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Authors: Diana Mitford (Mosley)
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success came to him, did he become once again the delightful person he was in
The Golden Echo
.
Many of the best Bloomsbury sagas are told. There is the Garsington peacock, named Argus by Aldous Huxley, which got carbuncles and conveniently died in December 1917 and was roasted for Christmas dinner; when the guests were violently sick. Lady Ottoline said it was an appendicitis epidemic. And Lytton Strachey’s evidence when he came before the Tribunal for conscientious objectors, where he was accompanied by his whole family:The Military Representative was inspired with a flight of fancy and asked: ‘What would you do, Mr. Strachey, if you saw an Uhlan attempting to rape your sister?’ Lytton looked at his sisters in turn, as though trying to visualise the scene, and gravely replied in his high voice: ‘I should try to interpose my own body.’
The Flowers of the Forest
, Garnett, D. (1955)
Past Notes from a Spirited Puritan
In her nineties, the last of the Bloomsbury group, Frances Partridge, has produced a delightful book, full of indiscreet gossip, amusing stories and fascinating journeys. There is something for everyone in these diaries, far and away the best she has bestowed upon the public.
Sharply observant, she gives a lyrical description of restored Warsaw and St Petersburg, enjoying every moment despite the bitter cold. Then there is a calm visit to David Garnett in his French cottage with its pastoral setting, walks in woods, hunting for wild flowers, talking about the past.
In Italy she goes on a rather frenzied tour with Dadie Rylands and Raymond Mortimer, visiting cities, palaces, cathedrals and museums, almost too much beauty; Raymond is rather tiresome with his schoolmaster-like comments forced upon his companions. For her journeys abroad she chose her companions well on the whole, not as easy as it sounds. Spain was perhaps her favourite country.
Back in England life was very different. Strikes galore, rubbish in the streets, electric fires sadistically fading during ‘cuts’, torch batteries and candles unobtainable: London in the early 1970s became almost as uncomfortable as it had been in the war.
All Frances Partridge’s friends were ill, some desperately so. She herself is a widow mourning her clever husband as well as their only son, who died in his twenties, yet she flies to comfort her ailing contemporaries. Her greatest friend Julia Strachey, always neurotic , at this time goes completely mad. The account of the descent into hell of the charming , intelligent Julia is frightful and sad as only the truth can be. It is a relief when Julia herself insists upon enmity where once had been deep friendship. Frances was getting to the end of her fund of sympathy when she was forced to abandon the terrible task to others .
There is a close-up view of many a broken marriage, when she is called to help in a situation where there is never much hope. There are also happy marriages, Heywood and Anne Hill for example, and visits to the Hills and Anne’s eccentric brothers for the Aldeburgh Music Festival.
Two snowy Christmases she stayed with the David Cecils, another happy pair. DavidCecil talked himself and everyone else into a stupor, and when Frances retired to her room she heard the Cecil voices rising uninterruptedly through the floorboards.
Very naturally, she dreads the Bloomsbury-hounds, and the cinema and television absurdities, pretending to tell the ‘truth’ about her famous friends and making a hash of it. But these talented and articulate people are not really at risk.
Frances Partridge reveals herself, as diarists always do, from Pepys to Chips, from André Gide to Alan Clark and James Lees-Milne. She is a puritan who responds to beauty . She hates war, cruelty, stupidity. But she also hates luxury, grandeur, and even, almost, comfort. She fails to see the superb beauty of Houghton, within and without. Or if she sees it, she cannot approve. She says aristocrats are arrogant,
The Golden Echo
.
Many of the best Bloomsbury sagas are told. There is the Garsington peacock, named Argus by Aldous Huxley, which got carbuncles and conveniently died in December 1917 and was roasted for Christmas dinner; when the guests were violently sick. Lady Ottoline said it was an appendicitis epidemic. And Lytton Strachey’s evidence when he came before the Tribunal for conscientious objectors, where he was accompanied by his whole family:The Military Representative was inspired with a flight of fancy and asked: ‘What would you do, Mr. Strachey, if you saw an Uhlan attempting to rape your sister?’ Lytton looked at his sisters in turn, as though trying to visualise the scene, and gravely replied in his high voice: ‘I should try to interpose my own body.’
The Flowers of the Forest
, Garnett, D. (1955)
Past Notes from a Spirited Puritan
In her nineties, the last of the Bloomsbury group, Frances Partridge, has produced a delightful book, full of indiscreet gossip, amusing stories and fascinating journeys. There is something for everyone in these diaries, far and away the best she has bestowed upon the public.
Sharply observant, she gives a lyrical description of restored Warsaw and St Petersburg, enjoying every moment despite the bitter cold. Then there is a calm visit to David Garnett in his French cottage with its pastoral setting, walks in woods, hunting for wild flowers, talking about the past.
In Italy she goes on a rather frenzied tour with Dadie Rylands and Raymond Mortimer, visiting cities, palaces, cathedrals and museums, almost too much beauty; Raymond is rather tiresome with his schoolmaster-like comments forced upon his companions. For her journeys abroad she chose her companions well on the whole, not as easy as it sounds. Spain was perhaps her favourite country.
Back in England life was very different. Strikes galore, rubbish in the streets, electric fires sadistically fading during ‘cuts’, torch batteries and candles unobtainable: London in the early 1970s became almost as uncomfortable as it had been in the war.
All Frances Partridge’s friends were ill, some desperately so. She herself is a widow mourning her clever husband as well as their only son, who died in his twenties, yet she flies to comfort her ailing contemporaries. Her greatest friend Julia Strachey, always neurotic , at this time goes completely mad. The account of the descent into hell of the charming , intelligent Julia is frightful and sad as only the truth can be. It is a relief when Julia herself insists upon enmity where once had been deep friendship. Frances was getting to the end of her fund of sympathy when she was forced to abandon the terrible task to others .
There is a close-up view of many a broken marriage, when she is called to help in a situation where there is never much hope. There are also happy marriages, Heywood and Anne Hill for example, and visits to the Hills and Anne’s eccentric brothers for the Aldeburgh Music Festival.
Two snowy Christmases she stayed with the David Cecils, another happy pair. DavidCecil talked himself and everyone else into a stupor, and when Frances retired to her room she heard the Cecil voices rising uninterruptedly through the floorboards.
Very naturally, she dreads the Bloomsbury-hounds, and the cinema and television absurdities, pretending to tell the ‘truth’ about her famous friends and making a hash of it. But these talented and articulate people are not really at risk.
Frances Partridge reveals herself, as diarists always do, from Pepys to Chips, from André Gide to Alan Clark and James Lees-Milne. She is a puritan who responds to beauty . She hates war, cruelty, stupidity. But she also hates luxury, grandeur, and even, almost, comfort. She fails to see the superb beauty of Houghton, within and without. Or if she sees it, she cannot approve. She says aristocrats are arrogant,
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