LONDON. Sunday, October 2nd
Yes, I will allow myself a new nib. Odd how coming back here upsets my writing mood. Odder still how possessed I am with the feeling that now, aged 50, I'm just poised to shoot forth quite free straight and undeflected my bolts whatever they are. Therefore all this flitter flutter of weekly newspapers interests me not at all. These are the soul's changes. I don't believe in ageing. I believe in forever altering one's aspect to the sun. Hence my optimism. And to alter now, cleanly and sanely, I want to shuffle off this loose living randomness: people; reviews; fame; all the glittering scales; and be withdrawn, and concentrated. So I shan't run about, just yet, buying clothes, seeing people. We are off to Leicester tomorrow, to the Labour Party Conference. Then back to the fever of publishing. My C.R. doesn't cause me a single tremor. Nor Holtby's book.* I'm interested in watching what goes on for the moment without wishing to take part—a good frame of mind when one's conscious of power. Then I am backed now by the downs: the country: how happy L. and I are at Rodmell: what a free life that is—sweeping 30 or 40 miles; coming in when and how we like; sleeping in the empty house; dealing triumphantly with interruptions; and diving daily into that divine loveliness—always some walk; and the gulls on the purple plough; or going over to Tarring Neville—these are the flights I most love now—in the wide, the indifferent air. No being jerked, teased, tugged. And people come easily, flowering into intimacy in my room. But this is the past, or future. I am also reading D. H. L.† with the usual sense of frustration: and that he and I have too much in common—the same pressure to be ourselves: so that I don't escape when I read him: am suspended: what I want is to be made free of another world. This Proust does. To me Lawrence is airless, confined: I don't want this, I go on saying. And the repetition of one idea. I don't want that either. I don't want "a philosophy" in the least: I don't believe in other people's reading of riddles. What I enjoy (in the Letters) is the sudden visualisation: the great ghost springing over the wave (of the spray in Cornwall) but I get no satisfaction from his explanations of what he sees. And then it's harrowing: this panting effort after something: and "I have £6.10 left" and then Government hoofing him out, like a toad: and banning his book: the brutality of civilised society to this panting agonised man: and how futile it was. All this makes a sort of gasping in his letters. And none of it seems essential. So he pants and jerks. Then too I don't like strumming with two fingers—and the arrogance. After all, English has one million words: why confine yourself to 6? and praise yourself for so doing. But it's the preaching that rasps me. Like a person delivering judgment when only half the facts are there: and clinging to the rails and beating the cushion. Come out and see what's up here—I want to say. I mean it's so barren: so easy: giving advice on a system. The moral is, if you want to help, never systematise—not till you're 70: and have been supple and sympathetic and creative and tried out all your nerves and scopes. He died though at 45. And why does Aldous say he was an "artist"? Art is being rid of all preaching: things in themselves: the sentence in itself beautiful: multitudinous seas; daifodils that come before the swallow dares: whereas Lawrence would only say what proved something. I haven't read him of course. But in the Letters he can't listen beyond a point; must give advice; get you into the system too. Hence his attraction for those who want to be fitted: which I don't; indeed I think it a blasphemy this fitting of Carswells into a Lawrence system. So much more reverent to leave them alone: nothing else to reverence except the Carswellism of Carswell. Hence his schoolboy tweaking and smacking of anyone offered to him: Lytton, Bertie, Squire—all are suburban, unclean. His ruler coming down and measuring them. Why all this criticism of other people? Why not some system that includes the good? What a discovery that would be—a system that did not shut out.
Wednesday, November 2nd
He is a rattle headed, bolt eyed young man, raw boned, loose jointed, who thinks himself the greatest poet of all time. I daresay he is—it's not a subject that interests me enormously at the moment. What does? My own writing of course. I've just polished up the L.S. for The Times—a good one, I think, considering the currents that sway round that subject in The Times of all papers. And I have entirely remodelled my "Essay." It's to be an Essay-Novel, called The Pargiters *—and it's to take in everything, sex, education, life etc.: and come, with the most powerful and agile leaps, like a chamois, across precipices from 1880 to here and now. That's the notion anyhow, and I have been in such a haze and dream and intoxication, declaiming phrases, seeing scenes, as I walk up Southampton Row that I can hardly say I have been alive at all, since 10th October.
