A Writer's Diary (40 page)

Thursday, September 1st

A very fine clear September day. Sybil threatens to dine, but may put us off—should a Cabinet Minister crop up. Politics marking time. A violent attack on
Three Guineas
in
Scrutiny
by Q. Leavis. I don't think it gave me an entire single thrill of horror. And I didn't read it through. A symbol though of what wiggings are to come. But I read enough to see that it was all personal—about Queenie's own grievances and retorts to my snubs. Why I don't care more for praise or wigging I don't know. Yet it's true. A slight distaste for my biography of Roger this morning: too detailed and flat. But I must take it up tomorrow, and lay aside
P.H.
I fear. Quentin over to finish his table. We have settled to keep the roof Cornish cream colour. I found a new walk down Telscombe Valley to the river yesterday.

Oh Queenie was at once cancelled by a letter from Jane
Walker—a thousand thanks...
Three Guineas
ought to be in the hands of every English speaking man and woman etc.

Monday, September 5th

It's odd to be sitting here, looking up little facts about Roger and the M.M. in New York, with a sparrow tapping on my roof this fine September morning when it may be 3rd August 1914 ... What would war mean? Darkness, strain: I suppose conceivably death. And all the horror of friends: and Quentin: ...All that lies over the water in the brain of that ridiculous little man. Why ridiculous? Because none of it fits: encloses no reality. Death and war and darkness representing nothing that any human being from the pork butcher to the Prime Minister cares one straw about. Not liberty, not life. Merely a housemaid's dream, and we woke from that dream and had the Cenotaph to remind us of the fruits. Well, I can't spread my mind wide enough to take it in, intelligibly. If it were real, one could make something of it. But as it is it merely grumbles, in an inarticulate way, behind reality. We may hear his mad voice vociferating tonight. Nuremberg rally begun: but it goes on for another week. And what will be happening this time 10 days? Suppose we skim across, still at any moment any accident may suddenly bring out the uproar. But this time everyone's agog. That's the difference. And as we're all equally in the dark we can't cluster and group: we are beginning to feel the herd impulse: everyone asks everyone Any news? What d'you think? The only answer is Wait and see.

Old Mr. Thompsett meanwhile after driving horses to the brooks and about the fields for 74 years had died in the hospital. And L. is to read his will on Wednesday.

Saturday, September 10th

I don't feel that the crisis is real—not so real as Roger in 1910 at Gordon Square, about which I've just been writing; and now switch off with some difficulty to use the last 20 minutes that are over before lunch. Of course we may be at war this time next week. The papers each in turn warn Hitler in the same set, grim but composed words, dictated by the Government presumably, that if he forces us we shall fight. They are all equally calm and good tempered. Nothing is to be said to provoke. Every allowance is to be made. In fact we are simply marking time as calmly as possible until Monday or Tuesday, when the oracle will speak. And we mean him to know what we think. The only doubt is whether what we say reaches his own much cumbered long ears. (I'm thinking of Roger not of Hitler—how I bless Roger and wish I could tell him so, for giving me himself to think of—what a help he remains in this welter of unreality.) All these grim men appear to me like grown ups staring incredulously at a child's sand castle which for some inexplicable reason has become a real vast castle, needing gunpowder and dynamite to destroy it. Nobody in their senses can believe in it. Yet nobody must tell the truth. So one forgets. Meanwhile the aeroplanes are on the prowl, crossing the downs. Every preparation is made. Sirens will hoot in a particular way when there's the first hint of a raid. L. and I no longer talk about it. Much better to play bowls and pick dahlias. They're blazing in the sitting room, orange against the black last night. Our balcony is now up.

Tuesday, September 20th

Since I'm too stale to work—rather headachy—I may as well write a sketch roughly of the next chapter.
^*
(I've been rather absorbed in
P.H.,
hence headache. Note: fiction is far more a strain than biography—that's the excitement.)

Suppose I make a break after H.'s
^†
death (madness). A separate paragraph quoting what R. himself said. Then a break. Then begin definitely with the first meeting. That is the first impression: a man of the world, not professor or Bohemian. Then give facts in his letters to his mother. Then back to the second meeting. Pictures: talk about art: I look out of window. His persuasiveness—a certain density—wished to persuade you to like what he liked. Eagerness, absorption, stir—a kind of vibration like a hawkmoth round him. Or shall I make a scene here—at Ott.'s? Then Cple
^‡
Driving out: getting things in: his deftness in combining. Then quote the letters to R.

