A bit upset

Tuesday, October 31st., Fulham Park Gardens, London.


Mr. and Mrs. Phillpotts and I walked down into Torquay. Mild, with flowers blooming everywhere. It seemed to me to be a place of retired military officers, rich and stiff dowagers, and spoiled overfed dogs led about by servant maids. Phillpotts said that for its size, it was the second richest place in England, and I can believe it. Tunbridge Wells is first. There were scarcely any poor. Nearly every house stood in its own garden. There were very few children as the inhabitants were mainly retired and old. Also, but few young men. I felt quite a youth again! If a young man above the tradesman's class grew up in Torquay, he could not stay there, because there was nothing for him to do. The whole town consisted of rich households and the people who fed them and waited on them.

I left Torquay in the afternoon for London. At Exeter I heard of the British defeat in the Transvaal. It was at a place called Nicholson's Nek (sic), somewhere near Ladysmith. Strange effect as if I personally had been defeated, a real emotional response, and yet I can see no sense in this war with the Boers at all. Why are we fighting the Boers? I have no idea. Cynically I presume that there are financial interests at stake and that soldiers on both sides are being sacrificed for the enrichment of persons in positions of power/influence in the colony. Same applies in India and elsewhere. What is the point of this Imperial project? Beats me. And yet I felt diminished by the news.

I must say that I am glad to be back home. I have written belatedly to May Beardmore at Porthill to congratulate her on her 21st birthday. Now I will settle back down to my work, and writing and playing music with Dr. Farrar. Speaking of work, I am consumed with a fever just now to chuck up women's journalism utterly, and go in for fiction and criticism only. No doubt the spell with Phillpotts, who is doing very well for himself, has had its effect. I could do it if I had the pluck of a louse; but having got used to a comparatively expensive way of living I haven't the courage to make the necessary sacrifice. Nevertheless I swear that I will get out of that damned office inside two years or shoot myself. I always keep my oaths!

Adultery everywhere

Wednesday, October 30th., Yacht Club, London.

Lord Beaverbrook

I was summoned by Beaverbrook yesterday. He was in bed, bandaged, depressed, having been told by the doctor in the morning that he had septic poisoning. This results from an operation he has had for some unspecified (at least to me) condition. Of course he has had to resign as Minister of Information and I am de facto holding the fort. I said that I would go if he did, fearing the terrible politicking which afflicts every aspect of governmental work. It is all about personal status and prestige, so it seems to me. Any good achieved seems more or less accidental, arising because it happens to be useful to one of the actors in the drama. I doubt that I could contrive a plot from this experience which anybody would find credible. But I may try one of these days. Somebody once told me that "everything is material", and they were right.

When Lady B. and Needham, B's Secretary at the Ministry, had left the room, he began to smoke and to talk intimately, and said: "You know, Arnold, my life has been all crises. I was worth 5 millions when I was 27. And now this is a new crisis and it is the worst." However, he cheered up.

Bonar Law came in and was very courteous and cautious to me. He said that his sister had been a very great and constant admirer of mine, but since "The Pretty Lady" she had done with me. Quite why she should have been so upset I felt it inopportune to enquire. In any case, I am unconcerned. It seems to me that "Pretty Lady" is rather tame by current standards. The sensual appeal is now really marked everywhere, in both speech and action, on the stage. Adultery everywhere pictured as desirable, and copulation generally ditto. Actresses play courtesan parts (small ones, often without words but with gestures) with gusto. I suppose in years to come when historians are writing about our times they will see the slackening of morals as a consequence of the war.

Talking books

Saturday, October 29th., Eltham, Torquay.

Staying with the Phillpotts' at present. Every night we have had long literary talks, in which I did rather more than half the talking, while Mrs. P. sat between us, quiet but apparently interested. Phillpotts often speaks of these 'shoppy' talks with the greatest pleasure. He says they are a sharp stimulant - a stimulant he rarely gets. One of the things he admires in writing is stateliness, the stately management of a long sentence. He remarked how few writers cared to attempt a long and elaborate sentence.

