A character

Sunday, March 14th., Comarques, Thorpe-le-Soken.

Disturbed night. Five or six hours in total. Felt discontented this morning so I went for a walk first thing after breakfast. Blustery sort of day, and had obviously rained in the night so I stuck to the roads and made-up paths. Quiet. Nobody about except that as I was passing the gate to one of the local estates a rough looking man appeared and engaged me in conversation. Turns out that he is some sort of gamekeeper, but not paid; rather he receives benefit in kind. At least that was the impression he gave me.

Interesting character. About sixty I should say but well preserved, ruddy complexion, strongly built though not especially tall. Looks as if he has seen something of life. Enjoys a good scrap he said. Wanted to talk about himself and his ideas and I let him. Obviously not an educated man, but naturally bright I should say and completely at home in the countryside. His talk ranged widely. Told me about, and showed me, some fossils he had found nearby eroding out from the bank of a stream. Wouldn't say where. Also the trouble he has with trespassers to whom he gives short shrift. "See that hedge", he said at one point, "If I am after a trespasser I don't go round a hedge, I go through it. That surprises 'em". I think he was serious. In fact he seemed a serious man in general. Believes in omens and 'wise women' who have powers that humanity generally has lost. Says he has seen some things that are inexplicable by science. Told me that he has shot over 100 squirrels on the estate just this year because they predate on birds eggs. Fascinating character. In fact I felt quite fascinated, in the literal sense, by his talk. Like someone from Yeats 'Faerie' book. Worth turning out for.

I felt better when I got back and did some good work after my afternoon sleep.

Strange feelings

Monday, March 1st., Winter Palace Hotel, Menton.

I wrote 700 words this morning, and 700 this afternoon, of my new novel which I think I shall call "The Vanguard". Dorothy worked on her scenario of my short story "Death, Fire and Life", and so was not ready to go out until 12.22.  We sat in the garden of the hotel for a bit, and began to lunch fairly early. After a snooze we went out at 3 and walked down to the level ground, about six minutes, and then Dorothy did not want to walk any more, and we took a victoria and went about town shopping. I think that pregnancy is starting to make her lazy, and warned her that she will get fat if not careful. She laughed.

I have been reading more of Yeats's "Celtic Twilight". It is an engaging little book. Simple but elegantly written. I particularly like the way Yeats tells the reader, without frills or comment, what he has himself been told about supernatural experiences. Their matter-of-fact delivery makes them more credible. Yeats describes a couple of weird experiences of his own but shrinks from saying that he believes in 'faeries'; intimates that he may have fallen under some sort of enchanting influence. But I think he does believe. A part I was reading today about the feeling one can get in isolated places, especially woods, rang a bell with me. I have sometimes felt that sense of heightened awareness, a sort of anticipation that something strange is going to happen, even on one occasion in Bradwell Woods when I was a boy. I can remember that just in the act of taking one step I felt as if I had crossed some sort of line, things were quieter, I became wary, and wanted to look round as if I was being watched. Not scared exactly, but conscious that there was more around me than I had been aware of previously. This must have been forty odd years ago, and yet I can resurrect the feeling now, and the hair on my neck rises.

We have had an invitation to visit the Wells's for one of their 'weekends' but won't be back in England in time. Our intention is to leave here next Sunday and travel by easy stages to Paris, then on to Calais and home.

On form

Thursday, February 1th., Fulham Park Gardens, London.

I have struck a good seam of form. In the last month I have finished my serial and have written two short stories, one of 4,000 words and one of 5,000. They are pretty good I think. The serial is 'sensational' of course but there is money to be earned from sensational serials and I cannot afford to spurn any opportunity to earn. If I continued to write psychological treatises like "A Man from the North" I might earn some sort of reputation but I would most definitely not earn a livelihood. And in any case I have today read through as much as is done of the draft of "Anna Tellwright". It is not sensational. It is, I think, good. Perhaps even very good. I am drawn to finish it.

At the moment, in between work, I am in the act of discovering W.B. Yeats, the Irish poet, whose prose, to my mind, is just about equal to anything going round. I have been fascinated by "The Celtic Twilight", a little volume of essays about fairies and spirits. I wrote to Frank to recommend it to him only to find that he bought it when it came out and has admired it for six years now. He might have told me! I intend to get Yeats' complete works. It dawns upon me that he is one of the men of the century, so aloof, so spiritual, and with a style which is the last word of simplicity and natural refinement.

Tomorrow I am going down to Torquay for a weekend with Phillpotts and expect to have some jolly good jaws beside the whiskey bottle. He is a man who really can't argue. I can't argue myself, but I can argue him off his legs; yet he is always in the right ultimately. He is like Sharpe in that he feels, and what he feels he absolutely relies on, knowing that arguments are merely the refuge of the clever.

Phillpotts has a new play at the Court called "For the Love of Pim". It was very well done indeed, simple, direct and strong; and damn well acted too. In the main piece at the Court was our adored Miriam Clements, as regally lovely as ever, and just as bad an actress. She was playing the sister of Louis X1V and the role suited her appearance to perfection.

Party tricks

Wednesday, February 7th., Yacht Club, London.

Dined at Madame Van der Velde's, and sat at a spiritualistic seance with a clairvoyant named Peters who brought his son, a youth in the R.A.M.C. home for a few hours on leave. This son said there were 500 professed spiritualist soldiers at Aldershot. Theosophist. The clairvoyant a man of 45 or so. Short. Good forehead. Bald on top, dark hair at sides. Quick and nervous. Son of a barge owner. Present: Yeats the poet, Mr. and Mrs. Jowitt, Roger Fry, hostess and me. Mrs J. very beautiful, quite distractingly so. Jowitt is editor of the Daily Chronicle. 

We were all asked to put an object we had brought with us on a tray, unseen by Peters. Though not by his son I noticed. Peters then handled the objects with his eyes closed. His greatest success, quite startling, was with the glass stopper of a bottle brought by Jowitt. He decribed a man throwing himself out of something, down, with machinery behind him, and a big hotel or building behind him. Something to do with water, across water. He kept repeating these phrases with variations. Turns out the stopper had once belonged to a baronet (I forget his name) who threw himself off a launch in response to a challenge, at 3 a.m. into the Thames, after a party up river. He drowned. Drunk presumably.

He had some success with my toothpick, in getting me to the Potteries, and into the office of the Staffordshire Knot, or Sentinel, and described a man that might be either Goold or the editor of the Sentinel, and said that known or unknown to me, this man had greatly influenced me. He insisted on the word 'Zola'. He said there was a message to tell me, that I hadn't done my best work. I felt quite impressed at the time, but not so now. A professional would not have any difficulty finding out things about us, and offering fairly vague suggestions which we seize upon and mould to fit. Probably he and his son have some sort of code to indicate which item belongs to which person. 

What strikes me most is the banality of the whole thing. here we are in the middle of the greatest war the world has seen, people dying in their millions, and the spirits can only tell us who has fallen out of a boat or has a link with a newspaper! The fact is that people tend towards credulity and the mediums and clairvoyants make use of this tendency with their party tricks. I am glad I went. I made full notes.