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ОглавлениеJANUARY
‘The life of every man is a diary in which he means to write one story, and writes another; and his humblest hour is when he compares the volume as it is with that he vowed to make it.’
J. M. BARRIE
1 January
1662
Waking this morning out of my sleep on a sudden, I did with my elbow hit my wife a great blow over her face and nose, which waked her with pain, at which I was sorry, and to sleep again.
Samuel Pepys
1763
I went to Louisa at one. ‘Madam, I have been thinking seriously.’ ‘Well, Sir, I hope you are of my way of thinking.’ ‘I hope, Madam, you are of mine. I have considered this matter most seriously. The week is now elapsed, and I hope you will not be so cruel as to keep me in misery.’ (I then began to take some liberties.) ‘Nay, Sir – now – but do consider–’ ‘Ah, Madam!’ ‘Nay, but you are an encroaching creature!’ (Upon this I advanced to the greatest freedom by a sweet elevation of the charming petticoat.) ‘Good heaven, Sir!’ ‘Madam, I cannot help it. I adore you. Do you like me?’ (She answered me with a warm kiss, and pressing me to her bosom, sighed, ‘O Mr Boswell!’) ‘But, my dear Madam! Permit me, I beseech you.’ ‘Lord, Sir, the people may come in.’ ‘How then can I be happy? What time? Do tell me.’ ‘Why, Sir, on Sunday afternoon my landlady, of whom I am most afraid, goes to church, so you may come here a little after three.’ ‘Madam, I thank you a thousand times.’
James Boswell
1829
Having omitted to carry on my diary for two or three days, I lost heart to make it up, and left it unfilld for many a month and day. During this period nothing has happend worth particular notice. The same occupations, the same amusements, the same occasional alterations of spirits, gay or depressd, the same absence of all sensible or rational cause for the one or the other – I half grieve to take up my pen, and doubt if it is worth while to record such an infinite quantity of nothing. But hang it! I hate to be beat so here goes for better behaviour.
Sir Walter Scott
1866
Travelling in France, it is a misfortune to be a Frenchman. The wing of the chicken at a table d’hôte always goes to the Englishman. He is the only person the waiter serves. Why is this? Because the Englishman does not look upon the waiter as a man, and any servant who feels that he is being regarded as a human being despises the person considering him in that light.
The Brothers Goncourt
1902
What I have to write today is terribly sad. I called on Gustav – in the afternoon we were alone in his room. He gave me his body – & I let him touch me with his hand. Stiff and upright stood his vigour. He carried me to the sofa, laid me gently down and swung himself over me. Then – just as I felt him penetrate, he lost all strength. He laid his head on my breast, shattered – and almost wept for shame. Distraught as I was, I comforted him.
We drove home, dismayed and dejected. He grew a little more cheerful. Then I broke down, had to weep, weep on his breast. What if he were to lose – that! My poor, poor, husband!
I can scarcely say how irritating it all was. First his intimate caresses, so close – and then no satisfaction. Words cannot express what I today have undeservedly suffered, and then to observe his torment – his unbelievable torment!
My beloved!
Alma Mahler-Werfel
1914
What a vile little diary! But I am determined to keep it this year.
Katherine Mansfield
1915
We were kept awake last night by New Year Bells. At first I thought they were ringing for a victory.
Virginia Woolf
1970 [Ardnamurchan, Scotland]
As I was up long before the other members of the household I carried out the old ritual of going out by the back door, and bringing in a lump of coal by the front door. After that I did my usual daily stint of lighting the fire and making their morning tea for the sleepers! Some showers before daylight. Forenoon damp with intermittent smirr and hill fog. Wind Westerly, light to moderate, at first but veered Northwesterly in the evening. Showers from mid-day onwards. Afternoon and evening raw and cold. No sunshine. Apart from [his wife] Eliz’s illness, the year just ended was a good one for us in every way. No post tonight.
Ian Maclean
1983
New Year’s Day
These are my New Year resolutions:
1. I will revise for my ‘O’ levels at least two hours a night.
2. I will stop using my mother’s Buff-Puff to clean the bath.
3. I will buy a suede brush for my coat.
4. I will stop thinking erotic thoughts during school hours.
5. I will oil my bike once a week.
6. I will try to like Bert Baxter again.
7. I will pay my library fines (88 pence) and rejoin the library.
8. I will get my mother and father together again.
9. I will cancel the Beano.
Adrian Mole
2 January
1763
I got dinner to be at two, and at three I hastened to my charmer.
Here a little speculation on the human mind may well come in. For here was I, a young man full of vigour and vivacity, the favourite lover of a handsome actress and going to enjoy the full possession of my warmest wishes. And yet melancholy threw a cloud over my mind. I could relish nothing. I felt dispirited and languid. I approached Louisa with a kind of an uneasy tremor. I sat down. I toyed with her. Yet I was not inspired by Venus. I felt rather a delicate sensation of love than a violent amorous inclination for her. I was very miserable. I thought myself feeble as a gallant, although I had experienced the reverse many a time. Louisa knew not my powers. She might imagine me impotent. I sweated with anxiety, which made me worse. She behaved extremely well; did not seem to remember the occasion of our meeting at all. I told her I was very dull. Said she, ‘People cannot always command their spirits.’ The time of church was almost elapsed when I began to feel that I was still a man. I fanned the flame by pressing her alabaster breasts and kissing her delicious lips. I then barred the door of her dining-room, led her all fluttering into her bedchamber, and was just making a triumphal entry when we heard her landlady coming up. ‘O Fortune why did it happen thus?’ would have been the exclamation of a Roman bard. We were stopped most suddenly and cruelly from the fruition of each other. She ran out and stopped the landlady from coming up. Then returned to me in the dining-room. We fell into each other’s arms, sighing and panting, ‘O dear, how hard this is.’ ‘O Madam see what you can contrive for me.’ ‘Lord, Sir, I am so frightened.’
Her brother then came in. I recollected that I had been at no place of worship today. I begged pardon for a little and went to Church . . . I heard a few prayers then returned and drank tea . . . I went home at seven. I was unhappy at being prevented from the completion of my wishes, and yet I thought that I had saved my credit for prowess, that I might through anxiety have not acted a vigorous part; and that we might contrive a meeting where I could love with ease and freedom.
James Boswell
1926
I went to tea at Sumner Place and we went on to dinner at a new restaurant called Favas which Richard has discovered which is very cheap indeed. I gave Richard the ties I had bought in Paris. I enjoyed the evening very much.
On Sunday I was bored.
On Monday I went to luncheon at Sumner Place and to a cinema in Shaftesbury Avenue to see the new Harold Lloyd film. Richard found an harlot who took us to drink at a club called John’s in Gerard Street where there was a slot machine which gave me a lot of money and Alfred Duggan who gave me a lot of brandy. We went to dinner again at Favas with Anthony Russell. He brought me back and I made him drunk.
Evelyn Waugh
1926 [Paris]
Talk turned largely on mutual acquaintances: Diaghilev, Cocteau, Radiguet. When I spoke about the Russian Ballet’s miraculous salvation and rejuvenation through war and revolution, Misia told us how badly off Diaghilev had been during the war. In Spain he nearly starved. It took months before the French Government granted him an entry permit, but at last Sert was able to fetch him from Barcelona. On the way to the frontier he asked Diaghilev whether he had anything compromising on him. No, nothing at all, he never carried anything compromising on him. Well, at any rate look whether you haven’t anything in your pockets, Sert urged him. Only a few old letters. Yes, but what letters? Finally Diaghilev brought out a fat wad of papers, including two letters from Mata Hari. The French had just arrested her for espionage. There was barely time to destroy the correspondence before they reached the frontier.
Count Harry Kessler
1952
After tea I went to visit Khalid’s surgery, where he treats the poor of Baghdad for free – a really horrifying experience which I could hardly bear to watch. Half the men were suffering from stab wounds and broken heads, but there were also wretched women with ulcerous breasts and babies with rickets. Khalid was examining a woman who had some problem with her womb when her mother burst in screaming and shouting and dragged her out of the surgery. Apparently because the operation might mean she could bear no more sons, it was forbidden, so she will probably die in childbirth.
Maurice’s students at the college are much more emancipated. They arrive shrouded in black abbas which they throw off to reveal tight-fitting skirts and sweaters with ‘Wisconsin’ printed on them. All the girls are in love with Mo because he is tall and blond. Unfortunately he has an awful habit of scratching his crotch when carried away by his own eloquence, and halfway through a lecture on Chaucer he’ll notice fifty pairs of beady eyes glued to his trousers. Their work is excellent but erratic as they have a great desire to be colloquial – a splendid analysis of Hamlet’s Act 1 will be followed by ‘Well cheerio, so long, old sport – see you in Act 2!’
Joan Wyndham
1966
Went out and got the papers. The usual load of rubbish, apart from an interesting piece by Philip Toynbee on the boring pointlessness of the writing of Beckett and Burroughs. He should have cast his net wider, to include Osborne. He made the point that this kind of writing treats of despair despairingly. He rightly says that this is a fundamental misconception of Art.
Kenneth Williams
1978 [in Barlinnie Prison]
3.14am. I’ve been wakened for over an hour, am irritable and restless. The Radio Clyde disc jockey is speaking to people in their homes via telephone. I get the atmosphere of home parties from it. Pop music is blasting in my ears and I marvel at radio and how it must comfort lonely people. It’s almost as though it’s reassuring me I’m not alone. 3.55am. One of these days I won’t be ‘still here’. It’s amazing how difficult I find it to think of myself being anywhere else.
Jimmy Boyle
1990
I seem to be the only Western playwright not personally acquainted with the new President of Czechoslovakia [Václav Havel]. I envy him though. What a relief to find oneself head of state and not have to write plays but just make history. And no Czechoslovak equivalent of Charles Osborne snapping at your ankles complaining that the history you’re making falls between every possible stool, or some Prague Steven Berkoff snarling that it’s not the kind of history that’s worth making anyway. I wonder whether Havel has lots of uncompleted dissident plays. To put them on now would be somehow inappropriate. Still, he could write a play about it.
Alan Bennett
3 January
1853
I love Nature partly because she is not man, but a retreat from him. None of his institutions control or pervade her. There a different kind of right prevails. In her midst I can be glad with an entire gladness. If this world were all man, I could not stretch myself, I should lose all hope. He is constraint, she is freedom to me. He makes me wish for another world. She makes me content with this.
H. D. Thoreau
1870
I went to see old Isaac Giles. He lamented the loss of his famous old pear tree. He told me he was nearly 80 and remembered seeing the Scots Greys passing through Chippenham on their way to Waterloo. They looked very much down, he said, for they knew where they were going.
Rev. Francis Kilvert
1902
Bliss and rapture.
Alma Mahler-Werfel
1915
It is strange how old traditions, so long buried as one thinks, suddenly crop up again. At Hyde Park Gate we used to set apart Sunday morning for cleaning the table silver. Here I find myself keeping Sunday morning for odd jobs – typewriting it was today – and tidying the room – and doing accounts which are very complicated this week. I have three little bags of coppers, which each owe the other something. We went to a concert at the Queen’s Hall, in the afternoon. Considering that my ears have been pure of music for some weeks, I think patriotism is a base emotion. By this I mean that they played a National Anthem and a hymn, and all I could feel was the entire absence of emotion in myself and everyone else. If the British spoke openly about WCs, and copulation, then they might be stirred by universal emotions. As it is, an appeal to feel together is hopelessly muddled by intervening greatcoats and fur coats. I begin to loathe my kind, principally from looking at their faces in the tube. Really, raw red beef and silver herrings give me more pleasure to look upon.
Virginia Woolf
1932
On my way back to Missouri I stopped in St Louis and I saw my first bread line – 200 starving men forming a gray line as they waited for food. The sight of them disturbed me.
Edward Robb Ellis
1940
James Thurber of the New Yorker is in Baltimore this week, revising a play. It is being performed at the Maryland theatre, and apparently needs considerable rewriting. Paul Patterson entertained Thurber at the Sun office yesterday, and I had a chance to talk with him. He was full of curious stuff about Ross, editor of the New Yorker. He said that Ross never reads anything except New Yorker manuscripts. His library consists of three books. One is Mark Twain’s ‘Life on the Mississippi’; the second is a book by a man named Spencer, falsely assumed by Ross to be Herbert Spencer, and the third is a treatise on the migration of eels. Despite this avoidance of reading Ross is a first-rate editor. More than once, standing out against the advice of all of his staff, he has proved ultimately that he was right. Thurber said that he is a philistine in all the other arts. He regards painting as a kind of lunacy, and music as almost immoral.
H. L. Mencken
1973
It has been nearly three weeks since I last wrote in this diary. At Christmas time the world goes dead and this now extends into the New Year. Ireland remains as violent as ever; we continue to offer the other cheek to Uganda and Iceland; labour relations have been relatively quiet over the holidays, the Vietnam war is on again, off again; Nixon begins his new term of office with an appalling world press; the newspapers, of course, are filled with our joining the European Community. I supported this cause in the Daily Mirror, long before other newspapers or Macmillan took it up. I still think it is not the best policy, but it is the only one, and the antics of Wilson and the Labour party are contemptible. But is it not mistimed? All European countries are faced with uncontrolled inflation and, as well, we have many problems unsolved from Ireland to labour relations, Italy is hanging on the edge of civil war and France is not all that much better. May we not have signed the Treaty of Rome just before the collapse? Official comment is so widely optimistic on every subject that it is hard to judge what is really happening. We even have a new doctrine that optimism is a patriotic duty – criticism or even cautious comment are little better than sabotage. And in the meanwhile every problem is to be settled by negotiation and goodwill. No one must actually stand firm on anything – except in a demand for more money.
Cecil King
4 January
1664
To the Tennis Court and there saw the King play at Tennis, and others; but to see how the King’s play was extolled without any cause at all was a loathsome sight, though sometimes indeed he did play very well and deserved to be commended; but such open flattery is beastly.
Samuel Pepys
1848
Such a beautiful day, that one felt quite confused how to make the most of it, and accordingly frittered it away.
Caroline Fox
1902
Rapture without end.
Alma Mahler-Werfel
1903 [Discovery expedition to Antarctica]
Epiphany Sunday. Good juicy brown beef dripping is one thing I long for, and a large jugful of fresh creamy milk in Crippetts dairy. Killed another dog today as he was too weak to walk. We turned out at 6 a.m., had breakfast and were on the march by 8.30 a.m. And though the surface was very heavy with ice crystals, soft and deep and smooth, there being no sun to glaze the surface, we did 4 and a half miles by lunch time, when the Captain [Scott] took a sight, but it was too overcast all over the land for me to sketch. We had an hour’s rest and then made 3 and a half miles more in the afternoon. We have now only 8 dogs and they are good for no work at all. We camped at 4.30 p.m., when sky cleared over the land, but a cold breeze from the north made sketching impossible. We are all now pulling on foot in finnesko all day, heavy work for 7 hours or more, soft ice crystals with no crust. The sledges go very heavily when there is no sun, but run easily as soon as the sun comes out. I think much on the march of our return to the ship, when we shall I hope, find all our letters waiting for us. Le bon temps viendra.