He admitted as a defect in himself that he could not tolerate the romantic convention - it was so false. He went on to contrast the heroine of the usual historical novel (even Scott) with the actual coarse, ignorant, crude-thinking, rough-mouthed maiden of past times. Fair comment, but if we, as authors, actually reproduced in our works the speech of 'ordinary' men and women who would want to buy them. Surely it is romance, in its broadest sense, that the reading public wants? And I can't say that Pillpotts' characters are so 'real' as all that. Still, I didn't say anything about it. He has been kind to me, and I like them both. He said he had been influenced by Hardy ("Talking about your god are you?" said his wife coming in at that moment). And distantly by Fielding, for whom he has an intense admiration.

"The hero of my next book", he said ("The Pagan"), "has better ideas about Dartmoor than any person I ever met. He seems to have proper ideas, the only right attitude. He knows much more of Dartmoor than I do, and has taught me a lot." This, almost seriously, of a creature of his own brain. I know what he means because a character, if truly imagined, does acquire a sort of life of his own. I have found myself engaging in mental conversations with my characters, particularly in a relaxed state, say waking from a nap.

Looking through Mrs. Phillpotts' collection of autographs I was a little surprised at the warmth and spontaneity of the tributes sent by well-known men. This must be very rewarding. There was a letter from James Payn about "Lying Prophets", and another from R.D. Blackmore about "Children in the Mist" pleased me particularly, so natural and large-hearted and fine. I had no idea that well-known men put themselves out to do these things.

On privacy

Saturday, October 28th., Cadogan Square, London.

The feature of gossip, chit-chat, scandal, is still growing in the press. I know rather intimately several journalistic gossipers, and I never hide from them my dislike of the feature. (Which dislike does not prevent me from reading the feature when I happen to see it - there are at least two persons in all of us, even in the righteous and the self-righteous, one who on principle objects to an evil, and another who in practice often yields to the temptation of the same evil.) I have entreated the gossipers never to refer to me in their string of paragraphs. But they frequently do. When I upbraid them they reply that they have to live, and that copy is copy and much more important than promises.

All this set me thinking about privacy, essentially my own, but by extension people in general. It is ironic, I thought, that as a successful man of mature years I seem to have much less privacy than I had when a poor clerk attempting to make a way in life with my pen. In those days nobody in London knew me, contact with my family was by letter, and I could more or less do as I liked without exciting any sort of social comment. Similarly when I was first in Paris. I was, for example, able to avail myself of the services of 'actresses' so as to expand my sexual horizons. Nobody noticed. Imagine if I did the same now!

So what is privacy? Clearly it is a dynamic concept, by which I mean that it is "in the eye of the beholder". I am inclined as a first attempt to define it as "the avoidance of unwanted intrusion". I may be prepared to surrender privacy in exchange for wealth and influence. Indeed I have done so. But my satisfaction with this state of affairs varies from day to day and depends on things like mood, context and incentives. The gossipers intrude and I may say that their intrusion is unwanted, but if it really mattered to me I would give up my social status, move to the country, and live out my days in peace. I do not expect to do so.

Thinking

Thursday, October 27th., Cadogan Square, London.

I went to South Kensington Museum to think, and I thought. Then I wrote the penultimate section of my story "The Wind" in about an hour. I dined with Geoffrey Russell at the Reform, and we went to the Lener concert together at the Queen's Hall. Fine concert. All Mozart. I thought that exclusive Mozart would be trying, but it wasn't.

Marconi House - aerials of the BBC

One of the things I thought about was the development of communications. Recent reports coming to my attention have described broadcasting as the enemy of all other forms of entertainment, diversion, and instruction. Theatrical managers, music hall managers, cinema managers, concert givers, book publishers, clergymen, lecturers, all complain of broadcasting, that insidious newcomer which is cannibal in that it eats up its fellow creatures.

We are used to the telephone and the telegram. I have at home a radio receiver and I hear that there are experiments to transmit pictures. All this has come about in my lifetime and I wonder what will happen in the future? This is the sort of thing that Wells and Huxley write about so convincingly but I doubt that even their fertile imaginations are adequate to the task. What will be the effects on society of simpler communication? Homogeneity I suspect, which may be a good thing if there is a general 'rounding up' of knowledge and awareness, rather than a reduction to the lowest common denominator. What about the book? Will people still read in 100 years time?

