An anxious day

Sunday, March 20th., Cadogan Square, London.

The nurse for Dorothy's operation was here about 8 o'clock, and soon Dorothy's bedroom was transformed into an operating room.

I walked for about 40 minutes. Beautiful Spring-like day. Positive warmth in the sun. People noticeably more cheerful in consequence. Saw Dorothy when I got back and began to write my chapter at noon precisely. I wrote about 750 words. Saw Dorothy again and then at intervals I wrote more words. Nurse had been sitting in the drawing-room and elsewhere for a change.  When she returned to the bedroom I returned to my study, and finished my chapter and counted the words. I had written a complete chapter of 1,700 words and was fairly assuaged and content.

Then I went and had my own dinner and drank some Burgundy, and read Sinclair Lewis's "Elmer Gantry", which is acutely alive and readable. Then I saw Dorothy again and came downstairs and had half of one of my new Partaga Cigars. I saw Dorothy again previous to her being arranged for the night. I came back to my study and finished my cigar and read more of "Elmer Gantry". Finally I got to bed by 11 p.m. but with the expectancy of a disturbed night. I didn't spend one penny of petty cash all day. It was a satisfactory day considering all the circumstances, and I had done a day's work sufficient for even an absolutely free day.

I was indisputably on edge because of the operation but wouldn't admit it to myself until I got to bed. How strange the mind is and how little control we have over it even when we pride ourselves on self-discipline. My sense is that we are essentially emotional animals who have evolved large brains where rational thought takes place; but under stress our more primitive nature comes to the fore and ideas enter consciousness which would be abhorrent ordinarily. For example I found myself thinking yesterday afternoon, in a sort of semi-waking state after my nap, that if Dorothy were to die as a result of the operation how my life would be transformed, and the thought gave me pleasure. No use denying it!

Trying times

Monday, March 21st., Cadogan Square, London.

I've written 20,000 words in the last twelve days.
In today's Evening Standard article, I was writing about Sinclair Lewis, and particularly about "Dodsworth". The theme of which is the relative merits of the civilisation of the United States  and of Europe and the reactions of the one civilisation to the other. Embark on "Dodsworth" and you are carried away on a swift tide, and you exult in the swirling stream under you. Sinclair Lewis is a man at the height of his powers. Immediately after reading "Dodsworth" I read Mr. Sturge Moore's "Armour for Aphrodite". Interjected between his chapters are a number of aphorisms, and though some of them are not immediately helpful, others are lamps in a dark world. Here is one of the latter. "Beauty is rarely simple, and always supposes completeness." Think it over. Here is another. "To cherish beauty in memory prompts us to seek it everywhere." Think it over. Such lamps really do illuminate.

Dorothy had her operation yesterday. The nurse was here about 8 o'clock and soon D.'s room was transformed into an operating-room. I walked for about 40 minutes, saw Dorothy, and began to write my chapter at noon precisely. I wrote about 750 words. Saw Dorothy again and then at intervals I wrote more words. Nurse had been sitting in the drawing-room and elsewhere for a change. When she returned to the bedroom I returned to my study, and finished my chapter, and counted the words. I had written a complete chapter of 1,700 words, and was fairly assuaged and content. Then went and had my own dinner and drank some Burgundy, and read Sinclair Lewis's "Elmer Gantry", which is acutely alive and readable. Then I saw Dorothy again, and came downstairs and had half of one of my new Partaga cigars. I saw Dorothy again previous to her being arranged for the night. I came back to my study and finished my cigar, and read more "Elmer Gantry". Finally I got to bed by 11 p.m. but with the expectancy of a disturbed night. I didn't spend one penny of petty cash all day. It was a satisfactory day, considering all the circumstances, and I had done a day's work sufficient for even an absolutely free day.

I had to order the meals and wrestle with the French cook this morning. So that by 10.30, after I had seen Dorothy twice, although I had had a very calm pre-prandial time (from 6.30 to 8.30), I was beginning to have a headache and felt dans tous mes etats. I went out for an idea-finding walk, and got to the South Kensington museum and sat down in a corner, and no sooner had I done so than four workmen came to disturb me by moving trestles. No sooner had they gone than the ideas came to me in a vague but satisfactory rush; and I walked straight out again. I saw Dorothy a third time, and exactly at 12 sat down to work and at 12.35 had actually written 700 words. It seems as if nothing can stop me from working just now.

