Archive for the 'Things I Have Learned' Category

An important anniversary occured while I was away in Flanders, and I am very grateful to Richard Carter, FCD, for drawing it to my attention. He writes:

Sadly, Orwell recorded the abandonment of his egg-count in his diary entry for 13th March, 1940:

…Have now lost accurate count of the eggs & shall have to close the egg-account book, which however gives an accurate account stretching over 7 months, useful for future reference. From the mikman’s account it appears the hens have laid 270 eggs since 29.1.40 (6 weeks about). Yesterday 10. It is now difficult to sell eggs, as there is a glut, so shall put some in water-glass.

Orwell’s egg counting lasted much longer than my own pitiful attempt at a squirrel count, and he was surely correct to note how useful it would be for future reference. I am sure all Hooting Yard readers will share my sense of loss, knowing there are no further egg tallies to pore over.

“When Violet and Denys finally get married, after Vita decides just before the wedding not to go through with the plan for the two women to elope (she had heard from Harold, and ’something snapped in my mind’), the honeymooners and Vita all find themselves in Paris together, and Vita takes Violet away from Denys (’I wanted to say “Don’t you know, you stupid fool, she is mine in every sense of the word?”), then Denys takes her back from Vita (’That night I dined at the Ritz, and from the open window of her room Violet watched me, and Denys sobbed in the room behind her’, and the general conclusion is that ‘That day seems to have made a great impression upon him’ – well, I suppose it would) after which ‘they went away to St Jean de Luz, and I went to Switzerland with Harold’, and then they all go back to England, but soon the girls are off again, to Paris (’I used to sit in cafés drinking coffee, and watching people go by’ – fancy!) and Monte Carlo (’divine’), where ‘a complication arose over Denys announcing his arrival at Cannes’ (by now his blue eyes must have been damned near falling out of his head, never mind starting), and they all form twos again and go back to London, but then Violet goes off to Amiens, where Vita is to join her, for ever this time, only when Vita follows she takes Denys along, which complicates the situation until Denys says he will leave them and never come back (’Denys cried the whole way’), but he does come back, this time travelling with Harold and only a couple of lengths behind Violet’s father, and then Harold actually suggests that Violet may have slept with her own husband (’I thought I should have gone mad when she said that’) so Vita makes a scene and goes off with Harold from Amiens to Paris, and Violet’s father catches the same train, but no sooner do they get to Paris than Violet turns up (maybe she was at the other end of the train), and the two girls go up to Harold’s and Vita’s room, whereupon Harold bursts in with Denys (how many people were on that train, for God’s sake?), and Denys swears that he has never done anything unbecoming with his own wife (’I promise you there has never been anything of that kind between Violet and me’), which mollifies Vita a little, ‘but still it was bad enough that she should have deceived me even to a certain extent’, and then it all gets rather confused, except that at one point Vita goes to Paris, Violet goes to Bordighera and Denys goes to Cornwall (no mention of Harold – perhaps he’s just gone to bed), and among other places visited by the various parties are Avignon, San Remo and Venice – oh, now I remember where Harold was – he says he has been ’spending his time with rather low people, the demi-monde’, and he sums up by saying ‘my heart feels like a pêche melba’, and then Violet fades away and Harold and Vita live happily ever after, apart from Vita’s having an affair with Virginia Woolf, and another one, just to vary things, with Geoffrey Scott, while Harold…

“The long and the short of the matter is that practically everybody in this ludicrous story has a nice comfortable income, apart from the charwoman whom Vita steps across when visiting Violet early one morning, and of whom she says ‘There was a dreary slut scrubbing the doorstep’. When you have plenty of money you can not only afford to rush about between London and Amiens and Paris (where you stay at the Ritz, of course – well, I mean, doesn’t everybody?) and San Remo and Bordighera and Monte Carlo and Avignon and Venice; you can also afford (if you are silly enough to want to) to spend your time striking grotesque poses, keening over your own emotions, and saying things like ‘I had been vouchsafed insight, as one sometimes is’. The ‘dreary slut’ scrubbing the doorstep could no more afford the poses than she could afford the travel, and I would dearly like to read her diary, particularly if it contained a passage about some stupid, snobbish, affected woman who stepped right on to her nice clean doorstep the minute after she had just whitewashed the bleedin’ thing.”