I have been reading Margaret Kennedy's new novel "Red Sky at Morning". This is her third novel. To my mind there is too much dialogue in this book. And I have failed to discern a theme. Nor am I sure which of the characters are hero and heroine. There is hardly a thrill of excitement until about two thirds of the way through the book. These criticisms are grave especially when one admires the talent of an author as much as I admire that of Miss Kennedy.

Small and great pleasure

Tuesday, October 26th., Cadogan Square, London.

Went to Tchekoff's "Three Sisters" at the Barnes Theatre. Well, I was bored frequently. Did I enjoy myself? No, not on the whole, taking everything into account. Was I uplifted as I had been by the even gloomier play "Rosmersholm"? No. It seemed to me that often the author was wilfully pessimistic. He is certainly very monotous, and all his plays that I have seen have the same tone. A decent Philistine man, seated just behind us, said at the end of the second act that he had been disappointed and bored. But he liked Act lll better, and Act lV better still. On the whole Tchekoff had succeeded with him.


When I got home I found a great letter from H.G. about (1) "Raingo", (2) Dorothy, (3) my 'renewed' home, (4) my improved health. It was a fine letter, and cheered me up. An excellent antidote to Tchekoff.

I take a nap most afternoons. For years I resisted it, thinking that I would be wasting time. My wife still does resist it. Says she just can't get to sleep during the day, but I think she regards napping as a sort of moral failure. The turning point for me was when I found that I could no longer sleep through a night - I have to get up to relieve myself at least once. So the nap makes up for sleep lost at night, as well as refreshing me during the day. We usually go to bed at the same time and generally read. She rarely manages more than ten or fifteen minutes, whereas I, having napped, can easily read for an hour or more. What a pleasure that is - to read a good book, comfortably supported in bed, warm, in a solitary silent world. One of life's small and great pleasures.

The traveller

Monday, October 25th., Victoria Grove, London.

Having returned safely, if rather knocked about and weary, from my short break I have been reflecting on travel as an experience. The traveller, however virginal and enthusiastic, does not enjoy an unbroken ecstasy. He has periods of gloom, periods when he askes himself the object of all these exertions, and puts the question whether or not he is really experiencing pleasure. At such times he suspects that he is not seeing the right things, that the chracteristic, the right aspects of these strange scenes are escaping him. He looks forward dully to the days of his holiday yet to pass, and wonders how he will dispose of them. he may be disgusted because his money is not more, his command of the language so slight, and his capacity for enjoyment so limited. The newness of things grows monotonous; he desires the known, the expected. And there is the question of whether it is best to travel alone or with a companion? If he happens to be alone, then the manifold advantages of companionship will, on occasion, occur to him; though most of the time he will be content to have absolute executive authority over how to spend his time. If he is in company, well ......!

Second day of dyspepsia. Nevertheless I began at quarter to eight this morning, and at 11 o'clock I had been out for a walk in the rain and read the newspapers and written a complete draft of Act ll. I hated doing it. This afternoon, after painting I walked about in Kensington Gardens and arranged the whole scheme, and most of the characters, of my next novel - the first of a trilogy about the son of a Burslem steam printer named Clayhanger. Assuredly a great day!


Weather colder but still mainly bright. magnificent moonlight night. What I am always wanting to do is a few landscape sketches, in words, just as material for use. And I never seem to have the energy or the power to concentrate sufficiently for useful observation. But yesterday and Saturday, in my dyspeptic idleness, I had several ideas for new books.

Taking a break

Saturday, October 21st., Strand Mansions, Sliema, Malta.

I am here on a short holiday. Getting away from the deteriorating autumnal weather at home. More importantly, recharging the batteries by a change of scene.

Marvellous view across the harbour to Valletta from my balcony. Constantly changing scene. Sunny and warm. Immediate improvement in mood arises from a blue sky. Particularly enjoying walking around in shirt sleeve order after sunset. Sliema looks better at night. So, I expect, do I!

Ferry across to Valletta this morning. Impressive bastions. Laid out on a grid pattern by the Knights and largely unaltered. Long vistas down gorge-like streets. Visited the Museum of Archaeology which has a fascinating exhibition of artefacts from the neolithic period. Particularly liked a terracotta figure (only tiny) of a rotund lady lying on a sort of bed - 4000 years old, but in perfect condition. Found in an underground ritual site of some kind. Enigmatic is too mild a word!

