Notes to "Anthony Powell on Aubrey, far from 'bloody boring.'"

*Right before Wood died, on November 28, 1695, of "a Total Suppression of the Urine," his acquaintance Robert South made the cruel and unforgettable crack that "if he could not make water he would have to make earth." Powell, while finding convincingly in Aubrey's favor in their quarrel, is carefuly to give Wood his due. He was

an unhappy, unhealthy, malicious, frustrated old man; but one to whom all 'pretenders to antiquity' owe a great debt. . . . He was not, on the whole, an attractive figure, but he did not lack qualities of courage and perseverance. . . . Aubrey had found in him something that was intensely sympathetic, and Wood is yet another instance in the strange annals of friendship of the unlikely human beings who can inspire deep affection.

It's that very openness to difference, to oddity, that animates A Dance to the Music of Time