Sailing for home

Thursday, November 30th., Lusitania at sea.

The Dorans, T.B. Wells, Inglish, John Macrae, Davis, and May Preston came to see me off; not to mention several reporters and photographers. The Lusitania left at 9.30 a.m., having been delayed half an hour waiting for the mails. I met the Forbeses on board about 11, and Edgar Selwyn at lunch. Mrs. Selwyn much later. These two had gone to bed at 2.15.

Edgar Selwyn and Margaret Mayo Selwyn

Edgar Selwyn (1875 – 1944) was a prominent figure in American theatre and film in the first half of the 20th Century. He co-founded Goldwyn Pictures in 1916. Born in Cincinnati, Ohio, Selwyn flourished in the Broadway theatre as an actor, playwright, director, and producer from 1899 to 1942. With his brother Archie Selwyn he founded the theatrical production company The Selwyns which produced plays on Broadway from 1919 to 1932. The Selwyns owned several theatres in the United States. Selwyn also worked in Hollywood, producing and directing eight films between 1929 and 1942. In addition, he wrote two screenplays and many more films were adapted from his original plays. He died in Los Angeles, California.

Either they or the Forbeses had received a lot of fruit and flowers, and Forbes had installed a supply of champagne at the foot of the table in ice. I helped to consume everything except the flowers. I had, nevertheless, previously sworn neither to drink nor smoke on board. But having drunk, I thought I might as well buy the best cigar and the oldest brandy on the ship; which I did, and stood liqueurs round. This was after dinner. Perhaps I was coming it a bit strong?

I was overcome by sleepiness both before and after lunch, and also before dinner; the air gave me a headache. I was very gloomy, spent all afternoon alone and had tea alone, and wondered what the hell was the matter with life anyway. I was all right after I had tasted champagne again.

We spent the whole evening in talking "shop", Edgar Selwyn being the quietest. Boat rolled, always. In the middle of the night she rolled so much that she overthrew my red clock. Also fiddles on the tables, last night at dinner. Quite unnecessary, but it is probably a dodge to convince passengers that they are good sailors. No fiddles on at breakfast this morning, when they were necessary and crockery was rattling and crashing about all over the place. 

The Titanic and her sister ship Olympic were an answer to the Cunard Line's speed queens Mauritania and Lusitania - here we see the "Lucy" resolutely knifing her way through an Atlantic swell. In fact, Titanic could never have beaten her rivals' records. A fast ship means a slender hull, and while Cunard's ships were racers, they suffered from a tendency to roll and pitch wildly in rough seas. The wider, more stable and slightly slower White Star Line sisters focused instead on luxurious comfort. But for those seeking the fastest passage across the Atlantic, especially in the calmer summer months, Mauritania and Lusitania were hard to outclass.

<http://www.sciencecenter.net/butlerart/htm/98-050.htm>

The Selwyns and the Forbeses had parting gifts which they displayed, but I also had a parting gift, which I did not display. It was an article for desk use, in silver, heavy and elaborate, engraved with my name, and the card on it bore the following words: "Thank you for all the delightful things you have written and are going to write during the coming year." George Doran will think he can guess the woman it came from at first guess. He couldn't. But he might guess it in three perhaps. And I had five letters from other ladies, chiefly hating "Hilda Lessways", but nevertheless all rustling with flattery.

Byways of literature

Tuesday, November 29th., Paris.

Dinner at Mrs. Devereux's last night. Schwob there. (See 'Parisian Life' - September 27th.) We talked a good deal about Meredith, and Schwob showed an extraordinary knowledge of the byways of English literature. He said Meredith was certainly the son of a tailor and quoted a passage from "Peter Simple" where two characters go to "Meredith the tailor", and he said this was George's father. It appears that Meredith now talks in aloud voice, but continually interrupts the conversation by talking to himself, mere senility of course, a 'softening of the brain'. He has 'ataxy' or something of one leg and limps and always tells any visitor that he had the misfortune to hurt his ankle that very morning. Schwob heard this from Oscar Wilde and didn't believe it. However, when Schwob called on Meredith, sure enough he had hurt his leg that very morning. Schwob's enthusiasm for Meredith's last book was magnificent. He looked ill, but he was in his best form, and speaking beautiful English.

