Quiet foot

    

                     

      

Sent down from Oxford 
part-way through his 
second year, Quennell 
thought to accept the 
Sitwells' invitation 
to Amalfi. His father 
had heard good reports 
of the brothers' hard-
working lives.

The Sitwells loved Amalfi, and no doubt I should have enjoyed it myself had the winter skies occasionally cleared. But, alas, storm after storm pursued one another across the Gulf of Naples, blotting out the horizon and drenching the narrow ledge on which our hotel stood with incessant sheets of rain.

         

This very nice man went on to edit History Today, dine well, and write about every Englishman who wrote or made love before he did. I like him and I enjoy reading him still. His small study of Pope is a sweet book-end, alongside Edith Sitwell's.


But I was given him when I was rather young, so he is also a link to that time. I find myself anxiously hoping now, that he ever did wonder, what was the weather like, off the narrow ledge?
















Peter Quennell
The Marble Foot
  An Autobiography, 1905-1938
Collins, 1976©


iii, vii  Carl Mydans