You can't possibly mean we have to do this again ?

 Ah, you were in Iowa last night.

 There's no need to deny it, for

 one can sort of tell - and if we

 haven't gone there, ourself, per- 

 haps we ought to.

 But, yes, to go through that mode

 of election - with all those con-

 testants around, tugging at us in

 one direction or another - is a

 trial not to be revisited anytime

 soon. To have to learn that none

 of this ever registered at all,

 never was measured or counted or

 lasted, and left no trace behind -

 please, don't say it.

 Mother always warned about Iowa,

 and now one can certainly see why. 

 What's hardest to endure, indeed,

 is the thought that she might ev-

 er have heard of it. No wave was

 ever meant to be of grain.

Saturday commute clxxix: No rush

The idea that Pasternak knew these 

lines, and had perhaps carried 

them around in his head for twenty-

five years, really thrilled me,

more than any review I've ever read.

I think the parrotlike way in which

people say there is no 'communica-

tion' nowadays is rubbish really;

communication is having the faith

that if you do your utmost someone

somewhere does and will understand

this and sometime somewhere you 

will know it.

Stephen Spender

1959

Matthew Spender

A House in St John's Wood

  In search of my parents

Farrar, Straus & Giroux

2015©

Origins of Wednesday cix: An acquittal worse than the crimes

                   I've just been clearing my ears

                   from the proceedings in the US

                   Senate, and I must say, I'm sor-

                   ry I bothered. What posturing I

                   have heard, has been enough to

                   persuade me that the staggering

                   leap into denial on display, is

                   grossly worse than the betrayal

                   of the national interest under

                   prosecution. The President's

                   Party gives every sign of being

                   captivated by a perversion giv-

                   ing ordinary Constitutional in-

                   terpretive casuistry a halo of

                   innocence: oh, we forgot to tell

                   you, we've always believed in

                   absolute Executive power. How

                   comical it now seems in retro-

                   spect, to have seized power on

                   the pretexts of tiny government.

                   Credit an Annunciation arriving

                   under deprivation of legality

                   and reason, for exposing to this

                   Party the true, latent, revealed 

                   rights of its disorderly organs.

                   It's bathed in shining awe, to be

                   wringing no longer its hands, but

                   its own neck, out on Fifth Avenue.

Saturday commute clxxviii: To the bottom line

Was no one else so bouleversé as we

were, the other day, to learn that

America's Chief Justice had just re-

ferred to the same country's Senate

as the greatest deliberative body in

the solar system? 

At a minimum, we can say that it's a

cinch he can kiss off any election

to the Académie Française, much less

to the Art Committee of the Bohemian

Club. What else, on the other hand, 

was to be expected of the author of

that death warrant of liberated delib-

eration, Citizens United v. Yo Mama?

Not that it isn't natural to give pre-

cedence to the intrigues of the olig-

archs on Capitol Hill to the casuist

hissings of the Third Branch, below.

Still, one likes one's oligarchs to

possess a keener command of the mine-

laying in their rhetorical wake, so

as to avoid an explosion of shameless

self-reversals every third week. We

yearn to be favored with that anti-

cipatory avoidance of catastrophe 

which once came so naturally to 

Her Majesty's Colonial Office --

   The sentence in the draft Report under discussion was as follows: "Mr Ormsby-Gore dwelt upon the strategic and economic importance of the Colonies." Sir Edward Harding thought it was very unwise to say anything about the strategic importance of the Colonies. If anyone were to look at a map of the Colonies he might find out where Singapore was, and who could say what that would lead to? He proposed to strike out the word 'strategic'. Mr Vernon agreed.

   Sir Harry Batterbee thought that it was very dangerous to refer to the economic importance of the Colonies. Any such reference would direct the mind of the reader tot he claims of Germany for the restoration of her past colonial empire upon purely economic grounds. He thought that the words should be omitted. Mr Vernon agreed.

   Sir Rupert Howorth did not like emphasis being laid on the importance of the Colonies. We were already to a large extent the object of envy and suspicion of the world on account of our possession of colonies. The best line for us to take now was to minimize their importance, and even to underrate them. He suggested that the word 'importance' should be omitted. Mr Vernon agreed.

   The sentence in the draft now read: "Mr Ormsby-Gore dwelt upon the Colonies." Mr Archer thought that this was a rather unhappy expression in that it suggested a lingering, continued exposition of the colonial aspect of inter-imperial affairs, which might very easily provoke jealousy on the part of the Dominions. Mr Vernon pointed out that the report would probably be read by a large number of agents of foreign governments who might be imperfectly acquainted with the English language. There was a grave risk that they would interpret the words "Mr Ormsby-Gore dwelt upon the Colonies" as meaning "Mr Ormsby-Gore dwelt in the Colonies." This would not be true. He suggested the substitution of the words "referred to". Sir Edward Harding pointed out that these words had already appeared in every sentence of the draft Report which had so far been passed, and he thought it would be a good thing to find another expression this time. Sir Harry Batterbee suggested the words "alluded to". Mr Vernon agreed.

   The sentence thus revised read: "Mr Ormsby-Gore alluded to the Colonies." Sir Rupert Howorth enquired whether it would not really be better to leave the sentence out altogether. If the Report merely stated that Mr Ormsby-Gore alluded to the Colonies, it might excite suspicion on the part of foreign readers that the real gist of his remarks had been of a quite different character, and that this was nothing more than a screen or a disguise. Sir Harry Batterbee pointed out that Mr Ormsby-Gore's name would in any case appear as one of those present, and that as he was Secretary of State for the Colonies it might probably arouse some jealousy in the minds of Dominion statesmen if they considered that he had talked about the Dominions just as if they were colonies. It therefore seemed wiser to leave the sentence in. Mr Vernon agreed, but suggested that the addition of the word "furtively" before "alluded to" might be an improvement. This was negatived without a division.

