A Writer's Diary (44 page)

Monday, May 20th

This idea was meant to be more impressive. It bobbed up I suppose in one of the sentient moments. The war is like a desperate illness. For a day it entirely obsesses: then the feeling faculty gives out; next day one is disembodied, in the air. Then the battery is re-charged and again—what? Well, the bomb terror. Going to London to be bombed. And the catastrophe—if they break through: Channel this morning said to be their objective. Last night Churchill asked us to reflect, when being bombed, that we were at least drawing fire from the soldiers, for once. Desmond and Moore
^*
are at this moment reading—i.e. talking under the apple trees. A line windy morning.

Saturday, May 25th

Then we went up to what has been so far the worst week in the war. And so remains. On Tuesday evening, after my freshener, before Tom and Wm. P.
^†
came, the B.B.C. announced the taking of Amiens and Arras. The French P.M. told the truth and knocked all our "holding" to atoms. On Monday they broke through. It's tedious picking up details. It seems they raid with tanks and parachutists: roads crammed with refugees can't be bombed. They crash on. Now are at Boulogne. But it also seems these occupations aren't altogether solid. What are the great armies doing to let this 25 mile hole stay open? The feeling is we're outwitted. They're agile and fearless and up to any new dodge. The French forgot to blow up bridges. The Germans seem youthful, fresh, inventive. We plod behind. This went on the three London days.

Rodmell burns with rumours. Are we to be bombed, evacuated? Guns that shake the windows. Hospital ships sunk. So it comes our way.

Today's rumour is the Nun in the bus who pays her fare with a man's hand.

Tuesday, May 28th

And today at 8, the French P.M. broadcast the treachery of the Belgian King. The Belgians have capitulated. The Government is not capitulating. Churchill to broadcast at 4. A wet dull day.

Wednesday, May 29th

But hope revives. I don't know why. A desperate battle. The Allies holding. How sick one gets of the phrase—how easy to make a Duff Cooper speech about valour; and history, where one knows the end of the sentence. Still it cheers, somehow. Poetry as Tom said is easier to write than prose. I could reel off patriotic speeches by the dozen. L. has been in London. A great thunderstorm. I was walking on the marsh and thought it was the guns on the channel ports. Then, as they swerved, I conceived a raid on London; turned on the wireless; heard some prattler; and then the guns began to lighten; then it rained. Began
P.H.
^*
again today and threshed and threshed till perhaps a little grain can be collected. I sent off my Walpole too. After dinner I began Sydney Smith; plan being to keep short flights going;
P.H.
in between. Oh yes—one can't plan, any more, a long book. H. Brace cable that they accept
Roger—
whom, which, I'd almost forgotten. So that's a success: where I'd been expecting failure. It can't be so bad as all that. 250 advance. But we shall I suppose certainly postpone. Reading masses of Coleridge and Wordsworth letters of a night—curiously untwisting and burrowing into that plaited nest.

Thursday, May 30th

Walking today (Nessa's birthday) by Kingfisher pool saw my first hospital train—laden, not funereal but weighty, as if not
to shake bones: something—what is the word I want—grieving and tender and heavy laden and private—bringing our wounded back carefully through the green fields at which I suppose some looked. Not that I could see them. And the faculty for seeing in imagination always leaves me so suffused with something partly visual, partly emotional, I can't, though it's very pervasive, catch it when I come home—the slowness, cadaverousness, grief of the long heavy train, taking its burden through the fields. Very quietly it slid into the cutting at Lewes. Instantly wild duck flights of aeroplanes came over head; manoeuvred; took up positions and passed over Caburn.

Friday, May 31st

Scraps, orts and fragments, as I said in
P.H.,
which is now bubbling. I'm playing with words: and think I owe some dexterity to finger exercises here—but the scraps: Louie has seen Mr. Westmacott's man. "It's an eyesore"—his description of fighting near Boulogne. Percy weeding: "I shall conquer 'em in the end. If I was sure of our winning the other battle..." Raid, said to be warned, last night. All the searchlights in extreme continual vibration: they have blots of light, like beads of dew on a stalk. Mr. Hanna "stood by" half the night. Rumour, very likely: rumour, which has transported the English in Belgium who, with their golf sticks, ball and some nets in a car coming from Flanders, were taken for parachutists: condemned to death; released; and returned to Seaford. Rumour, via Percy, transplanted them to "somewhere near Eastbourne" and the villagers armed with rifles, pitchforks etc. Shows what a surplus of unused imagination we possess. We—the educated—check it; as I checked my cavalry on the down at Telscombe and transformed them into cows drinking. Making up again. So that I couldn't remember, coming home, if I'd come by the mushroom path or the field. How amazing that I can tap that old river again: and how satisfying. But will it last? I made out the whole of the end: and need only fill in: the faculty, dormant under the weight of
Roger,
springs up. And to me it's the voice on the scent again. "Any waste paper?" Here I was interrupted by the jangling bell. Small boy in white sweater
come, I suppose, for Scouts, and Mabel says they pester us daily at 37; and make off with the spoils. Desperate fighting. The same perorations. Coming through Southease I saw Mrs. Cockell in old garden hat weeding. Out comes a maid in muslin apron and cap tied with blue riband. Why? To keep up standards of civilisation?