I had a highly disturbing letter from F. C. B. about a wild project of his for coming to London; which upset me. I have written to Richard to tell him about this scheme of his father's to take a practice in London, which does not appeal to me at all. I do not think for a moment that, after all these years in the provinces, he would be able to hold together any sort of a London practice, & I do not think he realises this in the least. I also divulged to Richard that, after much indecision, we have settled on a Rolls Royce. It is 1921, but went through RR works for reconditioning only two months ago & is now in perfect order. Total price £650. I should have got a Sunbeam but I arrived at the garage just after the thing had been sold to someone who could run quicker. The yacht will certainly not be fitted out this year. In fact I shall sell her.

A domestic day

Sunday, March 13th., Cadogan Square, London.

I went out for a walk, along the Embankment past the old Clock House (now turned into flats and looking damned odd - what a change, only a year or two ago I met at dinner the woman who lived in Clock House all by herself), and past Oakley Street into Cheyne Row and past Carlyle's gloomy house, which I hadn't seen for a long time, and home by 12 0'clock.

The Clock House 1879. R Norman Shaw, architect. Five storeys, basement and dormers. Mostly 7 windows. Red brick. Cornice at third floor. Three wide oriel windows at second floor. Leaded lights. Iron balcony first floor. Octagonal clock on carved wood bracket at second floor. Altered upper storey.

Wherupon, having got my ideas into order, I at once sat down and wrote 800 words of "Accident". Lunch at home with Dorothy.

At night I resumed Sinclair Lewis's new novel, "Elmer Gantry".

Universally recognized as a landmark in American literature, Elmer Gantry scandalized readers when it was first published, causing Sinclair Lewis to be "invited" to a jail cell in New Hampshire and to his own lynching in Virginia. His portrait of a golden-tongued evangelist who rises to power within his church--a saver of souls who lives a life of duplicity, sensuality, and ruthless self-indulgence--is also the record of a period, a reign of grotesque vulgarity, which but for Lewis would have left no trace of itself. Elmer Gantry has been called the greatest ,most vital, and most penetrating study of hypocrisy that has been written since the works of Voltaire.

At 3.25 we went forth by a 11 bus to the National Gallery, and saw a few fine things again, and the Hubert van Eyck thing that was in the Flemish exhibition at the R.A. Good, but not, to my mind, in the same place as John van Eyck, which is hanging close by. Dorothy showed me a portrait of a man by (I forget - Italian, 15 cent.), and said that for her it was the finest portrait in the world.It was very fine, but perhaps she was attracted as much by the subject as by the painting. We dined alone together, and then we played four-hand bits out of the "Meistersinger".

A visit to Berlin

Tuesday, September 13th., Berlin.

Visiting Berlin in a party consisting of  Beaverbrook, Venetia Montagu, Lord Castlerosse (Daily Express journalist),  Diana Cooper, and myself.

William Maxwell "Max" Aitken, 1st Baron Beaverbrook, Bt, PC, ONB, (25 May 1879 – 9 June 1964) was an Anglo-Canadian business tycoon, politician, and writer. Lord Beaverbrook held a tight grip on the British media as an influential Press Baron, owning The Daily Express newspaper, as well as the London Evening Standard and theSunday Express. His political career included serving as a Minister in the British Government during both world wars.

He was an influential and often mentioned figure in British society of the first half of the 20th century.

Beatrice Venetia Stanley Montagu (22 August 1887 – 3 August 1948) was a British aristocrat and socialite best known for the many letters that Prime Minister Herbert Henry Asquith wrote to her between 1910 and 1915. After converting to Judaism, Venetia married Edwin Samuel Montagu, a Liberal MP, on 26 July 1915. Venetia's marriage to Montagu lasted nine years until his premature death in 1924. Despite the birth of a daughter in 1923, Venetia was unhappy in her marriage. She had affairs with Lord Beaverbrook and others.

