessed], tho' clearly he is without Stavrogin's (characteristically Russian) willingness to throw everything overboard according to mood. On reconsideration, Giscard is essentially a French figure, Stendhal or Balzac. Giscard's apparently phoney claims to noblesse is typical of characters in novels of either of the last. Proust less so. One certainly does not see Giscard in Proust's grand circles, nor Marcel's family, nor for that matter the Verdurins, where he would essentially have been regarded as a 'bore'. Perhaps M. de Norpois might have made some revealing comment on him as an ambitious young politician. Roy's self-portrait is amusing, his taste for the arts, good living, smart society, appreciating such things as being given the Spanish Order of Charles III, because its blue-and-white riband often figures in Goya pictures of Spanish royalities and notabilities. That is absolutely the right reason for wanting the decoration. One recognizes that Roy was born into the purple of the Labour Party. Even so his ease, unaffected pleasure in the beau monde is remarkable in its total lack of strain, to which I can think of no parallel on the Left; often missing in those of a higher bracket. At one point Roy's Diary records going to the loo with James Callaghan, then Prime Minister, after some dinner. Callaghan 'made me a most fanciful offer'. I think Roy deliberately worded the entry so that one would think Callaghan suddenly gasped in a broken voice: 'Roy, have you never guessed after all these years what I feel for you?' It was, in fact, proffer of the Governorship of Hong Kong. Interesting that appointments are made in such circumstances. ~ Anthony Powell 22 February 1855 We saw 26 of the sick and wounded of the Coldstreams ... There were some sad cases; – one man who had lost his right arm at Inkermann, was also at the Alma, and looked deadly pale – one or two others had lost their arms, others had been shot in the shoulders and legs, several, in the hip joint ... A private, Lanesbury, with a patch over his eye, and his face tied up, had had his head traversed by a bullet, penetrating through the eye, which was gone, – through the nose, and coming out at the neck! He looked dreadfully pale, but was recovering well. There were 2 other very touching and distressing cases, 2 poor boys. I cannot say how touched and impressed I have been by the sight of these noble brave, and so sadly wounded men and how anxious I feel to be of use to them, and to try and get some employment for those who are maimed for life. Those who are discharged will receive very small pensions but not sufficient to live upon. ~ Queen Victoria 1944 Go for the day to Montepulciano and help to serve lunch at the communal kitchen started by Bracci, the Mayor, at which four hundred people are given lunch daily in two shifts. They usually get soup or macaroni, followed by vegetables or chestnuts, with a piece of bread of fifty grammes, and meat once or twice a week – all for half a lira – and a glass of wine for an extra half lira. To-day, being Shrove Tuesday, there was a slice (smallish) of roast beef in a plate of macaroni, followed by a small slab of chestnut-cake – and a glass of wine free. All this in addition to the usual scanty food ration, which thus remains available for the evening meal. The food was well cooked, and hot, the rooms clean and cheerful. Everyone who has applied – whether evacuees or the poor of the district – has been admitted. An admirable enterprise. ~ Iris Origo 1962 [San Francisco] Coley [his secretary/manager] saw me off in Kingston on Tuesday, and I sped off through the bright skies at approximately the same moment that John Glenn Junior sped off in his capsule into outer space. He had been round the world three times before I landed at Miami airport. I did a little shopping and had my hair cut, and while this was going on I heard over the radio that Glenn had landed safely. It was a tremendously exciting moment, ruined for me by a blonde manicurist with a voice like a corncrake who made it almost impossible to hear what had happened. ~ Noel Coward Report to moderator   Logged Blunderov Archon Gender: Posts: 3160 Reputation: 8.91 Rate Blunderov "We think in generalities, we live in details" Re:The Assassin's Cloak « Reply #69 on: 2011-02-24 14:43:59 » 23 February 1938 I wonder every now and then, whether it is  really worth it – this endless poverty, borrowing, uncertainty, frustration – all the sake of a possibility that I may one day write something that will have value. Is my talent big enough to justify my leading this sort of life? If I were never to become a writer of very much importance, what would be the sense of my making this attempt to live on nothing but what each day brings, to devote myself to nothing but trying to understand the sense of existence and to make words live on paper – this prolonged refusal to submit to everyone else's way of life? What small excuse, then, would there be for not coming to terms with the world, and gaining the security of an income earned in an ordinary way. How far more sensible it would be to work in a regular job, as everyone else has to who has no means of support and no other raison d'etre – if I do not succeed, if I end by having nothing to show for all this struggle, the disgrace will be twofold, I shall be doubly rate, and the responsibility for a wasted life will be all my own. ~David Gascoyne 1970 [Tangier] On undressing, I discovered the  infestation again! So I had to get dressed and procure the taxi and he knew where I wanted to go, and he waited for me! The all-night chemist in the Rue de Fez gave me the Benzyl Benzoate & I returned to the hotel. Put it all on and lay in bed with my balls on fire. Really it can't be an accident! This  happened last time I was here! All these boys must be dirty. The only one who I've known with no mishap is Mohammed Halimi and he seems to have left Tangier. One thing is certain – it puts one off for years as far as I'm concerned! All the attraction flies out of the window and one just feels total revulsion. ~ Kenneth Williams 1977 I really had to pee. Fred [Hughes] came back from the bathroom and I asked him if there was anybody in there and he said no, that it was empty. I went in and was peeing and suddenly there was someone next to me saying, 'Oh my God, I can't believe I'm standing next to you, let me shake your hand and then he realized and said, No, I'll wash my hands and then we can shake.' I lost my concentration and had to stop peeing. And then more and more people started coming in and saying, 'Is it really you?' I got out. ~ Andy Warhol 24 February 1916 [Russia] Yesterday I was commissioned to buy some coarse white cloth; accordingly, I walked to town and went into a small draper's shop. The Jewish owner was cleaning away the snow from the pavement, but seeing a customer, he put down his spade. Just as he was pulling down a roll of the material from the shelf, the shop-door opened and a fierce, bearded Russian face, with a fierce, thundering Russian voice, ordered him out into the street — 'immediately!' to continue sweeping the snow. I was annoyed at the Russian's rude interference; so I, too, suddenly became loud and rude. Facing the infuriated soldier, I told him that I would not allow the Jew to leave the shop until my purchase was made. 'Durak [fool!]' I cried. 'What right have you to interfere? I am carrying out an official commission. When I am ready, and not before, this man shall leave the shop.' It worked! The soldier turned and walked out into the street. Thinking it over afterwards, I was puzzled to decide what I should have done if it had not worked! ~ Florence Farnborough 1934 Tonight I danced in my room with the furniture pushed back, in my bathing suit. Jazz, Ravel, Mozart, Jazz. The compelling rhythms. You must dance. Abandon all else. ~ Elizabeth Smart 1981 The papers tell us that Prince Charles's engagement to Lady Diana Spencer will be announced today. [His wife] Elizabeth's book on the Queen Mother will be out in June; there will be just time to insert a statement that the engagement will give special pleasure to Prince Charles's grandmother. It all fits well with Elizabeth's conception of the Queen as a sublime exemplar of the family principle. We learn that Lady Diana's parents have a house next door to Sandringham and that her father was an equerry of King George VI. Elizabeth thinks of saying in her book that 'Lady Diana will fit into the royal family like a hand into a glove.' This, however, is too much of a cliche — can I think of another, better simile? I rack my brains hopelessly. She then comes up with. this: 'She will fit in like a royal crest into its nest.' It is this which gives Elizabeth, in addition to all her academic qualities, the edge on other biographers. ~ Lord Longford Report to moderator   Logged Blunderov Archon Gender: Posts: 3160 Reputation: 8.91 Rate Blunderov "We think in generalities, we live in details" Re:The Assassin's Cloak « Reply #70 on: 2011-02-26 15:47:56 » 25 February 1808 Since the last entry I've killed three hares, the first quadrupeds in my life. ~ Stendhal 1942 Heart hurt for first time in years. ~ Dawn Powell 1942 [Holland] It is now half-past seven in the morning. I have clipped my toenails, drunk a mug of genuine Van Houten's cocoa, and had some bread and honey, all with what you might call abandon. I opened the Bible at random, but it gave me no answers this morning. Just as well, because there were no questions, just enormous faith and gratitude that life should be so beautiful, and that makes this a historic moment, that and not the fact that we are on our way to the Gestapo this morning. ~ Etty Hillesum 1957 Ted's book of poems — The Hawk in the Rain — has won the first Harper's publication contest under the 3 judges: W H. Auden, Stephen Spender & Marianne Moore! Even as I write this, I am incredulous. The little scared people reject. The big unscared practising poets accept. I knew there would be something like this to welcome us to New York! We will publish a bookshelf of books between us before we perish! And a batch of brilliant healthy children! I can hardly wait to see the letter of award (which has not yet come) & learn details of publication. To smell the print off the pages! ~ Sylvia Plath 1970 Today was Gladwyn's [Sir Gladwyn Jebb, her husband] motion in the Lords on the changes in the BBC's radio programmes, particularly in the Third Programme, which I urged him to table and so felt very responsible about the success of the debate. It went very well, there were seventeen speakers. G spoke very well, so I felt gratified. What a strange man Lord Annan is. Anxious to keep in with the government, he rose to his feet to state that he wondered why the BBC had bothered to announce the changes, since had they not done so they might have got away with it; a most deplorable argument, as orchestras might have been disbanded without anyone knowing. I could see the jaw of that philistine and uninspiring figure, Lord Hill, who had been responsible for it all, drop in astonishment. ~ Cynthia Gladwyn 1981 Norah [Baroness] Phillips joined us at lunch ... She has a great deal to do with the Palace and hopes that her place is assured for the royal wedding [of Prince Charles and Princess