Strange people

Sunday, February 4th., 97 Chiltern Court, London.

Bernard Shaw came for lunch. He and Dorothy talked theatre all the time. He said that the first preliminary to her going in for theatrical management and acting was a divorce between us. I think he was joking. He was rather more sensible and agreeable than usual. He went with us to Harriet Cohen's Henry Wood orchestral concert at Wigmore Hall. The hall was full. I dozed off twice, being very fatigued and sleepy, but I still enjoyed it. We drove home in rain. Shaw left us to get exercise on foot, in the rain. He is a strange person.


But then, authors are strange people. I am one myself, and I probably know as many authors as any living man - except literary agents and income tax inspectors. Authors are ticklish, sensitive people, and, more than most categories of persons, they are victims (generally willing enough) of the astounding, and to me incomprehensible, mania for 'meeting' celebrities, notorieties and infamies. Why do I say so? Because it has been my observation over a long period of years. Why is it so? I don't know!

I regard myself as the exception that proves this particular rule. So far as I am aware I have never had the desire to meet a celebrity because he was a celebrity. On the contrary I have had, and still have, a desire to avoid him. "But you are a great admirer of his books!" said an acquaintance to me once, when I had demurred to an encounter with a genius. "Yes I am," I said. "That's why I don't want to meet him. If I run across him by chance, all right! But deliberately to go out of my way to meet him - No!" And I never did meet him.

Rightly or wrongly one has one's sense of dignity. I have been acused of having an over-developed sense of dignity, and that may be the case. But it is my sense of dignity and I cling to it. In my defence I will assert that my antipathy towards celebrity is by no means uncommon in the Midlands where I grew up. There were men in the Five Towns (and probably still are) who would not cross the street to acknowledge the existence of some local celebrity or other; they would be ashamed to do so. They would regard it as a matter of personal pride and self-respect not to acknowledge a celebrity. I have introduced them into some of my novels and stories. "The Death of Simon Fugue", which some suggest is my best short story, is a case in point. 

Were I to go to the Potteries myself, which is unlikely, I would have no expectation of acknowledgement and I expect that when I die there may be a brief obituary in The Sentinel, but not such as to draw attention away from 'real' news - the football results for example.

Farting fiction

Sunday, January 5th., Fulham Park Gardens, London.

In the time-honoured manner, since New Year, I have been taking stock of my life and career at age thirty two.

I worked prodigiously for the last three months of last year - 96,000 words in total and I was a week in Brussels; so well over 1,000 words a day, including Sundays. I completed several short stories, a huge mass of criticism and 35,000 words of a sensational serial. I began the serial partly because I had a notion that  my position, commercially, was not founded on a rock as it should be, and partly because I didn't see why I shouldn't write as good exciting fiction as anyone else.

This house costs a hell of a lot to keep going in a generous way as I like, and although I am actually earning ample for all purposes, my desire is to earn enough apart from my editorial salary. I am sick of editing Woman and of being bound to go to a blasted office every day. I want to work when I feel inclined and to travel more. I saw only one way of freeing myself from official ties, namely fiction. If other people can hit the popular taste and live on magazine and newspaper fiction, them why not me? It's not literature I know but it is better fun than going to an office and editing a ladies' paper, and should pay better. And the literature can come later.

I began the serial towards the end of October and swore to myself to do one instalment a week, though I nearly killed myself at first to keep my oath. However, after the fourth instalment (17,000 words in a month) I seemed suddenly to conquer the trick of the thing. There has been an immense increase in my facility, not only for rotten but for decent stuff. I believe I could fart sensational fiction now! Several times I have sat down at 4 pm. and done 3,000 words in the day - not to be sniffed at.

I have thoughts of sticking to the sensational stuff and blow the literary reputation but I know I won't. I am dying to get on with my Five Towns novel, which lately in my mind has assumed a larger and more epical aspect as if it has acquired a sort of independent life. I do believe it will be decent. With my newly acquired facility I fancy I could write that novel in six months and put my best work into it. It will certainly be immensely superior to "A Man from the North".

Class distinctions

Friday, March 24th., Comarques, Thorpe-le-Soken.

London yesterday. Pamela McKenna handed over a book which Birrell had given me in exchange for "The Golden Remains of the Ever Memorable John Hales", which he bought from me about 24 years ago when I was doing a few experiments in book selling - and never paid for.

On Wednesday night a Welsh vet. officer came here to sleep. 60. Very provincial and polite and talkative. All about Lloyd George and North Wales and Stanley Weyman. Just like middle-class provincials in the Potteries, except for the accent. Speaking of billeting in Manningtree, he said that billetees had to cook for soldiers, while not finding the food. "Now, many of them didn't like it," he said with sympathy and conviction, as middle-class speaking of and understanding middle-class. It was absolute Five Towns. No member of upper middle-class would have said it like that. A member of upper middle-class might have laughed, or said it indulgently, or said it comprehendingly, but not with the same unconscious sympathy.