Sniping

Tuesday, October 17th., In transit

I had an unusually vivid dream last night. I don't often remember my dreams, but this one has been in my mind on and off all day.

I appeared to be a soldier of some kind, fighting in a war; more specifically I was a sniper. Apparently I was a particularly good shot and was picking off enemy soldiers to order. The order seemed to be coming from a superior somewhere behind me. I was located on high ground with good vantage over a coastal bay. Large, rolling waves, sunshine on the sand. People making their way out to the sea. I say they were enemy soldiers, but in fact I couldn't really make them out in any detail, too far away. My rifle was an old fashioned one with a wooden stock and I had to sight along the barrel. But every shot seemed to be successful. I aimed at the shape that was pointed out to me, pulled the trigger, and the shape crumpled to the floor. Then I got to thinking about the morality of my actions. Clearly I was following orders and doing my duty, but who were these people? I was turning over in my mind arguments for and against continuing. I thought that if I stopped then I would probably be shot myself. Also that whoever these people were they were not suffering and would all be dead eventually anyway, so in the great scheme of things what did it matter? I never came to any conclusion.

All very strange and disconcerting. I have never fired a gun in my life. What troubled me most was how untroubled I felt. Because I was firing at shapes in the distance they didn't seem like people at all. Is this how a real sniper feels? Is this what happens to soldiers in wars?

Pot Boiler

Monday, October 16th., 12B George Street, London.

S.P.B Mais

I am quite put out. The writer and critic S.P.B. Mais, in reviewing my novel "Lilian" referred to it as a 'pot boiler'. The OED defines a pot boiler as "a work of art or literature done merely to make a living." That is to say the writer of a pot boiler has venally contrived something for a purely commercial end, and solely for money. Nearly all writers write for money. Shakespeare did. But the serious writers do not write solely for money. Serious writers produce the best work they can, and hope to make a living out of it.

In fact I wrote "Lilian" as a sort of answer to a novel by Frank Swinnerton ("Coquette"); I felt the book was incomplete and the aim of "Lilian" was to show him what the end should be. Now I am not prepared to defend "Lilian" as my finest piece of literature, but nor is it negligible. I deeply resent Mais's implication that it is lightweight, of no consequence.

Literary critics seem to have fallen into the habit of describing as a pot boiler any novel which they do not like. They have not the least right to do so, and in doing so they presume upon the indifference of authors. Well I am not indifferent. Such a description is undoubtedly libellous. Not that I should ever dream of bringing a libel action! But some day some critic with more cheek than prudence will find himself in trouble. I have a long memory and am inclined to bear a grudge. I think it is in the Five Towns character to do so, as I have shown in some of my short stories. My opportunity for revenge will arise one day, and I shall not miss it.

If Mais knew the literary world as he should, he would know that the writing of a novel like "Lilian" involves a considerable financial to its author, in the matter of serial rights alone. It would have been easy for me to write a novel twice as remunerative as "Lilian". Only I wanted to write "Lilian".

So, I feel better for having got that off my chest. On with the work of making a living and, hopefully, thereby adding a little something to the total of artistic achievement.

To Antwerp

Thursday, October 15th., Grand Hotel, Antwerp

 

Last week I wrote the first of a series of short stories for the Cosmopolitan, "The Life of Nash Nicklin", 8000 words. Finished it Saturday. On Sunday the Atkinses, H. Sullivan and Oscar Raphael came for lunch, and we went to Sullivan's for dinner. On Monday we drove to London. I seem to spend such a lot of time in these sorts of social situations, and it usually feels like time wasted. In my way of life I need to cultivate the acquaintance and good opinion of important people, but I sometimes look round the table at a dinner and feel convinced that most of the people there, like myself, would in fact rather be somewhere else.


