Confidences

Friday, January 4th., Trinity Hall Farm, Hockliffe, Bedfordshire.

As we drove through Battlesden Park on a misty moist morning yesterday, Kennerley and Tertia in front, and Sharpe and I cramped and pinched behind, I had a sense of a constantly unrolling panorama of large rounded meadows, studded with immense bare cedars, also of a formal and balanced shape; bulls and sheep, all of fine breeds, wandered vaguely about; sometimes a house; often a gate to be opened, and Spot gallivanting tirelessly around the trap; in one distant clump of trees we saw a rook perched on an invisible twig on the top of a high elm; in the mist he seemed enormous, an incredible motionless fowl; at length he sretched his wings slowly, sank gently forward, and beat heavily away into the distance. Everything was a vague green and dark grey in the fog - everything except the red hips and the staring white of Spot's coat. 

On the way home we called for a dead snipe that had been given to us: the first snipe that I had ever seen; I was naively astonished at its small proportions, and the impossible length of its thin bill. 

In the afternoon Tertia began, at my request, to teach me to bake. I have very few practical skills but felt I could take to baking, and do it well. Here it seems very appropriate, in the same way that it would be appropriate to tend a vegetable garden, or shoot game. I enjoyed it and produced a very creditable mincemeat tart which was much admired at supper. There is a a real satisfaction in making things well. I expect William Morris tried his hand at baking. Tertia and I had quite a talk whilst alone in the kitchen. It seemed conducive to confidences. I told her about some of my experiences and misadventures in Paris and she confessed that she was not a virgin; it seems that she and Willie Boulton had anticipated their conjugal state. She said she didn't regret doing so, and was just glad that there had been no consequence. She is quite 'over' Willie's tragic death now, and has hopes of the relationship with Kennerley.

Septembers (2)

September 2nd., 1897

Received a letter from my mother today (dated August 30th.) informing me of the death by drowning of my sister Tertia's fiance, Willie Boulton.They are holidaying at Barmouth and it seems he was swept out to sea by a strong current. The body has not yet been recovered.

I threw the letter over to Kennerley to read, and walked away to the lock.
In a few minutes it occurred to me that of course I was going by the Newhaven steamer that night. Nothing else was possible.

As the time approached for the appearance of the steamer, little groups of people collected round the darkness of the lock, in which small craft had already encamped. At some distance on the other side of the channel, were a few electric lights where some earthworks had begun to be thrown up. Save for these and one or two other scattered lamps, all was mysterious gloom. At last the hoot of the steamer came eerily down the canal, and as the vessel rounded the last corner, its electric headlight, like a great eye dropping a tear in the still water, illuminated the vista of the canal, and though it was yet a mile away, threw a deep black shadow behind our figures.
Then suddenly I felt that this passage of a channel steamer through the Ouistreham lock was going to be an impressive transaction.
I was filled with the presence of an inexorable power. With tremendous majesty the great ship crept gradually forward to the accompaniment of hoarse calls and hoots, and so at last into the lock. It was an hour before the water of the lock had subsided and her bulwarks were level with the sides of the lock. She moved out silently, save for the pilot's call, and with the same dignity as she appeared, disappeared with us into the blackness of the sea.
Such scenes as this are the poetic apotheosis of machinery. The spectacle accorded with and soothed my feelings.

September 2nd., 1910

On Tuesday I went to Paris. Lunch at Martin's (his cousin Eugene was there). I met Lee Mathews at Hotel St. James at 6.10. We discussed plays and his projects till 7.20. Caught 7.55 home, for  bread and milk at 9 p.m. I bought nothing.
See also, 'French excursion' - 
September 24th., http://earnoldbennett.blogspot.co.uk/2012/09/friday-september-24th.html

Couldn't work next day or yesterday. Not sure why. Sometimes one is oppressed by a sense of pointlessness; why make another effort, or even exert oneself to be pleasant? Fortunately, with experience comes the knowledge that the feeling will pass and life will resume its normal optimistic course. In the meantime go through the motions.
So, I resumed "Seeing Life in Paris" this morning, and did 1,200 words.
Yesterday afternoon I just did a New Age article. 

By first post I received news that Pinker could sell serial use of "The Honeymoon" to McClure's Magazine for £200. I cabled to accept, provided dramatic rights not jeopardised.

