Talked at

Thursday, December 23rd., Strand Palace Hotel, London.

Tuesday night Rickards dined with me. We went to "The Blue Bird" at the Haymarket, and then to Gambrinus, where he ate an enormous sandwich and drank stout. He talked about himself the whole time, except when the curtain was up, from 6.40 to 12.15. Of course this exasperated egoism was painful as a disease to witness, but his talk was exceedingly good and original. Artistically and intellectually I don't think he has gone off.

To lunch at Wells's. He and I talked his scandal from 12.15 to lunch time. I think he likes to be able to open himself up in my company, knowing that I will not be censorious. Frankly, I don't know how he finds the energy, and what is it about him that women find so compelling? He believes that he gives off a sort of sexual 'aroma' when he is looking for a conquest which arouses women and in some way lowers their defences. I wish he could gift me with some of it! Saying that, I wouldn't want the complexities of his life. Too much like hard work.

At lunch there was Robert Ross, the Sidney Lows, Mrs. Garnett, Archer, and the young Nesbit girl who was mad on the stage. I got on fairly well with Archer. I liked Ross at once. Archer bluntly asked me why I had said in print that he and Walkley were the upas-trees  of the modern drama. So I told him, less bluntly. I consider that he has no real original ideas of his own. I mean to cultivate Ross and made a point of not mentioning Oscar Wilde as I am sure he is tired to death of being questioned on that subject. If I were homosexual Ross is the sort of man I would be attracted to. He seems quite at ease with his notoriety.

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.

Poets

Tuesday, December 18th., Yacht Club, London.

Robbie Ross

To lunch at the Reform Club where I joined Robert Ross who had two young poets, Robert Graves and Philip ------ (I forget his name and am not even sure if he is a poet. I was very pleased with both these youths. Lately I am more and more struck by the certainty, strength, and unconscious self-confidence of young men, so different from my middle-aged uncertainty and also my lack of physical confidence in my own body. As an example of the latter: it has lately been cold and frosty with some light snow; as a consequence pavements have been rather slippy; a decade ago I would have been unconcerned, but now I am anxious about falling.

Ross is of course a homosexual, and remains devoted to the memory of Oscar Wilde. He was Wilde's literary executor and produced the definitive edition of his work. More recently he has worked as an art critic for the Morning Post and has mentored a number of young poets including Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen. A cultured and likeable man who has been pursued vindictively by the Marquis of Queensberry and others because of his sexual inclinations which he can no more help than I can help wanting to write. Will there come a time I wonder when homo-phobia is extinct?

This afternoon two and three quarter hours hard in which I wrote 1,200 words of "The Pretty Lady". I am finding it an interesting book to write. Rather a departure for me and I winder how it will be received. Inevitably there will be shock and a certain amount of offence taken. I hope that reaction to the content will not obscure attention to the style because I really think that it is well-written so far. I don't expect it to be a 'success' like my earlier novels, but I hope that it will stand the test of time and will come to be regarded as an important addition to my catalogue of works.

Ides of March

4 Rue de Calais, Paris
March 15th., 1905


If my calculations are correct it is one thousand, nine hundred and forty nine years ago today that Julius Caesar was assassinated in the Roman Senate. Would the world have been a different place now had the assassination failed? Surely the answer must be "Yes". How different cannot be known, but different certainly. Which shows that the history of mankind turns unpredictably on the outcome of events. But is it just grand events like the death of Caesar? At first glance we might think so, but who is to say that what appear to be quite small events in the lives of people not in the public eye might have great consequences? Take the case of Caesar. He was captured by pirates on his way to Rhodes in 75 BC, when still relatively unknown. Suppose they had killed him? I wonder if I could summon up the imagination to write a sort of alternative history - probably not; it is a task better suited to the pen of my friend H G Wells. I may suggest it to him.

Today I finished the second part of "Sacred and profane Love". The book so far is over 6,000 words longer than I had anticipated, and I think the second part is rather better on the whole than I expected it would be when I started it.

I have read Oscar Wilde's "Intentions", and found it really very good. better than "De Profundis". I read also in "The Importance of Being Ernest", and found that admirably witty.

The French are a 'stuffy' nation; but they do hang their bedding out of the windows in the morning to air. This is more than can be said of the English. Though it does occur to me that if the matrons of the Five Towns hung their bedding out to air it would become so begrimed as to be impossible to restore to the beds.

Critic as Artist

Thursday, March 16th., Les Sablons.

Yesterday I finished the second part of "Sacred and Profane Love". The book so far is over 6,000 words longer than I had anticipated, and I think the second part is rather better on the whole than I expected it would be when I started it.

I have read Oscar Wilde's "Intentions", and found it really very good, better than "De Profundis". As someone who sees himself as both an original writer and a critic, the idea of 'critic as artist' appeals strongly to me. Wilde is too severe on 'realism', reflecting his own thoroughly Romantic character and style.