Edward Wilson
1922
The snow is thicker, it clings to the branches like white new-born puppies.
Katherine Mansfield
1935
Now that I am growing older and can see young folks isolated from me by a number of years, I am sometimes halted by the thought, when looking on them: ‘Is it a fact that my own youth ended at 24?’ This, of course, is a time when the joys of physical freedom are emphasized, and the pleasures that gather around a home of one’s own. And with this emphasis comes the thought that we are but human once, and that to be able to joy in action is a great privilege. The thought, of course, is but fleeting – for it is folly to brood: and has not one known the joy – which is enough; and are there not many who have never known it?
William Soutar
1953
I think that people who manifest their love for you, physically, when they know your lack of reciprocation, are abominably selfish. Sooner or later, the relationship must suffer, however noble its beginnings. I must be comparatively under sexed or something for I have never particularly wanted to make physical love to anybody. All this touching and kissing which seems so popular among others passes me by. Denis Goacher knows I’m virgin, and is always saying that I make up for it by flirting continually. He says I should do something. He can’t believe I could be abnormal. To him, everyone must do something or die! Perhaps I am dead.
Kenneth Williams
1958
New year four days gone, along with resolutions of a page a day, describing mood, fatigue, orange peel or color of bathtub water after a week’s scrub. Penalty, and escape, both: four pages to catch up. Air lifts, clears. The black yellow-streaked smother of October, November, December, gone and clear New Year’s air come – so cold it turns bare shins, ears and cheeks to a bone of ice-ache. Yet sun, lying low on the fresh white paint of the storeroom door, reflecting in the umber-ugly paint coating the floorboards, and shafting a slant on the mauve-rusty rosy lavender rug from the west gable window. Changes: what breaks windows to thin air, blue views, in a smother-box? A red twilly shirt for Christmas: Chinese red with black-line scrolls and oriental green ferns to wear every day against light blue walls. Ted’s job chance at teaching just as long and just as much as we need. $1000 or $2000 clear savings for Europe. Vicarious joy at Ted’s writing which opens promise for me too: New Yorker’s 3rd poem acceptance and a short story for Jack and Jill. 1958: the year I stop teaching and start writing. Ted’s faith: don’t expect: just write: what? It will take months to get my inner world peopled, and the people moving. How else to do it but plunge out of this safe scheduled time-clock wage-check world into my own voids. Distant planets spin: I dream too much of fame, posturings, a novel into print. But with no job, no money worries, why, the black lid should lift. Look at life with humor: easy to say: things open up: know people: horizons extend . . .
Sylvia Plath
5 January
1821 [Ravenna]
Rose late – dull and drooping – the weather dripping and dense. Snow on the ground, and sirocco above in the sky, like yesterday. Roads up to the horse’s belly, so that riding (at least for pleasure) is not very feasible. Read the conclusion, for the fiftieth time (I have read all W. Scott’s novels at least fifty times) of the third series of ‘Tales of my Landlord’, – grand work – Scotch Fielding, as well as great English poet – wonderful man! I long to get drunk with him.
Dined versus six o’the clock. Forgot that there was a plum-pudding, (I have added, lately, eating to my ‘family of vices,’) and had dined before I knew it. Drank half a bottle of some sort of spirits – probably spirits of wine; for what they call brandy, rum, &c. &c., here is nothing but spirits of wine, coloured accordingly. Did not eat two apples which were placed by way of dessert. Fed the two cats, the hawk, and the tame, (but not tamed) crow. Read Mitford’s History of Greece – Xenophon’s Retreat of the Ten Thousand. Up to this present moment writing, 6 minutes before eight o’ the clock – French hours, not Italian.
Hear the carriage – order pistols and great coat, as usual – necessary articles. Weather cold – carriage open, and inhabitants somewhat savage – rather treacherous and highly inflamed by politics. Fine fellows, though, – good materials for a nation. Out of chaos God made a world, and out of high passions comes a people.
Clock strikes – going out to make love. Somewhat perilous, but not disagreeable. Memorandum – a new screen put up to-day. It is rather antique, but will do with a little repair.
Lord Byron
1918
We went to Hampton Court. We walked across Bushby park, and along a raised bank beneath trees to the river. It was cold, but still. Then we took a tram to Kingston and had tea at Atkinsons, where one may have no more than a single bun. Everything is skimped now. Most of the butcher’s shops are shut; the only open shop was besieged. You can’t buy chocolates, or toffee; flowers cost so much I have to pick leaves instead. We have cards for most foods. The only abundant shop windows are the drapers. Other shops parade tins, or cardboard boxes, doubtless empty. (This is an attempt at the concise, historic style.) I suppose there must be some undisturbed pockets of luxury somewhere still; but the general table is pretty bare. Papers, however, flourish, and by spending sixpence we are supplied with enough to light a week’s fires.
Virginia Woolf
1940
So far as politics and the war are concerned, everything is quiet as the grave. But Roosevelt has spoken to the House of Representatives. Covert but very malicious jibes against our regime and the Reich. He says he still hopes to keep America out of the war. That sounds anything but hopeful.
. . . The Russians are making absolutely no progress in Finland. The Red Army really does seem to be of very little military worth.
In London there is great outrage about our radio broadcasts in English. Our announcer has been given the nickname ‘Lord Haw-Haw’. He is causing talk, and that is already half the battle. The aim in London is to create an equivalent figure for the German service. This would be the best thing that could happen. We should make mincemeat of him.
Josef Goebbels
1941
Lunch with the Chisholms. Bridget looked beautiful, pale and slim again, and somehow mysterious, like Mother Earth. We went in to see the baby. It was screaming desperately, in spasms, and plucking frantically at its mouth, as if fighting to express something – and it couldn’t, it couldn’t. The effort was almost as painful to watch as a death agony. Such a bitter struggle at the beginning of life. Such a superhuman effort: one can’t believe that this little wrinkled crimson creature will survive it. But it forces its way, on and on, grimly, into time-consciousness – fighting and resting and fighting again. We stood awed and silent at the foot of the bed, unable to help – till the lady nurse bustled in, exclaiming, ‘Isn’t he cute? Isn’t he? And doesn’t he want his milk? I’ll say he does!’
Then Hugh entered, fresh and dapper from his bath. He looked so ridiculous – the absurd little rooster who had graciously donated his valuable semen for this creative act. Bridget said she’d been told that male sperm and female ovaries can now be introduced into the body of another woman, who will then be able to bear the child. Under these circumstances, the child still inherits everything from its parents, not the foster mother. We imagined a society lady introducing ‘Miss Jones – our carrier.’ And Miss Jones would refer casually to her clientele: ‘Last spring, when I was carrying for the Duchess of Devonshire . . .’
Christopher Isherwood
1978
When I got to Halston’s the phone was ringing and it was [Ilie] Nastase, and Bianca [Jagger] told him to come over. He arrived with a boyfriend, just one of his friends, and he was intimidated by the place – Halston was dressing the Disco Queen in a coat he’d made for her that day, and she came down the stairs and Halston was saying, ‘Come on Disco Queen.’ He talks like baby talk. He didn’t put any feathers in her hair this time. I told him he couldn’t, that the newspapers wouldn’t take her picture if she put one more feather in her hair.
And then Nastase’s boyfriend decided not to come to Studio 54 with us, and when we got in the limo Halston was yelling at the driver because he couldn’t find the black radio station, he said, ‘What do you mean you don’t know where the black station is – you’re black, aren’t you?’ And then the driver said he couldn’t see, meaning the radio dial, and Halston said, ‘What do you mean you can’t see, you’re driving, aren’t you?’ and then he told me that you have to yell at the help or they don’t respect you. He has over a hundred people working for him and they’re all so terrified of him, they’re always asking each other what kind of a mood he’s in.
And I notice something – Bianca had two blemishes on her face! She’s never had a blemish! I guess she’s depressed about Mick, discoing the night away. She stays out until 6:00 then gets up for her 8:00 exercise class.
Andy Warhol
6 January
1662
This evening (according to costome) his Majestie opned the Revells of that night, by throwing the Dice himselfe, in the Privy Chamber, where was a table set on purpose, and lost his 100 pounds: the yeare before he won 150 pounds: The Ladys also plaied very deepe: I came away when the Duke of Ormond had won about 1000 pounds and left them still at passage, Cards etc: at other Tables, both there and at the Groome-porters, observing the wicked folly vanity and monstrous excesse of Passion amongst some loosers, and sorry I am that such a wretched Custome as play to that excesse should be countenanc’d in a Court, which ought to be an example of Virtue to the rest of the kingdome.
John Evelyn
1836
A brig called the Agenoria arrived from St. John’s bringing 11 men, from the crew of a timber vessel, whom they had picked up in the most forlorn condition. They were capsized on the night of the 3rd [December] in a tremendous storm. Having cut the lanyards with much difficulty the vessel righted & the crew with the exception of 3 who were drowned, congregated on the quarterdeck. All their provisions were washed overboard & they continued till the 18th enduring the extremity of starvation and misery. On that day they came to the decision of drawing lots for who should die for his comrades & a young man of 19 was the victim. After prayers they cut his throat & drank the blood & devoured a considerable part of the body before it was cold. On the 20th another man being on the point of death, they cut his throat to save the blood & on the 24th another for the same reason. Having finished their horrible meal on that day a sail was discovered by the crew with tears of joy. This was the Agenoria which took them on board. They are now settled in the two Poor-Houses & where they are all likely to recover.
Barclay Fox
1915
I went to Adenkirke two days ago to establish a soup-kitchen there, as they say that Furnes station is too dangerous. We heard today that the stationmaster at Furnes has been signalling to the enemy, so that is why we have been shelled so punctually. His daughter is engaged to a German. Two of our hospital people noticed that before each bombardment a blue light appeared to flash on the sky. They reported the matter, with the result that the signals were discovered.
There has been a lot of shelling again today, and several houses are destroyed. A child of two years is in our hospital with one leg blown off and the other broken. One only hears people spoken of as, ‘the man with the abdominal trouble’, or ‘the one shot through the lungs’.
Children know the different aeroplanes by sight, and one little girl, when I ask her for news, gives me a list of the ‘obus’ (shells) that have arrived, and which have ‘s’eclate’ (burst), and which have not. One says ‘Bon soir, pas de obus (Good evening, no shells),’ as in English one says, ‘Goodnight, sleep well.’
Sarah Macnaughtan
1917
I had one of my little dinners and went straight to bed. I am in best looks. Marie Bashkirtseff is always apologetic when she makes a similar entry in her diary, but why should one be? Today I could really pass a great deal of time very happily just looking at myself in the glass. It’s extraordinary how one’s whole outline seems to alter, as well as complexion and eyes.
Lady Cynthia Asquith
1932 [Rome]
Spend most of the day reading fascisti pamphlets. They certainly have turned the whole country into an army. From cradle to grave one is cast in the mould of fascismo and there can be no escape. I am much impressed by the efficiency of all this on paper. Yet I wonder how it works in individual lives and shall not feel certain about it until I have lived some time in Italy. It is certainly a socialist experiment in that it destroys individuality. It also destroys liberty. Once a person insists on how you are to think he immediately begins to insist on how you are to behave. I admit that under this system you can attain to a degree of energy and efficiency not reached in our own island. And yet, and yet . . . The whole thing is an inverted pyramid.
We meet Signora Sarfatti, a friend of Mussolini whom we met at the Embassy yesterday. A blonde questing woman, daughter of a Venetian Jew who married a Jew in Milan. She helped Mussolini on the Popolo d’Italia, right back in 1914. She is at present his confidante and must be used by him to bring the gossip of Rome to the Villa Torlonia. She says that Mussolini is the greatest worker ever known: he rides in the morning, then a little fencing, then work, and then after dinner he plays the violin to himself. Tom [Oswald Mosley] asks how much sleep he gets. She answers, ‘Always nine hours.’ I can see Tom doing sums in his head and concluding that on such a time-table Musso cannot be hard-worked at all. Especially as he spends hours on needless interviews.
Harold Nicolson
1942 [Jersey]
RAF dropped leaflets early this morning. Laurence found one and Joyce found one in our garden near the bee-hive! They were all written in French. They were not addressed specially to Channel Islanders. German officers were searching the countryside for them but our eyes are sharper than theirs! It is nice to think that our British friends were close to us today. We are not forgotten after all!
Nan Le Ruez
1944
My longing for someone to talk to has become so unbearable that I somehow took it into my head to select Peter for this role. On the few occasions when I have gone to Peter’s room during the day, I’ve always thought it was nice and cosy. But Peter’s too polite to show someone the door when they’re bothering him, so I’ve never dared to stay long. I’ve always been afraid he’d think I was a pest. I’ve been looking for an excuse to linger in his room and get him talking without his noticing, and yesterday I got my chance. Peter, you see, is currently going through a crossword-puzzle craze, and he doesn’t do anything else all day. I was helping him, and we soon ended up sitting across from each other at his table, Peter on the chair and me on the divan.
It gave me a wonderful feeling when I looked into his dark blue eyes and saw how bashful my unexpected visit made him. I could read his innermost thoughts, and in his face I saw a look of helplessness and uncertainty as to how to behave, and at the same time a flicker of awareness of his masculinity. I saw his shyness, and I melted. I wanted to say, ‘Tell me about yourself. Look beneath my chatty exterior.’ But I found that it was easier to think up questions than to ask them.
. . . That night I lay in bed and cried my eyes out, all the while making sure no one could hear me. The idea that I had to beg Peter for favours was simply revolting. But people will do almost anything to satisfy their longings; take me, for example, I’ve made up my mind to visit Peter more often, and, somehow, get him to talk to me.
You mustn’t think I’m in love with Peter, because I’m not. If the van Daans had a daughter instead of a son, I’d have tried to make friends with her.
Anne Frank
1953
How impossible it is for me to make regular entries in the diary. I suddenly remember how I used to puzzle over the word at school. Always wondering why diary was so like Dairy and what the connection was. Never found out. Like that label on the bottle of Daddies Sauce – it never stopped. The man on the label was holding a bottle of Daddies Sauce and on the bottle was a label with a man holding a bottle of Daddies Sauce . . . ad infinitum ad nauseam for me at any rate.
