A Writer's Diary (47 page)

Sunday, October 20th

The most—what?—impressive, no, that's not it—sight in London on Friday was the queue, mostly children with suitcases, outside Warren Street tube. This was about 11:30. We thought they were evacuees waiting for a bus. But there they were, in a much longer line, with women, men, more bags, blankets, sitting still at 3. Lining up for the shelter in the night's raid—which came of course. Thus, if they left the tube at 6 (a bad raid on Thursday) they were back again at 11. So to Tavistock Square.
^*
With a sigh of relief saw a heap of ruins. Three houses, I should say, gone. Basement all rubble. Only relics an old basket chair (bought in Fitzroy Square days) and Penman's board To Let. Otherwise bricks and wood splinters. One glass door in the next house hanging. I could just see a piece of my studio wall standing: otherwise rubble where I wrote so many books. Open air where we sat so many nights, gave so many parties. The hotel not touched. So to Meck.
^†
All again. Litter, glass, black soft dust, plaster powder. Miss T. and Miss E. in trousers, overalls and turbans, sweeping. I noted the flutter of Miss T.'s hands: the same as Miss Perkins'. Of course friendly and hospitable in the extreme. Jaunty jerky talk. Repetitions. So sorry we hadn't had her card ... to save you the shock. It's awful ... Upstairs she propped a leaning bookcase for us. Books all over dining room floor. In my sitting room glass all over Mrs. Hunter's cabinet—and so on. Only the drawing room with windows almost whole. A wind blowing though. I began to hunt out diaries. What could we salvage in this little car? Darwin and the silver, and some glass and china.

Then lunch off tongue, in the drawing room. John came. I forgot
The Voyage of the Beagle.
No raid the whole day. So about 2:30 drove home.

Exhilaration at losing possessions—save at times I want my books and chairs and carpets and beds. How I worked to buy them—one by one—and the pictures. But to be free of Meek., would now be a relief. Almost certainly it will be destroyed—and our queer tenancy of that sunny flat over ... In spite of the move and the expense, no doubt, if we save our things we shall be cheaply quit—I mean, if we'd stayed at 52 and lost all
our possessions. But it's odd—the relief at losing possessions. I should like to start life, in peace, almost bare—free to go anywhere. Can we be rid of Meek, though?

Friday, November 1st

A gloomy evening, spiritually: alone over the fire—and by way of conversation, apply to this too stout volume. My
Times
book for the week is E. F. Benson's last autobiography—in which he tried to rasp himself clean of his barnacles. I learn there the perils of glibness. I too can flick phrases. He said, "One must discover new depths in oneself." Well I don't bother about that here. I will note, though, the perils of glibness. And add, considering how I feel in my fingers the weight of every word, even of a review, need I feel guilty?

Sunday, November 3rd

Yesterday the river burst its banks. The marsh is now a sea with gulls on it. L. and I walked down to the hangar. Water broken, white, roaring, pouring down through the gap by the pillbox. A bomb exploded last month; old Thompsett told me it took a month to mend. For some reason (bank weakened Everest says by pillbox) it burst again. Today the rain is tremendous. And gale. As if dear old nature were kicking up her heels. Down to the hangar again. Flood deeper and fuller. Bridge cut off. Water made road impassable by the farm. So all my marsh walks are gone—until? Another break in the bank. It comes over in a cascade: the sea is unfathomable. Yes, now it has crept up round Botten's haystack— the haystack in the floods—and is at the bottom of our field. Lovely if the sun were out. Medieval in the mist tonight. I am happy, quit of my money-making; back at
P.H.
writing in spurts; covering, I'm glad to say, a small canvas. Oh the freedom—

Tuesday, November 5th

The haystack in the floods is of such incredible beauty ... When I look up I see all the marsh water. In the sun deep blue, gulls caraway seeds: snowstorms: Atlantic floor: yellow islands:
leafless trees: red cottage roofs. Oh may the flood last for ever. A virgin lip: no bungalows; as it was in the beginning. Now it's lead grey with the red leaves in front. Our inland sea. Caburn is become a cliff. I was thinking: the University fills shells like H.A.L.F. and Trevelyan. They are their product. Also: Never have I been so fertile. Also: the old hunger for books is on me: the childish passion. So that I am very 'happy' as the saying is: and excited by
P.H.
This diary shorthand comes in useful. A new style—to mix.

