Tuesday 9 June 2009

instantaneous and frantic love (i was drunk)

December 31, 1919
I felt wakeful [after dinner] so went to the Albert Hall where there was a fancy dress ball. I managed to get in without a ticket by a subterfuge and with the help of Godfrey Wentworth whom I met at the door. He took me up to the Duke of Manchester's box where were all the lesser lights of the stage and a great quantity of champagne. Just as I was going I met Iris who introduced me to Cathleen Nesbitt.* The latter I immediately drove home, making instantaneous and frantic love to her the while. I found her charming and so she found me. I told her how much I had loved her as Jessica, Perdita and the Duchess of Malfi. I expressed a wish to kiss her feet having admired them when bare in the part of Perdita. She obligingly removed her stocking. We talked a lot of poetry, said we would arrange no further meeting lest we should spoil the romance, we would leave it to the fates. It was half past five when I got to bed and I was drunk.


Took The Duff Cooper Diaries to the loo. This was the page I flicked to. It was not a wildly brilliant plum. This is what the book is like. And you still haven't bought it. I have literally no patience with people like you.

* A famous beauty, who had been engaged to Rupert Brooke

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