Long life
Love rules
Nigel Nicolson
Othello, that paragon of the martial virtues, that proto-Powell, felt himself inca- pable of jealousy, in contrast to Iago, who was jealousy incarnate. But when Othello was driven to homicidal mania by his ill- founded suspicion of Desdemona, his jeal- ousy knew no bounds. 'I will chop her into messes,' he cried, and,
I had rather be a toad And live upon the vapour of a dungeon Than keep a corner of the thing I love For others' uses.. . That is sexual jealousy. Envy is material, covetousness of another person's money and possessions, or his gifts and accom- plishments, 'desiring this man's art and that man's scope'. One could not speak of Heathcliff's insane envy of Edgar Linton, for he coveted nothing but his wife, but it would be possible to say that Josephine envied Marie-Louise without being jealous of her, because she gave Napoleon a son and his motives were understandable.
It is no use being envious of people whose careers lie in quite different fields from one's own, and with whom competi- tion would be ludicrous. I could not envy Sir Bernard Lovell or Sebastian Coe, but I might easily be envious of the superior gifts of Michael Holroyd or Roy Jenkins, because the prizes they have won might conceivably have once been within my grasp. Writers, on the whole, are not envious people, or at least they are careful to make sure that such malice as they may feel towards a rival is only exercised behind his back. If it is true that A.L. Rowse experienced a gleam of envy when he heard that C.V. Wedgwood had been awarded the OM, he had something to be envious about, but did not proclaim it. Politicians are probably the most envious of all, and the least adept at concealing it.
Envy isn't discreditable. It is an element of ambition, a natural reaction to frustrated hopes. Imagine the feelings of the young Edwin Lutyens, the front-run- ning candidate for the design of County Hall, when he learnt that the commission had been awarded to Ralph Knott, an architect of whom he had never heard. 'All my nine months' work is lost', he wrote to his wife. It was worse than having a novel rejected by a publisher when it might be published by another. Lutyens's designs were utterly wasted. But being a man of unusual generosity and resilience, he turned to other things, and what he turned to was the Viceroy's house in New Delhi.
Jealousy, unlike envy, is impossible to suppress. It really is the green-ey'd mon- ster. I have known families declare that they have never experienced it, and I envy them. When the OED quotes someone whom they identify as G. Greene, Daintry envied him his wife, she was so rich, so dec- orative', and E. O'Brien, 'I noticed with envy that her legs were delicately tanned', the Dictionary should have pointed out that in both cases the author meant not envy, but jealously. Jealousy is as old as Achilles's fury when Agamemnon took Bri- seis away from him. It is sexual. Once expe- rienced it is never forgotten. When I was very young, just returned from the war, I saw a girl enter a ballroom on the arm of a man with whom she was much in love, hav- ing rejected mine. I felt a stab of jealousy as deep as Othello's, but instead of smoth- ering my Desdemona with a pillow, I have loved her ever since.
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