The Assassin's Cloak. Группа авторов
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. ‘È nero!’ ‘È bianco! È fatto il Papa! È 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 façade 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 fitts after, and then bathing my leggs to the knees in Milk made as hott as I could endure it, and sitting so in it, in a deepe Churn or Vessell, covered with blanquets and drinking Carduus posset, 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. Musta 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