Wednesday, November 13th., Cadogan Square, London.
On Sunday last I attended a special performance for V.C.s of "Journey's End". What crowds and what policemen outside the theatre! Of course not such crowds and not so many policemen as would embelish the arrival of a Hollywood film-star at a cinema-theatre. No, No! We must not expect too much from ourselves.
Well ther are only two decorations free from some kind of stain of undeservingness. One is the O.M. and the other is the V.C. And I have doubts about even the O.M. The V.C. is the reward of "conspicuous bravery in presence of the enemy". It is nearly seventy-five years old. And less than ten years have elapsed since somebody in authority had the idea of extending it to women. Nurses had on occasion been conspicuously brave in presence of the enemy for more than sixty years while the greatest of all decorations was denied to their heroism!
In the theatre V.C.s were all over the place - hundreds of them. Most of them wore three to six medals; but a few had only the crimson ribbon and the bronze Maltese Cross of the V.C. Without the ribbon and the cross nobody could possibly have picked them out as heroes, though they were in the main a hefty and rather challenging lot. And they were unconventional, careless in demeanour, self-unconscious and the very reverse of dandies. The large majority seemed to be young and youngish men of strictly limited incomes. We give our V.C. heroes £10 per annum, and if they conspicuously risk their lives a second time, we give them an extra £5 for every new peril. In special circumstances we even increase their allowance to the grandiose amount of £50 per annum. There is nothing like reckless generosity. It proves a bounteous soul.
The younger men excited admiring respect in me. But the old men, the ageing men, the portly men who had in the worldly sense 'succeeded', all the mature men with their dignity of presence - these excited in me more than admiring respect. They excited in me the tender feeling which pathos excites. They had once been young and adventurous and audacious. They had done marvels of audacity; but all that happened a long time ago, and now they were sobered and a bit prim, and conscious of experience, and deliberate in gesture. I say it was touching.
A strange night, impressive, disturbing to one's sense of relative values! Why do we put physical courage before all other qualities? I don't know. But we do. And since we do there must be some reason for the preference deep in the primal instincts of human nature. I could argue that moral courage is rarer, and may be more intense, and may certainly be richer in good results for society, than physical courage. But if a decoration was instituted to bestow upon the doers of moral courage in the presence of rooted social prejudices, should we seriously think twice about it? We should not. Ten to one we should laugh at it.
Additionally for November 13th., see 'Art appreciation' -
http://earnoldbennett.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/art-appreciation.html
The total conglomerate effect - loud voices falling coarsely on the silence; untouched sandwiches; silk-hatted man; dowdy-ish, self-possessed woman; innured quiet art critic practising his trade in the spirit of a tradesman; and the rank, calm, supercilious, harsh nudity - the effect was bizarre and memorable.
Wednesday, 13 November 2013
Tuesday, 12 November 2013
The charm of danger
Thursday, November 12th., Rue de Calais, Paris.
I am still reading "Don Quixote", and was much struck with the perfect narrative style of the inserted story "The Ill-advised Curiosity". It is simply charming. And I am with the licentiate who, after censuring the improbabilities, said: "With the manner of the telling I have no fault to find." I should like sometime to write a few stories in that simple style - pure narration, very little dialogue, and what there is, arranged conventionally in long speeches. Hardy's "A Group of Noble Dames" must have been composed under some such influence, I imagine.
"Bostock's Great Animal Arena" at the Hippo. Palace. First night. Vast crowd, very badly controlled. The whole performance consisted of wild-animal tricks. The principal dompteur had some exciting moments in the vast cage with lionesses, a tiger, several bears, a hyena, two superb dogs, and other animals. When a crisis arrived the Frenchmen around me were as impressed as children. "Ils ne sont pas commode," "Il a du sangfroid! Il a du sangfroid!" And, when their nerves were getting strained, "Assez! Assez!" in a nervous tone. Some of the crises were apparently somewhat dangerous.
During a long bout of opposing wills between the trainer and the tiger, the tiger chewed up a good part of a wooden seat and splintered the gate over which he had to jump. And if, at the end of that bout, the trainer was only acting when he wiped his brow, he was acting very well. At the beginning the crowd was captious and fractious, owing to delays and bad arrangements, but the applause was now tremendous. The performance was really rather out of the way, and I appreciated more than I have done before the charm of danger in a show, real danger.
http://www.sideshowworld.com/13-TGOD/2006/tgodBSMbook.html
Additionally for November 12th., see 'The end of the war' -
http://earnoldbennett.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/the-end-of-war.html
We had driven through large crowds part way up the Mall, and were then turned off from Buckingham Palace.
