Feeling old

Thursday, March 3rd., Hotel Bristol, Paris.

I drove down to the Institut de France along the quays, and then walked slowly back as far as the Rue du Bac, looking at the book boxes. I only bought one book, "Les Moments Perdu de John Shag" by Gilbert Voisins, which Gide had specially recommended me. It was 8 frs instead of 12, and its transparent paper envelope had not been violated at all. Good word, violated. There were a few other books I might have bought, but I didn't want to carry them, or I knew I shouldn't read them, or something. Good to be out alone in Paris again. Quite took me back to my younger days here. Glad to be away from Dorothy for a while to be honest. I feel as if we are involved in an intermittent war to be 'in charge' and I'm not winning.

I then walked on to the Restaurant Lucas, where Maurice Baring gave a very good lunch to Dorothy and me and a Russian exile named Dimitrieff Momonoff, a sharp-nosed man with a good grey beard, speaking good English. Unfortunately he had not been reading the new Russian authors. He said that "The Death of Simon Fuge" was in the Tchekoff style, though probably written before I had read Tchekoff. There is something in this. Maurice said I had never written the sort of plays I ought to write and could write. Something in this too. Easy to think of things we might have done when we were younger, not so easy to do them now. It's all about choices it seems to me, and I expect that, given my time again, I would make the same ones.

We entertained the whole five Godebski-Blaque Bellair crew to dinner. We had a most agreeable and chattering evening. Dorothy was at bottom very exhausted, yet she plotted with the others to force me to go the Grand Ecart on Friday night, and stay until one or two in the morning. I am too old for this, and she knows it. It will certainly upset my health, and she knows that too. Another choice I made - getting involved with a younger woman!