A Writer's Diary (17 page)

Yes, I repeat, a very happy, a singularly happy autumn.

Thursday, December 22nd

I just open this for a moment, being dull of the head, to enter a severe reprimand of myself to myself. The value of society is that it snubs one. I am meretricious, mediocre, a humbug; am getting into the habit of flashy talk. Tinsel it seemed last night at the Keynes. I was out of humour and so could see the transparency of my own sayings. Dadie said a true thing too; when V. lets her style get on top of her, one thinks only of that; when she uses clichés, one thinks what she means. But, he says, I have no logical power and live and write in an opium dream. And the dream is too often about myself.

Now with middle age drawing on and age ahead it is important to be severe on such faults. So easily might I become a harebrained egotistic woman, exacting compliments, arrogant, narrow, withered. Nessa's children (I always measure myself against her and find her much the largest, most humane of the two of us), think of her now with an admiration that has no envy in it; with some trace of the old childish feeling that we were in league together against the world; and how proud I am of her triumphant winning of all our battles; as she takes her way so nonchalantly, modestly, almost anonymously, past the goal, with her children round her; and only a little added tenderness (a moving thing in her) which shows me that she too feels wonder, surprise, at having passed so many terrors and sorrows safe....

The dream is too often about myself. To correct this; and to forget one's own sharp absurd little personality, reputation and the rest of it, one should read; see outsiders; think more; write more logically; above all be full of work; and practise anonymity. Silence in company; or the quietest statement, not the showiest; is also "medicated" as the doctors say. It was an empty party, rather, last night. Very nice here, though.

Tuesday, January 17th

Yesterday we went to Hardy's funeral. What did I think of? Of Max Beerbohm's letter, just read; or a lecture to the Newn-hamites about women's writing. At intervals some emotion broke in. But I doubt the capacity of the human animal for being dignified in ceremony. One catches a bishop's frown and twitch; sees his polished shiny nose; suspects the rapt spectacled young priest, gazing at the cross he carries, of being a humbug; catches Robert Lynd's distracted haggard eye; then thinks of the mediocrity of X.; next here is the coffin, an overgrown one; like a stage coffin, covered with a white satin cloth; bearers elderly gentlemen rather red and stiff, holding to the corners; pigeons flying outside, insufficient artificial light; procession to poets corner; dramatic "In sure and certain hope of immortality" perhaps melodramatic. After dinner at Clive's Lytton protested that the great man's novels are the poorest of poor stuff; and can't read them. Lytton sitting or lying inert, with his eyes shut, or exasperated with them open. Lady Strachey slowly fading, but it may take years. Over all this broods for me some uneasy sense of change and mortality and how partings are deaths; and then a sense of my own fame—why should this come over me? and then of its remoteness; and then the pressure of writing two articles on Meredith and furbishing up the Hardy. And Leonard sitting at home reading. And Max's letter; and a sense of the futility of it all.

Saturday, February 11th

I am so cold I can hardly hold the pen. The futility of it all—so I broke off; and have indeed been feeling that rather persistently, or perhaps I should have written here. Hardy and Meredith together sent me torpid to bed with headache. I know the feeling now, when I can't spin a sentence and sit mumbling and turning; and nothing flits by my brain, which is as a blank window. So I shut my studio door and go to bed, stuffing my ears with rubber; and there I lie a day or two. And what leagues I travel in the time! Such "sensations" spread over my spine and head directly I give them the chance; such an exaggerated tiredness; such anguishes and despairs; and heavenly relief and rest; and then misery again. Never was anyone so tossed up and down by the body as I am, I think. But it is over; and put away....

For some reason, I am hacking rather listlessly at the last chapter of
Orlando,
which was to have been the best. Always, always the last chapter slips out of my hands. One gets bored. One whips oneself up. I still hope for a fresh wind, and don't very much bother, except that I miss the fun, which was so tremendously lively all October, November and December. I have my doubts if it is not empty; and too fantastic to write at such length.

