A Writer's Diary (45 page)

Friday, August 2nd

Complete silence surrounds that book. It might have sailed into the blue and been lost. "One of our books did not return" as the B.B.C. puts it. No review by Morgan: no review at all.
No letter. And though I suspect Morgan has refused, finding it unpalatable, still I remain—yes, honestly—quiet minded and prepared to face a complete, lasting silence.

Sunday, August 4th

Just time, while Judith and Leslie
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finish their game, to record on a great relief—Desmond's review really says all I wanted said. The book delights friends and the younger generation say Yes, yes, we know him: and it's not only delightful but important. That's enough. And it gave me a very calm rewarded feeling—not the old triumph, as over a novel, but the feeling I've done what was asked of me, given my friends what they wanted. Just as I'd decided I'd given them nothing but the materials for a book I hadn't written. Now I can be content: needn't worry what people think: for Desmond is a good bell-ringer; and will start the others—I mean, the talk among intimates will follow, more or less, his lines. Herbert Read and Maccoll have bit their hardest; put their case; now only Morgan remains, and perhaps a personal dart from W. Lewis.

Tuesday, August 6th

Yes, I was very happy again when I saw Clive's blue envelope at breakfast (with John) this morning. It's Clive almost—what?—devout: no, quiet, serious, completely without sneer, approving. As good in its way as the best of my books—the best biography for many years—the first part as. good as the last and no break. So I'm confirmed in what I felt, even when I had that beak pecking walk in March with a temperature of 101 with Leonard—confirmed in what I feel—that the first part is really more generally interesting, though less complex and intensified than the last. I'm sure it was necessary—as a solid pavement for the whole to stand on.

Saturday, August 10th

And then Morgan slightly damped me: but I was damp already from Leslie hum haw the night before and the day before
and again tomorrow. So Morgan and Vita slightly damped: and Bob slightly elated and Ethel, and some old boy in the
Spectator,
attacking Read. But God's truth, that's the end of it all. No more reviews and if I had solitude—no men driving stakes, digging pink gun emplacements, and no neighbours, doubtless I could expand and soar—into
P.H.,
into Coleridge; but must first—damn John—re-write the
L.P.
^*
Incessant company is as bad as solitary confinement.

Friday, August 16th

Third edition ordered. L. said, at 37 on Wednesday "It's booming." The boom is dulled by our distance. And why does a word of tepidity depress more than a word of praise exalts? I don't know. I refer to Waley: I don't refer to Pamela—great work of art etc. Well, it's taking its way. It's settling. It's done. And I'm writing
P.H.,
which leaves a spare hour. Many air raids. One as I walked. A haystack was handy. But walked on, and so home. All clear. Then sirens again. Then Judith and Leslie. Bowls. Then Mrs. Ebbs etc. to borrow table. All clear. I must make a stopgap for the last hour, or I shall dwindle, as I'm doing here. But
P.H.
is a concentration—a screw. So I will go in; and read Hare and write to Ethel. Very hot, even out here.

They came very close. We lay down under the tree. The sound was like someone sawing in the air just above us. We lay flat on our faces, hands behind head. Don't close your teeth, said L. They seemed to be sawing at something stationary. Bombs shook the windows of my lodge. Will it drop I asked? If so, we shall be broken together. I thought, I think, of nothingness—flatness, my mood being flat. Some fear I suppose. Should we take Mabel to garage. Too risky to cross the garden, L. said. Then another came from Newhaven. Hum and saw and buzz all round us. A horse neighed in the marsh. Very sultry. Is it thunder? I said. No, guns, said L., from Ringmer, from Charleston way. Then slowly the sound lessened. Mabel in kitchen said the windows shook. Air raid still on: distant
planes; Leslie playing bowls. I well beaten. My books only gave me pain, Charlotte Bronte said. Today I agree. Very heavy, dull and damp. This must at once be cured. The all clear. 5 to 7. 144 down last night.

Monday, August 19th

Yesterday, 18th, Sunday, there was a roar. Right on top of us they came. I looked at the plane, like a minnow at a roaring shark. Over they flashed—three I think. Olive green. Then pop pop pop—German? Again pop pop pop, over Kingston. Said to be five bombers hedge hopping on their way to London. The closest shave so far. 144 brought down—no that was last time. And no raid (so far) today. Rehearsal. I cannot read
Remorse.
Why not say so?

Friday, August 23rd

Book flopped. Sales down to 15 a day since air raid on London. Is that the reason? Will it pick up?