George Meredith (1828-1909) was a major Victorian novelist whose career developed in conjunction with an era of great change in English literature during the second half of the nineteenth century. While his early novels largely conformed to Victorian literary conventions, his later novels demonstrated a concern with character psychology, modern social problems, and the development of the novel form that has led to his being considered an important precursor of English Modernist novels. Meredith was born in Portsmouth, England. His father inherited a seemingly prosperous Portsmouth naval outfitters and tailor shop from Meredith's grandfather. Meredith was sent to private schools and quickly learned to say nothing of his family's position, instead encouraging the assumption that he was of the gentry. Meredith remained secretive about his origins all his life, and much is unknown about his childhood because of his unwillingness to disclose details of this period. As he entered his early twenties, Meredith began writing poetry, influenced in particular by John Keats and Lord Tennyson. Meredith's lifetime of reticence about his early years carried over into a stolid refusal to discuss his first marriage, which was a failure. He lived alone or with male friends for years, but married again in 1864, and settled at Box Hill, Surrey, where he lived the rest of his life. As a part-time reader for Chapman and Hall publishers, Meredith was able to observe literary trends and to employ them in his early novels. Once he despaired of reaching a large audience, Meredith began to write primarily to please himself and the small circle of admirers who had defended and praised his works from the first. It was then that he found his works more popular than at any other time in his career. Meredith was most concerned with writing psychological novels that portrayed the tangled motivations of individuals and explored the disparity between the public and private aspects of self. At the time of his death Meredith was considered one of England's premier men of letters. In the years since, his critical reputation has undergone several reassessments, although he has never enjoyed the resurgence in general popularity enjoyed by such Victorian novelists as Charles Dickens and Anthony Trollope. However, as has been true throughout the history of commentary on Meredith, there remains a dedicated group of admirers who contend, with J. B. Priestley, that Meredith's difficult style, requiring as it does the full and undivided attention of the reader, paved the way for the public acceptance of much subsequent serious fiction, helping to shape "the modern attitude towards fiction and the modern novel itself."

Mrs. Devereux had been to hear the trial of a crime passionel. A man had cut his wife's throat with a razor from ear to ear, but, through some fortunate movement of the woman, had only severed the skin. "A close shave!" said Schwob at once. I could see that he was extremely pleased with this really admirable comment. He beamed after he had said it.

On Monday I was trying to find a leading idea for the concert scene in "Sacred and Profane Love", but could not. I read late, and dreamed about the scene all night, and got it all mixed up, and generally wasted a vast amount of energy with no result at all. Today I continued to search after that idea with no success. I stayed late at Mrs. Devereux's and then read a lot afterwards, and I didn't go to bed till nearly two. I dreamed of the chapter all night and woke up at 6.30 after which I didn't go to sleep again. Today, I received the "Fantasia" of Chopin from Tertia. This is the clou of the chapter if only I can make it so. (see 'Love in Liverpool' - September 19th.)

Uncanny things

Sunday, November 28th., London.

Talking about things uncanny, Webster said that the weirdest thing of all was the vibrating cry of the snipe on the moors at night - a cry which you hear, faint and wavering, in the distance, and which the next second has shot past your ears in the darkness. This bird is also called the bog-bleater; Webster said that its cry had been termed "the wail of a lost soul", and that the name was justified. There is nothing more horribly scaring, and the awfulness of it cannot be conceived by those who have not heard it. He described it effectively as "the last cry on earth", and related how, as a child, he had been lost all night on the Westmorland moors; his terror of the invisible snipes shooting across the waste with their awful cries; and his terror of stepping into a bog.
Then he told me of his sole experience of ghosts. On a hill near Milnthorpe is a ruined cottage, said to be haunted. A man and his wife had lived there, and one night the man, being called away, gave a gun into his wife's hands for her protection and told her to shoot anything that appeared. Before he had proceeded far, he recollected that he had left something behind him, and returning to his cottage was shot by his wife. Hence the ghost.
It seems that Webster was walking late in a dark lane near the ruin - a lane with a dreadful reputation for spirits - when he saw a sombre figure in front of him. It advanced to within a few paces of him, and then grew large and wide, till it towered above him. Then it collapsed and Webster was standing in the middle of it. At last it edged away from him, face upwards, with a curious backward motion on hands and feet. As soon as it had moved, Webster turned and ran two miles to the nearest humanity ... He was a child, and thinks now the appearance was merely a subjective hallucination, but at the time nothing could have been more real to him.
Webster related these stories with extraordinary graphic effectiveness.  As he spoke of the terrors of the bog-bleater and his night on the moor, I had one of those periodical glimpses which are vouchsafed to me occasionally, of the vast crowd of wonderful sensations and experiences that a dweller in towns, like myself, is debarred from .... A night on the moors, alone, with the snipe winging and crying about one .... The townsman can scarcely imagine it!
All this leads me to think of ghost stories, but I hardly think I have the sort of imagination to produce one effectively. My particular favourite is Dickens' "The Signalman". I cannot read it without a chill passing along my spine, my breathing becoming shallow and my heart starting to race! Dickens was a master of atmosphere and excels himself in this short story.
<http://www.spookyisles.com/2012/06/charles-dickens-the-signalman/>

