Rebecca West on Austria

Excerpt from Black Lamb and Grey Falcon:

Proust has pointed out that if one goes on performing any action, however banal, long enough, it automatically becomes ‘wonderful’: a simple walk down a hundred yards of village street is ‘wonderful’ if it is made every Sunday by an old lady of ninety. Franz Josef had for so long risen from his camp bed at four o’clock in the morning and worked twelve or fourteen hours on his official papers that he was recognized as one of the most ‘wonderful’ of sovereigns, almost as ‘wonderful’ as Queen Victoria, though he had shown no signs of losing in age the obstinacy and lack of imagination that made him see it as his duty to preserve his court as a morgue of etiquette and his Empire as a top-heavy anachronism. He was certain of universal acclamation not only during his life but after his death, for it is the habit of the people, whenever an old man mismanages his business so that it falls to pieces as soon as he dies, to say, ‘Ah, So-and-so was wonderful! He kept things together so long as he was alive, and look what happens now he has gone!’

It was true that there was already shaping in his court a disaster that was to consume us all; but this did not appear to English eyes, largely because Austria was visited before the war only by our upper classes, who in no country noticed anything but horses, and Austrian horses were good.

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2 Responses to Rebecca West on Austria

  1. CityIslandMichael says:

    That second paragraph is ruthlessly brilliant (brilliantly ruthless?).

  2. red says:

    Yeah, you’re right. It is ruthless and it is brilliant. It gave me a bit of a chill when I first read it.

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