Читать книгу Set Down in Malice: A Book of Reminiscences онлайн

24 страница из 74

That afternoon, at the formal ceremony of “opening” the institute, my warning concerning the suffragettes was nearly prophetic. MrLloyd George, of course, did all in his power to quell the mob’s anger, but the women were violently assaulted, their breasts beaten, their clothes ripped from their backs, their hair torn by the roots from their heads.... On the edge of the mêlée I saw P.W. Wilson standing deploring it.

. . . . . . . .

It has always seemed to me an extraordinary thing that, in company with DrWalford Davies, I should have been asked some years ago to be a guest at the annual dinner of the Church Diocesan Music Society. I am always ready for adventure, of however hazardous a nature, so I accepted the invitation even after I had been told that a speech was expected from me.

Bishop Welldon, arriving late—in fact, I believe he had dined elsewhere—plumped himself on a chair next to me, and immediately began to dominate everything and everybody within a radius of twenty yards. He is one of those distressing people who will be jocular. And his jocularity is rather noisy. He laughed a great deal and rubbed his hands together. And he asked me a question and then asked me another before I had had time to answer the first. And, really, he did talk so awfully loudly.... I had come across him before in trams and shops and places of that kind, and it was always the same; he invariably talked at you.... Even in the Manchester Cathedral, where DrKendrick Pyne introduced me to him, he shouted at me and never allowed me to finish a sentence.