Gloom

Wednesday, December 19th., Yacht Club, London.

Yarned at Reform Club with Harold Massingham and a few others. Then finished Sardonyx article, and then saw Gardiner who said the "Thugs" were after him now. Apparently all to do with his recent attacks on Lloyd George interpreted as meaning that the Daily News is pro-German and represents nothing in England. What poppycock! Just wartime hysteria which will blow over, but I can see why he is anxious about it.

Then to Turkish Baths. Masterman and Squire. Masterman told us that the new Allied Military Council at Versailles is an absolute farce. I am not surprised. Seemingly their main concern is to get equal representation of all the allies on the Council. Nobody would guess there is a war on! Turkish bathing is very civilised. No wonder it was so popular with the Romans. Squire is something of a scholar and tells me that the Roman bigwigs would regularly meet in the Baths to talk politics and business. And they had a system of being oiled (by slaves presumably) all over and then 'scraped' with a special instrument called a strigil to remove the oil and dirt at the same time. I wouldn't mind trying it, especially if I had the right sort of slave to rub the oil in.

I was wakened out of my after-bath sleep by news of an impending air-raid. This made me feel gloomy. I didn't mind missing dinner at the flat, or anything - I was merely gloomy. As soon as I got out into Northumberland Avenue I heard guns. Motors and people rushing. Then guns very close. I began to run. I headed for the Reform Club, and abandoned idea of reaching the flat. Everybody ran. Girls ran. However, I found that after the Turkish bath I couldn't run much in a heavy overcoat. So I walked. It seemed a long way. Guns momentarily ceased. So I didn't hurry and felt relieved. But still prodigiously gloomy. When I reached the Club the hall was in darkness. No girls in the Coffee Room. The menservants manfully tackled the few diners. Nothing could be had out of the kitchen as it is under glass and deserted.

All clear at about 9.30. I heard later that there were five bomber planes and that ten people were killed and a lot more injured. Oddly that made me feel less gloomy.

 

A hard read

Wednesday, January 11th., Cadogan Square, London.

Ivor Nicholson came for tea at 5.15, and wanted six more articles for Hearsts: but only the English rights thereof. So I refused. I said I would write for 2s. a word and return to Hearsts all I received by selling the articles on my own in the U.S.A. It wasn't what he was expecting!

The Daily News rang up to say that Hardy was dead, and would I say something. I wouldn't. But I decided that I must get up early tomorrow morning, and write a Standard article on Hardy to take the place of the one on Gilbert Murray. This news has affected me. I liked Hardy and he was really the last link with a former generation of writers.

Last evening in bed I finished an interesting book titled "The History of Loneliness", by John Boyne, a writer not previously known to me. The subject is corruption in the Catholic Church in Ireland, and specifically the covering-up of child sexual abuse by priests. It takes the form of a first person narrative by one Odran Yates, himself a priest in his sixties. Giving an account of incidents in his life he exposes religious hypocricy, abuse of power, cultural inertia and much more. All culminating in admission of his own culpability as a man who did nothing. And we as readers realise, as Yates does himself, that his life has been a waste and a sham. Depressing. Boyne is excellent at dialogue, conveying a real sense of the tensions and evasions that litter discourse. I particularly enjoyed his account of a radio interview of an Irish Cardinal. He mistakenly, in my view, inserts an episode where Yates goes to Rome and works for the Pope which does nothing to take the story forward. I suppose the intention was to say that corruption in the Catholic Church is widespread and systemic. Overall this is a powerful  piece of writing which should probably be required reading in theological colleges everywhere. The good news seems to be that Irish society has moved on from its subservience to the Church. I would thank God for that if I believed in Him!

Life and death

Monday, June 4th., Cadogan Square, London.

I worked in the morning on proofs and instructions concerning my Mediterranean book. Good sleep after lunch. I went on with work on the Mediterranean book. At last decided on a title for the book, "Mediterranean Scenes". Then I finished up the proofs, illustrations, etc.

I've been reading "Endymion". Opening too descriptive and too generally narrative, not individual enough in event and description. But it can be read.

Yesterday Dorothy and I went down to Beaverbrook's at Cherkley for lunch, and found a lot of gloomy and silent people there. We enlivened them somewhat, but not enough. However we had a nice drive.
See also, 'Leading the High Life' - September 18th. http://earnoldbennett.blogspot.co.uk/2012/09/leading-high-life.html

It was a great relief for me to learn from the managing director and the producer, Dupont, of British International Films Ltd. that "Piccadilly" the film which I have written for them is absolutely perfect from their point of view. I have never before seen men so enthusiastic about any work of mine as they were. They immediately asked me to write another film for them. But my policy in such a case is always to hang fire, to make difficulties, to say that I cannot etc. But I shall probably write them another film all the same. The difficulties and the delays only whet their appetite.

Piccadilly is a 1929 British silent drama film directed by Ewald André Dupont, written by Arnold Bennett and starring Gilda Gray, Anna May Wong, and Jameson Thomas. The film was produced by British International Pictures and released by Wardour Films Ltd. in the UK, and distributed in the US by Sono Art-World Wide Pictures. It is best remembered for the performance by Anna May Wong as a vamping dancer, Shosho, who becomes the star of the Piccadily Club and the obsession of Valentine Wilmot (Jameson Thomas), the owner of the club.

I had an article in the Daily News on Saturday entitled "Where are the Dead?" It amounted to a sort of response to, an article the previous day by E. A. Knox, formerly Bishop of Manchester, who propounded a conventional Christian view of the 'afterlife'. I of course expressed little interest in congregations of spirits. Believing, as I do, that matter and spirit are inseparable, two sides of the same coin, I conclude that dissolution of material organisation means dissolution of spiritual. It seems to me that any normally intelligent person, not unduly constrained by social convention, can see at a glance that ideas of resurrection and 'eternal life' are laughable. The stories of organised religion would not deceive a sensible ten year old child were they not wrapped up in an envelope of  ritual, tradition and mumbo-jumbo.

The Daily News was a national daily newspaper in the United Kingdom. It was founded in 1846 by Charles Dickens, who also served as the newspaper's first editor and was conceived as a radical rival to the right-wing Morning Chronicle. The paper was not at first a commercial success. Dickens edited 17 issues before handing over the editorship. Charles Mackay, Harriet Martineau, George Bernard Shaw, H. G. Wells, G.K. Chesterton and Arnold Bennett were among the leading reformist writers who wrote for the paper during its heyday. In 1901, Quaker chocolate manufacturer George Cadbury bought the Daily News and used the paper to campaign for old age pensions and against sweatshop labour. As a pacifist, Cadbury opposed the Boer War – and the Daily News followed his line. In 1906, the News sponsored an exhibition on sweated labour at the Queen's Hall. This exhibition was credited with strengthening the women's suffrage movement. In 1909, H. N. Brailsford and H. W. Nevinson resigned from the paper when it refused to condemn the force feeding of suffragettes.