I finally (after how many months?) finished ‘A Strange Eventful History’ the story of Ellen Terry and Henry Irving -584 pages of it. It wasn’t that it was hard going but, as a bedside book having only two or three pages read a night, that is why it took so long. The last section of the book is devoted to Gordon Craig who I wanted to talk about, but I have since discovered on my bookshelf the biography written by his son, so maybe I will leave it until I have finished that and have a more rounded picture because up to now all I can think of is that he was a totally screwed, crazy mixed up kid for his entire life. His behaviour towards women was appalling (shades of Tolstoy) though they all seemed to find him extremely attractive, in fact besotted might be a better word. I lost count of how many there were or how many children both legitimate and illegitimate. His affair with Isadora Duncan I didn’t know about and that probably lasted the longest. Her two children unfortunately drowned in an accident when the car in which they were seated was not properly secured on a river bank and rolled into the water.
But just why Craig was considered this great icon of the late nineteenth early twentieth century theatre I still have no idea. Maybe son Edward will enlighten me. His writing, seeing as to how it is about daddy, can be a wee bit on the twee side at times, for example –“a baby boy was born” Mum would have had an useful lot of trouble if a big boy had been born or if it had been a baby something else – a lemur perhaps?
So the election in the UK is over and the Tories have come in with the most votes and the most seats, but all the forecasting seemed to have been correct in that the result is a hung parliament. The talk now is all about will Beast Brown wanting to slip into bed with Beauty Nick in order to stay on in power? I can’t see it as being a particularly healthy situation.
Greece meanwhile stumbles from crisis to crisis, from strike to strike, from demonstration to demonstration and, this being Greece, not without unaccompanied and senseless violence. I am beginning to think the Greeks might have a death wish. Certainly their trade unions seem to be still living with the dinosaurs. Talking of which, evidently scientists have discovered that 4% of homo sapiens carry the Neanderthal genome – maybe that’s where the violence comes from.
And here is a thought: thirteen years of a socialist government has brought Britain virtually to its knees and ten years of a conservative government has done the same for Greece. Ain’t that weird? What does it prove? That all political parties are the same and you simply cannot trust any politician further than you can throw him, or her as the case might be? Maybe.
In the meantime Cavalier Dave is wooing Beauty Nick which does seem more logical because even if Beast Gordon won fair maiden’s hand they still wouldn’t reach a majority so what would be the point?
Do you think the whole country is panting to know the outcome? I should imagine ennui must have set in by now.