Disappointment in Rome

 Friday, February 5th., Hotel Russie, Rome.

I spent a lot of the morning at the top of the hotel garden, which I had never discovered before, after having been here over seven weeks. Marvellous view over Rome, of which I made a sketch. I thought about my new novel, had quite a lot of excellent ideas concerning it.

After siesta we took a taxi and drove along dusty and dull and very bad roads to Tre Fontane - the place where Paul's head jumped three times after being cut off, at each place producing a fountain. There are three churches, and if they locate the fountains, Paul's head must have very considerably bounded. Two churches were open, both very poor and odd and neglected. In fact - no interest at all - yet it is a place one is supposed to go to!

Additionally for February 5th., see 'An intoxicating day'

The ski-ers started, under guidance of the Professor, and I and Peter (Huxley's dog) kept near them in the sleigh. We met every now and then, and I saw several fine runs and several falls. Dorothy was doing very well. They were all enjoying themselves enormously. I got home first. Dorothy said it was the finest day she had ever had in all her life. Certainly a most marvellous day, even for me, with air, sunshine, superb landscapes, and a universal clarity.

Philanthropy

Friday, February 4th., Comarques, Thorpe-le-Soken.

I went to 47 Bedford square yesterday morning to see Roscoe, Secretary of Teachers' Registration Council. A downright midlander with traces of accent. He gave me information for articles on education. The whole feel of 47 is now changed - for the better. Clearer and brighter everywhere.

' DRASTIC CURE? Mr. Frank Roscoe, Secretary of the Teachers' Registration Council, in a London lecture, quoted from an author on child psychology who said that if a boy stole sweets it was a natural desire for sugar, and he should be given more sweets.This method 'fuelling him' Mr. Roscoe illustrated with examples. His twin boys, at the age of four, were presented by a kind friend with hammers. Mr.Roscoe, instead, of' confiscating the hammers or waiting until valuable furniture had been smashed, promptly drew an elephant on the kitchen table, and gave the children the task of outlining the elephant with nails. It took a whole day. The twins worked another day withdrawing the nails with the hammer claws. .Their desire for hammering was quickly satisfied.A science master complained to him that his class always welcomed him with rhythmic banging of desk lids. Mr. Roscoe suggested a remedy. The next day the master detained the whole class and set them the task of desk banging. 'The first boy who stops before the half-hour's up will get 300 lines,' he announced. It cured desk banging.

Lunch at the Reform. I saw Methuen who said that the Publishers' Association had unanimously decided to issue novels at net prices, and at prices varying according to length - from 4s. 6d. net to 7s. 6d. net. I don't think it will work at 7s. 6d. net anyhow.

Two committee meetings at W.A.R.C. Lady Paget came over half an hour late. She is a master-woman, and well-accustomed to command. Everyone says she is an unrivalled 'beggar'. She enunciated her principles of begging, ruthlessly. They were excellent. She is now starting out to collect a million for blind soldiers. If she gets £5,000 from Our Caledonian Market Show I shall be far more than satisfied.

Lady Muriel Evelyn Vernon Paget, CBE, (1876 – 1938) was a British philanthropist and a humanitarian relief worker, initially based in London, and later in Eastern and Central Europe. She was awarded an OBE in 1918 and a CBE in 1938. She received awards in recognition of her humanitarian work from the governments of such nations as Belgium, Czechoslovakia, Estonia, Japan, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, as well as Imperial Russia. After an initial involvement in co-founding the Children's Order of Chivalry, a society that linked wealthy children with poor London children,[8] Lady Muriel first became actively involved in charity work when, in 1905, she responded to a suggestion made by an aunt that she might take up the post of honorary secretary of a charity seeking to establish a kitchen in Southwark (the Southwark Invalid Kitchen). In 1915, concerned by what she had learned of the dire situation on the Russian front, Lady Muriel travelled to Petrograd, where she and her friend Lady Sibyl Grey set up an Anglo-Russian hospital whose primary purpose was the treatment of wounded soldiers.[14] This was based in the Dmitri Palace. The Empress Alexandra Feodorovna was involved in the funding of this project, and other generous donations came from the UK. The following year Lady Muriel established a number of field hospitals and food kitchens in Ukraine. In 1917, in order to raise funds for the Anglo-Russian hospitals, she organised a huge Russian exhibition on the theme of "Russia in Peace and War" at the Grafton Galleries in London, which ran through May of that year. The exhibition included a series of Russian concerts (where Feodor Chaliapin sang to raise money for her), lectures on various Russian-related topics, dramatic performances of Anton Chekhov and Leo Tolstoy, etc

Additionally for February 4th., see 'Strolling about'

Yesterday, walking on the Thames Embankment near Grosvenor Road, met Sidney Webb and his wife. Beautiful morning. they were quite happy strolling along. Of course I stopped them.

