Regulars

The Way We Were: from Boxing Day to New Year

What Samuel Pepys and George Orwell wrote in their diaries

December 26, 2016
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26th December, 1662 Samuel Pepys writes in his diary: "Up, my wife to the making of Christmas pies all day, and I abroad to several places. To the Wardrobe. Hither come Mr Battersby; and we falling into discourse of a new book of drollery in verse, called Hudibras, I would needs go and find it out, and met with it at the Temple, cost me 2s 6d. But when I came to read it, it is so silly an abuse of the Presbyter Knight going to the wars, that I was ashamed of it; and by and by meeting at Mr Townsend's at dinner, I sold it to him for 18d." 26th December, 1938George Orwell writes from Marrakech: “Funnily enough we've been having the cold snap even here and on Xmas eve there was a heavy frost—don't know whether that is usual here, but judging by the vegetation I don't think it can be. I had the queer and rather pleasant experience of seeing the oranges and lemons on the trees frosted all over, which apparently didn't damage them. “The Atlas Mountains have been covered with snow even on the lower slopes for some time past. The Romans thought they were the end of the world, and they certainly look as if they might be. It's generally fine and bright in the daytime, but we have fires all the time. The only fuel is olive wood, because there simply isn't a wild tree for miles and miles. This is one of those countries which are very nearly desert and which just exactly support a small population of men and beasts who eat every eatable thing and burn every burnable thing on the surface, so that if there were one more person there'd be a famine. And to think that in Roman times North Africa was full of magnificent forests full of lions and elephants. “The French hardly celebrate Xmas, only the New Year. The Arabs probably celebrate the New Year, but it may not be the same as ours. They are pretty strict Mahomedans, except that owing to poverty they are not overscrupulous about what they eat. We simply haven't celebrated Xmas yet, but shall when we get a pudding that is coming from England. Eileen was ill on Xmas day and I actually forgot till the evening what day it was.” 27th December, 1963Ned Rorem, composer, writes in his journal: “The year's closing, I feel low. High at Gloria's wedding party Christmas Day after three weeks on the wagon. We're in that blurred fortnight of undifferentiated parties, snow, whisky, fudge, carols, relatives and worklessness. I did spend twenty-four hours in Philadelphia where I again admired Rosemary's indefatigability. Never idle: with all her six kids and husband John she reads more than I, and while she converses (intelligently and without excitement), she knits pretty mittens, never dropping a stitch.” 27th December, 1915Vera Brittain writes in her diary: "I had just finished dressing when a message came to say that there was a telephone message for me. I sprang up joyfully, thinking to hear in a moment the dreamed-of tones of the beloved voice. "But the telephone message was not from Roland [her fiancé] but from Clare [Roland's sister]; it was not to say that Roland had arrived, but that instead had come this telegram: 'Regret to inform you that Lieutenant RA Leighton 7th Worcesters died of wounds December 23rd. Lord Kitchener sends his sympathy.'" 27th December, 1931Virginia Woolf writes in her diary: "For 48 hours Lytton has been better, and now, Nessa says, realises that he is better, and eats; whatever he is allowed. I am therefore freely imagining a future with my old serpent to talk to, to laugh at, to abuse. I shall read his book on Shakespeare; I shall stay at Ham Spray [his house]; I shall tell him how Leonard [her husband] and I sobbed on Christmas Eve." 28th December, 1958James Pope-Hennessey writes in his journal: “The Duke of Windsor is, on first sight, much less small than I had been led to believe: he is not at all a manikin, but a well-proportioned human being. Just then his hair was blown out in tufts on either side of his head, and he was looking crumple-faced and wild, like Shaw's Dauphin. The hair is nicotine-coloured; but when he emerges from his shower and his valet's hands he looks very silken and natty and well-arranged; he has his father's eyes, and some, I fancy, of his mannerisms. He was drinking milk, for what the Duchess calls 'that lil' old ulcer'. I was soon startled to find that, except for occasionally repeating a complete story (which the Duchess stops whenever she can) he is the one member of our royal family for whom one has to make no intellectual allowances.”