Last night we drove to Harwich, took G.E.R. steamer Vienna and arrived at Antwerp at 8.15 a.m. today. Grand Hotel. Room and bathroom, both large, 20 francs. Old fashioned and ugly, but seemingly good. Dreadful ride in hotel omnibus over cobbled froads from quay to the hotel. We drove out at 10 a.m. in closed cab round boulevards to Musee Plantin, where I searched for a particular room whose details I thought I had remembered for 16 years, and couldn't find - indeed was about convinced that such a room had never existed. Not the first time that this sort of thing has happened to me, and makes me wonder about the reliability of memory in general. Probably a lot of things we think we remember, if not actually invented, bear little resemblance to their original. I well remember waking up a year or so ago and lying in bed thinking about a situation which was troubling me; only gradually did I realise that it was imaginary, and I had some difficulty convincing myself that the things I thought I had remembered had never happened.

Headache

Thursday, October 14th., Villa des Nefliers.

Headache, began yesterday. The camel's backbreaking straw was probably a Dutch cigar that Godebski gave me. I nearly cured the headache twice today and then brought it on again by working. The trouble is that if I stop work every time I have a headache I won't get much done. My inclination when suffering is to turn inwards, allow myself to be entirely self-absorbed, and to become uncommunicative, or sometimes surly. I know that the best thing is just to get on with things, but easier said than done. My wife copes brilliantly with headaches which she gets infrequently but which last for three days - she seems able just to ignore them.
 
Godebski's for tea yesterday.


I finished "Ann Veronica" yesterday. Wells sent me a copy with the inscription "The Young Mistresses' Tale, to Arnold B. with love from his nephew H.G." The last 30 pages are the best. But still, a minor work. Seems to me much too short; incidents not described in sufficient detail. But then again I have been accused of too much attention to detail. Mere writing impudently careless of dissonant effects, and full of extreme colloquialisms. Of course it occurs to me that my appreciation of the book may have been affected by my headache. Critics ought to take this into account and declare at the start of each review what the state of their health was when they were reading!

I finished a letter to a cousin of mine who lives on the Isle of Man today. She is a native of the "ancient borough" but has lived on Man for a long time and I asked her if she felt herself to be a manxwoman. I suspect not. You probably have to be born there to be Manx. When people ask me where I am from I say "the Potteries, but I don't live there at the moment". There is a sort of implication in the statement that I would live there if I could, and one day might. In fact I have no intention of doing so. I may well leave here one day, but I won't be going back to the Potteries.

The love of books

Friday, October 13th., At home.

The individual alone in London has a special need for books. It is only the solitary man who really appreciates the full significance of that extraordinary word book. Books he must have, books he must understand, and books he must love - or it will be better for him that he had never been born, or at least that he had stayed in Burslem and married the draper's pale daughter.

Having carefully considered, I take the view that the average young man alone in London, with an income of £120 a year can afford to spend £4 on books. "But", you will say, "what can be done with £4?" A great deal if you go the right way about it.

In the first place it is necessary to enlarge one's notions of the book market. The average man's notion of the book market is a beautiful shop window, with rows of beautiful new books in speckless and variegated bindings. If he enters the shop he is unlikely to find anything with a price less than six shillings - prohibitive; £4 will not last long here. This is the part of the book market which the book buyer of limited means, and the book lover who has a broad view of literature, should leave well alone. Our average young man must not enter a book shop to spend more than half a crown on a book, and not often to spend more than a shilling.

He must also get firmly fixed into his head the indubitable truth that it is advantageous to keep oneself quite a year behind contemporary literature; this rearwardness saves both time and money. And, further, he must continually dwell on the relative unimportance of contemporary literature compared to the whole of literature.

Farringdon Road

As a violent contrast to the richness of the new bookshop, and by way of initiating him into the methods of the cheapest book buying, I will direct my young man eastwards. Let him visit Farringdon Road, Aldgate and Shoreditch, and gaze upon the thousands of books there displayed on barrows in the street. He will find that prices of books commence here at a halfpenny apiece, and go up to a shilling apiece; a shilling is princely. Now about 99% of these books will be useless to a man of literary taste, but the remaining 1% will not be useless and I reckon that at any one time there will be at least 50 books worth buying on Farringdon Road alone. Of course these books need to be carefully searched for, but what man who loves books will find time spent searching for them the least bit onerous? I calculate that my average man should be able to acquire at least fifty, and perhaps seventy five, books annually with his £4.

