Morning Read: Saca fuerzas de flaqueza
¶ Two of Lord Chesterfield’s letters today; one to Bubb Dodington, a fellow Tory, about Parliamentary maneuverings. An auld lament:
I entirely agree with you, that we ought to have meetings to concert measures some time before the meeting of the Parliament; but that, I likewise know, will not happen. I have been these seven years endeavouring to bring it about, and have not been able; fox-hunting, gardening, planting, or indifference having always kept our people in the country, till the very day before the meeting of the Parliament.
In a letter to his son, Chesterfield tries to make the case for paying attention by painting a humorous portrait of the inattentive man, who trips over his sword when he enters a room, eats with his knife, &c. Did it make little Philip Stanhope laugh?
¶ In La Rochefoucauld, a maxim that I not only stand up to salute but recommend as the founding principle of healthy society:
La modération des personnes heureuses vient du calme que la bonne fortune donne à leur humeur.
As Rochefoucauld suggests, a calm character is to some extent innate. But we might do a great deal more to encourage it in children.
¶ Three pages about chowder in Moby-Dick, but no recipe. Or is this is it?
Oh, sweet friends! hearken to me. It was made of small juicy clams, scarcely bigger than hazel nuts, mixed with pounded ship biscuit, and salted pork cut up into little flakes; the whole enriched with butter and plentifully seasoned with pepper and salt.
No potatoes?
¶ Reading Don Quixote is taking longer now, because I’m always picking up the original (now that I’ve got the Alfaguara edition of 2004) to see how Cervantes actually put something.
“Stop that now and find strength in weakness, Sancho,” Don Quixote responded…. (Grossman)
— Déjate de eso y saca fuerzas de flaqueza, Sancho – respondió don Quijote…
Saca fuerzas de flaqueza. I like that.
¶ In Squillions, I come across “Honkers,” for “Hong Kong.” Of course. Had I ever heard this nickname? I can’t tell. It does make one wonder how Coward ever resisted the lyric “From Yonkers to Honkers…” — or vice-versa.
At least there are letters by Noël Coward in today’s chapter. He can’t stop delighting in the good time that he had aboard HMS Suffolk, a cruiser on which he and his toff pal, Jeffrey Amherst, were invited by the officers to sail from Shanghai to Hong Kong. But: “(no monkey business anywhere, all above board and very enjoyable).” Conveniently, Coward’s companion, later Lord Amherst, would turn out to have been at Eton with the King of Thailand. “We’ve also been taken into all the secret shrines and temples where no Europeans are allowed, one in particular had a floor made entirely of silver!”
¶ In After the Edwardians, A N Wilson puts the matter very succinctly:
People were drawn to communism because of the obvious failure of the Tsars to bring a just or fair way of life; because of the huge disparity between rich and poor all over the Western world; because they believed that communism was a way of peace. Likewise, people were drawn to fascism because they could see the same injustices which drew people to communism, but could also see the anarchy which resulted when communists actually took control.