Sightseeing

Tuesday, February 16th., Hotel Nettuno, Pisa.

At 8.30 a.m. I received a note from C.K. Scott Moncrieff asking to see me and offering to show me things in the town. He came at 11.30. Lame, quick, fussy. Very talkative (smartishly) and rather nervous at first but not later when we became used to each other. He was lamed in the war, and converted to Catholicism whilst at the Front. Not married. I think he may be homosexual judging by the acquaintanceships he has had. But that is no problem for me. He tells me that he had a rather snide letter from Proust about his translation of Proust's "Swann's Way". I told him that I found Proust impossible to read, which he seemed to appreciate.

He said that Lucca was only twelve miles off. This was on our way to the cathedral here. I wanted to turn back at once and get a car for Lucca, which had always been romantical to me on account of a chapter in Heine's "Reisebilder". We couldn't get a car in the town. All had gone or were going to Viareggio for the carnival. However, after an early lunch, we did get a car and set off together.

At Lucca we got a carrozza, and went through the town at walking pace, and saw cathedrals and churches. Very fine and distinctive and Moncrieff a good guide. A rich town, prosperous, clean, self-contained, and self-sufficient. More so than Pisa. The oil business and farming must be money-making. But I asked for the Bagni di Lucca, made fascinating to me by Heine, and found they were twenty miles off. So I was baulked there. At San Frediano, Lucca, it was interesting to see the altar where Frankia's "Entombment" once was. Who pinched it and put it in the National Gallery I don't know.

The news of Septimus is no better. In fact worse. His weight apparently is under seven stone! he needs food but cannot assimilate it. Letters I have had from his doctor and from Maud convince me that there is very little hope of saving him. What a shame! In some ways I am glad not to be able to be over there to see him. Cowardly I know but it would be very upsetting for him as well as me, and what good would it do?

True or false?

Tuesday, January 31st., Cadogan Square, London.

I went out for a long walk and got really quite a few decent ideas for my play during this walk, which took just under two hours. For many people in my experience walking in the city is not really walking at all, and they see no purpose in doing it. They think me rather eccentric, which I am, but walking is not a symptom of that eccentricity. Country walking is what is valued but I see no essential difference - the streets are as full of interest as is the countryside, perhaps more so. Lambeth was the most interesting part of my walk today. Had tea in the Express Dairy in King's Road. I always enjoy this place. Total cost: 3d.

My memory has been troubling me. Recall is the problem - names of people; names of places; titles of books. It is infuriating (and worrying) to know that you know something, but are unable to bring it to mind. And then, later, when your mind is on something else, it pops up. A mystery. And what is a memory anyway? It has become obvious to me over time that even things you feel confident about, remembering I mean, can prove to be unreliable or even downright wrong. Only a few weeks ago I was talking to Geoffrey Russell about a play I had seen some years ago; he looked puzzled and, when we explored it, it became apparent that I could not have seen it. I wasn't lying; I sincerely believed that I remembered seeing it. So this was a false memory, a fabrication. How much of memory is false then? I am starting to think that very little is accurately remembered, at least not by me. What about Proust? I have found his writing impenetrable, though I don't doubt that it contains within its borders several small masterpieces, but have not questioned its veracity. Does it matter?

Some rather wearing visits anticipated from relatives I scarcely ever see and whose course of existence is separating from me more widely every year, and has been doing for over 30 years. It is, as a fact, desolating.

Proustian reflections

Sunday, February 25th., Cadogan Square, London.

The other day I went into a large and beautiful bookshop in Paris. Bookshops, like all other kinds of shops, are more artistically arranged in Paris than they are in London. I went out with six or seven volumes which I have since read, or read 'in'. A striking difference between the two countries, from a publishing point of view, is that the freedom of the press to print anything, and any word whatever, is growing in the Republic. Such rich and complete candour as some of these books display I have never before met with in good modern work openly sponsored by publishers of the highest standing. 

One of the volumes was "Souvenirs sur Marcel Proust" by Robert Dreyfus. Personally I am not an out-and-out Proustian. That is to say, I hesitate to believe that Proust was the greatest novelist that ever lived or ever could live. My admiration has got me into trouble with non-Proustians, and my reserves about him have got me into more serious trouble with Proustians.So that I am compelled to live in a sort of Proustian no-man's land. Not that I mind that!