Saturday, February 18th

And I should be revising Lord Chesterfield at this moment, but I'm not. My mind is wool-gathering away about
Women and Fiction,
which I am to read at Newnham in May. The mind is the most capricious of insects—flitting, fluttering. I had thought to write the quickest most brilliant pages in
Orlando
yesterday—not a drop came, all, forsooth, for the usual physical reasons, which delivered themselves today. It is the oddest feeling: as if a finger stopped the flow of the ideas in the brain; it is unsealed and the blood rushes all over the place. Again, instead of writing
O.,
I've been racing up and down the whole field of my lecture. And tomorrow, alas, we motor; for I must get back into the book—which has brightened the last few days satisfactorily. Not that my sensations in writing are an infallible guide.

Sunday, March 18th

I have lost my writing board; an excuse for the anæmic state of this book. Indeed I only write now, in between letters, to say that
Orlando
was finished yesterday as the clock struck one. Anyhow the canvas is covered. There will be three months of close work needed, imperatively, before it can be printed; for I have scrambled and splashed and the canvas shows through in a thousand places. But it is a serene, accomplished feeling, to write, even provisionally, the End, and we go off on Saturday, with my mind appeased.

I have written this book quicker than any; and it is all a joke; and yet gay and quick reading I think; a writer's holiday. I feel more and more sure that I will never write a novel again. Little bits of rhyme come in. So we go motoring across France on Saturday and shall be back on April 17th for the summer. Time flies—oh yes; that summer should be here again; and I still have the faculty of wonder at it. The world swinging round again and bringing its green and blue close to one's eyes.

Thursday, March 22nd

These are the last pages at the end of
Orlando
and it is twenty-five minutes to one; and I have written everything I have to write and on Saturday we go abroad.

Yes it's done—
Orlando—
begun on 8th October, as a joke; and now rather too long for my liking. It may fall between stools, be too long for a joke, and too frivolous for a serious book. All this I dismiss from a mind avid only of green fields, the sun, wine; sitting doing nothing. I have been for the last 6 weeks rather a bucket than a fountain; sitting to be shot into by one person after another. A rabbit that passes across a shooting gallery, and one's friends go pop-pop. Heaven be praised, Sibyl today puts us off; which leaves Dadie only and a whole day's solitude, please Heaven, tomorrow. But I intend to control this rabbit-shooting business when I come back. And money making. I hope to settle in and write one nice little discreet article for £25 each month; and so live; without stress; and so read—what I want to read. At 46 one must be a miser; only have time for essentials. But I think I have made moral reflections enough, and should describe people, save that, when seen so colourlessly, by duty not wish, one's mind is a little slack in taking notes.

Watery blowy weather; and this time next week we shall be in the middle of France.

Tuesday, April 17th

Home again, as foretold, last night, and to settle the dust in my mind, write here. We have been across France and back—every inch of that fertile field traversed by the admirable Singer. And now towns and spires and scenes begin to rise in my mind as the rest sinks. I see Chartres in particular, the snail, with its head straight, marching across the flat country, the most distinguished of churches. The rose window is like a jewel on black velvet. The outside is very intricate yet simple; elongated; somehow preserved from the fantastic and ornate. Grey weather dashed all over this; and I remember coming in at night in the wet often and hearing the rain in hotels. Often I was bobbing up and down on my two glasses of vin du pays. It was rather a rush and a cram—as these jumbled notes testify. Once we were high up on a mountain in a snow storm; and rather afraid of a long tunnel. Twenty miles often cut us off from civilisation. One wet afternoon we punctured in a mountain village and I went in and sat with the family—a nice scrupulous polite woman, a girl who was pretty, shy, had a friend called Daisy at Earlsfield. They caught trout and wild boars. Then on we went to Florae, where I found a book—Girardin's memoirs in the old bookcase that had been sold with the house. Always some good food and hot bottles at night. Oh and my prize—£40 from the French. And Julian. And one or two hot days and the Pont du Garde in the sun; and Les Beaux (this is where Dante got his idea of Hell, Duncan said) and mounting all the time steadily was my desire for words, till I envisaged a sheet of paper and pen and ink as something of miraculous desirability—could even relish the scratch as if it were a divine kind of relief to me. And there was St. Remy and the ruins in the sun. I forget now how it all went—how thing fitted to thing; but the eminences now emerge and I noticed how, talking to Raymond at the
Nation
this afternoon, we had already pitched on the high points. Before that, crossing the
graveyard
^*
in the bitter windy rain, we saw Hope
^†
and a dark cultivated woman. But on they went past us, with the waver of an eye. Next moment I heard "Virginia" and turned and there was Hope coming back—"Jane
^‡
died yesterday," she murmured, half asleep, talking distraught, "out of herself." We kissed by Cromwell's daughter's grave, where Shelley used to walk, for Jane's death. She lay dead outside the graveyard in that back room where we saw her lately raised on her pillows, like a very old person whom life has tossed up and left; exalted, satisfied, exhausted. Hope the colour of dirty brown paper. Then to the office, then home to work here; and now to work and work, as hard as I can.

