space-usurping

Updated: June 4, 2025

But when, like Elodie, you would have to go into a shop and buy a bottle of ink and a pen and paper and envelopes and take them up to a tiny hotel bedroom shared with an untidy, space-usurping colleague, or when you would have to sit at a cafe table and write under the eyes of a not the least little bit discreet companion for even the emancipated daughters of song and dance cannot, in modesty, show themselves at cafes alone; or when you have to stand up in a post office and then there is the paper and envelope difficulty with a furious person behind you who wants to send a telegram Elodie's invariable habit when she corresponded, on the back of a picture post card, with her mother; when, in fact, you have before you the unprecedented task of writing a letter picture post cards being out of the question and a letter whose flawlessness of expression is prescribed by your vanity, or better by your nice little self-esteem, and you are confronted by such conditions as are above catalogued, human frailty may be pardoned for giving it up in despair.

William John Locke - The Mountebank