Party tricks

Wednesday, February 7th., Yacht Club, London.

Dined at Madame Van der Velde's, and sat at a spiritualistic seance with a clairvoyant named Peters who brought his son, a youth in the R.A.M.C. home for a few hours on leave. This son said there were 500 professed spiritualist soldiers at Aldershot. Theosophist. The clairvoyant a man of 45 or so. Short. Good forehead. Bald on top, dark hair at sides. Quick and nervous. Son of a barge owner. Present: Yeats the poet, Mr. and Mrs. Jowitt, Roger Fry, hostess and me. Mrs J. very beautiful, quite distractingly so. Jowitt is editor of the Daily Chronicle. 

We were all asked to put an object we had brought with us on a tray, unseen by Peters. Though not by his son I noticed. Peters then handled the objects with his eyes closed. His greatest success, quite startling, was with the glass stopper of a bottle brought by Jowitt. He decribed a man throwing himself out of something, down, with machinery behind him, and a big hotel or building behind him. Something to do with water, across water. He kept repeating these phrases with variations. Turns out the stopper had once belonged to a baronet (I forget his name) who threw himself off a launch in response to a challenge, at 3 a.m. into the Thames, after a party up river. He drowned. Drunk presumably.

He had some success with my toothpick, in getting me to the Potteries, and into the office of the Staffordshire Knot, or Sentinel, and described a man that might be either Goold or the editor of the Sentinel, and said that known or unknown to me, this man had greatly influenced me. He insisted on the word 'Zola'. He said there was a message to tell me, that I hadn't done my best work. I felt quite impressed at the time, but not so now. A professional would not have any difficulty finding out things about us, and offering fairly vague suggestions which we seize upon and mould to fit. Probably he and his son have some sort of code to indicate which item belongs to which person. 

What strikes me most is the banality of the whole thing. here we are in the middle of the greatest war the world has seen, people dying in their millions, and the spirits can only tell us who has fallen out of a boat or has a link with a newspaper! The fact is that people tend towards credulity and the mediums and clairvoyants make use of this tendency with their party tricks. I am glad I went. I made full notes.

Strange people

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

Bernard Shaw came for lunch. He and Dorothy talked theatre all the time. He said that the first preliminary to her going in for theatrical management and acting was a divorce between us. I think he was joking. He was rather more sensible and agreeable than usual. He went with us to Harriet Cohen's Henry Wood orchestral concert at Wigmore Hall. The hall was full. I dozed off twice, being very fatigued and sleepy, but I still enjoyed it. We drove home in rain. Shaw left us to get exercise on foot, in the rain. He is a strange person.


But then, 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. They would regard it as a matter of personal pride and self-respect not to acknowledge a celebrity. 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. 

Were I to go to the Potteries myself, which is unlikely, I would 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 - the football results for example.

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.

Justice dispensed

Thursday, December 9th., 179 Waterloo Road, Burslem.


Yesterday I sat with Dawson and Cartledge on the magistrates bench. I made some notes. One hopeless case showing the criminality of the criminal system. A woman who had been in and out of prison since 1876 (when I was nine!), and she got another month. Probably she is inured to the system by now and really knows nothing else, but surely something could have been done all those years ago to divert her from this waste of a life. No doubt drink has become a factor and yet I feel confident that it is a consequence, not a cause. If someone took the trouble to really dig into her past, the circumstances of her birth and childhood, I would bet that the odds were stacked against her from the start.

I didn't really want to sit up on the bench. The body of the court would have been fine for me, if not better, but Dawson insisted and he is my primary source of information for "Clayhanger". He is a decent man, and so seems Cartledge, but how pompous and self-righteous they appear when hearing the cases and doling out punishments. It is not for me. Of course the Sentinel reported that I had been on the bench. They would.

I was at the dentist on Tuesday and now have a gold filling. The gold shines in my mouth. I suppose I will get used to it. I am picking up a lot of useful material and getting ideas. I went to the Grand after dinner yesterday and was profoundly struck by all sorts of things but especially the clog dancing. Its significance had never occurred to me before. I thionk I could do something on it for the Nation. And maybe I could work somthing into "Clayhanger". Towards the end I came across Warwick Savage and walked home with him. This was a pity because I had got into an extraordinary vein of 'second sight'. I perceived whole chapters. Of all the stuff I made sufficient notes.

Enthusiastic letter from Lee Matthews about the play. Let us hope that his enthusiasm is well founded.