Morning Read:
Golosina
¶ Lord Chesterfield presses home the indispensability of good manners in the world — something that doltish, obstinate people perversely continue to regard as a failing of the world:
You may possibly ask me, whether a man has it always in his power to get into the best company? and how? I say, Yes, he has, by deserving it; provided he is but in circumstances which enable him to appear upon the footing of a gentleman. Merit and good-breeding will make their way everywhere. Knowledge will introduce him, and good-breeding will endear him to the best companies; for, as I have often told you, politeness and good-breeding are absolutely necessary to adorn any, or all other good qualities or talents. Without them, no knowledge, no perfection whatever, is seen in its best light. The scholar, without good-breeding, is a pedant; the philosopher, a cynic; the soldier, a brute; and every man disagreeable.
¶ In Moby-Dick: Ahab at last. Complain as I will and do about Melville’s overwriting (which to my ear signals the insecurity of the American writer of his day), it is really Captain Ahab who has kept me from reading Moby-Dick all these years. If there are two things I can’t stand, it’s unpleasant old men (unlike moi) and obsessions.
A few years ago, I re-read Ethan Frome, and found it very rough going, because at the bottom of the novel was a social problem that has since been solved (if even more recently — ie now — dis-solved): social security. Ethan is stuck with Zeena because there’s no one else to take care of her. So it is with Moby-Dick. The Ahabs of today lose their jobs if they go off their meds.
Before my reductive vision causes any spluttering, however, I must declare that the story of a long sea voyage in search of a whale would bore me to death no matter who was telling it.
¶ In Don Quixote, the beginning of a strange adventure involving a lovelorn madman. At this point, I am ready to shoot our hero just for being an impossibly deluded old man (unlike moi). Thank heaven for Sancho Panza!
While Don Quixote was looking through the book, Sancho looked through the traveling case, and every corner of it and the cushion was searched, scrutinized, and investigated, every seam pulled apart, every tuft of wool untangled, so that nothing would be left behind for want of effort or diligence, for the escudos he had discovered, which amounted to more than a hundred, had awakened an enormous appetite in him.
En tanto que don Quijote pasaba el libro, pasabe Sancho la maleta, sin dejar rincón en toda ella ni en el cojín que no buscase, escudriñase e inquiriese, ni costura que no deshiciese, ni vedija de lana que no escarmenase, porque no se quedase nada por diligencia ni mal recado: tal golosina habían despertado en él los hallados escudos, que pasaban de ciento.
I expect that Edith Grossman worked hard to match the echoing pasar at the end of the sentence, before deciding that the result was doomed to be strained. But I’d have replaced “appetite” with one of the readings of “golosina” that’s given in my Langenscheidt: “sweet tooth.”
¶ In Squillions, a blessedly short chapter, devoted to Cavalcade and 1931, much of which Coward spent on a South American holiday.
The last boat was very grand and the beast of a Captain refused to allow us on deck or have meals in the dining room because we were not suitably dressed (Riding things). He actually sent for the Police to put us off which they refused to do. So we were sent below where we remained for two days. All the first class passengers were delighted with themselves. We remained quite happily below and gave a cocktail party to all the stewards! Then on the morning we arrived, we stepped off the boat exquisitely dressed, were met by a very grand car and several commissaires etc., we cut the Captain and shook hands with all the stewards. There has been the most awful row about it it, all the Directors of the line have apologised and the Papers have been full of it. I almost feel sorry for the Captain now! The first class passengers’ faces were a study, when we left the boat. I said very loudly in Spanish to the Head Steward that we had enjoyed the journey very much and infinitely preferred being with the real gentlemen below, than the pretentious plebeians above!
A pattern gent!
¶ I do not expect these Morning Reads to be timely — possibly because, when they are, it breaks my heart. A N Wilson wrote After the Victorians only a few years ago, when anyone with half a brain could see where the economy was headed, so a certain contemporary anxiety may have shaped the following passage. It nonetheless remains correct.
The very ingredients which made the great capitalists so prodigiously rich in the good times were those which caused the Crash and the subsequent Depression. The bigger the conglomerates, the greater the amounts of capital they were able, in times of prosperity, to raise on the stock markets. As shares boomed in the 1920s, the harder it was for anyone with spare cash to resist the urge to become a speculator. In fact, in 1929, at most 7 or 8 per cent of the American population actually owned stocks, but many who did not own share certificates were indirectly affected by the stock market, in their insurance, mortgages and savings plans. The huge growth of gadgetry and domestic appliances, and modern ‘convenience’ ways — such as chain stores — had led to an explosion of companies after the war, with businesses making automobiles, radio sets, electric toasters, electric irons, telephones. Many of the little firms depended on larger ones for their business. Successful compoanies were always going to be gobbled up by the larger sharks in the ocean, butr in the energy of the exploding market many very dubious concerns were in operation, and sound money was not what the investors were after. As the speculative craze took hold, they wanted, and seemed to be offered, a quick buck. As he left office in 1928 President Coolidge told the electorate that their prosperity was “absolutely sound” and that stocks were “cheap at current prices.”
Alan Greenspan must have known all of this, and yet he did nothing but fan the flames a second time round.