Kenneth Williams
1973
A gathering at the Savoy after the National Theatre’s Twelfth Night at the Old Vic. I had a giggle with Norman St John Stevas, an old acquaintance from television and radio panel games, and now Under-Secretary and spokesman for the Arts in the Commons. He is an extraordinary man: irreverent, very funny, very Catholic, and he can sometimes be delightfully indiscreet. I have always felt that his heart is in the right place. We were speaking of the energy of the Prime Minister [Edward Heath] in a very crowded week, which included Fanfare for Europe, Boat Shows, and battling with the TUC and CBI over a wage policy. Norman said that celibacy was a great aid to energy, didn’t I find. I said I didn’t. He remarked that since he had become a minister, all sexual desire had faded. Celibacy, he said, was the secret of Heath.
Peter Hall
7 January
1833
At half-past five, took coffee, and off to the theatre. The play was Romeo and Juliet; the house was extremely full: they are a delightful audience. My Romeo had gotten on a pair of trunk breeches, that looked as if he had borrowed them from some worthy Dutchman of a hundred years ago. Had he worn them in New York, I could have understood it as a compliment to the ancestry of that good city; but here, to adopt such a costume in Romeo, was really perfectly unaccountable. They were of a most unhappy choice of colours, too – dull, heavy-looking blue cloth, and offensive crimson satin, all be-puckered, and be-plaited, and be-puffed, till the young man looked like a magical figure growing out of a monstrous, strange-coloured melon, beneath which descended his unfortunate legs, thrust into a pair of red slippers, for all the world like Grimaldi’s legs en costume for clown.
The play went off pretty smoothly, except that they broke one man’s collarbone, and nearly dislocated a woman’s shoulder by flinging the scenery about. My bed was not made in time, and when the scene drew, half a dozen carpenters in patched trowsers and tattered shirt sleeves were discovered smoothing down my pillows and adjusting my draperies!
Fanny Kemble
1857
There has never been an age so full of humbug. Humbug everywhere, even in science. For years now the scientists have been promising us every morning a new miracle, a new element, a new metal, guaranteeing to warm us with copper discs immersed in water, to feed us with nothing, to kill us at no expense whatever and on a grand scale, to keep us alive indefinitely, to make iron out of heaven knows what. And all this fantastic scientific humbugging leads to membership of the Institut, to decorations, to influence, to stipends, to the respect of serious people. In the meantime the cost of living rises, doubles, trebles; there is a shortage of raw materials; even death makes no progress – as we saw at Sebastopol, where men cut each other to ribbons – and the cheapest goods are still the worst goods in the world.
The Brothers Goncourt
1936
Brian Lunn took me to lunch in the Inner Temple. It was like being back at Cambridge. I found him in a little wooden room, reading old divorce briefs. They were pencilled over with comment. The language was not at all bowdlerized. One contained a verbatim report of a telephone conversation a husband had overheard between his wife and her lover. He claimed that it proved adultery because, in this conversation, she used the same pet name for penis as with him.
Malcolm Muggeridge
1969
Dashed home to change hurriedly for the Buckingham Palace reception for the Commonwealth Prime Ministers. It was an awful nuisance having to dress but the only way I could see of meeting my old friends during my frantic week.
It was nice to see Indira Gandhi again: I warm to her. She is a pleasant, rather shy and unassuming woman and we exchanged notes about the fun of being at the top in politics. When I asked her whether it was hell being Prime Minister she smiled and said, ‘It is a challenge.’ Oddly enough, I always feel protective towards her.
Every group I spoke to greeted me as the first woman Prime Minister to be. I hate this talk. First I’m never going to be PM and, secondly, I don’t think I’m clever enough. Only I know the depth of my limitations: it takes all I’ve got to survive my present job.
Barbara Castle
1975
I have received a letter from Martin Gilbert, who is engaged on vol. 5 of Winston Churchill’s life. Among Sir Winston’s archives he has come upon my name as a guest at Chartwell for four nights in January 1928. Can I give him any recollections of the visit? I have replied that I remember it fairly well. I was terrified of W. C., who would come into dinner late, eat his soup aggressively, growl in expostulation at Randolph’s cheek, then melt so as to be gallant with the girls and tolerant of the boys: that one night we remained at the dinner table till midnight while W. C. gave us a demonstration of how the Battle of Jutland was fought, with decanters and wine glasses in place of ships, while puffing cigar smoke to represent gun smoke. He was like an enthusiastic schoolboy on that occasion. The rest of the visit he was in waders in the lake or building a wall, or pacing backwards and forwards in his upstairs room dictating a book to his secretaries. Thump, thump on the floorboards overhead.
James Lees-Milne
1994
Rugged is my favourite word.
If I had my way even workmen would wear velvet every day.
Ossie Clark
1995 [Brussels]
As I got up to leave the restaurant, the crêpe chef in the middle of the room gestured urgently to warn me of something. I assumed, ‘Careful – this stuff is flambé’, and waved to acknowledge. I moved between the tables around him. He cried out again. I realized he was saying ‘Serviette!’ and that I had it hanging neatly from below my now buttoned jacket – a large, white, triangular codpiece. Everyone looked at me with the patronizing admiration the Europeans show to the absent-minded and/or obsessed.
Brian Eno
8 January
1849 [Ireland]
I don’t see that the misery of the country is at all increasing, it is only spreading. None of the lower orders need suffer for an hour, the Poor House is open. They bear a great deal before they will go there, hunger alone drives them into it, so that those who are out however wretched they may look are not as yet in want of food. The upper classes are now suffering, the farmer class a good deal, the landlord class a great deal. Every day we hear of the ruin of additional families, of themselves or their ancestors, yet who managed to live and let live till these unjust poor laws came to overwhelm them. That we have so far escaped is owing entirely to the Honourable East India Company’s pay, small though it be, for the little property having but a debt of £1,000 upon it would yield but a bare £100 a year for the support of its owner after all the charges on it were paid unless we were to dismiss all the servants and labourers. We are tight enough as it is and must try and lessen our expenditure still.
Elizabeth Grant of Rothiemurchus
1934
At Marks and Spencer’s I bought a peach-coloured vest and trollies to match with insertions of lace. Disgraceful I know but I can’t help choosing my underwear with a view to it being seen.
Barbara Pym
1935
I arrived back at Elveden late, cold and hungry. Our guests were all still up but all the fifty servants had gone to bed, and I could get nothing to eat. In spite of that, of all the Iveagh houses I like Elveden. I love its calm, its luxurious Edwardian atmosphere. For a fortnight now I have slept in the King’s bed, which both Edward VII and George V have used. And this morning, in the wee sma’ hours, I had a humiliating accident – I somehow smashed the royal chamber pot. It seems a habit of mine, and one much to be discouraged. At Mentmore once, staying with the Roseberys, I broke Napoleon’s pot in similar circumstance, a very grand affair covered with ‘N’s and Bees.
‘Chips’ Channon
1940 [Berlin]
Did a mike interview with General Ernst Udet tonight, but Göring, his boss, censored our script so badly that it wasn’t very interesting. I spent most of the day coaching the general on his English, which is none too good. Udet, a likeable fellow, is something of a phenomenon. A professional pilot, who only a few years ago was so broke he toured America as a stunt flyer, performing often in a full-dress suit and a top hat, he is now responsible for the designing and production of Germany’s war planes. Though he never had any business experience, he has proved a genius at his job. Next to Göring and General Milch, he is given credit in inner circles here for building up the German air force to what it is today. I could not help thinking tonight that a man like Udet would never be entrusted with such a job in America. He would be considered ‘lacking in business experience.’ Also, businessmen, if they knew of his somewhat Bohemian life, would hesitate to trust him with responsibility. And yet in this crazy Nazi system he has done a phenomenal job. Amusing: last night Udet put on a little party at his home, with three generals, napkins slung over their shoulders, presiding over his very considerable bar. There were pretty girls and a great deal of cutting up. Yet these are the men who have made the Luftwaffe the most terrible instrument of its kind in the world.
William L. Shirer
1943
Left flat early, bought sour apples and (at Fortnum & Mason’s of all places) a head of celery – the last one left, price 1/-, very dirty & I could take it or leave it! Took it, as my object was to procure some vitamins for Stuart.
Lunched at the Westway Hotel with Howard Kershner (Director of Relief in Europe for the American Friends’ Service Committee) who told me interesting facts about the food situation (including the fact that Churchill & Roosevelt are the persons really responsible & nothing but a large public agitation will move them). He also said that 6,000 Jews escaped to Spain from France, & are now in danger of being sent back to Germany by starving Spain, yet our Gvt. despite all its talk of atrocities will do nothing for them!!
Vera Brittain
1970
Cecil Beaton had sent me a card saying come to lunch and that it was to be just him and ‘a load of old women.’ The ‘old women’ turned out to be Loelia, formerly Duchess of Westminster, now Lady Lindsay, and Lady Hambleden. Cecil was in terrific form: ‘I just flew in and went straight to the doctor for a couple of injections and slept for a week at Reddish.’ Both grandes dames turned out to be highly engaging. Loelia Lindsay particularly so. She had a wonderful eye for changing social mores, recalling the blatant snobbery of the twenties when she was a deb when, if you had danced with a man the night before and had found that he was socially inferior, if you happened to see him the following day you would just look through him.
She recalled how once she went out to dinner, and returned explaining to her mother how wonderful the food had been, how delicious in particular the consommé with sherry had tasted. She was never allowed there again. For her first weekend away, her mother insisted that she took gloves up to the elbow to wear in the evening. On descending the staircase with them on she found herself an anachronism, and, taking them swiftly off, tucked them behind a silver-framed portrait of Queen Ena of Spain.
Roy Strong
9 January
1821
The lapse of ages changes all things – time – language – the earth – the bounds of the sea – the stars of the sky, and every thing ‘about, around, and underneath’ man, except man himself, who has always been and always will be, an unlucky rascal. The infinite variety of lives conduct but to death, and the infinity of wishes lead but to disappointment. All the discoveries which have yet been made have multiplied little but existence.
Lord Byron
1836
I met Captain Gillard, master of the Agenoria, who confirmed all the statement of Capt. G. as far as he was competent. I saw the penknife belonging to Capt. G. with which the 3 men were butchered. I saw sticking to the blade – horrible, horrible! – a piece of human flesh, a relic of their cannibal meal!
Barclay Fox
1930
At the table directly opposite us was a rather attractive young couple. Probably a wedding-trip, for the table is covered with flowers. The young man was reading Les Caves du Vatican. This is the first time I have ever happened to meet someone actually reading me. Occasionally he turned toward me and when I was not looking at him, I felt him staring at me. Most likely he recognized me. Lacretelle kept telling me: ‘Go ahead! Tell him who you are. Sign his book for him. . . .’ In order to do this I should have had to be more certain that he liked the book, in which he remained absorbed even during the meal. But suddenly I saw him take a little knife out of his pocket. . . . Lacretelle was seized with uncontrollable laughter on seeing him slash Les Caves du Vatican. Was he doing so out of exasperation? For a moment I thought so. But no: carefully he cut the binding threads, took out the first few sheets, and handed a whole part of the book that he had already read to his young wife, who immediately plunged into her reading.
André Gide
1932
Read today that Corot, Degas, Manet, Cézanne were all ‘paternal parasites’ as regards money – if I can do my share in the Scottish Renaissance perhaps I’ll justify my parasitism yet. Up to yourself, my boy, it’s up to yourself.
William Soutar
1953
On Wednesday we lunched with the PM at Barnie Baruch’s. Winston Churchill seems to have shrunk a lot and was very deaf in his left ear, which unfortunately was the side I was on, so conversation was a little difficult. But mentally he was extremely alert, and he had a charming old-world courtliness; he was dressed impeccably in a black suit. His skin is as pink and fresh and unwrinkled as a baby’s and he poured some champagne from his glass over the Virginia ham, and dipped the end of his cigar in his brandy. He made a little speech to the Mayor of New York, a slippery ice-creamer from near Palermo called Impelliteri, making a pun which the Mayor failed to see.
Cynthia Gladwyn
1958
Jim Egan began at the World Telegram as a messenger boy and now works in our production department. Today he told me an amusing story. In 1940, when Franklin Roosevelt and Wendell Wilkie were vying for the presidency, Jim was sent on an errand to the Herald Tribune. He wore a huge Roosevelt button on his shirt. Going up in the elevator he was seen by Mrs. Helen Rogers Reid, who owned the Trib. Glaring at the Roosevelt button she snapped: ‘Why are you wearing that thing?’
‘Why not?’
‘Well don’t you know this is a Republican newspaper?’
‘So what?’
‘You’re fired!’
‘You can’t fire me.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because I don’t work here.’
Edward Robb Ellis
1977
It may be a little late in the day to start making New Year resolutions, but mine are none the less serious for that. I shall write them down to remind myself:
1. To make some money.
2. To think seriously about getting married – possibly to Jane, but ideally to someone with money.
3. To find somewhere else to live. I am getting too old for this type of flat life.
4. To move freely in society. I am always reading in the diaries of the famous how they dined here and lunched there; sat next to this person at table and met that one at the theatre. I see no reason why I should not do the same. My problem is that my life is too often taken up with domestic trivialities, and I allow my time to be wasted by people of little worth and influence. I shall take steps to break out of this little world in which I have become trapped in recent months, and give far freer rein to my personality and talents.
Christopher Matthew (Diary of a Somebody)
10 January
1824
Called on Miss Lamb. I looked over [Charles] Lamb’s library in part. He has the finest collection of shabby books I ever saw. Such a number of first-rate works of genius, but filthy copies, which a delicate man would really hesitate touching, is, I think, nowhere to be found.
Henry Crabb Robinson
1872
This morning at prayers the pretty housemaid Elizabeth with the beautiful large soft eyes was reading aloud in Luke i how Zacharias saw a vision in the Temple, but for the word ‘vision’ she substituted ‘venison’.
Rev. Francis Kilvert
1914
To one of these new night-clubs, Murray’s in Bleak Street. Here were numerous people dancing the tango and the maxixe with jealous precision; the latter is rather a graceful dance, but, as to the former, the old lady in the current anecdote was not far wrong – ‘I whip my dog when he does that.’
Not that these people seemed to get any physical fun out of the thing, as they were all grimly preoccupied with trying to tread it out according to the rules. It’s an amusing place, though, and we sat there till three; there are an amazing lot of all-but-beautiful women in the London stage, and demimonde, just now, and some who are quite – e.g., Sari Petrass, who is a lovely little creature, and looks like a duchess. Two years ago, I suppose, London was without any sort of place of this kind, and now there are about half a dozen flourishing like the greenest bay-trees; an excellent thing.