Proust has enchanted me, and he has bored me. I am however convinced that, taken in the mass (and there is indeed mass) he very considerably 'counts'. I was an early admirer and bought a copy of "Du cote de chez Swann" in 1913, a first edition. Now and then I produce it for a Proustian friend - every time the effect has been all that the snob in me could have wished. If I sense the onset of a question as to whether I have actually read all of Proust, I change the subject as adroitly as possible. The fact is that Proust has more often lulled me to sleep than stimulated my receptive powers.

Out strolling about this morning. A fine, crisp, blood-stimulating winters day. Ground frozen hard underfoot and not a cloud to be seen. I doubt if the temperature got much, if at all, above zero. I am noticing a change this year. Usually by the end of February I have had enough of winter and am longing for warm weather but, so far, I have remained content to tog-up and get on. Is this a symptom of ageing that I had not anticipated?

Visiting Brighton

Monday, August 23rd., Royal Albion Hotel, Brighton.

A misty morning. 

Yesterday at dinner a man walked across the dining-room and thanked me for writing my books. He then wrote a note and sent it to me via the maitre d'hotel, apologising for his bad form. In this note he excused himself by saying that he had just parted from a son - gone to Singapore for five years. I think he had had too much to drink.

See also, 'Social contrasts' - January 2nd., http://earnoldbennett.blogspot.co.uk/2013/01/an-entertaining-evening.html

Elizabeth Lewis came for lunch, and Harry Preston had a special grouse cooked for us. Harry, wife and child drove us to his country house, beyond Burgess Hill, for tea, and we had to have eggs for tea. It is a small house with large grounds. the kennels are his pride bull-terriers. He was very 'down' on Alsatians, which he said were the rage but were very treacherous and soon reverted to the wolf.

In the early 1900s Brighton, in line with many other seaside resorts, was in decline. Its fashionable visitors had long since departed and the middle classes were seeking other places. This left the town to the day trippers. According to the Daily Mail, the town was an "unenterprising, unattractive and outdated holiday resort".The Royal York Hotel was almost derelict when it was taken over by Sir Harry Preston in 1901. Following the hotel's refurbishment, he wined and dined London newspaper editors to promote visitors, particularly motorists, to the town and to encourage them to stay at his hotel. This he was spectacularly successful at and in 1913 he bought the nearby Royal Albion Hotel, which had been closed since 1900, for £13,500. During the twenties and early thirties the Royal Albion Hotel became the town's leading hotel where authors, actors, film stars, sportsmen and even the Prince of Wales were entertained by Preston who had a wonderful feel for publicity. Like many Edwardian gentlemen, he was a sportsman in the widest sense, embracing yachting (he owned the first motor yacht on this stretch of coast the "My Lady Ada"), motor racing and flying, as well as his first love, boxing (in his younger days he fought at bantamweight).

I have been reading "A l'ombre des jeune filles en fleurs" (Proust), and I still maintain that it is a bit on the dry side, though very good. It doesn't impassion me. I shouldn't care much if I didn't read any more of it. It lacks juice. It has almost no concern with anything except analysis of views and feelings - especially snobbishness. No landscapes, no furniture, no corporate life. No general 'feel' of things. This sort of business satisfies Walkley, but it could never satisfy me, in a novelist.
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/2998/2998-h/2998-h.htm

Good sleep last night but I did have a strange dream, which Huxley might have turned into a novel. I was living in a society which was increasingly controlled by the state. In particular the citizens were like automatons, going about their lives quietly, efficiently, apparently contentedly, but with no freedom of will. I was part of a group dedicated to overthrowing this state of affairs. In the dream I was aware that the powers that be were on to us and intentionally hung back when our group attacked an omnibus with the aim of 'liberating' the passengers. I escaped when all my fellows were ambushed and killed or captured. Then I realised I had a choice to make: live as an outlaw; live in society but pretending to be conditioned like the rest; submit to conditioning. I woke up undecided!

Additionally for August 23rd., see 'Spotting spies' - http://earnoldbennett.blogspot.co.uk/2012/08/sunday-august-23rd.html