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    A Modern Chronicle — Volume 06
    A Modern Chronicle — Volume 06
    A Modern Chronicle — Volume 06
    Ebook107 pages1 hour

    A Modern Chronicle — Volume 06

    By Winston Churchill

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    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherArchive Classics
    Release dateNov 26, 2013
    A Modern Chronicle — Volume 06
    Author

    Winston Churchill

    Sir Winston Churchill was a British military man, statesman, and Nobel-prize winning author, and, by virtue of his service during both the First and Second World Wars, is considered to be one of the greatest wartime leaders of the twentieth century. Born to the aristocracy, Churchill pursued a career in the British Army, seeing action in British India and in the Second Boer War, and later drew upon his experiences in these historic conflicts in his work as a war correspondent and writer. After retiring from active duty, Churchill moved into politics and went on to hold a number of important positions in the British government. He rose to the role of First Lord of the Admiralty during the First World War and later to the role of prime minister, a position that he held twice, from 1940-1945 and from 1951-1955. A visionary statesman, Churchill was remarkable for his ability to perceive emerging threats to international peace, and predicted the rise of Nazi Germany, the Second World War, and the Iron Curtain. In his later years Churchill returned to writing, penning the six-volume Second World War series, A History of the English-Speaking Peoples, and many other historical and biographical works. Winston Churchill died in 1965 and, after one of the largest state funerals to that point in time, was interred in his family’s burial plot.

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      A Modern Chronicle — Volume 06 - Winston Churchill

      Project Gutenberg's A Modern Chronicle, Volume 6, by Winston Churchill

      This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net

      Title: A Modern Chronicle, Volume 6

      Author: Winston Churchill

      Release Date: October 19, 2004 [EBook #5379] [Last updated. July 16, 2011]

      Language: English

      *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A MODERN CHRONICLE, VOLUME 6 ***

      Produced by David Widger

      A MODERN CHRONICLE

      By Winston Churchill

      Volume 6.

      CHAPTER VI

      CLIO, OR THALIA?

      According to the ordinary and inaccurate method of measuring time, a fortnight may have gone by since the event last narrated, and Honora had tasted at last the joys of authorship. Her name was not to appear, to be sure, on the cover of the Life and Letters of General Angus Chiltern; nor indeed, so far, had she written so much as a chapter or a page of a work intended to inspire young and old with the virtues of citizenship. At present the biography was in the crucial constructive stage. Should the letters be put in one volume, and the life in another? or should the letters be inserted in the text of the life? or could not there be a third and judicious mixture of both of these methods? Honora's counsel on this and other problems was, it seems, invaluable. Her own table was fairly littered with biographies more or less famous which had been fetched from the library, and the method of each considered.

      Even as Mr. Garrick would never have been taken for an actor in his coach and four, so our heroine did not in the least resemble George Eliot, for instance, as she sat before her mirror at high noon with Monsieur Cadron and her maid Mathilde in worshipful attendance. Some of the ladies, indeed, who have left us those chatty memoirs of the days before the guillotine, she might have been likened to. Monsieur Cadron was an artist, and his branch of art was hair-dressing. It was by his own wish he was here to-day, since he had conceived a new coiffure especially adapted, he declared, to the type of Madame Spence. Behold him declaring ecstatically that seldom in his experience had he had such hairs to work with.

      Avec une telle chevelure, l'on peut tout faire, madame. Etre simple, c'est le comble de l'art. Ca vous donne, he added, with clasped hands and a step backward, ca vous donne tout a fait l'air d'une dame de Nattier.

      Madame took the hand-glass, and did not deny that she was eblouissante. If madame, suggested Monsieur Cadron, had but a little dress a la Marie Antoinette? Madame had, cried madame's maid, running to fetch one with little pink flowers and green leaves on an ecru ground. Could any coiffure or any gown be more appropriate for an entertainment at which Clio was to preside?

      It is obviously impossible that a masterpiece should be executed under the rules laid down by convention. It would never be finished. Mr. Chiltern was coming to lunch, and it was not the first time. On her appearance in the doorway he halted abruptly in his pacing of the drawing-room, and stared at her.

      I'm sorry I kept you waiting, she said.

      It was worth it, he said. And they entered the dining room. A subdued, golden-green light came in through the tall glass doors that opened out on the little garden which had been Mrs. Forsythe's pride. The scent of roses was in the air, and a mass of them filled a silver bowl in the middle of the table. On the dark walls were Mrs. Forsythe's precious prints, and above the mantel a portrait of a thin, aristocratic gentleman who resembled the poet Tennyson. In the noonday shadows of a recess was a dark mahogany sideboard loaded with softly gleaming silver—Honora's. Chiltern sat down facing her. He looked at Honora over the roses,—and she looked at him. A sense of unreality that was, paradoxically, stronger than reality itself came over her, a sense of fitness, of harmony. And for the moment an imagination, ever straining at its leash, was allowed to soar. It was Chiltern who broke the silence.

      What a wonderful bowl! he said.

      It has been in my father's family a great many years. He was very fond of it, she answered, and with a sudden, impulsive movement she reached over and set the bowl aside.

      That's better, he declared, much as I admire the bowl, and the roses.

      She coloured faintly, and smiled. The feast of reason that we are impatiently awaiting is deferred. It were best to attempt to record the intangible things; the golden-green light, the perfumes, and the faint musical laughter which we can hear if we listen. Thalia's laughter, surely, not Clio's. Thalia, enamoured with such a theme, has taken the stage herself—and as Vesta, goddess of hearths. It was Vesta whom they felt to be presiding. They lingered, therefore, over the coffee, and Chiltern lighted a cigar. He did not smoke cigarettes.

      I've lived long enough, he said, to know that I have never lived at all. There is only one thing in life worth having.

      What is it? asked Honora.

      This, he answered, with a gesture; when it is permanent.

      She smiled.

      And how is one to know whether it would be—permanent?

      Through experience and failure, he answered quickly, we learn to distinguish the reality when it comes. It is unmistakable.

      Suppose it comes too late? she said, forgetting the ancient verse inscribed in her youthful diary: Those who walk on ice will slide against their wills.

      To admit that is to be a coward, he declared.

      Such a philosophy may be fitting for a man, she replied, but for a woman—

      We are no longer in the dark ages, he interrupted. Every one, man or woman, has the right to happiness. There is no reason why we should suffer all our lives for a mistake.

      A mistake! she echoed.

      Certainly, he said. It is all a matter of luck, or fate, or whatever you choose to call it. Do you suppose, if I could have found fifteen years ago the woman to have made me happy, I should have spent so much time in seeking distraction?

      Perhaps you could not have been capable of appreciating her—fifteen years ago, suggested Honora. And, lest he might misconstrue her remark, she avoided

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