Friday, June 7th

Just back
^*
this roasting hot evening. The great battle which decides our life or death goes on. Last night an air raid here. Today battle sparks. Up till 2:30 this morning.

Sunday, June 9th

I will continue—but can I? The pressure of this battle wipes out London pretty quick. A gritting day. As sample of my present mood, I reflect: capitulation will mean All Jews to be given up. Concentration camps. So to our garage. That's behind correcting
Roger,
playing bowls. One taps any source of comfort—Leigh Ashton at Charleston yesterday for instance. But today the line is bulging. Last night aeroplanes (G.?) over: shafts of light following. I papered my windows. Another reflection: I don't want to go to bed at midday: this refers to the garage. What we dread (it's no exaggeration) is the news that the French Government have left Paris. A kind of growl behind the cuckoos and t'other birds. A furnace behind the sky. It struck me that one curious feeling is, that the writing "I" has vanished. No audience. No echo. That's part of one's death. Not altogether serious, for I correct
Roger,
send finally I hope tomorrow: and could finish
P.H.
But it is a fact—this disparition of an echo.

Monday, June 10th

A day off. I mean one of those odd lapses of anxiety which may be false. Anyhow they said this morning that the line is unbroken—save at certain points. And our army has left Norway and is going to their help. Anyhow—it's a day off—a coal
gritty day. L. breakfasted by electric light. And cool mercifully after the furnace. Today, too, I sent off my page proofs, and then have read my
Roger
for the last time. The Index remains. And I'm in the doldrums; a little sunk, and open to the suggestion, conveyed by the memory of Leonard's coolness, enforced by John's
^*
silence, that it's on e of my failures.

Saturday, June 22nd

Waterloo I suppose. And the fighting goes on in France; and the terms aren't yet public; and it's a heavy grey day, and I've been beaten at bowls, feel depressed and irritated and vow I'll play no more, but read my book. My book is Coleridge: Rose Macaulay; the Bessborough letters—rather a foolish flight inspired by Hary-o: I would like to find, one book and stick to it. But can't. I feel, if this is my last lap, oughtn't I to read Shakespeare? But can't. I feel oughtn't I to finish off
P.H.:
oughtn't I to finish something by way of an end? The end gives its vividness, even its gaiety and recklessness to the random daily life. This, I thought yesterday, may be my last walk. On the down above Baydean I found some green glass tubes. The corn was glowing with poppies in it. And I read my Shelley at night. How delicate and pure and musical and uncorrupt he and Coleridge read, after the Left Wing Group. How lightly and firmly they put down their feet, and how they sing; and how they compact; and fuse and deepen. I wish I could invent a new critical method—something swifter and lighter and more colloquial and yet intense: more to the point and less composed; more fluid and following the flight; than my
C.R.
essays. The old problem: how to keep the flight of the mind, yet be exact. All the difference between the sketch and the finished work. And now dinner to cook. A role. Nightly raids in the east and south coast. 6, 3, 22 people killed nightly.

A high wind was blowing: Mabel, Louie picking currants and gooseberries. Then a visit to Charleston threw another stone into the pond. And at the moment, with
P.H.
only to fix upon, I'm loosely anchored. Further, the war—our waiting while the knives sharpen for the operation—has taken away
the outer wall of security. No echo comes back. I have no surroundings. I have so little sense of a public that I forget about
Roger
coming or not coming out. Those familiar circumvolutions—those standards—which have for so many years given back an echo and so thickened my identity are all wide and wild as the desert now. I mean, there is no "autumn," no winter. We pour to the edge of a precipice ... and then? I can't conceive that there will be a 27th June 1941. This cuts away something even at tea at Charleston. We drop another afternoon into the millrace.

