I have an idea for a "play." Summer's night. Someone on a seat. And voices speaking from the flowers.
Wednesday, January 23rd
Yes, I ought to have explained why I wrote the Sickert. I always think of things too late. I am reading The Faery Queen—with delight. I shall write about it. I took Angelica shopping. "Do you mind if I read The Heir of Redcliffe?" she said at tea, amusing me. What a curious sense the clothes sense is! Buying her coat, mine, hearing the women talk, as of race horses, about new skirts. And I am fluttered because I must lunch with Clive tomorrow in my new coat. And I can't think out what I mean about conception: the idea behind F.Q. How to express a kind of natural transition from state to state. And the air of natural beauty. It is better to read the originals. Well, Clive's lunch will jump me out of this. And now that the play is over, we must begin to see people here: and go to Hamlet and plan our spring journey. I am taking a fortnight off fiction. My mind became knotted. I think of making Theresa sing: and so lyricise the argument. Get as far from T (so called after my Sarah and Elvira provisionally). But oh heavens the duck squashy—this is from the pressed duck Jack once gave us: all juice; one squab of juice. I am reading Point Counterpoint. Not a good novel. All raw, uncooked, protesting. A descendant, oddly enough, of Mrs. H. Ward: interest in ideas; makes people into ideas. A man from America returns my letters and says he is glad to see me as I am.
Friday, February 1st
And again this morning, Friday, I'm too tired to go on with Ps. Why? Talking too much I daresay. I thought, though, I wanted "society": and saw Helen, Mary, Gillett. Ann tonight. I think The Ps. however a promising work. Only nerve vigour wanted. A day off today.
Wednesday, February 20th
Sara is the real difficulty: I can't get her into the main stream, yet she is essential. A very difficult problem; this transition business. And the burden of something that I won't call propaganda. I have a horror of the Aldous novel: that must be avoided. But ideas are sticky things: won't coalesce: hold up the creative, subconscious faculty; that's it I suppose. I've written the chophouse scene I don't know how many times.
Tuesday, February 26th
A very fine skyblue day, my windows completely filled with blue for a wonder. Mr. Riley has just mended them. And I have been writing and writing and rewriting the scene by the Round Pond. What I want to do is to reduce it all so that each sentence, though perfectly natural dialogue, has a great pressure of meaning behind it. And the most careful harmony and contrast of scene—the boats colliding etc.—has also to be arranged. Hence the extreme difficulty. But I hope perhaps tomorrow to have done, and then the dinner party and Kitty in the country should go quicker. At least I find the upper air scenes much simpler; and I think it's right to keep them so. But Lord what a lot of work still to do! It won't be done before August. And here I am plagued by the sudden wish to write an anti-Fascist pamphlet.
Wednesday, February 27th
And I've just written it all over again. But it must do this time, I say to myself. Yet I know that I must put the screw on and write some pages again. It's too jerky: too .* It's obvious that one person sees one thing and another another; and that one has to draw them together. Who was it who said through the unconscious one comes to the conscious, and then again to the unconscious?
I now feel a strong desire to stop reading F.Q.: to read Cicero's letters, and the Chateaubriand Memoirs. As far as I can see, this is the natural swing of the pendulum. To particularise after the generalisation of romantic poetry.
Monday, March 11th
How I should like, I thought some time on the drive up this afternoon, to write a sentence again! How delightful to feel it form and curve under my fingers! Since October 16th I have not written one new sentence, but only copied and typed. A typed sentence somehow differs; for one thing it is formed out of what is already there: it does not spring fresh from the mind. But this copying must go on, I see, till August. I am only now in the first war scene: with luck I shall get to E. in Oxford Street before we go in May: and spend June and July on the grand orchestral finale. Then in August I shall write again.