Sir Alan ‘Tommy’ Lascelles
1920 [Berlin]
To-day the Peace Treaty was ratified at Paris; the War is over. A terrible era begins for Europe, like the gathering of clouds before a storm, and it will end in an explosion probably still more terrible than that of the World War. In Germany there are all the signs of a continuing growth of nationalism.
Count Harry Kessler
1946
At the fashionable, carefree Carcano – Ednam wedding reception I remarked to Emerald [Cunard] how quickly London had recovered from the war and how quickly normal life had resumed. ‘After all,’ I said, pointing to the crowded room, ‘this is what we have been fighting for.’ ‘What,’ said Emerald, ‘are they all Poles?’
‘Chips’ Channon
1953
[With] the young duke of Kent and his sisters, taken to see a famous illusionist in a London music hall. The number ends with some nudity, and the nanny doesn’t know what to do. As they leave she ventures to ask, ‘How did Your Highness enjoy the performance?’ ‘I’m scared.’ ‘Why, Your Highness?’ ‘Mama told me if I looked at naked women I’d turn to stone – and it’s starting.’
Jean Cocteau
1979
Took off at 8.20 in a curious twin-engined, high-wing, old Russian plane which I viewed with apprehension and dismay, but which in fact proved to be extremely stable for the three-hour slow journey, diverting in order to see things like the Silingue Dam and to follow the course of the River Niger to Timbuctoo.
I was greeted at the airport by the military governor, mayor, etc, and then at the entrance to the main square, five miles away, by two Nubian maidens, one of whom presented me with some dates, which I ate, and the other with a bowl of camel’s milk, which I put to my lips but refrained from drinking as it had the most nauseous smell. Then into the square where the whole population seemed to be lined up. Fortunately the population of Timbuctoo is now only about 8000 compared with 100,000 in 1500, so it was not quite as formidable a gathering as it might earlier have been. A lot of music and cheering, though quite whom or what they thought they were cheering I am not sure. Then I walked round the square and decided that the only thing to do was a Richard Nixon, plunge in, shake hands and then move on fifty yards and plunge again.
Roy Jenkins
1984
Two boxes arrived this morning, stuffed with PO cases and what officials call ‘reading’. First thing, always, on top of all the folders are the grey sheets of diary pages. My heart sank as I looked at the stuffed days, the names of dreary and supercilious civil servants who will (never singly) be attending. I’ve got three months of this ahead of me without a break.
At dinner the other night Peter [Morrison], who is a workaholic (not so difficult if you’re an unhappy bachelor living on whisky) showed Ian [Gow] and me, with great pride, his diary card for the day following. Every single minute, from 8.45 a.m. onwards, was filled with ‘engagements’.
‘Look,’ he said. ‘How’s that for a diary?’
Ian, unexpectedly and greatly to his credit, said, ‘If my Private Office produced a schedule like that I’d sack the whole lot, immediately.’
Alan Clark
1995
Peter Cook died yesterday and of course today is the funniest man who ever lived. He may almost have been. (Dud: ‘So would you say you’ve learned from your mistakes?’ Pete: ‘Oh yes, I’m certain I could repeat them exactly.’)
This morning, after dark thoughts about my life, I picked up Whole Earth Review and read the interview with Annie Nearing, now 94 years old. She said something that struck me right in the heart – though it seems very minor: ‘People give so much attention to food.’ This struck a chord because last night we left the Lacey meeting prematurely primarily so we could have a proper sit-down meal. A snack would have done me fine, and I was slightly discomfited that eating had come to occupy such a major position in our lives. Then I thought about all the evenings that evaporate in the long haze of preparing, eating, drinking, smoking. Lately, when cooking (unless I’m really in the mood) I find myself thinking, ‘This is taking an absurdly long time.’
Generally my feeling is towards less: less shopping, less eating, less drinking, less wasting, less playing by the rules and recipes. All of that I want in favour of more thinking on the feet, more improvising, more surprises, more laughs.
Brian Eno
11 January
1857
There was wit and even poetry in the negro’s answer to the man who tried to persuade him that the slaves would not be obliged to work in heaven. ‘Oh, you g’way, Massa. I know better. If dere’s no work for cullud folks up dar, dey’ll make some fur ‘em, and if dere’s nuffin better to do, dey’ll make em shub de clouds along. You can’t fool this chile, Massa.’
H. D. Thoreau
1909
Madam Posfay was in the courtyard of the palace at the time of the murder of the King and Queen of Serbia, but knew nothing. ‘What are they throwing bolsters out of the windows for?’ she asked. It was the bodies.
Arnold Bennett
1920
Like every morning I have had my enema, in order to preserve a clear skin and sweet breath. It is a family habit, approved of by Dr Pinard. One of Maman’s old great-aunts, the beautiful Madame Rhomès, died at the age of ninety and a half with a complexion of lilies and roses, skin like a child’s. She took her little enema, it seems, at five o’clock every evening, so that she would sleep very well. She did it cheerfully in public. She would simply stand in front of the fireplace; her servant would come in discreetly, armed with the loaded syringe; Madame Rhomès would lean forward gracefully so that her full skirts lifted, one two there, and it was done! Conversation was not interrupted. After a minute or two my beautiful ancestress would disappear briefly, soon to return with the satisfaction of a duty performed.
Liane de Pougy
1912
Night. Height 10, 530. Temp -16.3º. Minimum -25.8º. Another hard grind in the afternoon and five miles added. About 74 miles from the Pole – can we keep this up for seven days? It takes it out of us like anything. None of us ever had such hard work before. Cloud has been coming and going overhead all day, drifting from the S.E., but continually altering shape. Snow crystals falling all the time, a very light breeze at start soon dying away. The sun so bright and warm tonight that it is almost impossible to imagine a minus temperature. The snow seems to get softer as we advance; the sastrugi, though sometimes high and undercut, are not hard – no crusts, except yesterday the surface subsided once, as on the Barrier. Our chance still holds good if we can put the work in, but it’s a terribly trying time.
Captain Robert Falcon Scott
1940 [Berlin]
Cold. Fifteen degrees below zero centigrade outside my window. Half the population freezing in their homes and offices and workshops because there’s no coal. Pitiful to see in the streets yesterday people carrying a sack of coal home in a baby-carriage or on their shoulders. I’m surprised the Nazis are letting the situation become so serious. Everyone is grumbling. Nothing like continual cold to lower your morale. Learned today from a traveller back from Prague that producers of butter, flour, and other things in Slovakia and Bohemia are marking their goods destined for Germany as ‘Made in Russia.’ This on orders from Berlin, the idea being to show the German people how much ‘help’ is already coming from the Soviets.
William L. Shirer
1973
In the British Museum reading room I asked the superintendent if I might be allowed to visit the shelves in order to search for an article in an obscure Italian journal of the 1850s and 60s, the reference to which was evidently wrongly given in the bibliography I have consulted. He looked at me and said, ‘We are not supposed to, but you seem all right.’ ‘I hope I am, but I don’t know how you can tell,’ I said. He called a black assistant, who took me miles and miles upstairs past shelves and shelves and shelves, all beautifully stacked. We arrived at a little office amidst this forest of books.
The charming assistant took me to the shelves where the Rivista Europa volumes were stacked – about forty of them. He had them all taken out on a trolley and put on a table for me. I found my article and read it; it was of no use to me, but I was struck by the kindness and helpfulness of everyone concerned. When I came to leave my friend was nowhere to be found. It was terrifying being left alone in this deserted forest, no sound, only endless speechless books. Depressing, and frightening. Enough to make a humble author feel a worm.
James Lees-Milne
12 January
1819
I sat up till two, as I did last night, to finish Pride and Prejudice. This novel I consider as one of the most excellent of the works of our female novelists. Its merit lies in the characters, and in the perfectly colloquial style of the dialogue. Mrs Bennet, the foolish mother, who cannot conceal her projects to get rid of her daughters, is capitally drawn. There is a thick-headed servile parson, also a masterly sketch. His stupid letters and her ridiculous speeches are as delightful as wit. The two daughters are well contrasted – the gentle and candid Jane and the lively but prejudiced Elizabeth, are both good portraits, and the development of the passion between Elizabeth and the proud Darcy, who at first hate each other, is executed with skill and effect.
Henry Crabb Robinson
1840 [Ireland]
I have been thinking how best to encourage the school, and not being able to afford more help in money than it now costs, I have determined on giving fewer prizes – only one in each Division – instead I shall send ten children to school. I have also resolved on resuming my regular daily business as the only possible way of keeping things in order. Monday – The washing to be given out. Clothes mended. Stores for the week given to the servants. Tuesday – work for the week cut out and arranged, my own room tidied. Wednesday – accounts, letters, papers all put by. Thursday – housekeeping, closets, storeroom, etc. arranged, bottles put by, pastry made – in short every necessary job done for the week. Friday – gardening and poor people’s wants. Saturday – put by clean clothes and school. Two hours generally does all, except on Thursday. Thus I am always ready and have plenty of time for other occupations. I also give an hour every evening to the little girls. Janey has a musick lesson every day – Annie every second day – twice a week French – twice a week English – twice a week dancing. Alas, when we see company all this happiness must be forborne, but we owe a duty to society as to other things and in its turn it must be paid and a little intercourse with our acquaintance is good both for ourselves and for our children. With friends it is delightful, and we have some even here I should be very sorry to have to part from. In the evening played some of Corelli’s solos, read aloud Mrs Trollope’s Domestic Manners of the Americans.
Elizabeth Grant of Rothiemurchus
1936
I realize now that I would marry if I could do so; but I am not wholly blind to the fact that my arrival at this nuptial mood has been accelerated by adventitious means. What woman – granting she overlook my disabilities – would expect that my affection was entirely unselfish. Yet – and this is perhaps a confession of my overweening self-regard rather than of my confidence in the magnanimity of women – I do believe that a woman would accept me for what I am and that our marriage should be one of mutual affection, and not a ‘second-best’ accommodation for security and comfort. No doubt to an outsider it must appear preposterous that at my age I should consider it not an impossibility to win the affection of such a woman as I might have reasonably hoped to have won when a whole man; but the hope is there and places me, I suppose, among the incorrigible.
William Soutar
1938 [Nanking]
A month ago today Nanking fell into the hands of the Japanese. The body of that Chinese soldier shot while tied to a bamboo sofa is still lying out in the street not 50 yards from my house.
John Rabe
13 January
1921
Rainy weather. Does the weather matter in a journal? Lunched alone; does that matter? (Grilled turbot and apple-pudding, if you want full details.) Talked to ‘the Judge’ about fox hunting for a few minutes. Then went to Cheyne Walk for tea with Gabriel. Bought yellow narcissi on the way. Buying flowers is refreshing, though I always give them away. Left at five, and played The Beggar’s Opera for an hour: also refreshing. Dined at Arnold Bennett’s and enjoyed it greatly. B. is always the same, and always nice. He showed me his manuscripts, which are very beautiful. That of Old Wives’Tale practically free from corrections. He had been to see George Moore, who said: ‘Hardy is a villager; Conrad is a sailor; Henry James was a eunuch.’
Siegfried Sassoon
1945 [Bergen-Belsen]
Yesterday marked our first year here. It has been a terrible year, far from home, from the children, without news from them, a year of disappointment. The transport to Palestine, the peace that did not come, a year of hunger, cold, hounding, persecution and humiliation. Fortunately, though, apart from a few bouts of dysentery, we have not been seriously ill.
The food is getting worse and worse. At midday, swede soup, every day without a single potato. The ‘extra’ food is distributed centrally now. Every day there are genuine punch-ups over a ticket. From time to time there is no bread at all here – from time to time (tonight, for example) we are not allowed to use the toilet. Those who have diarrhoea must go outdoors. We have procured some buckets for ourselves, discarded jam buckets.
This morning, my neighbour had to resort to them.
This morning his bunkmate discovered to his horror that his shoes were full. The other had soiled himself twice during the night.
We are living amid the lice. For months I have not been able to change into clean underwear, nor had a shower. Naturally there is also no heating here, we suffer terribly from the cold in the huts, which are draughty and where the door is never shut.
Deaths, deaths, deaths.
For how long?
The persecution of the Jews continues. Nevertheless we are a year nearer to peace than on 13 January 1944.
Abel J. Herzberg
1953
Lunched with Jack Kennedy, the new Senator from Massachusetts. He has the making of a first-class Senator or a first-class fascist – probably depending on whether the right kind of people take the trouble to surround him. His brother is now counsel for McCarthy’s committee and he himself has been appointed on McCarthy’s committee, though Jack claims against his wishes. There was a time when I didn’t quite understand why F.D.R. broke with Joe Kennedy. But the more I see of Jack, the more I can understand it.
Drew Pearson
1955 [Jamaica]
The Parachini [a neighbour] funeral was almost comical. It was also strident with local colour. The hearse and the funeral cortège were late and were unable to turn into the church gates and had to go straight on into Port Maria and then come back on the other side of the road. When the hearse finally drew up we observed that a common little Palmolive soap van had wormed its way into a position just behind it and directly in front of the relatives’ car. On the side of the van in large letters was a slogan which read, ‘A Lovelier Skin in Fourteen days’.
Noël Coward
1995
Took a long walk this morning – down 7th Avenue to 42nd Street. Such nostalgic air – cool but clear, straight up Manhattan fresh off the Atlantic, having crossed the Sargasso Sea, then accented with all those residual traces of faint fishiness, cinnamon muffins, subway urine, women’s perfumes, bacon, coffee, newsprint.
Brian Eno
14 January
1833 [Washington]
We walked up to the Capitol and went first into the senate, or upper house, because [Daniel] Webster was speaking, whom I especially wished to hear. The room itself is neither large nor lofty; the senators sit in two semi-circular rows, turned towards the President, in comfortable arm-chairs. On the same ground, and literally sitting among the senators, were a whole regiment of ladies, whispering, talking, laughing, and fidgeting. A gallery, level with the floor, and only divided by a low partition from the main room, ran round the apartment: this, too, was filled with pink, and blue, and yellow bonnets; and every now and then, while the business of the house was going on, and Webster speaking, a tremendous bustle, and waving of feathers, and rustling of silks, would be heard, and in came streaming a reinforcement of political beauties, and then would commence a jumping up, a sitting down, a squeezing through, and a howd’ye-doing, and a shaking of hands. The senators would turn round; even Webster would hesitate, as if bothered by the row, and in short, the whole thing was more irregular, and unbusiness-like than any one could have imagined . . .
