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