Saturday, March 16th
I have had three severe swingeings lately: Wyndham Lewis; Mirsky; and now Swinnerton. Bloomsbury is ridiculed; and I am dismissed with it. I didn't read W. L.: and Swinnerton only affected me as a robin affects a rhinoceros—except in the depths of the night. How resilient I am; and how fatalistic now; and how little I mind and how much; and how good my novel is; and how tired I am this morning; and how I like praise; and how full of ideas I am; and Tom and Stephen * came to tea, and Ray† and William‡ dine; and I forgot to describe my interesting talk with Nessa about my criticising her children; and I left out—I forget what. My head is numb today and I can scarcely read Osbert on Brighton, let alone Dante.
In last week's Time and Tide St. John Ervine called Lytton "that servile minded man ... that Pandar" or words to that effect. I'm thinking whether, if I write about Roger, I shall include a note, a sarcastic note, on the Bloomsbury baiters. No, I suppose not. Write them down—that's the only way.
Monday, March 18th
The only thing worth doing in this book is to stick it out: stick to the idea and don't lower it an inch, in deference to anyone. What's so odd is the way the whole thing dissolves in company and then comes back with a rush; and Swinnerton's sneers and Mirsky's—making me feel that I'm hated and despised and ridiculed—well, this is the only answer: to stick to my ideas. And I wish I need never read about myself or think about myself, anyhow till it's done, but look firmly at my object and think only of expressing it. Oh what a grind it is embodying all these ideas and having perpetually to expose my mind, opened and intensified as it is by the heat of creation, to the blasts of the outer world. If I didn't feel so much, how easy it would be to go on.
Having just written a letter about Bloomsbury I cannot control my mind enough to go on with The Ps. I woke in the night and thought of it. But whether to send it or not, I don't know. But now I must think of something else. Julian and Helen last night.
L. advised me not to send the letter and after two seconds I see he is right. It is better, he says, to be able to say we don't answer. But we suggest a comic guide to Bloomsbury by Morgan and he nibbles.
Thursday, March 21st
Too jaded again to tackle that very difficult much too crowded raid chapter. In fact I am on the verge of the usual headache—for one thing yesterday was such a scramble.
I have resolved to leave that blasted chapter here and do nothing at Rodmell. Yet, as I see, I cannot read; my mind is all tight like a ball of string. A most unpleasant variety of headache; but I think soon over. Only a little change needed. Not a real bad headache. Why make this note? Because reading is beyond me and writing is like humming a song. But what a worthless song! And it is the spring.
Monday, March 25th
And this morning, in spite of being in a rage, I wrote the whole of that d——d chapter again, in a spasm of desperation and, I think, got it right, by breaking up, the use of thought skipping and parentheses. Anyhow that's the hang of it. And I cut from 20 to 30 pages.
Wednesday, March 27th
I see I am becoming a regular diariser. The reason is that I cannot make the transition from Pargiters to Dante without some bridge. And this cools my mind. I am rather worried about the raid chapter: afraid if I compress and worry that I shall spoil. Never mind. Forge ahead and see what comes next.
Yesterday we went to the Tower, which is an impressive murderous bloody grey raven haunted military barrack prison dungeon place; like the prison of English splendour; the reformatory at the back of history; where we shot and tortured and imprisoned. Prisoners scratched their names, very beautifully, on the walls. And the crown jewels blazed, very tawdry, and there were the orders, like Spinks or a Regent Street jewellers. And we watched the Scots Guards drill: and an officer doing a kind of tiger pace up and down—a wax faced barbers block officer trained to a certain impassive
balancing. The sergeant major barked and swore. All in a hoarse bark: the men stamped and wheeled like—machines: then the officer also barked: all precise, inhuman, showing off. A degrading, stupefying sight. But in keeping with the grey walls, the cobbles, the executioner's block. People sitting on the river bank among old cannon. Steps etc. very romantic: a dungeon like feeling.
