A Writer's Recollections — Volume 2Ward, Humphry, Mrs.
General
A Writer's Recollections — Volume 2
Ward, Humphry, Mrs.
Novelists, English -- 19th century -- Biography; Novelists, English -- 20th century -- Biography; Ward, Humphry, Mrs., 1851-1920
Now about Manisty. What a fortunate beggar, to have two such
charming women in love with him! It is always so. The less a man
deserves it the more they adore him. That is the advantage you women
writers have. You always figure men as they are and women as they
ought to be. If I had the composition of the history I should never
represent two women behaving so well to one another under the
circumstances. Even American girls, according to my observation, do
not show so much toleration to their rivals, even though in the end
they carry off their man....
Your sincerely attached
W. V. HARCOURT.
Let me detach a few other figures from a gay and crowded time, the
ever-delightful and indefatigable Boni--Commendatore Boni--for instance.
To hear him talk in the Forum or hold forth at a small gathering of
friends on the problems of the earliest Italian races, and the causes
that met in the founding and growth of Rome, was to understand how no
scholar or archeologist can be quite first-rate who is not also
something of a poet. The sleepy blue eyes, so suddenly alive; the
apparently languid manner which was the natural defense against the
outer world of a man all compact of imagination and sleepless energy;
the touch in him of "the imperishable child," combined with the brooding
intensity of the explorer who is always guessing at the next riddle; the
fun, simplicity, _bonhomie_ he showed with those who knew him well--all
these are vividly present to me.
So, too, are the very different characteristics of Monseigneur Duchesne,
the French Lord Acton; like him, a Liberal, and a man of vast learning,
tarred with the Modernist brush in the eyes of the Vatican, but at heart
also like Lord Acton, by the testimony of all who know, a simple and
convinced believer.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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