Thursday 4th September, 1913: Pinsent and LW get up at 6.30, breakfast at 7.15, pay their hotel bill and take a cab to the quay to catch the steamer to Öystese. It departs at 8 am, and they have a second breakfast on board at 8.30. The boat journey takes them all along channels between islands, with good weather and good views. They lunch on board at 2 pm, and reach Öystese around 6 pm. Pinsent sleeps for a good part of the journey. The hotel landlord meets them off the steamer, and conducts them to the hotel Öystese. Pinsent describes him as ‘a quiet man – very pleasant’. At his hotel they take two single rooms and another large room which they then have converted into a private sitting room. All their rooms look out onto the fjord. Pinsent remarks on the excellent views, and deems Öystese ‘the ideal place we want’. Later they take a stroll, but Pinsent’s decision to take his camera with him upsets LW, who becomes silent and sulky when Pinsent leaves him for a moment to take a photo. His keenness to take a photo disgusts LW, who remarks on Pinsent being ‘like a man who can think of nothing – when walking – but how the country would do for a golf course’ (pga/golf-courses/courses-feature/worlds-most-beautiful-courses ). Pinsent talks to LW about the matter, and they make up. But he also remarks that LW is later in an awful neurotic state: ‘this evening he blamed himself violently and expressed the most piteous disgust with himself. At first I was rather annoyed with him – it seemed to me that his feelings were silly and rather selfish. But afterwards I could only pity him – it is obvious he is quite incapable of helping these fits’. He hopes that an outdoor life there will make LW better, since at present ‘it is no exaggeration to say that he is as bad – (in that nervous sensibility) – as people like Beethoven were. He even talks of having at times contemplated suicide’. On returning to the hotel they have supper at 8 pm, then encounter the hotel’s other occupants, almost all ten or so of whom seem to be Norwegians. After supper they go for a stroll, later returning to their hotel to play dominoes in the sitting room. At around 10.30 pm they turn in (Pinsent, pp.66-68, Kanterian, p.49).
Posted on: Wed, 04 Sep 2013 06:31:34 +0000