Raining now. An excellent thing to damp hysteria and Bolshevism.
I am still reading "Don Quixote", and was much struck with the perfect narrative style of the inserted story "The Ill-advised Curiosity". It is simply charming. And I am with the licentiate who, after censuring the improbabilities, said: "With the manner of the telling I have no fault to find." I should like sometime to write a few stories in that simple style - pure narration, very little dialogue, and what there is, arranged conventionally in long speeches. Hardy's "A Group of Noble Dames" must have been composed under some such influence, I imagine.
During a long bout of opposing wills between the trainer and the tiger, the tiger chewed up a good part of a wooden seat and splintered the gate over which he had to jump. And if, at the end of that bout, the trainer was only acting when he wiped his brow, he was acting very well. At the beginning the crowd was captious and fractious, owing to delays and bad arrangements, but the applause was now tremendous. The performance was really rather out of the way, and I appreciated more than I have done before the charm of danger in a show, real danger.
http://www.sideshowworld.com/13-TGOD/2006/tgodBSMbook.html
Frank C. Bostock was born in Basford, Derbyshire in 1866 and started his career in small circuses around the country but by the time he died he had travelled the world, survived attacks by lions and tigers, put on shows in Paris, Indianapolis, New York, Blackpool and other cities, and was known worldwide as “The Animal King”. He was one of the pioneers in his field and even wrote a book, The Training of Wild Animals, which you can still buy today.
Additionally for November 12th., see 'The end of the war' -
http://earnoldbennett.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/the-end-of-war.html
We had driven through large crowds part way up the Mall, and were then turned off from Buckingham Palace.
Monday, 11 November 2013
Working hard
Wednesday, November 11th., Rue de Calais, Paris.
I worked all day yesterday, except between 4 and 6 when I paid a call, till one o'clock this morning. I lunched on 2 francs and dined on 2 francs at the Duval, and took coffee at the Cafe Terminus St. Lazaire, a big place with an orchestra. And I noticed how even Donizetti came out strong and alive amongst the mass of Gibulkas, Metras, and other composers of light music.
Again today I worked the whole day, till 10.40, and I finished the third Windsor story. "A Bracelet at Bruges"; 5,100 words complete in two days. Already, after a period of slackness, I have a sort of wild hope of being able to finish the six stories by the end of the month.
Tonight I had two letters from Eden, both of them about our play and our holiday next Spring on the Riviera. He says that Jerome has written asking him to collaborate in a big serious play! Eden says that my recent letters indicate a tendency to cynicism, and that my recent articles in T.P's W. seemed to "throw distrust, not to say contempt, on love of women". He goes on: "Some natures are self-contained and don't want it - some can't do without it. Golden rule in the matter: To keep the mouth shut and go one's own way."
Additionally for November 11th., see 'Remembrance' -
http://earnoldbennett.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/remembrance.html
I walked out and 'saw' the Two Minute Silence from inside the lobby of the Court Theatre. When I saw old gents standing two minutes in that perishing wind, hatless, I was glad I'd come inside.
Again today I worked the whole day, till 10.40, and I finished the third Windsor story. "A Bracelet at Bruges"; 5,100 words complete in two days. Already, after a period of slackness, I have a sort of wild hope of being able to finish the six stories by the end of the month.
Tonight I had two letters from Eden, both of them about our play and our holiday next Spring on the Riviera. He says that Jerome has written asking him to collaborate in a big serious play! Eden says that my recent letters indicate a tendency to cynicism, and that my recent articles in T.P's W. seemed to "throw distrust, not to say contempt, on love of women". He goes on: "Some natures are self-contained and don't want it - some can't do without it. Golden rule in the matter: To keep the mouth shut and go one's own way."
Additionally for November 11th., see 'Remembrance' -
http://earnoldbennett.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/remembrance.html
I walked out and 'saw' the Two Minute Silence from inside the lobby of the Court Theatre. When I saw old gents standing two minutes in that perishing wind, hatless, I was glad I'd come inside.
Sunday, 10 November 2013
Pouring wisdom
Saturday, November 10th., Cadogan Square, London.
I walked three miles to get ideas and didn't get them.
Julian Huxley and Professor Church came to see me at noon about their proposed magazine The Realist, and I poured wisdom into them, of which they were very receptive, for one hour.
I saw the Quintero Brothers little piece in three scenes, "Fortunata", at the Court, with O. B. Clarence in the principal role. I went to see this because Dorothy had praised it so highly. A very good, picturesque little comedy, and well played. I met A. P. Herbert there. The remainder of the afternoon I chiefly wasted - I think because I had felt a chill going out in the wet to the theatre.
