A visit to Berlin

Tuesday, September 13th., Berlin.

Visiting Berlin in a party consisting of  Beaverbrook, Venetia Montagu, Lord Castlerosse (Daily Express journalist),  Diana Cooper, and myself.

William Maxwell "Max" Aitken, 1st Baron Beaverbrook, Bt, PC, ONB, (25 May 1879 – 9 June 1964) was an Anglo-Canadian business tycoon, politician, and writer. Lord Beaverbrook held a tight grip on the British media as an influential Press Baron, owning The Daily Express newspaper, as well as the London Evening Standard and theSunday Express. His political career included serving as a Minister in the British Government during both world wars.

He was an influential and often mentioned figure in British society of the first half of the 20th century.

Beatrice Venetia Stanley Montagu (22 August 1887 – 3 August 1948) was a British aristocrat and socialite best known for the many letters that Prime Minister Herbert Henry Asquith wrote to her between 1910 and 1915. After converting to Judaism, Venetia married Edwin Samuel Montagu, a Liberal MP, on 26 July 1915. Venetia's marriage to Montagu lasted nine years until his premature death in 1924. Despite the birth of a daughter in 1923, Venetia was unhappy in her marriage. She had affairs with Lord Beaverbrook and others.

We set off on Friday on the SS Deutschland and arrived here on Sunday. The Deutschland is only a 20,000 ton ship but looked enormous when we boarded her at Southampton.

SS Deutschland

Yesterday, before dinner, Max gave a full account of the rise of Baldwin. I wanted this for my first political article. It was a marvellous narrative and full of meat for me. All of us were enthralled.

This morning I went out with Kommer to Charlottenburg to buy books and things. I bought a few German books and some good coloured reproductions of Cezanne, Seurat etc., very cheap. Lunch with Castlerosse, Sinclair Lewis, Bartch of Ufa (a film company that was the principal film studio in Germany, home of the German film industry during the Weimar Republic and through World War II, and a major force in world cinema from 1917 to 1945), and three American journalists - all very agreeable.

Harry Sinclair Lewis (February 7, 1885 – January 10, 1951) was an American novelist,short-story writer, and playwright. In 1930, he became the first writer from the United States to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, "for his vigorous and graphic art of description and his ability to create, with wit and humor, new types of characters." 

No time for sleep. We went at 4 to Potsdam to see Sans Souci.

The Sanssouci palace was the summer residence of Frederick the Great. Georg Wenzeslaus von Knobelsdorff built it above the terraced vineyard from 1745 to 1747 following the King's ideas and sketches. The palace is considered the major work of Rococo architecture in Germany. Paintings by Watteau, Panini and Pesne are on exhibit in the picture gallery. 

<http://www.potsdam.de/cms/beitrag/10001008/34080/>

Fine avenues thither, speed-roads etc. Back at 6.25. The girls, Kommer and I went to 'Piscator's' communistic play "Hoppla wir leben" at the Rollenplatz Theatre.

Oops, We're Alive! (German: Hoppla, wir leben!) is a Neue Sachlichkeit (or "New Objectivity") play by the German playwright Ernst Toller. Its second production, directed by the seminal epic theatre director Erwin Piscator in 1927, was a milestone in the history of theatre. 

Scene from Hoppla wir leben, directed by Erwin Piscator, Berlin, 1927

Interesting perspective on our party by Sefton Delmer:

Sefton Delmer and Lord Beaverbrook, Berlin, 1927

Lord Beaverbrook was not alone when I entered. He was surrounded by the other members of his party: the novelist Arnold Bennett, whom I described in my diary at the time as "sardonic, silent and sallow"; Sunday Express columnist, Lord Castlerosse, "fat, flushed and chortling, a vast cigar sticking out under his arched Edwardian nose"; Mrs. Venetia Montagu, "gracious, erect and smiling"; and Lady Diana Cooper, "brilliant, brittle and blonde, with the palest watery blue eyes".

They all called Lord Beaverbrook 'Max'. I gathered they had come to Berlin in connection with some film which Arnold Bennett was to write, Lady Diana was to star in, and Lord Beaverbrook would finance. I answered telephone calls, took messages in German, replied to questions about Berlin night life. I listened in awe as Lord Beaverbrook, talking to his managers in London, made lightning calculations in his head about the price of the newsprint he was ordering. I ran errands.

For Bennett I went out and bought a stack of the homosexual and nudist magazines I had told him about. No sooner had I given them to him than Lord Castlerosse also wanted a set. I could see wonder about me in the eyes of the woman at the news stand on the Potsdamerplatz, as she sold me the second lot. When I called for the third which Lord Beaverbrook then ordered all her doubts about me had been dispersed. She was certain now of my category. 

