library ‘will be over’. – I feel as if I was in a dream, almost unconscious, so much of me was in you.
* * *
And I thought as I threw the rubbish on the bonfire. ‘So that’s the end of his spectacles. Those spectacles that have been his companions all these years. Burnt in a heap of leaves.’ And those vests the ‘bodily companions’ of his days now are worn by a carter in the fields. In a few years what will be left of him? A few books on some shelves, but the intimate things that I loved, all gone.
And soon even the people who knew his pale thin hands and the texture of his thick shiny hair, and grisly beard, they will be dead and all remembrance of him will vanish. I watched the gap close over others but for Lytton one couldn’t have believed (because one did not believe it was ever possible) that the world would go on the same. [She shot herself on 11 March.]
Dora Carrington
1947 [staying in College accommodation while on a lecture tour]
Upon waking, I wonder just why I’m staying here in this sanatorium. The room is white and fluffy, like the one at Vassar. With nurselike attention, a woman has placed a breakfast platter beside me. Last evening, to spare me any fatigue, they brought my dinner to my room. Without leaving my bed, I drink the orange juice, eat the crusty rolls, and savor the charms of convalescence in the café au lait. Nothing is stranger to me than these restrained pleasures. Amid such attentive care I feel so fragile and precious I almost frighten myself. Perhaps I’ve undertaken a detox cure; no alcohol, no noise, no movies, no music, no fever. I draw an armchair up to the table. I’ve stayed here today to write an article before hurrying back to New York and going north. But I like to nurse the illusion that I’m restrained by force and working to distract myself. There’s nothing more restful on a trip than to imagine you’re in prison.
Simone de Beauvoir
17 February
1763
I dined at the Chaplain’s table upon a roasted Tongue and Udder. N.B. I shall not dine on a roasted Tongue and Udder again very soon.
Rev. James Woodforde
1888
Today a dinner was given in Rodin’s honour by his friends and admirers, a dinner at which I presided, with a draught in my back.
I found myself sitting next to Clemenceau with his round Kalmuck head, and he told me some anecdotes about the peasants in his province and how they would stop him out in the open during his tours of the department to consult him about their illnesses. He described one huge woman who, just as the horses of his brake were about to gallop away from some place or other, leaned on their cruppers and called out: ‘Oh, Monsieur, I suffer from wind something awful!’ To which the Radical deputy, giving his horses a crack of the whip which sent them on their way, replied:‘Then fart, my good woman, fart!’
The Brothers Goncourt
1912
A very terrible day. Evans looked a little better after a good sleep, and declared, as he always did, that he was quite well. He started in his place on the traces, but half an hour later worked his ski shoes adrift, and had to leave the sledge. The surface was awful, the soft recently fallen snow clogging the ski and runners at every step, the sledge groaning, the sky overcast, and the land hazy. We stopped after about one hour, and Evans came up again, but very slowly. Half an hour later he dropped out again on the same plea. He asked Bowers to lend him a piece of string. I cautioned him to come on as quickly as he could and he answered cheerfully as I thought. We had to push on, and the remainder of us were forced to pull very hard, sweating heavily. Abreast the Monument Rock we stopped, and seeing Evans a long way astern, I camped for lunch. There was no alarm at first, and we prepared tea and our own meal, consuming the latter. After lunch, and Evans still not appearing, we looked out, to see him still afar off. By this time we were alarmed, and all four started back on ski. I was first to reach the poor man and shocked at his appearance; he was on his knees with clothing disarranged, hands uncovered and frost-bitten, and a wild look in his eyes. Asked what was the matter, he replied with a slow speech that he didn’t know, but thought he must have fainted. We got him on his feet, but after two or three steps he sank down again. He showed every sign of complete collapse. Wilson, Bowers, and I went back for the sledge, whilst Oates remained with him. When we returned he was practically unconscious, and when we got him into the tent quite comatose. He died quietly at 12.30 a.m. On discussing the symptoms we think he began to get weaker just before we reached the Pole, and that his downward path was accelerated first by the shock of his frost-bitten fingers, and later by falls during rough travelling on the glacier, further by his loss of all confidence in himself. Wilson thinks it certain he must have injured his brain by a fall. It is a terrible thing to lose a companion in this way, but calm reflection shows that there could not have been a better ending to the terrible anxieties of the past week. Discussion of the situation at lunch yesterday shows us what a desperate pass we were in with a sick man on our hands so far from home.
At 1 a.m. we packed up and came down over the pressure ridges, finding our depôt easily.
Captain Robert Falcon Scott
1931
Finished reading The Intimate Journals of Paul Gauguin. Very fresh mind – he at once joins the company of those whom we wish we could have met. Such a distinctive French book makes a Scot feel that he is rather a dog-collared dog. We cannot recall Mary Stuart without seeing the shadow of Knox at her back.
William Soutar
18 February
1814
Is there any thing beyond? – who knows? He that can’t tell. Who tells that there is? He who don’t know. And when shall he know? Perhaps, when he don’t expect it, and, generally when he don’t wish it. In this last respect, however, all are not alike; it depends a good deal upon education, – something upon nerves and habits – but most upon digestion.
Lord Byron
1852
I have a commonplace-book for facts and another for poetry, but I find it difficult always to preserve the vague distinction which I had in my mind, for the most interesting and beautiful facts are so much the more poetry and that is their success. They are translated from earth to heaven. I see that if my facts were sufficiently vital and significant, – perhaps transmuted more into the substance of the human mind, – I should need but one book of poetry to contain them all.
H. D. Thoreau
1867
Mist. Steamer to Yarmouth. Flags flying. The Queen expected from Osborne, coming to take a look at this part of the island. I say to Tennyson, ‘Perhaps the Queen will visit you to-day.’ He thinks it possible.
‘Then I had better go?’
‘No, stay by all means.’
Talking of the Queen, when Tennyson was at Osborne Her Majesty said to him, ‘Cockneys don’t annoy us,’ to which Tennyson rejoined, ‘If I could put a sentry at each of my gates I should be safe.’
‘She was praising my poetry; I said, “Every one writes verses now. I daresay Your Majesty does.”
