Read Online The Pursuit of Laughter by Diana Mitford (Mosley) - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Diana Mitford (Mosley)
Ads: Link
picking on one lady, Kathleen Stanley, who was the kindest of women.
Her Puritanism just occasionally shows the tip of its ear, as the French say. Perhaps it is one of her virtues. Be that as it may, her book deserves the success which it will surely have.
The Diaries of Frances Partridge: 1963-66
, Partridge, F.
Sunday Times
(1998)
Lifelong Fit of Giggles
Here are the scrapings of the barrel, more or less everything left behind by Henry Yorke (for that was Henry Green’s real name) when he died. Much of it is well worth preserving : interviews, unperformed television plays, chapters of unfinished novels, scenes of family life half-truth half-caricature written in the merciless and sardonic way he had. Henry Green’s grandson has edited these literary remains, putting them in chronological order. It is easy to see influences—Kafka, Henry James—but from the beginning Green’s was such a distinctive voice that only he could have written these pages.
Greatly admired in his lifetime by other writers, Waugh, Auden, Isherwood, V.S. Pritchett for example, there will probably never be a school of Henry Green. As he himself said of Joyce, his style, his jokes, his marvellous dialogue were his alone.
He might have echoed Gide’s cry: ‘
Familles! Je vous hais!
’ There is bitterness in the way he describes a boring family evening, father and mother bickering and two sulky sons leaving them to it. There is a fantasy about a giant who appears in the park at Petworth. Henry Green’s eccentric Wyndham uncles and aunts see him out of the window and are half terrified , half outraged. How to get rid of him? The butler is sent out, but is blown into the lake. Finally the giant goes, but not before bellowing that he had come there hoping to hear the family engaged in intellectual conversation.
There is a biographical chapter by Sebastian Yorke, Henry’s son. He describes his father’s delight in minor disasters and how amused he was when things went wrong. He may have looked upon life itself as one long sick joke. Yet for his friends he was one ofthe most delightful men of his talented generation.
Surviving
, ed. Yorke, M.
Evening Standard
(1994)
Fluttering Wings
‘Dearest Maud, dearest Primavera! I do not know what primavera means, or if I have spelt it sufficiently for you to recognize the word. It means Spring, doesn’t it? It means joy, the joy of green leaves with the flutter of wings among the leaves. And you, dearest, mean all these things to me, for you are not, I am convinced, a mere passing woman but an incarnation of an idea… You are at once the poet and the poem, and you create yourself not with silks and pearls, though these things are beautiful upon you, but by your intense desire of beauty and life.’
‘I gave you all the love I was capable of. I never cease to think of you…’
The first passage quoted above was written by George Moore when he was 52 and had been in love with Lady [Emerald] Cunard for ten years. The second he wrote twenty five years later. His love for her lasted from their first meeting until his death forty years after. She destroyed most of his letters; all that remain are in this volume.
Lady Cunard was a great admirer of George Moore’s books; he was a fervent admirer of her astonishing personality. ‘To Maud Cunard,’ he wrote, ‘a woman of genius. Her genius is manifest in her conversation, and like Jesus and Socrates, she has refrained from the other arts.’
The audience for this marvellous, intelligent, inconsequent conversation was formed by her luncheon and dinner guests, and although she invited clever men to her house some of the company was not as amusing as it was fashionable. ‘There are people about that are of no interest to me, as little intelligent they seem as squeaking dolls,’ complained George Moore.
None of Lady Cunard’s letters to her faithful admirer have been found, yet her portrait is clearly seen in his to her, from her marble eyes and
Her Puritanism just occasionally shows the tip of its ear, as the French say. Perhaps it is one of her virtues. Be that as it may, her book deserves the success which it will surely have.
The Diaries of Frances Partridge: 1963-66
, Partridge, F.
Sunday Times
(1998)
Lifelong Fit of Giggles
Here are the scrapings of the barrel, more or less everything left behind by Henry Yorke (for that was Henry Green’s real name) when he died. Much of it is well worth preserving : interviews, unperformed television plays, chapters of unfinished novels, scenes of family life half-truth half-caricature written in the merciless and sardonic way he had. Henry Green’s grandson has edited these literary remains, putting them in chronological order. It is easy to see influences—Kafka, Henry James—but from the beginning Green’s was such a distinctive voice that only he could have written these pages.
Greatly admired in his lifetime by other writers, Waugh, Auden, Isherwood, V.S. Pritchett for example, there will probably never be a school of Henry Green. As he himself said of Joyce, his style, his jokes, his marvellous dialogue were his alone.
He might have echoed Gide’s cry: ‘
Familles! Je vous hais!
’ There is bitterness in the way he describes a boring family evening, father and mother bickering and two sulky sons leaving them to it. There is a fantasy about a giant who appears in the park at Petworth. Henry Green’s eccentric Wyndham uncles and aunts see him out of the window and are half terrified , half outraged. How to get rid of him? The butler is sent out, but is blown into the lake. Finally the giant goes, but not before bellowing that he had come there hoping to hear the family engaged in intellectual conversation.
There is a biographical chapter by Sebastian Yorke, Henry’s son. He describes his father’s delight in minor disasters and how amused he was when things went wrong. He may have looked upon life itself as one long sick joke. Yet for his friends he was one ofthe most delightful men of his talented generation.
Surviving
, ed. Yorke, M.
Evening Standard
(1994)
Fluttering Wings
‘Dearest Maud, dearest Primavera! I do not know what primavera means, or if I have spelt it sufficiently for you to recognize the word. It means Spring, doesn’t it? It means joy, the joy of green leaves with the flutter of wings among the leaves. And you, dearest, mean all these things to me, for you are not, I am convinced, a mere passing woman but an incarnation of an idea… You are at once the poet and the poem, and you create yourself not with silks and pearls, though these things are beautiful upon you, but by your intense desire of beauty and life.’
‘I gave you all the love I was capable of. I never cease to think of you…’
The first passage quoted above was written by George Moore when he was 52 and had been in love with Lady [Emerald] Cunard for ten years. The second he wrote twenty five years later. His love for her lasted from their first meeting until his death forty years after. She destroyed most of his letters; all that remain are in this volume.
Lady Cunard was a great admirer of George Moore’s books; he was a fervent admirer of her astonishing personality. ‘To Maud Cunard,’ he wrote, ‘a woman of genius. Her genius is manifest in her conversation, and like Jesus and Socrates, she has refrained from the other arts.’
The audience for this marvellous, intelligent, inconsequent conversation was formed by her luncheon and dinner guests, and although she invited clever men to her house some of the company was not as amusing as it was fashionable. ‘There are people about that are of no interest to me, as little intelligent they seem as squeaking dolls,’ complained George Moore.
None of Lady Cunard’s letters to her faithful admirer have been found, yet her portrait is clearly seen in his to her, from her marble eyes and
Similar Books