We set off on Friday on the SS Deutschland and arrived here on Sunday. The Deutschland is only a 20,000 ton ship but looked enormous when we boarded her at Southampton.

SS Deutschland

Yesterday, before dinner, Max gave a full account of the rise of Baldwin. I wanted this for my first political article. It was a marvellous narrative and full of meat for me. All of us were enthralled.

This morning I went out with Kommer to Charlottenburg to buy books and things. I bought a few German books and some good coloured reproductions of Cezanne, Seurat etc., very cheap. Lunch with Castlerosse, Sinclair Lewis, Bartch of Ufa (a film company that was the principal film studio in Germany, home of the German film industry during the Weimar Republic and through World War II, and a major force in world cinema from 1917 to 1945), and three American journalists - all very agreeable.

Harry Sinclair Lewis (February 7, 1885 – January 10, 1951) was an American novelist,short-story writer, and playwright. In 1930, he became the first writer from the United States to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, "for his vigorous and graphic art of description and his ability to create, with wit and humor, new types of characters." 

No time for sleep. We went at 4 to Potsdam to see Sans Souci.

The Sanssouci palace was the summer residence of Frederick the Great. Georg Wenzeslaus von Knobelsdorff built it above the terraced vineyard from 1745 to 1747 following the King's ideas and sketches. The palace is considered the major work of Rococo architecture in Germany. Paintings by Watteau, Panini and Pesne are on exhibit in the picture gallery. 

<http://www.potsdam.de/cms/beitrag/10001008/34080/>

Fine avenues thither, speed-roads etc. Back at 6.25. The girls, Kommer and I went to 'Piscator's' communistic play "Hoppla wir leben" at the Rollenplatz Theatre.

Oops, We're Alive! (German: Hoppla, wir leben!) is a Neue Sachlichkeit (or "New Objectivity") play by the German playwright Ernst Toller. Its second production, directed by the seminal epic theatre director Erwin Piscator in 1927, was a milestone in the history of theatre. 

Scene from Hoppla wir leben, directed by Erwin Piscator, Berlin, 1927

Interesting perspective on our party by Sefton Delmer:

Sefton Delmer and Lord Beaverbrook, Berlin, 1927

Lord Beaverbrook was not alone when I entered. He was surrounded by the other members of his party: the novelist Arnold Bennett, whom I described in my diary at the time as "sardonic, silent and sallow"; Sunday Express columnist, Lord Castlerosse, "fat, flushed and chortling, a vast cigar sticking out under his arched Edwardian nose"; Mrs. Venetia Montagu, "gracious, erect and smiling"; and Lady Diana Cooper, "brilliant, brittle and blonde, with the palest watery blue eyes".

They all called Lord Beaverbrook 'Max'. I gathered they had come to Berlin in connection with some film which Arnold Bennett was to write, Lady Diana was to star in, and Lord Beaverbrook would finance. I answered telephone calls, took messages in German, replied to questions about Berlin night life. I listened in awe as Lord Beaverbrook, talking to his managers in London, made lightning calculations in his head about the price of the newsprint he was ordering. I ran errands.

For Bennett I went out and bought a stack of the homosexual and nudist magazines I had told him about. No sooner had I given them to him than Lord Castlerosse also wanted a set. I could see wonder about me in the eyes of the woman at the news stand on the Potsdamerplatz, as she sold me the second lot. When I called for the third which Lord Beaverbrook then ordered all her doubts about me had been dispersed. She was certain now of my category. 

<http://www.heretical.com/miscella/delmer2.html>

Denis Sefton Delmer (born 24 May 1904, Berlin, Germany – died 4 September 1979,Lamarsh, Essex) was a British journalist and propagandist for the British government. Fluent in German, he became friendly with Ernst Röhm who arranged for him to interview Adolf Hitler in the 1930s. During the Second World War he led a black propaganda campaign against Hitler by radio from England and he was named in the Nazi's Black Book for immediate arrest after their invasion of England.