Party tricks

Wednesday, February 7th., Yacht Club, London.

Dined at Madame Van der Velde's, and sat at a spiritualistic seance with a clairvoyant named Peters who brought his son, a youth in the R.A.M.C. home for a few hours on leave. This son said there were 500 professed spiritualist soldiers at Aldershot. Theosophist. The clairvoyant a man of 45 or so. Short. Good forehead. Bald on top, dark hair at sides. Quick and nervous. Son of a barge owner. Present: Yeats the poet, Mr. and Mrs. Jowitt, Roger Fry, hostess and me. Mrs J. very beautiful, quite distractingly so. Jowitt is editor of the Daily Chronicle. 

We were all asked to put an object we had brought with us on a tray, unseen by Peters. Though not by his son I noticed. Peters then handled the objects with his eyes closed. His greatest success, quite startling, was with the glass stopper of a bottle brought by Jowitt. He decribed a man throwing himself out of something, down, with machinery behind him, and a big hotel or building behind him. Something to do with water, across water. He kept repeating these phrases with variations. Turns out the stopper had once belonged to a baronet (I forget his name) who threw himself off a launch in response to a challenge, at 3 a.m. into the Thames, after a party up river. He drowned. Drunk presumably.

He had some success with my toothpick, in getting me to the Potteries, and into the office of the Staffordshire Knot, or Sentinel, and described a man that might be either Goold or the editor of the Sentinel, and said that known or unknown to me, this man had greatly influenced me. He insisted on the word 'Zola'. He said there was a message to tell me, that I hadn't done my best work. I felt quite impressed at the time, but not so now. A professional would not have any difficulty finding out things about us, and offering fairly vague suggestions which we seize upon and mould to fit. Probably he and his son have some sort of code to indicate which item belongs to which person. 

What strikes me most is the banality of the whole thing. here we are in the middle of the greatest war the world has seen, people dying in their millions, and the spirits can only tell us who has fallen out of a boat or has a link with a newspaper! The fact is that people tend towards credulity and the mediums and clairvoyants make use of this tendency with their party tricks. I am glad I went. I made full notes.

Enough of Monte

Saturday, February 6th., Hotel d'Italie, Menton.

Yesterday being wet I went over to Monte Carlo, and lost money, and was depressed by that and the weather, and more particularly by my lack of sense in playing with insufficient capital. That sentence is a lie. I went over to Monte Carlo in spite of the weather because I wanted to gamble and I thought I would win. Idiot. If there were a way of beating the system then somebody would have thought of it by now. Supremely arrogant of me to think that I have some special insight. No more!

Early this morning, still in a fairly savage mood, I composed a limerick on that infernal and un-vanquishable bore Mrs. Miller:

     There was an old woman named Miller
     Whose acquaintances wanted to kill her,
     When they put her in ice,
     She sniggered, "How nice!"
     For nothing could possibly chill her.

I sent it off to Eden Phillpotts by special messenger, and instantly felt better.

Phillpotts and I should have finished our play in the next few days and I must then go to England to pay a duty call on my mother who is still quite ill. Then back to Paris. I am trying to persuade Wells to visit me there. I have read the first instalment of his "The Food of the Gods" in Pearson's and thought it extremely good apart from a few minor verbal infelicities. Wells's reputation is high in Paris and I am sure he would be suitably feted there. Anyway, I would like to see him. I am starting to think that I have been here long enough. The place has interested me but one can have too much of a good thing.

When in Rome

Friday, February 5th., Hotel Russie, Rome.

I spent a lot of the morning at the top of the hotel garden, which I had never discovered before, after having been here over seven weeks. Marvellous view over Rome, of which I made a sketch. I thought about my new novel, had quite a lot of excellent ideas concerning it. I expect to make a start this week.

After siesta we took a taxi and drove along dusty and dull and very bad roads to Tre Fontane - the place where Paul's head jumped three times after being cut off, at each place producing a fountain. There are three churches, and if they locate the fountains, Paul's head must have very considerably bounded. Two churches were open, both very poor and odd and neglected. In fact - no interest at all - yet it is a place one is supposed to go to!


Septimus is much on my mind, and I doubt that he will live much longer. Under 7 stones now apparently. Should I return to England for a last word with him? It would mean leaving Dorothy here and, though she is very well, I don't think it would do in her present condition. In any case I doubt if Sep would know me, or even be conscious. 

I found myself in a headline of the Continental Daily Mail and have since had trouble with journalists. Especially female American journalists. They are very determined and not above using their 'charms' to get me to do an interview. Of course I don't mind being 'charmed' by an attractive woman, but I am not in the mood to talk and if I gave way to one then that would open the floodgates.

Anyway, there is, as they say, no place like Rome. It is 13 years since I was here last and I feel that I am only just beginning to see what Rome is. I must admit that this is partly due to Dorothy who has a genuine passion for archaeology and has communicated some of her enthusiasm to me. Perhaps I should forget about the writing for a bit and just absorb the place. To think that I could not have imagined having this opportunity all those years ago in Burslem.

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.

Thoughts

Wednesday, February 3rd., Hotel d'Italie, Menton.