Monday, April 1st
At this rate I shall never finish the Purgatorio. But what's the use of reading with half one's mind running on Eleanor and Kitty. Oh that scene wants compacting. It's too thin run. But I shall finish it before I go away. We think of three weeks in Holland and France; a week in Rome, flying there. We went to Kew yesterday and if vegetable notes are needed this is to signify that yesterday was the prime day for cherry blossom, pear trees and magnolia. A lovely white one with black cups to the flowers; another purple tinted, just falling. Another and another. And the yellow bushes and the daffodils in the grass. So to walk through Richmond—a long walk by the ponds. I verified certain details.
Tuesday, April 9th
I met Morgan in the London Library yesterday and flew into a passion.
"Virginia, my dear," he said. I was pleased by that little affectionate familiar tag.
"Being a good boy and getting books on Bloomsbury?" I said.
"Yes. You listen. Is my book down?" he asked Mr. Mannering.
"We were just posting it," said Mr. M.
"And, Virginia, you know I'm on the Committee here," said Morgan. "And we've been discussing whether to allow ladies"—It came over me that they were going to put me on: and I was then to refuse: "Oh but they do," I said. "There was Mrs. Green."
"Yes, yes. There was Mrs. Green. And Sir Leslie Stephen said never again. She was so troublesome. And I said haven't ladies improved? But they were all quite determined. No, no, no, ladies are quite impossible. They wouldn't hear of it."
See how my hand trembles. I was so angry (also very tired) standing. And I saw the whole slate smeared. I thought how perhaps M. had mentioned my name, and they had said no no no: ladies are impossible. And so I quieted down and said nothing and this morning in my bath I made up a phrase in my book On Being Despised which is to run—a friend of mine, who was offered ... one of those prizes—for her sake the great exception was to be made—who was in short to be given an honour—I forget what ... She said And they actually thought I would take it. They were, on my honour, surprised, even at my very modified and humble rejection. You didn't tell them what you thought of them for daring to suggest that you should rub your nose in that pail of offal? I remarked. Not for a hundred years, she observed. And I will bring in M. Pattison: and I will say sympathy uses the same face required to lay 700 bricks. And I will show how you can't sit on committees if you also pour out tea—that by the way Sir L. S. spent his evenings with widow Green: yes, these flares up are very good for my book: for they simmer and become transparent: and I see how I can transmute them into beautiful clear reasonable ironical prose. God damn Morgan for thinking I'd have taken that ... And dear old Morgan comes to tea today and then sits with Berry who's had cataract.
The veil of the temple—which, whether university or cathedral, academic or ecclesiastical, I forget—was to be raised and as an exception she was to be allowed to enter in. But what about my civilisation? For 2,000 years we have done things without being paid for doing them. You can't bribe me now. Pail of offal? No: I said while very deeply appreciating the hon.... In short one must tell lies, and apply every emollient in our power to the swollen skin of our brothers' so terribly inflamed vanity. Truth is only to be spoken by those women whose fathers were pork butchers and left them a share in the pig factory.
Friday, April 12th
This little piece of rant won't be very intelligible in a year's time. Yet there are some useful facts and phrases in it. I rather itch to be at that book. But I have been skirmishing round a headache, and can't pull my weight in the morning.
Saturday, April 13th
Let me make a note that it would be much wiser not to attempt to sketch a draft of On Being Despised, or whatever it is to be called, until The Ps. is done with. I was vagrant this morning and made a rash attempt, with the interesting discovery that one can't propagate at the same time as write fiction. And as this fiction is dangerously near propaganda, I must keep my hands clear.
It's true I'm half asleep, after the Zoo and Willy. But he threw some coals on my fire: the horror of the legal profession: its immense wealth: its conventions: a Royal Commission now sitting: its hidebound hoariness and so on: worth going into one of these days: and the medical profession and the osteopaths—worth a fling of laughter. But oh dear, not now. Now for Alfieri and Nash and other notables: so happy I was reading alone last night. We saw the great dumb fish at the Zoo and the gorillas: storms of rain, cloud: and I read Annie'S. Swan on her life with considerable respect. Almost always this comes from autobiography: a liking, at least some imaginative stir: for no doubt her books, which she can't count, and has no illusions about, but she can't stop telling stories, are wash, pigs', hogs'—any wash you choose. But she is a shrewd capable old woman.
Saturday, April 20th
The scene has now changed to Rodmell, and I am writing at the table L. made (supported on a cushion) and it is raining. Good Friday was a complete fraud—rain and more rain. I tried walking along the bank and saw a mole, running on the meadow—it glides rather—is like an elongated guinea pig. Pinka * went and nuzzled it and then it managed to slide into a hole. At the same time through the rain I heard the cuckoo's song. Then I came home and read and read—Stephen Spender: too quick to stop to think: shall I stop to think? read it again? It has considerable swing and fluency; and some general ideas; but peters out in the usual litter of an undergraduate's table: wants to get everything in and report and answer all the chatter. But I want to investigate certain questions: why do I always fight shy of my contemporaries? What is really the woman's angle? Why does so much of this seem to me in the air? But I recognise my own limitation: not a good ratiocinator, Lytton used to say. Do I instinctively keep my mind from analysing, which would impair its creativeness? I think there's something in that. No creative writer can swallow another contemporary. The reception of living work is too coarse and partial if you're doing the same thing yourself. But I admire Stephen for trying to grapple with these problems. Only of course he has to hitch them round—to use his own predicament as a magnet and thus the pattern is too arbitrary: if you're not in his predicament. But as I say, I read it at a gulp without screwing my wits tight to the argument. This is a method I find very profitable: then go back and screw.
Saturday, April 27th
All desire to practise the art of a writer has completely left me. I cannot imagine what it would be like: that is, more accurately, I cannot curve my mind to the line of a book; no, nor of an article. It's not the writing but the architecting that strains. If I write this paragraph, then there is the next and then the next. But after a month's holiday I shall be as tough and springy as—say heather root: and the arches and the domes will spring into the air as firm as steel and light as cloud—but all these words miss the mark. Stephen Spender demands a letter of criticism; can't write it. Nor can I describe with any certainty Mrs. Collett, with whom both L. and I fell in love yesterday. A whippet woman; steel blue eyes; silver spotted jersey; completely free, edged, outspoken, the widow of the Lord Mayor's son, who was killed before her eyes flying. After that she broke down and the only cure she said was to go to Hong Kong and stay with Bella. From that we did not expect anything much, to tell the truth; whereas she ridiculed the Jubilee, the Lord Mayor and told us all about life in the Mansion House. The L.M. spends £20,000 out of his own pocket on his year of office; 10,000 on his sheriffdom; then buys an ermine coat for £1,000 in which to admit the King to Temple Bar. It rains; the King flashes past and the coat is spoilt. Her mother in law is a perfectly natural sensible woman who goes buying fish with a bag. The Queen gave her as a token o
f esteem two large shells engraved with the story of George and the Dragon. These mercifully are left at the Mansion House. The L.M. wears a dress that is heavy with bullion. A terrible state of display and ugliness—but she was so nice and unexpected I actually asked her to come and see us—which, had she known it, is a compliment we never never pay even the royal family.
JOURNEY TO HOLLAND, GERMANY, ITALY AND FRANCE ZUTPHEN. Monday, May 6th
Ideas that struck me.
That the more complex a vision the less it lends itself to satire: the more it understands the less it is able to sum up and make linear. For example: Shakespeare and Dostoievsky, neither of them satirise. The age of understanding: the age of destroying—and so on.
Belchamber.
A moving, in its way, completed story. But shallow. A superficial book. But also a finished one. Rounded off. Only possible if you keep one inch below; because the people, like Sainty, have to do things without diving deep; and this runs in the current; which lends itself to completeness. That is, if a writer accepts the conventions and lets his characters be guided by them, not conflict with them, he can produce an effect of symmetry: very pleasant, suggestive; but only on the surface. That is, I can't care what happens: yet I like the design. Also disgust at the cat monkey psychology, to which he is admirably faithful. A sensitive sincere mind—however, doing his embroidery and making his acute observation. Not a snob either.