The first 1910 show.

The ridicule. Quote W. Blunt.

Effect on R. Another close-up.

The letter to MacColl. His own personal liberation.

Excitement. Found his method (but this wasn't lasting. His letters to V. show that he was swayed too much by her.)

Love. How to say that he never was in love?

Give the pre-war atmosphere. Ott. Duncan. France.

Letter to Bridges about beauty and sensuality. His exactingness. Logic.

Thursday, September 22nd

By mistake I wrote some pages of
Roger
here; a proof, if proof is needed, as I'm in the habit of saying, that my books are in a muddle. Yes, at this moment, there are packets of letters to V. B. 1910-1916—packets of testimonials for the Oxford Slade—endless folders, each containing different letters, press cuttings and extracts from books. In between come my own, now numerous, semiofficial
Three Guineas
letters (now sold 7,017...) No sober silent weeks of work alone all day as we'd planned, when the Bells went. I suppose one enjoys it. Yet I was just getting into the old, very old, rhythm of regular reading, first this book then that:
Roger
all the morning; walk from 2 to 4; bowls 5 to 6:30; then Madame de'Sévigné; get dinner 7:30; read
Roger;
listen to music; bind Eddie's
Candide;
read Siegfried Sassoon; and so bed at 11:30 or so. A very good rhythm; but I can only manage it for a few days it seems. Next week all broken.

Thursday, October 6th

Another 10 minutes. I'm taking a frisk at
P.H.
at which I can only write for one hour. Like the
Waves.
I enjoy it intensely: head screwed up over
Roger.
A violent storm two days ago. No walking. Apples down. Electric light cut off. We used the four 6d. candlesticks bought at Woolworths. Dinner cooked, and smoked, on dining room fire. Men now staining boards. The room will be done actually this week. Politics now a mere "I told you so ... You did. I didn't." I shall cease to
read the papers. Sink at last into contemplation. Peace for our lifetime: why not try to believe it? Can't make a push and go to'S. Remy. Want to: don't want to. Long for change: love reading'Sévigné even by candlelight. Long for London and lights; long for vintage; long for complete solitude. All this discussed with L. walking to Piddinghoe yesterday.

Friday, October 14th

Two things I mean to do when the long dark evenings come: to write, on the spur of the moment, as now, lots of little poems to go into
P.H.:
as they may come in handy: to collect, even bind together, my innumerable
T.L.S.
notes: to consider them as material for some kind of critical book: quotations? comments? ranging all through English literature as I've read it and noted it during the past 20 years.

Tuesday, November 1st

Max
^*
like a Cheshire cat. Orbicular. Jowled. Blue eyed. Eyes grow vague. Something like Bruce Richmond—all curves. What he said was, I've never been in a group. No, not even as a young man. It was a serious fault. When you're a young man you ought to think There's only one right way. And I thought This is very profound, but you mayn't realise it. "It takes all sorts to make a world." I was outside all the groups. Now dear Roger Fry who liked me, was a born leader. No one so "illuminated." He looked it. Never saw anyone look it so much. I heard him lecture, on the Aesthetics of Art. I was disappointed. He kept on turning the page—turning the page ... Hampstead hasn't yet been spoilt. I stayed at Jack Straw's Castle some years ago. My wife had been having influenza. And the barmaid, looking over her shoulder, said—my wife had had influenza twice—"Quite a greedy one aren't you?" Now that's immortal. There's all the race of barmaids in that. I suppose I've been ten times into public houses. George Moore never used his eyes. He never knew what men and women think. He got it all out of books. Ah I was afraid you would remind me of
Ave atque Vale.
Yes; that's beautiful. Yes, it's true he used his eyes
then. Otherwise it's like a lovely lake, with no fish in it.
The Brook Kerith
... Coulson Kernahan? (I told how C. K. stopped me in Hastings. Are you Edith Sitwell? No, Mrs. W. And you? Coulson Kernahan.) At this Max gobbled. Instantly said he had known him in Yellow Book days. He wrote
God and the Ant.
Sold 12 million copies. And a book of reminiscences. How I visited Lord Roberts ... The great man rose from his chair. His eyes—were they hazel? were they blue? were they brown—no they were just soldier's eyes. And he wrote, Celebrities I have not met, Max Beerbohm.