Everything is running of its own accord into the stream, as with Orlando. What has happened of course is that after abstaining from the novel of fact all these years—since 1919—and N. & D. is dead—I find myself infinitely delighting in facts for a change, and in possession of quantities beyond counting: though I feel now and then the tug to vision, but resist it. This is the true line, I am sure, after The Waves—The Pargiters—this is what leads naturally on to the next stages—the essay-novel.
Monday, December 19th
Yes, today I have written myself to the verge of total extinction. Praised be I can stop and wallow in coolness and downs and let the wheels of my mind—how I beg them to do this—cool and slow and stop altogether. I shall take up Flush again, to cool myself. By Heaven, I have written 60,320 words since October 11th. I think this must be far the quickest going of any of my books: comes far ahead of Orlando or the Lighthouse. But then those 60 thousand will have to be sweated and dried into 30 or 40 thousand—a great grind to come. Never mind. I have secured the outline and fixed a shape for the rest. I feel, for the first time, No I mustn't take risks crossing the road, till the book is done....
Yes, I will be free and entire and absolute and mistress of my life by October 1st, 1933. Nobody shall come here on their terms; or haul me off to them on theirs. Oh and I shall write a poet's book next. This one, however, releases such a torrent of fact as I did not know I had in me. I must have been observing and collecting these 20 years—since Jacob's Room anyhow. Such a wealth of things seen present themselves that I can't choose even—hence 60,000 words all about one paragraph. What I must do is to keep control; and not be too sarcastic; and keep the right degree of freedom and reserve. But oh how easy this writing is compared with The Waves! I wonder what the degree of carat-gold is in the two books. Of course this is external: but there's a good deal of gold—more than I'd thought—in externality. Anyhow, "what care I for my goose feather bed? I'm off to join the raggle taggle gipsies oh!" The gipsies, I say: not Hugh Walpole and Priestley—no. In truth The Pargiters is first cousin to Orlando, though the cousin is the flesh: Orlando taught me the trick of it. Now—oh but I must stop for 10 days at least—no 14—if not 21 days—now I must compose the 1880-1900 chapter, which needs skill. But I like applying skill I own. I am going to polish off my jobs: and tomorrow we go. A very fruitful varied and I think successful autumn—thanks partly to my tired heart: so I could impose terms: and I have never lived in such a race, such a dream, such a violent impulsion and compulsion—scarcely seeing anything but The Pargiters.
RODMELL. Friday, December 23rd
This is not the first day of the New Year: but the discrepancy may be forgiven.* I must write off my dejected rambling misery—having just read over the 30,000 words of Flush and come to the conclusion that they won't do. Oh what a waste—what a bore! Four months of work and heaven knows how much reading—not of an exalted kind either—and I can't see how to make anything of it. It's not the right subject for that length: it's too slight and too serious. Much good in it but would have to be much better. So here I am two days before Christmas pitched into one of my grey welters. True, it's partly over writing The Pargiters. But I can't get back into Flush ever, I feel: and L. will be disappointed; and the money loss too—that's a bore. I took it up impetuously after The Waves by way of a change: no forethought in me: and so got landed: it would nee
d a month's hard work—and even then I doubt it. In that time I might have done Dryden and Pope. And I'm thus led to begin—no to end—the year with a doleful plaint. It is blazing hot; like spring, with the bees on the flowers. Never mind; this is not a reverse of the first order—not at all.