<http://www.heretical.com/miscella/delmer2.html>

Denis Sefton Delmer (born 24 May 1904, Berlin, Germany – died 4 September 1979,Lamarsh, Essex) was a British journalist and propagandist for the British government. Fluent in German, he became friendly with Ernst Röhm who arranged for him to interview Adolf Hitler in the 1930s. During the Second World War he led a black propaganda campaign against Hitler by radio from England and he was named in the Nazi's Black Book for immediate arrest after their invasion of England.

Writing for a living

Monday, September 12th., London.

I have decided very seriously to take up fiction for a livelihood. A certain chronic poverty had forced upon me the fact that I was giving no attention to money making, beyond my editorship, and so the resolution came about. Till the end of 1899 I propose to give myself absolutely to writing the sort of fiction that sells itself. My serious novel "Anna Tellwright" with which I have made some progress is put aside indefinitely - or rather until I have seen what I can do. To write popular fiction is offensive to me, but it is far more agreeable to being tied daily to an office and editing a lady's paper; and perhaps it is less ignoble, and less of a a strain on the conscience. To edit a lady's paper, even a relatively advanced one, is to foster conventionality and hinder progress regularly once a week. Moreover I think that fiction will pay better, and in order to be happy I must have a fair supply of money.
Also I have decided very seriously to aim at living in the country, to the entire abandonment of London. A year ago I could not have contemplated the idea of leaving London, but I have developed since then.

Out and about in London yesterday. British Library to view their current exhibition "Writing Britain". Very good. Lots of original manuscripts (including first page of The Card!) which make a personal connection to the writer: some very neat; some all over the place; all interesting. Bit too much poetry for my taste and, perhaps inevitably, a lot of London.
<http://www.bl.uk/whatson/exhibitions/writingbritain/index.html>

Later in Bermondsey and Rotherhithe, primarily to visit the Brunel Museum and the original entrance shaft out from which the first Thames Tunnel was dug. Fascinating!

<http://www.brunel-museum.org.uk/>



Walked back to and over Tower Bridge. Very atmospheric in the area between Jamaica Road and the river.

Zeppelin!

Saturday, September 11th., Thorpe-le-Soken.

During the day, from Davray, Walker and Rickards, I got information as to the Zeppelin raid on Wednesday night. Davray on the roof of the Waldorf. He said Zeppelin was fairly low over roof. Searchlights on it. Star-lights. Fairy-like. Shots at it . Then it rose and went northwards. Spectacle agreed to be superb. Noise of bombs agreed to be absolutely intimidating. And noise of our guns merely noise of popguns.

Two Army Zeppelins successfully bombed London on 7–8 September, SL.2 dropped bombs on the Isle of Dogs, Deptford, Greenwich and Woolwich. LZ.74 was forced to drop weight on its approach and scattered 39 bombs over Cheshunt, before heading on to London and dropped devices on Bermondsey, Rotherhithe and New Cross. Eighteen people were killed and 28 injured, property damage totalled £9,616. Fog and mist prevented any aircraft being launched, but a number of anti-aircraft guns fired at LZ.74 with no effect.

<http://www.historyonthenet.com/WW1/zeppelin_raids.htm>

Although these raids had no significant military impact, the psychological effect was considerable. The poet D.H. Lawrence described the raid in a letter to Lady Ottoline Morrell:

'The First Zeppelin Seen From Piccadilly Circus,
8th September 1915' by Andrew Gow

"Then we saw the Zeppelin above us, just ahead, amid a gleaming of clouds: high up, like a bright golden finger, quite small (...) Then there was flashes near the ground — and the shaking noise. It was like Milton — then there was war in heaven. (...) I cannot get over it, that the moon is not Queen of the sky by night, and the stars the lesser lights. It seems the Zeppelin is in the zenith of the night, golden like a moon, having taken control of the sky; and the bursting shells are the lesser lights."

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zeppelin>

<http://www.1914.org/podcasts/podcast-12-zeppelins-over-britain/>

One bomb in garden of Queen's Square had smashed windows and indented walls and smashed window frames on three sides. Two hospitals here. A lot of glazing had already been repaired.

Much damage at Wood Street Cheapside. I didn't see it. Two motor-buses demolished with passengers. Rickards, who went out at 11.15 (visitation at 10.50 - he was in bed and went to cellar), said it was very strange to see motor-buses going along just as usual, and a man selling fruit just as usual at the corner. People spoke to each other in the streets. Walker said streets near bomb in City were 'two inches deep' in glass etc. I didn't see damage in Theobald Road. It appears there had been a raid over New Cross on Tuesday night. Queen's Square was rather like the front - Arras, for example.