It goes without saying, how indebted the inquiring judge of our finer deliberative bodies truly is, today, to possess this extract from Mr R.V. Vernon's Memorandum of an exemplary meeting of the Colonial Office, in June, 1936. With what subtlety, with what felicity, with what luminously oligarchic duplicity was this quibble conducted, on behalf of the class being represented, we need not rend our rags with envy to observe -- but for the miraculous discovery, before our eyes, of the perfecting redaction of the proceedings, for the convenience of all inter-preters and the immaculate elimination of witnesses.

John Julius Norwich

Still More Christmas Crackers

  1990 - 1999

Viking, 2000©

iii  Julian Schneyder

   

Origins of Wednesday cviii: Static

  I wonder, if I could reclaim
  from moments of incurable i-
  dleness, my years of sorting
  out the front from the back,
  of a freshly laundered T, to
  say nothing of locating some
  seam to tell me whether it's
  inside, out: what would I do
  with all that time, to match
  the useful recurrence of be-
  ing lost for a few unhurried
  breaths, before slamming out
  the door on some inferior a-
  genda? Would I apply myself,
  once more, to the pursuit of
  some higher understanding or
  would I content myself to be
  free?

J.M.W. Turner
Venice with The Salute
ca 1840

Saturday commute clxxvii: Going once

                                           

I don't know what I may seem to
the world. But as to myself I
seem to have been only like a 
boy playing on the seashore and
diverting myself in now and then 
finding a smoother pebble or pret-
tier shell than ordinary, whilst 
the great ocean of truth lay all 
undiscovered before me.

                         Newton
















David Brewster
Memoirs of the Life,
  Writings and Discoveries
  of Sir Isaac Newton
Cambridge University, 1855©

I find that I'm with Queen Victoria

 As hereditary an authority as
 one could summon to mind, on
 the dual risks of removal
 from office - for an oddity
 of the head, or for simply
 having one attached to one's
 neck - her perplexity with a
 system of popular government
 was incurable, especially in
 view of who'd determine that.

  These are trying moments,
  and it seems to me a
  defect in our much-famed
  constitution to have to
  part with an admirable
  government like Lord Sal-
  isbury's for no question
  of any importance, or any
  particular reason, merely
  on account of the number
  of votes.











 To whose predicament is Her
 Majesty's aperçu now more
 applicable, than those to
 whom the burden falls, of
 tidying up the government
 of the United States, from
 the top? Far from querying
 the prohibitive immensity
 of his popularity, the jan-
 itors need merely to act on
 the oddity or the existence
 of his head. All else is
 bound to fall into place,
 without all this unseemli-
 ness of constitutionality.

 No stranger to internation-
 al treachery in the miscon-
 duct of states, Her Majesty
 clarified entirely how to
 adjust to such interventions.

John Julius Norwich
More Christmas Crackers
  Citing Peter Vansittart
    In Memory of England
Viking, 1990©

Couldn't they maybe go somewhere else?

Once again, we're all old enough to
remember the late Mohammed Reza Pah-
lavi, Shah of Iran in the good old
days of CIA-bespoke hegemons around
the world. Enthrallingly rich, ag-
onizingly beautifully spoused, and
about as interested in whose money
he was taking as any upstart pro on
the PGA tour. People will say, the
legitimate second son of the Prince
of Wales conjures more the profile
of his regal late great-great-uncle,
Edward VIII for a few weeks, quitter
par excellence for the woman he en-
deared himself to, with promises
neither one of them wanted to keep.

But I think the feebleness which
hangs about his proposals now re-
calls much more the nuisance fac-
tor of the late Shah, than the
lamentable maladjustments to roy-
alty of which the present Duke
is so archly proud. We remember,
how anxiously a retired fixer of
all things diplomatic, Henry Kis-
singer, attempted to gain for the
deposed Shah, persona non grata
and security risk incarnate, per-
mission to enter the United States
on the compassionate excuse of our
having doctors, whose care he was
said to require. (Disclosure: my
father-in-law was one of them).

Allowing the deposed Shah
access to any of the facilities 
of the City of New York would not
only have held our greatest con-
centration of population hostage
to recriminations from the reform
government of the mullahs; no one
could get around the streets with
any predictability, much less di-
gest the evening news without an
immense amuse bouche of his day's
progress through the shops and
suites of highest expense. For
this is admittedly the agenda of
the impossibly coddled couple who
wishes to be financially indepen-
dent - and don't everybody howl
with laughter at once - scarfing
up endorsements worth quite a
lot more to them, than their be-
smirched Royal Warrant could ever
bear to a Tate cube of demerara.
(Search "Tate sugar The 39 Steps"
and their portraits already appear).

That said, even the most besotted
groupies of Edward VIII (a matin-
ée-idol prince if ever there were
one) never pretended that he might
endure being royal while dressed,
and a free-range industrialist and
tastemaker while in Nike mufti. 
What this modernist desires is
much more beholden to the example
of the late Shah, or Virginia Hill
in Bugsy -- whatever he wants,
whenever he wants it -- and, like
his late mother, to spend the rest
of his time urging everyone to
mock the fount of his prestige. 

Didn't Aesop do a fable on this?