Sunday, November 17th

I observe, as a curious trifle in mental history—I should like to take naturalist's notes—human naturalist's notes—that it is the rhythm of a book that, by running in the head, winds one into a ball; and so jades one. The rhythm of
P.H.
(the last chapter) became so obsessive that I heard it, perhaps used it, in every sentence I spoke. By reading the notes for memoirs I broke this up. The rhythm of the notes is far freer and looser. Two days of writing in that rhythm has completely refreshed me. So I go back to
P.H.
tomorrow. This I think is rather profound.

Saturday, November 23rd

Having this moment finished the Pageant—or Poyntz Hall?—(begun perhaps April 1938) my thoughts turn well up, to write the first chapter of the next book (nameless) Anon, it will be called. The exact narrative of this last morning should refer to Louie's interruption, holding a glass jar, in whose thin milk was a pat of butter. Then I went in with her to skim the milk off: then I took the pat and showed it to Leonard. This was a moment of great household triumph.

I am a little triumphant about the book. I think it's an interesting attempt in a new method. I think it's more quintessential than the others. More milk skimmed off. A richer pat, certainly a fresher than that misery
The Years.
I've enjoyed writing almost every page. This book was only (I must note) written at intervals when the pressure was at its highest, during the drudgery of
Roger.
I think I shall make this my scheme: if the new
book can be made to serve as daily drudgery—only I hope to lessen that—anyhow it will be a supported on fact book—then I shall brew some moments of high pressure. I think of taking my mountain top—that persistent vision—as a starting point. Then see what comes. If nothing, it won't matter.

Sunday, December 22nd

How beautiful they were, those old people—I mean father and mother—how simple, how clear, how untroubled. I have been dipping into old letters and father's memoirs. He loved her: oh and was so candid and reasonable and transparent—and had such a fastidious delicate mind, educated, and transparent. How serene and gay even, their life reads to me: no mud; no whirlpools. And so human—with the children and the little hum and song of the nursery. But if I read as a contemporary I shall lose my child's vision and so must stop. Nothing turbulent; nothing involved; no introspection.

Sunday, December 29th

There are moments when the sail flaps. Then, being a great amateur of the art of life, determined to suck my orange, off, like a wasp if the blossom I'm on fades, as it did yesterday—I ride across the downs to the cliffs. A roll of barbed wire is hooped on the edge. I rubbed my mind brisk along the Newhaven road. Shabby old maids buying groceries, in that desert road with the villas; in the wet. And Newhaven gashed. But tire the body and the mind sleeps. All desire to write diary here has flagged. What is the right antidote? I must sniff round. I think Mme. de Sevigne. Writing to be a daily pleasure. I detest the hardness of old age—I feel it. I rasp. I'm tart.

The foot less prompt to meet the morning dew,
The heart less bounding at emotion new,
And hope, once crush'd, less quick to spring again.

I actually opened Matthew Arnold and copied these lines. While doing so, the idea came to me that why I dislike, and like, so many things idiosyncratically now, is because of my growing
detachment from the hierarchy, the patriarchy. When Desmond praises
East Coker,
and I am jealous, I walk over the marsh saying, I am I: and must follow that furrow, not copy another. That is the only justification for my writing, living. How one enjoys food now: I make up imaginary meals.

Wednesday, January 1st

On Sunday night, as I was reading about the Great fire, in a very accurate detailed book, London was burning. Eight of my city churches destroyed, and the Guildhall. This belongs to last year. This first day of the new year has a slice of wind like a circular saw. This book was salvaged from 37: I brought it down from the shop, with a handful of Elizabethans for my book, now called
Turning a Page.
A psychologist would see that the above was written with someone, and a dog, in the room. To add in private: I think I will be less verbose here perhaps—but what does it matter, writing too many pages. No printer to consider. No public.

Thursday, January 9th

A blank. All frost. Still frost. Burning white. Burning blue. The elms red. I did not mean to describe, once more, the downs in snow; but it came. And I can't help even now turning to look at Asheham down, red, purple, dove blue grey, with the cross so melodramatically against it. What is the phrase I always remember—or forget. Look your last on all things lovely. Yesterday Mrs. X. was buried upside down. A mishap. Such a heavy woman, as Louie put it, feasting spontaneously upon the grave. Today she buries the Aunt whose husband saw the vision at Seaford. Their house was bombed by the bomb we heard early one morning last week. And L. is lecturing and arranging the room. Are these the things that are interesting? that recall: that say Stop, you are so fair? Well, all life is so fair, at my age. I mean, without much more of it I suppose to follow. And t'other side of the hill there'll be no rosy blue red snow. I am copying
P.H.

