The war went on

Again from Henry Green's Pack My Bag:

The war went on, more and more people were killed. When our mothers visited us they often had news of relatives who had lost their lives. When they came down they were allowed to take us out to tea in the town and it was a rule we had made between ourselves that each of these times we should take a friend with us. This rule was unbreakable and it so happened that when a friend's father lost his life and his mother came down to read out his last letters home I went out with them and after tea we sat in that park I have described and they both cried over his letters as we sat with our backs against a tree. You would have thought this rule could be relaxed at such a time but there was no question of it. We always had boiled eggs when out for tea.

The passage talks about the unbreakable rules and its last sentence, "We always had boiled eggs when out for tea," is surprisingly efficient and fresh. Such is his power of mind that you are caught breathless. The kind of style I'd love to emulate.

On style

Some people's really got style. It comes so naturally to them, or so it seems. Henry Green is one such person. This from his mid-life autobiography:

They say the fox enjoys the hunt but the sound of the horn as he breaks covert must set great loneliness on him. When he knows by the cry of the pack at his heels that the huntsman has put the hounds on then surely in so far as animals can be expected to have feelings and however cruel they may be by nature fear must enter into it, he must fear for his life.

Henry Green, Pack My Bag (1940)

It's this great loneliness, beyond human loneliness, that sounds so true.