Word: tantalus
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Kindly Stygian. Betjeman's nostalgia is for the Victorian past; his heart is in its poor remnants, and he frankly calls himself "a case of arrested development." He was raised comfortably in London, great-grandson of a Dutch-descended Englishman who grew rich on inventions such as the tantalus, a contrivance to keep Victorian housemaids out of the port. Betjeman went to Oxford's Magdalen College, where he detested his tutor (Author C. S. Lewis), failed to get a degree because he forgot to take "divvers" (divinity...
Last week the U.S. was seriously considering a new policy of its own which might break the deadlock. The main British weapon against Iran has been the blockade. It has left the Iranians somewhat in the position of Tantalus, who was up to his neck in water but, though dying of thirst, was not able to drink it. The Iranians are up to their necks in oil but, though nearly bankrupt, they cannot sell it, because the British stop any ship that tries to carry the oil to market. The U.S. has tacitly supported the blockade; the new policy would...
...that some of the historical fabric of the picture is fairly enjoyable. It was framed in Berlin itself, and a little of the agony and destruction of the country is caught. A single little shovel digging methodically into an infinite pile of rubble is about as grimly futile as Tantalus' hopeless reach for the fruit...
...were members or friends of the ten-year-old Baker Street Irregulars (hosts at the Murray Hill dinner), a strictly stag club with branches in Boston, Chicago and Akron. Its two officers bear strictly Holmesian titles: President Christopher Morley is Gasogene-&-Tantalus (Holmes kept his whiskey in a tantalus, his soda water in a gasogene); Secretary-Treasurer Edgar W. Smith is Buttons (pageboy in several Holmes stories). Franklin Roosevelt is an Honorary Irregular. This was the first dinner of the Baker Street Irregulars to which women have been invited...
...relationship, did the Master use those profane words ["Quick, Watson, the needle!"] to his Boswell. His addiction to drugs was an early and passing phenomenon, inspired by boredom and abandoned in the maturity of his years. . . . But even in the days when the needle lay beside the gasogene and tantalus, Holmes did not stoop to call for it in such undignified terms...