Personal Pleasures (23 page)

But here is a trouble and a hindrance, that has ever impeded and hampered the dilettante in his enjoyments: one believes that one has to live, and to live one must try to earn. And who will buy these fragments, unstrung, unset, without context or coordinated form? Who will buy the fish or seaweed, shells or shrubs, caught in my drag-net, scattered loosely like the twigs of white coral and the oyster shells with which Italian fisher lads pursue the foreigner, crying
Frutto del mare?
No one (heaven forgive readers and heaven help writers) desires such loose jetsam. They desire books. And, oh, God of literature and of achieved tasks, how incompetent do I feel adequately to produce these!

¹
My thanks are due to Miss Livia Gollancz, who patiently and skilfully took down this tune straight from the bird's beak—no easy task, with so rapid a performer.

This electronic edition published in 2011 by Bloomsbury Reader

Bloomsbury Reader is a division of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, 50 Bedford Square, London WC1B 3DP

Copyright © 1990 by The Estate of Rose Macaulay

The moral right of the author has been asserted

All rights reserved
You may not copy, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise
make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means
(including without limitation electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying,
printing, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the
publisher. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication
may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages

ISBN: 9781448204113
eISBN: 9781448203529

Visit
www.bloomsburyreader.com
to find out more about our authors and their books
You will find extracts, author interviews, author events and you can
sign up for
newsletters
to be the first to hear about our latest releases and special offers