Getting on

Friday, April 7th., Comarques, Thorpe-le-Soken.

The end of winter was very sudden last week. On Tuesday last week was the worst blizzard for fifty years, in which our car got smashed up against a tree that had fallen across the Colchester road. Snow, slush etc. very trying. And then on Saturday the sun was very hot, and the roads full of flying dust. Just like summer even to the East and North-East winds.

I really 'got on to' the first scene of "Carlotta" play on Wednesday.

In the meantime I have been reading Conrad short stories. "Youth" excellent. It evidently comes from the heart and is perfectly convincing. Then "The End of the Tether". Probably the second or third time I have read it and likely to be my last. As I get older so it becomes more and more poignant. I don't think I could bear to see Captain Whalley decline again. It is a tragedy in the real sense of the word. A masterpiece in my view. When I am drawn into a story by a writer of Conrad's genius I realise anew just what a miracle literature is. I hope that somewhere, at some time, someone has felt the same having read a work of mine. If so, my life will not have been wasted.