Fear of raids

Thursday, September 27th., Yacht Club, London.

Dined with Marguerite at Waldorf. To get there strange journeys in Tube. Very wet. Very poor women and children sitting on stairs (fear of raid). Also travelling in lift and lift-man grumbling at them because no fear of raid, and they answering him back, and middle-class women saying to each other that if the poor couldn't keep to the regulations they ought to be forbidden the Tube as a shelter from raid.

Spender said he had seen dreadful sights of very poor with babies in Tube on Monday. One young woman was in labour. He asked her if she was and she said she was, and that she had got up because she was told to go with the rest. He got her taken on a stretcher to a hospital. Proprietor of a restaurant where I lunched today with Swinnerton said that although his place was ordinarily always full at night, he only had four people on Monday night, and not a single customer on Tuesday night (fear of raids). He said also that at fish and vegetable markets he couldn't get what he wanted because supplies were not there, and that wholesalers had not taken supplies because they couldn't dispose of them, and that stuff was rotting. A raid was feared tonight but evidently the German machines were turned back before reaching London.

Additionally for September 27th., see 'The residue of love' - http://earnoldbennett.blogspot.co.uk/2012/09/the-residue-of-marriage.html

It is bound to be published somewhere; it is bound to make people think that I am partner in the bad taste. But if it is to be published I would sooner it be published by someone who is very friendly and will take care that nothing offensive appears in it.