... having been breathed out

A number of people had disliked Lytton Strachey—Harold Nicholson for instance. I went to see him in his rooms at the Albany one evening. He was sitting in a chair when I entered, open-eyed and apparently examining me critically. He said nothing. I stood before him shuffling my feet, shifting my weight from one side to another, murmuring something about the uncontroversial weather. He continued to glare. Suddenly a sort of convulsion ran through him, and he blinked. ‘I’m afraid I’ve been asleep,’ he said. 'Would you like a drink?’ I said that I would. But the question was apparently to satisfy his curiosity rather than my thirst. We began to talk. Lytton, he told me, resembled a bearded and bitchy old woman, rude rather than witty in society, injecting with his unnaturally treble voice jets of stinging poison into otherwise convivial gatherings. After about a quarter of an hour he looked across at his own large empty glass, which stood on a table between us, and and asked: 'Another drink?’ Hesitantly I agreed. But once again he made no move, and since I could see no sign of a drink in the room, we went on talking. Ten minutes later his gaze again fell on the glass, this time with incredulity. 'Do you want another drink?’ His tone was so sharp I felt it prudent to refuse.

Next day I told this story to Duncan Grant. Without a word, he leapt up and poured me a strong gin and tonic. It was half past ten in the morning.

—Michael Holroyd, from the double preface to Lytton Strachey: The New Biography, on conducting research for the first volume of his book, in 1963 or 1964.

OH DUNCAN, basically, is my takeaway here.