Monday, August 15, 2016

Osbert

Heading for the morning bath, I find on a top shelf a book I'd quite forgotten -- Queen Mary and Others, by Osbert Sitwell (yes, Edith's brother.)  It's a handsome hardcover, which I evidently bought for 88 cents. 
It seems to be a first edition, 1975, but alas! a quick trip to Alibris.com reveals that it's still a drug on the market -- used book stores are offering copies for 99 cents today. 
Anyhow, what I set out to show you is the footnote on page 30, which I'm having trouble photographing.  Sitwell (Sir Osbert, actually) is reporting on a luncheon party --the writing style is catching -- attended by Queen Mary, and he mentions their host's son-in-law -- if you ask me, simply as an excuse to append this brief footnote, 
*Some years later, he met a strange death, by sawing off a branch on which he was standing.

5 comments:

  1. Hi Edith, Your story reminds me of the Monty Python sketch "Upperclass Twit of the Year". And i was interested to see that you also tape the price (tag) to the front page of the book. Always interesting to know what one paid for a book years later. -Nan

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  2. Hi Edith, Your story reminds me of the Monty Python sketch "Upperclass Twit of the Year". And i was interested to see that you also tape the price (tag) to the front page of the book. Always interesting to know what one paid for a book years later. -Nan

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  3. Was Kingsley Amis also at the luncheon? This sounds like something from Lucky Jim.

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  4. Some folks would say that the British aristocracy has been sawing off the branch on which it's been standing for several generations now.

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