GLEANINGS FROM LYTTON STRATCHEY
“As I passed up Lord
Street on my bicycle I saw that one of the Book Shops had a ‘selling off’ going
on and ‘Removal of premises’ etc. I eagerly rushed to see if there was anything
decent, though I had not over much ‘cash’ to spare. I saw nothing of interest but
a Byron – in fact two Byrons: one large, and probably, I surmised, complete; t’other
small, and probably, I concluded extracted. I went in boldly; my surmise was
correct. The large one was pub. By Murray 1837 and was called at any rate complete.
The small one was a ratlike edition of extracts – foul! I can’t conceive; that
is to say to buy an extract and nothing more. I refused the 1/4d and took
(rather extravently) the 2/6d. (Diary
1898)
+
I walked entranced;
that feeling of a sudden explanation came upon me – a sudden easy mysterious
mysterious explanation of all the long difficult mysterious embroilments of the
world. ‘Est-ce que j’ai trouvé le grand Peut-être”?’ I thought ‘Am I I luckier
even than Rabelais? -... And I sat down, absolutely comfortable, with a little
bank of earth under the hedge for4 my back to lean against, and the charming
English prospect before my eyes. I thought of my friends, and my extraordinary
happiness. I thought of Death, of Keats and the Ode to the Nightingale, of ‘easeful
Death’ – ‘half in love with easeful death’ – and I was convinced, … that if
De3ath would onoy come to one in a mood of serene happiness, he would be very
welcome. I thought of suddenly dying, painlessly, where I lay. (Diary – Monday June
26th 1916)
Otherwise a book that
I’ve long wanted to have – ‘Ėloges de Madame Geoffrin”, which I discovered in a
second-hand bookshop here two days ago – has been entertaining me. (A Fortnight
in France – Sept 11th 1931)
To-day at any rate
shall be devoted to absolute drifting – looking at old books and pictures –
errand boys and aged whores- gardens and street- corners. (A Fortnight in
France – Sept. 15. 1931)
FROM
LETTERS: VIRGINIA WOOLF AND LYTTON STRACHEY
“…and the naked boys
run like snipe along the beach, balancing their buttocks in the pellucid air.”
“Why is everything
that is satisfactory in this life
impregnated with unsatisfactoriness?”
“The French seem to me
a melancholy race – is it because they have no imagination, so that they have
no outlets when thy find themselves (as all intelligent people must) vis-à-vis with
the horrors of the world? There’s a sort of dry desperation about some of them
which I don’t believe exists with the English – even with Swift.”
OF DOSTOIEVSKY-
“Such an anaesthetic
view of life.”
“If I could my way, I
should go out to dinner every night, and then to a party or an opera, and then
I should have a champagne supper, and then I should go to bed in some wonderful
person’s arms.”
“Just about this
moment, you’re settling down over the fire, having returned from a brisk walk
among the Scotch firs in a Scotch mist, and saying (something I can’t spell –
it’s French) to the effect that life holds nothing copulation, after which you
groan from the profundities of the stomach…”
“My state has long
been quite deplorable. I put it down to the Winter-the agony of thick
underclothes, etc. etc.; but of course it may be sheer deliquescence of the
brain.”
