The Australian Heir

"Left alone in the hall with the sun streaming in from the park, I was just reading the family crest on the door, Je vive en espoir, when a tall man in a bush hat loped through it.  'Stradbroke' he said.  'Call me Keith.'
…by luck his Lordship himself was over from Sydney.  He normally costs a thousand quid an hour for interviews, but waived all charges for Punch.

Wild light blue eyes glittered at me over his mug of tea. 'I had a peculiar childhood,  I couldn't read or write till I was about fifteen. Granny wrote to me on my fifth birthday saying, "'Dear Keith, You are now the head of the family, here is one guinea, put it in your war bonds."  Same every birthday, but never enclosed the guinea.  I don't have to keep Henham.  I could sell it tomorrow.'  But he keeps it.  It's a challenge.  He has a fax machine in the corner near the scones,  'I'm a commission man.  I'm about profit.  The thing tells me my Sydney office is making a profit and my English office -- this lot -- isn't.  It's going to. '  He stared moodily out at his pretty, derelict acres.

It is odd, it must be odd, to emerge from a family of alienating inbred weirdness, get kicked out of Harrow, build yourself an uncomplicated fortune in a hot new land --only to be clobbered from across the seas by a chilly, failing estate, a press of merciless taxes and an unsought title, bestowed by a subtle and decadent old country which has the nerve to think that you are the oddity."

Coronet among the Corks  Libby Purves  © Punch Limited

In Bevis Marks

"There was not much to look at.  A rickety table, with spare bundles of papers, yellow and ragged from long carriage in the pocket, ostentatiously displayed upon its top; a couple of stools, set face to face on opposite sides of this crazy piece of furniture; a treacherous old chair by the fireplace, whose withered arms had hugged full many a client and helped to squeeze him dry; a second-hand wig-box, used as a depository for blank writs and declarations and other small forms of law, once the sole contents of the head which belonged to the wig which belonged to the box, as they were now of the box itself; two or three common books of practice; a jar of ink, a pounce box, a stunted hearth-broom, a carpet trodden to shreds but still clinging with the tightness of desperation to its tacks -- these, with the yellow wainscot of the walls, the smoke-discoloured ceiling, the dust and cobwebs, were among the most prominent decorations of the office of Mr. Sampson Brass."

The Old Curiosity Shop  Charles Dickens

St Nicholas arrives for Louise

"Albany,  N.Y.

Dear St. Nicholas:  I have scarlet fever at present and cannot write this to you with my own hand.  It has to be read to Mother through the sealed door of my room, and she writes it down and reads it over the telephone to my father's office, to his secretary.

You may be interested to know that this is the second time I have had scarlet fever at Christmas time.  Last year like this year I was in quarantine, and Father carried my gifts up in a bag like a Santa Claus, and came up a ladder to the roof under my window; and all the family came, too, except the cook, who was afraid to climb the ladder.  Several of our neighbours came too, to see me and my presents.  I got many beautiful things,  but I think I like you as well as any of them.

….of all the stories in St Nicholas,   The Lost Prince  is my favourite.  I have liked all of Mrs. Burnett's stories ever since I first read Little Lord Fauntleroy.  You keep me very happy until I have read you all through.  I always gobble you up at my very first chance.

Your interested reader,
Louise van Loon     (age 10)"

St Nicholas: an illustrated magazine for Young Folks   1915 

April 8. Trouble with a Stylographic pen.

"April 8.  No events of any importance, except that Gowing strongly recommended a new patent stylographic pen, which cost me nine and sixpence, and which was simply nine and sixpence thrown in the mud.  It has caused me constant annoyance and irritability of temper.  The ink oozes out of the top, making a mess on my hands, and once at the office when I was knocking the palm of my hand on the desk to jerk the ink down, Mr Perkupp, who had just entered, called out: 'Stop that knocking!  I suppose that is you, Mr Pitt?'  That young monkey, Pitt, took a malicious glee in responding quite loudly: 'No, sir; I beg pardon, it is Mr Pooter with his pen; it has been going on all morning.'  To make matters worse, I saw Lupin laughing behind his desk.  I thought it wiser to say nothing.  I took the pen back to the shop and asked them if they would take it back, as it did not act.  I did not expect the full price to be returned, but was willing to take half.  The man said he could not do that -- buying and selling were two different things."

The Diary of a Nobody  G. and W. Grossmith

"Caves of Ice", reviewed

"Motored to Edinburgh in beastly cold weather, but this morning after church, an amusing little neo-Gothic structure, there was a Canaletto sky over the castle....
Vowed to make the best of everything, even though inconveniently located remote from Gloucestershire and SW1, SW3, SW7 and W1.  Decided would even try to make the best of James Lees-Milne's latest volume of diaries, Caves of Ice, which records some of his activities and emotional responses as Adviser on Historic Buildings to the National Trust in 1946 and 1947.

Glanced through the book before lunch.  Elegant, pale architectural jacket (Cotehele House, Cornwall) and endpapers (Cotehele House and Nostell Priory, Yorkshire).  Frontispiece portrait of the author looking up balefully from the pen in his hand and the sheaf of papers on his desk.  His expression suggests that he does not like writing, resents working in an office and really isn't at all pleased when someone intrudes to photograph him in such un-chic drudgery."

Extract from Book review (in Daily Telegraph?) by Patrick Skene Catling 1983

Distant shores

"Perched on my city office-stool
I watched with envy, while a cool
And lucky carter handled ice ...
And I was wandering in a trice,
Far from the gray and grimy heat
Of that intolerable street,
O'er sapphire berg and emerald floe,
Beneath the still, cold ruby glow
Of everlasting Polar night,
Bewildered by the queer half-light,
Until I stumbled, unawares,
Upon a creek where big white bears
Plunged headlong down with flourished heels,
And floundered after shining seals
Through shivering seas of blinding blue.
And as I watched them, ere I knew,
I'd stripped and I was swimming, too,
Among the seal-pack, young and hale,
And thrusting on with threshing tail,
With twist and twirl and sudden leap
Through crackling ice and salty deep --
Diving and doubling with my kind,
Until, at last, we left behind
Those big white, blundering bulks of death,
And lay, at length, with panting breath
Upon a far untravelled floe,
Beneath a gentle drift of snow --
Snow drifting gently, fine and white,
Out of the endless Polar night,
Falling and falling evermore
Upon that far untravelled shore,
Till I was buried fathoms deep
Beneath that cold, white drifting sleep --
Sleep drifting deep,
Deep drifting sleep . . . .

The carter cracked a sudden whip:
I clutched my stool with startled grip,
Awakening to the grimy heat
Of that intolerable street."

The Ice-Cart  Wilfred Wilson Gibson