Mrs. T. to lunch. Her father, a bishop, has just lost his wife. A grandnephew was told to write condolences to him. The boy, aged 11, wrote first: "Dear Grandad, I am very sorry Grandma is dead but we must make the best of these things". Told that this wouldn't do he tried again: "I am very sorry that Grandma is dead but you may be sure that she is far happier where she is". This also being condemned,  he wrote a conventional letter about Grannie having always been kind to them all etc.

Beauty of Burslem

Friday, September 10th., Burslem.

During this week, when I have been taking early morning walks with Tertia, and when I have been traversing the district after dark, the grim and original beauty of certain aspects of the Potteries, to which I have referred in the introduction to "Anna Tellwright", has fully revealed itself for the first time. Before breakfast on the heights of Sneyd Green, where the air blows as fresh and pure (seemingly) as at the seaside, one gets glimpses of Burslem and of the lands between Burslem and Norton, which have the very strangest charm.

 The stretch of road on which one stands, used by men and young women on their way to work, is sufficiently rural and untouched to be intrinsically attractive. It winds through pretty curves and undulations; it is of a good earthy colour and its borders are green and bushy. Down below is Burslem, nestled in the hollow between several hills, and showing a vague picturesque mass of bricks through its heavy pall of smoke. If it were an old Flemish town, beautiful in detail and antiquely interesting, one would say its situation were ideal. It is not beautiful in detail, but the smoke transforms its ugliness into a beauty transcending the work of architects and of time.

Though a very old town, it bears no sign of great age - the eye is never reminded of its romance and history - but instead it thrills and reverberates with the romance of machinery and manufacture, the romance of our fight against nature, of the gradual taming of the earth's secret forces.

And surrounding the town on every side are the long straight smoke and steam wreaths, the dull red flames, and all the visible evidences of the immense secular struggle for existence, the continual striving toward a higher standard of comfort.
This romance, this feeling which permeates the district, is quite as wonderfully inspiring as any historic memory could be.

Shelton Bar steel works

And, if the effects of morning are impressive, what shall be said of the night scenes - of the flame-lit expanses bearing witness to a never-ceasing activity; the sky-effects of fire and cloud; and the huge dark ring of hills surrounding this tremendous arena.

On keeping very busy

Tuesday, September 9th., Thorpe-le-Soken

Constant moderate perspirations through sharp exercise seem to be putting me into form. Yesterday was a proper sort of day for my trade. 400 words before breakfast. After breakfast, newspapers, cigar. Then 800 words. Then dictation of letters. A few 'Muller' exercises.

Born in Asserballe, Denmark in 1866, J.P. Müller was, for a time, as famous as that other Danish export, Hans Christian Anderson. Maybe more. At the turn of the last century, Müller's wildly popular cult of physical fitness swept Mitteleuropa, turning parlor-sitting dandies from Copenhagen to Berlin to London into ironmen. Müller's My System was published first in 1904 as little more than a long, bound pamphlet graced with an image of the Greek athlete Apoxyomenos naked and toweling himself. The exercise guide, which promised that just "15 minutes a day" of prescribed  exercise would make "weaklings" into strong men (and women), was ultimately translated into 25 languages, reprinted dozens of times, and sold briskly well into the 20th century. Müller was the Tom Paine of free body movement and fresh air. Like many a radical, he was resisted at first, called pornographic (partly because he often appeared in a loincloth—even while skiing in St. Moritz). His was a call to throw off the restrictive shackles of the Victorian era—a literal stripping away of restrictive layered clothes and corsets, a rejection of the "pallid, sickly looks" once prized as beautiful, and the "false dignity which forbids people, for instance, to indulge in so healthy and beneficial an exercise as running." He admonished: "Do not let a day pass without every muscle and every organ in your body being set in brisk motion." And bathing—the man had a fondness for cleanliness many of his contemporaries did not share: "This does not only refer only to people of the 'working' classes. I have often met 'gentlemen' in frock-coats and top hats and ladies in evening dress of whom you could tell by the smell of them, even at a distance of several feet, that they seldom or never took a bath." Born sickly himself, so small "I could be placed in an ordinary cigar box," Müller nearly died of dysentery at two and "contracted every childhood complaint." His own strength, in other words, was acquired, not inherited, through physical exercise.

<http://archive.org/details/MySystemByJ.P.Muller>

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j1iB4snZa2k>

A quarter of an hour in the garden. A section of Lavisse's "Histoire Generale". Lunch. Flaubert's correspondence. Sleep. Early tea. In car with Marriott to Landermere to make a watercolour - 4 to 6 o'clock.

