It’s been a Gloomy Sunday (although not gloomy enough for the suicidal connotations of that song, admittedly) and I’ve been home alone again. Much as I like my own company, in the same way one gets tired of spending too much time with any one person, I get tired of my own company sometimes. However, we jaunted out to Lewes the oth
er day to visit one of our favourite second-hand bookshops, The 15th Century Bookshop (99-100 Lewes High Street, Lewes, East Sussex www.oldenyoungbooks.co.uk) and picked up a Beverley Nichols I hadn’t read. This one is Evensong, written in 1932, telling of the decline of an opera diva (based, I presume, on Nellie Melba, as Nichols ghost-wrote her autobiography and hung out with her.)
Nichols is beautifully period, all cocktails and aristocracy, so I threw some Ivor Novello on in the background and settled down with the book and a Kir Royale. This is how Sundays ought to be spent.
Kir Royales
Kir Royale
Cheap cava, with a slug of Crème de Cassis in the bottom. Slowly sipped throughout the day
Ivor Novello
The Dancing Years was the first I ever heard, at the great-aunt and uncle’s house in Chertsey, on a dodgy old video. We’ll Gather Lilacs is probably the most famous.
Beverley Nichols
I think this book may contain first recorded use of the expression “jell”:
The number came through. Irela snatched the telephone, and Pauline listened to this astonishing conversation.
‘Baba – darling! I’m very jell!’ (A high laugh, quickly followed by a frown, and an aside, ‘The damned fool doesn’t understand a word of English.’) Then again in a crooning voice…’Very jealous, darling.’
(Evensong, Beverley Nichols, Jonathan Cape, 1932, p 219)
@shallispellthat
View From The Basement 
Leave a comment