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The Way We Were: New Year's Eve

Excerpts from diaries—Arnold Bennett to Andy Warhol

December 31, 2016
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31st December 1899 Arnold Bennett writes in his journal: “This year I have written 335,340 words, grand total: 228 articles and stories (including four instalments of a serial of 30,000-7,500 words each) have actually been published. Also my book of plays—Polite Farces. I have written six or eight short stories not yet published or sold. Also the greater part of a 5,000-word serial—Love and Life for Tillotson, which begins publication about April next year. Also the whole draft (80,000 words) of my Staffordshire novel Anna Tellwright. My total earnings were £592 3s. 1d [the equivalent of about £200,000 today], of which sum I have yet to receive £72 10s.” 31st December 1870 Edmond de Goncourt, in Paris during the siege by the Prussian army, writes in his journal: “In the streets of Paris, death passes death, the undertaker's waggon drives past the hearse. Outside the Madeleine today I saw three coffins, each covered with a soldier's greatcoat, with a wreath of immortelles on top. “Out of curiosity I went into Roos's, the English Butcher's shop on the Boulevard Hausmann, where I saw all sorts of weird remains. On the wall, hung in a place of honour, was the skinned trunk of young Pollux, the elephant at the Zoo; and in the midst of nameless meats and unusual horns, a boy was offering some camel's kidneys for sale. “The master-butcher was perorating to a group of women: ‘It's forty francs a pound for the fillet and the trunk ... Yes, forty francs ... You think that's dear? But I assure you I don't know how I'm going to make anything out of it. I was counting on three thousand pounds of meat and he has only yielded two thousand, three hundred ... The feet, you want to know the price of the feet? It's twenty francs ... For the other pieces, it ranges from eight francs to forty ... But let me recommend the black pudding. As you know, the elephant's blood is the richest there is. His heart weighed twenty-five pounds ... And there's onion, ladies, in my black pudding.’ “I fell back on a couple of larks which I carried off for my lunch tomorrow.” 31st December 1971Kenneth Williams writes in his diary: “Got a taxi to Gordon & Rona [Jackson]. The house was looking beautiful, with a huge Christmas tree dominating the drawing room, and I suddenly felt so safe there. These are the friends to be really cherished, because even the times when we have had disagreements are all informed by a professional awareness of what we are as actors—I suppose that is why the only really good permanent relationships that work for me are the ones with fellow artists. Gordon played "Valse Ultime" and Rona & he sang it in French & as usual it enchanted me. When I drank a champagne toast with them to 1972 as Big Ben struck, I just adored them both. They've given me a wonderful present—the Oxford Companion to Eng. Lit.!!” 31 December 1981Andy Warhol writes in his diary: “We went to Sonny Bono's wedding [to the British-born actress Susie Coelho] in Aspen. We finally found the beautiful church and we had to stand. The ceremony was already on, and they were singing beautiful songs, and the preacher finally came on and said, ‘I pronounce you, Sonny and Cherie’ - he said ‘Cherie’ instead of ‘Susie’ —and the whole audience gasped and she said, ‘My name isn't Cherie; it's Susie’: and the preacher got very upset; he said that he just knew he was going to do that, and then he said a million times, ‘Sonny and Susie, Sonny and Susie’ till the end of the ceremony. They had lighted candles and Chastity [daughter of Sonny and second wife Cher] was the flower girl. She was kind of tall. And it was really beautiful: it was snowing outside, and everybody had candles, and Susie was all in white and Sonny was crying. We were invited to the party for Sonny, but we went off to one of the halls to a New Year's Eve party instead.” 31st December, 1997Roy Strong writes in his diary: “Goodbye 1997. I shall scream if I read one more article about ‘Cool Britannia’ or ‘The People’s’ this, that or the other, or that we are witnessing a kind of ‘New Dawn’. New Labor may be refreshing but they’re not the Second Coming. All we’ve seen is a cosmetic barrage of spin-doctor speak. Nothing much has changed. How could it in seven months? I hate New Labour’s denial of our past, not that I want to wallow in heritage any more. But we’re stuck with a government that thinks that food is equivalent of a work of art like a painting or a sculpture. Are they mad?”