Bernard Levin, reviewing Portrait Of A Marriage by Nigel Nicolson in The Observer, 28 October 1973, collected in Taking Sides (1979).

ADDENDUM : Elsewhere in the collection, Levin writes thus of Yoko Ono’s husband (in 1974): “There is nothing wrong with Mr Lennon that could not be cured by standing him upside down and shaking him gently until whatever is inside his head falls out.”

More at Agence Eureka

Here are two things I learned today, which, taken together, have planted in my brain the idea of writing A Dictionary Of Great Composers. These would be the complete entries for those named, and dozens, nay, hundreds of others would be similarly brief:

Schubert, Franz. Upon his deathbed, his final wish was that someone would bring him some books by James Fenimore Cooper.

Tippett, Michael. He referred to the refrigerator in his kitchen as “Bernard Levin”.

“Snow! Gor had traveled far, but never had he seen a storm like this with white cold in the air. Again a shiver that was part fear rippled through his muscles and gripped with invisible fingers at his knotted arms.

“‘The Beast of the North is angry!’ he told himself.

“Through the dark and storm, animals drifted past before the blasts of cold. They were fleeing; they were full of fear – fear of something that the dull mind of Gor could not picture. But in that mind was the same wordless panic.

“Gor, the man-animal of that pre-glacial day, stared wondering, stupidly, into the storm with eyes like those of the wild pig. His arms were long, almost to his knees; his hair, coarse and matted, hung in greasy locks about his savage face. Behind his low, retreating forehead was place for little of thought or reason. Yet Gor was a man…”

From Two Thousand Miles Below : A Four-Part Novel by Charles Willard Diffin, published in Astounding Stories between June 1932 and January 1933. New research suggests Diffin may have been writing about a fictionalised version of the Grunty Man who is, as we know, older than the Earth itself.

“The first volume in the series, The Boy Scouts of the Eagle Patrol, was necessarily confined to the activities of the young organization; but Rob and his mates met and overcame many difficulties that are well worth reading about.

“In the second volume, The Boy Scouts on the Range, were recounted a series of strange adventures that befell some of the Eagles during a visit to the Far Southwest, where they took part in the wild life of a cattle ranch.

“Through the pages of The Boy Scouts and the Army Airship the reader will find that Rob and his comrades always bore themselves manfully, no matter the emergency; and that they scrupulously observed ’scout law’ under any and every occasion, as every true wearer of the khaki makes it a point to do.

“After this, followed an account of many remarkable happenings that befell the Eagles when under canvas. The Boy Scouts’ Mountain Camp has deservedly been reckoned one of the very best scout books ever published for boys, and those who own a copy are likely to read it many times.

“Once more, chance allowed some of the leading characters in the Hampton Troop to come in touch with Government officers who were experimenting with a wonderfully designed submarine. It happened that Rob and his friends were enabled to assist Uncle Sam’s agents in defeating the plans of foreign spies who tried to steal the design of the new invention. In the pages of The Boy Scouts for Uncle Sam are recorded the adventures that accompanied their service, as well as mention of the reward following their victory.

“It was a happy chance that allowed some of the boys to pay a visit to the then uncompleted Panama Canal. While in the Canal Zone they again demonstrated that they were always wide-awake and devoted to the service of their country. Much useful information will also be found between the covers of this volume, called The Boy Scouts at the Panama Canal.

“Once more, Rob and several of his close adherents were unexpectedly allowed to take a trip. Andy Bowles, the bugler of the troop, had an uncle who owned a cattle ranch down in Chihuahua, in Mexico. He was sick, and unable to go down himself to dispose of the stock before the fighting forces of rebels and Federals drove the herds away. Accordingly, he sent his nephew and several of his chums to seek General Villa, whom he had once befriended, and gain his assistance in selling the valuable stock. The wonderful things they saw, and the peculiar adventures that came their way, have all been described in the seventh volume, just preceding this, under the title of The Boy Scouts Under Fire in Mexico.

“That, telling briefly some of the remarkable things that happened in their career as Boy Scouts, will have to suffice to introduce Rob and his two chums to the reader.”

From The Boy Scouts On Belgian Battlefields by Lieutenant Howard Payson (1915)