Romantic London

Friday, December 14th., Yacht Club, London.

Wakened at 6. I began writing about noon and by the end of the day, 7 p.m., had written 1,400 words of "The Pretty Lady". Not bad. I feel it is developing well. May cause a bit of a stir when it comes out.

Dugald MacColl

Lunched at Reform, and had talk with Dugald MacColl who was rather professional in appearance but not at all in ideas. He made one more real expert to confirm me in my anti-Sargent views. I spoke to him about his own watercolours and he said that the one that I liked took him half an hour, but that all his watercolours were chances - at any rate the sketches, and that the percentage of successes was about five only. Which is considerably higher than my percentage success rate!

During the evening F.E. Smith, Attorney General, rang me up - how he got hold of me God knows - and said: "Will you go to the United States with me on Saturday morning?" He then spoke, low, some confidential remarks about his mission. I didn't catch them all and didn't get him to repeat them as I hadn't the slightest intention of going - especially for two months. I only listened out of politeness. I did hear him say: "Nominally you'll be my secretary, but only nominally of course."

Although I like him as a dinner companion I didn't see myself going to the U.S. as F.E.'s secretary even had I spare time to do so. Of course it is all about raising money for the war.

Fog and mist and a most damnably romantic London. I walked from Oxford Street to Piccadilly. Scarcely one of my 'pretty ladies' about. Had there been I might just have been in the mood to make an engagement, purely for professional reasons of course.

Interesting people

Sunday, December 9th., Comarques, Thorpe-le-Soken.

Better arrangements must be made for keeping this damned journal! 

On Thursday last I made my debut at the Other Club, to which I was elected without my knowledge. I sat next to F. E. Smith, who is a live companion, inclined to recount his achievements, but interesting and informed. Duke of Marlborough in the chair - merely to propose the royal health. An irritating anachronism, but people dislike change, even for the better.
Also see 'Storm in a political teacup', November 23rd., -
http://earnoldbennett.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/storm-in-political-teacup.html

F. E. Smith and Winston Churchill

Churchill, who in 1910 was Liberal Home Secretary, and barrister and Conservative MP F. E. Smith had not been invited to join the venerable political dining club known just as The Club. Although both had friends in it, the members thought Churchill and Smith too controversial. So they established their own club, to be called by contrast "The Other Club". The first dinner was on 18 May 1911. Twelve rules were written for the club, mostly by F. E. Smith, and they were, and are still, read aloud at each dinner. Churchill claimed to have contributed the last,12. "Nothing in the rules or intercourse of the Club shall interfere with the rancour or asperity of party politics."  Election to the club depended on Smith and Churchill believing members to be "men with whom it was agreeable to dine". 

Sir Mark Sykes seemed the most interesting man there. He did a very original caricature of F. E. Smith and me. I heard he was the best amateur actor in England. He certainly has brains, and political brains. Lutyens amiably played the amusing fool. I greatly enjoyed the affair.

Colonel Sir Mark Sykes, 6th Baronet (1879 – 1919) was an English traveller, Conservative Party politician and diplomatic adviser, particularly about matters respecting the Middle East at the time of the First World War. He is associated with the Sykes-Picot Agreement, drawn up while the war was in progress, regarding the apportionment of postwar spheres of interest in the Ottoman Empire to Britain, France and Russia. Sykes was in Paris in connection with peace negotiations in 1919. At the conference, a junior diplomat present, Harold Nicolson, described Sykes' effect: "It was due to his endless push and perseverance, to his enthusiasm and faith, that Arab nationalism and Zionism became two of the most successful of our war causes." He died in his room at the Hotel Lotti near the Tuileries Garden on 16 February 1919, aged 39, a victim of the Spanish flu pandemic.

Turkish baths and a little dissipation have lately improved my health and greatly improved my capacity for finding ideas and working.


Additionally for December 9th., see -
http://earnoldbennett.blogspot.co.uk/2012/12/self-examination.html

Instinctively, and all the time, I was comparing it with my own, and in particular comparing Margaret Ogilvy and J.M. Barrie with my mother and myself. Again and again, I had to acknowledge inferiority - inferiority of essential 'character', apart from inessential talent - a lack of bigness, and a presence of certain littlenesses. yet at the same time, I found us sturdy enough not to be ashamed of shortcomings. What we are, we are! "I exist as I am, that is enough." To hold such a creed religiously is in one way to be great.
A proud and self-unconscious self-esteem; that is what few people have. If at times it deserts me and mine, it always returns the stronger for having retreated. We are of the North, outwardly brusque, stoical, undemonstrative, scornful of the impulsive; inwardly all sentiment and crushed tenderness. We are of the North, incredibly, ruthlessly independent; and eager to say "Damn you" to all the deities at the least hint of condescension.