Perils of success

Thursday, April 24th., Comarques, Thorpe-le-Soken.

Finished "War and Peace" on Tuesday. The last part of the Epilogue is full of good ideas the johnny can't work out. The first part is as good as anything. All that domesticity is superbly rendered, with a natural and yet ruthless veracity. It has inspired me to a good basic theme for the third "Clayhanger". I shall give an account of the marriage between Edwin and Hilda which will shock because it is so true to real life, and touch the nerves of anyone who has experienced the conjugal battlefield. "War and Peace" is simply terrific. The battle of Borodino is fine. So is the Rostov family. And so are many of the 'set' descriptions of Russian life, such as the wolf-hunting on the Rostov estate. I wanted to write one of the same dimensions, and hope to yet.

I am just finishing instalment three of the Harper serial. It is sound but not brilliant. It is an infernal nuisance writing scenes which you know all through are only sound and not fine. Therein lies one important difference between myself and Tolstoy - I have to write all sorts of things just to make my living. Or at least the life we have grown used to living! Returns of "Great Adventure" at Kingsway going up. Over £150 a night now. Could scarcely be better. But current success is no guarantee for the future.

Yacht Velsa arrived at Brightlingsea from Ostend on Wednesday, and yesterday we went over to see her lying in the Creek. Lovely weather but barometer falling quickly and wind from the South East. She looked superb in every way except inside the engine case. Entirely Dutch crew, of whom two cannot speak English at all. I liked the aspect of the cook, but it was impossible to communicate any ideas to him direct. We got home at six o'clock. So excited that we forgot the dog absolutely but he was collected by the harbour master and saved for us.

I now notice one or two devoted heads amongst critics who lose no opportunity of going for me both tooth and nail. And it is astonishing how this small minority of criticism, convinced that one may be that it is obviously wrong-headed, and perhaps malicious or prejudiced, has a capacity for annoying the successful person surfeited with money and laudation.

Other ways

Monday, April 7th., Comarques, Thrope-le-Soken.

Last week being in need of an inspirational bucking up, I dropped "War and Peace" and read Balzac's "Cure de Tours" and "Pierrette". Latter better than Saintsbury says it is. Balzac was an ignorant and crude man, often childish in his philosophising. But if he had been properly educated and influenced he would have been a great social philosopher. His apercus are often astounding. And his vitality is terrific. He is full of inspiring and agreeable ornament.

Nothing of the kind in Tolstoy. All a flat recital. Often dull, unless you give yourself to it. But if you do, he is never dull. Some of Tolstoy's long descriptions (such as of the wolf-hunt on Count Izla's estate) are extremely beautiful. Natasha is the most beautiful character - anyway up to page 700 or so, where I am now.

I think of the contrast between life on an estate in Russia and my estate here in Thorpe. It's not just the scale, but the whole aspect of things, physically and socially. Tolstoy makes Russia seem untamed and exciting - not words one would use in describing Essex! And the women! How it must be to be loved and desired by a Russian woman. Makes my blood flow faster just thinking about it. I thought I was doing something exotic by marrying a Frenchwoman, but to think if she had been Russian. No prospect of peace and tranquility of course, but the passion!

Grey day

Sunday, January 20th., Cadogan Square, London.

Worst sort of day weather-wise. Grey, dismal, a steady sleet making any sort of venture into the outer world unpleasant. Regrettably I had to go over to Chessington on a family matter which could not be deferred. It was horrible. But the matter in question is being progressed towards a conclusion. I quite often find that people are overwhelmed by a problem and consequently make no progress with it. The secret is to break it down into parts and tackle one at a time.

I have been reading in a book called "Arnold Bennett of the Five Towns" which was sent to me by its author, one L.G. Johnson. I gather he is a Staffordshire man and claims to have 'grown up' with some of my characters. It is a good book. His appreciations and his animadversions are full of interest, significance - meat! The book is incomparably better than Darton's. Although Darton had evidently been to the Potteries to study the topography he failed to find in Burslem the equivalent of 'Duck Square. Yet this square indisputably exists under the name of Swan Square, just as Duck Bank is really Swan Bank. How he could have missed this passes understanding. He also failed to realise that 'Axe' is in fact Leek. 

Johnson clearly knows his Potteries and makes some insightful observations about, and criticisms of, my books. He considers that "These Twain" 'narrows down' the trilogy. Well he is right about that, but not in the way he thinks. It was intentional and deliberate, and part of the scheme as a whole. Compare the much more drastic narrowing down into domestic life at the end of "War and Peace". I cannot remember whether I read "War and Peace" before or after I planned "Hilda Lessways", which I consider to be quite inferior to "These Twain". I have received the most passionate testimonies to the authenticity and force of "These Twain". It was written from the heart and contains not a little personal experience. Frank Swinnerton calls it a 'tour de force'.

The old days

March 14th., 1929
75 Cadogan Square, London

A woman, an experienced and abandoned reader, lamented to me the other day that the domestic novel was disappearing. I could not agree and told her so. At any rate I, who do indeed glance at novels now and then in my spare time, have observed no sign of it. The great majority of novels have been and will be essentially domestic in matter. Even Tolstoy in "War and Peace" had to come down to the bedrock of domesticity in the end. To my mind the last 100 pages of that perhaps supreme work, dealing in the main with very narrow domesticity, are the most poignant in it - and the most effective. It is certainly not essential for the action of a novel to be confined to a traditional home, with the characters engaging in conversation across the kitchen table, for it to be regarded as domestic. Of course I am well aware what the lamenting lady meant. She meant that the old-fashioned domestic novel was disappearing. Naturally it is. The old-fashioned everything is disappearing, and has been disappearing steadily for thousands of years.

Yesterday I met an American, clearly a man of taste and discernment, who asked me for the name and address of the artist who had created the suit in which I happened to be clad. He said that in the old days he used to order all his clothes in London, but he had given up London tailors because they demanded so many tryings-on. However he was now inclined to return to them. I then told him my most famous experience: how I had spent three months, and given at least twelve tryings-on, and exhausted two tailoring firms, in the attempt, ultimately successful, to obtain three evening waistcoats that would fit without crease. Not that I am hard to please!

Wherever I go it seems that people of a certain age are complaining to me about things 'not being as they were in our day'. And they seem to take for granted that I will agree with them. Only today a neighbour, rather older than myself, was bemoaning modern food, the difficulty of getting 'real' meat and 'proper' vegetables such as were, apparently, in abundance when he was a boy. Is this a sort of resentment that life has been so unaccountably unfair as to make us old? For myself, if I were offered the opportunity to relive my youth I would politely decline - once has been sufficient for me.