Originally published in 1891 when Wilde was at the height of his form, these brilliant essays on art, literature, criticism, and society display the flamboyant poseur's famous wit and wide learning. A leading spokesman for the English Aesthetic movement, Wilde promoted "art for art's sake" against critics who argued that art must serve a moral purpose. On every page of this collection the gifted literary stylist admirably demonstrates not only that the characteristics of art are "distinction, charm, beauty, and imaginative power," but also that criticism itself can be raised to an art form possessing these very qualities. The heart of the collection is the long two-part essay titled "The Critic as Artist." In one memorable passage after another, Wilde goes to great lengths to show that the critic is every bit as much an artist as the artist himself, in some cases more so. A good critic is like a virtuoso interpreter: "When Rubinstein plays...he gives us not merely Beethoven, but also himself, and so gives us Beethoven absolutely...made vivid and wonderful to us by a new and intense personality. When a great actor plays Shakespeare we have the same experience." Also included are: "The Decay of Lying," in which Wilde takes to task modern literary realists like Henry James and Emile Zola for their "monstrous worship of facts" and stifling of the imagination; "Pen, Pencil, and Poison," a fascinating study of art critic and murderer Thomas Griffiths Wainewright; and "The Truth of Masks," on the use of masks, disguises, and costume in Shakespeare. For newcomers to Wilde and those who already know his famous plays and fiction, this superb collection of his criticism offers many delights.

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1141685.Intentions

I read also in "The Importance of Being Ernest", and found that admirably witty.

The French are a "stuffy" nation; but they do hang their bedding out of the windows in the morning to air. This is more than can be said of the English.

I go to Paris tomorrow with some regret. I could easily become a countryman completely. I am now 38, and it occurs to me that I am still trying to find a style of life which suits me. Sometimes I think I am made to be a countryman (or at least could embrace that persona), and yet the life of the city calls me. In a way I suppose that with my English provincial roots (and what roots they are!) I am not really suited to settle in any of the patterns of life which my ideas suggest as being appropriate. Perhaps I have outgrown the possibility of contentment.

Byways of literature

Tuesday, November 29th., Paris.

Dinner at Mrs. Devereux's last night. Schwob there. (See 'Parisian Life' - September 27th.) We talked a good deal about Meredith, and Schwob showed an extraordinary knowledge of the byways of English literature. He said Meredith was certainly the son of a tailor and quoted a passage from "Peter Simple" where two characters go to "Meredith the tailor", and he said this was George's father. It appears that Meredith now talks in aloud voice, but continually interrupts the conversation by talking to himself, mere senility of course, a 'softening of the brain'. He has 'ataxy' or something of one leg and limps and always tells any visitor that he had the misfortune to hurt his ankle that very morning. Schwob heard this from Oscar Wilde and didn't believe it. However, when Schwob called on Meredith, sure enough he had hurt his leg that very morning. Schwob's enthusiasm for Meredith's last book was magnificent. He looked ill, but he was in his best form, and speaking beautiful English.

George Meredith (1828-1909) was a major Victorian novelist whose career developed in conjunction with an era of great change in English literature during the second half of the nineteenth century. While his early novels largely conformed to Victorian literary conventions, his later novels demonstrated a concern with character psychology, modern social problems, and the development of the novel form that has led to his being considered an important precursor of English Modernist novels. Meredith was born in Portsmouth, England. His father inherited a seemingly prosperous Portsmouth naval outfitters and tailor shop from Meredith's grandfather. Meredith was sent to private schools and quickly learned to say nothing of his family's position, instead encouraging the assumption that he was of the gentry. Meredith remained secretive about his origins all his life, and much is unknown about his childhood because of his unwillingness to disclose details of this period. As he entered his early twenties, Meredith began writing poetry, influenced in particular by John Keats and Lord Tennyson. Meredith's lifetime of reticence about his early years carried over into a stolid refusal to discuss his first marriage, which was a failure. He lived alone or with male friends for years, but married again in 1864, and settled at Box Hill, Surrey, where he lived the rest of his life. As a part-time reader for Chapman and Hall publishers, Meredith was able to observe literary trends and to employ them in his early novels. Once he despaired of reaching a large audience, Meredith began to write primarily to please himself and the small circle of admirers who had defended and praised his works from the first. It was then that he found his works more popular than at any other time in his career. Meredith was most concerned with writing psychological novels that portrayed the tangled motivations of individuals and explored the disparity between the public and private aspects of self. At the time of his death Meredith was considered one of England's premier men of letters. In the years since, his critical reputation has undergone several reassessments, although he has never enjoyed the resurgence in general popularity enjoyed by such Victorian novelists as Charles Dickens and Anthony Trollope. However, as has been true throughout the history of commentary on Meredith, there remains a dedicated group of admirers who contend, with J. B. Priestley, that Meredith's difficult style, requiring as it does the full and undivided attention of the reader, paved the way for the public acceptance of much subsequent serious fiction, helping to shape "the modern attitude towards fiction and the modern novel itself."

Mrs. Devereux had been to hear the trial of a crime passionel. A man had cut his wife's throat with a razor from ear to ear, but, through some fortunate movement of the woman, had only severed the skin. "A close shave!" said Schwob at once. I could see that he was extremely pleased with this really admirable comment. He beamed after he had said it.

On Monday I was trying to find a leading idea for the concert scene in "Sacred and Profane Love", but could not. I read late, and dreamed about the scene all night, and got it all mixed up, and generally wasted a vast amount of energy with no result at all. Today I continued to search after that idea with no success. I stayed late at Mrs. Devereux's and then read a lot afterwards, and I didn't go to bed till nearly two. I dreamed of the chapter all night and woke up at 6.30 after which I didn't go to sleep again. Today, I received the "Fantasia" of Chopin from Tertia. This is the clou of the chapter if only I can make it so. (see 'Love in Liverpool' - September 19th.)