The Assassin's Cloak. Группа авторов
one. It is as though the words were not only indelible but that they spread out like dye in water and colour everything around them. A strange and mystic business, writing. Almost no progress has taken place since it was invented. The Book of the Dead is as good and as highly developed as anything in the 20th century and much better than most. And yet in spite of this lack of a continuing excellence, hundreds of thousands of people are in my shoes – praying feverishly for relief from their word pangs.
And one thing we have lost – the courage to make new words or combinations. Somewhere that old bravado has slipped off into a gangrened scholarship. Oh! you can make words if you enclose them in quotation marks. This indicates that it is dialect and cute.
John Steinbeck
1965 [Singapore]
At 2100 the whole of our party went to the fantastic home of Run Me Shaw, the brother of Run Run Shaw of Hong Kong. The story goes that the elder brother used to hang about for messages, saying ‘Run run?’, and when he had been sent on a message the younger brother would say ‘Run me?’ At all events they are both multi-millionaire magnates now.
The house is set in an elaborate garden with a large swimming pool, fountains, etc., with continually changing lighting systems. We were shown into an immense private cinema and then with evident pride he said to Patricia, Solly and me, ‘Now I will show you my wonderful pink Toyland.’
Solly and I expected to see a display of toys, but in fact it was the most luxurious ladies’ loo imaginable with two pink WCs at the far end, indeed a pink toilet.
Earl Mountbatten of Burma
14 February
1752
This being Valentine Day gave to 52 Children of this parish, as usual 1 penny each 0. 4. 4. Gave Nancy this morning 1. 1. 0.
The Rev. James Woodforde
1941 [POW camp, Germany]
How sick and tired I am of the nightly visitors’ excited entry with ‘What’s the news?’ As if we knew any. To make matters worse I heard somebody in the room talking defeatism – ‘if we lose’ and ‘when we lose’. Slaving in salt mines in Silesia, etc. Hell, one tries to think of home, etc., to keep cheerful if possible, but it would drive one permanently mental if one had to contend with defeatism. Actually, I think half of us, if not the majority, are slowly going mental – tho’ we think we’re sane.
Captain John Mansel
1980 [Düsseldorf]
We had to take Hans Mayer’s car and drive out to the country to a small town to photograph a German butcher. His company is called Herta, it’s one of the biggest sausage companies in Germany. He was a cute guy. He had this interesting building. You could see all the employees. He had my Pig on the wall. Junk everywhere. A lot of toys. A lot of stuffed cows, stuffed pigs. Pigs, pigs, pigs all over the place. And there was art. There were funny things hanging from the ceiling. There were water-dripping paintings. He buys a lot of art, he said they sell more sausages that way because the people are very happy. Then he gave us a white smock and white hat. We went through and watched the ladies make the sausages. It was really fun. You could smell the sauerkraut cooking, but they didn’t give us any hot dogs there. He had the whole portfolio of Picasso that I did the Picasso print of Paloma in. We looked at that, then we had to look at more pigs and more salamis and more hams and more ham art.
Then we took Polaroids for the portrait and had some tea. And his wife came by. They didn’t offer us lunch. Then all of a sudden he asked us if we’d like to try one of his hot dogs. They cooked some up and we had two apiece. They were really good. He said he had to go have lunch back at the lunch room. We had to go off without lunch which we thought was really strange. We got in the car and drove to a restaurant in a place called Bottrop.
As soon as we came in they told us it was this crazy day where all the women chase the men. They cut off your ties. But since we knew that was happening – we saw these drunken ladies running round – we took our ties off and hid them in our pockets. But then they got my shirt tail and they cut it off and it was my good shirt and I was so mad. These women were really bullies. We got back in the car and drove back to Hans’s gallery. I was so tired, and I was really upset about my shirt.
Andy Warhol
1983
ST VALENTINE’S DAY
Got four cards: one from Pandora [his girlfriend], one from Grandma, one from my mother and one from Rosie [his baby sister].
Big, big deal!
I got Pandora a Cupid card and a mini pack of ‘After Eights’. My parents didn’t bother this year, they are saving their money to pay for the solicitor’s letter.
Adrian Mole
15 February
1869
I was in London. Saw Siamese twins. Born in Siam – visited England 1829. They are farmers in North Carolina, and are here to repair their loss of fortune by American war. All the surgeons concur in advising them not to attempt an operation. Chang has 6 girls and 3 boys. Hang has 6 boys and 3 girls. They have a melancholy cast of countenance but brighten up when spoken to. They walk with arms folded in what looks a painful position but is described as being ‘perfectly comfortable’.
Dearman Birchall
1913
Tried to kiss her in a taxi-cab on the way home from the Savoy – the taxicab danger is very present with us – but she rejected me quietly, sombrely. I apologised on the steps of the Flats and said I feared I had greatly annoyed her. ‘I’m not annoyed,’ she said, ‘only surprised’ – in a thoughtful, chilly voice.
We had had supper in Soho, and I took some wine, and she looked so bewitching it sent me in a fever, thrumming my fingers on the seat of the cab while she sat beside me impassive. Her shoulders are exquisitely modelled and a beautiful head is carried poised on a tiny neck.
W. N. P. Barbellion
1915
We both went up to London this afternoon; L[eonard, her husband] to the Library, and I to ramble about the West End, picking up clothes. I am really in rags. It is very amusing. With age too one’s less afraid of the superb shop women. These great shops are like fairies’ palaces now. I swept about in Debenham’s and Marshall’s and so on, buying, as I thought, with great discretion. The shop women are often very charming, in spite of their serpentine coils of black hair. Then I had tea, and rambled down to Charing Cross in the dark, making up phrases and incidents to write about. Which is, I expect, the way one gets killed. I bought a ten and elevenpenny blue dress, in which I sit at this moment.
Virginia Woolf
1943
Hester the cook has a daughter, Elsie, who is the wife of a colored letter-carrier and the mother of two children. Some time ago I endorsed her application for a job at the Edgwood Arsenal, and she got it. She was graded as an unskilled laborer, and paid $3.60 a day. This morning Hester told me that she had been promoted to the rank of spray painter, and her pay lifted to $5.76 a day. It is amazing, with such opportunities open to colored women, that any of them go on working as domestic servants. Hester herself is probably too old for a government job; moreover she is lame. But Emma Ball, the maid, could get one easily, and be sure of rapid promotion, for she writes a good hand and is pretty intelligent. I am paying her $17 a week, which is considerably above the scale for housemaids in Baltimore. In addition, I give her a bonus of $150 a year, a present of $20 at Christmas and another of $20 when she begins her annual vacation of two weeks. Hester is paid $22 a week, with the same bonus and presents. Thus Emma receives $1,074 a year, besides her meals, and Hester $1, 334. They have Thursday and Sunday afternoons and evenings off, and do not come to work until noon on Saturday. When I am out of town in August I often let them off all day. They eat precisely what I eat.