... John Gielgud: "charming but inattentive. In conversation sophisticated remarks patter off him like undirected raindrops."
... Bamber Gascoigne (aged 7): "a sensitive, delicate and adventuresome little boy."
... Ralph Vaughan Williams: "a very sweet man, with an impressive appearance. He is big and broad and has a large head with sharply defined features, and eyes that look far into the distance."
... Beatrix Potter (Mrs. Heelis): "an unbending, masculine, stalwart woman, with an acute business sense. She was rather tart with her dim husband and adored her sheep, not for sentimental Beatrix Potter reasons but for hard-cash Heelis ones."
... T.S. Eliot: "dark, swarthy, professorial, retiring, quizzical, diffident - a medical practitioner or undertaker's clerk."
From James Lees-Milne, Diaries, 1942-1954
Such a snapshot through the 20the century with all those names.
Posted by: Fran H-B | 02 April 2019 at 08:41 AM
I know - his work/social circle was a 'who's who'.
Posted by: Cornflower | 03 April 2019 at 07:28 PM
I like the "undertaker's clerk" comment about T S Eliot. When he was an editor at Faber & F, he was apparently famously daunting, even for some very formidable modern poets.
Posted by: lindsay bagshaw | 22 May 2019 at 06:47 PM
He crops up in this rather nice short video about the early days of Faber: https://youtu.be/ZlsrQ5UBPgw
Posted by: Cornflower | 22 May 2019 at 09:15 PM