Travels

Saturday, December 31st., Waterloo Road, Burslem.

I left Paris last Wednesday week, and stayed two nights with Wells. I read the typescript of the first part of his new novel "The Comet". What an imagination he has. His skill seems to lie in making the improbable seem possible, if not likely. He said that his financial position was becoming more and more secure. Not boasting but obviously pleased with himself. I was somewhat envious.

I went to Burslem on Friday for Xmas. Same as ever. One day I walked through the town and saw two childs' funerals exactly of the same kind: a procession of five or six pairs of women in black with white trimmings; two pairs carried the small oak coffin which was covered with wreaths and which they held by white cords over their shoulders. Immediately behind the coffin, the chief mourners, in one case a man and a woman. The coffin occurred about the middle of the procession. These little forlorn, smug processions ambling towards the cemetery from the Wesleyan Chapel were very curious.

Glad to be here with the Phillpotts'. Eden and I have worked on "An Angel Unawares", and soon it will be finished. 

During the year I wrote 282,100 words which is a low number for me. I made no particular advance commercially. I had several grave disappointments including my visit to Scotland to be cured of stammering. The artistic success of "A Great Man" was a genuine surprise to me. I firmly decided to marry. Now I just need to find a suitable person!
 

Domestic strife

Monday, December 30th., Bath Spa Hotel, Bath.

If truth be told I am here to get away from my wife. I regard myself as a quiet, peaceable sort of chap, but if I stayed in Essex much longer I might do her serious damage. It is all getting to be too much for me to bear.

The bone of contention at the moment is Lockyer, the gardener. I don't know why but she dislikes him and wants to get rid of him. In fact she has been scheming to get rid of him for some time. I think myself that he is too assertive a character for her, too inclined to say what he thinks and to do what he considers best, even when it goes against her wishes. I like him for more or less the same reasons.

He has been fighting in France and has just recently returned. When he was called up Marguerite wanted me to take advantage of the situation to dismiss him. Think of that! I positively refused to do so. No man of honour and decency could have contemplated such a thing. Now she wants me to terminate his job at Comarques which would mean of course his leaving Thorpe and breaking up his home. Some reward for going through all the discomforts and dangers of a soldier's life at the Front. She is trying to blackmail me by saying that she will refuse to do her domestic duties unless I comply with her wishes. Well, I shall give no ground and we shall see who has the greater will. If my wife, aged 40, chooses to behave like a girl of 14 I shall have to respond accordingly.

I intend to stay here for at least another week. The spa facilities are excellent and the water appears to agree with my digestion.

I wrote to George Moore last week to, amongst other things, tell him that it was the first chapters of "A Mummer's Wife" which opened my eyes to the romantic nature of the district that I had bindly inhabited for over 20 years. He is indeed the father of all my Five Towns books and stories.

Feeling well

Thursday, December 29th., Cadogan Square, London.

Splendid health. I have now cut my breakfast down to four or five kinds of fruit (raisins, oranges, apples, lemon and prunes) plus two cups of tea and two pieces of rye bread. And little or no meat for lunch. This regime seems to be agreeing with me. I wonder if I should become vegetarian, and might were it not that it would be such a fag in restaurants etc. I would have to stop eating out and would also have to involve myself in 'warning' all guests in advance. Damned nuisance not to be able to do just what would suit one best.

It seems increasingly apparent to me that I know best about almost everything, that is everything about how to live. Of course I wrote several self-help guides in my younger days but this feeling is more about really living. The older I get the less likely I am to actually tell people where they are going wrong; I find they generally resent such advice, and in any case rarely stick to it. But I often find myself metaphorically (perhaps sometimes actually) shaking my head when I observe the behaviour of others.

Yesterday afternoon to a performance of "West Side Story". Music by Leonard Bernstein and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim. Excellent. Throbbing with the vital spark of life. For me the two central characters were the least interesting part of the performance. The supporting and peripheral parts had much more character and intensity. I can't decide whether this is intrinsic to the parts themselves or is a reflection of the actors' performances. Not that they were bad, just a little dull compared to the brittle glitter of the rest. Worth seeing.

Today, after chores, I walked along the Embankment to the next bridge west and down along King's Road, and then wrote 750 words of my "Millionaire" article in one and a quarter hours at most. Then by bus to Piccadilly. Lunch at Reform Club with Gardiner and Tudor Walters. I like Tudor more and more. Sir John Brunner and Vivian Phillipps joined us in the smoking room. We talked about our own defects and about the characters of politicians. I came to the conclusion that what Liberal statesmen lacked is courage.

Moral messages

Saturday, December 22nd., Comarques, Thorpe-le-Soken.

Rickards came on Christmas Eve. Doran came on Sunday morning. Doran left this morning to spend the weekend with Ernest Hodder Williams. He said that while he was ther he didn't have to go to chapel, and Ernest didn't go either. I said that if he had any backbone he would decide for himself whether or not to attend religious services, and not rely on moral support from others.. He said: "It's all very well for you!"
 
