In a whirl

Sunday, December 5th., Waterloo Road, Burslem.

 

I happened to see Conrad and Hueffer's "Romance" at Frank's at lunch today , and I took it to read. I read about 20 pages after lunch, before the gas stove in the bedroom, but I doubt if I shall get much further in it. I cannot read in Burslem. All I can do is to go about and take notes which is, of course, as it should be. It would be a nonsense to have this opportunity to absorb the atmosphere and not to take it. With the new book growing in my mind I shall need as much information and impression as I can absorb. This absorption is not a conscious process, in fact quite the opposite. It is about opening oneself to impression.

My mind is in whirl all the time. I have only been here for 5 days and yet all Paris and Avon seems years off; I scarcely ever think of these places and my life there. Sometimes, by accident, I speak to myself or one of the children in French. Slept well last night, nearly 7 hours uninterrupted. The sanatogen cure which I began on Wednesday is already working. What a place Burslem is though, so dirty and downright. And self-satisfied. Marguerite is coming on Saturday. How she will cope I don't know - she may not recognise me by then as I revert to type.

French praise

Saturday, November 30th., George Street, London.

Andre Gide

Andre Gide has written me a most charming and complimentary letter. It has given me the greatest satisfaction. I have always had the idea that French critics must regard English fiction as rather barbaric, lacking in finesse and in civilised breadth. In brief an imperfect attitude to life. I have written back that no appreciation that I have ever received has given me such pleasure, not even that of Joseph Conrad, who is an oriental and gives praise like one.

Gide has the idea that I have developed a new 'manner', and perhaps he is right. There were symptoms of it I think in "The Pretty Lady", but it is not emerging in my new book which is a light one. After writing sixty books one cannot change one's manner I find simply by taking thought. However, I feel encouraged to be more experimental, less circumspect, more challenging.

My film is progressing. As a first effort in this new medium I don't expect much of it, but when I have broken down the outer-defences of 'the trade' I hope to do something better. In France, Manoire's transalations of my books appear to be doing well. Most recently "Clayhanger". The firm of Bernard Grasset is to publish several. I understand that "These Twain" is to appear in the Revue de Paris, no doubt with the usual terrible cuts, but it may enhance my reputation and increase sales of the books. "The Price of Love" is to appear in a thing called La Revue de la Semaine of which I have never heard.

I know nothing better

Sunday, January 17th., Comarques, Thorpe-le-Soken.

Six hours uninterrupted sleep last night. I couldn't believe my eyes when I looked at the clock. Oddly, because I am not used to it I suppose, I felt more tired than usual this morning until I had a good wash. But I had more real energy. Barber's yesterday at Frinton. My chauffeur, Read, recommended it to me. He said it was smart and clean, but lacked things. He was half right! 

No antiseptic arrangements as far as I could see. Room cold. Man doing shaving. No greeting from the barber. Dirty apron and coat hanging up on the wall. Array of mugs with sponges. Place looked clean but wasn't. Thick dust on gas shades and many cobwebs. Chair too high, a modern chair which required a footstool. I commented on the height. The barber said, ""It's not high enough for me as it is. I always have to stoop." I asked if business was good? "No, very short season". A nice mild man, tall, badly shaven, baggy worn knees. But decent. No energy. Parted my hair on the wrong side, and badly. Shoved his sleeve in my eye. Didn't show me the back of my head. Doubtful towels. Indiarubber sponge. Price 10d. Apart from that, all went well! Be careful what recommendations you take!

May be potential for an article. I might describe Paris barbers, and insist on the inferiority of English barbers, with general reference to slackness and efficiency. That sort of thing is calculated to cause a bit of a stir.

I finished the third act of "Don Juan"n Friday night after fairly huge labours. I have read a little in John Mitchell's "Jail Journal". It is a good browsing book. Much of the nalysis and self-description is tedious. It could be usefully cut down and made manageable.

Lastly, Conrad's "Chance" came today and I have already read 150 pp. This is a discouraging book for a writer, because he damn well knows he can't write as well as this. The episode of the arrival of the news of de Barral's bankruptcy at his house in Hove, where his daughter and her superb friend of a governess are living is simply sublime. I know nothing better than this, and precious little as good.

Election day

Thursday, May 30th., Cadogan Square, London.

Day memorable to me because this evening before dinner I finished Act II of the play the idea for which had forced me to break my oath never to write another play.

To the rest of the British world, however, the day was memorable as being Election Day. I went to an enormous election party in the evening and found dozens of people seriously disturbed at the mere possibility of Labour getting a clear majority. The rancour and asperity of party politics was exposed naked in speech, tone, and gesture. Still the food and the champagne were admirable.

