A Writer's Diary (32 page)

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 of 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.

J
OURNEY TO
H
OLLAND,
G
ERMANY,
I
TALY AND
F
RANCE
Z
UTPHEN.
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.