Thursday, May 1, 2014

What did a country house weekend do for Tom?






I take it that as you have 
come alone
you have been unsuccessful.

Not at all.
I have come to remind you - 
you have made a decision.

Are you thinking that I
have changed my mind?

No. You will not be ready
to change your mind
Until you recover from
having made a decision.






I sometimes wonder, how our
reading represents a series
of decisions about texts al-
most as much as writing does.

The Little Augury blog enab-
led this question to be re-
freshed in a posting on the
30th, of several estimable
writers as they appear in a
scrapbook of a noted country
house. I take the liberty of
reading that information in
this way, but it deserves a
glance from everyone.

For my part, I'm simply glad
of an excuse to revisit an
artist I've cited extensive-
ly, with a frustration I've
found invigorating, of ever
being sure I've been right.
In this state I think one
finds the natural pitch of
satisfaction.























T.S. Eliot
1888 - 1965
The Cocktail Party
  A Comedy
  I, iii
Harcourt, Brace, 1950©







2 comments:

  1. well-it's a good thing my comment was not too elevated-since google ate it. what good taste it has-as did the country house hostess Ottoline Morrell. I suspect along with Tom's query and elevated banter-surely they had a thing or two to say about the host's latest conquest, and their weekend companions sleeping arrangements. thank you-as always for the reference to little augury.

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    Replies
    1. I must say how glad I was, to be shaken from my May Day socialist reveries -- you know, the fair price, for a clean conscience -- by discovering your posting on Garsington's offer of shelter without proof of a guest's unoriginality. This was not a reference, but a sighting of sparks.

      But had I known "at the time," that sleepings at Garsington had anything to do with arrangements as we know them (the host's droit du seigneur aside), then I could think of any number of bookings one might have made, never forgetting the benign confusion of the place.

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