In the three days up 'til yesterday I wrote 4,500 words of a short story, in spite of guests and eating. 

I am now re-reading "The Way of all Flesh". It stands it. There is very little wrong with this book, even technically. But the trick of reading a piece of the narrative to the hero himself and then writing down what the hero's comment on it was, is a mistake - especially when it is repeated. It is a brave book which could not have been published when it was written, and I'm not so sure that some of the messages it contains are not just as relevant today. In fact I know they are.

Lunacy

Wednesday, December 26th., Comarques, Thorpe-le-Soken.

Only seven sat down to dinner last night owing to difficulties of transport and engagements of officers for mess dinners. This is the smallest Xmas dinner we have had in this house. Soldiers were noisy outside during the day. Mason came for lunch and stayed 'til after nightfall. He rode off in falling snow, having made Richard a present of all the chemical reagents which he had ordered for him. Much bad music after dinner. I think Marguerite was disappointed not to have a good crowd. She enjoys the attention she gets from the young (and not so young) officers. I felt rather guilty to think that we were here enjoying a more or less traditional Christmas whilst millions of young men (German and Allied) are squatting in squalid conditions, not so far away, pursuing a lunatic war not of their making.


I have read a lot, all I shall read, of Saintbury's "History of the French Novel". Very prolix and bursting with subordinate sentences and clauses, but containing plenty of useful information. He understands something of the craft of novel writing. The amount of this old man's reading is staggering.

Some bookish men of my acquaintance have a morbid appetite which demands to be titillated by an everlasting diet of new books. I regard them as cases for brain specialists. Their malady is akin to alcoholism, which is the worst malady of the mind known to medical science. Then there are other bookish men who day in day out protest that too many new books are published. They gloomily assert that the majority of new books are worthles and can do no good to anyone. They weep, in a manner of speaking, because this is a decadent age and things are not what they were. I have a primitive desire to assassinate these liunatic men. But I refrain, for the reason that they are misguided rather than vicious.

The divine fire

Christmas Day, Chiltern Court, London.

Bright and sunny, just as it should be. Brisk walk. Smell of cooking on return stimulating the gastric juices. Just time for a few thoughts before settling down to a serious session of over-eating.

A number of people, all of them wanting information, most of them unwilling to take decisions, have been asking me to tell them what books to buy for Christmas. I have refused to advise. A book as a Christmas present is a dangerous thing. The recipient will quite probably not like it and, if he or she does like it, they will resent the fact that you have deprived them of the pleasure of 'finding' it for themselves. For a serious book person the finding is almost as rewarding as the reading itself. The recipient may not even read it, in which case his politeness will compel him to lie to you, or at best prevaricate.


All I would say positively about books as presents for Christmas is that they need not be Christmas books, nor books impregnated by what is termed 'the Christmas spirit'. There are excellent Christmas books, and I have read a few of them, but I should have enjoyed them equally well in a heat wave. And I would absolutely decline to circumscribe Christmas reading by limiting its subject.

There is in fact a marvellous embarrassment of choice for the prospective book buyer at this season, which may make him miserable, but should also make him happy - or the divine fire is not in him. Personally I am both miserable and happy. I could readily name two hundred books in the Christmas lists that I should be glad to have or glad to present. Withal, I am writing in a room fortified by four thousand volumes - and five ashtrays.

The vice of the Potteries

Thursday, December 24th., Waterloo Road, Burslem.

I had a smooth passage over on Monday and came here yesterday with Tertia, William and a headache. The first printed thing that caught my eye when I landed at Newhaven was a newspaper placard: "Vice in the Potteries: Shocking Details." It turns out that a bumptious local vicar, the Honourable Leonard Tyrwhitt by name, has been preaching sermons on "The Devil (and all his works) in the Potteries". It beggars belief. Talk about self-righteous, he is the sort of priest who goves religion a bad name.

It is one of the easiest and one of the most dangerous things in the world to kick up the dust of what is called 'morals'. The mere word 'vice' will draw people together from afar as a dead dog will draw carrion crows. When I tried to buy the London newspaper which had placarded our 'vice', do you suppose I could get it? Not a bit. It was sold out. It was sold out all over London. And the fact is that for days past the whole of England has been feasting upon the panorama of our alleged enormities.

It would be interesting to know whether any thinking man really believes at the bottom of his heart that human nature is worse in the Potteries than it is elsewhere. For my part I regard the theory that the Potteries is ultra-vicious as unworthy of discussion. I have no doubt that the same 'vice' is to be found in any large manufacturing district. Indeed in English villages a virgin at age twenty is something of a curiosity. No doubt the Honourable Tyrwhitt has emerged from that stratum of society which is sufficiently affluent to be high-minded and high-moraled. His elevated position does not however give him the right to look down on those less favoured by birth and expect them to conform to his idea of what is right and wrong.



I went out this morning and saw numbers of people as I walked down to Burslem. This afternoon, walking to Hanley, I was struck by the orange-apple cold Christmas smell of the greengrocers' shops. And now all is silent. There is a palpable air of expectation.