Diana]. Elizabeth and I were (admittedly to my surprise) not asked to the wedding of Princess Anne. I being a Knight of the Garter to which order Prince Charles belongs, we might have a chance this time. No doubt it all depends partly on whether it is a State occasion or a private wedding. Partly also on where it takes place. Most people seem to be assuming that it will be in Westminster Abbey. But Elizabeth sat next at dinner last night to the Dean of Westminster, Edward Carpenter. He said that they `had heard nothing' which makes them fear that it will be in St Paul's. The latter holds an extra four hundred. Our chances of squeezing in would then be improved. ~ Lord Longford 26 February Sir Robert of Paris, neither of whom I deemd sea worthy have performed 2 voyages, that is each sold off about $3400 and the same of the curr[e]nt year. It proves what I have thought almost impossible, that I might write myself [clear]. But as yet my spell holds fast. I have besides two or three good things in which I may advance with spirit. And with palmy hopes on the part of Caddell and myself. He thinks he will so n cry victoria on the bet about the bet on his hat. He was to get a new one when I had paid off all my debts. And I, uncorrected by misfortune, supposed our who [le] plan had gone to the Devil and seriously thought of thinking [shrinking?] from the affair of my own exertions. Yet even when I was meditating all this I had sure enough to remark that it was a base cowardly think and that I should lose all the  insurances which must come to $20,000 if I die without self Agency. I can hardly, now that I am assured that all is well again, form an idea to myself that I could think it was otherwise. ~Sir Walter Scott 1985 I don't understand why Jackie O[nassis] thinks she's so grand that she doesn't owe it to the public to have another great marriage to somebody big. You'd think she'd want to scheme and connive to get into history again. ~ Andy Warhol 1989 950 millibars, the lowest pressure recorded in the last 120 years. A long walk round the Ness to the power station; then up to the coastguard cottages, which I've never explored before. They are set in the middle of a moated mound which encloses a large area — once kitchen gardens. It's difficult to find a good vegetable garden; even in the marshes I came across only one last autumn, as I travelled round with my camera filming the countryside for War Requiem — the supermarkets have wiped them out. Once all these little cottages grew their own, before the road was constructed during the war. Now no-one does. ~ Derek Jarman Report to moderator   Logged Blunderov Archon Gender: Posts: 3160 Reputation: 8.91 Rate Blunderov "We think in generalities, we live in details" Re:The Assassin's Cloak « Reply #71 on: 2011-03-03 04:33:49 » 27 February 1814 There is something to me very softening in the presence of a woman – some strange influence, even if one is not in love with them – which I cannot at all account for, having no very high opinion of the sex. But yet, – I always feel in better humour with myself and every thing else, if there is a woman within ken. Even Mrs. Mule, my firelighter, – the most ancient and withered of her kind, – and (except to myself) not the best-tempered – always makes me laugh, – no difficult task when I am `i the vein'. ~ Lord Byron 1941 There is a rumour floating round today that we are going to a worse camp as a reprisal for the bad treatment of German prisoners at home – this from an officer. I can't really credit it. Granted we have been treated exceptionally well here, I own, but if the intention is reprisals – which I don't believe – this could equally well be made a Strafe Lager. Scottie came into our room at 4.0 o'clock with news that we have to be packed by 9.0 a.m. tomorrow. Knowing Scottie, we took not the slightest notice – didn't even look up – but it proved shortly to be true. ~ Captain John Mansel 1942 [Holland] How rash to assert that man shapes his own destiny. All he can do is determine his inner responses. You cannot know another's inner life from his circumstances. To know that you must know his dreams, his relationships, his moods, his sickness, and his death. Very early on Wednesday morning a large group of us were crowded into the Gestapo hall, and at that moment the circumstances of all our lives were the same. All of us occupied the same space, the men behind the desk no less than those about to be questioned. What distinguished each one of us was only our inner attitudes. I noticed a young man with a sullen expression, who paced up and down looking driven and harassed and making no attempt to hide his irritation. He kept looking for pretexts to shout at the helpless Jews: 'Take your hands out of your pockets' and so on. I thought him more pitiable than those he shouted at, and those he shouted at I thought pitiable for being afraid of him. When it was my turn to stand in front of his desk, he bawled at me, `What the hell's so funny?' I wanted to say, 'Nothing's funny here except you,' but refrained. 'You're still smirking,' he bawled again. And I, in all innocence, `I didn't mean to, it's my usual expression.' And he, `Don't give me that, get the hell out of here: his face saying, 'I'll deal with you later.' And that was presumably meant to scare me to death, but the device was too transparent. I am not easily frightened. Not because I am brave, but because I know that I am dealing with human beings and that I must try as hard as I can to understand everything that anyone ever does. And that was the real import that morning: not that a disgruntled young Gestapo officer yelled at me, but that I felt no indignation, rather a real compassion, and would have liked to ask, `Did you have a very unhappy childhood, has your girl-friend let you down?' Yes, he looked harassed and driven, sullen and weak. I should have liked to start treating him there and then, for I know that pitiful young men like that are dangerous as soon as they are let loose on mankind. But all the blame must be put on the system that uses such people. What needs eradicating is the evil in man, not man himself. Something else about this morning: the perception, very strongly borne in, that despite all the suffering and injustice I cannot hate others. All the appalling things that happen are no mysterious threats from afar, but arise from fellow beings very close to us. That makes these happenings more familiar, then, and not so frightening. The terrifying thing is that systems grow too big for men and hold them in a satanic grip, the builders no less than the victims of the system, much as large edifices and spires, created by men's hands, tower high above us, dominate us, yet may collapse over our heads and bury us. ~ Etty Hillesum 1948 In Gide's Journal I have just read again how he does not wish to write its pages slowly as he would the pages of a novel. He wants to train himself to rapid writing in it. It is just what I have always felt about this journal of mine. Don't ponder, don't grope – just plunge something down, and perhaps more clearness and quickness will come with practice. ~ Denton Welch 28 February 1805 Yesterday and today, I saw the lovable Melanie. My love increased amazingly. Tonight it was my whole life. I believe that M. Blanc, far from keeping her, is merely a man of letters who talks over her roles with her, but has exacted secrecy. In that case, what an angelic soul! She was far from even imagining my suspicions, and how far my coarse words are from interpreting her delicacy! She's in love with me and won't tell me so; tomorrow, I should let her see that I'm sad. I'm going to bed at half-past nine tonight because I feel the mi distruggo pensando a ella [that I am wearing myself out thinking about her]. ~ Stendhal 1935 How did she hurt me? Was it the day when she raised her arm to wave at someone across the street? The day when no one came to open the door to me, and then she appeared with her hair all ruffled? The day when she was whispering with him on the embankment? The thousands of times she made me hurry here and there? But this has nothing to do with aesthetics; this is grief. I wanted to count my memories of happy moments, and all I can remember is the pangs I suffered. Never mind, they serve the same purpose. My love story with her is not made up of dramatic scenes but of moments filled with the subtlest perceptions. So should a poem be. But it is agony. ~ Cesare Pavese 1956 This morning I' went with Cressida [his daughter] to the H.M.V. place in Oxford Street to buy records and the following amusing incident occurred:- It was terribly crowded, and we had great difficulty in getting anybody to attend to us. However eventually I managed to get some records to try – jazz records – and we found a young girl – I think she can't have been more than 17 – to shepherd us to a cubicle where one could play the records. She left me there to play the records while Cressida went off in search of other ones. As I was listening to the jazz, more or less dancing up and down to the rhythm, the door of the cubicle opened and who should put her head in but Elaine Burton, the Labour Member of Parliament for Coventry. Slightly embarrassed at being caught dancing on my own, I welcomed her. She said, 'I must tell you what the girl has just said to us. She said, "Do you know, I believe the Chancellor of the Exchequer is next door."' This is not the first time that, so long after I held the office, people have still regarded me as Chancellor. I suppose it is because I have so frequently broadcast and appeared on T.V. on financial questions. ~ Hugh Gaitskell 1958 Harry Cohn of Columbia Pictures died yesterday. I shall always remember him for having paid $750 for the tide of 'Washington Merry-go-Round' [the title of one of Pearson's newspaper columns] in 1931 and made a million-dollar movie out of 'it. He used to laugh when he saw me in later years. My share was $375. Latterly he has been chiefly famous around Broadway for paying $25,000 to the Negro nightclub singer Davis [Sammy Davis, Jr] not to sleep with Kim Novak. Cohn claimed he discovered her first. ~ Drew Pearson 1983 Benjamin [Liu] picked me up and we tried to feed the big gingerbread house that little Berkeley Reinhold had given me for Christmas to the pigeons in the park. But they didn't like gingerbread and they didn't like candy. And I tried to get rid of some fruitcake, too, and they didn't like that, either, so I feel like just letting them starve. I mean, what do they want? They do like nuts, though, so maybe I'll bring them some peanuts sometime. Okay, so then we went downtown. (cab $6). ~ Andy Warhol 1989 My sense of confusion has come to a head, catalysed by my public announcement of the HIV infection. Now I no longer know where the focus is, for myself, or in the minds of my audience. Reaction to me has changed. There is an element of worship, which worries me. Perhaps I courted it. ~ Derek Jarman 29 February 1872 At half past four drove in open landau and four with Arthur, Leopold, and Jane C[hurchill], the Equerries riding. We drove round Hyde and Regent's Parks, returning by Constitution Hill, and when at the Garden Entrance a dreadful thing happened ... It is difficult for me to describe, as my impression was