643: Rose Macaulay and "The World My Wilderness"

In 1950, Rose Macaulay’s penultimate novel, The World My Wilderness was published by Collins; I am fortunate in owning a first edition of this wonderful book, which I have just read for the third time.  Miss Macaulay was, in my opinion one of England’s greatest writers of the 20^th Century; a highly-learned individual, it is fortunate for me that unlike some others, she did not “wear her learning” too prominently – at least in her writing!

I also own a copy of her 1920s novel Told by an Idiot which too, is excellent and a copy of Jane Emery’s first-class biography of the writer; from this I should like to quote the following (by Macaulay herself from her final novel The Towers of Trebizond):

“And now the joy was killed, and there seemed no reason why life too should not run down and stop now that its mainspring was broken.  When a companionship like ours suddenly ends, it is to lose a limb or the faculty of sight; one is quite simply cut off from life and scattered adrift, lacking the coherence and integration of love.  Life, I supposed, would proceed; I should see my friends, go abroad, go on with my work, such as it was, but the sentient, enjoying principle which kept it all ticking, was destroyed.”

In The Common Reader (first series) Virginia Woolf includes an essay titled Montaigne, in which she explains how difficult it is for the pen to express the nature of the soul.  I think that Miss Macaulay made a good fist of it, don’t you?

Meanwhile I am searching for a copy of Miss Macaulay's  The Secret River written in 1909; all I can find are first editions at around £60...

Until the next time

605: Voices: A Treat for MY Ears

Many a time and oft I have complained in my usual pedantic style about the decline of standards in the use of English - for example, HERE.

As an antidote, and with my grateful thanks for the power of the Internet, here, a couple of examples of the sort of spoken English that is seldom heard indeed these days, more the pity.

Truly a joy to my ears.

First an amusing anecdote from the highly-talented novelist and biographer, Nancy Mitford:

And to follow, the velvety though frail voice of  Virginia Woolf, recorded in 1937:

How I wish I could hear voices like these today.

Compare and contrast with e.g. Russell Brand or Jonathan Ross or that awful female continuity announcer (anaancah?) on what she calls 'BayBaySayToe'. Credit where it's due: Stephen Fry can speak properly, but the problems lie elsewhere - for example the cretins he employs on his television programme, in particular that tit in the lumberjack shirt, but also all those horrible socialist so-called comedians

I was born too late, much too late.

Until the next time.