"Leonora" is in every way a much better book than "Anna". What women of forty ought to concern themselves with is not the point. What they do concern themselves with they will know when they reach that interesting age; in the meantime they should make no assumptions. That women of forty, generally, do regret the past is a fact. That they long to be young again is an undoubted fact. That they are particularly, peculiarly, & specially passionate & prone to sexual excitement is incontrovertible. It was the discovery of these piquant truths which led me to write "Leonora". I didn't conceive the idea and then search round for confirmation. The reverse. I certainly do not think that 'love' is a woman's whole existence, as does at least one of my correspondents. It was certainly not Leonora's whole existence. She was extremely addicted to the higher walks of housewifery. But I think that 'love' is the major part of woman's existence. It is a good part of man's, but differently. I think there are only two things in the world really worth having - sexual love & the love of children. Over & over again, in a career intimately mixed up with many & diverse women, I have found that women with a tendency to 'sit on' love have ended suddenly & swiftly with marriage & become even more domesticated than their sisters. Just some thoughts on women that have arisen in my mind lately.


I have been a little under the weather for the last few days. Just a cold in the head but it is surprising what an impact it has on the mood. Of course it becomes difficult to sleep with any comfort and hence one is perpetually tired. I started to feel a little better yesterday and hoped to see further improvement this morning, but had a minor relapse. Drinks of hot lemon and honey I find to be soothing and restorative.

The ideas of the average decently-informed person are so warped, and out of perspective, and ignorant, and entirely perverse and wrong and crude, on nearly every mortal subject, that the task of discussing anything with him or her seriously and fully and to the end, is simply appalling. This has struck me several times recently in this hotel, and I have recoiled from a discussion. The state of that average person's mind can scarcely be contemplated by me, in certain moods. In fact I doubt the value of discussion generally. In my experience discussion usually amounts to repeated statements by the participants of their views. I have rarely felt that I have changed anyone's mind by talking to them. I know that no-one has changed mine. I think this is partly because a 'discussion' is necessarily an adversarial affair, and people hate to feel they have been defeated. Better it is to read alternative views, mull over them and, if so inclined, amend one's views accordingly.

The funeral feast given by Catherine Ivanovna in "Crime and Punishment" is a magnificent piece of work, both as serious accurate observation and as brutal humour.

At the Savoy

Saturday, February 2nd., Cadogan Square, London.

Rupert Carte

Yesterday, lunch at the Savoy with Reeves Smith, Rupert Carte, Thornewill and Temple. They showed me over the hotel, by arrangement, as I have an idea of writing a novel with a great hotel at its centre. They know I will give it a fictitious name but I expect they believe good publicity will arise as its provenance becomes known. And of course I will formally acknowledge their assistance. They told me that the Savoy took in receipts a total of a million a year, about £3,000 a day.

Complex systems for tips which differ for waiters, chambermaids, valets, porters etc. Arcane. But not to be interfered with - hotel people are very conservative it appears.
Kitchen - Head Chef under thirty. Worked his way up. Wore a natty little cravat without collar. Stores. Fish in tanks. The man who calls out orders as they come down is called the aboyeur. I didn't see a great deal of special interest in the kitchens, except the patent washer-up.
Power station - Artesian wells. geared turbines. Power for carpet sweepers, pumping etc. The power station reminded me of the stoke hold of the Lusitania which I saw before the war when I went to the United States. Run by oil now. ventilated by vast draughts of cold air through trumpet-like things. Water heaters for both.
Graph Office (Capt. Jack) - graphs for various receipts. In summer receipts for rooms go up, and retaurant receipts go down. Londoners away in summer. Hence there are two publics; the travelling and the home publics - very distinct.
Audit Department - every bill separately checked, but afterwards. Every query on them has to be cleared up.
Printing Office -  all menus, cards, programmes and large bills. In their spare time they do the hotel's commercial printing, such as order forms.
Repairs Department - I didn't see this. But they plan all their big carpets there. However I saw through a window in the side-street the room where 10 to 12 women repair the hotel linen every day.
Laundry - Clapham. I didn't see it. An American expert said it was undoubtedly the finest equipped laundry in the world.
Bedrooms and suites - 6 guineas a day for double-bed and sitting room, bath etc. 9 guineas for two bedrooms and sitting room. It pleases visitors best that the rooms should be, if anything, too warm when shown. Thornewill had given orders previous night that one suite should not be let, so that I might see it at my ease.

A very instructive visit. Reinforces my view that a great hotel is a sort of organism and that it could, if dealt with properly, become almost a character in a novel. Much food for thought in this. I will allow the idea to 'ferment' in my mind, and one day it will burst forth.

 

Almost happy

Monday, February 1st., Victoria Grove, London.

Today I took up my novel again, and after roughly scribbling 2,300 words in three hours, began actually to have a dim vision of some of the characters - at last! To 'get way on' there is nothing like seizing the pen and writing something, anything about one's characters. The blank page is such a daunting thing to contemplate and it seems to grow in size the more one looks at it. It is a mistake to try to get everything right before starting. 

If I could spend every day as I have today spent today, happiness would be almost within grasp. A couple of hours editorial work at the office in the morning. After dinner I read myself to sleep with d'Annunzio's "Annales d'Anne", and when I woke I went to pay some money into the bank. Then I schemed out in my head the next chapter of my novel. Before tea Mrs. Sharpe came upstairs for a talk, a talk which continued for some time after tea was over. We talk entirely in French. Her suggestion, to improve my conversational ability as I have confided to her that it is my intention one day to live in Paris. She speaks French very well and I feel that I am improving under her tutelage.

From six to nine I worked fairly easily at my novel, drafting 2,300 words - a complete chapter. After supper, I opened a new copy of Arnold's "Essays in Criticism" (Second series) and read the essay on Tolstoy. I shall read myself to sleep (for the second time today) with Maria Edgeworth's "Belinda".

In spite of the laziest liver in the world, I am well nigh content with myself tonight.