About his own writing: dear Lytton Strachey said to me: first I write one sentence: then I write another. That's how I write. And so I go on. But I have a feeling writing ought to be like running through a field. That's your way. Now how do you go down to your room, after breakfast—what do you feel? I used to look at the clock and say oh dear me, it's time I began my article ... No, I'll read the paper first. I never wanted to write. But I used to come home from a dinner party and take my brush and draw caricature after caricature. They seemed to bubble up from here ... he pressed his stomach. That was a kind of inspiration, I suppose. What you said in your beautiful essay about me and Charles Lamb was quite true. He was crazy: he had the gift: genius. I'm too like Jack Horner. I pull out my plum. It's too rounded, too perfect ... I have a public of about 1500. Oh I'm famous, largely thanks to you, and people of importance at the top like you. I often read over my own work. And I have a habit of reading it through the eyes of people I respect. I often read it as Virginia Woolf would read it—picking out the kind of things you would like. You never do that? Oh you should try it.

Isherwood and I met on the doorstep. He is a slip of a wild boy: with quicksilver eyes: nipped: jockeylike. That young man, said W. Maugham, "holds the future of the English novel in his hands." Very enthusiastic. In spite of Max's brilliance, and idiosyncrasy, which he completely realises, and does not overstep, this was a surface evening; as I proved, because I found I could not smoke the cigar which I had brought. That was on the deeper level. All kept to the same surface level by
Sybil's hostesscraft. Stories, compliments. The house: its shell like whites and silvers and greens: its panelling: its old furniture.

Wednesday, November 16th

There are very few mountain summit moments. I mean looking out at peace from a height. I made this reflection going upstairs. That is symbolical. I'm "going upstairs" now, when I write
Biography.
Shall I have a moment on top? Or when I've done Roger? Or tonight, in bed, between 2 and 3? They come spasmodically. Often when I was so miserable about
The Years.

Viola Tree died last night, of pleurisy: two years younger than I am.

I remember the quality of her skin: like an apricot; a few amber coloured hairs. Eyes blistered with paint underneath. A huge Goddess woman, who was also an old drudge; a big boned striding figure; much got up, of late. Last time I saw her at the Gargoyle Cocktail; when she was in her abundant expansive mood. I never reached any other; yet always liked her. Met her perhaps once a year, about her books. She dined here the night her
Castles in Spain
came out. And I went to tea in Woburn Square, and the butter was wrapped in a newspaper. And there was an Italian double bed in the drawing room. She was instinctive; and had the charm of good actress manners; and their Bohemianism and sentimentality. But I think was a sterling spontaneous mother and daughter; not ambitious; a great hand at life; I suppose harassed for money; and extravagant; and very bold; and courageous—a maker of picturesque surroundings. So strong and large that she should have lived to be 80; yet no doubt undermined that castle, with late hours: I don't know. She could transmit something into words. Her daughter Virginia to be married this week. And think of Viola lying dead. How out of place—unnecessary.

Tuesday, November 22nd

I meant to write Reflections on my position as a writer. I don't want to read Dante; have ten minutes over from rehashing "Lappin and Lapinova," a story written I think at Asheham 20 years ago or more; when I was writing
Night and Day
perhaps.

That's a long stretch. And apparently I've been exalted to a very high position, say about 10 years ago: then was decapitated by W. Lewis, and Miss Stein; am now I think—let me see—out of date, of course; not a patch, with the young, on Morgan:
^*
Yet wrote
The Waves;
yet am unlikely to write anything good again; am a secondrate and likely, I think, to be discarded altogether. I think that's my public reputation at the moment. It is based largely on C. Connolly's cocktail criticism: a sheaf of feathers in the wind. How much do I mind? Less than I expected. But then of course; it's all less than I realised. I mean, I never thought I was so famous; so don't feel the decapitation. Yet it's true that after
The Waves,
or
Flush, Scrutiny
I think found me out. W. L. attacked me. I was aware of an active opposition. Yes I used to be praised by the young and attacked by the elderly.
Three Guineas
has queered the pitch. For the G. M. Youngs and the Scrutineers both attack that. And my own friends have sent me to Coventry over it. So my position is ambiguous. Undoubtedly Morgan's reputation is much higher than my own. So is Tom's.
^†
Well? In a way it is a relief. I'm fundamentally, I think, an outsider. I do my best work and feel most braced with my back to the wall. It's an odd feeling though, writing against the current: difficult entirely to disregard the current. Yet of course I shall. And it remains to be seen if there's anything in
P.H.
In any case I have my critical brain to fall back on.