A change

Sunday, January 7th., Comarques, Thorpe-le-Soken.

We have been away for a few days to Aldeburgh. Only the next county but quite different in its atmosphere we thought. In fact the area around has an atmosphere uniquely its own which has struck me on previous visits, and prompts my return periodically.
 
Aldeburgh is rather picturesque, with fishing boats on the beach. and a number of quaint buildings, including an Old Customs House with its door at first floor level accessed by steps from the street. Apparently this was a safeguard against flooding and seems to have been a sensible precaution given that the whole village of Slaughden, just a mile or so down the coast, was only recently inundated by the sea and abandoned. There is also a substantial martello tower standing guard just south of the town. 
 
Busy few days with visits to Southwold, Thorpeness and Orford, the latter to view the castle. Really just the keep of the castle as the walls have been entirely demolished, but the keep is intact and very interesting. Extensive views from the roof level. Excellent walk from Aldeburgh to the nearby village of Snape, using a so-called 'Sailors Path'. Apparently much used by smugglers at one time, but now a pleasant mixed walk through fields and woods with the occasional glimpse of the river. 

 My mother often said that "a change is as good as a rest", and she was quite correct. Although we were only away for four days it seemed much longer and we return invigorated and refreshed.

Too much to say

Saturday, January 6th., 14 St. Simon's Avenue, London.

Henry James by John Singer Sargent

Henry James. At Pinker's. Very slow talker. Beautiful French. Expressed stupefaction when I said I knew nothing about the middle class, and said the next time he saw me he would have recovered from the stupefaction, and the discussion might proceed. Said there was too much to say about everything - and that was the thing most felt by one such as he, not entirely without - er - er - er - perceptions. When I said I lay awake at nights sometimes thinking of the things I had left out of my novels, he said that all my stuff was crammed, and that when the stuff was crammed nothing more could be put in, and so it was all right. He spoke with feeling about his recent illness. "I have been very ill". Said he was now settled down in Cheyne Walk, and had one or two faithful, dependable servants, and so on. An old man, waning, but with the persistent youthfulness that all old bachelors have.

Rough justice

Friday, January 5th., Trinity Hall Farm.

My father, in a mood of reminiscence, told us of an incident which, he said, happened when he was about 8. He seemed fairly sure of the date, but I should say that he would be more probably 10 or 12; anyhow he still wore pinafores. At the time, being highly precocious, he taught in a sort of night school, and earned 2d, a night for so doing.

Mow Cop Castle

One day he was fetched out of day school by an older boy who had just begun to work in the office of Sneyd Colliery. This boy had embezzled certain small sums (my father did not know this until later) and was itching to spend. They took train to Stone and there bought a lop-eared rabbit. Returning to Burslem they walked with a third boy (George Wigley) to Mow Cop, and bought there a donkey for 12s. The Sneyd boy drove the donkey home, while father and Wigley carried the lop-eared rabbit in a basket.

Father reached home about midnight. My grandmother had sent the town crier round to 'cry' him. By a lie he managed to escape immediate consequences. But on the third day my grandfather entered his bedroom carrying a pair of braces. In the meantime the whole adventure had revealed itself. My grandfather set himself specially against the lying. First of all he knelt down and prayed, then he thrashed father with the braces until neither of them could very well stand. My father remembers how his mother afterwards, with tears, displayed his bruised back for the commiseration of a neighbour. At that time my father was accustomed daily to strip everything but his trousers and wash in the yard at the rear of the house. The Bennetts then lived in Pitt Street just off the Waterloo Road.

Writers

Tuesday, January 4th., Royal York Hotel, Brighton.

When I came downstairs this morning full to the brim with the first chapters of "Clayhanger", I found a letter from Herbert Trench asking me to alter tremendously the third act of "The Honeymoon". My soul revolted, but of course I gradually gave way and then wrote him that I would.

I was occupied with letters till 11, and then I went out to recover myself for "Clayhanger" and I did so. The recuperative power of sea air. I worked till 1 0'clock and again after lunch, and again after dinner. So that now I have got the opening of the book pretty ripe.

Sir Sidney Low

This afternoon we went to have tea with the Sidney Lows at the Metropole. Low told me how he discovered Kipling, and how his superiors on the Indian daily didn't think anything of him at all, but Low insisted on getting hold of his stuff. It seems he was very shy and young at the start. Low also insisted on Hall Caine's powers as a raconteur, as proved at Cairo when he kept a dinner party of casual strangers interested for an hour and a half by a full account of the secret history of the Druce case, which secret history he admitted afterwards was a sheer novelist's invention.

When Caine was with Low in Egypt he saw everything as a background to "The White Prophet", which was originally meant as a play for Tree. When Low showed him the famous staircases in the Ghezireh Palace he said, "I can get three different entrances underneath that". And when he saw the pyramids, he said, "Tree can do simply anything with those". The Sidney Lows said he was the kindest, nicest sort of man in private life (but Low told me behind his hand that he was also apt to be tedious on the subject of himself, and naif). Present also, inter alia, the wife of T.H.S. Escott, who lives at Brighton but is paralysed. He still works and produces however, and has a new book just coming out.

