Intense cold

 Sunday, February 7th., Hotel Matignon, Paris.

According to newspaper reports it is colder here than it is in London, but here we are so we shall have to make the best of it. I can well believe the reports. About the cold the word 'intense' can safely be used. There is a strong wind from the east, what a friend of mine used to call a 'lazy wind' because it went through you rather than round you. It was like this occasionally in Thorpe, but you don't really expect it in the middle of a big city.

Arrived here yesterday and went to a play last night. I warned Dorothy how it would be - theatre dirty, theatre packed, theatre entirely unventilated - and it was. Happily the play was good. But a play which lasts from 8.45 to midnight is thirty minutes too long for me. Dorothy doesn't seem to be able to get enough theatre. For my part I often think that if I see one more play in this lifetime, it will be one too many. 

Haven't done much today apart from a light lunch for Madame Andre Maurois and Jean Aubry. Maurois himself couldn't come as he is lecturing in Lyons. I said that anybody who went to a place like Lyons deserved all the consequences thereof. He agreed. But I bet it is warmer there. We did walk out briefly after lunch. To go forth into the streets at present is quite an adventure. Most of the girls run, or at least scuttle, and there are public braziers lighted in various places so that passers-by can warm themselves. That is a nice touch I think. There are fewer people in Paris than usual which is excellent. I don't think it was ever this cold during the time I lived here. I had considered walking down to the Rue de Calais, just to look at my old haunt, but I thought better of it. It is not usually a good idea to revisit places in my experience.

This hotel is decidedly good. And cheap! We have two bedrooms, one private bathroom and a cabinet de toilette for 22s. a day. The food could be better but I intend to eat as much as I can. More theatre tomorrow I expect but I hope to renew acquaintance with a few old friends at least.

Visiting

Saturday, February 6th., Royal York Hotel, Brighton.

We went to see Hornung's "Stingaree" on Monday and I arranged with Vedrenne to compress it into good shape and give it guts, with a view to turning it from a failure into a success. Subject to Hornung's consent - for £100. However, on Tuesday Vedrenne telegraphed me that Hornung refused his consent, so that is that. No reason given. I suppose it is a case of professional 'offence'. I expect I would feel the same if some other author offered to improve one of my plays!

We went to Mrs. Perrin's today, and she took us to Lady Seton's. A large house full of numberless bad pictures, etc. Mrs Perrin is, it turns out, almost exactly the same age as me. She was born in India and tells me that she took to writing to "relieve the boredom of being a British woman in India". I have read a few of her short stories and enjoyed them well enough. She was certainly observant in India, even when bored. Regrettably she is the sort of woman who is very class conscious, impressed by the aristocracy because they are the aristocracy. Marguerite liked her but I sensed that the liking was not particularly reciprocated.

I am getting on with "Clayhanger". I am resisting the temptation to 'press on regardless' as my mother would say. Instead I intend to take as long as I need and to make the book the best I possibly can.

Life

 Friday, February 5th., Chiltern Court, London.

What I desiderate more than anything in the reminiscential line is a book of reminiscences by a known person about encounters with the admiring uncelebrated. Such a book might be marvellous. I would not write it myself but I have heaped material for it. As an example. Once, on board ship, a lady said to me suddenly: "Oh, Mr. Bennett, I do love your "Old Wives' Tale". I made no reply because, what can one reply that is not desolatingly banal? She thought I was displeased and went on: "But I love your serious books too!" "For instance?" I enquired. "Well, "How to Live on Twenty Four Hours a Day." For once, words failed me!

And words almost fail me in connection with a book I am reading at the moment. In fact I have nearly finished it and stopped reading this afternoon only because I could sense the end was near and I want to savour it. It is "Zorba the Greek" by Nikos Kazantzakis. In translation. This is a book about how to live life, nothing else. I know nothing of Kazantzakis but he must know something about living. Certainly more than I know. The book put me in mind from the start of Hess's "Narziss and Goldmund", the contrast between the sensualist and the aesthete/ascetic. But Zorba is, for me, much more fully realised than is Goldmund. What a character! To say that he is 'larger than life' is to underestimate the man; he is life. Zorba is a noble creation. Casting around for a character on the same scale from my reading I came up with Haggard's noble Zulu, Umslopogaas; he too expanded the conception of what is possible to a man.

We know nothing worth knowing about the narrator of the story, not even his name, but that does not matter. All we need is to have been introduced to Zorba, and to listen fascinated as he tells the stories of his life. We do not believe all he says of course, but his experience fills our breasts to overflowing. At times I wanted to throw down the book and set off immediately in search of adventure. In search of life. To go to Greece. And as for Crete, well, I have been there, but I was wasting my time. I don't suppose the cast of colourful village characters are any more true to life than are Hardy's peasantry, but they live in the mind of the reader in the same way, and will continue to live in the memory. I am exhausted but exhilarated as is the hapless narrator after a night eating and drinking with Zorba.

Peace needed

Monday, February 5th., Comarques, Thorpe-le-Soken.

Lunch at the Reform with Wells and Gardiner yesterday. They were in favour of communal feeding in case of starvation, as most efficient, starting in schools. Hard to believe that such a possibility is even being considered here. What a pretty pass! Wells took the submarine menace, like me, very calmly. On the other hand, Donald and McKenna who joined the conversation were much upset by it and gave dramatic figures. They are closer to the centre than we are, so should know what they are talking about.

