July Gleanings

“My dear Rick, when will you realize that in this world today isolationism is no longer a practical policy?” (Casablanca)

I shall not say why or how I became , at the age of fifteen, the mistress of the Earl of Craven. Whether it was love or the severity of my father, the depravity of my own heart, or the winning arts of the noble Lord, which induced me to leave my parental roof and place myself under his, does not signify: or if it does, I am not in a humour to gratify curiosity in this matter. (The Memoirs of Harriette Wilson, 1825)

To have a house which is commodious, clean and beautiful;
Tapestried with fragrant espaliers, a garden;
Fruits, excellent wine; a small retinue; few children;
To have, without commotion, a wife who is loyal.

To have no debts, no dalliance, no lawsuits, no quarrel;
No obligation with parents to make division;
To content oneself with little, to hope for no attention
From the great; to scale one’s plans to what is manageable.

To live with candour and without ambition;
To give oneself to piety without hesitation;
To damp the passions and make them obedient,
Cultivating branch and graft, telling one’s rosary
While preserving a free spirit and strong judgement:
This is to wait at home for death comfortably.

(Le Bonheur de ce Monde, Christophe Plantin, 1514 – 1589)

For the forgetful, there is this comfort: “knowing you have forgotten something is a form of memory”. (Veronica O’Keane, Professor of Psychiatry at Trinity College Dublin)

I recently discovered Domaine de Triennes, which is a serious wine with length and structure – far better than the average supermarket rosé which would work perfectly well as an ice lolly. (Bruce Anderson in The Spectator)

It is not here to make sense of the world, but to help us forget it for a couple of hours. (Anything Goes, reviewed in The New York Times, 2011)

One of the few small extravagances I have ever dreamed of – and I have not dreamed of many, I do not want to own things, they eat you up – is a large steam yacht. Given this, I would cut across those seas as fast as my paddles would take me, exchange the blue horses of the Atlantic for the rich smooth muddy silver of the Guadalquivir, and steam fifty-four miles up-stream. There with a deep toot, an olé from all sirens, I would tie up to the quays of that great port and fair city, Seville. (Pleasures Strange and Simple, William Sansom)

O death! rock me asleep,
Bring me the quiet rest;
Let pass my weary guiltless ghost
Out of my careful breast:
Toll on the passing bell,
Ring out the doleful knell,
Let thy sound my death tell,
Death doth draw nigh;
There is no remedy.

My pains who can express?
Alas! they are so strong,
My dolour will not suffer strength
My life for to prolong:
Toll on, thou passing bell,
Ring out my doleful knell,
Let thy sound my death tell,
Death doth draw nigh;
There is no remedy.

Alone in prison strong,
I wait my destiny,
Woe worth this cruel hap that I
Should taste this misery?
Toll on, thou passing bell,
Let thy sound my death tell,
Death doth draw nigh,
There is no remedy.

Farewell my pleasures past,
Welcome my present pain!
I feel my torments so increase
That life cannot remain.
Cease now,thou passing bell;
Rung is my doleful knell,
For the sound my death doth tell,
Death doth draw nigh,
There is no remedy.

(Ann Boleyn, while imprisoned in the Tower of London)

Think of what our Nation stands for,
Books from Boots and country lanes,
Free speech, free passes, class distinction,
Democracy and proper drains.
Lord, put beneath Thy special care
One-eighty-nine Cadogan Square.

(In Westminster Abbey, John Betjeman)