This I believe to be true.

Tuesday, January 3rd., Fulham Park Gardens, London.

At the Burne-Jones exhibition. I was much impressed by the whole thing and especially by the superb richness and spirituality of the early "Annunciation" (two panels) and the "Adoration of the Magi", all three pictures being dated 1861. In some ways these surpass, or at least equal, any subsequent work.

The sight of Burne-Jones's aloofness, of his continual preoccupation with the spiritual, to the ignoring of everyday facts, served to complete in me a modification of view which has been proceeding now for a year or two. The day of my enthusiasm for 'realism', for 'naturalism', has passed. I can perceive that a modern work of fiction dealing with modern life may ignore realism and yet be great. To find beauty, which is always hidden, that is the aim. If beauty is found then superficial facts are of small importance. But they are of some importance. And though I concede that in the past I have attached too high a value to realism, nevertheless I see no reason why it should be dispensed with. My desire is to depict the deeper beauty while abiding by the envelope of facts. At the worst the facts should not be ignored. They might for the sake of disclosing the beauty, suffer a certain distortion - I can't think of a better word. Indeed they cannot be ignored in the future. The achievements of the finest French writers, with Turgenev and Tolstoy, have set a standard for all coming masters of fiction.

What the artist has to grasp is that there is no such thing as ugliness in the world. This I believe to be true, but perhaps the saying would sound less difficult in another form; all ugliness has an aspect of beauty. The business of the artist is to find that aspect.
 

All based on copulation

Wednesday, January 2nd., Yacht Club, London.

Came to London yesterday. George Paish's Food Question lunch arranged for yesterday had been put off without warning me. Rather irritating. So I lunched with Ross at the Reform.

Afterwards turkish bath with Masterman. who said that the shine of the present Honours List would be nothing to that of the List when Ll. George quitted the Premiership. He would have everything to wipe up then. What a travesty the whole business seems to me, and so many otherwise sensible men (and their wives) are consumed by it. To think that at this stage in the twentieth century, and with the greatest war the world has ever endure still going on, titles which belong in the Middle Ages are being dispensed as 'rewards'. Surely success in your chosen field of activity is sufficient reward? I would like to be offered an Honour so as to have the great pleasure of refusing it.

On reaching the Club I read the Book of Esther in the Eversley Bible which I have newly bought. A good Eastern story, exceedingly ingenuous, all based on copulation.

Gamblers

Monday, January 1st., Yacht Amaryllis, Monte Carlo.

Casino de Monte Carlo

We came here last Tuesday and I found that all the people I knew were confirmed bachelors and gamblers. So it has taken me some days, by various introductions, to find partners suitable to me. I met the chief one this morning on the Casino Terrace - aged 29, tres chic - and she said that she was just going to church, and wouldn't I go? And before I knew where I was she was telling me that once you had grasped the fact that the English are the descendants of the ten lost tribes the whole bible becomes perfectly clear. Also that the second coming was expected to occur in 1935, and that all the great dates in history, including this last, are to be found inscribed in a secret place beneath the Great Pyramid. Was I happy, she asked? If not, why not? She and her husband had been very happy since they found the truth etc. By this stage my interest, having waned, disappeared completely. I did not go to church!

Herbert Sullivan (right)

Bertie Sullivan is a confirmed gambler. I have joined the two private gambling halls run by the Casino, but I never play and have lost all desire to play. It gives much greater satisfaction watching other people lose. Winston Churchill was playing mightily last night. I asked him if he had won and he said he hadn't. His mother-in-law lives here and plays twice daily and, apparently, tries to cheat the whole time. The curious thing is that she looks almost exactly like his late lamented mother. I think he is a very great man but he spends fifty percent of his time being a super fool.

Chartres Biron

We have on board Chartres Biron, Chief Magistrate of Bow Street, and the destroyer of Bottomley. he is 57, a fine tennis player, a fine talker, very handsome, rather a dandy and as mean as Ephraim Tellwright. Bertie is very generous but not an organiser nor an anti-muddler. we are lying here beyond our time because he has muddled the engines, the engineer, and the electricity. Happily his housekeeper, a Belgian aged 60, runs the household part of the ship very well. She is a wonderful individuality, gambles frequently, and seldom loses. The Italian cook consistently gives us the best regular cooking I ever had.

As for Marguerite, her pen, like her tongue, runs away with her. She loses no occasion to write to me, good wishes, assurances of affection, readiness to come at once if I am ill etc. The mischief is that often what she says bears no recognisable relation to the truth whatever. My impression is that she wants to return, but I can't be sure. As things stand I can conceive of no circumstances under which I would have her back. In my experience, leopards never change their spots. And I am taking to the bachelor lifestyle, chic biblical nutcases notwithstanding.