Thoughts and impressions

Saturday, November 5th., Les Sablons, near Moret.

I am very well fixed here. The old couple are so decent, such braves gens; they exhale such an atmosphere of a life's effort nearly accomplished. They may be narrow, but they have worked honestly and lived sanely. They like being praised, as all right-minded people do. And they are so simple. Imagine taking to a garden  after 31 years of railway work in Paris.

I walked into the forest this morning. There was a foggy mist everywhere, and on all sides could be heard the dropping of water from the drenched trees. And looking into the depths of the forest one could conjure up the magic of "As You Like It" and "A Midsummer Night's Dream". At intervals cavalry trotted past towards Fontainebleau. One officer read a newspaper as he trotted along. 

For the second time in eight days the government was in danger of falling yesterday.

I was thinking this morning that the United States Republic had substituted an aristocracy of commercial cleverness for the old forms of aristocracy. It is said that every man has an equal chance in the U.S., and he has. But commercial aptitude, with as little honesty as possible, is the only thing that will be of use to him. And everything is so arranged that the 'risen' can trample on those who have not risen.

Additionally for November 5th., see 'An incident in Paris' -
http://earnoldbennett.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/an-incident-in-paris.html

Of course, a crowd gathered immediately; a busy, interfering, wishful-to-help crowd. I was much struck by the stink of the crowd, the low type of face, the squints, the bullet heads, the misshapen features. The getting up of the horse was mismanaged for a long time; but in the end it was accomplished without injury to the horse or the cart.

A literary evening

Thursday, November 4th., Cadogan Square, London.

I walked to the Savoy Hotel for the luncheon given to Osbert Sitwell prior to his departure for America. 60 people at this lunch. It was exceedingly well done. Birrell, aged 76, was in the chair, and as lively as a boy. He made two excellent informal speeches. 

Francis Birrell

Francis Birrell (1889 -1935) was a British journalist, editor, translator and literary critic, of the so-called Bloomsbury Group and counted as a friend of the authors James Elroy Flecker  and David Garnett. Between 1915 and 1919 he worked in France for the War Victims Relief Committee of the Society of Friends. Along with Garnett he ran during the 1920s in London, the bookstore Birrell and Garnett, 33 Gerrard Street, near the British Museum. There the members of the Bloomsbury Group, preferably bought their books.

I got home at 4 p.m., and did oddments and had tea, and then went to bed for two hours 5.15 to 7.15. 

Leonard and Virginia Woolf in 1926

We were ten minutes late for dinner at H. G. Wells's, and H. G. himself was eleven minutes late. The Shaws were there, and Frank Wells, and Marjorie Craig (H.G.'s morning secretary) and the Leonard Woolfs. Both gloomy these last two. But I liked both of them in spite of their naughty treatment of me in the press.

Shaw talked practically the whole time, which is the same thing as saying he talked a damn sight too much. After dinner he and Dorothy and Virginia Woolf and H. G. formed a group and never moved. I formed another group with Charlotte Shaw and Jane Wells, and never moved either. I really wanted to have a scrap with Virginia Woolf; but got no chance.




Additionally for November 4th., see 'London again' -
http://earnoldbennett.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/wednesday-november-4th.html

Then tea at A.B.C. Shop opposite Charing Cross. Down into smoking room. A few gloomy and rather nice men. One couple of men deliberately attacking dish of hot tea-cakes. Terrible. Familiar smell of hot tea. A.B.C shops are still for me one of the most characteristic things in London.

A retreat

Friday, November 3rd., Royal Thames Yacht Club, Piccadilly.

I came to London on Wednesday and took possession of apartment 'C' at the R. Thames Y.C. which I have rented. This in the face of opposition from my wife which strengthened rather than weakened my resolve. She has now, herself, a small modest flat in London. 

Rather like celibate life in Paris again. I dined at the Club and read Macready's diary; extraordinary sensation of having resumed a closed chapter of existence.

Dined with Marguerite at Elysee Restaurant. Dancing by two nice professional girls at intervals. Young nut who came in at 9.31 and asked whether it was just before or just after drink-closing time. He crossed legs and leaned on stick before beginning to ask waiter.

Caledonian Market this morning. I got there too soon and saw trucks and hand-carts and carts being wheeled up by all sorts of people - many foreigners. Type of pale puffed skin, or pinched and full red lips. I went back to tailor's to try on, and went to market again at noon, when it was in full swing. I bought an eastern bowl.

Making movies

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

Worried by my film "Punch and Judy", I walked out for an hour and got ideas and came back and wrote another scene. 