Henry Williamson, author of "The Pathway", came to dinner. I'd never seen him before. 32, dark. Highly strung. Bit by bit we got on better and better, and he left at 11.15 much touched by the contact. I liked him. Married. Two children. Seems to be very fond of his wife, and admires her. She is the original of "Mary" in "The Pathway"; so she must be fine. He told me lots of autobiography. I had anticipated ‘The Pathway’ with unusual interest [due to Tarka] and it must be read. But Mr. Williamson has still to learn a few things about the novelist’s supreme job of being continuously interesting. He is a bit too ruthless with the reader. Mr. Williamson is without doubt a novelist, though perhaps excessively (for an artist) preoccupied with the spiritual consequences of the war. He makes pictures which – I should say – have in their line never been surpassed. The opening scenes are masterly. He is the creator of loveliness in a landscape but there are too many metaphysical ‘other-world’ insertions, and the final tragedy is not made plain. ‘The Pathway’ is a novel richly worth quarrelling with. The author’s gifts are authentic and dazzling. He has yet to show himself the master of them.
Additionally for November 10th., see 'Theatrical temptations' -
http://earnoldbennett.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/theatrical-temptations.html
After cogitating off and on through the night I decided upon what will probably be the first sentence of my novel (Anna Tellwright): "Bursley, the ancient home of the potter, has an antiquity of a thousand years" - and also upon the arrangement of the first long paragraph describing the Potteries.
I walked three miles to get ideas and didn't get them.
Julian Huxley and Professor Church came to see me at noon about their proposed magazine The Realist, and I poured wisdom into them, of which they were very receptive, for one hour.
The Realist was a short lived monthly British magazine first published in March 1929 which brought together many intellectuals from that era. It was dedicated to Scientific Humanism and carried a distinctive pale orange cover. It closed in January 1930, a victim of the Great Depression. It was founded in 1928 by the political scientist George Catlin and Major A. G. Church, then assistant editor of Nature, who became its editor. It was backed by Lord Melchett and published by Macmillan. The literary editor was the then little-known philosopher Gerald Heard. Contributors included, Arnold Bennett, H. G. Wells, Sir Richard Gregory, J. B. S. Haldane, Bronisław Malinowski, Herbert Read, Julian Huxley, Aldous Huxley, Sir Frank Baines, H. J. Laski and Rebecca West. The founders hoped to find a market for an intellectual monthly along similar lines to the American Harper's Magazine.
 |
| O. B. Clarence |
Fortunato is a biting social commentary by Joaquin and Serafin Alvarez-Quintero, popular Spanish playwrights of the early 20th century. Fortunato, who works very hard trying to find work in order to feed his family, grows ever more desperate as the pangs of hunger become unbearable. On the brink of madness, he discovers his innate dignity and transcends his fate with the help of the circus performer Amaranta the Triumphant.
Henry Williamson, author of "The Pathway", came to dinner. I'd never seen him before. 32, dark. Highly strung. Bit by bit we got on better and better, and he left at 11.15 much touched by the contact. I liked him. Married. Two children. Seems to be very fond of his wife, and admires her. She is the original of "Mary" in "The Pathway"; so she must be fine. He told me lots of autobiography. I had anticipated ‘The Pathway’ with unusual interest [due to Tarka] and it must be read. But Mr. Williamson has still to learn a few things about the novelist’s supreme job of being continuously interesting. He is a bit too ruthless with the reader. Mr. Williamson is without doubt a novelist, though perhaps excessively (for an artist) preoccupied with the spiritual consequences of the war. He makes pictures which – I should say – have in their line never been surpassed. The opening scenes are masterly. He is the creator of loveliness in a landscape but there are too many metaphysical ‘other-world’ insertions, and the final tragedy is not made plain. ‘The Pathway’ is a novel richly worth quarrelling with. The author’s gifts are authentic and dazzling. He has yet to show himself the master of them.
The writer Henry Williamson was born in London in 1895. Naturalist, soldier, journalist, farmer, motor enthusiast and author of over fifty books, his descriptions of nature and the First World War have been highly praised for their accuracy. He is best known as the author of Tarka the Otter, which won the Hawthornden Prize for Literature in 1928 and was filmed in 1977. By one of those extraordinary coincidences, Henry Williamson died while the crew were actually filming the death scene of Tarka. "The Pathway" is Volume 4 of "A Flax of Dream". In It, Willie Maddison returns to his writing and meets up with his childhood friend Mary Ogilvie. Their love story is set in idyllic scenes of the North Devon countryside, but Mary’s mother objects and in despair Willie decides to leave Devon – but is drowned as he tries to cross the estuary. His bereft friends hold a Shelley-like scene on the beach to bid him farewell.