I should point out that the man who seriously takes to book buying, even inexpensive book buying, is seldom content to remain a purchaser of books for the purpose of reading. He develops into a purchaser of books as curiosities, and his library grows into a museum, as well as a storehouse of ideas. In other words he becomes a book collector. I am myself an incorrigible book collector.

Exhilarated

Wednesday, October 11th., R.M.S. Lusitania, At sea.

I have noticed before how easy it is to become extremely affectionate towards one's wife when separated from her. And at the moment I am very separated from her. The exhilaration of being a bachelor once more! I was feeling so exhilarated, and affectionate, this morning that I sent  my very first marconigram. It cost me 26 shillings - it will never catch on at that rate. I sent Marguerite 26 kisses, which will give her something to think about while I am away. I sent the telegram at noon London time (9 a.m. boat time). No idea when she will get it.

I had a most busy day yesterday. I was writing most of the morning, and at 2.30 the First Officer took Knoblock and me on a tour of the ship, all the navigating part and also into the engine rooms. This occupied nearly two hours. I t was absolutely astounding. I shall write an article about it. Then we came upon the Captain who invited us into his parlour and we smoked cigars and told stories there for another two hours. later I had a tremendous dinner, but suffered for it in the night. Still, I am all right this morning. There is such a strong breeze that, at the front of the boat, you literally cannot stand up against it. It would blow you down.  yet the boat is very steady. It is not yet certain whether we shall land tomorrow night or Friday morning. I hope it will be Friday as I should like to experience the arrival in New York.

Making acquaintances

Monday, October 11th., Victoria Grove, London.

At the Symonds' last evening. I first met them a year ago and try to renew the acquaintance when I can. I think they are the most interesting women I know. As I listened to mother and daughter recounting their deeds and wanderings since I last saw them, I was struck by their faculty for extracting from life pleasure and amusement. They read everything that appears, travel during several months in the year, gamble soberly when gambling is to be had, and generally make it a duty to go through life with as much pleasantness and change as will not fatigue them. Both are witty, and neither is afraid of criticising her friends, or of getting fun out of idols. Emily, the daughter, writes clever novels under the pen-name George Paston, and exhibits a good-humoured, railing tolerance for all 'missions', including her own. She is a few years older than me and rather plain but what an excellent companion for a man of intelligence if she could be got to believe that she had anything to gain from a marriage.

H G Wells

Yesterday I wrote back to H.G.Wells who has honoured me by replying in a most friendly way to my recent letter seeking his acquaintance. He recently published a short story. "The Cone" which was set in the Potteries, and this fell in with my own developing idea that there are immense possibilities in the very romance of manufacture - not wonders of machinery and that sort of stuff - but in the tremendous altercation with nature that is continually going on. This is a passage from "The Cone" which exemplifies what I mean:

A blue haze, half dust, half mist, touched the long valley with mystery. Beyond were Hanley and Etruria grey and dark masses, outlined thinly by the rare golden dots of the street lamps.... Here and there a pallid patch and ghostly stunted beehive shapes showed the position of a pot-bank,, or a wheel, black and sharp against the hot lower sky, marked some colliery where they raise the iridescent coal of the place. Nearer at hand was the broad stretch of railway, and half invisible trains shunted... And to the left, between the railway and the dark mass of the low hill beyond, dominating the whole view, colossal, inky-black, and crowned with smoke and fitful flames, stood the great cylinders of the Jeddah Company Blast Furnaces.... They stood heavy and threatening, full of an incessant turmoil of flames and seething molten iron, and about the feet of them rattled the rolling mills, and the steam hammer beat heavily and splashed the white iron sparks hither and thither.

I am quite sure that there is an aspect of industrial districts which is really grandiose, full of dark splendours and which has been absolutely missed by all novelists to date. Wells seems to be the first man I have come across whom the Potteries has impressed emotionally. There are a number of good men in the Potteries, but I have never yet met one who could be got to see what I have 'seen' there; they were all inclined to scoff. I think Wells will understand me.

On vacation

Sunday, October 10th., Sanclu Hotel, Ramsgate.
 
Yesterday I corrected two articles and a short story, and went for a walk in the morning, and felt that I had had an idle morning. I also read about 50 pages of Osbert Sitwell's first novel, "Before the Bombardment". It is inscribed to "dear, good, uncle Arnold from a nephew". Not an easy read, but then Osbert is not an 'easy' man. Still, nice of him to remember me.