a great fright, and all was over in a minute. How it all happened I knew nothing of. The Equerries had dismounted, [John] Brown had got down to let down the steps, and Jane C. was just getting out, when suddenly someone appeared at my side, whom I at first imagined was a footman, going to lift off the wrapper. Then I perceived that it was someone unknown, peering above the carriage door, with an uplifted hand and a strange voice, at the same time the boys calling out and moving forward. Involuntarily, in a terrible fright, I threw myself over Jane C., calling out, 'Save me,' and heard a scuffle and voices! I soon recovered myself sufficiently to stand up and turn round, when I saw Brown holding a young man tightly, who was struggling. They laid the man on the ground and Brown kept hold of him till several of the police came in. All turned and asked if I was hurt, and I said, `Not at all.' Then Lord Charles [Fitzroy], General Hardinge, and Arthur came up, saying they thought the man had dropped something. We looked, but could find nothing, when Cannon, the postillion, called out, 'There it is,' and looking down I then did see shining on the ground a small pistol! This filled us with horror. All were as white as sheets, Jane C. almost crying, and Leopold looked as if he were going to faint. It is to good Brown and to his wonderful presence of mind that I greatly owe my safety, for he alone saw the boy rush round and followed him! When I was standing in the hall, General Hardinge came in, bringing an extraordinary document which this boy had intended making me sign! It was in connection with the Fenian prisoners! ~ Queen Victoria 1920 Oh, to be a writer, a real writer given up to it and to it alone! Oh, I failed to-day; I turned back, looked over my shoulder, and immediately it happened, I felt as though I too were struck down. The day turned cold and dark on the instant. It seemed to belong to summer twilight in London, to the clang of the gates as they close the garden, to the deep light painting the high houses, to the smell of leaves and dust, to the lamp-light, to 'that stirring of the senses, to the langour of twilight, the breath of it on one's cheek, to all those things which (I feel to-day) are gone from me for ever ... I feel to-. day that I shall die soon and suddenly: but not of my lungs. ~ Katherine Mansfield 1928 Very much worn down, these last few days, by an absurd grippe that my petty daily occupations have not given me time to treat as I should have, by two days in bed. Cannot get myself to give up smoking. I had got out of the habit for two months, helped by Marc's example. Then both of us in Berlin allowed ourselves to be led into it again. Despite this stultifying cold, I am not much aware of getting older, and have even rarely felt my mind more fit, my whole being more full of aspirations and desires. But I am constantly computing my age and telling myself that the ground may suddenly give way under my feet. I manage to get myself not to feel too melancholy over this. ~ Andre Gide MARCH `I have decided to keep a full journal, in the hope that my life will perhaps seem more interesting when it is written down.' ADRIAN MOLE 1 March 1686 Came Sir Gilb: Gerrard to treate with me about his sonns marying my Daughter Susanna; The father being obnoxious, and in some suspicion and displeasure of the King, I would receive no proposal, 'til his Majestie had given me leave, which he was pleas'd to do: but after severall meetings, we brake off, upon his not being willing to secure any thing competant for my daughter[s] Children: besides that I found his estate to be most of it in the Coale-pits as far as N. Castle, and leases from the Bishop of Durrham, who had power to make concurrent Leases with other difficulties, so as we did not proceede to any conclusion. ~ John Evelyn 1851 Rule. In difficult circumstances always act on first impressions. ~ Leo Tolstoy 1871 After dinner last night Mr V. kindly anxious to cure my face ache made me drink four large glasses of port. The consequence was that all night and all today I have been groaning with a bursting raging splitting sick headache. ~ Rev. Francis Kilvert 1886 Rather her heavy snow. There has been a most singular nuisance going on since Christmas about Manchester. A gang of young men called themselves Spring-heeled Jacks have been going about in the dusk frightening people. They wore india-rubbering dresses which would puff up at will to a great size, horns, a lantern and springs in their boots. One jumped right over a cab in the Eccles Road, nearly frightening the gentleman inside out of his wits. One poor girl in Swinton Lane had a fit. They were cowardly bullies, also thieves for they took money. Some say they are Medical Students from Owens College, and it is not impossible I am afraid. They were bad to catch, but the authorities sent some detectives. One of these met a jack who demanded his money or his life. The detective pretended to be frightened and get out money, but instead he produced some handcuffs and caught him. Another was captured on a Sunday evening by some young men who beat him soundly, and then discovered he was an acquaintance. One was in the next garden to Hopefield a fortnight since. The maids durst not stir out a step in the evening, which, my Aunt remarked, was just as well. ~ Beatrix Potter 1925 [Paris] Yesterday afternoon we caught the Bois in one of its most unusual aspects. Just as we! passed the gate, leaden clouds gathered over our heads and poured rain and hail on the startled promenaders. Mothers, children, nurses, lovers, old men and women, students and dogs, all suddenly disappeared. Automobiles rushed homeward and carriage drivers opened their umbrellas. Hugh [Guiler, her husband] and I did the same. `I'm Scottish, 'Hugh. `I love to walk in the rain.' `So do I' 'Well then, let's go.' Suddenly the rain and hail stopped short, and gray-and-purple mist fell all around us and over the surface of the lake. We rented a boat, and Hugh rowed us to a little island, where we walked up a gravel hill to a chalet and sat on the porch before a white-top table and ordered chocolate and cakes. Behind us were a pair of lovers discreetly kissing. Before us stretched brilliant wet grass and mist-enveloped trees, from which came the cooing and twittering of birds. Beyond, the hill descended into the lake, and we would have thought ourselves miles away from Paris. We dreamed together on that quiet and soft afternoon, sipping chocolate and nibbling cakes and turning now and then to look at our little white boat rocking on its chain. When Hugh rowed us homeward, the rain started again. The leaden sky turned the lake's water black, and on this deep, black, undulating surface, swans languidly floated. ~ Anais Nin 1941 In the morning the milkmaid refused to come up. She is no longer allowed to deliver to Jews' Houses. At midday at the bank only 178M had been transferred from the pension office instead of the 409M of previous months: the new 'social deduction' from Jews, 15 percent of income, deducted all at once for the three months January to March. – After that the butcher declared he would have to give less from now on because deliveries were so poor. In the afternoon the news that Bulgaria had joined the Tripartite Pact. So Greece is lost, so Russia looks calmly on, so the route to Egypt through Turkey-in-Asia is open, so Germany appears to be winning the war. In the evening we wanted to eat something at the Pschorrbrau and found nothing edible without meat coupons, went to the Monopol and found only turnips, went to the station and found nothing at all, went back to the Monopol and ate the turnips. (All in spring weather and slush.) As soon as we were home there was a police check. One day in my life in the Third Reich. ~Victor Klemperer 1943 My husband has to do different work now – less `large' work, and nearly all blitz repairs that take him into people's houses. He comes in horrified sometimes – really shocked – to tell of people with no coal, no sugar till they went downtown for their rations, meat for only two days a week, bread and jam for tea, women ill with standing for hours in queues. He stands and gazes on my gaily embroidered cloth, spread 'extravagantly with all kinds of food' – and never sees it's only cheese on toast, vegetable salads etc! ~ Nella Last 1963 Bunny's [David Garnett] remark about the convenience and simplicity of leaving one's body to a hospital has been rumbling in my mind and finally I took action on it. Two days ago I found myself staring in bewilderment at an envelope with 'INSPECTOR OF ANATOMY' written on it in large black letters. I thought for a moment I'd gone mad. But no, this is the gentleman who arranges for the hospitals' corpse-supply. I must admit it gave me a slight frisson as I saw myself laid out cold and stiff and pale, or kept on ice for two years, which seems possible. I shoved it away with a little burst of escapism. Then yesterday, 'This won't do,' I thought, and fished it out and dealt with it. I rang up H. M. Inspector. A delightful humorous Scotch voice answered, recommending me to leave myself to 'the nearest medical school' – because `ye might die up in the north country or somewhere'. So it's done now and I feel another cupboard has been tidied. ~ Frances Partridge 2 March 1859 [New York] Stopped at Barnum's on my way down town to see the much advertised nondescript, the 'What-is-it.' Some say it's an advanced chimpanzee, others that it's a cross between nigger and baboon. But it seems to me clearly an idiotic negro dwarf, raised, perhaps, in Alabama or Virginia. The showman's story of its capture (with three other specimens that died) by a party in pursuit of the gorilla on the western coast of Africa is probably bosh. The creature's look and action when playing with his keeper are those of a nigger boy. But his anatomical details are fearfully simian, and he's a great fact for Darwin. ~ George Templeton Strong 1940 [Palestine] Probably because I had sat up all night on a hard seat being serenaded by the Austrialian soldiers singing 'Waltzing Matilda' and 'We're the boys from way down under' I found Palestine in the dawn rather disappointing – it was flat and less, colourful than I expected. I ate breakfast on the train and reached Rehovoth at eleven. I climbed out on to sand, hardly daring to believe I was going to see Dan [her husband, serving in the Yeomanry]. I saw him a long way down the train looking up at the carriages. Tall, bronzed by the sun, wearing khaki shorts and tunic, marvellously good-looking ... I stood and watched him, spellbound. I thought my heart would burst ... Heaven is being together. ~ Countess of Ranfurly 1961 [Fiji] There was a dinner party of thirty. Opposite me was seated Lieutenant-Colonel The Hon. Ratu Edward Cakobau, who has just been appointed a district commissioner. When the bandmaster came in for his glass of port, Ratu Edward leaned across and said to me, 'The bandmaster comes from the worst cannibal district in the island.' I asked Ratu Edward if he were a great-grandson of King Thakimbau, and he replied, 'Yes: I then asked him whether he knew that his great-grandfather had been to lunch with Queen Victoria in the late 187os. He replied, ,Yes.' I then told him that the