Mixed feelings

 Monday, December 8th., Cadogan Square, London.

Dorothy is in Italy. I will be joining her there next week - arriving in Genoa a week today. In the meantime I have a great deal to do and so have had to neglect my journal. Also I had fantastic neuralgia last night from 2 - 5 am. So it would be fair to say that I have felt better than I do at the moment.. I intend to finish my Sunday Pictorial article this afternoon and proceed with my play tomorrow. In between I have four Harpers Magazine people dining here tonight. An arrangement with them should be lucrative.

There is a theme running through literature to the effect that people who are always right and always punctual are unbearable. It is in the letters of Cicero, and also in the moral works of a certain A.B. in various places. The converse is equally true, that people who are never right and never punctual are unbearable. As for myself, I can honestly say that my faculty for being right is often most annoying to me, and I would sooner be oftener in the wrong. But what can one do? On balance, I would rather be unbearably right than unbearably wrong.

What shall we find in Italy? Italians generally are charming but they only understand a small part of life. Their happy-go-lucky methods have resulted in the most appalling trouble several times in every century since Rome fell. Happy-go-luckiness is bound to end in a mess. I prophecy that there will be another big upset in Italy in a year or two. Hutton tells me that nearly all the English in Italy are in favour of Fascism. They would be. English colonies abroad are ever the same, a festering mass of reactionary political opinions. Would they welcome a 'Duce' in England? Some would.

Harriet Cohen honoured me with her company at lunch yesterday. She was, comparatively, humble. Dear Tania, as usual she wanted advice and I gave it to her. I think she considers me her best source of advice about matters of the heart, which pleases me in most respects but is also rather dissatisfactory. Clearly she perceives me as being of no sexual threat to her. Nor am I. But it diminishes the ego somewhat to be taken so much for granted in that way. She is very beautiful and it is hard sometimes to hear details of her various 'liaisons', to appear dispassionate, but at the same time to wish it were me. She would like me to introduce her to H.G. I know where that would end! How is it that some men have a sort of sexual magnetism and others don't. Mostly it doesn't bother me; in fact I think it would be more trouble than it is worth, but now and then ....