Fanny Kemble
1935
Today I had a chance to explore the waterfront for the first time. New Orleans, a major world port, has ten miles of wharves and is used by scores of steamship lines and nine railroads. At the Thalia St wharf I watched as bananas from Central America were unloaded from a ship by sweating Negro longshoremen. They are paid 45 cents an hour and get work only about three days a week. As I sat watching the men, a hairy tarantula almost ran up my pant leg. Looking up, I began watching the sea gulls soaring over the river and ships and docks. Seldom have I seen such beauty. The sleek white birds have black-tipped wings and long necks, tuck their orange feet under them, and some glided so near that I saw their sparkling eyes. They are the essence of grace. I wish I were a poet because poetry is the best medium for describing these lovely lofty creatures. If I believed in reincarnation, I’d like to come back as a sea gull. I am curious about them, just as I am curious about everything. Life without curiosity wouldn’t be worth living. Today I remembered the first two lines of a poem:
What is this life if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.
Edward Robb Ellis
1938 [Corfu]
We climbed the dizzy barren razorback of Pantocratoras to the monastery from which the whole strait lay bare, lazy and dancing in the cold haze. Lines of dazzling water crept out from Butrinto, and southward, like a beetle on a plate, the Italian steamer jogged its six knots towards Ithaca. Clouds were massing over Albania, but the flat lands of Epirus were frosty bright. In the little cell of the warden monk, whose windows gave directly upon the distant sea, and the vague ruling of waves to the east, we sat at a deal table and accepted the most royal of hospitalities – fresh mountain walnuts and pure water from the highest spring; water that had been carried up on the backs of women in stone jars for several hundred feet.
Lawrence Durrell
1944
Anatole France, in his old age, intended to write a novel, of which the title was to be Les Autels de la peur. The Altars of Fear – could a better title be found for an account of our times?
Iris Origo
15 January
1912
It is wonderful to think that two long marches would land us at the Pole. We left our depôt today with nine days’ provisions, so that it ought to be a certain thing now, and the only appalling possibility the sight of the Norwegian flag forestalling ours. Little Bowers continues his indefatigable efforts to get good sights, and it is wonderful how he works them up in his sleeping-bag in our congested tent. (Minimum for night -27.5º.) Only 27 miles from the Pole. We ought to do it now.
Captain Robert Falcon Scott
1941
Parsimony may be the end of this book. Also shame at my own verbosity, which comes over me when I see the – 20 it is – books shuffled together in my room. Who am I ashamed of? Myself reading them. Then Joyce is dead. Joyce about a fortnight younger than I am. I remember Miss Weaver, in wool gloves, bringing Ulysses in type-script to our tea-table at Hogarth House. Roger I think sent her. Would we devote our lives to printing it? The indecent pages looked so incongruous: she was spinsterly, buttoned up. And the pages reeled with indecency. I put it in the drawer of the inlaid cabinet. One day Katherine Mansfield came, and I had it out. She began to read, ridiculing: then suddenly said, But there’s something in this: a scene that should figure I suppose in the history of literature. He was about the place, but I never saw him. Then I remember Tom [T. S. Eliot] in Ottoline’s [Lady Ottoline Morell] room at Garsington saying – it was published then – how could anyone write again after achieving the immense prodigy of the last chapter. He was, for the first time in my knowledge, rapt, enthusiastic. I bought the blue paper book, and read it here one summer I think with spasms of wonder, of discovery, and then again with long lapses of intense boredom. This goes back to a pre-historic world. And now all the gents are furbishing up their opinions, and the books, I suppose, take their place in the long procession.
Virginia Woolf
1943
A group of naughty little boys crept in [to the canteen] and started playing with the table-tennis gear. I went to chase them off, and collided with two little girls about twelve or fourteen. I said, ‘Hallo, my dears, what do you want?’ and got a very evasive answer. I noticed they were very bold-looking little things. It appears that they have haunted the canteen all week, and when Mrs. Diss came, I said, ‘Do you know, I’ve never before seen girls or women hanging round the canteen’ and she answered, ‘No, but we have not had Scotties or Australians before. We were warned of the queer attractions they – and Americans too – have for young girls.’ She had talked firmly and kindly to the two girls, and asked, ‘Whatever would your mother think if she knew?’ She had got a pert but pitiful reply, ‘Oh she wouldn’t say anything – but Dad would thrash me.’ However, it appeared Dad was in the Middle East. The other said her mum was working, and she could not get in the house till seven o’clock when she came in.
When I told Mary, she said that, at Fulwood Barracks in Preston, it was really shocking to see such young girls ‘seeking trouble’. We have seen little of it openly in Barrow, and it set me thinking again of the ‘new world’. I wonder if the ones with such beautiful ideas, who blah so much about what will happen after the war, even dimly realise the stupendous tasks and problems awaiting them, the cosmic swing of change, the end of all things as we know them. I read in the paper of American school-teachers’ problems with unruly adolescents who have never been disciplined.
Nella Last
16 January
1755
This morning about 1 o’clock I had the misfortune to lose my little boy Peter, aged 21 weeks, 3 days. Paid for flour and other small things. At home all day. In the even read the 11th and 12th books of Paradise Regained, which I think is much inferior for the sublimity of style to Paradise Lost.
Thomas Turner
1814
I have simplified my politics into an utter detestation of all existing governments; and, as it is the shortest and most agreeable and summary feeling imaginable, the first moment of an universal republic would convert me into an advocate for single and uncontradicted despotism. The fact is, riches are power, and poverty is slavery all over the earth, and one sort of establishment is no better, no worse, for a people than another.
Lord Byron
1854
I was struck today by the poetic beauty of the winter weather. In the sky a mist got up and the pale sun shone through it. On the roads the dung is beginning to thaw and there is a damp moisture in the air.
Leo Tolstoy
1912
Camp 68. Height 9, 760. T. -23.5º. The worst has happened, or nearly the worst. We marched well in the morning and covered 7½ miles. Noon sight showed us in Lat. 89° 42’ S., and we started off in high spirits in the afternoon, feeling that tomorrow would see us at our destination. About the second hour of the march Bowers’ sharp eyes detected what he thought was a cairn; he was uneasy about it, but argued that it must be a sastrugus. Half an hour later he detected a black speck ahead. Soon we knew that this could not be a natural snow feature. We marched on, found that it was a black flag tied to a sledge bearer; near by the remains of a camp; sledge tracks and ski tracks going and coming and the clear trace of dogs; paws – many dogs. This told us the whole story. The Norwegians have forestalled us and are first at the Pole. It is a terrible disappointment, and I am very sorry for my loyal companions. Many thoughts come and much discussion have we had. Tomorrow we must march on to the Pole and then hasten home with all the speed we can compass. All the day-dreams must go; it will be a wearisome return. Certainly we are descending in altitude – certainly also the Norwegians found an easy way up.
Captain Robert Falcon Scott
1919
Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg have met with a dreadful and fantastic end. The midday editions of the newspapers have published the story. Last night Liebknecht was shot from behind while being taken in a truck through the Tiergarten and, so it is said, trying to escape. Rosa Luxemburg, having been interrogated by officers of the Guards Cavalry Division in the Eden Hotel, was first beaten unconscious by a crowd there and then, on the canal bridge, was dragged out of the car in which she was being removed. Allegedly she was killed. Her body has at any rate disappeared. But, according to what is known so far, she could have been rescued and brought to safety by party comrades. Through the civil war, which she and Liebknecht plotted, they had so many lives on their conscience that their violent end has, as it were, a certain inherent logic. The manner of their deaths, not the deaths themselves, is what causes consternation.
Count Harry Kessler
1979
Today I began a regime which will probably last for twenty-four hours. I jogged in the bedroom for about twenty-five minutes and did some exercises. Resolved not to eat any bread, potatoes or sugar, and to stop smoking. It’s terrifying the extent to which one is dependent on drugs. If I tried to give up tea as well, I think I should go mad!
. . . It’s 10.45 pm and I still haven’t smoked.
Tony Benn
1995
Opening of Interview with the Vampire in Dublin. Tom Cruise comes over, bless his heart. He promised to do so months ago, and I had always thought circumstances would intervene. But here he is, causing a sensation in O’Connell Street. Police holding back crowds, as if the Beatles had returned. He makes his way through a quite terrifying line and finds time to talk to everybody. All I know is I couldn’t do it.
A party afterwards in Dublin Castle. Liam Neeson turns up. And Michael D. Higgins and a group of British MPs who have come to see how the tax-breaks have worked for the Irish film industry, James Callaghan and a Labour spokesman for Defence among them. I talk to him for a while and get the impression they found the film quite loathsome. Maybe they don’t want this kind of activity on their shores after all. When you have Shakespeare, why do you need movies?
Neil Jordan
17 January
1912
Camp 69. T. -22º at start. Night -21º. The Pole. Yes, but under very different circumstances from those expected. We have had a horrible day – and to add to our disappointment a head wind 4 to 5, with a temperature -22º, and companions labouring on with cold feet and hands.
Captain Robert Falcon Scott
1919
In the evening I went to a cabaret in the Bellevuestrasse. The sound of a shot cracked through the performance of a fiery Spanish dancer. Nobody took any notice. It underlined the slight impression that the [Russian] revolution has made on metropolitan life. I only began to appreciate the Babylonian, unfathomably deep, primordial and titanic quality of Berlin when I saw how this historic, colossal event has caused no more than local ripples on the even more colossally eddying movement of Berlin existence. An elephant stabbed with a penknife shakes itself and strides on as if nothing has happened.
Count Harry Kessler
1936
I read Kipling’s verses all the afternoon (he died yesterday). It struck me how good the verses were, how full of genuine vitality, how full of contempt for what I despised – ‘brittle intellectuals’ – and of poetic genius; how, if he praised Empire, it was not at all because he had not counted the cost (who has expressed better the wrongs of the common soldier?) but because, men being what they are, he saw it as one of the less despicable manifestations of their urge to over-run and dominate their environment.
Malcolm Muggeridge
1962
Walter Shenson [film producer]. He said he’d been having a talk with Brian Epstein, the Beatles’ manager. He was delighted that I’d like to do the film [script]. ‘So,’ W. Shenson said, ‘you’ll be hearing either from Brian or Paul MacCartney in the near future. So don’t be surprised if a Beatle rings you up.’ ‘What an experience,’ I said. ‘I shall feel as nervous as I would if St Michael or God were on the line.’ ‘Oh, there’s not any need to be worried, Joe,’ Shenson said. ‘I can say, from my heart, that the boys are very respectful of talent. I mean, most respectful of anyone they feel has talent. I can really say that, Joe.’
Joe Orton
1965
Winston Churchill, I fear, is dying at this very moment. I suppose it’s just as well really. Ninety years is a long, long, time. Personally I would rather not wait until the faculties begin to go. However, that must be left in the hands of ‘The One Above’ and I hope he’ll do something about it and not just sit there.
Noël Coward
18 January
1805
I’ve just been reflecting for two hours on my father’s conduct toward me, being deplorably worn down by a strong attack of the slow fever I’ve had for more than seven months. I haven’t been able to recover from it: first, because I didn’t have the money to pay the doctor; in the second place, because, having my feet constantly in the water in this muddy city owing to lack of boots, and suffering in every way from the cold owing to lack of clothing and wood for the fire, it was useless and even harmful to wear down my body with remedies to get rid of an illness which poverty would have given me even if I hadn’t had it already.
If you add to this all the moral humiliations and the worries of a life passed continually with twenty sous, twelve, two, and sometimes nothing in my pocket, you’ll have a slight idea of the state in which that virtuous man has left me.
For two months I’ve been planning to put a description of my condition here; but, in order to describe it, you must regard it, and my only resource is to distract my attention from it.
Just calculate the effect of eight months of slow fever, fed by every possible misfortune, on a temperament which is already attacked by obstructions and weakness in the abdomen, and then come and tell me that my father isn’t shortening my life!
Were it not for my studies, or rather the love of glory that has taken root in my breast in spite of him, I should have blown out my brains five or six times.
Stendhal
1824
I have been reading about an English judge who desired to live to a great age and accordingly proceeded to question every old man he met about his diet and the kind of life he led – whether his longevity had any connexion with food, alcoholic liquor, and so forth. It appears that the only thing they had in common was early rising and, above all, not dozing off once they were awake. Most important.
Eugène Delacroix
1940 [Amsterdam]
Ed [Murrow] and I are here for a few days to discuss our European coverage, or at least that’s our excuse. Actually, intoxicated by the lights at night and the fine food and the change of atmosphere, we have been cutting up like a couple of youngsters suddenly escaped from a stern old aunt or a reform school. Last night in sheer joy, as we were coming home from an enormous dinner with a fresh snow drifting down like confetti, we stopped under a bright street-light and fought a mighty snow-ball battle. I lost my glasses and my hat and we limped back to the hotel exhausted but happy. This morning we have been ice-skating with Mary Marvin Breckinridge, who has forsaken the soft and dull life of American society to represent us here. The Dutch still lead the good life. The food they consume as to both quantity and quality (oysters, fowl, meats, vegetables, oranges, bananas, coffee – the things the warring peoples never see) is fantastic. They dine and dance and go to church and skate on canals and tend their business. And they are blind – oh, so blind – to the dangers that confront them. Ed and I have tried to do a little missionary work, but to no avail, I fear. The Dutch, like everyone else, want it both ways. They want peace and the comfortable life. But they won’t make the sacrifices or even the hard decisions which might ensure their way of life in the long run. The Queen, they say, stubbornly refuses to allow staff talks with the Allies or even with the Belgians. In the meantime, as I could observe when I crossed the border, the Germans pile up their forces and supplies on the Dutch frontier.
William L. Shirer
1977
I worked until 2, then up at 6.30 to go off to begin my tour of European capitals as President of the Council of Energy Ministers.
I took my own mug and lots of tea bags. When we arrived in Paris we were met by the Ambassador, Nico Henderson, a tall, grey-haired, scruffy man, almost a caricature of an English public schoolboy who got to the top of the Foreign Office. I don’t think I had ever met him before; he was rather superior and swooped me up in his Rolls Royce.
The end of a day of negotiations, and I enjoyed it very much. In a way it’s very relaxing not to be a British Minister, just a European one.
But I must admit that the standard of living of, for example, the Ambassador – a Rolls Royce, luxurious house, marvellous furniture, silver plate at dinner – is indefensible. Ours is a sort of corporate society with a democratic safety valve. What a long time it will take to put it right. And how do you get measured steps in advance? Undoubtedly openness is one, and negotiations and discussions with the trade unions is another. Nobody should have power unless they are elected.
Tony Benn
19 January
1938 [Senegal]
Night of anguish. Went to bed early, very sleepy; but stifling. Stomach churning; never again take that frightful soft and sticky meat which is called ‘fish’ in this country.