King had sat next to my mother, who, being a very cheeky young girl, had asked him if he regretted having given up cannibalism. She had always said that he had replied that all he missed was babies' toes. Ratu Edward was highly amused and said, `I don't think that can be right, for I always heard my great-grandfather particularly liked ladies' fingers.' Edward Cakobau was shown the menu on board the ship bringing him back to Fiji recently, and said to the head waiter, 'This menu looks horrible, bring me the passenger list.' ~ Earl Mountbatten of Burma 1996 In the evening we watched an excellent TV interview with Dame Muriel Spark. She came over as wonderfully direct, honest, witty and charming. When she lived in Rome some years ago she invited us to drinks in her splendid apartment. At that time she wore her hair piled high; there were flashing jewels and chic clothes, and she was most affable. The last time I saw her was in June 1991, at the memorial service for Graham Greene. We sat next to each other; we were both required to get up and speak. She wore no make-up and was almost casually dressed. In her tribute to Graham she spoke of the financial help he gave her when she was a struggling writer. She said, 'It was typical of Graham that with the monthly cheques he often sent a few bottles of red wine to "take the edge off cold charity".' It says something very pleasing about both of them. ~ Alec Guinness 3 March 1886 Davis, the cowman, caught and killed a fine badger. It was sleeping in a corner under the manager at the stalls. He was feeding the cows and first stuck his foot into its rump, and beat it on the head. They are getting rare. I do not remember one being caught here before, though we have often found their holes in the wood. They are not in the least destructive of anything one wishes to preserve. We had it stuffed at a cost of 20/– and put into what the taxidermist called a menacing attitude. ~ Dearman Birchall 1928 Driving rain outside. Tremendous appetite for rest. Yet brain very active, at once receptive and creative. Ali, to be able to begin a new career; start out anew and under another name! How little satisfies those who are succeeding today! Launching a tone of voice, a gait, a bearing, is enough for them. No maturation of thought; no composition. (If ever, later on, someone reads these lines, he will wonder whom I am getting at ... I am none too'sure of it myself.) ~ Andre Gide 1943 When we got to Ambleside, I said to the conductress, 'Do you think if I got off the bus I could get on again?' She answered, 'Oh yes – leave your case on the seat'. I knew there should be a wait of fifteen minutes, so I hurried into a fish shop, where a pleasant old man apologised for the 'poor show and said they had only cod and plaice. I got a tail-piece of cod, and he filleted it and gave me a handful of trimmings to cook for my little cat. I rushed back to the car-park – to see my bus swing out, taking my case with it. I was at a loss till I saw a Windermere bus leaving, and ran to stop it. I said,' Oh dear, the Barrow bus has left me behind – how will I get home?' The driver replied crossly, 'You had no right to leave your seat, madam. It was late in, and had only a nine-minute wait: I smiled at him and said, 'No, I shouldn't have been tempted. But now, wouldn't your wife have been tempted if she had seen FISH – and got it for your tea?' He laughed and said, 'Aye, she would. Come on, jump in, and we'll overtake the Barrow bus for you.' ~ Nella Last 1983 I take a version of a script down to Settle to be photocopied. The man in charge of the machine watches the sheets come through. 'Glancing at this,' he says, 'I see you dabble in playwriting.' While this about sums it up, I find myself resenting him for noticing what goes through this machine at all. Photocopying is a job in which one is required to see and not see, the delicacy demanded not different from that in medicine. It's As if a nurse were to say, 'I see, watching you undress, that your legs are nothing to write home about.' ~ Alan Bennett Report to moderator   Logged Blunderov Archon Gender: Posts: 3160 Reputation: 8.91 Rate Blunderov "We think in generalities, we live in details" Re:The Assassin's Cloak « Reply #72 on: 2011-03-17 19:49:37 » [Blunderov] My apologies for having to catch up in such a big chunk. The marvelous ease with which it turned out to impossible to convert to 64 bit computing caused a few snafus. More than a few. </bitter> 4 March 1656 This night I was invited by Mr Rog: VEstrange to heare the incomperable Lubicer [Thomas Baltzar] on the Violin, his variety upon a few notes and plaine ground with that wonderful dexterity, as was admirable, and though a very young man, yet so perfect and skillfull as there was nothing so Crosse and perplext, which being by our Artists, brought] to him, which he did not at first sight, with ravishing sweeteners, and improvements, play off, to the astonishment of our best Masters: In Summ, he plaid on that single Instrument a full Consort, so as the rest, flung-downe their Instruments, as acknowl[e]dging a victory: As to my owne particular, I stand to this hour amaz'd that God should give so great perfection to so young a person. ~ John Evelyn 1968 Paid a visit to Mme Tussaud's to see my newly installed effigy. It is absolutely horrible. A raddled face under a red wig, with a mouth like Edith Summerskill's. Ted [her husband] assures me I really don't look like that. I had never been in the place before and was quite fascinated. One of the best likenesses is Harold Macmillan's and, when I pointed that out, Tussaud's man agreed. 'As Malcolm Muggeridge remarked, some people are naturally wax.' Apparently they had found me one of the most difficult likenesses to capture, so presumably I am not in that category. ~ Barbara Castle 1969 [at the premiere of Isadora] The invitation bade those who came to wear 'gems and flowers'. I couldn't think what to do but my barber persuaded me to go wearing a false moustache which looked very fetching but kept falling off. The film, directed by Ken Russell, turned out to be pretty feeble but there was a great party afterwards at the Coliseum. The only drama of the evening occurred when the star of the film, Vanessa Redgrave, in a scarlet and gold sari, her hair encircled with flowers, fainted. ~ Roy Strong 1978 [Egypt] I brought a couple of books from Barbara Cartland to give to Mrs Sadat who she understood read her books. However, the President said, 'No, no, I shall read them first, I am a great fan of Barbara Cartland myself' He then suggested she might come out to Egypt and get some background information for writing one of her novels set in Egypt. I said I would pass on the invitation. ~ Earl Mountbatten of Burma 5 March 1858. Overheard at the next table at Broggi's: 'I've met his mistress' 'But that's his wife!' 'He introduced her to me as his mistress, to rehabilitate her ~The Brothers Goncourt 1935 If I had not been blessed, in youth, with an athletic fleetness, if I had not known the joy of leaping and dancing, if I had not known those moments of exhilaration when one's only expression of the knowledge that it is good to be alive is to strain the body to exhaustion – then I might have been tempted now to despise the pride of mere physical fitness, to sneer at the daily adulation of the boxer, or the football player, or the tennis star. But having known the same pride of youth — the sheer muscular exuberance which forces one to run against the wind or to lay hold of a friend and bear him to the ground — having known this, I am saved from jealousy and cannot betray the body by denying that it is a fine thing to feel the life is in flesh. Even yet I can feel it — as if a statue grown warm, not bitter, with the desire to run. ~ William Soutar 1945 [Bergen-Belson] Sleepless nights, filled, filled with the central problem: life or death, and when will it end? Filled, filled with the central national problems, the place of Judaism in the world. Religion, the concept of God. Constantly reaching back to the One eternal God — its meaning and how mankind deludes itself with having vanquished God. Will we manage with materialism? We cannot ignore what has happened, but what really matters is that we should stay alive! I have so much to say still. The dying continues. One thing: the pessimists were right. Pessimists, optimists, they say nothing about the war. They all talk about themselves. For lack of facts, no one has insights. At most Ahnung [a notion] of the relative strengths. And I knew that Germany was powerful. Everything is getting less, forty grams of butter a week instead of sixty. Half a piece of sausage, et cetera. Starving, starving, Starving. ~ Abel J. Herzberg 1970 The celebration of two hundred years of Madame Tussaud's was the occasion for a vast fancy-dress dinner in their Hall of Fame to which a huge contingent of the diplomatic corps had been bidden, suitably festooned with sashes, ribbons and orders. The lead-up to this event was more than trying, as the press for some mysterious reason had got it into their heads that I was going either in drag as Madame Tussaud or as Dr Crippen. In the end I plumped for 'Sea-Green' Robespierre and decked myself in 1790s green satin with black frogging hired from Bermans. I resisted painting a thin red line around my neck as perhaps going a bit far, but it did cross my mind. However, on arriving at Baker Street I was assailed by a battery of photographers and as a consequence must be the first national museum director to figure on the front page of the Daily Mail.... Too much drink flowed and I vaguely remember clambering into the tableau of Madame Tussaud modelling the severed head of Marie Antoinette, grabbing the head and being photographed nursing it by Time, something I later regretted. As an evening, however, it all fell curiously flat. ~ Roy Strong 6 March 1761 Went up into the Hall this afternoon after the Judge was in, and I could not get a tolerable Place some time, but at last I jumped from two men's shoulders and leaped upon the Heads of several men and then scrambled into the Prisoners Place where the Judge said I must not stay., so one of the Counsellors [i.e. Barristers] desired me not to make a noise, and he would let me have his Place, which was immediately under the Prisoners and opposite the Judge, where I sat and heard three or four tryalls, and likewise condemnation passed on Dumas, alias Darking, alias Hamilton, alias Harris. Was up there from 5 till 9, and then the Judge had finished everything. 1 condemned to die, 4 transported for seven years, 1 burnt in the hand and acquitted. ~ Rev. James Woodforde 1941 8.4o a.m. Posen (Poland). Our destination 100 km from here — by the map in the corridor. We seem well North. There are horse cabs in the station yard and a 1914-18 War Memorial. Two Party [Nazi] officers are strolling about on the platform looking very smart in their immaculate brown uniforms. Arn rather amused to see a girl get into a waiting train near ours and pick up the Menu Card in the Dining Car. I can't think what it could have had on it bar Klippfisch and Sauerkraut. Also shaken to see some cold coffee thrown out of a window of that same train. I would have given anything for it. Crumbs from the rich man's table. We move out of Posen. 