Upon a Sunday morning, then, my father was walking round the lake which he had caused to be created, regretting that he had not moved the old river bed further back, and thinking out possible fantasies in stone, torrents to fall through the hanging woods above, pavilions upon islands and decorative effects generally (a few years before, he had determined to have all the white cows in the park stenciled with a blue Chinese pattern, but the animals were so obdurate and perverse as in the end to oblige him to abandon the scheme). The lake is shaped like an hourglass or a figure-of-eight, and a bridge spans its waist. In this bridge my father met Arthur Waley advancing towards him. Each took his hat off ceremoniously and said to the other, ‘How much I wish we were going in the same direction!’ and passed on. Half an hour later they met again at the same place, having pursued their contrary courses as though they were planets whose goings and comings are immutably fixed by the sun, and repeated the salutation.
—Sir Osbert Sitwell,
(Left Hand, Right Hand!, p. 220)
