Comment: Days Like These

10 March 1884

EDMOND DE GONCOURT

observes in his journal:

"Strange how an old man of letters still feels a stupid satisfaction at seeing his work printed in a newspaper. This morning, before seven, I went downstairs two or three times in my nightshirt to see if the Gil Blas was in my letterbox and if it contained the first instalment. Then I roamed around Paris, looking for my posters. Sacrificing a quarter of my fee for the novel, I ended the day with a visit to Bing's where I paid 2,000 francs for a masterpiece by Korin, a writing-desk in gold lacquer decorated on top and inside with chrysanthemums with golden blossoms and mother-of-pearl leaves, a thing in the most wonderfully barbaric taste."

11 March 1953

NANCY MITFORD, (pictured) writes in her diary from Paris: "Three elections for the Academie Francaise just over and one more to come. These elections are seldom concluded without a great deal of canvassing, since the candidate is supposed to pay a visit to each of the immortals and respectfully beg for his vote. The visits are said to be terrifying and rather inconclusive. A few people promise to vote for their visitor, but most content themselves with assuring him that they will do their very best for him; nobody refuses definitely. Marshal Juin got in without paying a single visit but M Fernand Gregh, one of the new members, must have paid, in all, 640, because this is the 16th time in his 80 years that he has presented himself."

12 March 1944

IRIS ORIGO, in German-occupied Tuscany, writes in her diary:

"I hear the broadcast of the Pope's benediction of the faithful in Piazza San Pietro - a crowd chiefly composed of the homeless and starving refugees who have flocked into the city. It was a short address, without any political flavour: an admission of the Pope's inability to stop or mitigate the horrors of war even within his own city, a final appeal to the rulers on both sides - and to the congregation before him, a repetition of the well-known words of Christian consolation: "Come unto me, all ye that are weary and heavy-laden". Perhaps never, in all the history of suffering humanity, have these words been spoken to so great an assembly of the homeless, the penniless and the bereft."