Virginia Woolf is a very different sort of writer and I have today reviewed "A Room of One's Own" in the Evening Standard. I have often been informed by the elect that a feud exists between Virginia Woolf and myself, and I dare say that she has received the same tidings. Possibly she and I are the only two lettered persons unaware of this feud. True, she has written a book about me and a mythical Mrs. Brown. But I have not read the book (I don't know why). True, I always said, until she wrote To The Lighthouse that she had not written a good novel. But I have said the same of lots of my novelist friends. True, she is the queen of the high-brows; and I am a low-brow. But it takes all sorts of brows to make a world, and without a large admixture of low-brows even Bloomsbury would be uninhabitable. One thing I have said of her: she can write. A Room of One's Own is a further demonstration of this truth. However, she suggests that five hundred a year and a room with a lock on the door are the essential prerequisites to writing fiction or poetry. I beg to state that I have myself written long and formidable novels in bedrooms whose doors certainly had no locks, and in the full dreadful knowledge that I had not five hundred a year of my own - nor fifty. And I beg to state further that from the moment when I obtained possession of both money and a lockable door all the high-brows in London conspired together to assert that I could no longer write.

A Funeral in Burslem

Friday, November 27th., Thorpe-le-Soken.

Marguerite and I went down to Burslem for the mater's funeral on Tuesday afternoon.
The mater died about 1 p.m. on Monday.
I learnt from Jennings that the 'last journey' had to be 'the longest', i.e. corpse must always go longest way to cemetery. I asked why. He sniggered: "So as to prolong the agony, I suppose." Real reason nowadays and for long past must be ostentation. We naturally altered this.

Walk down town. Some bricks dry before others. Prominent yellow painted stone-facings of Macintyres. Abolition of most crossings in Waterloo Road, to disgust of residents. I saw new Coliseum Theatre. New window in Mr. Povey's side-room at top of Church St. Church St. was cleaner and better kept.


Funeral. Too soon. Orange light through blinds in front of room. Coffin in centre on two chairs. Covered with flowers. Bad reading, and stumbling of parson. Cliches and halting prayer. Small thin book out of which parson read. In dim light, cheap new carving on oak of coffin seemed like fine oak carving. Sham brass handles on coffin. Horrible lettering. Had to wait after service for hearse to arrive. Men hung their hats on spikes of hearse before coming in. No trouble in carrying coffin. I kept Uncle J.L.'s arm most of the time as he is nearly blind. He told me he still managed 700 accounts. Long walk from cemetery gates to region of chapel.

Burslem Cemetery Chapel

Burslem Cemetery opened in 1879 and covers approximately 11.4 hectares (about 28 acres). When it was opened it was intended to be a "a recreation park, to be used for walking, riding and driving" as well as a cemetery and at least a third of the land was taken up with the lodges, chapel, walks & drives. Only about five and a half acres was laid out for burials.

By the way, the lodge at gates is rented as an ordinary house to a schoolmaster. John Ford's vault next to Longson, with records of his young wives ("the flower fadeth" etc.) This could be exaggerated into a fine story. No sign of any other coffins of course in Longson vault.
Curious jacket and apron of first grave-digger. Second stood apart. Both with hats off. Parson put on a skull-cap.

On return, carriages trotted down slope from cemetery, but walked as we got to houses near Cobridge station. 'Nest Egg Factory' en route. 2 cottages turned into works.

War. Extract from notice signed G.R. and issued from War Office: "Complete second half million and ensure success at home and abroad." And yet a second million is asked for. I ascertained totals of regular recruits up to November 25th. 12,800 applied, and 9,600 were accepted, in Potteries and N'castle.

Country house politics

Tuesday, November 26th., Yacht Club, London.

Week-end at Beaverbrook's, Cherkley Court. Good, except that not enough food, B. not being interested in food. The Hulton's came over on Sunday afternoon and stayed to dinner. Hulton had been trained for the R.C. priesthood. An agreeable pair. He with a certain sense of decency, not a fool, a Lancashire accent and rather ignorant. For example, he had never heard of the Labour Party programme!

