Marginal Comment
PERSONAL COLUMN HAROLD NICOLSON
Sir Harold Nicolson, who died on I May at the age of eighty-one, for many years wrote a weekly essay in this journal under the heading 'Marginal Comment.' The SPECTATOR here reprints, as its tribute to the memory of a distinguished contributor, a characteristic example which first appeared in the issue 'of 25 May 1951.
At this season of the year, more acutely even than in the first weeks of autumn, we are reminded of the impermanence of beauty and of the irreparable outrage that time causes to the young. Only a few days ago the cherries were shaking their buds sturdily against the north-east gale; today the petals have fallen one by one, leaving in the centre an ugly little stalk and blob, stretching brown stamens or pistils to the embrace of Nature, preparing for the red round fruits and the delight of little birds. The apple blossoms, more wonderful this year than in any other, will follow the same sensible course; pink and white to begin with, and then settling and hardening into rough lumps of edible substance, thereby ful- filling the cycle of their nature and passing back, with a soft thump on autumn nights, through grass, through brown glutinous decay, into the final acids of the soil. The fact that all animate objects wax and wane, that this process of blossoming and decaying is more painful when observed in objects of great youthful beauty than in objects whose develop- ment is apparent only to the expert—this hate- ful deliquescence has, I admit, been commented upon with taste and acumen by poets and philosophers before my time. It is perhaps un- wise to begin an article with so trite a prelude, Yet had you been with me in the orchard this morning, had you felt upon your cheeks the fine wind dancing towards you from the Downs, had you handled those filthy little cherry stamens, had you cast a knowing ver- weil doch-look upon the bumptious apple blossom, and had you then returned to your typewriter as I have returned, and sat down by the books—you also would be oppressed by the mutability of Nature and be prepared, at the risk of platitude, to intone the same lament that Sappho sang, or du BeHay, many years ago.
The things arranged around me as I sit assume, in contrast to the falling, fleeting flowers, the semblance of immortality. Immune to the harsh cycle of the seasons, they just remain in their accustomed places, sedentary and immutable, while I, their beloved master, as I join them each morning, have shed a petal or two during the night, have advanced a millimetre closer to the day when I shall be screwed up tight in a box and covered with many feet of soil. I have found it difficult not to attribute to inanimate objects sentient emo- tions similar to my own, or to disbelieve that things that have been with me for forty years should not have acquired those feelings of affection or loathing that constant cohabitation inevitably creates. I am aware that this is a habit as foolish, sentimental and irritating as that of regarding animals as if they shared the same process of thought as the clergymen in Lincolnshire or the ladies in South Kensington by whom they are so devotedly owned. Yet although it is indeed a foolish fantasy to sup- pose that inanimate objects can acquire feelings of ,approval or disapproval, it is certainly true that we ourselves adopt to these familiar things attitudes that are intimate, personal and ex- perienced by no one else. I do not expect my nephews to feel for my shoehorn those senti- ments of affectionate and well-tried comrade- ship that I experience myself. I know that there is an old rusty pocket-knife, broken in both blades, that will be discovered when I am dead in the drawer of a dressing-table. My afflicted family will ask each other in wonder, 'Why did he keep that?' But they will never know; never will they have even an inkling of the true reason; that will remain a tight, warm little secret between myself and this ugly piece of rusted steel.
Each of these objects upon the writing-table possesses, apart from the immediate congruity of the atoms of which it is composed, an identity formed of past memories and asso- ciations. The typewriter, for instance, on which I type these words has been a constant com- panion for more than twenty-three years. In spite of the chance that it bears the name 'Remington' inscribed in letters of gold, it is, in fact, of German nationality; the back- spacer is called `R ackschalter,' and it can write a and a and a without the slightest strain. I have become intimately acquainted with every intonation of its voice and aecent, with every jerk or hesitation of its slim arms and fingers. Although in general patient and industrious, it is subject (as one might expect from some- one born in Berlin during the post-inflation period) to gusts of hysteria, to sudden move- ments of self-pity, and even occasionally, I fear, to a Wutanfall, when its ribbon turns inside-out, refuses to move backwards or for- wards like a wayward child, and in the end twists itself into a contorted piece of string. Now I myself understand and love this machine; the affection that I have always felt for the German character has enabled me to tend its moods; but when I die it will fall into uncomprehending hands, and be misunderstood by people who never knew what inflation meant to the young Germans, and who will therefore not prove forgiving to its tantrums and sweet sensitiveness. It is in such a manner that links of authentic feeling are formed between one's own character and the temperament of the inanimate things with which one daily dwells.
I raise my eyes from the keyboard and look at the other objects that are disposed upon my desk. To my right, sturdy and old- fashioned, is my old friend Wilson, with whom, or which, I still punch holes in sheets of paper when I wish to string them together. Wilson represents the only conscious theft that I ever practised in my twenty years as a Civil Ser- vant; he did not belong to me, he belonged to His Majesty's Stationery Office; I abducted him, and we have lived in bliss together ever since. Beside him are two lumps of amber, terminating in brass seals for sealing registered envelopes, the one bearing the motto 'To de thaitmaston hedit' and the other (acquired at a time of impending exile) the sad words 'Nos patriae fines et dulcia linquimus arva.' These seals are priggish, but not snobbish. Then comes the porphyry bowl, in which when I was a regular smoker I used to keep my pipes. Today it is used to receive the ashes of a single cigarette. Above it, affixed to the wall, is a drawing by Landseer of the gorgeous Lady Blessington, and above her a charming print of Mrs Thrale atrayed in black bonnet, with a cape tied tightly under her ugly little chin. Above that again is a sketch by Erich Mendel- sohn of some impossible Ecbatana; facing these, two pictures of the Shiants in the Hebrides. Two paper-weights there are, one formed of a stone from Athens, and the other, bearing traces of an -Assyrian beard, picked up at Persepolis. And beside them a silver tumbler with a little hood, bearing an inscrip- tion in Arabic to the effect that it was given in memory of the circumcision of little Rifaat in 1834. Propped against one of the diamond panes of the lattice-window is a tiny piece of coloured glass rescued from the still-smoking debris of the old House of Commons.
These bits of things, as compared to the tumbling cherry blossom, are immutable : they do not change. Yet I am aware that their present identity is as mortal as I am myself; once I die, and my memories are drained from them, they will just become little bits of dead stone, and glass, and paper. The clock upon the mantelpiece, having in later middle-age acquired acerbity of tone, repeats these sullen conclusions. It is able, with its slow, deep double tick, to form two monosyllables in any language—son gosier de metal parle tomes le, 'coignes. 'Tout passe,' it iterates, 'dead stone, dead stone, dead stone.' The advantage is, however, that, if I listen long enough, I can make it say anything I like. Nice things, nice things.
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