Morning Read:
Braying
¶ Lord Chesterfield invites his son to regard him as a censor.
I can now undertake this employment only upon hearsay, or at most, written evidence; and therefore shall exercise it with great lenity and some diffidence; but when we meet, and that I can form my judgment upon ocular and auricular evidence, I shall no more let the least impropriety, indecorum, or irregularity, pass uncensured, than my predecessor Cato did. I shall read you with the attention of a critic, not with the partiality of an author; different in this respect, indeed, from most critics, that I shall seek for faults, only to correct, and not to expose them.
Has anyone ever thought of writing another jolly musical on Pygmalian themes: My Fair Bastard?
¶ In Moby-Dick, Ahab colloquiates with a fellow whaling captain who has also lost a limb to the White Whale; unlike Ahab, Captain Boomer has learned his lesson.
No more White Whales for me; I’ve lowered for him once, and that has satisfied me. There would be great glory in killing him, I know that; and there is a ship-load of precious sperm in him, but, hark ye, he’s best let alone; don’t you think so, Captain?” — glancing at the ivory leg.
“He is. But he will still be hunted, for all that. What is best let alone, that accursed thing is not always what least allures. He’s all a magnet! How long since thou saw’st him last? Which way heading?”
¶ In Don Quixote, our hero’s encounter with the villagers who feel insulted by their neighbors’ braying mockery, goes swimmingly, until Sancho decides to say a few words — followed by a few sounds.
I remember, when I was a boy, I used to bray whenever I felt like it, and nobody held me back, and I did it so well and so perfectly that when I brayed all the donkeys in the village brayed, but that didn’t stop me from being my parents’ son, and they were very honorable people and even though this talent of mine was envied by more than a few of the conceited boys in my village, I didn’t care at all. And so that you can see that I’m telling the truth, wait and listen, because if you know this, it’s like knowing how to swim: once you’ve learned you never forget.
“But one of the men who was near him, thinking he was mocking them, raised a long pole…”
¶ In Squillions, Noël Coward writes, to Laurence Olivier, that Marilyn Monroe “is certainly no Madame de Staël, is she?” He’s not asking.