1945

Here's an experiment of sorts. Once I get some technical issues out of the way, I will post a few songs and other scraps from each year, 1945-onward. To give a taste of time.

To start, two excerpts from Loving, published in 1945, by Henry Green. Let's begin with a death.

"Once upon a day an old butler called Eldon lay dying in his room attended by the head housemaid, Miss Agatha Burch. From time to time the other servants seperately or in chorus gave expression to proper sentiments and then went on with what they had been doing.

One name he uttered over and over. 'Ellen.'

The pointed windows of Mr Eldon's room were naked glass with no blinds or curtains. For this was in Eire where there is no blackout."

The War has seeped in everywhere.

and, later, when the head butler finds two maids dancing together in an empty wing of the castle:

"They were wheeling wheeling in each other's arms heedless at the far end where they had drawn up one of the white blinds. Above a rather low ceiling five great chandeliers swept one after the other almost to the waxed parquet floor reflecting in their hundred thousand drops the single sparkle of a distant day, again and again red velvet panelled walls, and two girls, minute in purple, dancing multiplied to eternity in these trembling pears of glass."

Green is still greatly, amazingly neglected. Buy his books here: