A Writer's Diary (16 page)

The colour for some moments was of the most lovely kind—fresh, various; here blue and there brown; all new colours, as if washed over and repainted.

Tuesday, September 18th

A thousand things to be written had I time: had I power. A very little writing uses up my capacity for writing.

Laughton Place and Philip Ritchie's
^*
death.

These as it happened synchronised. When Vita was here 10 days ago we drove over to Laughton and I broke in and explored the house. It seemed, that sunny morning, so beautiful, so peaceful; and as if it had endless old rooms. So I come home boiling with the idea of buying it; and so fired L. that we wrote to the farmer, Mr. Russell, and waited, all on wires, edgy, excited for an answer. He came himself, after some days; and we were to go and see it. This arranged, and our hopes very high, I opened the
Morning Post
and read the death of Philip Ritchie. "He can't take houses, poor Philip" I thought. And then the usual procession of images went through my mind. Also, I think for the first time, I felt this death leaves me an elderly luggard; makes me feel I have no right to go on; as if my life were at the expense of his. And I had not been kind; not asked him to dinner and so on. So the two feelings—about buying the house and his death—fought each other; and sometimes the house won and sometimes death won; and we went to see the house and it turned out unspeakably dreary; all patched and spoilt; with grained oak and grey paper; a sodden garden and a glaring red cottage at the back. I note the strength and vividness of feelings which suddenly break and foam away. Now I forget to think about Philip Ritchie.

One of these days, though, I shall sketch here, like a grand historical picture, the outlines of all my friends. I was thinking of this in bed last night and for some reason I thought I would begin with a sketch of Gerald Brenan. There may be something in this idea. It might be a way of writing the memoirs of one's own times during people's lifetimes. It might be a most amusing book. The question is how to do it. Vita should be Orlando, a young nobleman. There should be Lytton; and it should be truthful but fantastic. Roger. Duncan. Clive. Adrian. Their lives should be related. But I can think of more books than I shall ever be able to write. How many little stories come into my head! For instance: Ethel Sands not looking at her letters. What this implies. One might write a book of short significant separate scenes. She did not open her letters.

Tuesday, September 25th

On the opposite page I wrote notes for Shelley, I think, by mistake for my writing book.

Now let me become the annalist of Rodmell.

Thirty-five years ago, there were 160 families living here where there are now no more than 80. It is a decaying village, which loses its boys to the towns. Not a boy of them, said the Rev. Mr. Hawkesford,
^*
is being taught to plough. Rich people wanting weekend cottages buy up the old peasants' houses for fabulous sums. Monks House was offered to Mr. H. for £400; we gave £700. He refused it, saying he didn't wish to own country cottages. Now Mr. Allison will pay £1,200 for a couple and we he said might get £2,000 for this. He (Hawkesford) is an old decaying man, run to seed. His cynicism and the pleasant turn it gives his simple worn out sayings amuses me. He is sinking into old age, very shabby, loose limbed, wearing black woollen mittens. His life is receding like a tide, slowly; or one figures him as a dying candle, whose wick will soon sink into the warm grease and be extinct. To look at, he is like some aged bird; a little, small featured face, with heavily lidded smoky bright eyes; his complexion is still ruddy; but his beard is like an unweeded garden. Little hairs grow weakly all over his cheeks and two strands are drawn, like pencil marks, across his bald head. He tumbles into an armchair and tells over his stock of old village stories which always have this slightly mocking flavour as though, completely unambitious and by no means successful himself, he recouped himself by laughing slyly at the humours of the more energetic. The outlay these flashy newcomers make on their field and farms makes him sardonic. But he won't raise a finger either way; likes his cup of Indian tea, which he prefers to China, and doesn't much mind what anybody thinks. He smokes endless cigarettes and his fingers are not very clean. Talking of his well, he said, "It would be a different thing if one wanted baths"—which for some 70 years, presumably, he has done without. Then he likes a little practical talk about Aladdin lamps, for instance, and how the Rector at Iford has a device by which he makes the globe of the Veritas lamp, which is cheaper, serve. It appears that the Aladdin costs lod. and 2/-. But it blackens suddenly and is useless. Leaning over stiles, it is of lamp mantles that the two rectors talk. Or he will advise about making a garage; how Percy should cut a trench and then old Fears should line the walls with cement. That is what he advises; and I fancy many many hours of his life have passed hobnobbing with Percies and Fears about cement and trenches. Of his clerical character there is little visible. He would not buy Bowen
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a riding school he said; her sister did that. He didn't believe in it. She has a school at Rottingdean, keeps 12 horses, employs grooms and has to be at it all day, Sundays included. But having expressed his opinion in the family conclave he would leave it at that. Mrs. H. would back Bowen. She would get her way. The Rector would slouch off to his study, where he does heaven knows what. I asked him if he had work to do: a question which amused him a little. Not work, he said; but a young woman to see. And then he settled into the armchair again and so sat out a visit of over an hour and a half.

Wednesday, October 5th

I write in the sordid doss house atmosphere of approaching departure. Pinker is asleep in one chair; Leonard is signing cheques at the little deal table under the glare of the lamp. The fire is covered with ashes, since we have been burning it all day and Mrs. B. never cleans. Envelopes lie in the grate. I am writing with a pen which is feeble and wispy; and it is a sharp fine evening with a sunset, I daresay.

We went to Amberley yesterday and think of buying a house there. For it is an astonishing forgotten lovely place, between water meadows and downs. So impulsive we both are, in spite of our years.

But we are not as old as Mrs. Gray, who came to thank us for our apples. She won't send to buy, as it looks like begging, since we never take money. Her face is cut into by wrinkles; they make weals across her. She is 86 and can never remember such a summer. In her youth it was so hot in April often that they couldn't bear a sheet on them. Her youth must have been almost the same time as my father's. She is 9 years younger, I make out; born in 1841. And what did she see of Victorian England I wonder.

I can make up situations, but I cannot make up plots. That is: if I pass a lame girl I can, without knowing I do it, instantly make up a scene: (now I can't think of one). This is the germ of such fictitious gift as I have. And by the way I get letter after letter about my books and they scarcely please me.

If my pen allowed, I should now try to make out a work table, having done my last article for the
Tribune,
and now being free again. And instantly the usual exciting devices enter my mind: a biography beginning in the year 1500 and continuing to the present day, called
Orlando:
Vita; only with a change about from one sex to another. I think, for a treat, I shall let myself dash this in for a week, while...

Saturday, October 22nd

This is a book, I think I have said before, which I write after tea. And my brain was full of ideas, but I have spent them on Mr. Ashcroft and Miss Findlater, fervent admirers.

"I shall let myself dash this in for a week"—I have done nothing, nothing, nothing else for a fortnight; and am launched somewhat furtively but with all the more passion upon
Orlando:
a Biography. It is to be a small book and written by Christmas. I thought I could combine it with Fiction, but once the mind gets hot it can't stop: I walk making up phrases; sit, contriving scenes; am in short in the thick of the greatest rapture known to me; from which I have kept myself since last February, or earlier. Talk of planning a book, or waiting for an idea! Then one came in a rush; I said to pacify myself, being bored and stale with criticism and faced with that intolerable dull Fiction, "You shall write a page of a story for a treat; you shall stop sharp at 11:30 and then go on with the Romantics." I had very little idea what the story was to be about. But the relief of turning my mind that way was such that I felt happier than for months; as if put in the sun, or laid on a cushion; and after two days entirely gave up my time chart and abandoned myself to the pure delight of this farce; which I enjoy as much as I've ever enjoyed anything; and have written myself into half a headache and had to come to a halt, like a tired horse, and take a little sleeping draught last night; which made our breakfast fiery. I did not finish my egg. I am writing
Orlando
half in a mock style very clear and plain, so that people will understand every word. But the balance between truth and fantasy must be careful. It is based on Vita, Violet Trefusis, Lord Lascelles, Knole, etc.

Sunday, November 20th

I will now snatch a moment from what Morgan calls "life" to enter a hurried note. My notes have been few; life a cascade, a glissade, a torrent; all together. I think on the whole this
is
our happiest autumn. So much work; and success now; and life on easy terms; heaven knows what. My morning rushes, pell mell, from 10 to 1. I write so quick I can't get it typed before lunch. This I suppose is the main backbone of my autumn—
Orlando.
Never do I feel this, except for a morning or two, writing criticism. Today I began the third chapter. Do I learn anything? Too much of a joke perhaps for that; yet I like these plain sentences; and the externality of it for a change. It is too thin of course; splashed over the canvas; but I shall cover the ground by January 7th (I say) and then re-write.

