From The Demons (aka The Devils, or The Possessed):

"She invited literary people, and they were immediately brought to her in great numbers. they they began to come on their own, without invitations: one would bring another. Never before had she seen men of letters like these. They were impossibly vain, but very openly so, as that was their duty. Some (though by no means all) would even turn up drunk, but they seemed to see this as evidence of some beautiful, special truth that had been discovered only the day before. All of them were strangely proud of something. On all of their faces it was written that they had just discovered some extremely important secret. They would abuse each other, and reckon it their honour. It was rather difficult to determine just what they had written; but critics, novelists, playwrights, satirists and specialists in exposes were in attendance."

<Added>

I typed it out badly - should be 'as though that was their duty'.

<Added>

Also 'they they' should be 'Then they'. My excuse is, I was typing with one hand as I held the book open with the other.

Lovely

We think it's all new but...

I just love Louis XV telling Madame de Pompadour that it was all very well for Frederick of Prussia to encourage writers at the royal table because he didn't have that many but there was no way he was going to sit down with 'all that' night after night!

Sarah

Brilliant. Both of them.

Roger, that's brilliant!

As it happens, I've just been re-reading Gaudy Night, and there's a lovely scene set in a literary cocktail party, which is too long to type out here, but I highly recommend it, for anyone who thinks that the obsession with reviews and promotions, inter-author bitchiness, and the triviality of much ostensibly literary fiction are modern phenomena... Makes me laugh every time.

Emma

There's another gorgeous 'literary/artistic' party in Titus Alone - the one in which Titus makes a rather abrupt entry

I love it!

Sarah

Great stuff Rog. Strange creatures, these writers.

JB