Books read or in reading.
Thursday, October 4th
A violent rain storm on the pond. The pond is covered with little white thorns; springing up and down: the pond is bristling with leaping white thorns, like the thorns on a small porcupine; bristles; then black waves; cross it; black shudders; and the little water thorns are white; a helter skelter rain and the elms tossing it up and down; the pond overflowing on one side; lily leaves tugging; the red flower swimming about; one leaf flapping; then completely smooth for a moment; then prickled; thorns like glass; but leaping up and down incessantly; a rapid smirch of shadow. Now light from the sun; green and red; shiny; the pond a sage green; the grass brilliant green; red berries on the hedges; the cows very white; purple over Asheham.
Thursday, October 11th
A brief note. In today's Lit. Sup., they advertise Men Without Art, by Wyndham Lewis: chapters on Eliot, Faulkner, Hemingway, Virginia Woolf ... Now I know by reason and instinct that this is an attack; that I am publicly demolished; nothing is left of me in Oxford and Cambridge and places where the young read Wyndham Lewis. My instinct is not to read it. And for that reason: Well, I open Keats and find: "Praise or blame has but a momentary effect on the man whose love of beauty in the abstract makes him a severe critic on his own works. My own domestic criticism has given me pain beyond what Blackwood or Quarterly could possibly inflict ... This is a mere matter of the moment—I think I shall be among the English poets after my death. Even as a matter of present interest the attempt to crush me in the Quarterly has only brought me more into notice."
Well: do I think I shall be among the English novelists after my death? I hardly ever think about it. Why then do I shrink from reading W. L.? Why am I sensitive? I think vanity: I dislike the thought of being laughed at: of the glow of satisfaction that A., B. and C. will get from hearing V. W. demolished: also it will strengthen further attacks: perhaps I feel uncertain of my own gifts: but then, I know more about them than W L.: and anyhow I intend to go on writing. What I shall do is craftily to gather the nature of the indictment from talk and reviews; and, in a year perhaps, when my book is out, I shall read it. Already I am feeling the calm that always comes to me with abuse: my back is against the wall: I am writing for the sake of writing, etc.; and then there is the queer disreputable pleasure in being abused—in being a figure, in being a martyr, and so on.
Sunday, October 14th
The trouble is I have used every ounce of my creative writing mind in The Pargiters. No headache (save what Elly calls typical migraine—she came to see L. about his strain yesterday). I cannot put spurs in my flanks. It's true I've planned the romantic chapter of notes: but I can't set to. This morning I've taken the arrow of W. L. to my heart: he makes tremendous and delightful fun of B. and B.: * calls me a peeper, not a looker; a fundamental prude; but one of the four or five living (so it seems) who is an artist. That's what I gather the flagellation amounts to: (Oh I'm underrated, Edith Sitwell says). Well: this gnat has settled and stung: and I think (12:30) the pain is over. Yes. I think it's now rippling away. Only I can't write. When will my brain revive? In 10 days I think. And it can read admirably: I began The Seasons last night ... Well: I was going to say, I'm glad that I need not and cannot write, because the danger of being attacked is that it makes one answer back—a perfectly fatal thing to do. I mean, fatal to arrange The P.s so as to meet his criticisms. And I think my revelation two years ago stands me in sublime stead: to adventure and discover and allow no rigid poses: to be supple and naked to the truth. If there is truth in W. L., well, face it: I've no doubt I'm prudish and peeping. Well then live more boldly, but for God's sake don't try to bend my writing one way or the other. Not that one can. And there is the odd pleasure too of being abused and the feeling of being dismissed into obscurity is also pleasant and salutary.
Tuesday, October 16th
Quite cured today. So the W. L. illness lasted two days. Helped off by old Ethel's bluff affection and stir yesterday by buying a blouse; by falling fast asleep after dinner.
Writing away this morning.
