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.