The 1929 United Kingdom general election was held on 30 May 1929, and resulted in a hung parliament. It was the first of only three elections under universal suffrage in which a party lost the popular vote (i.e. gained fewer popular votes than some other party) but gained a plurality of seats. In 1929 that party was Ramsay MacDonald's Labour, which won the most seats in the Commons for the first time ever but failed to get an overall majority. 

The Liberals led by David Lloyd George regained some of the ground they had lost in the 1924 election, and held the balance of power. The election was often referred to as the "Flapper Election" in that it was the first election in which women over the age of 21 were allowed to vote, under the provisions of the Fifth Reform Act. It was fought against a background of rising unemployment with the memory of the 1926 General Strike still fresh in voters' minds. 

Foreign policy also took prominence in the campaign, with Austen Chamberlain's record as Foreign Secretary contributing to the Conservative defeat, as he was perceived as being "pro-French". By 1929 the Cabinet was being described by many as "old and exhausted". 

The Liberals campaigned on a comprehensive programme of public works under the title "We Can Conquer Unemployment". The Conservatives, under Baldwin,  campaigned on the theme of "Safety First".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom_general_election,_1929

Some people have reproached me for being too concerned with rare editions, first editions, beautiful editions, the argument being that such matters have no relation to literature itself, and that what counts in a book is the stuff in it, not the presentation of the stuff in it. To my mind the argument is ridiculous. A book is a physical object as well as a medium for the transmission of thought, emotion, and information. And the attributes, including the historical attributes, of the physical object react upon the person to whom the thought, emotion, or information is being transmitted.

Many people read Dickens with joy, still more people assert (without adducing proof) that they read Dickens with joy. But it is an absolute certainty that the first category, if not the second, would be tremendously diminished if Dickens were only published in folio volumes like pulpit bibles - were the price per volume only sixpence, were even the volumes given away.

But even were the argument not ridiculous, it would still be beside the point. The point is that our age is a collecting age. And why should it not be? Only rare, beautiful, historical, odd or scandalous objects are collected. To collect them is a virtue - for which the next generation will thank us.

I am currently re-reading Conrad's "Victory" in a beautiful Folio Society edition. Conrad's prose is marvellous as ever, and the subtlety of his characterisation has a tendency to turn me green with envy, but my reading pleasure is enhanced by holding a beautiful object as well as a work of art. I love the sensation of taking the book from its slip-case; I love the heft of a hard-bound book in my hand; I love to feel and even smell the paper; I love the way a properly bound book stays open at the page you are reading ... I could go on, but if you are a bibliophile you get my point.

London again

Wednesday, November 4th., London.

Came to London yesterday morning. The Atkinses arrived on Saturday and left on Monday. An impression of off-season, half-emptiness throughout West End. Girls driving motor cars. If one thinks about recruiting one soon gets obsessed by number of young men about the streets. Lunch with Pinker at Arts Club. "Price of Love" had sold 6,700 Engl. and 3,500 colonial. Season good, at shops; but libraries 'obstructive' as Pinker said.

Dr. Walter Hines Page

He had seen Conrad that morning, just returned from Austrian Poland. C. had no opinion of Russian army, and had come to England to influence public opinion to get good terms for Austria! As if he could. Pinker had also seen Henry James, who often goes to see Page, American Ambassador, in afternoons. They have long quiet talks together. First time H.J. opened his heart to Page, he stopped and said: "But, I oughtn't to talk like this to you, a neutral." Said Page: "My dear man, if you knew how it does me good to hear it!" Hy. James is strongly pro-English, and comes to weeping point sometimes.



Then tea at A.B.C. Shop opposite Charing Cross. Down into smoking room. A few gloomy and rather nice men. One couple of men deliberately attacking dish of hot tea-cakes. Terrible. Familiar smell of hot tea. A.B.C shops are still for me one of the most characteristic things in London.

A.B.C. (the Aerated Bread Company) was revolutionary for its chain of self-service A.B.C. tea shops, the fast-food outlets of their day. These grew from A.B.C. opening the U.K.'s first tearoom in 1864, two years after the company's founding. The first A.B.C. tea shop opened in the courtyard of London's Fenchurch Street Railway Station. The idea for opening the tearoom is attributed to a London-based manageress of the Aerated Bread Company "who'd been serving gratis tea and snacks to customers of all classes, [and] got permission to put a commercial public tearoom on the premises." The motivation for the company acting upon the manageress's suggestion was "the fact that the sale of bread alone was not proving a dividend-earning proposition." The tearooms were significant since they provided one of the first public places where women in the Victorian era could eat a meal, by herself or with women friends, without a male escort. While by 1880 unescorted women could visit higher-end restaurants, they had to avoid the bar. As safe havens for unescorted women of the Victorian era, the A.B.C. tea shops were recommended to delegates of the Congress of the International Council of Women held in London the week ending 9 July 1899. At its peak in 1923, A.B.C. had 150 branch shops in London and 250 tea shops and was second in terms of outlets only to J. Lyons and Co. This proliferation led George Orwell to view A.B.C.'s tea shops, and those of its competitors, as : 

