To the Other Club

Thursday, December 2nd., Cadogan Square, London.

As I had not got my ideas clear for the next chapter of the novel, I went out for a walk after finishing correspondence and oddments, and walked to the XXI Gallery in Durham House Street, Strand. I found my idea all right. The gallery is very dark, appropriately in the circumstances as it has an exhibition of Cosmo Clark's pictures of the Black Country. I wasn't awfully pleased with them, but I bought one because I had known Cosmo as a baby and was an old friend of his father's.

I walked all the way to the Savoy Hotel for the dinner of the Other Club. Birkenhead came in, and we were very affable to one another, and everybody laughed about the just-finished scrap between us in the Daily Mail. Afterwards he was most friendly and asked me to lunch with him alone. Reading was in the chair and the dinner was the most agreeable that I remember of this Club. I sat next to Charles Masterman and opposite Alf Mason, and we had a great time. Afterwards I went and sat next to Jim Garvin. He talked exceedingly well, and is full of knowledge and ideas. Churchill and Jack Seely came in very late, long after dinner. Churchill said to me: "Receive the congratulations of Tom Hogarth" (over my row with Birkenhead). There was a great deal of "Raingo" throughout the evening.

Raingo

Wednesday, November 10th., Cadogan Square, London.

I finished Part I (including all the political stuff) of "Lord Raingo" on Monday afternoon, to my great relief. While doing this I could not be bothered to write journals or do anything that I was not absolutely compelled to do. 83,000 words of the novel are now done. Beaverbrook has read all but the last four (short) chapters, to vet it for political correctness, and he is enthusiastic about it, thrilled by it. He only found one small slip in it (about the time it would be possible for Raingo to leave the House of Commons after hearing a debate). He found another slip; but it wasn't one. He made two suggestions: one for altering the wording of a telgram; the other in a form of address. It is marvellous to me that I have been able to do all these complicated politics without once getting off the rails. I can scarcely believe it. 

Beaverbrook said he would guarantee the rightness of the politics, though quite what that means in practice I don't know. he has a tendency to over-enthuse. he said it was the finest thing he had read for years. Miss Nerney also describes it as "a very fine book". I rather value her opinion more and so am rather reassured. My misgivings continue to be whether it is of any interest outside that small group of people who have an active interest in political affairs? Will the average reader find it tedious? I don't know.

I have put it to one side now while I write an article and work up the libretto of the "Bandits" which Phillpotts and I are doing for music by Austin.

Today I corrected the typescript of a short story "The Cornet Player" which I think is the most original story I have ever written

Entertaining Melba

Friday, November 2nd., Cadogan Square, London.

My nephew Richard seems never to settle to anything. I don't know why. Of course there have been all the problems with his father and the sorry 'adoption' business which I should never have agreed to. Still those are all well in the past and he is mature enough to get on with life. At least in my opinion. At his age I was making my way in London, and had had none of the support he has received. Perhaps that is part of the problem - the more 'help' some people get, the more dependent they become. Have we made him dependent? Possibly.

Anyway, at the moment he is at Port Sunlight (what a name for a place!) working as some sort of chemical engineer. Quite what that involves I have no idea. He is discontented, allegedly because of the environment and the people he is working with but mainly, I think, because he aspires to a life of luxury (like yours truly!) and is impatient to get it. I have told him that he must, whilst he remains at P.S., work as if he intends to spend the rest of his life there. I doubt if he will.

Dame Nellie Melba

I have had a good month of writing - 26,000 words of "Raingo" besides a lot of correcting of MS and typescript etc. The only thing is that I feel more and more often that I am writing by rote rather than with the true creative flame burning as it used. It is professional and well done but not up to my work of two decades ago. Probably unrealistic to expect anything else. It is generally true that artists (and scientists) produce their best work when they are young and unconstrained by experience. Do I have another first rate novel in me? I don't know. Perhaps my big 'hotel' project if I ever bring it to fruition.

I was to have dined with Knoblock last night but instead accepted an invitation from a journalist name  Beverley Nichols who was entertaining Melba. We had a great time with Melba. She is 64 and as lively as ever. She has sold her house in Mansfield Street and we called in to see it all dismantled. It's a lovely house. She left for Paris at 9 a.m. today. They say that she is by far the richest of all the retired opera stars. I can believe it.

A fine letter

Tuesday, October 26th., Cadogan Square, London.

Went to Tchekoff's "Three Sisters" at the Barnes Theatre. Well, I was bored frequently. Did I enjoy myself? No, not on the whole. Was I uplifted as I had been by an even gloomier play "Rosmersholm"? No. It seemed to me that often the author was wilfully pessimistic. He is certainly very monotonous, and all his plays that I have seen have the same tone. A decent Philistine man seated just behind us was more satisfied - thought it improved as it went forward. On the whole Tchekoff had succeeded with him.

I was rather cross with myself this morning because (again) I caught myself trying to make Dorothy fit into my way of doing and seeing things. This is a fault with me which I have become increasingly aware of, and am trying to do something about. It is really about the exercise of power. I suppose it is human nature to want to assert oneself and thus maintain one's 'position' in the pecking order; or at least it is man's nature! Anyway it is not something I like about myself. By my time of life I should be secure enough to accept with equanimity  that others do things their own way, even though I think I know better.

When I got home I found a great letter from Wells about (1) "Raingo", (2) Dorothy, (3) my 'renewed' home, (4) my improved health. Incidentally H.G. attributes the latter to a more active sex life - he would! It was a fine letter.

Class war

Thursday, May 6th., Cadogan Square, London.

Today is the third day of the general strike. At lunch yesterday (Gardiner, Tudor Waters, Hedges, Jim Currie, Sassoon, and Lord Devonport) most people were gloomy, but all uncompromising. General opinion that the fight would be short  but violent. Bloodshed anticipated next week. Plenty of wireless messages, futile. Typescript printed Times and Financial Times.

Another N.N.E. wind today. Not a taxi on the streets that I saw. It is now over a week since I did anything on the novel - the last day being Thursday, 29th April. 

I went for a walk to Brompton Road to spy out the land. Eleven buses passed the top of Sloane Street in five minutes at 4.30. Only two of them were Generals, and both of them had a window smashed. I saw more in the evening. A policeman and a special constable on every General. 

I drove up to see Griffin about "Lord Raingo", which he had medically vetted for me. He was very pleased with the book.

Dined at the Yacht Club, after some trouble about me not being in evening dress (a new rule that I had never heard of). However, I insisted on dining there, and did. Imagine enforced evening dress in the middle of a General Strike!
Additionally see 'The General Strike'


Also for May 6th., see 'Survivor's story'

Returned here on Friday and met Bertie Sullivan in the train. Carrying F.O. mails over to Holland in the Copenhagen, he had been torpedoed by a submarine. He said 6 subms. waited for the boat, in 3 pairs. He was shaving. He seems to have kept pretty calm, but said he couldn't get his boots on. "I was flurried," he said. Of 17 bags he saved 16, and sank one. Result, after several days, a sort of lack of feeling in fingers. (It was March and he was not in row-boat for long.)