Hugh Gaitskell
1958
Harry Cohn of Columbia Pictures died yesterday. I shall always remember him for having paid $750 for the title of ‘Washington Merry-go-Round’ [the title of one of Pearson’s newspaper columns] in 1931 and made a milliondollar movie out of it. He used to laugh when he saw me in later years. My share was $375. Latterly he has been chiefly famous around Broadway for paying $25,000 to the Negro nightclub singer Davis [Sammy Davis, Jr] not to sleep with Kim Novak. Cohn claimed he discovered her first.
Drew Pearson
1983
Benjamin [Liu] picked me up and we tried to feed the big gingerbread house that little Berkeley Reinhold had given me for Christmas to the pigeons in the park. But they didn’t like gingerbread and they didn’t like candy. And I tried to get rid of some fruitcake, too, and they didn’t like that, either, so I feel like just letting them starve. I mean, what do they want? They do like nuts, though, so maybe I’ll bring them some peanuts sometime. Okay, so then we went downtown. (cab $6).
Andy Warhol
1989
My sense of confusion has come to a head, catalysed by my public announcement of the HIV infection. Now I no longer know where the focus is, for myself, or in the minds of my audience. Reaction to me has changed. There is an element of worship, which worries me. Perhaps I courted it.
Derek Jarman
29 February
1872
At half past four drove in open landau and four with Arthur, Leopold, and Jane C[hurchill], the Equerries riding. We drove round Hyde and Regent’s Parks, returning by Constitution Hill, and when at the Garden Entrance a dreadful thing happened . . . It is difficult for me to describe, as my impression was a great fright, and all was over in a minute. How it all happened I knew nothing of. The Equerries had dismounted, [John] Brown had got down to let down the steps, and Jane C. was just getting out, when suddenly someone appeared at my side, whom I at first imagined was a footman, going to lift off the wrapper. Then I perceived that it was someone unknown, peering above the carriage door, with an uplifted hand and a strange voice, at the same time the boys calling out and moving forward. Involuntarily, in a terrible fright, I threw myself over Jane C., calling out, ‘Save me,’ and heard a scuffle and voices! I soon recovered myself sufficiently to stand up and turn round, when I saw Brown holding a young man tightly, who was struggling. They laid the man on the ground and Brown kept hold of him till several of the police came in. All turned and asked if I was hurt, and I said, ‘Not at all.’ Then Lord Charles [Fitzroy], General Hardinge, and Arthur came up, saying they thought the man had dropped something. We looked, but could find nothing, when Cannon, the postillion, called out, ‘There it is,’ and looking down I then did see shining on the ground a small pistol! This filled us with horror. All were as white as sheets, Jane C. almost crying, and Leopold looked as if he were going to faint.
It is to good Brown and to his wonderful presence of mind that I greatly owe my safety, for he alone saw the boy rush round and followed him! When I was standing in the hall, General Hardinge came in, bringing an extraordinary document which this boy had intended making me sign! It was in connection with the Fenian prisoners!
Queen Victoria
1920
Oh, to be a writer, a real writer given up to it and to it alone! Oh, I failed to-day; I turned back, looked over my shoulder, and immediately it happened, I felt as though I too were struck down. The day turned cold and dark on the instant. It seemed to belong to summer twilight in London, to the clang of the gates as they close the garden, to the deep light painting the high houses, to the smell of leaves and dust, to the lamp-light, to that stirring of the senses, to the langour of twilight, the breath of it on one’s cheek, to all those things which (I feel to-day) are gone from me for ever . . . I feel today that I shall die soon and suddenly: but not of my lungs.
Katherine Mansfield
1928
Very much worn down, these last few days, by an absurd grippe that my petty daily occupations have not given me time to treat as I should have, by two days in bed. Cannot get myself to give up smoking. I had got out of the habit for two months, helped by Marc’s example. Then both of us in Berlin allowed ourselves to be led into it again.
Despite this stultifying cold, I am not much aware of getting older, and have even rarely felt my mind more fit, my whole being more full of aspirations and desires. But I am constantly computing my age and telling myself that the ground may suddenly give way under my feet. I manage to get myself not to feel too melancholy over this.
André Gide
*Coleridge’s ‘Christabel’, pt. 2, 11. 375–6.
*Burns’s ‘Twa Dogs’, slightly adapted.
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