The Journal of a Disappointed Man

January 30. Hearing Beethoven To the Queen's Hall and heard Beethoven's Fifth and Seventh Symphonies. Before the concert began I was in a fever. I kept on saying to myself, "I am going to hear the Fifth and Seventh Symphonies." I regarded myself with the most ridiculous self-adulation--I smoothed and purred over myself--a great contented Tabby cat--and all because I was so splendidly fortunate as to be about to hear Beethoven's Fifth and Seventh Symphonies. It certainly upset me a little to find there were so many other people who were singularly fortunate as well, and it upset me still more to find some of them knitting and some reading newspapers as if they waited for sausage and mashed. How I gloried in the Seventh! I can't believe there was any one present who gloried in it as I did! To be processing majestically up the steps of a great, an unimaginable palace (in the "Staircase" introduction), led by Sir Henry, is to have had at least a crowded ten minutes of glorious life--a suspicion crossed the mind at one time "Good Heavens, they're going to knight me." I cannot say if that were their intentions. But I escaped however.... I love the way in which a beautiful melody flits around the Orchestra and its various components like a beautiful bird. January 19. An Average Day After a morning of very mixed emotions and more than one annoyance ... at last sat down to lunch and a little peace and quiet with R----. We began by quoting verse at one another in open competition. Of course neither of us listened to the other's verses. We merely enjoyed the pleasure of recollecting and repeating our own. I began with Tom Moore's "Row gently here, my Gondolier." R---- guessed the author rightly at once and fidgeted until he burst out with, "The Breaths of kissing night and day"--to me an easy one. I gave, "The Moon more indolently sleeps to-night" (Baudelaire), and in reply he did a great stroke by reciting some of the old French of Frangois Villon which entirely flummuxed me.