Saturday, April 21st

And I find myself again in the old driving whirlwind of writing against time. Have I ever written with it? But I vow I won't spend longer at
Orlando,
which is a freak; it shall come out in September, though the perfect artist would revoke and rewrite and polish—infinitely. But hours remain over to be filled with reading something or other—I'm not sure what. What sort of summer do I desire? Now that I have £16 to spend before July 1st (on our new system) I feel freer; can afford a dress and a hat and so may go about, a little, if I want. And yet the only exciting life is the imaginary one. Once I get the wheels spinning in my head, I don't want money much, or dress, or even a cupboard, a bed at Rodmell or a sofa.

Tuesday, April 24th

A lovely soaring summer day this; winter sent howling home to his arctic. I was reading
Othello
last night and was impressed by the volley and volume and tumble of his words; too many I should say, were I reviewing for
The Times.
He put them in when tension was slack. In the great scenes, everything fits like a glove. The mind tumbles and splashes among words when it is not being urged on; I mean, the mind of a very great master of words who is writing with one hand. He abounds. The lesser writers stint. As usual, impressed by Shakespeare. But my mind is very bare to words—English words—at the moment; they hit me, hard, I watch them bounce and spring. I've read only French for 4 weeks. An idea comes to me for an article on French; what we know of it.

Friday, May 4th

And now there's the Femina prize to record before I go off this brilliant summer day to tea with Miss Jenkins in Doughty Street. I am going dutifully, not to snub the female young. But I shall be overpowering I doubt not. But it is a wonderful day.

The prize was an affair of dull stupid hours; a function; not alarming; stupefying. Hugh Walpole saying how much he disliked my books; rather, how much he feared for his own. Little Miss Robins, like a redbreast, creeping out. "I remember your mother—the most beautiful Madonna and at the same time the most complete woman of the world. Used to come and see me in my flat" (I see this as a summer visit on a hot day). "She never confided. She would suddenly say something so unexpected, from that Madonna face, one thought it
vicious.
" This I enjoyed; nothing else made much impression. Afterwards there was the horror of having looked ugly in cheap black clothes. I cannot control this complex. I wake at dawn with a start. Also the "fame" is becoming vulgar and a nuisance. It means nothing; yet takes one's time. Americans perpetually. Croly; Gaige; offers.

Thursday, May 31st

The sun is out again; I have half forgotten
Orlando
already, since L. has read it and it has half passed out of my possession; I think it lacks the sort of hammering I should have given it if I had taken longer; is too freakish and unequal, very brilliant now and then. As for the effect of the whole, that I can't judge. Not, I think, "important" among my works. L. says a satire.

L. takes
Orlando
more seriously than I had expected. Thinks it in some ways better than the
Lighthouse:
about more interesting things, and with more attachment to life and larger. The truth is I expect I began it as a joke and went on with it seriously. Hence it lacks some unity. He says it is very original. Anyhow I'm glad to be quit this time of writing "a novel"; and hope never to be accused of it again. Now I want to write some very closely reasoned criticism; book on fiction; an essay of some sort (but not Tolstoy for
The Times). Dr. Burney's Evening Party
I think for Desmond. And then? I feel anxious to keep the hatch down; not to let too many projects come in. Something abstract poetic next time—I don't know. I rather like the idea of these Biographies of living people. Ottoline suggests herself, but no. And I must tear up all that manuscript and write a great many notes and adventure out into the world.