September 2nd., 1919

At the Midland Adelphi Hotel in Liverpool.
I came here from Dublin yesterday. Pouring rain. Packed steamer. Couldn't move on it except with the greatest difficulty. People placidly getting soaked through while being ill. I felt sure my luggage would reach Liverpool with me. It didn't. Great melancholy. Fruitless expeditions by hotel people to lost luggage office. At 9 p.m. I strolled up there myself and the trunk came in at that identical moment. It was like a miracle. How dependant our moods are on our particular circumstances - from dejected to delighted as the result of the arrival of an inanimate object!

On Sunday we drove over Wicklow mountains and things to Glendalough; ancient ecclesiastic city. Much of the scenery was superb. I drank one and a half bottles of stout which gravely incommoded me. 

Yesterday I sat in wet boots after leaving the boat, 12.30 a.m. to 9.30 p.m. No alternative. Yet did not catch cold.  

September 2nd., 1927

At 75 Cadogan Square, London.
I wrote 1,100 words of "Under the Hammer" in one and a half hours. Great going.
Considering that I only slept two hours last night I was in astonishing creative form today

A pleasant evening

Saturday, January 30th., Victoria Grove, Chelsea.

Tonight I met the typical respectable Clerk and his wife. The Clerk: a short man with a merry, half-boyish face, and a good moustache; keen in looks and yet every feature disclosing a narrow habit of mind; at first good-naturedly too courteous and deferential, afterwards assuming his natural manner of unaffected pleasantness. His wife: a woman of about 35, apparently older than the clerk, dressed plainly in red and grey; a broad face of peculiar shape, with long censorious lips that came together in a straight line, and remained so; a sensible, sober face, full of what is called character. One felt that while her husband supplied the motive power of their existence, the wife furnished the steadying ballast. She was very restrained till late in the evening when at the sight of some comic drawings she laughed immoderately and long, repeating: "I do think that's funny ... " After this the clerk began to give us his volunteering experiences, and over his quietly vivacious talk I heard a conversation begin between the wife and Gertie Kennerley; "Are you fond of reading?" "Yes," said Gertie. "Read Charlotte Bronte's books? 'Jane Eyre'? 'Villette'? 'Shirley'? - I like 'Shirley' the best. And George Eliot's? And Mrs. Henry wood's? I think ----- is the best of hers." here the clerk broke in to say he hadn't read that: hadn't read anything of Mrs. Henry Wood's. "I don't think you'd care for them," she turned to him. "There isn't much in them you know." So, though clearly the stronger character, she looked up to him, wondering from below to what heights his intellect reached.

Both were skilful, experienced, alive, in the things which lay within their own segment of life's circle, and lost and awed, like babes in the wood, if they happened to stray outside that segment. Example: Though the husband was above Mrs. Henry Wood and read Lamb, and had a distant interest in Stevenson, he asked, "What is this Yellow Book, Mr. Bennett?" as if he were inquiring into the nature of the differential calculus or bimetallism. But both of them know all about latchkeys, burglars, the programmes at the Empire and the Alhambra, and so on. The Clerk was fond of horses. he liked riding because there was "a lot of danger in it - you might get thrown off". Then he explained the difficulties.

The Yellow Book, published in London from 1894 to 1897 by Elkin Mathews and John Lane, later by John Lane alone, was a quarterly literary periodical (priced at 5s.) that lent its name to the "Yellow Nineties". It was a leading journal of the British 1890s; to some degree associated with Aestheticism and Decadence, the magazine contained a wide range of literary and artistic genres, poetry, short stories, essays, book illustrations, portraits, and reproductions of paintings. Aubrey Beardsley was its first art editor, and he has been credited with the idea of the yellow cover, with its association with illicit French fiction of the period. Authors who contributed were: Max Beerbohm, Arnold Bennett, "Baron Corvo", Ernest Dowson, George Gissing, Sir Edmund Gosse, Henry James, Richard Le Gallienne, Charlotte Mew, Arthur Symons, H. G. Wells, William Butler Yeats.

They made several attempts to go, and finally left at 11.5, the clerk with genial smiles and punctilious salutations, the wife rather stiffer, but breaking out into a warm, genuine smile and a "We've had such a pleasant evening," for Mrs. K.

Additionally for January 30th., see 'Courting' -
http://earnoldbennett.blogspot.co.uk/2013/01/courting.html

Several times lately, about 10 p.m., I have noticed a couple that stand under the big tree at the corner next to the pillar box, shielded by the tree-trunk from the lamplight. They stand motionless, with hands nearly meeting around each other's backs, tightly clasped. They were there tonight. The man was holding an umbrella over them. Can't see what sort of people they are. In the first place I don't like to intrude and in the second place the shade is so dark. One day I will include this scene in a novel.