Summat missing

Thursday, April 9th., Les Sablons.

A great Spring day today. Also yesterday. Sofia, a friend of ours, wrote the other day that "Spring had sprung" and she was right. I walked to Fontainebleau and back yesterday morning and wrote 2,000 words of novel in the afternoon; mainly background detail! This afternoon we had tea in the garden - first reflection of the year outside.

Finished Merrick's "The Actor-Manager" in twenty four hours. This is praise of it. The interest keeps up but the book ends abruptly, and unreasonably, long before the story is finished. I find it remarkable that so few authors really know how to finish a book. It is undoubtedly a good book but rather monotonous in colour and movement, and practically no backgrounds in it at all. As for scenic effects, whether of town or country, scarcely an attempt. It is excellent so far as it goes; but it lacks. It lacks the romantic feeling , or summat! I know that many authors see character as the focus of a novel and regard background detail, what I would call context, as of secondary importance. Not me. Not when I write or when I read. I find a richly described background essential for thorough immersion in a novel. And I don't think a character is separable from their context in a novel, or in life.