"the sinister strand in English catering, the relentless industrialisation that was overtaking it: the 162 teashops of the Aerated Bread Company, the Lyons Corner Houses, which rolled out 10 miles of swiss roll every day and manufactured millions of “frood” (frozen cooked food) meals, the milk bars that served "no real food at all … Everything comes out of a carton or a tin, or is hauled out of a refrigerator or squirted out of a tap or squeezed out of a tube."

"Milestones" on buses again. Same servants at hotels and clubs.
After tea to N.L.C. but I saw nobody I knew. Then, through latest dusk, to Reform, where Rickards and I dined. London not so dark as I expected, owing to lamps in centre of roads throwing down a volume of light in the shape of a lamp shade (they are blackened at top). After dinner, Ponting's antarctic cinema, followed by poor war pictures, at Phil. Hall.

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PKBttUMKND4>

Provincial-seeming audience. Woman behind me continually exclaimed under her breath, with a sharp, low intake of breath, 'Oh', 'Oh'.

Reform Club

Two nice old johnnies at Reform Club, phlegmy-voiced, one fat, one thin, quoting latin to each other over their reading. One said he had a music professor from Liege coming to stay with him - seemed rather naively proud of it. Many old men at Reform. Their human-ness, almost boyishness, comes out. Lying placards on evening papers. P.M.G. "Great German Retreat" on strength of a phrase in Belgian communique affecting one small part of battle line only.

Self-discipline

Saturday, September 14th.,

Yesterday I could not write and had leisure to think about myself. I saw that even now my life was not fully planned out; that I was not giving even an hour a day to scientific reading, to genuine systematic education; and that the central inspiration for my novel was not fine enough.
I began to rectify this, resuming my Spencer. I bought Taine's "Voyage en Italie", and was once again fired to make fuller notes of  the impressions of the moment, of choses vues. Several good books by him consist of nothing else.

Hippolyte Adolphe Taine (21 April 1828 – 5 March 1893) was a French critic and historian. He was the chief theoretical influence of French naturalism, a major proponent of sociological positivism, and one of the first practitioners of historicist criticism. Literary historicism as a critical movement has been said to originate with him. Taine is particularly remembered for his three-pronged approach to the contextual study of a work of art, based on the aspects of what he called "race, milieu, and moment". Taine had a profound effect on French literature; the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica asserted that "the tone which pervades the works of Zola, Bourget and Maupassant can be immediately attributed to the influence we call Taine's."

<http://archive.org/details/voyageitalieyork01tainuoft>

I must surely by this time be a trained philosophic observer - fairly exact and controlled by scientific principles. At the time one can scarcely judge what may be valuable later on. At the present moment I wish for instance, that some school mistress had written down simply her impression of her years of training; I want them for my novel. The whole of life ought to be covered thus by "impressionists", and a vast mass of new material of facts and sensations collected for use by historians, sociologists and novelists. I really must try to do my share of it more completely than I do.

So, today I worked from 6 to 7.45. Then, after breakfast, I read Epictetus and Spencer, did my Italian and my piano. After lunch I read Conrad's new book "The Secret Agent", then went out and collected ideas for my novel.

Joseph Conrad weaves a startling tale of espionage, political unrest, and personal turmoil in his 1907 novel The Secret Agent. Set in 1886, it is the story of a man known as Verloc. Life is a humdrum affair for Verloc, who is a shopkeeper and lives with his wife and in-laws. What Verloc's family doesn't know is that he has befriended a group of revolutionaries who are seeking major political overthrow. One fateful day, Verloc is called to a foreign embassy. There, a mysterious man gives him a task on which his reputation and future as a secret agent will depend: to destroy the town of Greenwich. As Verloc contemplates this grave and terrible mission, he must decide how far he is willing to go for the sake of rebellion. Police begin to trail Verloc's revolutionary circle, hoping to prevent an attack on the city but knowing that the terrorists may strike at any moment. Tension builds towards an unforgettable climax as Verloc's depths of sinister ambition come to light in this painful and astonishing work.

<http://www.dailylit.com/books/secret-agent>

After tea I wrote letters and took a stroll with my wife. After dinner more piano; and French poetry; then this journal. In short a damned virtuous, high-minded day