At midnight I decide to have recourse to Dial. Badly closed tubes, which open and scatter the lozenges in my valise. In the bathroom, where I go to get some distilled water (but a mistake was made; the bottle contains syrup), I surprise cockroaches in the act of copulating. I thought they were wingless; but some (probably the males), without taking flight, unfold enormous trembling wings. When I am ready to go back to bed, I notice rising above the top of the wardrobe opposite my bed the erect head of a python, which soon becomes but an iron rod.
Got up at dawn. The main road, which passes our veranda, becomes active: a whole nation is going to market. Very ‘road to India.’
André Gide
1959 [Paris]
The evening finished with a blonde lady (French) pounding the piano and everyone getting a trifle ‘high’. Princess Sixte de Bourbon was definitely shocked when the Duke [of Windsor] and I danced a sailor’s hornpipe and the Charleston, but there was no harm in it, perhaps a little sadness and nostalgia for him and for me a curious feeling of detached amusement, remembering how beastly he had been to me and about me in our earlier years when he was Prince of Wales and I was beginning. Had he danced the Charleston and hornpipe with me then it would have been an accolade to cherish. As it was, it looked only faintly ridiculous to see us skipping about with a will. The Princess needn’t have been shocked, it was merely pleasantly ridiculous.
Noël Coward
1976
This morning there arrived by post from Switzerland a Xerox sent by Ali Forbes of a letter written to him by Stephen Spender, abusing me. In it Stephen says he has always loathed the sight of me, and disliked my very appearance, which is that of a sinister undertaker who with his spade thrusts moribund, not yet dead corpses into the grave. That he sees my soul as a brown fungus upon a coffin, etc. That he has never spoken more than a dozen sentences to me in his life. Now this is pretty mischievous of Ali Forbes, I consider. I am affected by Spender’s letter. No, not gravely, because I do not like him and know that what he writes is pretentious tripe, yet affected by the knowledge that there is someone alive who can write such disagreeable things about me.
James Lees-Milne
1995
We fly to West Cork where Liam (Neeson) is waiting and go to meet the Collins family. Welcomed at the home of Liam Collins, Michael’s nephew, and his wife, with old-fashioned rural courtesy. Visit the old farmhouse at Woodfield which has been landscaped quite beautifully into a fitting monument. No museums or interpretative centres here. Just a preserved old burnt-out farmhouse, with a lovely oak tree in the garden and a plaque or two. One gets the impression of quite severe intelligence here, and of a reticence that has accumulated over the years – a necessary reticence given that neighbours and families would have been divided by the events of the Civil War.
We go to the Four-Alls pub and hear stories of the various directors and actors who passed through here, researching the same film. Michael Cimino, Kevin Costner, even, apparently, John Huston. Kevin Costner we are told turned down the offer of a pint of Guinness for a cup of tea. Liam immediately orders four more pints. Then four more and more again until I’m almost footless.
Neil Jordan
20 January
1917 [Panshanger in Hertfordshire, home of Lord Desborough]
Instead of going to church, a party conducted by Lord Desborough went over to see the German prisoners. There are about a hundred of them in the park and they work in the woods. I was not allowed to talk German to them. The specimens I saw were of the meek-and-mild type, not at all ‘blond beasts’. They had rather ignominious identification marks in the form of a blue disc patched somewhere on to their backs: it looked as though its purpose was to afford a bull’s eye to the marksman if they attempted to escape.
Lady Cynthia Asquith
1936
Eventually we get to Tain and go to the little inn where we are received by a man in a kilt and given a dram. We walk across to the Town Hall, where there are the Provost, two ex-Provosts, and the local dominie. A good platform. The hall is amazingly full for such a night. The gallery is packed. The Provost makes a speech, and then I talk for 45 minutes. It goes very well indeed. Then we take the old boys round to the inn and have more drams. And then off we go into the night. Twenty-five miles to Dingwall skidding and slithering. The sound of water in the mist. Then the lighted hotel and the journalists in the lounge and warmth and sandwiches.
‘How is the King?’ is our first question. ‘The 11.45 bulletin was bad. It said that His Majesty’s life was moving peacefully to its close.’ How strange! That little hotel at Dingwall, the journalists, the heated room, beer, whisky, tobacco, and the snow whirling over the Highlands outside. And the passing of an epoch. I think back to that evening twenty-six years ago when I was having supper at the Carlton and the waiter came and turned out the lights: ‘The King is dead.’
Harold Nicolson
1941 [Dresden]
A couple of weeks ago at the Jewish tea downstairs with the Katzes and Kreidles, Leipziger, an elderly medical officer and insurance doctor, garrulously and somewhat boastfully and conceitedly monopolized the conversation; recently Frau Voss comes back enchanted from one of her bridge parties: The medical officer had read so interestingly from a book about the doctor, it is his own life. So now all the Jews who have been thrown out are writing their autobiography, and I am one of twenty thousand . . . And yet: The book will be good, and it helps me pass the time. But then the old doubt also revived again, whether it would not have been better for me to learn English. Now on the one hand the new reduction in our money is in the offing, on the other the block on American visas has been lifted and it will soon be the turn of our quota number, and Sussmann . . . has passed on my documents by airmail to Georg. Wait and see . . .
It continues to be cold with snow (without interruption since December), apartment difficult to heat, bad chilblains on my chapped and swollen hands.
Victor Klemperer
1995
Travel back to Dublin. Do the Late, Late Show with Gay Byrne. For those who don’t know, this is the Irish equivalent of Dave Letterman and Jay Leno rolled into one. And it has been running since they have had television in Ireland. I’ve avoided it for years, because it is the one thing that makes your face known here. As it is, I’m generally confused with Jim Sheridan and complimented for My Left Foot, which is fine by me. Actors and rock stars deserve that recognition since they’re paid so much. Writers and directors are paid to be anonymous. And halfway through the show I realise that anonymity here for me is gone for ever. The interest in this Collins film is turning it into a national institution. My problem now is how to make a film that won’t feel like a national institution.
Neil Jordan
21 January
1664
Up, and after sending my wife to my aunt Wight’s to get a place to see Turner hanged, I to the office, where we sat all the morning. And at noon going to the ‘Change, and seeing people flock in the City, I enquired and found that Turner was not yet hanged. And so I went among them to Leadenhall Street, and to St. Mary Axe, where he lived, and there I got for a shilling to stand upon the wheel of a cart, in great pain, above an houre before the execution was done; he delaying the time by long discourses and prayers one after another, in hopes of a reprieve; but none came, and at last was flung off the ladder in his cloake. A comely-looked man he was, and kept his countenance to the end: I was sorry to see him. It was believed there were at least 12 or 14,000 people in the street.
Samuel Pepys
1854
Here is a fact which needs to be remembered more often. Thackeray spent thirty years preparing to write his first novel, but Alexandre Dumas writes two a week.
Leo Tolstoy
1858 [New Orleans]
I am astonished more and more at the stupid extravagance of the women. Mrs H. (who gains her living by keeping a boarding house) has spent, she says, at least £60 on hair dyes in the last ten years. All the ladies, even little girls, wear white powder on their faces and many rouge. All wear silk dresses in the street and my carmelite [woollen material] and grey linen dresses are so singular here that many ladies would refuse to walk with me. Fashion rules so absolutely that to wear a hat requires great courage. Leather boots for ladies are considered monstrous. I never saw such utter astonishment as is depicted on the faces of the populace when I return from a sketching excursion. I do not like to come back alone so the Dr [her husband] always comes for me.
The people in the house would lend me any amount of flower garden bonnets if I would but go out in them. This is so like the Americans – they are generous and kind but will not let you go your own way in the world. My little plain bonnet and plaid ribbon is despised, all my wardrobe considered shabby and triste. I never saw people dress so much, and I must confess, too, with a certain taste which is caught from the French.
Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon
1915
A stormy day. We walked back this morning. J. [John Middleton Murry; they married in 1918] told me a dream. We quarrelled all the way home more or less. It has rained and snowed and hailed and the wind blows. The dog at the inn howls. A man far away is playing the bugle. I have read and sewed today, but not written a word. I want to to-night. It is so funny to sit quietly sewing, while my heart is never for a moment still. I am dreadfully tired in head and body. This sad place is killing me. I live upon old made-up dreams; but they do not deceive either of us.
Later I am in the sitting-room downstairs. The wind howls outside, but here it is so warm and pleasant. It looks like a real room where real people have lived. My sewing-basket is on the table: under the bookcase are poked J.’s old house shoes. The black chair, half in shadow, looks as if a happy person had sprawled there. We had roast mutton and onion sauce and baked rice for dinner. It sounds right. I have run the ribbons through my underclothes with a hairpin in the good home way. But my anxious heart is eating up my body, eating up my nerves, eating up my brain, now slowly, now at a tremendous speed. I feel this poison slowly filling my veins – every particle becoming slowly tainted. Yes, love like this is a malady, a fever, a storm. It is almost like hate, one is so hot with it – and am never, never calm, never for an instant. I remember years ago saying I wished I were one of those happy people who can suffer so far and then collapse or become exhausted. But I am just the opposite. The more I suffer, the more of fiery energy I feel to bear it. Darling! Darling!
Katherine Mansfield
1918
[On Sunday] Lytton [Strachey] came to tea; stayed to dinner, and about 10 o’clock we both had that feeling of parched lips and used up vivacity which comes from hours of talk. But Lytton was most easy and agreeable. Among other things he gave us an amazing account of the British Sex Society which meets at Hampstead. They were surprisingly frank; and fifty people of both sexes and various ages discussed without shame such questions as the deformity of Dean Swift’s penis; whether cats use the w.c., self abuse; incest – incest between parent and child when they are both unconscious of it, was their main theme, derived from Freud. I think of becoming a member. Lytton at different points exclaimed Penis: his contribution to the openness of the debate. We also discussed the future of the world; how we should like professions to exist no longer; Keats, old age, politics, Bloomsbury hypnotism – a great many subjects.
Virginia Woolf
1936
The King is dead – Long live the King. The eyes of the world are on the Prince of Wales, the new King Edward VIII. This morning everyone is in mourning, and the park is full of black crows. I went to the House of Commons at 6, which had been summoned by gun-fire – and unofficially, by radio. About 400 MPs out of 615 turned up, then the Speaker came in, and took his oath to Edward VIII, and we followed; the Prime Minister first . . . it took hours and I sat in the smoking room with A. P. Herbert and Duff Cooper waiting my turn. We talked of Royalty. Today is the anniversary of Lenin’s death; tomorrow that of Louis XVI and Queen Victoria . . . Duff had just come on from St James’s Palace where he attended the Privy Council to announce the accession of the King, and there they witnessed the King’s Oath. 60 or 70 patriarchs, and grandees, in levee dress or uniform, presided over by Ramsay MacDonald as Lord President of the Council. They make an impressive picture, it seems, not unfunny and reminiscent of charades in a country-house; then they processed into yet another Long Gallery where they were received by the Princes . . . a few moments later the new King was sent for, and he entered . . . solemn, grave, sad and dignified in Admiral’s uniform. Everyone was most impressed by his seeming youth and by his dignity. Much bowing, and he in turn swore his Oath. When he left some of the Councillors were overcome by their emotions . . . all this from Duff.
‘Chips’ Channon
1979
Had my first pipe for about five or six days. Somehow the pressure of not smoking made me think of nothing but my pipe.
Tony Benn
22 January
1826
I feel neither dishonourd nor broken down by the bad – miserably bad news I have received. I have walked my last on the domains I have planted, sate the last time in the halls I have built. But death would have taken them from me if misfortune had spared them. My poor people whom I loved so well!! There is just another dye to turn up against me in this run of ill luck – i.e. If I should break my magic wand in a fall from this elephant and lose my popularity with my fortune. Then Woodstock and Boney may both go to the papermaker and I may take to smoking cigars and drinking grog or turn devotee and intoxicate the brain another way. In prospect of absolute ruin I wonder if they would let me leave the Court of Session. I should like methinks to go abroad
And lay my banes far from the Tweed.
But I find my eyes moistening and that will not do. I will not yield without a fight for it. It is odd, when I set myself to work doggedly as Dr Johnson would say, I am exactly the same man that I ever was – neither low spirited nor distrait. In prosperous times I have sometimes felt my fancy and powers of language flat – but adversity is to me at least a tonic and bracer – the fountain is awakend from its inmost recesses as if the spirit of afliction had troubled it in his passage.
Poor Mr Pole the harper sent to offer me £500 or £600, probably his all. There is much good in the world after all. But I will involve no friend either rich or poor – My own right hand shall do it – Else will I be done in the slang language and undone in common parlance.
I am glad that beyond my own family, who are excepting L.[ady] S.[cott] young and able to bear sorrow of which this is the first taste to some of them, most of the hearts are past aching which would have been inconsolable on this occasion. I do not mean that many will not seriously regret and some perhaps lament my misfortunes. But my dear mother, my almost sister Christy R[utherfor]d, – poor Will: Erskine – these would have been mourners indeed–
Well – exertion – exertion – O Invention rouze thyself. May man be kind – may God be propitious. The worst is I never quite know when I am right or wrong and Ballantyne, who does know in some degree will fear to tell me. Lockhart would be worth gold just now but he too would be too diffident to speak broad out. All my hope is in the continued indulgence of the public.
I have a funeral letter to the burial of the Chevalier Yelin, a foreigner of learning and talent, who has died at the Royal Hotel. He wishd to be introduced to me and was to have read a paper before the Royal Society when this introduction was to have taken place. I was not at the society that evening and the poor gentleman was taken ill in the meeting and unable to proceed. He went to his bed and never arose again – and now his funeral will be the first public place that I shall appear at – he dead and I ruind. This is what you call a meeting.
Sir Walter Scott
1848
Lady Beavale told me some anecdotes of the Royal children, which may one day have an interest when time has tested and developed their characters. The Princess Royal is very clever, strong in body and in mind; the Prince of Wales weaker and more timid, and the Queen says he is a stupid boy; but the hereditary and unfailing antipathy of our Sovereigns to their Heirs Apparent seems this early to be taking root, and the Queen does not much like the child. He seems to have an incipient propensity to that sort of romancing which distinguished his uncle, George IV. The child told Lady Beavale that during their cruise he was very nearly thrown overboard, and was proceeding to tell her how when the Queen overheard him, sent him off with a flea in his ear, and told her it was totally untrue.
Charles Greville
1864
Last night and tonight I have observed for the first time the noise of the new Charing Cross Railway. Even as I write the dull wearing hum of trains upon the Surrey side is going on: it goes on far into the night, with every now & then the bitter shriek of some accursed engine.