On Delf Street

Drove to Sandwich. A really antique feeling about this place. Streets such as Delf Street. Most curious the moment you begin really to think about it inquisitively. Happily a few barges get there still, up the stream, and seem to live in fields. All churches round here are closed on Sunday. We got into the one at Sandwich because some unfortunate children were imprisoned there for the afternoon service, but the fine church at Minster was closed; reminding me of my Sunday visit to Truro to see the monstrosity of a cathedral there: which was closed entirely.

My idea of fame

Monday, October 9th., At home.

I have been re-reading some of Kipling's short stories. They are good. I particularly enjoyed "The Man Who Would Be King" which was amusing as well as being a good adventure story.

I remember reading a few years ago that whilst taking part in an entertainment on board H.M.S. Majestic he read "Soldier and Sailor Too", and was encored. Then he read "The Flag of England". At the conclusion a body of subalterns swept him off the stage, and chaired him round the quarter deck, while "For he's a Jolly Good Fellow" was played by the massed bands of the Fleet and sung by 200 officers assembled. That's my idea of fame. I was intensely envious of his success. He is only a couple of years older than me but it is as if success has fallen into his lap. How to account for this? Of course he writes well, but so do a lot of others, including myself. It must be his subject matter of India and Empire - the exoticism appeals to those whose lives are humdrum, and plays on primitive emotions such as patriotism. Buchan has a similar appeal. I am still envious!

Out walking this morning. For once I was not trying to get ideas but just walking for pure enjoyment. It is hard for me to turn my mind away from the various projects I have in hand, but essential now and then. It was a dull, rather misty morning. Not much wind. Still quite green everywhere but close inspection shows the leaves turning and grasses dying back. I walked for three hours and hardly saw a soul which suited me perfectly. Sometimes it is good to just let the mind drift. I think it is not dissimilar to being asleep and is almost as relaxing. Couldn't tell you what I was thinking about. Mostly daydreaming. Probably imagining myself as popular as Kipling!

Harris and Shakespere

Friday, October 8th., Villa des Nefliers.

Mistake yesterday. "The Glimpse" was published today and not on Wednesday. I received today a highly enthusiastic letter from Waugh about it. He does not think it will sell. I have a wild idea that it will.

A wild wet morning, and it was very fine on the hill in the rain at 8.15. I came home and wrote the first of new series of articles for T.P's Weekly on English family life. rather pleased with it.

After lunch I painted. Then had tea here and went down to Godebskis for tea afterwards. Wonderful colours on the Godebskis' house and trees. Showers and wind.

Frank Harris

After dinner I finished Harris's Shakespere, amid enthusiasm. I telegraphed him that it surpassed my most sanguine expectations and was glorious. It is. But I wish I hadn't got to write an article on it. The ever-increasing emotion, which I experienced as I read steadily through Harris's book I can only compare with unforgettable sensations that have perturbed me at moments when I stood between earth and sky on some high tor of Dartmoor. . . . I realised that a masterpiece on Shakspere had at length been written. The opening pages of "The Man Shakspere" at once produce certainty that the mind of its author is worldly, non-academic, and powerfully creative. I use "worldly" in a good sense. I mean that the author knows the actual world, moves about in it freely, and is versed in life itself: qualities denied to professors, or to most of them. And he writes as an artist. He does not fit words ingeniously together; he plastically moulds the whole phrase. All English literature is divided into Shakspere and the rest, and in the subconsciousness of the race is a notion that Shakspere's defects are finer than other writers' virtues. Mr. Frank Harris has a very short way with all this. His fist goes through the pane instantly, and the breezes of commonsense blow through the stuffy chambers where the commentators have been mumbling at their priest-like task. By its courage, its originality, its force, its patient ingenuity, its comprehension of art and the artist, its acquaintance with life, and its perfectly astounding acquaintance with Shakspere's plays, the ultimate destiny of the book is assured. It marks an epoch. It has destroyed nearly all previous Shaksperean criticism, and it will be the parent of nearly all the Shaksperean criticism of the future.