On 'love'

Wednesday, February 3rd., Hotel d'Italie, Menton.

"Leonora" is in every way a much better book than "Anna". What women of forty ought to concern themselves with is not the point. What they do concern themselves with they will know when they reach that interesting age; in the meantime they should make no assumptions. That women of forty, generally, do regret the past is an undoubted fact. That they long to be young again is an undoubted fact. That they are particularly, peculiarly, & specially passionate & prone to sexual excitement is an undoubted fact. It was the discovery of these piquant truths which led me to write "Leonora". I didn't conceive the idea and then search round for confirmation. The reverse. I certainly do not think that 'love' is a woman's whole existence, as does at least one of my correspondents. It was certainly not Leonora's whole existence. She was extremely addicted to the higher walks of housewifery. But I think that 'love' is the major part of woman's existence. As it is of man's. I think there are only two things in the world really worth having - sexual love & the love of children. Over & over again, in a career intimately mixed up with many & diverse women, I have found that women with a tendency to 'sit on' love have ended suddenly & swiftly with marriage & become even more domesticated than their sisters. 

I have been a little under the weather for the last few days. Just a cold in the head but it is surprising what an impact it has on the mood. Of course it becomes difficult to sleep with any comfort and hence one is perpetually tired. I started to feel a little better yesterday and hoped to see further improvement this morning, but had a minor relapse. Drinks of hot lemon and honey I find to be soothing and restorative.

The ideas of the average decently-informed person are so warped, and out of perspective, and ignorant, and entirely perverse and wrong and crude, on nearly every mortal subject, that the task of discussing anything with him seriously and fully and to the end, is simply appalling. This has struck me several times recently in this hotel, and I have recoiled from a discussion. The state of that average person's mind can scarcely be contemplated by me, in certain moods.

The funeral feast given by Catherine Ivanovna in "Crime and Punishment" is a magnificent piece of work, both as serious accurate observation and as brutal humour.

Today I began Act III of the play, and wrote 2,000 words.



Additionally for February 3rd., see 'An Atmospheric setting'

State occasion

Saturday, February 2nd., Trinity Hall Farm, Hockliffe.

This morning I saw what I could, over the heads of a vast crowd, of the funeral procession of Queen Victoria. The people were not, on the whole, deeply moved, whatever journalists may say, but rather serene and cheerful.

Queen Victoria had left very detailed instructions as to how she wanted her funeral. This included very specific things she wanted inside her coffin. Many of the items were from her beloved husband, Albert, who had died 40 years earlier in 1861. On January 25, 1901, Dr. Reid carefully placed the items that Queen Victoria had requested in the bottom of her coffin. These things included Albert's dressing gown, a plaster cast of Albert's hand, and photographs. When that was done, Queen Victoria's body was lifted into the coffin with the help of her son Albert (the new king), her grandson William (the German Kaiser), and her son Arthur (the Duke of Connaught). Then, as instructed, Dr. Reid helped place Queen Victoria's wedding veil over her face and, once the others had departed, placed a picture of John Brown in her right hand, which he covered with some flowers. On February 1, 1901, Queen Victoria's coffin was moved from Osborne House and placed on the shipAlberta, which carried the queen's coffin across the Solent to Portsmouth. On February 2, the coffin was transported by train to Victoria Station in London. From Victoria to Paddington, the queen's coffin was carried by gun carriage, since Queen Victoria had requested a military funeral. She had also wanted a white funeral and so the gun carriage was pulled by eight white horses. The streets along the funeral route were crowded with spectators who wanted to get a last glimpse of the queen. As the carriage passed by, everyone remained silent. All that could be heard were the clattering of the horses' hooves, the jangling of swords, and the distant boom of gun salutes. Once at Paddington, the queen's coffin was placed upon a train and taken to Windsor.

