Davies on Giants

From an essay on opera singer Emma Calve:

"Speaking of herself and her colleagues at the Metropolitan, she said: 'We were a race of giants.' Quite true, and in case you don't know it, being a giant is a very expensive business. The cost of food and drink, not merely for oneself but for one's fellow-giants and one's scores of attendant gnomes, is a very considerable item. And the cost of jewels for a female giant is really fabulous."

Robertson Davies, 1942, in the collection The Enthusiasms of Robertson Davies