12. noon — Wreschen. We learn here that we haven't a hope of getting to our destination today. About another 200 miles to go. We are travelling very slowly and apparently 2 sides of a triangle. No more food — no more smokes. All stations have been taken over by the Reichsbahn. Is this Country our War Aim? Blimey! Miles upon miles of sweet F.A. except mud and more mud. ~ Captain John Mansel 1941 I was talking to the Masseys' chauffeur today about the bombings. 'What astonishes me,' he said, 'is the way those old houses fall down so easy. You take that big house on the corner of Berkeley Square — used to belong to Lord T. My mother used to work there when I was a lad. It always seemed such a fine well-built old house and now it's just a pile of rubble. I would have thought that they would have stood up better — some of those big houses: Although his tone was practical I thought I could catch an under-note of dismay queerly mixed with relief. That great gloomy house may have hung on in his memory since childhood. It must have seemed as permanent as a natural feature of the landscape and clothed in dim prestige. Now brutally it vanishes. This sudden destruction of the accustomed must shake people out of the grooves of their lives. This overnight disappearance of the brick and mortar framework of existence must send a shock deep into the imagination. These high explosions and incendiaries are like the falling stars and blazing comets — noted of old as foretelling great changes in the affairs of man. ~ Charles Ritchie 1946 An offensive letter from a female American Catholic. I returned it to her husband with the note: 'I shall be grateful if you will use whatever disciplinary means are customary in your country to restrain your wife from writing impertinent letters to men she does not know.' ~ Evelyn Waugh 7 March 1914 Have been feeling very 'down' of late, but yesterday I saw a fine Scots Fir by the roadside — tall, erect, as straight as a Parthenon pillar. The sight of it restored my courage. It had a tonic effect. Quite unconsciously I pulled my shoulders back and walked ahead with renewed vows never to flinch again. It is a noble tree. It has strength as a giant, and a giant's height, and yet kindly withal, the branches drooping down graciously towards you — like a kind giant extending its hands to a child. ~ W N P Barbellion 1933 I walked along the Serpentine — not on the bank because there were too many people there. Why do people when they go for a walk look at each other? — but up on the other side of the road — and there was a breezy wind enough to blow your hair and make you feel a little like the mascots on motor cars. - so I took my loose, loose hat off before the wind did .Before I came to the end, I took a new path across - on my right were two lovers walking away - he bending over and around her with his arm and head. The sparrows were making so much Spring noise that I took off my gloves and scar fin spite of the brick red dress showing, and stuffed them in my purse. And then just as I thought I was alone I saw two more lovers who thought they were alone. They were sitting on a seat under a gigantic trunk of a tree. I had to walk all across that long bare path trying to think of other directions to look in besides theirs. Even painful things pass and that did. It was not that they embarrassed me — I was afraid of embarrassing them and having them send unpleasant thought waves after me. 'Why did she have to come along then?' 'Why can't she get a lover of her own?' Very disconcerting. ~ Elizabeth Smart 1934 My 35th birthday. Actually I have lied so much about my age that I forget how old I really am. I think I look 28, and know I feel 19. `Chips' Channon 1941 [Holland] Tonight I asked Mother to repeat some of the wise old sayings that are good to know if you want to have a good life. E.g. from Schopenhauer, etc.: 'He who believes in goodness will gain goodness.' And: `Trouble is the scale on which the true worth of friendship is weighed: And I just found this one in my pocket diary: `Look at the sun, then your shadow will fall behind you.' ~Edith Velmans 1963 The 'lower classes' and death: Mrs Ringe's husband has been sufficiently ill lately for him to be taken into hospital. In talking to me she makes no bones about the trouble he is, how irritable and hard to please, how he 'won't pull himself together and try to do things', yet she's not blind to how ill he is. At the same time she refers often to the possibility of his death, pensions, and whether she should ever marry again. I'm sure she thinks constantly and simply about all that. She says nothing 'in bad taste' yet it gives me a shock that anyone should be able to contemplate their nearest and dearest as alive and dead at one and the same time. I almost beg her to be kinder to him and try to put herself in the state of mind of a sinking, dying man, and realize the horror of it for him But I suppose she is being much more realistic thanI was for instance, who could only accept the possibility of death when it was forced on me and for short gasping stretches at a time, to build up as quickly as possible an optimistic ostrichism. Yet I consider myself a realist and my education ought to have trained me to face facts and control my thoughts, and not slide off into cliches like `It's only the thought,' or 'We've all got it coming to us,' or 'It'll all come out in the wash. ~ Frances Partridge 8 March 1852 N. P. Willis is stricken with deadly disease, epilepsy and consumption together. The idea of death and of the man who writes editorials for the Home Journal are an unnatural combination. Death seems too solemn a matter for him to have any business with it. ~ George Templeton Strong 1870 Yesterday there was an inquest at the Blue Boar, Hay, on the body of the barmaid of the Blue Boar who a day or two ago went out at night on an hour's leave, but went up the Wye to Glasbury and threw herself into the river. She was taken out at Llan Hennes. She was enceinte. Met the Morrell children returning from a walk with the first white violets and primroses. ~ Rev. Francis Kilvert 1918 Going up in the lift at Holborn the other day I stood next to a boy of fourteen or so, whose head only was visible among the crowd. I noticed that it was an extremely interesting, sensitive, clever, observant head; rather sharp, but independent looking. One couldn't tell from his cap whether he was well off or not. I came to the conclusion that he was the son of an officer with whom he stood. When we got into the street I looked at once at his legs. His trousers had holes in them. From that one could judge what a wretched affair his life will be. ~ Virginia Woolf 1919 [Paris] Churchill arrived late last night from London, & breakfasted with the P. M. [Lloyd George] this morning. Full of his speech in the House on the Military Service Bill. He certainly does not lack self-confidence — in fact if he had a little less he might think a little more before he acts & speaks. One cannot help being fascinated by him, although I cannot bring myself to like him. ~ Frances Stevenson 9 March 1870 I saw Mr. Helps [Clerk of the Privy Council] this evening at half past six, who brought and introduced Mr. Dickens, the celebrated author. He is very agreeable, with a pleasant voice and manner. He talked of his latest works, of America, the strangeness of the people there, of the division of classes in England, which he hoped would get better in time. He felt sure that it would come gradually. ~ Queen Victoria 1874 Why am I such a coward! If I was going to have a leg cut off it could not be worse. Instead of which I am going to have a tooth stopped. Gracious goodness! Where's the world going to next! Coward, coward, coward, that's what I am, morally and physically. ~ Beatrice Webb 1914 I am too tired, I must try to rest and sleep, otherwise I am lost in every respect. What an effort to keep alive! Erecting a monument does not require the expenditure of so much strength. ~ Franz Kafka 1932 During the morning I went over to 52 Avenue Kleber where [Aristide] Briand -died and has been laid out. Anyone can go in. A small, four-roomed apartment on the second floor. Petit bourgeois, almost seedy furnishings, an interior appropriate to a lower-middle-grade civil servant, few books, trivial prints on the walls. No sign of anything to satisfy intellectual or artistic needs, let alone a touch of luxury. Extraordinary! Did he really demand nothing over and above the average? I still see him sitting next to me, his eyes half closed as though he were dropping off to sleep, and listening while I tried to sound him out on what position he would concede Germany in the League of Nations. Suddenly he opened his eyes wide and gave an answer that clinched the matter: it would be ridiculous for Germany not to have a permanent seat on the Council, that is a foregone conclusion. The impression I had of him at that moment was of a highly intelligent, indeed crafty petit bourgeois. Perhaps it was this background which formed the bond of mutual understanding between Briand and [Gustav] Stresemann, innkeepers' sons, both of them. ~ Count Harry Kessler 1941 [POW camp, Poland] The German doctor, fully endorsed by the Brigadier, orders that except for Naval personnel, all hair is to be cut short and beards removed. If this is not done within 3 or 4 days, the whole Camp will be subjected to convict crops. (Lice have been found and apparently before we arrived they were rampant.) Tunics and greatcoats to be smartened up and boots polished etc., on Appell [roll call]. In fact flat out militarism. The tricky part is how to effect this. When the Camp Officer appeared he greeted us all with a shouted 'Guten Morgen!' — to which we had to reply in unison 'good morning'. At i i o'clock we had a service taken by Macintyre. The Chapel is worth sketching — another underground cul-de-sac — brickbuilt and from the austere point of view, thoroughly dramatic — in fact what I have always visualised as a prison chapel. Wooden rickety benches to sit on — extremely cold, but the driest room I have seen yet. It is a curious coincidence that we should have arrived here almost the ist day of Lent — we have certainly given up enough! I personally look upon this as an extremely good experience for all of us — it will certainly make us appreciate the simplest things in life afterwards. I think we are all getting acclimatised now and have certainly not lost heart. It is just like a dream from which one is bound to wake up sometime. ~ Captain John Mansel 10 March 1853 As we turned the corner of a lane during our walk, a man and a bull came in sight; the former crying out, 'Ladies, save yourselves as you can!' the latter scudding onwards slowly but furiously. I jumped aside on a little hedge, but thought the depth below rather too great — about nine or ten feet; but the man cried Jump!' and I jumped. To the horror of all, the bull jumped after me. My fall stunned me, so that I knew nothing of my terrible neighbour, whose deep autograph may be now seen quite close to my little one. He thought me dead, and only gazed without any attempt at touching me, though pacing round, pawing and snorting, and thus we were for about twenty minutes. The man, a kind soul but