Quiet Saturday ~

 

 

 

 

 

[Taken Feb. 8.  For larger image, click on photo, lbw]

 

 

When vaudeville performer, George Burns, finally proposed to his show partner Gracie, she laughed so that he commented, "If I could have gotten that kind of laughter from an audience, I would have been successful years earlier.  I even bought a ring.  It sold for $35 but I managed to get it for $20.  It was a very special ring--the metal band actually changed colors as it aged in my pocket."

Gracie turned George down saying that she wanted security when she married and besides, she was in love with another performer Benny Ryan.  Time went on and circumstances changed.

The story of Gracie and George's courtship tomorrow. 
[Gracie wore that $20 ring for the rest of her life, until the day she died.]

~ The 50 Most Romantic Things Ever Done, Dini Von Mueffling, Doubleday, 1997.

"Oh where are you going?  Stay with me here!
     Were the vows you swore me deceiving,
                                                           deceiving?
No, I promised to love you, dear,
      But I must be leaving."

~ W. H. Auden (Feb. 21, 1907 - Sept. 29, 1973) Anglo-American poet

POETRY REVIEW - Vol 85, Number 3.


Note:  Interpretations of these lines [taken out of context] vary. 

Two Dollars & Under

Books Books Books ~ January Clearance in February!

Letter from Evelyn Waugh to Alec Waugh ~ 1936

Dear Alex,

     Many thanks for your letter of congratulation.

     I look forward greatly to bringing Laura to see you when next all three of us are in London together.  She is thin & silent, long nose, no literary ambitions, temperate but not very industrious.  I think she will suit me o.k. and I am very keen on her.  Wedding probably in February in the country.  Joan is very kindly standing me the honeymoon.  Busy looking at houses which I find very pleasant indeed.  Have found a lovely one but don't know if I can get hold of it.

Regards to your children,
Evelyn

~ The Letters of Evelyn Waugh, Edited by Mark Amory, Tricknor & Fields 1980/ George Weidenfeld & Nicolson Ltd.

Lookout on Ouse St. ~ Snow-covered Thur., Feb. 6

Looking North-West

[Photos:  Thursday, February 6, 2014. Click on Photo for larger image ~ lbw]



Sweeping the Snow Off the Bridge

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From A Very Double Life, The true story of MacKenzie King's incredible private world ~ His Sex Life, His Love Affairs, His Seances  ~

Regarding a lady by the name of Jean Greer, MacKenzie wrote late in his life about an entry in his diary for 1918,
     "There is a case of a door closing, all to one's advantage. . . . Had I married her as I evidently had been prepared to do [!]  I wd have become in all probability a citizen of the U.S. in association with large interests, not P.M. of Canada. . ."

"How did it come about that Mackenzie King, a man who so often got what he wanted, who set out with much apparent determination to find himself a wife, and who persisted in the project for a decade, ended up still a bachelor?
"There is no simple answer, but we can suggest a few obvious points.  First, King wanted too much;  he had in mind a paragon, and paragons are hard to find.  Secondly, he had extreme difficulty in making up his mind;  those doubts that had assailed him as long ago as 1898 when he was worrying about Mathilde Grossert, assailed him still.

              Dread in woman, doubt in man....
                   So the Infinite runs away.

"In these years the Infinite gradually ran away for Mackenzie King.  Finally, in the one case in which he had no doubts at all he seems to have made a fool of himself and frightened the lady off.  However, the case here may have been hopeless anyway;  it is quite possible that Miss Greer was already interested in the man she married in the following year."

~ A Very Double Life,  C. P. Stacey, 1976, Macmillan of Canada