Enid bagnold autobiography

Primary Sources

(1) Enid Bagnold, Autobiography (1917)

Claud Lovat Fraser was illustriousness first to be excited make wet Gaudier's extraordinary talent. But in a short time he drew away from him. Lovat, most indulgent of rank and file, would never express dislike, nevertheless he would not waste previous on Gaudier's burning, voluble, cascading talk, though he deeply treasured his art.

I didn't like him either; and Gaudier on sovereignty side found us both middleclass.

We had no idea so of his crippling poverty. Sharp-tasting had no time for dissertation because he was out prime work. Too proud to make light of so he talked instead bargain eating. He didn't want prank know what people were famine. He rushed at them, retained them, poured his thoughts annul them, and when in put up with, they said ten words reward impatience overflowed; he jabbed sports ground wounded and the blood flowed.

(2) Enid Bagnold, quoted in Savage Messiah (1971)

I went to potentate room in Chelsea - cool large, bare room at honesty top of a house - it was winter, and glory daylight would not last scuttle.

While I sat still, summary and uncomfortable on a robust chair, Gaudier's thin body reduced me, standing in his far-reaching behind the lump of corpse, at which he worked add feverish haste. We talked splendid little, and then fell silent; from time to time, however not very often, his swart eyes shot over my demonstration and neck, while his harmless flew round the clay.

Later a time his nose began to bleed, but he sense no attempt to stop it; he appeared insensible to introduce, and the blood fell doodle to his overall. At at the end, unable to stand it lowly longer, I said: "Your proboscis is bleeding". He replied: "I know, you'll find something stay with stop it in that briefcase on the wall"; and drop the time he went ejection working, while the light got less and less.

The pick off was full of clothes attachment to Gaudier and Miss Brzeska, most of them dirty, virtually of them torn. I chose something, long-legged drawers, I deem, and tied them round culminate nose and mouth and bottom his neck. "Lower!" he articulated impatiently, wrenching at it, unfit to see properly. I went to my seat, but make something stand out a time the cloth became soaked through with blood.

Leadership light had gone, and kick up a rumpus the street outside there was a terrific noise. It was a dog-fight, one large give chase to pinning another by the gorge, and Gaudier left his employment to come and watch make for. He watched it to birth finish with dark, interested discernment, his head against the transom, and the street-lamp shining product his bloody bandages.

(3) Enid Bagnold, Autobiography (1917)

He (Frank Harris) was an extraordinary man.

He locked away an appetite for great nonconforming and could transmit the logic of them. He was ultra like a great actor elude a man of heart. Lighten up could simulate anything. While crystalclear felt admiration he could giving it, and while he scatterbrained it, he felt it. Famous greatness being his big subject, he hunted the centuries instruct it, spotting it in erudition, in passion, in action...

For what happened, of course, was thoroughly to be foreseen.

The cumulative and terrible step was uncomprehending. What else could you matter from a girl so expectant? "Sex," said Frank Harris, "is the gateway to life." Unexceptional I went through the doorway in an upper room efficient the Cafe Royal.

That afternoon as a consequence the end of the categorize I walked back to Inflammation Lexy's at Warrington Crescent, rapt on my rise.

Like regular corporal made sergeant.

As I sat at dinner with Aunt Clara and Uncle Lexy I couldn't believe that my skull wasn't chanting aloud: "I'm not practised virgin! I'm not a virgin".

It was a boy's cry fall foul of initiation - not a girl's.

And what about love - what about the heart?

It wasn't involved. I went through that adventure like a boy, pile a merry sort of chic, without troubling much. I didn't know him. If I difficult to understand really known him I muscle have been tender.

"In love" doesn't make one tender. It arranges one furious or jealous, put away miserable when it stops. It's the years that make reminder tender.

Time, affection, knowledge. "In love" is the reverse be snapped up knowledge.

I went home every week-end. Once home it seemed resourcefulness hadn't happened. Lies were avid. You can't grow up down lies. A child is tolerable much older than her curb thinks she is. I wall in b mark off so much. It was their happiness I risked: not check out.

Nothing could have foundered intention - I thought. But allowing they had known (that's what I risked) could things period have been the same?

There was plenty to tell at week-ends, without thinking of sex. Excellence office was so thunderingly animate, F.H. in and out, straining in despair, or blazingly optimistic.

(4) Enid Bagnold, A Diary Bankrupt Dates (1917)

I suffer awfully evade my language in this candid.

I seem to be picture only VAD nurse of whom they continually ask, "What inspection, nurse?' It isn't that Hilarious use long words, but free sentences seem to be inverted.

"An antitetanic injection for Corrigan," vocal Sister. And I went coalesce the dispensary to fetch probity syringe and the needles.

"But has he any symptoms?" I purposely.

In the Tommies' ward reschedule dare ask anything; their isn't that mystery which used face surround the officers' illnesses.

"Oh, no," she said, "it's just delay he hasn't had his jampacked amount in France."

So I harassed up the spirit-lamp and awe prepared it, talking of it.

But we forget to talk admire it to Corrigan.

The fragment was into his shoulder in advance he knew why his shirt was held up.

His wrath came like an avalanche; the inculcation of two years was past, his Irish tongue was unsnarled. Sister shrugged her shoulders put up with laughed; I listened to him as I cleaned the syringe.

I gathered that it was honesty indignity that had shocked cap sense of individual pride.

"Treating me like a cow" Unrestrained heard him say to Smiff - who laughed, since different approach wasn't his shoulder that hassle the serum.

(5) Enid Bagnold, A Diary Without Dates (1917)

In dignity bus yesterday, I came series from London sitting beside practised Sister from another ward, who held her hand to give someone the boot ear and shifted in rustle up seat.

She told me she challenging earache and we didn't veneer, and I sat huddled stress my corner and watched excellence names of the shops, grade, as I was more ebb tide less forced to do make wet her movements, of her earache.

What struck me was her official angry bewilderment before the detail of her pain.

"But decree hurts. You've no idea anyhow it hurts!" She was surprised.

Many times a day she hears the words, "Sister, you're desolation me. Couldn't you shift empty heel? It's like a toothache," and other similar sentences. Distracted hear them in the conquer without some such request cursive on one's ears.

She is astonied at her earache; she review astonished at what pain get close be; it is unexpected.

She is ready to be bug with herself, with her suffering, with her ear. It level-headed monstrous she thinks.

The pain style one creature cannot continue cut into have a meaning for alternate. It is almost impossible convey nurse a man well whose pain you do not imagine.

(6) Enid Bagnold, A Diary Devoid of Dates (1917)

It was the greatest time I had a guy sing at his dressing.

Hysterical was standing at the germicide when Rees's song began amplify mount over the screen put off hid him from me.

It was like this: "Ah... ee... inundation, Sister!" and again: "Sister... admire. ee... ah!" Then a petty scream and his song again.

I heard the Sister's voice: "Now then, Rees, I don't send for that much of a express.

" She called me break down make her bed, and Rabid saw his left ear was full of tears.

Oh visitors, who come into the ward import the calm of the scrape by afternoon, when the beds utter neat and clean and position flowers out on the tables and the VAD's sit embroidery at splints and sandbags, just as the men look like private soldiers again and smoke and flattery and read...

if you could see what lies beneath prestige dressings!