no hero, stood on the hedge above, charging me from time to time not to move. Indeed, my first recollection is of his friendly voice. And so I lay still, wondering how much was reality and how much dream; and when I tried to think of my situation, I pronounced it too dreadful to be true, and certainly a dream. Then I contemplated a drop of blood and a lump of mud, which looked very real indeed, and I thought it very imprudent in any man to make me lie in a pool — it would surely give me rheumatism. I longed to peep at the bull, but was afraid to venture on such a movement. Then I thought, I shall probably be killed in a few minutes, how is it that I am not taking it more solemnly? I tried to do so, seeking rather for preparation for death than restoration to life. Then I checked myself with the thought, It's only a dream, so it's really quite profane to treat it in this way; and so I went on oscillating, There was, however, a rest in the dear will of God which I love to remember; also a sense of the simplicity of my condition — nothing to do to involve others in suffering, only to endure what was laid upon me. To me the time did not seem nearly so long as they say it was: at length the drover, having found some bullocks, drove them into the field, and my bull, after a good deal of hesitation, went off to his own species. Then they had a laugh at me that I stayed to pick up some oranges I had dropped before taking the man's hand and being pulled up the hedge; but in all this I acted as a somnambulist, with only fitful gleams of consciousness and memory. ~ Caroline Fox 1919 P.M. [David Lloyd George] lunched at Mr Balfour's flat to meet with Queen of Rumania, & according to everybody, was in his best form. D. says she is very naughty, but a very clever woman, though on the whole he does not like her. She gave a lengthy description of her purchases in Paris, which included a pink silk chemise. She spoke of meeting President Wilson on his arrival. 'What shall I talk to him about?' she asked. 'The League of Nations or my pink chemise?' `Begin with the League of Nations,' said Mr. Balfour, land finish up with the pink chemise. If you were talking to Mr. Lloyd George, you could begin with the pink chemise!' ~ Frances Stevenson 1936 What diarist has not, at some moment, become ashamed of the numerous entries which belittle a friend or slight an acquaintance? — and yet at the time the man or the woman appeared so, and had by words and gestures irritated the writer. And the nature of the entry is also a self-confession to the diarist's own moods and limitations; so that even if he return to these pages, which now accuse him, and efface their nay-saying, would the action not testify rather to a fear than to a generous impulse: would not the solicitude be primarily for the diarist's own good name? I shall leave all my entries, even such as may shame me — for I do not hate anyone; and I know that the moments of human sympathy are not rare. Mutual irritation, boredom, and actual antagonism are unavoidable; but at heart we all desire to like people and be liked. ~ William Soutar 11 March 1912 Titus Oates is very near the end, one feels. What we or he will do, God only knows. We discussed the matter after breakfast; he is a brave fine fellow and understands the situation, but he practically asked for advice. Nothing could be said but to urge him to march as long as he could. One satisfactory result to the discussion; I practically ordered Wilson to hand over the means of ending our troubles to us, so that any one of us may know how to do so. Wilson had no choice between doing so and our ransacking the medicine case. We have 3o opium tablets apiece and he is left with a tube of morphine. So far the tragical side of our story. ~ Captain Robert Falcon Scott 1956 I have been denying for years any basis in A Time To Be Born for the general idea that it is Clare Luce. I swear it is based on five or six girls, some known personally and some by talk, and often I changed the facts to avoid libel with resulting character a real person evidently and libelously Luce-ian. I insist it was a composite (or compost) but then I find a memo from 1939 — 'Why not do novel on Clare Luce?' Who can I believe — me or myself? ~ Dawn Powell 1967 Kenneth W[illiams] told a lot of stories during the evening ... He told a story of how a woman had come up to him and said, 'You're on in that play at the Theatre Royal, aren't you?' and when he'd replied that he was, she said: 'Disgusting play. I walked out half-way through. What happened at the finish?' Kenneth said that Gordon Jackson who was with him said: 'By walking out madam, you forfeited your right to know.' 'Marvellous reply, wasn't it?' Kenneth said, his eyes shining. ~ Joe Orton 1978 I had a lot of dates but I decided to stay home and dye my eyebrows. ~ Andy Warhol 12 March 1780 Having gone to bed last night ruminating on my melancholy, I awaked this morning with this text full in my mind: 'Howbeit this kind goeth not out but by prayer and fasting.' This seemed to be a supernatural suggestion that piety alone could relieve me from the evil spirit. I was much impressed with it, and my devotion was fervent today. Heard Dr. Blair in the forenoon and I think Mr. Walker in the afternoon. Was a little at my father's between sermons. Dined at Lord Monboddo's with Mr. David Rae, Lady Duffus and one of her grand-daughters, a Miss Sinclair, and Mrs. Hamilton and some of her boarders. The invitation was to see the rising generation of females. We were very cheerful. But my Lord and I drank too much claret. I stayed tea. Walked home a good deal inflamed; met an old acquaintance in the street, and was in danger of being licentious with her, so soon had wine overpowered my morning seriousness, which was indeed 'like the morning cloud' However, I got off. Sir Charles Preston and Grange supped with us. Sandy said no divine lesson today, and Veronica and Phemie said but little. I must never dine abroad on Sunday. My wife was hurt by my being again on the confines of low debauchery. I was very uneasy. ~ James Boswell 1915 Mr Liddell gave me a curious account of his duties as the Lord Chancellor's secretary. He opens all the letters from lunatics. They have a right to send unopened letters to the Lord Chancellor twice a month. He says some of the letters that are coming in now are most pathetic, the burden of many of them being, 'Only let me out, and I will at once enlist!' He said the war had neither increased nor diminished the number of lunatics. I asked him if he had ever discovered a sane man incarcerated unfairly. He said no, but that they always looked out for such cases, and that he makes a very special note when any new lunatic's letter arrives. He also makes very particular enquiries when a lunatic writes a complaint of physical ill-treatment. He says he believes the medical superintendents are always humane, but that it is very difficult to get the right type of man to be a male nurse, as the work is so depressing. I said it ought to be done by monks and nuns. ~ Marie Belloc Lowndes 1944 Hear the broadcast of the Pope's Benediction of the faithful in Piazza San Pietro — a crowd chiefly composed of the homeless and starving refugees who have now flocked into the city. It was a short address, without any political flavour: an admission of the Pope's inability to stop or mitigate the horrors of war even within his own city, a final appeal to the rulers on both sides —and, to the congregation before him, a repetition of the well-known words of Christian consolation: 'Come unto me, all ye that are weary and heavy-laden.' Perhaps never, in all the history of suffering humanity, have these words been spoken to so great an assembly of the homeless, the penniless and the bereft. And when, the address ended, the Pope paused a moment before the Benediction, from thousands of throats came a cry of supplication, unforgettable by anyone who heard it — a cry which sounded like an echo of all the suffering that is torturing the world: 'Give us peace; oh, give us peace.' ~ Iris Origo 13 March 1856 Out shopping, then to University hospital to ask John Marshall about a dead body. He got the one that will just do. It was in the vaults under the dissecting room. When I saw it first, what with the dim light, the brown & parchment-like appearance of it & the shaven head, I took it for a wooden imulation [imitation] of the thing. Often as I have seen horrors I really did not remember how hideous the shell of a poor creature may remain when the substance contained is fled. Yet we both in our joy at the obtainment of what we sought declared it to be lovely & a splendid corps[e]. Marshall evidently loves a thing of the kind. Home again by 5. ~ Ford Madox Brown 1887 At Swindon I went over Huntley & Palmer's biscuit factory. It is indeed a most gigantic enterprize. They take Soo sacks of flour a day turning out ioo tons of biscuits every working day. Their goods are appreciated in the interiors of both China and Africa. They use a vast quantity of coconuts, almonds, treacle, ginger, butter, eggs, lard, arrowroot, rice water, and isinglass. I saw a large parcel of macaroons and coconut cakes come out of the ovens for a special order from Windsor Castle. They have over 3 000 hands and there are many very interesting mechanical dodges invented by the Palmers. The income is immense but the two young ones work incessantly instead of spending their money and living in idleness. ~ Dearman Birchall 1921 [T. S.] Eliot dines here tonight, alone, since his wife is in a nursing home, not much to our regret. But what about Eliot? Will he become 'Tom'? What happens with friendships undertaken at the age of forty? Do they flourish and live long? I suppose a good mind endures, and one is drawn to it, owning to having a good mind myself. Not that Tom admires my writing, damn him. ~ Virginia Woolf 1941 [Linz] To the meeting in the evening. Between huge crowds. The cheering never stops. Meeting overflowing. Fantastic atmosphere. I speak on the war situation. Each sentence is punctuated by storms of applause. I am on good form. Then the Gauleiter makes a short speech. And now, completely unexpected so far as the meeting is concerned, the Fiihrer arrives. The storm of applause is quite indescribable. The Fiffirer is lively and buoyant. He speaks for thirty minutes with the greatest elan. Total confidence in victory. The crowd goes wild. Drive between endless crowds. At the hotel. Then I stand with the Fiffirer on the balcony of his hotel room, and we look out over his home town. He loves this city very much, and this is understandable. He intends to establish a new centre of culture here. As a counterweight to Vienna, which will have to be gradually phased out of the picture. He does not like Vienna, basically for political reasons. I tell him a few things that I know about Vienna, aspects downright hostile to the Reich, which annoy him greatly. But Linz is his darling. I give him an account of my impressions, which he is very pleased with. A wonderful evening with the Fiffirer. He expounds his views on the situation to me: everything is going well, both militarily and diplomatically. We can be very satisfied. ~ Josef Goebbels 1943 [J. Pierpont] Morgan the banker and Benet the poet died