I am so sleepy. Is this age? I can't shake it off. And so gloomy. That's the end of the book. I looked up past diaries—a reason for keeping them, and found the same misery after Waves— after Lighthouse. I was, I remember, nearer suicide, seriously, than since 1913. It is after all natural. I've been galloping now for three months—so excited I made a plunge at my paper—well, cut that all off—after the first divine relief, of course some terrible blankness must spread. There's nothing left of the people, of the ideas, of the strain, of the whole life in short that has been racing round my brain: not only the brain; it has seized hold of my leisure; think how I used to sit still on the same railway lines—running on my book. Well, so there's nothing to be done the next two or three or even four weeks but dandle oneself; refuse to face it; refuse to think about it. This time Roger makes it harder than usual. We had tea with Nessa yesterday. Yes, his death is worse than Lytton's. Why, I wonder? Such a blank wall. Such a silence: such a poverty. How he reverberated!
Monday, October 29th
Reading Antigone. How powerful that spell is still—Greek, an emotion different from any other. I will read Plotinus: Herodotus: Homer I think.
Thursday, November 1st
Ideas that came to me last night dining with Clive; talking to Aldous * and the Kenneth Clarks.
About Roger's life: that it should be written by different people to illustrate different stages.
Youth, by Margery†
Cambridge, by Wedd?
all to be combined say by Desmond and me together. About novels: the different strata of being: the upper, under. This is a familiar idea, partly tried in the Pargiters. But I think of writing it out more closely; and now, particularly, in my critical book: showing how the mind naturally follows that order in thinking: how it is illustrated by literature.
I must now do biography and autobiography.
Friday, November 2nd
Two teeth out with a new anaesthetic: hence I write here, not seriously. And this is another pen. And my brain is very slightly frozen, like my gums. Teeth become like old roots that one breaks off. He broke and I scarcely felt. My brain frozen thinks of Aldous and the Clarks: thinks vaguely of biography; thinks am I reviewed anywhere—can't look—thinks it is a fine cold day.
I went upstairs to rinse my bleeding gum—the cocaine lasts ½ an hour; then the nerves begin to feel again—and opened the Spectator and read W. L. on me again. An answer to Spender. "I am not malicious. Several people call Mrs. W. Felicia Hemans." This I suppose is another little scratch of the cat's claws: to slip that in, by the way—"I don't say it—others do." And so they are supercilious on the next page about Sickert; and so—Well L. says I should be contemptible to mind. Yes: but I do mind for 10 minutes: I mind being in the light again, just as I was sinking into my populous obscurity. I must take a pull on myself. I don't think this attack will last more than two days. I think I shall be free from the infection by Monday. But what a bore it all is. And how many sudden shoots into nothingness open before me. But wait one moment. At the worst, should I be a quite negligible writer, I enjoy writing: I think I am an honest observer. Therefore the world will go on providing me with excitement whether I can use it or not. Also, how am I to balance W. L.'s criticism with Yeats—let alone Goldie and Morgan? Would they have felt anything if I had been negligible? And about two in the morning I am possessed of a remarkable sense of (driving eyeless) strength. And I have L. and there are his books; and our life together. And freedom, now, from money paring. And ... if only for a time I could completely forget myself, my reviews, my fame, my sink in the scale—which is bound to come now and to last about 8 or 9 years—then I should be what I mostly am: very rapid, excited, amused, intense. Odd, these extravagant ups and downs of reputation; compare the Americans in the Mercury ... No, for God's sake don't compare: let all praise and blame sink to the bottom or float to the top and let me go my ways in
different. And care for people. And let fly, in life, on all sides.
These are very sensible sayings I think. And it's all forgotten and over.
What is uppermost now is (1) the question of writing R.'s * life. Helen † came. Says both she and M.‡ wish it. So I wait. What do I feel about it? If I could be free, then here's the chance of trying biography; a splendid, difficult chance—better than trying to find a subject—that is, if I am free.
Wednesday, November 14th
And am now, 10:30 on Thursday morning, November 15th, about to tackle re-reading and re-writing The Pargiters: an awful moment.
