The Assassin's Cloak. Группа авторов
all of this leaves her perfectly serene. We who have withstood the siege of London will emerge as Lucknow veterans and have annual dinners.
We have not yet taken Derna but we have invaded Italian Somaliland . . . Eritrea has been badly pierced, and we are within striking distance of Massawa. But all this is mere chicken-feed. We know that the Great Attack is impending. We know that . . . we may be exposed to the most terrible ordeal that we have ever endured. The Germans have refrained from attacking us much during the last ten days since they do not wish to waste aeroplanes and petrol on bad weather. But when the climate improves they may descend upon us with force such as they have never employed before. Most of our towns will be destroyed.
I sit here in my familiar brown room with my books and pictures round me, and once again the thought comes to me that I may never see them again. They may well land their parachute and airborne troops behind Sissinghurst and the battle may take place over our bodies. Well, if they try, let them try. We shall win in the end.
Harold Nicolson
1977
Sitting in a bus in London last week, it being a raw day I took out of my pocket my white lip salve and applied it to my chapped lips. An elderly woman sitting opposite put on a strongly disapproving face, and said, ‘Well!’ in a long-drawn-out tone. I paid not the slightest notice.
James Lees-Milne
1979
Got my pay cheque today. Thought I would celebrate by taking myself to a good restaurant. Walked home; thought about so many things. One of them was how some weeks ago in London I walked along Long Acre from Covent Garden where I had seen Götterdämmerung – alone as I thought, along the street I farted. It was much louder, after five hours of Wagner, than I had dreamed it could possibly be! Some boys and girls, rather charming, whom I had scarcely noticed, overheard me, or it, and started cheering. In the darkness I was more amused than embarrassed. Then a self-important thought came in my mind. Supposing they knew that this old man walking along Long Acre and farting was Stephen Spender? What would they think? Anyway, for some reason a bit difficult for me to analyse, it would be embarrassing. Then I saw how an incident like this divides people one knows into categories – those who would laugh and those who would be shocked (shocked anyway at me writing this down). I don’t think F. R. Leavis would have been amused. But Forster, Auden, Isherwood, Connolly, Ackerley, and Matthew, my son, would be.
Stephen Spender
1988 [after a Hollywood film premiere]
We convertible down to the Hard Rock Café where Irv [his American agent] wedges me between big bellies and bozooms and the rhetoric of ‘YOU’RE AN ACTOR? DO YOU DIRECT? WHO’S YOUR AGENT? PUBLICIST? MANAGER? GURU? SAW YOU IN WITHNAAALE AND AY. SO WHADDYA THINK OF THE MOVIE, HUH?’
Double-glazed eyes – either drunk, disappointed or dumb. Can there really be as many stupid people here as I think there are?
‘Gotta remember this is not an A-list event, but kinda gives you a taster. Fun, huh?’ Young women with piles of peroxided hair switch on like megawatt bulbs when an agent or director is radared. I meet an English agent who is trying to itemize it all with irony, but before I can mutter Davey Crockett, Irv is at my side and reacting like the Brit has lured me away.
‘Beware of the people poachers,’ he whispers in my ear.
I gasp for some fresh air outside, pocketing the traitorous card clipped me by the English agent, and am delivered back to the hotel by Irv. Get a room service sandwich that must have taken four grown men to prepare. I haven’t yet asked how you’re s’posed to get your jaw wide enough for a bite without double jointing.
It’s impossible to imagine what this place does to your psyche and soul if you aren’t working. The divide is ruthless. Every waiter seems to be an actor and they deliver the menu like an audition speech.
‘HI, MY NAME’S WARREN AND I’LL BE YOUR WAITER FOR THE NIGHT. NOW THE SPECIALS GO LIKE THIS: TONIGHT WE HAVE CLAMS ON THE HALF SHELL, SHARK STEAK WITH A PIQUANT LIME AND DILL SAUCE, OR SAUTÉ OF LAMB’S BRAIN WITH A GUACAMOLE ACCOMPANIMENT AND I KNOW I SHOULDN’T BE SAYING THIS BUT THANKS FOR YOUR PERFORMANCE IN THAT MOVIE.’
Richard E. Grant
27 January
1658
After six fitts of a Quartan Ague it pleased God to visite my deare Child Dick with fitts so extreame, especiale one of his sides, that after the rigor was over and he in his hot fitt, he fell into so greate and intollerable a sweate, that being surpriz’d with the aboundance of vapours ascending to his head, he fell into such fatal Symptoms, as all the help at hand was not able to recover his spirits, so as after a long and painefull Conflict, falling to sleepe as we thought, and coverd too warme (though in midst of a severe frosty season) and by a greate fire in the roome; he plainely expird, to our unexpressable griefe and affliction. We sent for Physitians to Lond, whilst there was yet life in him; but the river was frozen up, and the Coach brake by the way ere it got a mile from the house; so as all artificial help failing, and his natural strength exhausted, we lost the prettiest, and dearest Child, that ever parents had, being but 5 yeares and 3 days old in years but even at that tender age, a prodigie for Witt, and understanding; for beauty of body a very Angel, and for endowments of mind, of incredible and rare hopes.
John Evelyn
1831
So fagd by my frozen vigils that I slept till after ten. When I lose the first two hours in the morning I can seldom catch them again during the whole day. A friendly visit from Ebenezer Clarkson of Selkirk, a medical gentleman in whose experience and ingenuity I have much confidence as well as his personal regard to myself. He is quite sensible of the hesitation of speech of which I complain, and thinks it arises from the stomach. Recommends the wild mustard as an aperient. But the brightest ray of hope is the chance that I may get some mechanical aid made by Fortune at Broughton Street which may enable me to mount a pony with ease, and to walk without torture. This would indeed be almost a restoration of my youth, at least of a green old age full of enjoyment – the shutting one out from the face of living nature is almost worse than sudden death.
Sir Walter Scott
1897
At a City branch of a certain bank yesterday morning two golden-haired girls, with large feathered hats, presented a piece of paper bearing a penny stamp and the words ‘Please pay the bearer £2 10/- Henry T. Davies.’ The cashier consulted his books and had to inform the ladies that Henry T. Davies had no account there. ‘I don’t know about that,’ said one of them, ‘but he slept with me last night, and he gave me this paper because he hadn’t any cash. Didn’t he, Clara?’ ‘Yes,’ said Clara, ‘that he did, and I went out this morning to buy the stamp for him.’ The cashier commiserated with them, but they were not to be comforted.
Arnold Bennett
1933
I resent in a clipping, ‘Father of the dead child.’ Dead child – a waxen child stretched out. No – the child who died.
I resent, ‘They lost a child too’ – as though that were the same. It is never the same. Death to you is not death, not obituary notices and quiet and mourning, sermons and elegies and prayers, coffins and graves and worldly platitudes. It is not the most common experience in life – the only certainty. It is not the oldest thing we know. It is not what happened to Caesar and Dante and Milton and Mary Queen of Scots, to the soldiers in all the wars, to the sick in the plagues, to public men yesterday. It never happened before – what happened today to you. It has only happened to your little boy . . .
Anne Morrow Lindbergh
28 January
1661
To the Theatre, where I saw again ‘The Lost Lady,’ which do now please me better than before; and here I sitting behind in a dark place, a lady spit backward upon me by a mistake,