Tea and poetry

Tuesday, December 25th., Comarques, Thorpe-le-Soken.

War. Only about half a pint of methylated spirits left in the house. Marguerite decided to keep this in stock for an emergency of illness etc. Wise. So I can no longer make my own perfect tea at what hour I like in the morning. And this morning I had poor servant-made tea. However there is a hope of me getting some other heating apparatus.
Je me suis recueilli somewhat yesterday for my novel, with difficulty. I re-read some of it in typescript and thought part was dullish and part interesting. Reading "Georgian Poetry 1916-1917" seemed to buck me up to raise the damned thing to a higher plane than it has yet reached save in odd places here and there.

http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/9546

Sir Edward Howard Marsh KCVO CB CMG (1872 – 1953) was a British polymath, translator, arts patron and civil servant. He was the sponsor of the Georgian school of poets and a friend to many poets, including Rupert Brooke and Siegfried Sassoon. In his career as a civil servant he worked as Private Secretary to a succession of Great Britain's most powerful ministers, particularly Winston Churchill. He was a discreet but influential figure within Britain's homosexual community.

Soldiers were noisy outside during the day. Mason came for lunch and stayed until after nightfall. He rode off in falling snow, having made Richard a present of all the chemical reagents which he had ordered for him.

I 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; also it shows that he does understand something of the craft of novel writing. His tracing of the development of the technique of the novel in the 17th century is interesting, and, to me, quite new. The amount of this old man's reading is staggering.