12:45. Well, that horrid plunge has been made and I've started re-writing the Ps. Lord, Lord! Ten pages a day for 90 days. Three months. The thing is to contract: each scene to be a scene: much dramatised: contrasted: each to be carefully dominated by one interest: some generalised. At any rate this releases the usual flood and proves that only creating can bring about proportion: now, damnably disagreeable, as I see it will be—compacting the vast mass—I am using my faculties again, and all the flies and fleas are forgotten.
A note: despair at the badness of the book: can't think how I ever could write such stuff—and with such excitement: that's yesterday: today I think it good again. A note, by way of advising other Virginias with other books that this is the way of the thing: up down up down—and Lord knows the truth.
Wednesday, November 21st
Margery Fry to tea on Sunday. A long debate about the book on Roger: not very conclusive. She says she wants a study by me, reinforced with chapters on other aspects. I say, Well, but those books are unreadable. Oh of course I want you to be quite free, she says. I should have to say something about his life, I say. The family—Now there of course I'm afraid I should have to ask you to be careful, she says. The upshot of all of which is that she's to write to the N.S. asking for letters; that I'm to go through them; that we're then to discuss—so it will drag on these many months, I suppose. And I plan working at Ps: and getting in reading time with Roger's papers, so that by October next I could write, if that's the decision. But what?
Monday, December 2nd
Isn't it odd? Some days I can't read Dante at all after revising The Ps.: other days I find it very sublime and helpful. Raises one out of the chatter of words. But today (doing the scene at the Lodge) I'm too excited. I think it a good book today. I'm in the thick again. But I will stop at the end of the funeral scene and calm my brain. That is I will write the play for Christmas: Freshwater a farce—for a joke. And rig up my Contemporary Criticism article; and look around. David Cecil on fiction: a good book for readers, not for writers—all so elementary; but some good points made, from the outside. I've done though with that sort of criticism. And he's often wrong: gets W. H. wrong, I think; wants to have a profound theory. We—Bloomsbury-are dead; so says Joad. I snap my fingers at him. Lytton and I the two distractions. Poor Francis * lies in a hotel bedroom in Russell Square this rainy morning. I went in and sat with him. Quite himself with a lump on his forehead. And is aware of it all. May die under another operation, or slowly stiffen into complete paralysis. His brain may go. All this he knows; and there it was between us, as we joked. He came to the verge of it once or twice. But I can't feel any more at the moment—not after Roger. I cannot go through that again. That's my feeling. I kissed him. "This is the first time—this chaste kiss," he said. So I kissed him again. But I must not cry, I thought, and so went.
Wednesday, December 18th
Talk with Francis yesterday. He is dying: but makes no bones about it. Only his expression is quite different. Has no hope. The man says he asks every hour how long will this go on, and hopes for the end. He was exactly as usual; no wandering, no incoherence. A credit to Athens. The soul deserves to be immortal, as L. said. We walked back, glad to be alive, numb somehow. I can't use my imagination on that theme. What would it be like to lie there, expecting death? and how odd and strange a death. I write hurriedly, going to Angelica's concert this fine soft day.
Sunday, December 30th
Since I forgot to bring my writing book, I must fill up here, on loose sheets. End the year: with these cursed dogs barking: and I am sitting in my new house; and it is, of all hours, 3:10; and it is raining; and the cow has the sciatica; and we are taking her into Lewes to catch a train to London; after which we have tea at Charleston, act the play and dine there. It has been the wettest Christmas, I should say, drawing a bow at a venture, on record. Only yesterday did I manage my phantom farm walk; but pray God, with Christmas over, the rain will stop falling, Miss Emery's dogs barking.
It was stupid to come without a book, seeing that I end every morning with a head full of ideas about The Pargiters. It is very interesting to write out. I am re-writing considerably. My idea is to contract the scenes; very intense, less so; then drama; then narrative. Keeping a kind of swing and rhythm through them all. Anyhow it admits of great variety—this book. I think it shall be called Ordinary People. I finished, more or less, Maggie and Sarah, the first scene, in the bedroom: with what excitement I wrote it! And now hardly a line of the original is left. Yes, but the spirit is caught I think. I write perhaps 60 pages before I catch that. And coming back I see it hopping like a yellow canary on its perch. I want to make both'S. and M. bold characters, using character dialogue. Then we go on to Martin's visit to Eleanor: then the long day that ends with the King's death. I have sweated off 80 or 90 pages, mostly due to a fault in paging though.