Wednesday, August 28th

How I should like to write poetry all day long—that's the gift to me of poor X, who never reads poetry because she hated it at school. She stayed from Tuesday to Sunday night, to be exact: and almost had me down. Why? Because (partly) she has the artist's temperament without being an artist. She's temperamental, but has no outlet. I find her charming: individual: honest and somehow pathetic. Her curious obtusity, her staleness of mind, is perceptible to her. And she hesitates. Ought one to make up? Y. says yes—I say no. The truth is she has no instinct for colour: no more than for music or pictures. A great deal of force and spirit and yet always at the leap something balks her. I can imagine her crying herself to sleep. So, having brought no rations, or book, she floundered on here. I called her, to mitigate her burden. My good dog. My Afghan hound—with her long too thick legs and her long body; and the shock of wild unbrushed hair on top. I'm glad I'm so nice looking, she said. And she is. But well, it taught me, that week of un-intermittent interruptions, bowls, tea parties, droppings in,
what public school is like—no privacy. A good rub with a coarse towel for my old mind, no doubt. And Judith and Leslie are about to play bowls. This is why, my first solitary morning, after London and the protracted air raid—from 9:30 to 4
A.M.
—I was so light, so free, so happy I wrote what I call
P.H.
poetry. Is it good? I suppose not, very. I should say, to placate V. W. when she wishes to know what was happening in August, 1940—that the air raids are now at their prelude. Invasion, if it comes, must come within three weeks. The harrying of the public is now in full swing. The air saws: the wasps drone; the siren—it's now Weeping Willie in the papers—is as punctual as the vespers ... We've not had our raid yet, we say. Two in London. One caught me in the London Library. There I saw reading in
Scrutiny
that Mrs. W. after all was better than the young. At this I was pleased. John Buchan—"V. W. is our best critic since M. Arnold and wiser and juster—" also pleased me. I must write to Pamela. Sales a little better.

P.S. to the last page. We went out on to the terrace; began playing. A large two decker plane came heavily and slowly. L. said a Wellesley something. A training plane said Leslie. Suddenly there was pop pop from behind the church. Practising we said. The plane circled slowly out over the marsh and back, very close to the ground and to us. Then a whole volley of pops (like bags burst) came together. The plane swung off, slow and heavy and circling towards Lewes. We looked. Leslie saw the German black cross. All the workmen were looking. It's a German: that dawned. It was the enemy. It dipped among the fir trees over Lewes and did not rise. Then we heard the drone. Looked up and saw two planes very high. They made for us. We started to shelter in the lodge. But they wheeled and Leslie saw the English sign. So we watched—they side slipped, glided, swooped and roared for about five minutes round the fallen plane as if identifying and making sure. Then made off towards London. Our version is that it was a wounded plane, looking for a landing. "It was a Jerry sure enough," the men said: the men who are making a gun hiding by the gate. It would have been a peaceful matter of fact
death to be popped off on the terrace playing bowls this very fine cool sunny August evening.

Saturday, August 31st

Now we are in the war. England is being attacked. I got this feeling for the first time completely yesterday; the feeling of pressure, danger, horror. The feeling is that a battle is going on—a fierce battle. May last four weeks. Am I afraid? Intermittently. The worst of it is one's mind won't work with a spring next morning. Of course this may be the beginning of invasion. A sense of pressure. Endless local stories. No—it's no good trying to capture the feeling of England being in a battle. I daresay if I write fiction and Coleridge and not that infernal bomb article for U.S.A. I shall swim into quiet water.

Monday, September 2nd

There might be no war, the past two days. Only one raid warning. Perfectly quiet nights. A lull after the attacks on London.

Thursday, September 5th

Hot, hot, hot. Record heat wave, record summer if we kept records this summer. At 2:30 a plane zooms: 10 minutes later air raid sounds; 20 later, all clear. Hot, I repeat; and doubt if I'm a poet. H. P. hard labour. Brain w—no, I can't think of the word—yes, wilts. An idea. All writers are unhappy. The picture of the world in books is thus too dark. The wordless are the happy: women in cottage gardens: Mrs. Chavasse. Not a true picture of the world; only a writer's picture. Are musicians, painters, happy? Is their world happier?

