Uplifted

Tuesday, December 4th., Cadogan Square, London.

Bad night. Somehow or other I have strained my back and it seems to be having some sort of sympathetic effect in my legs when I lie down. Must have pinched a nerve or something. So when I returned to bed at about three this morning I could not get comfortable enough to get back to sleep. Tossed and turned for an hour or so and then gave it up, and got up, and stayed up. Sat in my study (standing up periodically to stretch) browsing. I read my story "The Matador of the Five Towns". It is good, but not as good as "Simon Fugue" which is, I think, the best I have written. "Matador" hasn't quite got the balance or cohesiveness, though it is full of good things; perhaps I put too much in it? Interesting that I used the epithet 'matador' because I have been reading some of Hemingway's stories recently, and Jos Myatt is just the sort of taciturn, declining, complex sort of character that Hemingway might have put in a bull ring.

To liven myself up after my nap I walked by roundabout ways to the Garrick Club. En route I met and was stopped by four people, including one who didn't know me but thought he would like to be sure that I was I, and an old lady whom I had met once at Monte Carlo about seven years ago, just for a few minutes. Met Geoffrey Russell at the Club and he suggested I should go with him to Bach's B Minor Mass at St. Margaret's. I did. I ate oysters with him at the Reform hastily first. Church full. The whole thing marvellous. 

It seems that the Mass was not performed for many years after it was written and delivered, and Bach delivered it mainly as proof to his sovereign that he was fitted for post of capellmeister! Good performance. The effect was terrific; also uplifting, despite dowdiness of every woman in the congregation

Authors are strange people

Sunday, February 4th., 97 Chiltern Court, London.

Authors are strange people. I am one myself, and I probably know as many authors as any living man - except literary agents and income tax inspectors. Authors are ticklish, sensitive people, and, more than most categories of persons, they are victims (generally willing enough) of the astounding, and to me incomprehensible, mania for 'meeting' celebrities, notorieties and infamies. Why do I say so? Because it has been my observation over a long period of years. Why is it so? I don't know!

I regard myself as the exception that proves this particular rule. So far as I am aware I have never had the desire to meet a celebrity because he was a celebrity. On the contrary I have had, and still have, a desire to avoid him. "But you are a great admirer of his books!" said an acquaintance to me once, when I had demurred to an encounter with a genius. "Yes I am," I said. "That's why I don't want to meet him. If I run across him by chance, all right! But deliberately to go out of my way to meet him - No!" And I never did meet him.

Rightly or wrongly one has one's sense of dignity. I have been acused of having an over-developed sense of dignity, and that may be the case. But it is my sense of dignity and I cling to it. In my defence I will assert that my antipathy towards celebrity is by no means uncommon in the Midlands where I grew up. There were men in the Five Towns (and probably still are) who would not cross the street to acknowledge the existence of some local celebrity or other; they would be ashamed to do so. I have introduced them into some of my novels and stories. "The Death of Simon Fugue", which some suggest is my best short story, is a case in point. When I go to the Potteries myself I have no expectation of acknowledgement and I expect that when I die there may be a brief obituary in The Sentinel, but not such as to draw attention away from 'real' news.

A maniaque shop

Friday, February 26th., Hotel Belvedere, Vevey.

Marguerite and Pauline Smith came back from Vevey today with particulars of a maniaque shop there, where, when you had bought an article, it was taken from you and a number given in exchange. You then, after purchasing all you wanted, paid at the desk, and then went to another part of the shop, where were a number of pigeon-holes numbered. Your articles were then taken out of the pigeon-holes corresponding to your numbers and wrapped up. The wrapping-up could not begin till you had paid. At the wrapping-up place were a number of little brown paper bags containing pieces of string. The packer chose a suitable length from the bag containing pieces only of that length. One can imagine the fussiness, indeed mania of the proprietor, and hell of a time that the girls employed in it must have.

I found quite early this morning all the ideas for last chapter of novel. This afternoon I reviewed Barry Pain, Galsworthy, Le Gallienne, and Mrs. Nesbit for the New Age. Quite like old times. I fell at once into my old quiet habits of reviewing; but the stuff written was, I think, much better - certainly had more souplesse.

More and more struck by Tchekoff, and more and more inclined to write a lot of very short stories in the same technique. As a fact, "The Death of Simon Fugue", written long before I had read Tchekoff, is in the same technique, and about as good. Though to say anything is as good as "Ward No. 6" in "The Black Monk", wants a bit of nerve.

Additionally for February 26th., see 'Successes'

Reviews of "The Card" much too kind on the whole. Six on the first day, 6 or 8 on the second. Dixon Scott's in M. Guardian one of the best I ever had, and no effusiveness either.