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.