Tuesday, September 10th

Back from half a day in London—perhaps our strangest visit. When we got to Gower Street a barrier with diversion on it. No sign of damage. But coming to Doughty Street a crowd. Then Miss Perkins at the window. Meck. S.
^*
roped off. Wardens there. Not allowed in. The house about 30 yards from ours struck at
one in the morning by a bomb. Completely ruined. Another bomb in the square still unexploded. We walked round the back. Stood by Jane Harrison's house. The house was still smouldering. That is a great pile of bricks. Underneath all the people who had gone down to their shelter. Scraps of cloth hanging to the bare walls at the side still standing. A looking glass I think swinging. Like a tooth knocked out—a clean cut. Our house undamaged. No windows yet broken—perhaps the bomb has now broken them. We saw Bernal with an arm band jumping on top of the bricks. Who lived there? I suppose the casual young men and women I used to see from my window; the flat dwellers who used to have flower pots and sit in the balcony. All now blown to bits. The garage man at the back—blear eyed and jerky—told us he had been blown out of his bed by the explosion: made to take shelter in a church. "A hard cold seat," he said, "and a small boy lying in my arms. I cheered when the all clear sounded. I'm aching all over." He said the Jerries had been over for three nights trying to bomb Kings Cross. They had destroyed half Argyll Street, also shops in Grays Inn Road. Then Mr. Pritchard ambled up. Took the news as calm as a grig. "They actually have the impertinence to say this will make us accept peace...!" he said: he watches raids from his flat roof and sleeps like a hog. So, after talking to Miss Perkins, Mrs. Jackson—but both serene—Miss P. had slept on a camp bed in her shelter—we went on to Grays Inn. Left the car and saw Holborn. A vast gap at the top of Chancery Lane. Smoking still. Some great shop entirely destroyed: the hotel opposite like a shell. In a wine shop there were no windows left. People standing at the tables—I think drink being served. Heaps of blue green glass in the road at Chancery Lane. Men breaking off fragments left in the frames. Glass falling. Then into Lincoln's Inn. To the
N.S.
office: windows broken, but house untouched. We went over it. Deserted. Wet passages. Glass on stairs. Doors locked. So back to the car. A great block of traffic. The Cinema behind Madame Tussaud's torn open: the stage visible; some decoration swinging. All the R. Park houses with broken windows, but undamaged. And then miles and miles of orderly ordinary streets—all
Bayswater, and Sussex Square as usual—streets empty—faces set and eyes bleared. In Chancery Lane I saw a man with a barrow of music books. My typist's office destroyed. Then at Wimbledon a siren: people began running. We drove, through almost empty streets, as fast as possible. Horses taken out of the shafts. Cars pulled up. Then the all clear. The people I think of now are the very grimy lodging house keepers, say in Heathcote Street: with another night to face: old wretched women standing at their doors; dirty, miserable. Well—as Nessa said on the phone, it's coming very near. I had thought myself a coward for suggesting that we should not sleep two nights at 37. I was greatly relieved when Miss P. telephoned advising us not to stay, and L. agreed.

Wednesday, September 11th

Churchill has just spoken. A clear, measured, robust speech. Says the invasion is being prepared. It's for the next two weeks apparently if at all. Ships and barges massing at French ports. The bombing of London of course preparatory to invasion. Our majestic City—etc., which touches me, for I feel London majestic. Our courage etc. Another raid last night on London. Time bomb struck the Palace. John rang up. He was in Mecklenburgh Square the night of the raid: wants the Press moved at once. L. is to go up on Friday. Our windows are broken, John says. He is lodging out somewhere. Mecklenburgh Square evacuated. A plane shot down before our eyes just before tea: over the racecourse; a scuffle; a swerve; then a plunge; and a burst of thick black smoke. Percy says the pilot bailed out. We count now on an air raid about 8:30. Anyhow, whether or not, we hear the sinister sawing noise about then, which loudens and fades; then a pause; then another comes. "They're at it again" we say as we sit, I doing my work. L. making cigarettes. Now and then there's a thud. The windows shake. So we know London is raided again.

Thursday, September 12th

A gale has risen. Weather broken. Armada weather. No sound of planes today, only wind. Terrific air traffic last night. But the raid beaten off by new London barrage. This is cheering. If we can hold out this week—next week—week after—if the weather's turned—if the force of the raids on London is broken—we go up tomorrow to see John about moving Press; to patch the windows, rescue valuables and get letters—if, that is, we're allowed in the Square. Oh, blackberrying I conceived, or re-moulded, an idea for a Common History book—to read from one end of literature including biography; and range at will, consecutively.