I almost welcome the loss, which I had been groaning over, of my view of the Thames; hoping that the new building when it rises may keep out these sounds. No one who has not tasted the pure & exquisite silence of the Temple at night can conceive the horror of the thought that it is gone for ever. Here at least was a respite from the roar of the streets by day: but now, silence and peace are fast going out of the world. It is not merely the torture of this new noise in a quiet place: but one knows that these are only the beginnings of such sorrows.
Our children will not know what it is to be free from sound of railways.
Arthur F. Munby
1935
Snow fell on roses today in New Orleans. These southern people couldn’t have been more excited by the outbreak of another War between the States.
About 5 a.m. I walked downstairs and met a night watchman on a corner behind St. Louis Cathedral. In the glow of an antique street lamp he held the palm of his hand toward the white sky. A few flakes melted on his skin.
‘Lookit that!’ he exulted. ‘Lookit that!’ Pointing at himself, he said, ‘Had a top-coat on when I began duty last night, but – gosh! I sure had to change into this overcoat, even if it does have moth holes in it!’
This is the first snowfall in New Orleans since 1899, according to oldtimers. While they aren’t all exactly sure of the date, they agree it has been ‘some little spell’ since the last time.
When I walked into the press room at the criminal court building, a reporter yelled: ‘Eddie! Is this snow?’
‘Why, sure.’
‘Well,’ he said slowly, ‘I wasn’t sure whether it was snow or ice.’
We got in his car to drive out to get a story and this southern boy exclaimed at almost every snowflake. Excitedly he pointed at what he called snowdrifts – none more than half an inch deep. When we returned he jumped out of his car, scooped up what little snow he could and sprinkled it on his hat and shoulders. Then he yelled to a telephone operator in the building and she threw on a coat and joined us outdoors. She shouted in amazement. We put her under a palm tree, then hammered at the trunk to shake some snow off the fronds and onto her. Proud as a queen in ermine, she ran back inside to show her white collar to her friends.
Later in the day a man on a streetcar told me: ‘I got my wife and daughter out of bed and we all hurried into the yard. My little girl made a snowball and threw it at her mother. My wife said: “That’s the first time I’ve ever been hit by a snowball!”’
Instead of working today, these people who never before had seen snow frolicked outdoors or hung around doors and windows to gawk at something they called a miracle. A burly Negro grinned and said: ‘Man! Tom an’ Jerry sho catch hell today!’ Eleven precincts reported snow. The twelfth precinct reported egg nogs.
Edward Robb Ellis
23 January
1662
By invitacon to my uncle Fenner’s, where I found his new wife, a pitiful, old, ugly, ill-bred woman in a hatt, a midwife. Here were many of his, and as many of her relations, sorry, mean people; and after choosing our gloves, we all went over to the Three Crane Tavern, and though the best room in the house, in such a narrow dogg-hole we were crammed, and I believe we were near forty, that it made me loathe my company and victuals; and a sorry poor dinner it was too.
Samuel Pepys
1920
This day, the anniversary of the death of Louis XVI, brings back memories of my childhood in that corner of Brittany where all the old, right-minded families indicated their respectful mourning by keeping their shutters closed all day, going to mass dressed in black and doing penance to compensate for France’s criminal gesture. My mother, my old aunts and their friends set the example. My youth and cheerfulness were put to a hard test. Faces had to be long. Only the humble folk were allowed the privilege of passing this day comfortably, but they were regarded with an indulgent and disdainful pity.
Liane de Pougy
1927
Vita [Sackville-West] took me over the 4 acres building, which she loves: too little conscious beauty for my taste: smallish rooms looking on to buildings: no views: yet one or two things remain: Vita stalking in her Turkish dress, attended by small boys, down the gallery, wafting them on like some tall sailing ship – a sort of covey of noble English life: dogs walloping, children crowding, all very free and stately: & [a] cart bringing wood in to be sawn by the great circular saw. How do you see that? I asked Vita. She said she saw it as something that had gone on for hundreds of years. They had brought wood in from the Park to replenish the great fires like this for centuries: & her ancestresses had walked so on the snow with their great dogs bounding beside them. All the centuries seemed lit up, the past expressive, articulate; not dumb & forgotten; but a crowd of people stood behind, not dead at all; not remarkable; fair face, long limbed, affable, & so we reach the days of Elizabeth quite easily. After tea, looking for letters of Dryden’s to show me, she tumbled out a love letter of Lord Dorset’s (17th century) with a lock of his soft gold tinted hair which I held in my hand a moment. One had a sense of links fished up into the light which are usually submerged.
Virginia Woolf
1936
[Stanley] Baldwin spoke for 20 minutes about the late King. It is the sort of thing he does very well, and every word perfectly chosen, and perfectly balanced. He had a trying day as he was pall-bearer in the morning at the funeral of his first cousin Rudyard Kipling. Mr Baldwin’s speech was ‘The Question was–’ that messages of condolence be sent to the King, and to Queen Mary. He was followed by Major Attlee for the Socialists. We on our side thought he would jar, and do badly, but on the contrary he was excellent . . . he, too, held the House. At 3.40 the Speaker left the Chair, preceded by the Serjeant-at-Arms and Mace, etc., and we followed in pairs. Harold Nicolson said ‘Let’s stick together’, and we did. In solemn silent state we progressed into Westminster Hall, lining the East side. Harold and I were at the end of the queue, as befitted ‘new boys’, and thus were nearly on the steps and found ourselves next to the Royal Family; I could have touched the Queen of Spain, fat and smelling slightly of scent, and old Princess Beatrice. Opposite us, were the Peers led by the Lord Chancellor, who, unlike the Speaker, always seems a joke character. In the middle of the Great Hall stood the catafalque draped in purple.
We waited for 10 minutes . . . and I was rather embarrassed as my heavy fur-lined coat has a sable collar, a discordant note among all the black. I had been tempted to come into the hall without one, but that would certainly have meant pneumonia. I was sorry for the aged Princess next to me, shivering in her veil . . . After a little some younger women, heavily-draped, came in, and were escorted to the steps. I recognized the Royal Duchesses. Princess Marina, as ever, managed to look infinitely more elegant than the others; she wore violets under her veil and her stockings, if not flesh-coloured, were of black so thin that they seemed so.
The great door opened . . . the coffin was carried in and placed on the catafalque. It was followed by King Edward, boyish, sad and tired, and the Queen, erect and more magnificent than ever. Behind them were the Royal brothers. There was a short service . . . and all eyes looked first at the coffin, on which lay the Imperial Crown and a wreath from the Queen, and then we turned towards the boyish young King, so young and seemingly frail. Actually he is forty-two, but one can never believe it. After a few moments, the Queen and young King turned, and followed by the Royal Family, they left. The two Houses of Parliament then proceeded in pairs round the catafalque now guarded by four immobile officers and by Gentlemen-at-Arms . . . there was an atmosphere of hushed stillness, of something strangely sacred and awe-inspiring.
This King business is so emotional, it upsets and weakens me, and I am left with the feeling that nothing matters . . . almost an eve-of-war reaction. As we left, we were told that on the way to Westminster hall, the top bit of the Imperial Crown had fallen out during the procession, and had been picked up by a Serjeant-Major.
‘Chips’ Channon
1996
Today there is much fuss about Harriet Harman, of the Shadow Cabinet, sending her 11-year-old son to St Olave’s School in what the media describe as ‘leafy Orpington’. Presumably it is not very leafy at this time of year. Part of the trouble is that the boy has to take an exam and face an interview. Without such things I can’t see how the school would know in what form to place him. Neither do I see why all the emphasis is put on Ms Harman’s decision; presumably her husband should have at least 50 per cent say in the matter, and perhaps Master Joseph may have his views on education.
Alec Guinness
24 January
1684
The frost still continuing more and more severe, the Thames before London was planted with bothes in formal streetes, as in a Citty, or Continual faire, all sorts of Trades and shops furnished, and full of Commodities, even to a Printing presse, where the People and Ladys tooke a fansy to have their names Printed and the day and yeare set downe, when printed on the Thames: This humour tooke so universaly, that ’twas estimated the Printer gained five pound a day, for printing a line onely, at six-pence a Name, besides what he gott by Ballads etc: Coaches now plied from Westminster to the Temple, and from severall other staires too and froo, as in the streetes; also on sleds, sliding with skeetes; There was likewise, Bull-baiting, Horse and Coach races, Pupet-plays and interludes, Cookes and Tipling, and lewder places; so as it seem’d to be a bacchanalia, Triumph or Carnoval on the Water, whilest it was a severe Judgement upon the land: the Trees not only splitting as if lightning-strock, but Men and Cattell perishing in divers places, and the very seas so locked up with yce, that no vessells could stirr out, or come in.
John Evelyn
1856
A journal is a record of experiences and growth, not a preserve of things well done or said. I am occasionally reminded of a statement which I have made in conversation and immediately forgotten, which would read much better than what I put in my journal. It is a ripe, dry fruit of long-past experience which falls from me easily, without giving pain or pleasure. The charm of the journal must consist in a certain greenness, though fresh, and not in maturity. Here I cannot afford to be remembering what I said or did, my scurf cast off, but what I am and aspire to become.
H. D. Thoreau
1938 [Nanking]
We’re all degenerating around here. We’re becoming spineless, losing our respectability. In Indiscreet Letters from Peking, a book about the siege of Peking in 1900, Putnam Wheale reports how he and many other Europeans simply joined in the looting. I don’t think we’re all that far from it ourselves. My houseboy Chang bought an electric table fan worth 38 dollars for $1.20 today, and expects me to be pleased. A couple of genuine Ming vases, costing one dollar each, gaze at me with reproach from my fireplace mantel.
If I felt like it, I could fill the entire house with cheap curios – meaning stolen and then sold for a song on the black market. Only food is expensive these days: A chicken now costs two dollars, the exact same price as those two Ming vases.
John Rabe
1942 [Jersey]
Things are depressing all the time. Almost every night, the Evening Post reports sudden deaths. It is very strange – lack of proper nourishment must be the cause. Then there are lots of ‘foreign’ workmen in the island, brought by the Germans. These are half-starved, and half-clothed, and reported to have strange and dangerous diseases. However, we have all had a ration of a quarter pound of chocolate each this week. It was wonderful – chocolate!
Nan Le Ruez
1953
There are two kinds of men on tubes. Those who blow their noses and then examine the results in a handkerchief, and those who blow their noses without exhibiting any such curiosity, 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 nine she creeps round to her shelter under the Institute for the Blind and goes to sleep on her palliasse. But 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, not seeing me; but after seeing her to be a very pretty lady, I was not troubled at it at all.
Samuel Pepys
1780
We had for dinner a Calf’s Head, boiled Fowl and Tongue, a Saddle of Mutton rosted on the Side Table, and a fine Swan rosted with Currant Jelly Sauce for the first Course. The Second Course a couple of Wild Fowl called Dun Fowls, Larks, Blamange, Tarts, etc., etc. and a good Desert of Fruit after amongst which was a Damson Cheese. I never eat a bit of Swan before, and I think it good eating with a sweet sauce. The swan was killed 3 weeks before it was eat and yet not the lest bad taste in it.
James Woodforde
1829
Burke the Murderer hangd this morning. The mob which was immense demanded Knox and Hare but though greedy for more victims received with shouts the solitary wretch who found his way to the gallows out of five or six who seem not less guilty than He. But the story begins to be stale insomuch that I believe a doggerel ballad upon it would be popular how brutal soever the wit.
Sir Walter Scott
1891
How surprised and shocked I am to hear that Ellie Emmet, whose heart, I had been led to suppose, was seared by sorrow, is contemplating marriage again, – Poor Temple’s devotion, his tragic death, his fatherhood of her six children, all forgotten; not even his memory sacred, for she says she ‘never loved before.’ What ephemeræ we all are; to be sure, experience leaves no permanent furrow, but like writing on sand is washed out by every advancing ripple of changing circumstance.’Twould seem to the inexperienced that one happy ‘go’ at marriage would have given the full measure of connubial bliss, and all the chords of maternity have vibrated under the manipulation of six progeny; but man lives not to assimilate knowledge of the eternal essence of things, and only craves a renewal of sensation.
Alice James
1920
I shall not remember what happened on this day. It is a blank. At the end of my life I may want it, may long to have it. There was a new moon: that I remember. But who came or what I did – all is lost. It’s just a day missed, a day crossing the line.
Katherine Mansfield
1932 [France]
Alarming rumours are going about; country people are getting worried; tradesmen cannot get payment . . .
‘Is it true what they say, that we are going to have war again?’
Three times in the last four days this question has been asked of Em. [his wife], who hastens to reassure as best she can.
‘No country is in a state to make war today,’ she replies.
‘But then why have matches gone up two sous?’
André Gide
1975
Yesterday I had three letters from three friends, so different in every way that it was startling to find the same problem making for depression. One is a young married woman with two small children and a husband who is a company man. She feels shut out by his work, resents his cavalier way of bringing ‘friends’, meaning clients, home without warning, but especially their lack of communication because there is never time. He is also away a lot on business. The second is a friend whose husband retired recently; on his retirement they moved away from the town where they had always lived to be near the ocean. He is at a loose end and she feels caught, angry and depressed without being able to define why. The third is a woman professor, quite young, who lives happily with a woman colleague but speaks of her ‘bone loneliness.’
‘Loneliness’ for me is associated with love relationships. We are lonely when there is not perfect communion. In solitude one can achieve a good relationship with oneself. It struck me forcibly that I could never speak of ‘bone loneliness’ now, though I have certainly experienced it when I was in love. And I feel sure that poignant phrase would have described my mother often.
May Sarton
1978
At Temple Meads Station in Bristol waiting for the late train back to London, I went to the buffet on the platform and bought a sandwich, a Fry’s chocolate bar, some Wrigley’s spearmint gum and an apple. I was about to pay when an old man in a raincoat pushed forward and thrust a pound note at the girl. I thought he was trying to get ahead of me and I was going to say, ‘Excuse me’, but it turned out that he was paying for my food, which came to 54 pence. He turned to me and said, ‘I know you, I know who you are,’ left the money and disappeared. I did not know what to do, but thought it was very touching.
Tony Benn
1986 [New York]
Friends of Alan’s [Parker] invite us to dinner at an Italian restaurant called La Primavera, which they are trying out for the first time. More like La Prima Donnas. Hair in here is a real ‘do’, faces taut, diamonds sharp, toupées fixed and ties sapphire-pinned. New money, old flesh. Child-sized pasta portions clock in at thirty dollars. Talk is all deals and dollars and dumping money here to dough it up there. The artistic endeavour of making movies is relegated to a corner of minor irritation and inconvenience. Yet it seems everyone wants to know the stars. Meanwhile Alan is getting major attention from everyone in the place – maître d’, waiters, other guests, and we cannot work out why. Until the owner ‘compliments’ him with ‘You have lost so much weight Mr Kissinger.’ We were taken aback long enough not to dispel the mistake and settled back for the five-star service, laughing all the way through complimentary dessert and liqueurs. Must be these new glasses.