Afterwards, Legge, Fred Terry, and Hooley, lunched with me at the Golden Cross Hotel, and all was very agreeable and merry. Terry explained that they wished the third act of "The Chancellor" altering somewhat, but not at all radically.

Additionally for February 2nd., see 'Subject for a novel?'

Talking fiction

Saturday, February 1st., Victoria Grove, Chelsea.

I am still trying to write well. 

George Sturt wrote to me recently about fiction as an exercise for the intellect & fiction as the presentment of feeling for the appreciation of feeling, & one great and lovely fact became clear to me - I don't give a damn for the theory of our sacred art! Guided by an instinct which I cannot explain & on which I rely without knowing why, I seek to write down a story which I have imagined with only fitfully clear vision. Why I select certain scenes, why I make a beginning of a chapter at this point, and end a chapter at another point, why I go into minute detail here & slur over whole months there - God only knows. The only vital part of any art can never be learnt & certainly cannot be talked about with the slightest advantage. And yet one likes to talk about it & hear it talked about.

For more on George Sturt see 'George Sturt & me' -
http://earnoldbennett.blogspot.co.uk/2012/10/george-sturt-and-me.html

For example, at an afternoon tea business on Sunday last, at the house of a member of our staff with whom I have recently chummed up, I met a girl (I suspect that we had been invited precisely to meet each other) who has written three novels, two of which I know to be good & which I have praised in Woman, not without enthusiasm. Her name is Symonds (niece of John Addington Symonds) & she calls herself George Paston. About my age. We fastened on to each other at once in spite of her extraordinary plainness of feature; her face is untouched by beauty. We just jawed about ourselves for two hours. She is just like George & me, has precisely the same difficulties, the same exultations, depressions, full stops, frenzies of production. Aside from George, I never met anyone with whom I was in so complete (artistic) sympathy. She gave me one or two tips & I gave her one. I don't think she knows more of writing than we do. She firmly believes in working only two hours a day, but not shirking that whether she feels in exact trim or the reverse. I think I must give the two hours a trial! I couldn't get her to give George Moore a good word, but never mind. I should have got more out of her had we not frequently been interrupted by an abnormally clever woman who writes for the Pall Mall Gazette. However, I shall take particular care to encounter Miss Symonds again as soon as may be; I think she ought to be cultivated.

'George Paston' (Emily Morse Symonds) began her writing career as a novelist in the 1890s, but from 1900 turned her attention to writing biographies, histories, and drama, many of which reflect her fascination with the eighteenth century. Several of her works question the legal and social limitations faced by women of all classes, particularly within the institution of marriage.

http://orlando.cambridge.org/public/svPeople?person_id=pastge

For more on Miss Symonds see 'Sincere artistic ladies' -
http://earnoldbennett.blogspot.co.uk/2012/10/lively-ladies.html


Additionally for February 1st., see 'Approaching contentment' -
http://earnoldbennett.blogspot.co.uk/2013/02/approaching-contentment.html

If I could spend every day as I have spent today, happiness would be almost within grasp. A couple of hours editorial work in the office in the morning. After dinner I read myself to sleep with d'Annunzio's "Annales d'Anne", and when I awoke I went to pay some money into the bank. Then I schemed out in my head the next chapter of my novel. From six to nine I worked fairly easily at my novel, drafting 2,300 words - a complete chapter. After supper, I opened a new copy of Arnold's "Essays in Criticism" (Second series) and read the essay on Tolstoy.
I shall read myself to sleep (for the second time today) with Maria Edgeworth's "Belinda". In spite of the laziest liver in the world, I am well nigh content with myself tonight.

A sportsman

Thursday, January 31st., Yacht Club, London.

Collecting ideas for my article on the future of the Liberal Party. 

Then to show of the Senefelder Club at the Leicester Galleries. There was a lithograph of Forain, "Conseil Juridique" which put everything else in the show clean off the map. I couldn't think of anything that I had ever seen more perfect. 28 guineas so I didn't buy it. A loud-voiced old man in very sporting costume, and deaf, came in with a fairly young woman, who called him alternatively 'Claudie' and 'Sir Claud'. It was Claud de Crespigny, the sportsman. many of these chaps have very loud voices. He said 2s. 6d. was too high a price for entrance, had never known entrance to a gallery to be more than 1s. He was mollified when he learnt that 2s. 6d. paid for two. He had come to see a painting by Laura Knight of a prize-fighter. As soon as he saw it he shouted: "I think they ought to give you your money back. It's not like --- at all. He hasn't got those muscles on him - never had. And look at his legs. And look at the size of the ring. It's not 8 feet square." However the woman soothed him, and in the end he seemed to be quite a decent sort of chap. 