End of the year: and Francis transacting his death at that nursing home in Collingham Place. The expression on his face is what I see: as if he were facing a peculiar lonely sorrow. One's own death—think of lying there alone, looking at it, at 45 or so: with a great desire to live. "And so the New Statesman's going to be the best paper that ever was, is it?" "He's dead though," (of Brimley Johnson) spoken with a kind of bitterness. None of these words are exactly right.
And here we are, chafed by the cow's lame leg and the dogs; yet as usual very happy I think: ever so full of ideas. L. finishing his Quack Quack of a morning: the Zet * crawling from one chair to the other—picking at his head.
And Roger dead. And am I to write about him? And the stirring of the embers—I mean the wish to make up as much of a fire as possible. So to get ready for the wet drive. Dogs still barking.
1935
Tuesday, January 1st
The play rather tosh; * but I'm not going to bother about making a good impression as a playwright. And I had a lovely old year's walk yesterday round the rat farm valley, by a new way and met Mr. Freeth, and talked about road making; and then into Lewes to take the car to Martin's and then home and read St. Paul and the papers. I must buy the Old Testament. I am reading the Acts of the Apostles. At last I am illuminating that dark spot in my reading. What happened in Rome? And there are seven volumes of Renan. Lytton calls him "mellifluous." Yeats and Aldous agreed, the other day, that their great aim in writing is to avoid the "literary." Aldous said how extraordinary the "literary" fetish had been among the Victorians. Yeats said that he wanted only to use the words that real people say. That his change had come through writing plays. And I said, rashly, that all the same his meaning was very difficult. And what is "the literary." That's rather an interesting question. Might go into that, if I ever write my critical book. But now I want to write On being despised. My mind will go on pumping up ideas for that. And I must finish Ordinary People: and then there's Roger and writing despised. Begin Roger in October 1935. Is that possible? Publish O.P. in October; and work at these two during 1936. Lord knows! But I must press a good deal of work in—remembering 53—54—55 are on me. And how excited I get over my ideas! And there's people to see.
Friday, January 11th
This spring will be on us all of a clap. Very windy; today; a dumb misted walk two days ago to Piddinghoe. Now the men are threshing. Nessa and Angelica and Eve yesterday. We talk a great deal about the play. An amusing incident. And I shall hire a donkey's head to take my cal
l in—by way of saying This is a donkey's work. I make out that I shall reduce The Caravan (so called suddenly) to 150,000: and shall finish re-typing in May. I wonder. It is compressed I think. And sometimes my brain threatens to split with all the meaning I think could press into it. The discovery of this book, it dawns upon me, is the combination of the external and the internal. I am using both, freely. And my eye has gathered in a good many externals in its time.
Saturday, January 19th
The play came off last night, with the result that I am drybrained this morning and can only use this book as a pillow. It was said, inevitably, to be a great success; and I enjoyed—let me see what? Bunny's praise; Oliver's; * but not much Christabel's or the standing about pumping up vivacities with David, Cory, Elizabeth Bowen: yet on the whole it is good to have an unbuttoned laughing evening once in a way. Roger's ghost knocked at the door—his portrait of Charlie Sanger was delivered in the thick of the rehearsal. And how Francis would have enjoyed this, Leonard said. These are our ghosts now. But they would applaud the attempt. So to sleep: and now, God bless my soul, as Tennyson would say, I must rinse and freshen my mind and make it work soberly on something hard. There's my Dante; and Renan. And the horrid winter lap begins; the pale unbecoming days, like an aging woman seen at 11 o'clock. However, L. and I shall go for a walk this afternoon; and that seems to me an enormous balance at the Bank! solid happiness.