Richard E. Grant
29 January
1660
Spent the afternoon in casting up my accounts, and do find myself to be worth £40 or more, which I did not think, but am afraid that I have forgot something.
Samuel Pepys
1837
Had a Lady to dinner here today. The Lady’s maid is taken very sick today: I sopose she has been eating too much or something of the kind. But she is very subject to sickness. Last summer, when we were coming home from Canterbury, she actually spewed all the way, a distance of sixty miles and not less time than eight hours. The people stared as we passed through the towns and villages as she couldent stop even then. It amused me very much to see how the country people stood stareing with their mouthes half open and half shut to see her pumping over the side of the carriage and me sitting by, quite unconserned, gnawing a piece of cake or some sandwiches or something or other, as her sickness did not spoil my apatite. It was very bad for her but I couldent do her any good as it was the motion of the carriage that caused her illness. I gave her something to drink every time we changed horses but no sooner than it was down it came up again, and so the road from Canterbury to London was pretty well perfumed with Brandy, Rum, Shrub, wine and such stuff. She very soon recovered after she got home and was all the better for it after. It’s eleven o’clock. My fire is out and I am off to bed.
William Tayler
1860
Saw Barriere who told us this striking anecdote. On the Place de Grève he had seen a condemned man whose hair had visibly stood on end when he had been turned to face the scaffold. Yet this was the man who, when Dr. Pariset had asked him what he wanted before he died, had answered: ‘A leg of mutton and a woman.’
The Brothers Goncourt
1950
A lovely, remote time at Murphys’. They spoke of Elsa Maxwell and how she raised money for Russian Ambulance in World War 1, absconded with money, then returned to social success after three years. How a friend, Lily Havemeyer, had a caller who brought Miss Maxwell to lunch. Elsa looked over the place – marvelous for party – said to Lily (first meeting) ‘You go shopping for the day and leave me your servants, your house and carte blanche and at night you will find yourself with a party all Paris will talk about.’ ‘No’ was all Lily said.
Dawn Powell
1969
At Lindy Dufferin’s party for Duncan Grant I’d chatted to David Hockney and suggested what a marvellous subject Fred Ashton would make for him. At the time Fred was perching on the arms of a sofa with his fingers exquisitely arranged – the only word for it – around a cigarette. From afar en profile he looked like some exotic parakeet. David was clearly excited by the possibility. At the time he was drawing W. H. Auden so I thought that I ought to go and look.
Number 17 Powis Terrace is one of those late-Victorian stucco terraces in Notting Hill Gate with a vast columned portico and every sign that gentility had long since fled. The houses were now tatty tenements and I climbed up what can only be described as a squalid staircase-well to be met by David. Original is the only word one could ever apply to him with his bleached blond hair and owl spectacles. But I couldn’t help loving him and admiring his quick logic and unique perception. He’s rather large and square, getting fat in fact, and somehow terribly conscious of it. The whole time I was there he kept on feeling beneath his shirt as though checking up on the expansion of the wodges. We sat down in his kitchen together with his slim blond American boy-friend Peter Schlesinger, and lunched off consommé, toast and pâté washed down with red wine. After it we went into the studio.
I don’t think that I’d ever before encountered anyone so overtly homosexual. Against one wall rested two blown-up photographs of Peter, one in bikini underpants, the other in jeans with his flies left undone. All over the floor were scattered magazines with male nudes. David picked one up and complained how it had been seized by the Customs and then returned. On its cover was stamped ‘Nudes – semi-erect’. He works from photographs but not when he draws people. He showed me some of Angus Wilson, one of which was very good although he didn’t think so. He agreed to draw Fred Ashton for me, although I warned him about the Trustees [of the National Portrait Gallery]. The phone rang. It was a Spanish waiter who wanted to come round and strip for him to draw. The time had come to leave.
Roy Strong
30 January
1649
The Villanie of the Rebells proceeding now so far as to Trie, Condemne, and Murder our excellent King [Charles I], the 30 of this Moneth, struck me with such horror that I keep the day of his Martyrdom a fast, and would not be present, at that execrable wickednesse; receiving that sad [account] of it from my Bro: Geo: and also by Mr Owen, who came to Visit this afternoone, recounting to me all the Circumstances.
John Evelyn
1871
In a newspaper giving the news of the capitulation, I read the news of King William’s enthronement as Emperor of Germany at Versailles, in the Hall of Mirrors, under the nose of the stone Louis XIV in the courtyard outside. That really marks the end of the greatness of France.
The Brothers Goncourt
1915
Preparations for my departure are well under way. I am breathlessly impatient to be off, but there is much to be done and the [Red Cross] Unit itself is not yet fully organised. My nurse’s dresses, aprons and veils have been made already, and I have bought a flannel-lined, black leather jacket. An accessory to this jacket is a thick sheepskin waistcoat, for winter wear, whose Russian name, dushegreychka, means ‘soul-warmer’. I hear that our unit will be stationed for a time on the Russo-Austrian Front in the Carpathian Mountains and that we will have to ride horseback, as direct communication can be established there only by riding; so high boots and black leather breeches have been added to my wardrobe. At the moment of my departure, Anna Ivanovna, my Russian ‘mother’, bade me kneel before her. Taking from her pocket a little chain, she fastened it round my neck. Then she blessed me, kissed me three times, ‘In the name of the Father, of the Son and of the Holy Spirit’, and wished me ‘God speed’. I, too, was a soldier, going to war, for thus did all Russian mothers to their soldier sons. The little chain, with a small icon and cross attached to it, has already been blessed by a priest.
Florence Farmborough
1921
J. accused me of always bagging his books as soon as he had begun to read them. I said: ‘It’s like fishing. I see you’ve got a bite. I want your line. I want to pull it in.’
Katherine Mansfield
1938
I have advised the Duce not to let Biseo [Italian airman] continue his flight to Argentina, where some kind of hostile demonstration against our airmen was being prepared. There is really no point in exposing equipment and men to the not inconsiderable wear and tear of a three thousand kilometres’ flight, in order to give the rabble of a second-class country like Argentina a chance to insult us. The Duce agrees – they will not go. Of all the countries in which I have lived Argentina is certainly the one I loved least – indeed I felt a profound contempt for it. A people without a soul and a land without colour – both failed to exercise any kind of charm on me. For several decades, when all sorts of human wrecks were making their way to South America, the worst of all used to stop at the first place they came to. That was the beginning of Buenos Aires, a city as monotonous and turbid as the river on whose banks it lies. In recent years there has been added to this unpleasant mixture a very plentiful Jewish element. I don’t believe that can have improved things.
Count Ciano
1943
The first refugee children have arrived. They were due yesterday evening at seven – after a twelve hours’ journey from Genoa – but it was not until nine p.m. that at last the car drew up and seven very small sleepy bundles were lifted out. The eldest is six, the others four and five – all girls except one, a solemn little Sardinian called Dante Porcu. We carry them down into the play-room of the nursery-school (where the stove is burning, and supper waiting) and they stand blinking in the bright light, like small bewildered owls. White, pasty faces – several with boils and sores – and thin little sticks of arms and legs.
The Genoese district nurse who has brought them tells me that they have been chosen from families whose houses have been totally destroyed, and who, for the last two months, have been living in an underground tunnel beneath the city, without light or sufficient water, and in bitter cold. Their fathers are mostly dock-labourers; two of them have been killed.
The children eat their warm soup, still too bewildered fully to realize where they are – and then, as they gradually thaw and wake up, the first wail goes up – ‘Mamma, Mamma, I want my Mamma!’ We hastily produce the toys which we have prepared for just that moment; the little girls clutch their dolls, Dante winds up his motor, and for a few minutes tears are averted. Then we take them upstairs and tuck them up in their warm beds. Homesickness sets in again – and two of them, poor babies, cry themselves to sleep.
Iris Origo
1948
Gandhi has been assassinated. In my humble opinion, a bloody good thing but far too late.
Noël Coward
1969 [on the Monte Anaga, sailing to Las Palmas]
We were up to the sweet at lunch when the ship shuddered with an impact and the captain rushed from his table in the dining room and shot up to the bridge. A lot of passengers went running up to the deck, and practically emptied the room. I stayed for the coffee. Later it transpired that we’d hit a fishing boat amidships, cutting it in half & sinking it. We lowered a lifeboat and circled for survivors, and picked up four. There was one dead, and a further four missing. Another fishing boat hove to, and the crew shouted obscenities at our ship. Now, with the survivors on board, we have turned round and are making for Corunna, which is where the fishermen hail from. Obviously this will wreak havoc with our holiday plans. This fellow Bill on board organised a fund for the survivors of the disaster with the help of a priest and between 65 passengers we raised a measly 23 pounds which was quite shame-making. The radio officer said that you couldn’t see the bows of the ship because we were sailing into the sun and it was blinding.
Kenneth Williams
1973
We were bidden to a dinner with Olive and Denis Hamilton given in honour of Harold Macmillan and turned out to be the only other guests and I’m still left wondering why they alighted upon us. ... I suppose it was important and fascinating to meet the former Prime Minister, but I think that I would have to place him as one of the rudest men that I have ever met. He looks exactly like his own cartoons. Now about eighty, I would have thought, he’s a bit geriatric with a runny nose, and his speech is a stream of consciousness interspersed with occasional lucid flashes. He was a pattern of memories, all of them political, and the Hamiltons kept on feeding him with memory questions. I was swatted down regularly if I ever attempted to open my mouth, never allowed to contribute one thing to the conversation, and if I even began a sentence he interrupted it. For most of the evening Julia and I sat in bored amazement. The only remarks tossed my way took the form of periodic incoherent denunciations of the Gallery’s purchase of the Hill-Adamson albums: ‘What do you want them for? Got drawer-loads of old photographs at home.’ He really wasn’t human and there was not a single comment he made which wasn’t about himself. He was a caricature arch-reactionary, enough to make me want to vote Communist.
Roy Strong
1975
The sixties are marvelous years, because one has become fully oneself by then, but the erosions of old age, erosion of strength, of memory, of physical well-being have not yet begun to frustrate and needle. I am too heavy, but I refuse to worry too much about it. I battle the ethos here in the USA, where concern about being overweight has become a fetish. I sometimes think we are as cruel to old brother ass, the body, as the Chinese used to be who forced women’s feet into tiny shoes as a sign of breeding and beauty. ‘Middle-aged spread’ is a very real phenomenon, and why pretend that it is not? I am not so interested in being a dazzling model as in being comfortable inside myself. And that I am.
May Sarton
31 January
1932
There is a dead and drowned mouse in the lily-pond. I feel like that mouse – static, obese and decaying. Vita [Sackville-West, his wife] is calm, comforting and considerate. And yet (for have I not been reading a batch of insulting press-cuttings?) life is a drab and dreary thing. I have missed it. I have made a fool of myself in every respect.
Surely there was a time I might have trod
The sunlit heights, and from life’s dissonance
Struck one clear chord to reach the ears of God?
Very glum. Discuss finance. Vita keeps on saying that we have got enough to go on with. But when one goes into it, that represents only two months. I must get a job. Yet all the jobs which pay humiliate. And the decent jobs do not pay. Come back to Long Barn. Arrange my books sadly. Weigh myself sadly. Have put on eight pounds. Feel ashamed of myself, my attainments, and my character. Am I a serious person at all? Vita thinks I should make £2,000 by writing a novel. I don’t. The discrepancy between these two theories causes me some distress of mind.
Harold Nicolson
1938
As was to be expected, criticism of the parade step [the ‘Roman step’, similar to the German goose-step] has started up. The old soldiers are particularly against it, because they choose to regard it as a Prussian invention. The Duce is very angry – he has read me the speech he is going to make to-morrow, explaining and extolling the innovation. It seems that the King too has expressed himself unfavourably. The Duce’s comment was: ‘It is not my fault if the King is half size. Naturally he won’t be able to do the parade step without making himself ridiculous. He will hate it for the same reason that he has always hated horses – he has to use a ladder to climb on to one. But a physical defect in a sovereign is not a good reason for stunting, as he has done, the army of a great nation. People say the goose-step is Prussian. Nonsense. The goose is a Roman animal – it saved the Capital. Its place is with the eagle and the she-wolf.’
Count Ciano
1947
What makes daily life so agreeable in America is the good humour and friendliness of Americans. Of course, this quality has its reverse side. I’m irritated by those imperious invitations to ‘take life easy’, repeated in words and images throughout the day. On advertisements for Quaker Oats, Coca-Cola, and Lucky Strike, what displays of white teeth – the smile seems like lockjaw. The constipated girl smiles a loving smile at the lemon juice that relieves her intestines. In the subway, in the streets, on magazine pages, these smiles pursue me like obsessions. I read on a sign in a drugstore, ‘Not to grin is a sin.’ Everyone obeys the order, the system. ‘Cheer up! Take it easy.’ Optimism is necessary for the country’s social peace and economic prosperity. If a banker has generously lent fifty dollars without guarantee to some Frenchman in financial straits, if the manager of my hotel takes a slight risk by cashing his customers’ cheques, it’s because this trust is required and implied by an economy based on credit and expenditure.
Simone de Beauvoir
1947 [New York]
I went to the drugstore and asked for Dial [sleeping pill]. I learned later that New York State has lately become alarmed at the suicides and has enforced a strict ban on the sale of barbiturates. The chemist said I must have a doctor’s prescription.
‘I am a foreigner here. I have no American prescription.’
‘We have a doctor on the 17th floor.’
‘I have to go out. I can’t go and see him.’
‘I’ll fix it for you.’
He telephoned the doctor, ‘Dere’s a guy here says he can’t sleep. OK to give him Dial, doc?’ Was given a box of twenty tablets ‘to the prescription of Dr Hart’. ‘$3 medical attention.’ That was the best piece of service I have yet met in the USA.
Evelyn Waugh
1987
Eddie Brown [barber] and Mrs Wilson, manicurist, were amused in the morning when I told them a true story about Enoch Powell. There is a very chatty barber in the Commons who never stops telling MPs whose hair he cuts about politics and what his views are on the world. Enoch Powell went to have his hair cut by him one day, sat down and the barber said, ‘How would you like your hair cut, sir?’ ‘In silence,’ Enoch replied.
Woodrow Wyatt