Wednesday, January 15th

Parsimony may be the end of this book. Also shame at my own verbosity, which comes over me when I see the 20 it is—books shuffled together in my room. Who am I ashamed of? Myself reading them. Then Joyce is dead: Joyce about a fortnight younger than I am. I remember Miss Weaver, in wool gloves, bringing
Ulysses
in typescript to our teatable at Hogarth House. Roger I think sent her. Would we devote our lives to printing it? The indecent pages looked so incongruous: she was spinsterly, buttoned up. And the pages reeled with indecency. I put it in the drawer of the inlaid cabinet. One day Katherine Mansfield came, and I had it out. She began to read, ridiculing: then suddenly said, But there's something in this: a scene that should figure I suppose in the history of literature. He was about the place, but I never saw him. Then I remember Tom in Ottoline's room at Garsington saying—it was published then—how could anyone write again after achieving the immense prodigy of the last chapter? He was, for the first time in my knowledge, rapt, enthusiastic. I bought the blue paper book, and read it here one summer I think with spasms of wonder, of discovery, and then again with long lapses of intense boredom. This goes back to a pre-historic world. And now all the gents are furbishing up their opinions, and the books, I suppose, take their plact in the long procession.

We were in London on Monday. I went to London Bridge. I looked at the river; very misty; some tufts of smoke, perhaps from burning houses. There was another fire on Saturday. Then I saw a cliff of wall, eaten out, at one corner; a great corner all smashed; a Bank; the Monument erect: tried to get a bus; but such a block I dismounted; and the second bus advised me to walk. A complete jam of traffic; for streets were being blown up. So by Tube to the Temple; and there wandered in the desolate ruins of my old squares: gashed; dismantled; the old red bricks all white powder, something like a builder's yard. Grey dirt and broken windows. Sightseers; all that completeness ravished and demolished.

Sunday, January 26th

A battle against depression, rejection (by Harpers of my story and Ellen Terry) routed today (I hope) by clearing out kitchen; by sending the article (a lame one) to
N.S.:
and by breaking into
P.H.
two days, I think, of memoir writing. This trough of despair shall not, I swear, engulf me. The solitude is great. Rodmell life is very small beer. The house is damp. The house is untidy. But there is no alternative. Also days will lengthen. What I need is the old spurt. "Your true life, like mine, is in ideas" Desmond said to me once. But one must remember one can't pump ideas. I begin to dislike introspection: sleep and slackness; musing; reading; cooking; cycling: oh and a good hard rather rocky book—viz.: Herbert Fisher. This is my prescription.

There's a lull in the war. Six nights without raids. But Garvin says the greatest struggle is about to come—say in three weeks—and every man, woman, dog, cat, even weevil must girt their arms, their faith—and so on. It's the cold hour, this: before the lights go up. A few snowdrops in the garden. Yes, I was thinking: we live without a future. That's what's queer: with our noses pressed to a closed door. Now to write, with a new nib, to Enid Jones.

Friday, February 7th

Why was I depressed? I cannot remember. We have been to Charlie Chaplin. Like the milk girl we found it boring. I have been writing with some glow. Mrs. Thrale is to be done before we go to Cambridge. A week of broken water impends.

Sunday, February 16th

In the wild grey water after last week's turmoil. I liked the dinner with Dadie best. All very lit up and confidential. I liked the soft grey night at Newnham. We found Pernel in her high ceremonial room, all polished and spectatorial. She was in soft reds and blacks. We sat by a bright fire. Curious flitting talk. She leaves next year. Then Letchworth—the slaves chained to their typewriters, and their drawn set faces and the machines—the incessant more and more competent machines, folding,
pressing, gluing and issuing perfect books. They can stamp cloth to imitate leather. Our Press is up in a glass case. No country to look at. Very long train journeys. Food skimpy. No butter, no jam. Old couples hoarding marmalade and grape nuts on their tables. Conversation half whispered round the lounge fire. Elizabeth Bowen arrived two hours after we got back, and went yesterday: and tomorrow Vita; then Enid; then perhaps I shall re-enter one of my higher lives. But not yet.