Additionally for November 10th., see 'Theatrical temptations' -
http://earnoldbennett.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/theatrical-temptations.html
After cogitating off and on through the night I decided upon what will probably be the first sentence of my novel (Anna Tellwright): "Bursley, the ancient home of the potter, has an antiquity of a thousand years" - and also upon the arrangement of the first long paragraph describing the Potteries.
Friday, 8 November 2013
Protocol
Monday, November 8th., 12b George Street, London.
Difference between London and provinces. I have several times noticed in provincial theatres and music-halls that the men in the audience do not stand still when the National Anthem is played. They do not even take off their hats (or caps). In West End theatres the observance of the protocol is still absolutely strict. This suggests to me that observance or not is class-based. Evidently the middle and upper classes, who generally form the largest part of West End audiences, are upholders of the status quo, and 'respect' for the anthem symbolises their identification with the establishment. Away from London, the working classes have a lot less to be thankful for.
I am glad to see this decline in automatic formal respect. Most people I think regard the routine playing of the anthem as anachronistic, and yet feel obliged by a sort of social pressure to comply. I vividly recall an experience of my own when, waiting for a concert to begin, the strains of the anthem began and people started to rise to their feet. Apparently some minor 'royal' personage had arrived to attend. I wanted to stay in my seat but felt progressively more unable to do so as the rest of the audience (at least all those I could see) stood up. So, in the end, I grudgingly stood as well, and felt cross for the rest of the evening. At the end, I made sure to get out of the hall before being subject to a repeat performance!
Difference between London and provinces. I have several times noticed in provincial theatres and music-halls that the men in the audience do not stand still when the National Anthem is played. They do not even take off their hats (or caps). In West End theatres the observance of the protocol is still absolutely strict. This suggests to me that observance or not is class-based. Evidently the middle and upper classes, who generally form the largest part of West End audiences, are upholders of the status quo, and 'respect' for the anthem symbolises their identification with the establishment. Away from London, the working classes have a lot less to be thankful for.
I am glad to see this decline in automatic formal respect. Most people I think regard the routine playing of the anthem as anachronistic, and yet feel obliged by a sort of social pressure to comply. I vividly recall an experience of my own when, waiting for a concert to begin, the strains of the anthem began and people started to rise to their feet. Apparently some minor 'royal' personage had arrived to attend. I wanted to stay in my seat but felt progressively more unable to do so as the rest of the audience (at least all those I could see) stood up. So, in the end, I grudgingly stood as well, and felt cross for the rest of the evening. At the end, I made sure to get out of the hall before being subject to a repeat performance!
Thursday, 7 November 2013
Dining in N.Y.
Tuesday, November 7th., Park Hill, New York.
Dinner last night given by the Dutch Treat Club at Kean's Chop House. Over 100. Wallace Irwin gave a good skit on "How to live in New York on 48 hours a day." In a few words I said I would thank him in print.
The Dutch Treat Club was founded in 1905 by Thomas Masson, an editor of Life, the humour magazine, and Robert Sterling Yard, a reporter with the New York Sun. They wanted a New York City club for creative people. The original 11 members consisted of 4 writers, 4 illustrators, 2 editors and a publisher. The lunch was 'dutch' - everybody paid his own bill. From this beginning grew an institution with over 300 members, including some of the most creative minds in America.
I walked down 34th St. to Waterside offices of Italian lines, saw Duca degli Abruzzi half ready to go. A lot of people on board and a line of 3rd class passengers waiting outside shed for admittance. Nothing but Italian spoken all around me. This swift transition from 5th Avenue is very picturesque.
Declension of streets sets in immediately after Broadway. 6th Avenue is atrociously paved. After 7th the declension is frank. 10th and 11th are appalling, atrocious, and some of the sidewalks staggering - unworthy of the suburbs of a small provincial town. Trains allowed to shunt over 10th and 11th Avenues. Extraordinary.
This was election day. I saw the sinister but genial fellows bearing openly the insignia of Tammany. Don't please think that Tammany is a disease that happens to have attacked N.Y. It is as much an expression of N.Y. character as the barber's (remember my shave this morning at the Waldorf), the pavements, the fineness, the interest in education etc. etc.
Thorough badness of barbers.
Dinner at Sherrys. R. H. Davis, Franklin Adams, Doran and I.