Wednesday, July 24th

Yes, there are things to write about: but I want at the moment, the eve of publication moment, to discover my emotions. They are fitful: thus not very strong—nothing like so strong as before
The Years—
oh dear, nothing like. Still they twinge. I wish it were this time next week. There'll be Morgan and Desmond. And I fear Morgan will say—just enough to show he doesn't like, but is kind. D. will certainly depress. The
Times Lit. Sup.
(after its ill temper about
Reviewing
) will find chinks. T. and T. will be enthusiastic. And—that's all. I repeat that two strains, as usual, will develop: fascinating; dull: life-like; dead. So why do I twinge? Knowing it almost by heart. But not quite. Mrs. Lehmann enthusiastic. John silent. I shall of course be sneered at by those who sniff at Bloomsbury. I'd forgotten that. But as L. is combing Sally I can't concentrate. No room of my own. For 11 days I've been contracting in the glare of different faces. It ended yesterday with the W.I.: my talk—it was talked—about the Dreadnought. A simple, on the whole natural, friendly occasion. Cups of tea: biscuits; and Mrs. Chavasse, in a tight dress, presiding: out of respect for me, it was a Book tea. Miss Gardner had
Three Guineas
pinned to her frock: Mrs. Thompsett
Three Weeks:
and someone else a silver spoon. No I can't go on to Ray's
^*
death, about which I know nothing, save that that very large woman, with the shock of grey hair, and the bruised lip; that monster, whom I remember typical of young womanhood, has suddenly gone. She had a kind of representative quality, in her white coat and trousers; wall building; disappointed, courageous, without—what?—imagination?

Lady Oxford said that there was no virtue in saving, more in spending. She hung over my neck in a spasm of tears. Mrs. Campbell has cancer. But in a twinkling she recovered, began to spend. A cold chicken, she said, was always under cover on the sideboard at my service. The country people used butter. She was beautifully dressed in a rayed silk, with a dark blue tie; a dark blue fluted Russian cap with a red flap. This was given her by her milliner: the fruit of spending.

All the walls, the protecting and reflecting walls, wear so terribly thin in this war. There's no standard to write for: no public to echo back; even the "tradition" has become transparent. Hence a certain energy and recklessness—part good part bad I daresay. But it's the only line to take. And perhaps the walls, if violently beaten against, will finally contain me. I feel tonight still veiled. The veil will be lifted tomorrow when my book comes out. That's what may be painful: may be cordial. And then I may feel once more round me the wall I've missed—or vacancy? or chill? I make these notes, but am tired of notes, tired of Gide, tired of de Vigny notebooks. I want something sequacious now and robust. In the first days of the war I could read notes only.

Thursday, July 25th

I'm not very nervous at the moment: indeed at worst it's only a skin deep nervousness; for after all, the main people approve: still I shall be relieved if Morgan approves. That I suppose I shall know tomorrow. The first review (Lynd) says: "deep imaginative sympathy ... makes him an attractive figure (in spite of wild phrases): There is little drama ... at the same time those interested in modern art will find it of absorbing interest..."

What a curious relation is mine with Roger at this moment—I who have given him a kind of shape after his death. Was he like that? I feel very much in his presence at the moment; as if
I were intimately connected with him: as if we together had given birth to this vision of him: a child born of us. Yet he had no power to alter it. And yet for some years it will represent him.

Friday, July 26th

I think I have taken, say a good second, judging from the
Lit. Sup.
review. No Morgan.
Times
say it takes a very high place indeed among biographies.
Times
say I have a genius for the relevant.
Times
(art critic I gather) goes on to analyse Roger's tones, etc.
Times
intelligent, but not room for more. It's a nice quiet feeling now. With my Coleridge beneath me, and this over, as it really very nearly (how I hate that clash) is, I'm aware of something permanent and real in my existence. By the way, I'm rather proud of having done a solid work. I am content, somehow. But when I read my post it's like putting my hand in a jar of leeches and so I've a mint of dull dreary letters to write. But it's an incredibly lovely—yes lovely is the word—transient, changing, warm, capricious summer evening. Also I won two games. A large hedgehog was found drowned in the lily pool; L. tried to resuscitate it. An amusing sight. 2/6 is offered by the Government for live hedgehogs. I'm reading Ruth Benedict with pressure of suggestions—about culture patterns—which suggests rather too much. Six volumes of Aug. Hare also suggest—little articles. But I'm very peaceful, momentarily, this evening. Saturday I suppose a no-review day. Immune is again the right word. No, John hasn't read it. When the twelve planes went over, out to sea, to fight, last evening, I had I think an individual, not communal B.B.C. dictated feeling. I almost instinctively wished them luck. I should like to be able to take scientific notes of reactions. Invasion may be tonight: or not at all—that's Joubert's summing up. And—I had something else to say—but what? And dinner to get ready.