Seeing Rome

Saturday, January 23rd., Hotel de Russie, Rome.

I didn't begin work until 6 pm. Very near the end of "Raingo" now; shall finish it in a couple of days. And I already have a good idea for my next novel which I hope to start before we return to London. 

Septimus is declining further I hear. Now under 7 stones. He craves food, and needs it, but can't assimilate it. I am afraid the end cannot be far off, but it is infeasible for me to go back to England at the moment given Dorothy's condition. I have arranged for a specialist to see Sep. but more to mollify Maud than for any idea that it will do good. 

After lunch at the hotel we went for a drive. Right down right bank of the Tiber to the place where I moored the Velsa before the war. Much interested to see this again, It was a good spot. It was a good boat. I sometimes wish I had concentrated on boats to the exclusion of women. Then we drove round seeing Jewry, including the Marcello Theatre, with little shops in its ground floor arches, odd dwellings above, and apparently large flats in the superimposed modern part - by modern I mean 30 or 40 years old. Then to varied odd remains, and we came to an enclosed space where 'excavation' was actually in process of being done. This was thrilling. There is much to see above ground here in Rome but it strikes me that there is probably as much, or more, still buried.

Since the 1st of January the street, traffic-controlling police, newly initiated by Mussolini, have been very proud of their new uniforms and mackintoshes. In the Corso the horn-hooting seems to me to be less. But I must inspect this more closely after my novel is done.

I have just finished reading an excellent book, "Days Without End" by Sebastian Barry. In fact it has delayed me slightly in finishing "Raingo". A sort of Western. The central character is an Irishman exiled from his native land as a boy because of the famine, and growing up in America before and during the Civil War. He is homosexual and forms an enduring relationship with another young man. Together they join the Union army, experience great hardship, and eke out a living post-war as 'entertainers'. It turns out that our hero prefers to dress and act as a woman. They are involved in Indian wars, see and take part in acts of extreme brutality, and eventually have the opportunity to settle as farmers on land in Tennessee. There is much to admire in this book. The characters are convincing, the descriptions of weather and scenery poetic at times. There is a sense that the author has captured and conveyed something of the essence of what humans are, and can be, whatever the context. Little more can be asked of any author.