There is a convincing case to be made for regarding Arnold Bennett as the most important professionally engaged early twentieth-century writer dealing with the world of cinema and film. From the publication of The Regent in 1913, with one of the earliest references to film in the English novel, in a short passage on the cinematograph’s invasion of the music-hall, to the release of the 1929 E A Dupont’s film "Piccadilly" based on Bennett's original script, Bennett remained critically aware of the importance of film as an artistic and commercial medium. His involvement with the medium spans the most important period of the development, and rapid demise, of silent film as a narrative art form. 

"Punch and Judy" is – literally- an excursion by Bennett into the genre of Grand Guignol (Guignol being roughly the counterpart of Mr Punch in French puppet shows). Bennett’s film treatment begins with a street Punch and Judy show. The puppets are first limp and lifeless, but then burst into wild action, to enact the usual story of mayhem and murder. As the show reaches its conclusion, cinema trickery turns the Punch puppet into a human – Flitfoot, Bennett’s utterly ruthless hero-villain.The subsequent story shows Flitfoot’s unstoppable rise to wealth and power. He lies, swindles and cheats, ruining anyone who gets in his way. Like Punch he has an energy that makes him fascinating even at his most appalling. 

http://www.arnoldbennettsociety.org.uk/?page_id=289

http://greatwarfiction.wordpress.com/2012/08/02/3128/

Gilda Gray in Piccadilly

Then at 2.15 I drove in  studio car to Elstree to see some shooting of the "Piccadilly" film. Full crowd. 300 guests in the famous club. The colouring of the dresses was not at all distinguished; but this doesn't matter on the screen. Each item was filmed five or six times. Endless trouble taken. Considerable heat from terrific blaze of electric lamps. I talked with Gilda Gray.
http://cultview.wordpress.com/2008/09/13/piccadilly/


See also, June 15th., 'Back to Riceyman Steps' -
http://earnoldbennett.blogspot.co.uk/2013/06/back-to-riceyman-steps.html

The Denison Rosses, the Colefaxes, Muriel Foster, Humbert Wolfe, and H. G. Wells came to dinner and the uproariousness of the whole evening was terrific.

Additionally for November 2nd., see 'Musical evening' - 
http://earnoldbennett.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/musical-evening.html

It was rather like a City of the Dead. certainly as much a relic of barbarism as anything one is likely to see in Paris, with its tons of flowers and ugly wreaths ornamenting the most deplorable monuments and houses of corpses. vast crowds of people, many in black, but not all; many, if not most, out for an airing: moonstruck crowds before certain monstrous momentos of surpassing vulgarity.

Sensuality

Saturday, November 1st., Cadogan Square, London.

An interesting, challenging and provocative book called "In Defence of Sensuality" by John Cowper Powys has caused me to think about some of the differences between men and women. In fact the title of the book is misleading as it is as spiritual and as disdainful of nearly all that 'sensuality' signifies for the public as any new book I have read for years.

However, it seems to me that many men wear themselves out to obtain the means of physical existence, and they wear themselves out trying to 'keep fit' by dint of games and sports; and they have no time to live until they are old and safe, and then they are too tired to use either their brains or their emotions for the purpose of living. Then they die at the age of three score and fifteen, having been not alive for seventy-five years.

As for women, their case is more complicated. I have never understood them; nobody has, not even themselves. All I know about them is that they are apparently actuated by the ideal of pleasing, the means to which seems to be chiefly physical and chiefly to concern the face. They 'make up' before starting out on an evening of 'living - that is, pleasing. They ride with you for five minutes, then they vanish so that they may reconstruct the face again. Halfway through the meal they unfasten a bag of tools and reconstruct the face a third time, quite openly. It is as if they said: "Kindly note that there is no deception. My lips are not in fact vermilion. I tint them and I am honest about it." (We knew it already.) At the end of the meal they reconstruct the face a fourth time. If a theatre is visited they reconstruct a fifth and sixth time, in the entr'actes. If there is a supper or snack later, they reconstruct a seventh and an eighth time. And their last act of the day is to prepare, with the aid of revolting unguents, for pleasing the next day.

But what does this pleasing amount to? If they gave to pleasing the tenth part of the trouble which they give to the preliminary mechanics, there wouldn't be a bachelor left in the land. And, conceivably, men would be too busy being pleased to wear themselves out, not having lived. It may be that this is an over-simplified view of sex differences; but it is a view.

Additionally for November 1st., see 'Sadness' 
http://earnoldbennett.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/sadness.html

Eden and I

Tuesday, October 31st., Fulham Park Gardens, London.

I left Torquay, where I have been staying with the Phillpotts, this afternoon.

At Exeter I heard of the British defeat in the Transvaal.