Salty Stories

Saturday, October 7th., Comarques, Thorpe-le-Soken

Mrs. Lewis Harcourt

I went to London on Thursday. Lunched at Lady Paget's. The business was the appeal I had written for the American Women's Hospital. Lady P. was late and I ate with Mrs. Lewis Harcourt. I liked her. Youngish. Quiet. Self-possessed. Always a pleasure to chat to a pretty woman who seems genuinely interested in what one has to say. Harcourt is Secretary of State for the Colonies. Regrettably for Mrs. H., Harcourt is widely known to be a sex maniac, though nobody seems willing to expose him publicly. Apparently he likes girls and boys indiscriminately! Lady P. came down when our lunch was nearly over. She confided 'private information' about the way Zepps are caught. Two aeroplanes go up with a long wire between them. When they have got this wire against the Zepp they electrify it and it sets fire to the Zepp. She seemed to believe this. Some people will swallow anything.

Lord Fisher

Yesterday yet another lunch, this time at McKenna's. I sat between Lord Fisher and Miss Davidson. In two minutes Fisher had referred to 'bloody experts'. Touching Falkland battle and Cradock's defeat, he said that a tortoise had been sent to catch a hare, and then two tortoises. He said to me "that it doesn't want an expert to see that a tortoise can't catch a hare, and that a hare has never yet been wounded by a tortoise and won't be." He was evidently still feeling his shunt from the Admiralty. He said: "I was the only one who objected to the Dardanelles Expedition. Kitchener was in favour of it. He's dead. Won't say anything about him. He got the Order of the Garter. I got the Order of the Boot." He told some excellent stories with strong language. They say he is like a boy. He absolutely is. He said: "I'm told I shall live till I'm 110. So I've plenty of time yet." He gave me his favourite quotation:

Not heaven itself upon the past has power,

What has been has been, and I have had my hour.

They also say that he smacks more of the forecastle than of the bridge. There is something in this too.

A Dark View

Friday, October 6th., Cadogan Square, London.

Chores and a moderate walk this morning. Got some ideas for my next "Books & Persons" article which will be about autumn books. Everywhere has that autumnal feel now. I was reflecting on how the loss of daylight has its effect on our mood. Somebody should do a study about it.

This afternoon to a remarkable art exhibition of the work of Kathe Kollwitz. I had no idea who she was but had been told that her work was exceptional - and it was. She is the same age as me and East Prussian by birth though she has lived most of her life in a poor working class district of Berlin. Her theme is social justice, for the poor, for workers, and for women. Her work is largely lithographs and woodcuts, suitable for printing. For purposes of propaganda I expect.

About a third of the exhibits are self-portraits, the earliest dating from when she was about thirty to the recent past. She portrays herself as a strong, serious, rather resigned (I think) figure. I was set to wondering about what an artist has in mind when doing a self-portrait. Are they aiming for verisimilitude, or attempting to convey a message? Depends on the artist of course. Certainly for Kollwitz I felt she was searching for a sort of generic womanhood, using her own features merely as a foundation. I only saw one photograph of Kollwitz herself at the exhibition and though she looked serious, I don't think she would have been easily recognisable from the self-portraits.

There were some very powerful images. One entitled "Raped" particularly struck me. Not the sort of thing you expect to come across. It consisted of the obviously dead and violated body of a woman lying on her back in a garden; and in the background (easily missable) a young child looking on. Nothing prurient about it. The figure was just really sketched in. But powerful. I think it was a comment of course on violence towards women, but also about the repression of the sex more generally - this was everywoman, not a particular woman.


Several pieces were about workers/peasants revolting against oppression. Essentially groups of half-crazed, rather demonic figures trying to claw their way out of darkness. There was an inescapable sense, for me, that their struggle was hopeless. I don't know if this relects Kollwitz's views but I sense a definite lack of optimism about the human condition. The final piece that stays in my mind is entitled "The Carmagnole" (which I understand is a French revolutionary song). It is more detailed than the rest and shows a group of people, mainly women, engaged in a frenzied dance. Close inspection shows that they are not dancing round a maypole or any traditional focus, but a guillotine. Is Kollwitz suggesting that this is the outcome when the oppressed masses do in fact escape their bondage? A very dark view of human nature indeed.