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- Date: Sat, 15 Aug 1992 18:50:13 GMT
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- From: "'[*] Neuromancer'" <mjd@SAUL.CIS.UPENN.EDU>
- Subject: Re: The First Letter Of Each Line: Andrew J Solberg
- Comments: To: Multiple recipients of list SBRHYM-L <SBRHYM-L@SBCCVM.BITNET>
- In-Reply-To: ajm@wag.caltech.edu's message of 15 Aug 92 10:38:19 GMT
- Lines: 38
-
- In article <1992Aug15.103819.3052@cco.caltech.edu> ajm@wag.caltech.edu (Abner J.
- Mintz) writes:
- > Mr. Churchill was very drunk at a party. The hostess, outraged, exclaimed:
- > "Mr. Churchill, you are drunk!"
-
- Yes, that was Bessie Braddock. She gave good parties. I remember in
- particular she always served some sort of Dutch gin that everyone was
- ater, but she never would reveal her sources.
-
- Now of course Bessie would never have said such a thing under ordinary
- circumstances, because no matter what you think about the English, it is
- not true that they are so stupid or naive as to be surprised when a
- person becomes drunk at a party, and particularly not when the person is
- a vulgar, sensual man like Winston Churchill. In fact he was drunk,
- and the last time he had been drunk at one of Bessie's parties he had
- behaved very badly. He abused the servants, I think, and had to be
- restrained from striking the Lord Chancellor. (I wasn't at that party,
- so this is second-hand.) In any case, the story he and his friends told
- the following day was that he replied:
-
- > "Yes, Bessie, and you are ugly. But in the morning, I shall be sober."
-
- It does little credit to Winston that this was what he wished he had
- said, because once you get past the idea that it was a clever thing to
- have said on the spur of the moment (which it would have been had he
- said it on the spur of the moment and not made it up the following day
- while hung over) you realize just how devoid of real wit or quality the
- remark is. Beauty is only skin deep, and although Bessie Braddock
- wasn't beautiful, she certainly wasn't deformed either, and she was a
- particularly astute and forceful woman, a clever speaker, and a talented
- politician. If she was ugly (and I do not think she was) then in any
- case it was not her fault. On the other hand it most certainly was
- Winston's fault that he was so drunk at a party that he inconvenienced
- and embarassed his host.
- --
-
- And for to see, and eke for to be seye
- Mark-Jason Dominus mjd@central.cis.upenn.edu
-