1933
This is in fact the last day of 1932, but I am so tired of polishing off Flush—such a pressure on the brain is caused by doing ten pages daily—that I am taking a morning off and shall use it here, in my lazy way, to sum up the whole of life ... the dew pond is filling; the goldfish are dead; it is a clear pale blue eyed winter's day; and and—and my thoughts turn with excitement to The Pargiters, for I long to feel my sails blow out and to be careering with Elvira, Maggie and the rest over the whole of human life. And indeed I cannot sum this up, being tired in my head.
January 3rd, 1933
This is a little out of place,* but then so am I. We are up for Angelica's party last night and I have half an hour to spend before shooting in the new Lanchester (not ours—one lent) back to Rodmell. We have been there just short of one fortnight and I ate myself into the heart of print and solitude—so as to adumbrate a headache. And to wipe off the intensity of concentration trying to re-write that abominable dog Flush in 13 days, so as to be free—oh heavenly freedom—to write The Pargiters. I insisted upon a night of chatter.
Thursday, January 5th
I am so delighted with my own ingenuity in having after only ten years or so, made myself, in five minutes, a perfect writing board, with pen tray attached, so that I can't ever again fly into a fury bereft of ink and pen at the most critical moment of a writer's life and see my sudden sentence dissipate itself all for lack of a pen handy—and besides I'm so glad to be quit of page 100 of Flush—this the third time of writing that White-chapel scene, and I doubt if it's worth it, that I can't help disporting myself on this free blue page, which thank God in heaven, needs no re-writing. It is a wet misty day: my windows out here are all fog ... if only because I'm in sublime reading fettle: seriously I believe that the strain of The Waves weakened my concentration for months—and then all that article compressing for the C.R. I am now at the height of my powers in that line, and have read, with close and powerful attention, some 12 or 15 books since I came here. What a joy—what a sense as of a Rolls Royce engine once more purring its 70 miles an hour in my brain.... I am also encouraged to read by the feeling that I am on the flood of creativeness in The Pargiters—what a liberation that gives one—as if everything added to that torrent—all books become fluid and swell the stream. But I daresay this is a sign only that I'm doing what is rather superficial and hasty and eager. I don't know. I've another week of Flush here, and then shall come to grips with my 20 years in one chapter problem. I visualise this book now as a curiously uneven time sequence—a series of great balloons, linked by straight narrow passages of narrative. I can take liberties with the representational form which I could not dare when I wrote Night and Day—a. book that taught me much, bad though it may be.
Sunday, January 15th
I have come out here, our last morning, to write letters, so, naturally, I write this book. But then I haven't written a line these three weeks—only typed Flush, which, Heaven be praised, I "finished," almost without inverted commas, yesterday. Ah but my writing Flush has been gradually shoved out, as by a cuckoo born in the nest, by The Pargiters. How odd the mind's functions are! About a week ago, I began the making up of scenes—unconsciously: saying phrases to myself; and so, for a week, I've sat here, staring at the typewriter and speaking aloud phrases of The Pargiters. This becomes more and more maddening. It will however all be run off in a few days, when I let myself write again. I am reading Parnell. Yes; but this scene making increases the rate of my heart with uncomfortable rapidity. While I was forcing myself to do Flush my old headache came back—for the first time this autumn. Why should the Ps. make my heart jump; why should Flush stiffen the back of my neck? What connection has the brain with the body? Nobody in Harley Street could explain, yet the symptoms are purely physical and as distinct as one book is from the other.
Thursday, January 19th
It must be confessed that The Pargiters are like cuckoos in my nest—which should be Flush. I have only 50 pages to correct and send to Mabel; and these cursed scenes and dialogues will go on springing up in my head; and after correcting one page, I sit mooning for 20 minutes. I daresay this will increase the blood pressure when I come to write. But it is a tiresome bewildering distraction now.
