The Assassin's Cloak. Группа авторов
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
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 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 mercy.
On the evening of the fifth almost friendly contact with the corrupt and 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!) 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 J. 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,’ she 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
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 mêlée of all nations.
I noticed one mulatto girl who looked very sad and embarrassed.