Davis told how he interviewed Li Hung Chang for W. R. Hearst. Davis entered Chang's suite at the Waldorf "with my shoes in my hand". He interviewed him through an interpreter. At the end Davis said: "I asked his excellency if he spoke English, he answered in English 'No'. Asked if he was rich, he said "600,000,000 dollars today; nothing tomorrow. All I have is at the mercy of the State." He was very curious about rich men in America. Later he sent for Davis as a private man and spoke to him in English. He asked if Davis was married and Davis said he wasn't because he couldn't afford to be. He then said: "Get money. Get a wife. Get a home. Get children."
Dinner last night given by the Dutch Treat Club at Kean's Chop House. Over 100. Wallace Irwin gave a good skit on "How to live in New York on 48 hours a day." In a few words I said I would thank him in print.
Wallace Irwin (1875 – 1959) was an American writer. Over the course of his long career, Irwin wrote humorous sketches, light verse, screenplays, short stories, novels, nautical lays, aphorisms, journalism, political satire, lyrics for Broadway musicals, and the libretto for an opera. With his The Julius Caesar Murder Case (1935), he created a subgenre within detective fiction, the mystery novel set in antiquity.
I walked down 34th St. to Waterside offices of Italian lines, saw Duca degli Abruzzi half ready to go. A lot of people on board and a line of 3rd class passengers waiting outside shed for admittance. Nothing but Italian spoken all around me. This swift transition from 5th Avenue is very picturesque.
Declension of streets sets in immediately after Broadway. 6th Avenue is atrociously paved. After 7th the declension is frank. 10th and 11th are appalling, atrocious, and some of the sidewalks staggering - unworthy of the suburbs of a small provincial town. Trains allowed to shunt over 10th and 11th Avenues. Extraordinary.
This was election day. I saw the sinister but genial fellows bearing openly the insignia of Tammany. Don't please think that Tammany is a disease that happens to have attacked N.Y. It is as much an expression of N.Y. character as the barber's (remember my shave this morning at the Waldorf), the pavements, the fineness, the interest in education etc. etc.
Tammany Hall, also known as the Society of St. Tammany, the Sons of St. Tammany, or the Columbian Order, was a New York City political organization founded in 1786. It was the Democratic Party political machine that played a major role in controlling New York City and New York State politics and helping immigrants, most notably the Irish, rise up in American politics from the 1790s to the 1960s. The Society expanded its political control by earning the loyalty of the city's ever-expanding immigrant community, which functioned as a base of political capital. The Tammany Hall ward boss or ward heeler – "wards" were the city's smallest political units from 1686 to 1938 – served as the local vote gatherer and provider of patronage.
Thorough badness of barbers.
Dinner at Sherrys. R. H. Davis, Franklin Adams, Doran and I.
Davis told how he interviewed Li Hung Chang for W. R. Hearst. Davis entered Chang's suite at the Waldorf "with my shoes in my hand". He interviewed him through an interpreter. At the end Davis said: "I asked his excellency if he spoke English, he answered in English 'No'. Asked if he was rich, he said "600,000,000 dollars today; nothing tomorrow. All I have is at the mercy of the State." He was very curious about rich men in America. Later he sent for Davis as a private man and spoke to him in English. He asked if Davis was married and Davis said he wasn't because he couldn't afford to be. He then said: "Get money. Get a wife. Get a home. Get children."
Wednesday, 6 November 2013
Distractions
Wednesday, November 6th., St. Simon's Avenue, Putney.
Day before yesterday, after having written about 6,000 words of new novel, I decided to begin it again, in a somewhat different key, but with exactly the same construction. And I did begin it again, and at once felt easier in my mind. I also decided that I would not make a fine MS of it. The regularity of the lines and handwriting does not seem to accord with style in which this novel is to be written. A freer style than before - a little more capricious and swinging.
I had to interrupt the work last week but one to do an article of reminiscences for the Metropolitan and the Strand, and again on Sunday to review Allan Monkhouse's new novel, "Dying Fires" for the Manchester Guardian. This last is a good book.
Also I have begun to order a new library of music, through Sharpe, and the first noble batch of stuff came today. More in a few days.
Day before yesterday, after having written about 6,000 words of new novel, I decided to begin it again, in a somewhat different key, but with exactly the same construction. And I did begin it again, and at once felt easier in my mind. I also decided that I would not make a fine MS of it. The regularity of the lines and handwriting does not seem to accord with style in which this novel is to be written. A freer style than before - a little more capricious and swinging.
I had to interrupt the work last week but one to do an article of reminiscences for the Metropolitan and the Strand, and again on Sunday to review Allan Monkhouse's new novel, "Dying Fires" for the Manchester Guardian. This last is a good book.
Also I have begun to order a new library of music, through Sharpe, and the first noble batch of stuff came today. More in a few days.
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