yesterday: B.B.C. had much to say of the former but little of the latter. ~ William Soutar 1949 It is a curious business certainly. Here are three doctors, three strangers to me and to Nancy [his sister], Drs Brodie, Glover and Walker, and I run to them for help in a matter which covers, includes and exposes the whole of our family life. In a few letters, half an hour's or an hour's conversation, I have to convey to them somehow our characters and history and personal relationships — everything that constitutes our half century of life and beyond. They make up a sort of tribunal to which I have to take my own and the family guilt, the family failure, and they are expected, on what I care or choose to tell them, not only to withdraw my sister from her self-imposed psychosis, but rearrange our shabby and unsuccessful personal relations, in such a way that we shall not destroy ourselves or each other again. What I am saying to these doctors, in effect, is 'Comfort me in my guilt. I have mismanaged my domestic affairs so badly that my sister preferred death to my care, in which she no longer believes. Can you somehow pull her out of it, so that I shall not feel responsible, for the rest of my days? Can you, without knowing any of us, or anything really about any of us, create an atmosphere in which we can all live?' No wonder Dr Brodie seems to me not to understand or give due importance to the dreadful subtleties which seem to me involved.Yet I expect him somehow to launder this half- ~ J R. Ackerley 1979 Just before the end of the council, Callaghan and I both went out and coincided in the loo, whereupon he made to me the most fanciful offer, saying, `Would you like to be Governor of Hong Kong? I could possibly persuade Murray MacLehose to stay on until nearly the end of your time in Europe.' I said, 'Certainly not, Jim. I have never heard a more preposterous suggestion.' However, in a curious, rather heavy-footed way, he went on, saying, `Oh, it's a very important job, you know. You would be good at it. What do you want to do when you come back to England? You'll go to the House of Lords, I presume' I said, `I am not at all sure, as I told you when you last suggested that to me. Not for the moment, certainly. I want to come back and look around and keep options open.' `Well,' he said, 'you might find it quite difficult to get back into the I-louse of Commons' 'Certainly,' I said. `And you might not like it when you got there,' he said. 'It has changed, it has deteriorated a lot' I said, 'Yes, yes. All I intend to do is come back and look around at the political landscape, Jim, and certainly not become Governor of Hong Kong.' ~ Roy Jenkins 14 March 1802 William had slept badly — he got up at 9 o'clock, but before he rose he had finished the Begger Boys — and while we were at Breakfast that is (for I had breakfasted) he, with his basin of broth before him untouched and a little plate of Bread and butter he wrote the Poem to a Butterfly! He ate not a morsel, nor put on his stockings but sate with his shirt neck unbuttoned, and his waistcoat open while he did it. The thought first came upon him as we were talking about the pleasure we both always feel at the sight of a butterfly. I told him that I used to chase them a little but I was afraid of brushing the dust off their wings, and did not catch them — He told me they used to kill all the white ones when he went to school because they were Frenchmen. ~ Dorothy Wordsworth 1856 To the University by 1/2 past to. Draw the corps[e] till 1/2 past 2. Got on quite merrily & finished it 2 hours sooner than was obligate on me. As I was going met Marshall who could not keep away from the sweets of the charnel house. ~ Ford Madox Brown 1858 My dear [sister] Beth died at three this morning, after two years of patient pain. Last week she put her work away, saying the needle was 'too heavy,' and having given us her few possessions, made ready for the parting in her own simple, quiet way. For two days she suffered much, begging for ether, though its effect was gone. Tuesday she lay in Father's arms, and called us round her, smiling contentedly as she said, 'All here!' I think she bid us good-by then, as she held our hands and kissed us tenderly. Saturday she slept, and at midnight became unconscious, quietly breathing her life away till three, then, with one last look of the beautiful eyes, she was gone. A curious thing happened, and I will tell it here, for Dr. G. said it was a fact. A few moments after the last breath came, as Mother and I sat silently watching the shadow fall on the dear little face, I saw a light mist rise from the body and float up and vanish in the air. Mother's eyes followed mine, and when I said, 'What did you see?' she described the same light mist. Dr. G. said it was the life departing visibly. For the last time we dressed her in her usual cap and gown, and laid her on her bed, — at rest at last. What she had suffered was seen in the face, for at twenty-three she looked like a woman of forty, so worn was she, and all her pretty hair gone. On Monday Dr. Huntington read the Chapel service, and we sang her favorite hymn. Mr Emerson, Henry Thoreau, Sanborn, and John Pratt, carried her out of the old home to the new one at Sleepy Hollow chosen by herself. So the first break comes, and I know what death means, — a liberator for her, a teacher for us. ~ Louisa May Alcott 1893 [hotel in Torquay] I sniffed my bedroom on arrival, and for a few hours felt a certain grim satisfaction when my forebodings were maintained, but it is possible to have too much Natural History in a bed. I did not undress after the first night, but I was obliged to lie on it because there were only two chairs and one of them was broken. It is very uncomfortable to sleep with Keating's powder in the hair. What is to be thought of people who recommend near relations to an hotel where there are bugs? ~ Beatrix Potter 1929 I became aware, around noon, that my gloominess this morning, despite a night of excellent sleep and such as I had not known for some time, came too, came especially, from the fact that I had not shaved, that my collar was dirty, my suit out of press from the last two nights when I had to go to bed dressed, my shoes not shined, etc. My eyes, my mind, could not fix on anything without finding something to scratch and make bleed .. . A ring from Montherlant came very appropriately, like a cock's crow, to drive away the twilight phantoms. I went back up to wash, shave, change linen, suit, and thoughts. ~ Andre Gide 1937 I am in such a twitter owing to two columns in the Observer praising The Years that I can't, as I foretold, go on with Three Guineas. Why I even sat back just now and thought with pleasure of people reading that review. And when I think of the agony I went through in this room, just over a year ago ... when it dawned on me that the whole of three years' work was a complete failure: and then when I think of the mornings here when I used to stumble out and cut up those proofs and write three lines and then go back and lie on my bed — the worst summer in my life, but at the same time the most illuminating — it's no wonder my hand trembles. ~ Virginia Woolf 1941 [POW camp] Everyone has his particular habits which in normal circumstances one would never think of taking offence at. I will illustrate a few in our room, without any mention of names. The fellow who always hums to himself very quietly when he is reading or you are talking to him. The man who persistently is stroking the long ends of his moustache with his tongue. The man who quietly spits out stray ends of tobacco from his cigarette; who eats abnormally slowly and endlessly chews a bit of nothing which I myself have swallowed in one. The man who dresses slowly and meticulously, looking no better for it, if anything rather a twirp. The man who you can rely on to produce an argument and who will always disagree with anything which is said.The man who is never present when he should be, who, being a bookworm, will pick up any book that comes into his line of vision, open it at the middle and page hop. The man who visits our room for this special purpose, who spends the whole day playing double pack Patience — and thereby taking up more than his fair share of room. And above all the man who must be first with the news or acknowledge with 'oh yes' news started by someone else, showing that he knew it already, and who likes to show that he is the origin of all communal benefits or news by the incessant use of the first personal singular. That will do for today. ~ Captain John Mansel 1957 With Val to see play Look Back in Anger by John Osborne. Play quite execrable — woman ironing, man yelling and snivelling, highbrow smut, `daring' remarks (reading from Sunday paper; Bishop of ... asks all to rally round and make hydrogen bomb). Endured play up to point where hero and heroine pretended to be squirrels. ~ Malcolm Muggeridge 15 March 1826 This morning I leave No 93 [in fact No 39] Castle Street for the last time. `The cabbie was convenient' and habit made it agreeable to me. I never reckoned upon a change in this particular so long as I held an office in the Court of Session. In all my former changes of residence it was from good to better — this is retrograding. I leave the house for sale and cease to be an Edinburgh citizen in the sense of being a proprietor — which my father and I have been for sixty years at least. So farewell, poor 93, and may you never harbour worse people than those who now leave you. ~ Sir Walter Scott 1868 1868 Fine and summer-like — With Stokes on the Quinton Road. Chervil and wood-sorrel out. Hawthorn sprays papered with young leaves. — Venus like an apple of light. ~ Gerard Manley Hopkins 1944 A bad raid last night with heavy civilian casualties, as usual, in the densely populated port areas. I was sent this morning to investigate the reports of panic, and frantic crowds running through the streets crying, 'Give us peace,' and 'Out with all the soldiers.' n Santa Lucia, home territory of the Neapolitan ballad, I saw a heart-rending scene. A number of tiny children had been dug out of the ruins of a bombed building and lay side by side in the street. Where presentable, their faces were uncovered, and in some cases brand-new dolls had been thrust into their arms to accompany them to the other world. Professional mourners, hired by the locality to reinforce the grief of the stricken families, were running up and down the street, tearing at their clothing and screaming horribly. One man climbed into the rubble and was calling into a hole where he believed his little boy was trapped under hundreds of tons of masonry, begging him not to die before he could be dug out. 