The Assassin's Cloak. Группа авторов
my first pipe for about five or six days. Somehow the pressure of not smoking made me think of nothing but my pipe.
Tony Benn
22 January
1826
I feel neither dishonourd nor broken down by the bad – miserably bad news I have received. I have walked my last on the domains I have planted, sate the last time in the halls I have built. But death would have taken them from me if misfortune had spared them. My poor people whom I loved so well!! There is just another dye to turn up against me in this run of ill luck – i.e. If I should break my magic wand in a fall from this elephant and lose my popularity with my fortune. Then Woodstock and Boney may both go to the papermaker and I may take to smoking cigars and drinking grog or turn devotee and intoxicate the brain another way. In prospect of absolute ruin I wonder if they would let me leave the Court of Session. I should like methinks to go abroad
And lay my banes far from the Tweed.
But I find my eyes moistening and that will not do. I will not yield without a fight for it. It is odd, when I set myself to work doggedly as Dr Johnson would say, I am exactly the same man that I ever was – neither low spirited nor distrait. In prosperous times I have sometimes felt my fancy and powers of language flat – but adversity is to me at least a tonic and bracer – the fountain is awakend from its inmost recesses as if the spirit of afliction had troubled it in his passage.
Poor Mr Pole the harper sent to offer me £500 or £600, probably his all. There is much good in the world after all. But I will involve no friend either rich or poor – My own right hand shall do it – Else will I be done in the slang language and undone in common parlance.
I am glad that beyond my own family, who are excepting L.[ady] S.[cott] young and able to bear sorrow of which this is the first taste to some of them, most of the hearts are past aching which would have been inconsolable on this occasion. I do not mean that many will not seriously regret and some perhaps lament my misfortunes. But my dear mother, my almost sister Christy R[utherfor]d, – poor Will: Erskine – these would have been mourners indeed–
Well – exertion – exertion – O Invention rouze thyself. May man be kind – may God be propitious. The worst is I never quite know when I am right or wrong and Ballantyne, who does know in some degree will fear to tell me. Lockhart would be worth gold just now but he too would be too diffident to speak broad out. All my hope is in the continued indulgence of the public.
I have a funeral letter to the burial of the Chevalier Yelin, a foreigner of learning and talent, who has died at the Royal Hotel. He wishd to be introduced to me and was to have read a paper before the Royal Society when this introduction was to have taken place. I was not at the society that evening and the poor gentleman was taken ill in the meeting and unable to proceed. He went to his bed and never arose again – and now his funeral will be the first public place that I shall appear at – he dead and I ruind. This is what you call a meeting.
Sir Walter Scott
1848
Lady Beavale told me some anecdotes of the Royal children, which may one day have an interest when time has tested and developed their characters. The Princess Royal is very clever, strong in body and in mind; the Prince of Wales weaker and more timid, and the Queen says he is a stupid boy; but the hereditary and unfailing antipathy of our Sovereigns to their Heirs Apparent seems this early to be taking root, and the Queen does not much like the child. He seems to have an incipient propensity to that sort of romancing which distinguished his uncle, George IV. The child told Lady Beavale that during their cruise he was very nearly thrown overboard, and was proceeding to tell her how when the Queen overheard him, sent him off with a flea in his ear, and told her it was totally untrue.
Charles Greville
1864
Last night and tonight I have observed for the first time the noise of the new Charing Cross Railway. Even as I write the dull wearing hum of trains upon the Surrey side is going on: it goes on far into the night, with every now & then the bitter shriek of some accursed engine.
I almost welcome the loss, which I had been groaning over, of my view of the Thames; hoping that the new building when it rises may keep out these sounds. No one who has not tasted the pure & exquisite silence of the Temple at night can conceive the horror of the thought that it is gone for ever. Here at least was a respite from the roar of the streets by day: but now, silence and peace are fast going out of the world. It is not merely the torture of this new noise in a quiet place: but one knows that these are only the beginnings of such sorrows.
Our children will not know what it is to be free from sound of railways.
Arthur F. Munby
1935
Snow fell on roses today in New Orleans. These southern people couldn’t have been more excited by the outbreak of another War between the States.
About 5 a.m. I walked downstairs and met a night watchman on a corner behind St. Louis Cathedral. In the glow of an antique street lamp he held the palm of his hand toward the white sky. A few flakes melted on his skin.
‘Lookit that!’ he exulted. ‘Lookit that!’ Pointing at himself, he said, ‘Had a top-coat on when I began duty last night, but – gosh! I sure had to change into this overcoat, even if it does have moth holes in it!’
This is the first snowfall in New Orleans since 1899, according to oldtimers. While they aren’t all exactly sure of the date, they agree it has been ‘some little spell’ since the last time.
When I walked into the press room at the criminal court building, a reporter yelled: ‘Eddie! Is this snow?’
‘Why, sure.’
‘Well,’ he said slowly, ‘I wasn’t sure whether it was snow or ice.’
We got in his car to drive out to get a story and this southern boy exclaimed at almost every snowflake. Excitedly he pointed at what he called snowdrifts – none more than half an inch deep. When we returned he jumped out of his car, scooped up what little snow he could and sprinkled it on his hat and shoulders. Then he yelled to a telephone operator in the building and she threw on a coat and joined us outdoors. She shouted in amazement. We put her under a palm tree, then hammered at the trunk to shake some snow off the fronds and onto her. Proud as a queen in ermine, she ran back inside to show her white collar to her friends.
Later in the day a man on a streetcar told me: ‘I got my wife and daughter out of bed and we all hurried into the yard. My little girl made a snowball and threw it at her mother. My wife said: “That’s the first time I’ve ever been hit by a snowball!”’
Instead of working today, these people who never before had seen snow frolicked outdoors or hung around doors and windows to gawk at something they called a miracle. A burly Negro grinned and said: ‘Man! Tom an’ Jerry sho catch hell today!’ Eleven precincts reported snow. The twelfth precinct reported egg nogs.
Edward Robb Ellis
23 January
1662
By invitacon to my uncle Fenner’s, where I found his new wife, a pitiful, old, ugly, ill-bred woman in a hatt, a midwife. Here were many of his, and as many of her relations, sorry, mean people; and after choosing our gloves, we all went over to the Three Crane Tavern, and though the best room in the house, in such a narrow dogg-hole we were crammed, and I believe we were near forty, that it made me loathe my company and victuals; and a sorry poor dinner it was too.
Samuel Pepys
1920
This day, the anniversary of the death of Louis XVI, brings back memories of my childhood in that corner of Brittany where all the old, right-minded families indicated their respectful mourning by keeping their shutters closed all day, going to mass dressed in black and doing penance to compensate for France’s criminal gesture. My mother,