Keep paddling

Saturday, December 14th., Cadogan Square, London.

I find that I have turned into a toff, and feel ashamed. How do I know? In many ways: attention to dress, servants, aesthetic pretensions to do with literature and music, a willingness to advertise aforesaid pretensions in public, fine dining, rubbing shoulders with 'the great and good', a disinclination to spend time with Potteries people, a definite pomposity of manner.....

I think it all started when I bought the country house in Essex, though I must have had a tendency in the toffish direction even before then. With such a house how else can one be except toffish? I found that I was treated differently, with greater deference, and soon lived up to the expectations which people evidently had. Then of course there was the war and my increasing acquaintance with politicians and landed persons. A growing celebrity. And the move here only accelerated the process; my social circle increased in breadth but declined in depth. A subtle process which I wasn't aware of as it happened. Insidious really, as if I were being drawn in not exactly aginst my will but in spite of myself.

Is there hope of improvement? I don't think so. I need to earn money (lots of it) to maintain my domestic situation. So I must continue to cultivate the intelligentsia who are, at bottom, my employers. I am seen as something of an eccentric, and I suppose I am, but it is not natural to me. I think back to my days as a bachelor in France, and at Fontainebleau, and even my early years in London, and envy the freedom I had then to be myself. Now I have to be what I have become. Of course I have compounded the problem by establishing myself with Dorothy and fathering a child. Were it just myself I think I would, at least partially, 'retire' to somewhere modest in the country, perhaps by the sea. I know I could not return to the Potteries, and they wouldn't want me. I am adrift and can see no alternative other than to keep paddling.