A cogitating day

Sunday, December 13th., Rue de Calais, Paris.

After buying papers and tea yesterday I lunched at the little creamery in the Place de la Trinite. Then I came home and read various papers and periodicals and "Casanova", and fell asleep, sleeping uncomfortably. Then I tried seriously to find ideas for Chapter II of my new novel; I had been more or less asking for them all morning; no success. Then I went out for a walk and felt tired even in starting.

I walked through the St. Lazare quarter to the Madeleine and turned along the Grand Boulevard to the Grand Cafe. I like the interior of this cafe. It is as much like the respectable ugliness of an English club as anything in Paris. I must be a little homesick I think. I ordered a cup of chocolate because I felt empty.

I thought steadily for an hour over this chocolate and I seemed to leave the cafe with one or two germs of ideas. I walked home cogitating. When I arrived there was a telegram from Whitten requiring my weekly article two days earlier than usual. This upset my plans somewhat. I felt so tired - I had taken a chill - that I lay down under the eiderdown on the bed and went to sleep again, reading "Casanova". 

When I awoke it was dark though only late afternoon. I made tea and felt better. A leading notion for the chapter had now formed itself. I went out to the Comedie Mondaine to book a seat for Brieux's "Berceau" and then to the Duval to dine, where I read Le Temps all the way through. Then I bought a cigar and had coffee in the Place Clichy. I cogitated at the cafe for an hour, and then I had the whole chapter clearly outlined in my head. This is a fair specimen of one of my cogitating days.

Truth is a talisman

Monday, December 7th., Rue de Calais, Paris.

I am reading "Casanova". This caught my eye: "I have learnt by experience that truth is a talisman of which the charm never fails, provided that one does not squander it on rascals." What a motto for my "Truth About an Author"!

I cured my depression yesterday by slaving all day at our play. I did the sketch of it complete and posted it to Eden Phillpotts last night. I only went out for quite a short walk of about 20 minutes, just to clear my brain and exercise my limbs. And to eat. Speaking of which I have obtained a photograph of the Duval where I go for my lunch, and have sent it to my mother. She is curious about my way of life here. It is an enormous place and I always sit at the same table which I marked for her with a cross. I can imagine her sitting in her chair in the house at Waterloo Road imagining me sitting down to eat in Paris. Of course there are things about my life here which I cannot tell her about!

As for the restaurant it is good of its kind; and when I say a restaurant is good, I who renew my flickering life almost solely in restaurants, the praise is well-deserved. It is large, quiet, clean, well-ventilated, well-warmed, and well-decorated; the linen is good, the glass thin, the silver bright and the service rapid; the raw material of the dishes is sound, and the dishes are well-cooked and various. I have nearly always enjoyed, and never disliked, what I ate in that restaurant. In short, it meets with my hearty approval. And there is my regular waitress. I am prepared to assert that she is over fifty years old and that her waist measurement is over forty, but she has taken to me and I to her. Her dark hair is always carefully dressed, her gowns fit and suit her admirably, her features are agreeable, and her gestures show kindness and force of character. I know not if she is a wife or a widow. She is certainly not a virgin. Were I fifty six rather than thirty six, romance would be in the air. Perhaps I have read too much "Casanova".

Fatal defects

Thursday, November 26th., Rue de Calais, Paris.

I wrote over 3000 words of my last Windsor story, dined at a nice Duval in the Parc du Champs de Mars, smoked a cigar at the Globe, and then went to the Theatre Antoine and saw Ibsen's "Ghosts". This is not after all a good play. It is vitiated by the symbolism of the asylum. The defect, fatal defect, of the play is that it is too 'stagey'. It has not the air of being quite sincere. It is too clever. All this I can see quite clearly. There are moments in the first and second acts however which are poignantly dramatic.

Also "La Paix Chez-soi", a new one act piece by Georges Courteline. Very good, funny, and at the same time bitterly true, in its essence, to real life. How such an idea would have been ruined by sentimentality in an English play. But I think that I could write a play as good. I returned home after 12, and after reaching my etage dropped my box of matches, which fell right down the well of the stairs to the bottom. How I cursed! I had to go down and find them. Vile weather.

Somehow I got to thinking of Oscar Wilde whilst I was out and about today. It is only three years since he died here in Paris. I might well have met him had dissipation and the effects of imprisonment not taken their toll. How would we have got on? Well of course he was a toff so probably not very well. Not that I have anything against toffs, so long as they are only toffish in private and with other consenting adults. In fact I know little of Wilde's life but my sense is that, whilst he didn't deserve to be imprisoned, he was the author of his own destiny. No doubt attitudes to homosexuality will change in time but it is unwise to balatantly disregard public mores however much you despise them personally.

Inspiration

Wednesday, November 18th., Rue de Calais, Paris.

Last night, when I went into the Duval for dinner, a middle-aged woman, inordinately stout and with pendant cheeks, had taken the seat opposite to my prescriptive seat. I hesitated as there were plenty of empty spaces, but my waitress requested me to take my usual chair. I did so and immediately thought: "With that thing opposite to me my dinner will be spoilt!" But the woman was evidently also cross at my filling up her table, and she went away, picking up all her belongings to another part of the restaurant, breathing hard. Then she abandoned her second choice for a third one. My waitress was scornful and angry at this desertion, but laughing also. 

Les serveuses - Bouillon Duval

Soon all the waitresses were privately laughing at the goings-on of the fat woman, who was being served by the most beautiful waitress I have ever seen in any Duval. The fat woman was clearly a crotchet, a 'maniaque', a woman who lived much alone. her cloak (she displayed on taking it off a simply awful light puce flannel dress) and her parcels were continually the object of her attention, and she was always arguing with her waitress. And the whole restaurant secretly made a butt of her. She was repulsive; no one could like her or sympathise with her. But I thought - she has been young and slim once. And I immediately thought of a long 10 or 15 thousand word short story, "The History of Two Old Women". I gave this woman a sister, fat as herself. And the first chapter would be in the restaurant (both sisters) something like tonight - and written rather cruelly. Then I would go back to the infancy of these two and sketch it all. One should have lived ordinarily, married prosaically, and become a widow. The other should have become a whore and all that; 'guilty splendour'. Both are overtaken by fat. And they live together again in old age, not too rich, a nuisance to themselves and to others. Neither has any imagination. For 'tone' I thought of "Ivan Ilytch" and for technical arrangement I thought of that and also of "Histoire d'une Fille de Ferme". The two lives would have to intertwine. I saw the whole work quite clearly, and hope to do it. But I expect I shall have to do my humorous novel "A Great Man" first, not to mention other things.

Additionally for November 18th., see 'Leaving Chicago' -
http://earnoldbennett.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/leaving-chicago.html

Set out for Indianapolis this morning at 9.47.
Sort of accommodation train.
Niceish restaurant car. Niggers thereon. Nigger understrapper who shined boots, and knew all about the prospects of the C.H. and D. Rly. (Monan route.)
Chiefly flattish country (with welcome breaks), yellow stubble land. Occasionally a dark muddy river. Single track (after once clear out of Industrial Chicago, which seemed to be one vast shunting yard).
Arrived Indianapolis 3 (12 minutes late about). Maple streets in all streets. Monuments to sailors and soldiers. Dome of state house.