'Hang on, son. Only a few minutes longer now. We'll have you out of there in a minute. Please don't die.' The Germans murder only the poor in these indiscriminate raids, just as we did. ~ Norman Lewis 1983 It was a beautiful day. Walked on the street and a little kid, she was six or seven, with another kid, yelled, `Look at the guy with the wig,' and I was really embarrassed, I blew my cool and it ruined my afternoon. So I was depressed. ~ Andy Warhol 16 March 1883 What will be blown up next? Last night an attempt was made to blow  up the government houses in Parliament Street. Not much damage was done to the building, owing to its great strength, but the streets for some distance round were strewn with glass. One thing struck me as showing the extraordinary power of dynamite, a brick was hurled 100 feet and then through a brick wall into some stables. Some one said the noise was like the 8o ton gun. I believe it was heard here. An attempt was also made, but failed, on The Times office, which seems to prove it was the work of Irishmen, that paper having had a leading article in its last number in which it was stated the Irish had got enough and more than enough, and need ask for no more. Papa says it is Mr Gladstone's fault. He takes the side of these rogues and then, if they think he is slackening, they frighten him on a bit — really we shall be as bad as France soon. ~ Beatrix Potter (aged 16) 1912 Lunched at 'Thirty' [luncheon club]. We all talked about the enduring power of love. Some of those present said that love goes in a man when the woman becomes middle-aged. I said that it often amazed me to see how love endured, though I admitted that in a certain class — the prosperous commercial class, no man, whatever his age, has any use for a woman, even for her company, after she is, say, forty. That is one of the things that strikes me in one circle I frequent. The moment you know a man at all well, he confides to you quite frankly what a bore he finds his wife's friends — that being a man of sixty talking of women between forty and forty-five. ~ Marie Belloc Lowndes 1945 [Bergen-Belsen] Every day now transports of thousands of people are arriving from concentration camps. Men and women, including Dutch people, acquaintances, friends. Twenty to twenty-five per cent are dead, sometimes more. On the way to our latrines there is a field full of corpses and more corpses. It is a gruesome sight. And no one knows about it or will believe it. It makes us profoundly dejected and pessimistic. The corpses are being thrown into lime now. The crematorium can no longer cope with the volume. The mortality rate in our camp is declining slightly. Except that we have had the first case of spotted fever. T. [his wife] also has fever again, day after day. I am worn out and can hardly move. Almost the entire day I lie on the bed (if one can call it such). The filth is increasing. We are sick of it. For weeks I have been unable to make my bed. ~ Albert J. Herzberg 17 March 1798 I do not remember this day. ~ Dorothy Wordsworth 1806 I spent an hour with Mme. Tivollier, with whom I'm making great progress. I put my hand on her thigh without any objection on her part, I'd sleep with her with pleasure for a month. ~ Stendhal 1861 Flaubert said to us today: 'The story, the plot of a novel is of no interest to me. When I write a novel I aim at rendering a colour, a shade. For instance, in my Carthaginian novel, I want to do something purple. The rest, the characters and the plot, is a mere detail. In Madame Bovary, all I wanted to do was to render a grey colour, the mouldy colour of a wood-louse's existence. The story of the novel mattered so little to me that a few days before starting on it I still had in mind a very different Madame Bovary from the one I created: the setting and the overall tone were the same, but she was to have been a chaste and devout old maid. And then I realized that she would have been an impossible character: ~ The Brothers Goncourt 1873 Old James Jones the sawyer of the Infant School told me that he remembers a reprobate drunken fellow named James Davies, but nicknamed `Jim of the Dingle' being put in the stocks at Clyro by Archdeacon Venables and the parish constable. This Jim of the Dingle had a companion spirit as wicked as himself. And both of them belonged to the Herfordshire Militia. So when the Archdeacon and the Constable had gone away leaving Jim in the stocks. Jim's friend brought an axe and beat the stocks all to pieces and let the prisoner out.The two worthies fled away to Hereford to the militia and never returned to Clyro. But the Clyro people, seeing the stocks broken, demolished and burnt the stocks and the whipping post, and no one was ever confined or whipped at Clyro after that. ~ Rev. Francis Kilvert 1912 Friday March 16 or Saturday 17 — Lost track of dates, but think the last correct. Tragedy all along the line. At lunch, the day before yesterday, poor  Titus Oates said he couldn't go on; he proposed we should leave him in his sleeping-bag. That we could not do, and we induced him to come on, on the afternoon march. In spite of its awful nature for him he struggled on and we made a few miles. At night he was worse and we knew the end had come. Should this be found I want these facts recorded. Oates' last thoughts were of his Mother, but immediately before he took pride in thinking that his regiment would be pleased with the bold way in which he met his death. We can testify to his bravery. He has borne intense suffering for weeks without complaint, and to the very last was able and willing to discuss outside subjects. He did not — would not — give up hope till the very end. He was a brave soul. This was the end. He slept through the night before last, hoping not to wake; but he woke in the morning — yesterday. It was blowing a blizzard. He said, `I am going outside and may be some time.' He went out into the blizzard and we have not seen him since. ~ Captain Robert Falcon Scott 1944 I can't think of anything except something horrible I have had to do, getting the warble fly maggots out of the cattle, oh god it was filthy. The chap came to licence Timo [the bull], said he'd pass him but he wasn't very good, he thought I'd best sell him locally, gave me a lot of good advice.... then said he had warble flies and pressed an awful maggot out of his back, I was nearly sick. Duncan [a neighbour] says not to worry too much, they all have them, but give them a dressing of sheep dip. He was very lousy too. I got in the two Ayrshires, we rubbed the dip into their backs, neither had any lice, but Linda had two warble maggots, I pressed them out, I couldn't make Joan do it. They pop out, it is a real nightmare. I couldn't bear one to touch me, nor could Joan. I tried to do Timo but he kicked like a sledgehammer, I expect all the Galloways have it. Oh dear, it is one of the many things I didn't know about ... ~ Naomi Mitchison 1953 I was only thinking in the bath last night, that so many artists are thin that it must be significant. Aesthetic people usually seem to be thin. This must have something to do with nervous energy. ~ Kenneth Williams 1966 I turned up late at No. 10 today because I knew the P.M. had been at a monster meeting in Birmingham the night before with 10,000 people booing  and jostling in the hall; I had seen it all on the I.T.N. News the night before. I found Harold [Wilson] lying in bed eating kippers, with one kipper skeleton thrown on the carpet for his Siamese cat to finish. Harold sleeps in a tiny little bedroom — I suppose it was the scullery-maid's bedroom in the old days — and there I had my breakfast with him. He looked a bit tired, having got back at three in the morning, but he was enormously elated by the Birmingham meeting and told me with great excitement the story of how Mary [his wife] had got a scratch on her neck when something had been thrown at her. Should we give that to the press, he pondered, and finally concluded that we should. When I asked him why, he said, 'Well, you see the Tories are deliberately leaving her out of the campaign because Heath has no wife. It's a positive advantage to us that I and Mary appear together and Heath has nothing. So I would like to see her brought back into the campaign.' I said that Mary must hate it. 'Oh no,' he said. 'She liked the meeting last night a great deal.' As I-was going downstairs I ran into Mary and said, `I hear you really enjoyed last night after all? "Enjoyed ' she said, with agony on her face. 'Who told you that? That man?' Her relationship with Harold is fascinating. I am sure they are deeply together but they are now pretty separate in their togetherness. It is one of those marriages which holds despite itself because each side has evolved a self- c ontainedness within the marriage. ~ Richard Grossman 18 March 1669 I went with my Lord] Howard of Norfolk to visite Sir William Ducy at Charleton, where we dined: The servants made our Coach-men so drunk that they both fell-off their boxes upon the heath, where we were faine to leave them, and were driven to Lond: by two Gent: of my Lords: This barbarous Costome of making their Masters Wellcome by intoxicating the Servants had now the second time happn'd to my Coachman ... ~ John Evelyn 1861 You can't read any genuine history — as that of Herodotus or the Venerable Bede — without perceiving that our interest depends not on the subject but on the man, — on the manner in which he treats the subject and the importance he gives it. A feeble writer and without genius must have what he thinks a great theme, which we are already interested in through the accounts of others, but a genius — a Shakespeare, for instance — would make the history of his parish more interesting than another's history of the world. ~ H. D. Thoreau 1938 In the bathroom of Kay's hotel apartment, washing my hands, struck by a sudden indescribable desolation while listening to her cross-channel telephone conversation, in the other room, with Freddie: 'Do you love me? Yes, but' (shouting) 'Do you LOVE ME? — SAME HERE!' Standing in one of the basins was an enormous bouquet of daffodils and narcissi that he had had sent to her. (I had never thought that I should one day reach the point when the spectacle of other people's happiness would arouse only bitterness in me. — And when they don't even realise their own happiness!) ~ David Gascoyne 1941 [POW camp] The whole place seemed particularly cheerless this morning. When Appell [roll call] was sounded and the passages and stairs became filled with the mob going to parade, the scene struck me as being for all the world like a plague of rats and the only item missing a Pied Piper. The moat level passages are after all, in the dark, very like enormous sewers. The talk in the room this morning started off with a discussion as to the way in which PO.Ws are now and will be after the war regarded at home. Peter Tunstall told us how in his aerodrome before he was captured, if any one was known to have been captured, they all said 'Oh well, he's all right for the rest of the war.' A popular opinion is that one will be greeted by 'You lucky devil having been a prisoner of war, you missed it all.' ~ Captain John Mansel Report to moderator   Logged Pages: 1 2 3 4 [5]   Jump to:Please select a destination: ----------------------------- General ----------------------------- =>Announcements =>Evolution and Memetics =>FAQ =>Church Doctrine =>Science & Technology =>Society & Culture =>Arts & Entertainment =>Philosophy & Religion =>Humor & Satire =>Creative Endeavors =>Serious Business =>Virian Book Club =>Second Life =>Free For All =>Infections =>Suggestion Box =>Test Area ----------------------------- Mailing List ----------------------------- =>Virus 2006 =>Virus 2005 =>Virus 2004 =>Virus 2003

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