Landermere Wharf

Car came back to fetch our things. We walked home. Over two miles mostly uphill and ever rough ground, in 29 minutes. profuse perspiration. Change. Bath. Dinner. Champagne. Cigar. Coffee. Bed at 10 pm and a very fairish night. Absolutely no time at all cut to waste between 7 am and 7.30 pm, when we dine.

I can always do more work when I have many other things on hand, and when I am following a programme that is rather a tight fit for the day.

In my book "How to live on 24 hours a day" (1910) I addressed the large and growing number of white-collar workers that had accumulated since the advent of the Industrial Revolution. In my view, these workers put in eight hours a day, 40 hours a week, at jobs they did not enjoy, and at worst hated. They worked to make a living, but their daily existence consisted of waking up, getting ready for work, working as little as possible during the work day, going home, unwinding, going to sleep, and repeating the process the next day. In short, he didn't believe they were really living. I addressed this problem by urging these "salarymen" to seize their extra time, and make the most of it to improve themselves. Extra time could be found at the beginning of the day, by waking up early, and on the ride to work, on the way home from work, in the evening hours, and especially during the weekends. During this time, I prescribed improvement measures such as reading great literature, taking an interest in the arts, reflecting on life, and learning self-discipline. I regard time as the most precious of commodities. Many books have been written on how to live on a certain amount of money each day and there is the old adage "time is money" but, though time can often produce money, money cannot produce more time. Time is extremely limited, and I urged others to make the best of the time remaining in their lives. In bursts I try to practice What I preach!

<http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/2274>

Alpine heat

Saturday, September 8th., Annecey.

This was our hottest day so far. I began a rough preliminary sketch of my new film and I did about a third of it in the morning before a bathe. We bathed with Diana Cooper, Lady Horner, who had her two grand-daughters, Lady Helen and Lady Perdita Asquith with her, and the boy, Lord Oxford.

Lady Diana Cooper, Viscountess Norwich (29 August 1892 – 16 June 1986) was a prominent social figure in London and Paris, widely acknowledged as the beauty of the century. The young Diana moved in a celebrated group of intellectuals, most of them killed in World War I. She married one of the only survivors, Duff Cooper, later Ambassador to France. After his death, she wrote three volumes of memoirs which reveal much about 20th-century upper-class life.

<http://www.clivejames.com/snakecharmers/diana-cooper>


I talked to the old lady while on the raft. The Diana-Horner party went off to lunch at Talloires.

Talloires is located south of Geneva, Switzerland, on Lake Annecy and 13 km (8.1 mi) from the local "prefecture" Annecy, near the border of Italy. The town is situated in the French Alps, along a bay on the east side of the lake.

Duff Cooper had arrived in the early afternoon from Geneva.

Alfred Duff Cooper, 1st Viscount Norwich GCMG, DSO, PC (22 February 1890 – 1 January 1954), known as Duff Cooper, was a British Conservative Party politician, diplomat and author. He wrote six books, including an autobiography, Old Men Forget, and a biography of Talleyrand. He wrote one novel, Operation Heartbreak (1950).

He and Diana were returning from a rowing excursion (and reading Wells's new novel aloud to one another on the lake) just as Dorothy and I were finishing tea on the terrace.

H. G. Wells in The Shape of Things to Come, published in 1934, predicted a Second World War in which Britain would not participate but would vainly try to effect a peaceful compromise. In this vision, Duff Cooper was mentioned as one of several prominent Britons delivering "brilliant pacific speeches" which "echo throughout Europe" but fail to end the war (the other would-be peacemakers, in Wells' vision, included Hore Belisha, Ellen Wilkinson and Randolph Churchill).

Dreaming

Sunday, September 7th.

The extreme inventiveness of some dreams is remarkable.

I dreamt last night that I had to rush every few minutes to see Russian trains come into a tube station as I was expecting a friend from Russia, I think. Between two trains, I strolled off the platform on to a bridge over a canal, on which were ships whose immense and very ornate bowsprits came up as high as the bridge.
Turning another way I saw a very muddy road, and in this road a little acrobat (one of a troupe) was performing. He was 8 or 9 years of age. The greasy road was a very difficult 'take-off' but he had to do a double somersault with such a take-off, and he did it, two complete revolutions with only a slight slip on his back on alighting. He then lay on his back in the mud to do another trick, and I then noticed that he was smoking a thick strong cigar, puffing away at it all the time.
He was forced by his brutal persecutors to smoke this awful cigar all the time, and to keep puffing at it continuously. A tremendous refinement of cruelty.
Even as I write my gorge rises at the memory of the cigar in his small mouth. He clenched his small hands to prepare for the spring from his back. He did this several times, and then I woke up.

I can't imagine what led to this dream, unless it was my physical exercises daily and a fairly strong cigar at night.