Memories of the future : $b Being memoirs of the years 1915‒1972, written in the year of grace 1988Knox, Ronald Arbuthnott
History
Memories of the future : $b Being memoirs of the years 1915‒1972, written in the year of grace 1988
Knox, Ronald Arbuthnott
English fiction -- 20th century; Satire, English; Twentieth century -- Forecasts
This is the best for years. I knew you’d go and do it if I let you
go careering round America without me. I always thought Wynefryde
would go first, but you’ve got ahead of her. As to assisting at the
obsequies, you may count on me. Will it be at Grey? I should like to
have old Rowlands saying, “Wilt thou on the one hand have this woman
to thy wedded wife”—or have they given up all that sort of thing
nowadays? Anyhow, I’ll mug up the service, and be word-perfect on
the night. Now, what’s he like? You might have been more generous in
your wireless: “Am engaged to short American with slight squint”
would have told me the worst at once. But of course he’s tall? You
always hated small men. I believe you’d be Mrs. Hoskyns by now,
living on Boar’s Hill and calling on the other dons’ wives, if it
weren’t for that. And pots of money, of course, or he couldn’t be
“Lord”—what a comfort to have an aristocracy who can be sure where
their next meal’s coming from! I shall lose no time in telling him
about all your lurid past, because I suppose after the second time
I’ve been to stay he’s sure to turn nasty about me and say, “My
dear, I can’t have that woman in the house again; her cigars are too
strong! it hangs in the curtains.” And then my lot would be an
Opal-less one—oh very bad! So it’s just as well he should know I
have a guilty hold over you.... The paper’s just come in, with a
wirelessed portrait of him in it—it’s even more hopeless than most
wirelessed portraits. They ought really to put “The features,
reading from left to right, are ...” underneath them. You will have
sent me a proper one by now. Only I do want you to come back, and
tell me all about him. Darling, I _am_ so excited.
Your neglected
JULIET
Canon Dives was not slow to resume a somewhat interrupted acquaintance:
his letter was, as usual, a masterpiece of diction:
MY DEAR MISS WINTERHEAD,—
So East and West have met; I hope, nay, I am sure, that you have
made choice of a suitable partner; I dare hardly hope that you have
found one worthy of you! Pray accept, from Mrs. Dives and myself,
the warmest possible felicitations. And now, you will pardon a word
or two of sermonizing from one who has watched, with a very real
interest, your brilliant career at Oxford.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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