December 22
This book makes me of all people (and especially just now) groan inwardly. “I am at a loss,” he says, referring to the Decline and Fall, “how to describe the success of the work without betraying the vanity of the writer. … My book was on every table and almost on every toilette.” It makes me bite my lips. Rousseau and his criticism of “I sighed as a lover; I obeyed as a son,” and Gibbon on his dignity in reply make one of the most ludicrous incidents in literary history. “… that extraordinary man whom I admire and pity, should have been less precipitate in condemning the moral character and conduct of a stranger!” Oh my giddy Aunt! Isn’t this rich? Still, I am glad you did not marry her: we could ill spare Madam de Staël, Madam Necker’s daughter, that wonderful, vivacious and warmhearted woman.
“After the morning has been occupied with the labours of the library, I wish to unbend rather than exercise my mind; and in the interval between tea and supper, I am far from disdaining the innocent amusement of a game of cards.” How Jane Austen would have laughed at him! The passage reminds me of the Rev. Mr. Collins saying:
“Had I been able I should have been only too pleased to give you a song, for I regard music as a harmless diversion and perfectly compatible with the profession of a clergyman.”
“When I contemplate the common lot of mortality,” Gibbon writes, “I must acknowledge I have drawn a high prize in the lottery of life,” and he goes on to count up all his blessings with the most offensive delight—his wealth, the good fortune of his birth, his ripe years, a cheerful temper, a moderate sensibility, health, sound and peaceful slumbers from infancy, his valuable friendship with Lord Sheffield, his rank, fame, etc., etc., ad nauseam. He rakes over his whole life for things to be grateful for. He intones his happiness in a long recitative of thanksgiving that his lot was not that of a savage, of a slave, or a peasant; he washes his hands with imaginary soap on reflecting on the bounty of Nature which cast his birth in a free and civilised country, in an age of science and philosophy, in a family of honourable rank and decently endowed with the gifts of fortune—sleek, complacent, oleaginous and salacious old gentleman, how I would love to have bombed you out of your self-satisfaction!
It amused me to discover the evident relish with which the author of In the Daffodil Fields emphasises the blood and the flowers in the attack on Achi Baba. It’s all blood and beautiful flowers mixed up together to Masefield’s great excitement.
“A swear word in a city slum
A simple swear word is to some—
To Masefield something more.”
—Max Beerbohm
Still, to call Gallipoli “bloody Hell” is, after all, only a pedantically exact description. You understand, though, a very remarkable book—a work of genius.