The announcement that U.S.A. had severed diplomatic relations with Germany caused really very little discussion here. It was discussed a little at lunch. Already the intensely misunderstanding and unjust attitude of Marguerite and the officers (some of them) to the U.S.A. is changing. It is some sort of cognitive adjustment which allows people to 'fit in' with a different way of looking at things when that way becomes the accepted one. Within a week they will have forgotten that they ever thought differently.

At tea , when Lieut. and Mrs. Tracy came, it was discussed a little, and Mrs.Tracy well formulated for me the advantages of an 'American Peace', that is an unbiased peace, which was received with silence not altogether hostile. The fact is that unless something happens soon, both 'sides' will suffer and nothing will be gained except the salving of some misplaced pride. Afterwards Clegg agreed with me as to the advantages of the 'American Peace'. During the remainder of the evening nothing was said as to America, but the cognitive wheels were imperceptibly turning.

Some discomfort

Wednesday, February 4th., Rue de Grenelle, Paris.

It seems that the Bookman magazine is preparing an article about me, to be written by Bettany. I have had a letter from them asking for an up-to-date photograph. I don't have such a thing. In fact I don't much like to be photographed, but I sent them a few things I have on hand, including a couple of Rickards' caricatures. They also asked about photographs of the Potteries. Why I should be a source of these I know not.

Interestingly they refer throughout the letter not to the Potteries, but to the Five Towns. Seemingly my invented name for the district has now become common usage. It is used as if it were the real name, even in the district itself, and also by other novelists sometimes. For example Wells, in "The New Machiavelli", lays a number of important scenes in the Potteries, which he calls the Five Towns. The town of Burslem he sometimes calls by its proper name and sometimes by my adaptation of it - Bursley. I suppose I should be flattered by this, and I am, but I know that there is a fair amount of ill-feeling about it in the Potteries. They are a proud people, and easily offended, especially about trivial matters.

I wonder if Hardy gets any trouble arising from his invention of Wessex? I have seen the term used as a description for the south-west in general in the press. But I have never seen Dorchester referred to as Casterbridge, or Weymouth as Budmouth, etc. And then there is Trollope. I don't think that his Barsetshire is in fact based on a particular locality, so it's not the same. Overall I am glad to have been sufficiently successful in my creation to have influenced popular perception. But I doubt if I shall ever be welcome in Fenton!

I am getting on well with "Hilda Lessways" (in Turnhill). Nearly 20,000 words in three weeks. But now and then I get an uncomfortable sensation all over the top of my head and I have to go out for a very quick sweating walk of half an hour to clear it off. Unfortunately concentrated effort like this leads to neuralgia of fatigue and insomnia and so on, and I have to build myself up again with foods.

As usual

Friday, February 2nd., Rue de Calais, Paris.

I went with the two Ullmans to "Fidelio" at the Opera Comique last night. The usual slightly hurried dinner and general excitement in order to get seats. And, the seats being got, the usual exit before the performance to have a cup of coffee in a neighbouring bar. The usual disgraceful physical conditions of the seat - bad air, talkative neighbours, and a very imperfect view of the stage. I believe that a lot of the people who go to the theatre here do so not for the performance but to 'perform' themselves.

I was inclined to change my opinion of the libretto, and to give Beethoven credit for having chosen it not so badly after all. There are situations in it that are genuinely heroic, but which less fine music might have rendered footling. The constant grand beauty of the music is what chiefly affects one in memory after the performance.

It was a wet and very muddy night. But we walked home because we had need of fresh air after the poison of the theatre. The Ullmans are very agreeable companions. Alice UIlman, formerly Alice Woods is an author and illustrator of some popularity in America and one of the few really intelligent American women I have met here. She is also rather strikingly pretty and was pleasantly attentive to me. I was decidedly envious of Eugene when we parted at their door. As usual!

Best medicine

Monday, February 1st., Chiltern Court, London.

"Laughter is the best medicine". So my mother often used to say. And she was right.

Like most professional humourists, I rarely laugh, even at what I think is funny. There are two sorts of humour, the sort that makes you laugh audibly, and the sort that makes you laugh subterraneanly, and noiselessly, somewhere down in your solar plexus. Some people hold that the second is better than the first. I am not of this opinion. I would give the two sorts equal marks, but the first or loud sort holds a clear advantage over the second in that it has a positive ameliorating influence on bodily health.

I shall never forget a supper, a long time ago, in my dyspeptic days at which Frederic Norton, celebrated as author of the music for Chu Chin Chow, told stories. Mr. Norton is the finest and most elaborate raconteur in my experience. Now the supper consisted of lobster, steak-and-kidney pudding and beer. What a combination! I quailed at the prospect as any one of these items taken at night ought to have incapacitated me for at least three days. Yet the next morning I awoke in the sublime perfection of health. The reason was that throughout the meal and after it I had laughed, as they say, 'consumedly'. I laughed indeed more than I have ever laughed before or since. Now I maintain that a man who can by speech or writing make you laugh in this fashion is a doctor in addition to being a humourist. He is a benefactor of mankind.

Nowadays I do not laugh enough. I admit it. It seems that I simply do not find things as funny as I used to. I am often amused, but it is a quiet, contained sort of amusement. I honestly cannot remember when I last had a proper 'belly-laugh'. This is a great pity and I feel I am the poorer for it, but laughing is not one of those things one can develop by taking thought, quite the opposite in fact. Perhaps a decine in the inclination to laugh out loud is a natural concomitant of growing old, like going grey? I must investigate this with some of my contemporaries.