Saturday, January 21st
Well, Flush lingers on and I cannot despatch him. That's the sad truth. I always see something I could press tighter or enwrap more completely. There's no trifling with words—can't be done: not when they're to stand "forever." So I am battening down my Pargiters, say till Wednesday—it shan't be later, I swear. And now I grow doubtful of the value of those figures. I'm afraid of the didactic: perhaps it was only that spurious passion that made me rattle away before Christmas. Anyhow I enjoyed it immensely and shall again—oh to be free, in fiction, making up my scenes again—however discreetly. Such is my cry this very fine cold January morning.
Thursday, January 26th
Well, Flush is, I swear, despatched. Nobody can say I don't take trouble with my little stories. And now, having bent my mind for 5 weeks sternly this way, I must unbend it the other—the Pargiter way. No critic ever gives full weight to the desire of the mind for change. Talk of being manysided—naturally one must go the other way. Now if I ever had the wits to go into the Shakespeare business I believe one would find the same law there—tragedy comedy and so on. Looming behind The Pargiters I can just see the shape of pure poetry beckoning me. But The Pargiters is a delightful solid possession to be enjoyed tomorrow. How bad I shall find it.
Thursday, February 2nd
Not that I much want a move in March, with The Pargiters on my hands. I am going however to work largely, spaciously, fruitfully on that book. Today I finished—rather more completely than usual—revising the first chapter. I am leaving out the interchapters—compacting them in the text: and project an appendix of dates. A good idea? And Galsworthy died two days ago, it suddenly struck me, walking just now by the Serpentine after calling on Mrs. W. (who's been dying—is recovering) with the gulls opening their scimitars—masses of gulls. Galsworthy's dead: and A. Bennett told me he simply couldn't stick Galsworthy. Had to praise Jack's books to Mrs. G. But I could say what I liked against Galsworthy. That stark man lies dead.
Saturday, March 25th
It is an utterly corrupt society I have just remarked, speaking in the person of Elvira Pargiter, and I will take nothing that it can give me etc. etc.: Now, as Virginia Woolf, I have to write—oh dear me what a bore—to the Vice Chancellor of Manchester University and say that I refuse to be made a Doctor of Letters. And to Lady Simon, who has been urgent in the matter and asks us to stay. Lord knows how I'm to put Elvira's language into polite journalese. What an odd coincidence! that real life should provide precisely the situation I was writing about. I hardly know which I am, or where: Virginia or Elvira: in the Pargiters or outside. We dined with Susan Lawrence two nights ago. A Mrs. Stocks of Manchester University was there. How delighted my husband will be to give you your degree in July! she began. And had rattled off a great deal about the delight of Manchester in seeing me hon-oured, before I had to pluck up courage and say: "But I won't take it." After that there was a general argument, with the Nevinsons, (Evelyn Sharp) Susan Lawrence etc. They all said they would take a degree from a University though not an honour from the state. They made me feel a little silly, priggish and perhaps extreme: but only superficially. Nothing would induce me to connive at all that humbug. Nor would it give me, even illicitly, any pleasure. I really believe that Nessa and I—she went with me and used my arguments about the silliness of honours for women—are without the publicity sense. Now for the polite letters. Dear Vice Chancellor—
Tuesday, March 28th
The polite letters have been sent. So far I have [not] had, nor could have had, any answer. No, thank Heaven, I need not emerge from my fiction in July to have a tuft of fur put on my head. It is the finest spring ever known—soft, hot, blue, misty.
Thursday, April 6th
Oh I'm so tired! I've written myself out over The Pargiters, this last lap. I've brought it down to Elvira in bed—the scene I've had in my mind ever so many months, but I can't write it now. It's the turn of the book. It needs a great shove to swing it round on its hinges. As usual, doubts rush in. I get it all too quick, too thin, too surface bright? Well, I'm too jaded to crunch it up, if that's so; and so shall bury it for a month—till we're back from Italy perhaps; and write on Goldsmith etc. meanwhile. Then seize on it fresh and dash it off in June, July, August, September. Four months should finish the first draft—100,000 words, I think. 50,000 words written in 5 months—my record.
Thursday, April 13th