Wednesday, November 30th

A hurried note about the lunch party, L. dining at the Cranium. An art of light talk; about people. Bogey Harris; Maurice Baring. B. H. "knows" everyone: that is no one. Freddy Fossle? Oh yes I know him; knows Lady so-and-so. Knows everyone: can't admit to not knowing. A polished, burnished diner out—Roman Catholic. In the middle M. Baring says: "But Lady B. died this morning." Sibyl says: "Say that again." "But R. M. was lunching with her yesterday," says Bogey. "Well it's in the papers she's dead," says M. B. Sibyl says: "But she was quite young. Lord Ivor asked me to meet the young man his daughter's to marry." "I know Lord Ivor," says, or would say, Bogey. "Well it's odd," says Sibyl, giving up the attempt to wrestle with the death of the young at a lunch party. So on to wigs: "Lady Charlie used to have hers curled by a sailor on deck before she got up," says Bogey. "Oh, I've known her all my life. Went yachting with them. Lady ... eyebrows fell into the soup. Sir John Cook was so fat they had to hike him up. Once he got out of bed in the middle of the night and fell on the floor, where he lay 5 hours—couldn't move. B. M. sent me a pear by the waiter with a long letter." Talk of houses and periods. All very smooth and surface talk; depends on knowing people; not on saying anything interesting. Bogey's cheeks are polished daily.

Tuesday, December 20th

This is almost the shortest day and perhaps the coldest night of the year. We are in the black heart of a terrific frost. I notice that look of black atoms in a clear air, which for some reason I can never describe to my liking. The pavement was white with great powdery flakes the other night, walking back with Roger and Helen; this was from Nessa's last Sunday—last, I fear, for many a month. But I have as usual "no time": let me count the things I should be doing this deep winter's night with Leonard at his last lecture and Pinker asleep in her chair. I should be reading Bagenal's story; Julian's play; Lord Chesterfield's letters; and writing to Hubert (about a cheque from the
Nation).
There is an irrational scale of values in my mind which puts these duties higher than mere scribbling.

This flashed to my mind at Nessa's children's party last night. The little creatures acting moved my infinitely sentimental throat. Angelica so mature and composed; all grey and silver; such an epitome of all womanliness; and such an unopened bud of sense and sensibility; wearing a grey wig and a sea coloured dress. And yet oddly enough I scarcely want children of my own now. This insatiable desire to write something before I die, this ravaging sense of the shortness and feverishness of life, make me cling, like a man on a rock, to my one anchor. I don't like the physicalness of having children of one's own. This occurred to me at Rodmell; but I never wrote it down. I can dramatise myself a parent, it is true. And perhaps I have killed the feeling instinctively; or perhaps nature does.

I am still writing the third chapter of
Orlando.
I have had of course to give up the fancy of finishing by February and printing this spring. It is drawing out longer than I meant. I have just been thinking over the scene when O. meets a girl (Nell )in the Park and goes with her to a neat room in Gerrard Street. There she will disclose herself. They will talk. This will lead to a diversion or two about women's love. This will bring in O.'s night life; and her clients (that's the word). Then she will see Dr. Johnson and perhaps write (I want somehow to quote it) To all you Ladies. So I shall get some effect of years passing; and then there will be a description of the lights of the eighteenth century burning; and the clouds of the nineteenth century rising. Then on to the nineteenth. But I have not considered this. I want to write it all over hastily and so keep unity of tone, which in this book is very important. It has to be half laughing, half serious; with great splashes of exaggeration. Perhaps I shall pluck up courage to ask
The Times
for a rise. But could I write for my Annual I would never write for another paper. How extraordinarily unwilled by me but potent in its own right, by the way,
Orlando
was! as if it shoved everything aside to come into existence. Yet I see looking back just now to March that it is almost exactly in spirit, though not in actual facts, the book I planned then as an escapade; the spirit to be satiric, the structure wild. Precisely.