The Battle of Nicholson’s Nek was one of two British defeats around Ladysmith that came to be known as “Mournful Monday”, or the battle of Ladysmith. A British force found itself in an impossible position and the result was the biggest surrender of British troops since the Napoleonic Wars. Close to one thousand British soldiers entered captivity after the battle. The defeat at Nicholson’s Nek and the failure of White’s main attack at Lombard’s Kop ended any chance of avoiding a siege at Ladysmith.

I went down to Torquay last Friday and had not been long with Phillpotts before I found my own creative ideas begin to flow under the impulsion of his companionship. Phillpotts works from 10.30 or 11 to 1 o'clock each day, and sometimes in the afternoon again for an hour or so, after going for a walk.. Every month he interrupts his big work to write a short story which takes him 2 or 3 or 4 days.. He showed me a diary of work showing quantities. Up to date this year his total was 360,000 words. He had hoped to write 600,000 words in the year but has no chance of doing it.


See also, February 23rd.,  'Writing for a living' -
http://earnoldbennett.blogspot.co.uk/2013/02/writing-for-living.html
And September 21st., 'In the West Country' -
http://earnoldbennett.blogspot.co.uk/2013/09/in-west-country.html

On Saturday we walked by the coast to Teignmouth, and thence up the Teign to Newton Abbot, and back to Torquay by train. I was struck by Phillpotts's minute botanical knowledge, and his unfailing eye for a rare flower. Talking of dreams, he said that he had once kept a dream diary, with probable causes of the dream in opposite pages. But it was useless. He agreed with me that dreams, as works of art, were an utter failure. He had only had one dream that was of the least use to him.

Every night we have had long literary talks, in which I did rather more than half the talking, while Mrs. Phillpotts sat between us, quiet but apparently interested. Phillpotts often spoke of these 'shoppy' talks with the greatest pleasure. He said they were a sharp stimulant - a stimulant he rarely got. He said, among dozens of other little personal statements, that as regards style De Quincey had influenced him most. What he chiefly admired was stateliness, the stately management of a long sentence. He remarked how few men cared to attempt a long and elaborate sentence. He said he had been influenced by Hardy ("Talking about your god are you?" said his wife, coming in); and distantly by Fielding for whom he has an intense admiration.

"The hero of my next book", he said ("The Pagan") "has better ideas about Dartmoor than any person I ever met. he seems to me to have the proper ideas, the only right attitude. He knows much more of Dartmoor than I do, and has taught me a lot." This, almost seriously, of a creature of his own brain.

Looking through Mrs. Philpotts's collection of autographs, I was a little surprised at the warmth and spontaneity of the tributes sent by well-known men. A letter from James Payn about "Lying Prophets", and another from R. D. Blackmore about "Children of the Mist", pleased me particularly, so natural and large-hearted and fine. I had no idea that well-known men put themselves out to do these things.

Yesterday Phillpotts took me to Compton, three miles off, a little village with an old fortified manor house, lying in a hollow near Ipplepen, which he has chosen for the scene of his next novel but one - "Sons of the Morning".

Before leaving today Mr. and Mrs. Phillpotts walked with me down into Torquay. Mild, with flowers blooming everywhere. It seemed to me to be a place of retired military officers, rich and stiff dowagers, and spoiled over-fed dogs led about by servant maids. Phillpotts said that, for its size, it was the second richest place in England, Tunbridge Wells being first. There were scarcely any poor. Nearly every house stood in its own garden. There were very few children, as the inhabitants were mainly retired and old. Also, but few young men. The whole town consisted of rich households and the people who fed them and waited on them.

A novel idea

Saturday, October 30th., Cadogan Square, London.

I began to think more seriously about the plan of my new novel. I had already got the moral background for it: the dissatisfaction of a successful and rich man with his own secret state of discontent and with the evils of the age. I wanted a frame. I walked about three miles this morning, and about a mile after tea, without getting a really satisfactory idea; then as I was lolling in my 'easy' about 6.30, I suddenly thought that I would extend the role of the train de luxe, which I had thought of for the scene of the opening of the story, to be the scene of the whole of the novel - so that the entire time-space of the novel will only be about thirty hours or so. I didn't go any farther than this; I had enough for the day.

Then quite a lot of reading of Ludwig on the Kaiser. This seems to be rather a great book.

Wilhelm Hohenzollern by Emil Ludwig (1926)

This book is a portrait of William the Second and does not tell the whole story of his life. For fairness' sake, the author designed to let no adversary of the Emperor bear witness, but constructed his portrait wholly from William's own deed and words, together with the reports of those who stood in close relation to him and who give strikingly similar answers to the psychical questions involved. In short, this work is an attempt to trace from the idiosyncrasies of a monarch the direct evolution of international political events and the course of his country's destiny.