Made me think about what effect this war will have on the class system. As far as I can tell it is still pretty well maintained in the trenches, but surely close proximity and shared hardships and danger must have some effect? And then at home when it is all over. Will the returning 'common' soldiers be content to revert to the situation as before? I doubt it, and in fact hope not. I think we have seen the end of an era.

Spendthrift of pity

Saturday, February 10th., Maldon, Essex.

Maldon

I am here with my father and my brother Sep. Father has had a very serious nervous breakdown and is staying with me at Fulham Park Gardens for a complete rest. He seems better at the moment but in my opinion (and his own) he will never be the same man again. Fortunately his business can go on in his absence. Frank has taken up the strain. Strange thing to be looking after one's parents rather than being looked after. Even the way we adfdress each other is changing. I am paying close attention to the details of the change as it occurs to me that they may be useful at some time in the future, professionally I mean.

I am very much focused on short stories of the Five Towns at present. There seems to be a rich vein of material which is unexplored by other authors, though some have touched on it. I think I am on to something. The Five Towns is a great place, full of plots. My father's reminiscences have livened me up considerably. I have also been working on a play, in collaboration with Arthur Hooley, called "The Chancellor". I can never tell if a play is going to do well or not; don't think anybody can until it is actually produced somewhere and even then it may not last.

This evening we stood on a bridge over the Blackwater at the bottom of the town. There was snow everywhere, a very keen frost, and a bright moon approaching the full. On either side of the river, the wharves and warehouses were silhouetted in deep tones. The tide was comig in and we could hear a faint continuous crackling, or mysterious rustling as the ice, constantly forming, was crunched and crumbled gently against the projecting piles of the wharves. We stood quite still in this silent town and listened to this strange soft sound. Then we threw tiny pebbles over the bridge and they slid along the surface of the river. The water froze in broad areas as it passed under the bridge.

We saw a very fat and aged woman walking home, very carefully. The road was extremely slippery and a fall would have been serious to one of her age and weight. To me she seemed rather a pathetic figure, balancing herself along ... And yet, if I have learned anything, it is not to be a spendthrift of pity. She would be all right.

 

Authors are strange people

Sunday, February 4th., 97 Chiltern Court, London.

Authors are strange people. I am one myself, and I probably know as many authors as any living man - except literary agents and income tax inspectors. Authors are ticklish, sensitive people, and, more than most categories of persons, they are victims (generally willing enough) of the astounding, and to me incomprehensible, mania for 'meeting' celebrities, notorieties and infamies. Why do I say so? Because it has been my observation over a long period of years. Why is it so? I don't know!

I regard myself as the exception that proves this particular rule. So far as I am aware I have never had the desire to meet a celebrity because he was a celebrity. On the contrary I have had, and still have, a desire to avoid him. "But you are a great admirer of his books!" said an acquaintance to me once, when I had demurred to an encounter with a genius. "Yes I am," I said. "That's why I don't want to meet him. If I run across him by chance, all right! But deliberately to go out of my way to meet him - No!" And I never did meet him.

Rightly or wrongly one has one's sense of dignity. I have been acused of having an over-developed sense of dignity, and that may be the case. But it is my sense of dignity and I cling to it. In my defence I will assert that my antipathy towards celebrity is by no means uncommon in the Midlands where I grew up. There were men in the Five Towns (and probably still are) who would not cross the street to acknowledge the existence of some local celebrity or other; they would be ashamed to do so. I have introduced them into some of my novels and stories. "The Death of Simon Fugue", which some suggest is my best short story, is a case in point. When I go to the Potteries myself I have no expectation of acknowledgement and I expect that when I die there may be a brief obituary in The Sentinel, but not such as to draw attention away from 'real' news.

Ides of March

4 Rue de Calais, Paris
March 15th., 1905


If my calculations are correct it is one thousand, nine hundred and forty nine years ago today that Julius Caesar was assassinated in the Roman Senate. Would the world have been a different place now had the assassination failed? Surely the answer must be "Yes". How different cannot be known, but different certainly. Which shows that the history of mankind turns unpredictably on the outcome of events. But is it just grand events like the death of Caesar? At first glance we might think so, but who is to say that what appear to be quite small events in the lives of people not in the public eye might have great consequences? Take the case of Caesar. He was captured by pirates on his way to Rhodes in 75 BC, when still relatively unknown. Suppose they had killed him? I wonder if I could summon up the imagination to write a sort of alternative history - probably not; it is a task better suited to the pen of my friend H G Wells. I may suggest it to him.

Today I finished the second part of "Sacred and profane Love". The book so far is over 6,000 words longer than I had anticipated, and I think the second part is rather better on the whole than I expected it would be when I started it.

I have read Oscar Wilde's "Intentions", and found it really very good. better than "De Profundis". I read also in "The Importance of Being Ernest", and found that admirably witty.

The French are a 'stuffy' nation; but they do hang their bedding out of the windows in the morning to air. This is more than can be said of the English. Though it does occur to me that if the matrons of the Five Towns hung their bedding out to air it would become so begrimed as to be impossible to restore to the beds.