Edward George Hulton was born in Hume, Lancashire on 3rd March, 1869. His father had been a compositor on the Manchester Guardian before establishing his own papers, The Sporting Chronicle (1871) and The Athletic News (1875). Edward was educated at St. Bede's College, Manchester, but at sixteen left to learn the newspaper trade with his father. After serving an apprenticeship in the various departments he took over control of the business in 1894. Three years later he started a new halfpenny newspaper, the Manchester Evening Chronicle. This was highly successful and was followed by the Daily Dispatch in 1900. In 1909 Hulton produced the Daily Sketch, a illustrated morning paper. Six years later he began publishing the Illustrated Sunday Herald. He also purchased and developed the Evening Standard. Hulton had been in poor health for many years and in 1923 was forced to retire. Hulton sold all his publishing interests to Allied Newspapers for £6,000,000.

I read B.'s printed account of the conspiracy that overthrew Asquith in Dec. 1916. It was exceedingly well written, and showed great judgement of men and some sense of historical values. In fact it was remarkable and heightened my originally high opinion of Beaverbrook. The War Office and Ll. G. both came badly out of the account, especially the former. B.'s own share in the affair is kept very modestly in the background. He seemed almost inclined to publish it in the Daily Express. I advised him against this.

During the first world war, Beaverbrook represented the Canadian government at GHQ (Government Headquarters), was an observer at the Western Front, and published a newspaper for the Canadian troops. More importantly, he played a key role (especially in his own eyes) in the downfall of Herbert Asquith, the then prime minister, whom he disliked, and in the rise of David Lloyd George who replaced Asquith in December 1916. For his assistance, Beaverbrook had expected to be given the post of president of the Board of Trade. He was to be disappointed. The job and his seat in parliament were required for Sir Albert Stanley. Beaverbrook had to make do with Lloyd George's offer of a hereditary peerage and the post of minister for information in 1918.

<http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/4048514?uid=3738032&uid=2129&uid=2&uid=70&uid=4&sid=21101418777501>

A lone and wonderful genius

Thursday, November 25th., London

Last night, as I sat alone in the house, reviewing there was a strange knock. I went to the door, and saw old Mr. Boulton in the fog; a hansom was just driving away. He came in, and sat down in my easy chair; a tall, slightly bent figure, with a creased benevolent large face, and the whitest, silkiest hair and long beard: the most venerable and dignified person that has ever sat in this room of mine. I felt proud of the slight connection between us. He began to talk to me about the technique of writing, making naive, original observations - the thoughts of a gifted child; you could see the strong working of the mind that  by means of machinery has revolutionised an entire craft. "I don't know anything about writing," he said, "but give me a bit of machinery, and I could go to bed with it."
I told him I had just bought a folio bible printed at Burslem by John Tregortha, and asked if he would like to see it. "Ay," he said, "I should. It's a book I'm rather partial to." So he got it over his knees, and putting his spectacles on, spelt out the interminable title page. I directed him to the family register which had been kept according to custom between the Old and the New Testaments. When he came to the date 1786 he said "My father was alive then," and at 1826 "I was born just a year before that." Afterwards he examined with the same minuteness my Tregortha Hymn Book and Herbal.

The Quaker John Tregortha, born around 1767 in Cornwall but lived for many years in Burslem, is the earliest printer in Burslem whose work has survived. his press was set up in 1796 and is recorded is having been active to 1816.

<www.biblicalstudies.org.uk/pdf/whs/22-1.pdf>

At a quarter to ten he must go. He said he always went to bed between 10.30 and 10.45, and answered 20 or 30 letters before breakfast. I asked him how he proposed to get to Bloomsbury. "Oh," he said, "I shall go up this street, turn to the right, and pick up what I can - cab or bus." I had a mind to set him on his way, but he seemed so alert, so equipped, with his 71 years and his magnificent white hair and his tall stooping figure that to offer to do so would have been an insult.
Afterwards, I wondered to myself if he had taken the trouble to sum me up quickly. I felt always with him that he spoke about the hundredth part of what he thought, and I have noticed that he never contradicts.
A lone and wonderful genius, if ever there was one, existing in the world of his own brain, and passing over the earth as if in a dream. yet shrewd in earthly things and never to be fooled ... The force of his character radiates from him a certain fine influence sensible enough to those delicate enough to see it ... I regarded his visit as an event in my life, though he had not come to see me but Tertia, and was disappointed at missing her.

