Just Because: 'With Malice Toward Some'

A while ago, a friend was going through her late great-aunt's things, keeping some, giving some away ~ you know, like you do. Understanding how much I love books, she kindly passed some along to me, and among the tomes was this one, written by a Margaret Halsey (1910-1997), perfectly illustrated by a Peggy Bacon (1895-1987), and published in 1938. All hail the Internet! ~ I found out that Halsey is an American who lived in England for a brief while, and this book is about that experience. It did quite well, selling 600,000 copies and earning for its author a National Book Award for Most Original Book of 1938. I didn't know any of that while I was reading it and am so glad to know that it was appreciated as much as it should have been. I can't recall a more pleasant reading experience and hope that one day I'll be lucky enough to enjoy another such.

PART I

Arrival

May 30th

   Getting married was nothing. I had the German measles on my wedding day and a raging temperature, so that I was married under forced draught, as it were, and afterwards I went back to bed and opened a fresh box of Kleenex. That seems a long time ago. But now Henry has an exchange professorship for next winter at a small college in Devonshire, and we are sailing on the Britannic tomorrow for twelve months in Europe. Henry is tranquil. He has been to Europe several times before and is by nature as unruffled as a dish of Jello in a flat calm. But I have never traveled and the suitcases and tissue paper and coathangers have wrought me to such a white heat of excitement that I could be put on an anvil and hammered into any shape you want.

May 31st

    The incredible moment when the boat first began to move past the pier is over and done with by several hours now and I am left feeling, to tell the truth, rather flat and disheartened. Nothing, I suppose, will ever seem quite so miraculous again, and how am I to get through the long, tepid vista of the rest of my life? But Henry says that people who have been to Europe do manage somehow, and occasionally even show a degree of enthusiasm for living to ripe old ages. He submits that I am overtired and handsomely offers, if I will take a nap before dinner, to read me to sleep.

June 2nd

   We are having a storm, and the Britannic has spent two days trying to conclude a working agreement with the Atlantic Ocean and failing miserably. Henry's stomach and mine are both behaving like perfect little ladies and, as a matter of fact, I rather like that long, powerful, upward swing and the creaking, downward plunge. But it is not everybody's motion and the boat has a horribly front-line-trenches atmosphere about it. By a series of experiments, I have discovered that the bar is the safest place for a person who has any lingering fondness for human dignity and they will have to hew me out of it when we get into smooth water again. Henry, however, roves around at will. I should not like to call him insensitive, but it is my private opinion that he must have nerves like hawsers.

June 3rd

   The sun has come out again and there is only a little swell.

June 5th

   We have been reading and getting sunburned and playing Russian Bank together and Henry is still in the Ping-pong tournament. The other passengers consist of some priests and nuns; some old men who drink extensively but without flair; a handful of harassed, pathetic fathers and mothers who peer shudderingly down the ventilators in search of missing children; and a large group of beautiful, shiny-looking young people who generally travel about in a flying wedge and whose voices are distressingly reminiscent of seagulls discovering floating orange peel. We have not talked very much with these citizens, as most of the secular ones seem to be in the midst of an impromptu mating season. When we do have a few exchanges with them, they always tell Henry, on finding out that he is a teacher, that he would not believe the books they read, psychology. Under any other circumstances I would be inclined to call them dull, but as it is, my heart is too full of gratitude toward them for being well again.
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