Prowling round

Monday, March 16th., Villa des Nefliers, Avon S/M.

Worried about the finances of Fontainebleau lately. Still I kept myself in hand very well until the moment arrived last night for me to receive a crucial letter from Pinker. I had given him carte blanche to dispose of "Buried Alive" exactly as he thought best, and had made it clear that my priority was more money! The letter was handed to me in a dark street. I had some difficulty not stopping to read it under a gas lamp. I read it at the station with a commendable show of nonchalance, though nobody there had the least interest in me or my business. Strange the compulsion to 'perform' even when there is no audience. It was alright. No mistake, the constant practice of Marcus Aurelius and Epictetus has had its gradual effect on me.

Have never worked better than these last few days. 4,000 words of "The Old Wives' Tale" in three days plus two articles and some verse. And I have a general scheme of a long article on the London theatrical situation. And ideas for a big play about journalism for the Stage Society, designed to thrill London. Of course I cannot go on at this level or I will be ill. Marguerite is due to return from Paris today and will no doubt make me slow down by deployment of her feminine wiles.

Lovely weather but chilly. Chilblains on hands. Immense pleasure, pretty nearly ecstatic sometimes, in looking at the country, in being in it, particularly by the Seine and in the forest. I said to myself the other morning that the early savage used to prowl about from his cave like that and that I might almost meet one in the forest; whereupon it occurred to me that I was exactly the early savage over again, prowling round his cave, with the same sniffing sensations of instinctive joy in nature. We have lost a great deal in the acquisition of civilisation. Perhaps too much. Of course the life of primitive man was short and beset by hardship and violence, but how much richer it must have been in many respects. Is the worth of a life to be measured by the number of days lived, or by the way one lives today? Very curious this getting down to the bedrock of existence.

 

In the dark

Tuesday, November 9th., Les Sablons.

Today I rose in excellent health, began my last act, and at 5.30 had written one third of it. 

I received a complete bound set of my Tauchnitz works from the Baron. Though ugly, the format was not too ugly to please me. I put the row of twelve volumes in Marguerite's secretaire. Pauline seized "A Great Man" out of the lot, and has been reading it at every spare moment and smiling to herself the whole time. Not to be outdone, I began to read "Buried Alive", and also smiled the whole time. I don't think I have ever read a funnier book than this unless it's Wells's "The History of Mr. Polly".

Dark early of course but I determined to go out for a night walk, and did. I have always enjoyed getting out when it is dark, starting when I was young and needed to get out from under my extensive family. Very different walking here from walking the streets of Burslem. Two ideas came into my mind as I walked. One was to ask the question, "Has any author successfully conveyed the sensation of night walking?" The other was to think about how different the experience of darkness must have been before the advent of artificial lighting. Just imagine at this time of year how people managed with candles, or oil lamps, or just the light from a fire. Did the darkness make them melancholy? Bears thinking about.

Some silly things

Monday, December 31st., Hotel Belvedere, Mont Pelerin sur Vevey, Switzerland.

Dinner. Games. God save the Queen, and varied songs at the hotel. God save the Queen (or King) in various languages. Servants watching eagerly at nothing from behind a curtained window. I say 'at nothing', but the sight of a crowd of middle-class English people determined to enjoy themselves, and fuelled by over-indulgence in alcohol, may indeed be worth watching. I would rather have been watching than participating, but there you are; life is only occasionally what you make it.

I have never worked so hard as this year, and I have not earned less for several years. But I have done fewer sillier things than usual. It is a constant quandary for me, whether to focus on 'serious' writing which is professionally and intellectually rewarding, but unremunerative, or to write to make money. I have tried to do both. I will probably continue to do so because I do enjoy the rewards of financial success. Such as winter in this hotel. 

I wrote "Buried Alive", three quarters of "The Old Wives' Tale", "What the Public Wants", "The Human Machine", "Literary Taste: How to form it", about half a dozen short stories, including "A Matador in the Five Towns"; over sixty newspaper articles. Total words 423,500.

Looking back through my journals I see that it has become a habit to record the number of words written each year. I think this has been a record, but I have not been consistent in what I include, journal for example. Still my output is considerable by any standards. To think that if my working life extends to say forty years, at an average of 300,000 a year then I will have written 12 million words! That is a figure to conjure with indeed.

The turn of the year is a time to take stock and, for many, a time for new resolutions. I am not inclined to the latter, having seen so few actually carried through. I wrote in one of my self-help books this year that "the chief beauty about time is that you cannot waste it in advance. The next year, the next day, the next hour are lying ready for you, as perfect, as unspoiled, as if you had never wasted or misapplied a single moment in all your life. You can turn over a new leaf every hour if you choose." I still think that is good advice. I resolve to follow it!

Writing furiously

Monday, May 11th., Villa des Nefliers, Fontainebleau.

Since Tuesday last I have written an average of over 2,000 words a day, including 12,500 words of "The Old Wives' Tale". I finished the second part this afternoon at 6.15 and was assez emu. This makes half of the book, exactly 100,000 words done. I had a subdued bilious attack practically all the time since Tuesday, but just managed to keep it within bounds. With all this I naturally shirked journalizing. I must not forget that I also corrected in this time, more than 250 printed pp. of proofs. I had three books to correct at once: "Buried Alive"; "How to Live on 24 Hours a Day"; and "Helen with the High Hand".

Additionally for May 11th., see 'Reflections on the writer's craft'

I read through in the type-written copy some of the later chapters of my novel, and they seemed to be ineffective and sketchy. Which severely depressed me, and to recover myself I had to read certain other chapters which I knew would not come out badly. I happened to see in an old Idler today "Q's" article on his first book. In it he says that he wrote "Dead Man's Rock" without a trace of feeling. His view is that if on revision, the work moves its author, then there is surely some good in it. Amen! Parts of my novel have had that blessed effect on me.