William Boulton (1825 - 1900) The firm which bears his name was founded in 1852 at a time when the manufacture of pottery was evolving from an entirely hand crafted to a semi-mechanised industry. The firm developed many ideas and patented many inventions which revolutionised the mechanical side of the potter, sanitary, glazed tile, electrical porcelains and refractory industries. William Boulton of Burslem was a prolific engineer and produced many pieces of equipment including clay presses, blungers and pug mills. In 1867, he patented a continuous-rope driven jigger. This was much more reliable than the steam jigger and cost half as much. Many potters started to install mechanised processes in their potworks - the blunger was one of them. William Boulton designed the blunger and patented it in 1874. 

In the 1880s Boulton produced a machine which could produce 12 plates at a time and ended the need to 'bat out' the clay which had been the heaviest part of the plate makers task. Machinery has continuously improved so that it is possible to have a fully automated plate making machine, using a revolving roller profile which both spreads the clay and gives the shape. The steam engine at Middleport Pottery was built in 1888 by William Boulton , and was used to run huge amounts of the factory’s machinery.

<http://www.thepotteries.org/descriptive_account/burslem/55.htm>

<http://www.thepotteries.org/advert_wk/026.htm>

Interesting artistic experiences

Friday, November 24th., London.

H.G. Wells told me his scheme for a whole series of new books, some being novels. He wants monarchy destroyed, of course, and to have a new religion (that there is one God - and apparently he can be what you like) without priests and churches. He thought very little of British high command at the front, and had difficulties with the Censor about his articles on Front, and meant to say what he thought in a book to be issued in January.
I was still suffering yesterday from my stomach chill, but I wrote a thousand words.
I went up to the Omega workshops by appointment to see Roger Fry.

Roger Eliot Fry (1866 – 1934) was an English artist and art critic, and a member of the Bloomsbury Group. Establishing his reputation as a scholar of the Old Masters, he became an advocate of more recent developments in French painting, to which he gave the name Post-Impressionism. He was the first figure to raise public awareness of modern art in Britain, and emphasized the formal properties of paintings over the "associated ideas" conjured in the viewer by their representational content. He was described by the art historian Kenneth Clark as "incomparably the greatest influence on taste since Ruskin... In so far as taste can be changed by one man, it was changed by Roger Fry".

<http://www.mantex.co.uk/2009/09/17/the-omega-workshops/>

<http://archive.org/details/rogerfryabiograp010045mbp>

Arrived as arranged at 2.30. I was told he was out. Then that he was at his studio down Fitzroy Street. I went there and rang. He opened door.
"Come and have lunch," he said. "I've had lunch, it's 2.30," I said. "How strange!" he said. "I thought it was only 1.15." Then as he went upstairs he cried out to a girl above: "Blank (her Xtian name), it's 2.30," as a great item of news. Fry expounded his theories. He said there was no original industrial art in England till he started i.e., untraditional. He said lots of goodish things and was very persuasive and reasonable. Then he took me to the showrooms in Fitzroy Square, and I bought a few little things. I did not buy a fine still life by Duncan Grant. But I may, later. I gradually got to like a number of the things, especially the stuffs. He said manufacturing (English) firms roared with laughter at his suggestion that they should do business together. One firm quoted an impossible price when he asked them to make rugs to his design at his risks. But when a eulogistic article appeared in The Times they quoted a lower price, a reasonable one. He said that both French and German firms would take his stuff. I began to get more and more pleased with the stuff, and then I left with two parcels.
This morning I went to Carfax Gallery and bought a Sickert from the Sickert stand there, "Coster Girl".

William Rothenstein

In 1898 William Rothenstein co-founded the Carfax Gallery in St. James' Piccadilly with John Fothergill . During its early years the gallery was closely associated with such artists as Charles Conder, Philip Wilson Steer, Charles Ricketts and Augustus John. It also exhibited the work of Auguste Rodin, whose growing reputation in England owed much to Rothenstein's friendship and missionary zeal. The gallery was later the home for all three exhibitions of The Camden Town Group, led by Rothenstein's friend and close contemporary Walter Sickert.

<http://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/camden-town-group/samuel-shaw-the-carfax-gallery-and-the-camden-town-group-r1129539>

Had some talk with the proprietor who was highly intelligent, and stuck to it that Claude Phillips, though he couldn't write, had real taste. The boss thought Sickert the greatest artist of the age.