The Assassin's Cloak. Группа авторов
and simply replace the handkerchief in the pocket. I, generally, come under the first category.
Kenneth Williams
1996
The car taking me to Moorfields wriggled its way through tiny, twisted City streets which were almost deserted; a few thin clerks with blue noses hunched themselves against the bitter wind, walking stiffly and alone, like the black matchstick figures in a Lowry industrial townscape. The women to be seen were, for the most part, dressed as Paddington Bear. It is a pleasing hat but the face peeping from underneath it should be under thirty. The car slid past St Paul’s Cathedral which somehow looked smaller than usual and rather drab. Elizabeth Frink’s sheep, nearby, are being driven by their shepherd, as was pointed out to me a few years ago, and not following him as the Bible recommends. Things are out of joint.
Alec Guinness
25 January
1851
I’ve fallen in love or imagine that I have; went to a party and lost my head. Bought a horse which I don’t need at all.
Leo Tolstoy
1885
Daudet spoke of the first years of his married life. He told me that his wife did not know that there was such a thing as a pawnshop; and once she had been enlightened, she would never refer to it by name but would ask him: ‘Have you been there?’ The delightful thing about it all is that this girl who had been brought up in such a middle-class way of life was not at all dismayed by this new existence among people scrounging dinners, cadging twenty-franc pieces, and borrowing pairs of trousers.
‘You know,’ said Daudet, ‘the dear little thing spent nothing, absolutely nothing on herself. We have still got the little account books we kept at that time, in which, beside twenty francs taken by myself or someone else, the only entry for her, occurring here and there, now and then, is Omnibus, 30 centimes.’ Mme Daudet interrupted him to say ingenuously: ‘I don’t think that I was really mature at that time: I didn’t understand . . .’ My own opinion is rather that she had the trustfulness of people who are happy and in love, the certainty that everything will turn out all right in the end.
The Brothers Goncourt
1936
My younger daughter managed to get through Downing Street and so had a very good view of the procession as it came down Whitehall from the station on its way to Westminster Hall for the Lying in State. She told me that she had never seen anyone look so ill or as unhappy as the Prince of Wales looked that day. He was evidently going through the most fearful mental and physical anguish. And I heard from someone else that in Trafalgar Square they were afraid he would not be able to go on to the very end.
Marie Belloc Lowndes
1940
Chaplin got on to the subject of the Duke of Windsor, whom he met several times during a trip to Europe. Windsor was then the Prince of Wales. His first question was, ‘How old are you?’ He wanted to know what Chaplin had done in the 1914 war – and when Chaplin told him, ‘Nothing,’ there was a frosty silence. Then Chaplin asked him how many uniforms he owned and how he knew which one to wear on any given occasion: did someone tell him?’ ‘No one,’ Windsor replied coldly, ‘ever tells me to do anything.’
Nevertheless, he seems to have taken a great fancy to Chaplin and often asked him down to Fort Belvedere. Chaplin nearly committed a serious breach of etiquette by going to the lavatory when Windsor was already there. This is strictly against the rules.
Although Windsor had at once begun calling Chaplin ‘Charlie,’ Chaplin had stuck rigidly to the formal ‘Sir’. He imitated himself saying demurely: ‘Oh, no, Sir! Oh, yes, Sir!’ Behind all these anecdotes, there was the sparkle of guttersnipe impudence. One sees him in his classic role of debunker of official pomposity, always, everywhere. ‘How can they possibly go on with all that nonsense?’ he kept repeating.
Christopher Isherwood
1947
Embarked in the America full of cocaine, opium and brandy, feeble and low-spirited. One of the reasons for my putting myself under the surgeon’s knife was to wish to be absolutely well and free from ointments for Laura’s American treat. All the reasons for the operation [for piles] appeared ineffective immediately afterwards. The pain was excruciating and the humiliations constant. The hospital was reasonably comfortable and the nurses charming – the grace of God apparent everywhere. But I had ample time to reflect that I had undergone an operation, which others only endure after years of growing agony, when I had in fact suffered nothing worse than occasional discomfort. I took no advice, either from a physician or fellow sufferers, just went to the surgeon and ordered the operation as I would have ordered new shirts. In fact I had behaved wholly irrationally and was paying for it.
Evelyn Waugh
26 January
1837 [Paris]
Having seen all the high society the night before, I resolved to see all the low to-night, and went to Musard’s Ball – a most curious scene; two large rooms in the Rue St Honoré almost thrown into one, a numerous and excellent orchestra, a prodigious crowd of people, most of them in costume, and all the women masked. There was every description of costume, but that which was the most general was the dress of a French post-boy, in which both males and females seemed to delight. It was well-regulated uproar and orderly confusion. When the music struck up they began dancing all over the rooms; the whole mass was in motion, but though with gestures the most vehement and grotesque, and a licence almost unbounded, the figure of the dance never seemed to be confused and the dancers were both expert in their capers and perfect in their evolutions. Nothing could be more licentious than the movements of the dancers, and they only seemed to be restrained within the limits of common decency by the cocked hats and burnished helmets of the police and gendarmes which towered in the midst of them. After quadrilling and waltzing away, at a signal given they began galloping round the room; then they rushed pell-mell, couple after couple like Bedlamites broke loose, but not the slightest accident occurred. I amused myself with this strange and grotesque sight for an hour or more and then came home.
Charles Greville
1847 [Paris]
Dined with M. Thiers. I never know what to say to the men I meet at his house. From time to time they turn round and talk art to me when they observe how profoundly bored I am with conversation about politics, the Chamber, etc.
How chilly and tiresome is this modern fashion for dinner parties! The flunkeys bear the brunt of the whole business and do everything but put the food into one’s mouth. Dinner is the last thing to be considered, it is quickly polished off like some disagreeable duty. Nothing cordial or good-natured about it. The fragile glasses – an idiotic refinement! I cannot touch my glass without making it shake and spilling half the contents over the cloth. I get away as quickly as I can.
Eugène Delacroix
1930
When we made up our six months accounts, we found I had made about £3,020 last year – the salary of a civil servant; a surprise to me, who was content with £200 for so many years. But I shall drop very heavily I think. The Waves won’t sell more than 2,000 copies.
Virginia Woolf
1938
For no reason at all I hated this day as if it was a person – it’s wind, it’s insecurity, it’s flabbiness, it’s hints of an insane universe.
Dawn Powell
1941
Sibyl [Lady Colefax] comes to stay. As usual she is full of gossip. She minds so much the complete destruction of London social life. Poor Sibyl, in the evenings she goes back to her house which is so cold since all the windows have been broken. And then at