 

Sir Claude Champion de Crespigny (1847–1935), military adventurer and sportsman entered the navy at the age of 13, serving as a midshipman in the Warrior in 1862. In 1866 he transferred to the army and in 1867 he won the first of the many steeplechases in a racing career spanning nearly fifty years. Sir Claude considered fighting, whether with fists or pistols, to be a manly occupation, and he engaged in fisticuffs until his seventies. He devoted his life to the maxim: ‘Where there is a daring deed to be done in any part of the world, an Englishman should leap to the front to accomplish it’. In 1870, irked by the restrictions of army life, Sir Claude resigned his commission to embark on the strenuous and dangerous pursuits he was to follow for the rest of his life. His distaste for heavy betting set him apart from other gentleman riders of the time, as did the strenuous physical regimen he followed all his life. In 1882 Sir Claude took up ballooning, and he became the first European to swim the Nile rapids in 1889. In 1914, at the age of sixty-seven, Sir Claude rode in his last steeplechase, and thereafter devoted himself to the more leisurely pursuits, as he saw them, of sailing, swimming, high diving, and long-distance walking. Lean of face and of spare build, he was proud that his weight was still only 10½ stone.

Lunched at Marlborough Club. The first I saw at the Marlborough was the Duke of Marlborough. I like this chap - also he said he was very interested in my articles, and agreed with them. I liked him the first time I saw him. Ex-King Manoel was there, lunching like nobody at all with two military officers. 

Then to Reform Club to meet Wells, who was very angry with the insular commercial machinations of the aeroplane manufacturers, who, he says, are greatly over-represented on the Civil Air Transport Committee of which he is a member. He told me the latest theory is that the first floor of a well-built house is safer than the basement in an air-raid, owing to the new heavy delayed-action bombs which go through everything and burst only when they can't travel any further.

Additionally for January 31st., see 'A weak spirit' -
http://earnoldbennett.blogspot.co.uk/2013/01/a-weak-spirit.html

Having nothing to do yesterday afternoon, and Eden being at work, and two others being out, and the day being wet, I could not resist going over to Monte Carlo in the tram. I lost money at the tables and came home depressed. In the evening I played billiards, practically for the first time, Eden teaching me. Today, bad weather again. I wrote an excellent T.P. article on Monte Carlo. But at present my interest in this journal is not what it was. Monte Carlo and other things have disturbed it.

A pleasant evening

Saturday, January 30th., Victoria Grove, Chelsea.

Tonight I met the typical respectable Clerk and his wife. The Clerk: a short man with a merry, half-boyish face, and a good moustache; keen in looks and yet every feature disclosing a narrow habit of mind; at first good-naturedly too courteous and deferential, afterwards assuming his natural manner of unaffected pleasantness. His wife: a woman of about 35, apparently older than the clerk, dressed plainly in red and grey; a broad face of peculiar shape, with long censorious lips that came together in a straight line, and remained so; a sensible, sober face, full of what is called character. One felt that while her husband supplied the motive power of their existence, the wife furnished the steadying ballast. She was very restrained till late in the evening when at the sight of some comic drawings she laughed immoderately and long, repeating: "I do think that's funny ... " After this the clerk began to give us his volunteering experiences, and over his quietly vivacious talk I heard a conversation begin between the wife and Gertie Kennerley; "Are you fond of reading?" "Yes," said Gertie. "Read Charlotte Bronte's books? 'Jane Eyre'? 'Villette'? 'Shirley'? - I like 'Shirley' the best. And George Eliot's? And Mrs. Henry wood's? I think ----- is the best of hers." here the clerk broke in to say he hadn't read that: hadn't read anything of Mrs. Henry Wood's. "I don't think you'd care for them," she turned to him. "There isn't much in them you know." So, though clearly the stronger character, she looked up to him, wondering from below to what heights his intellect reached.

Both were skilful, experienced, alive, in the things which lay within their own segment of life's circle, and lost and awed, like babes in the wood, if they happened to stray outside that segment. Example: Though the husband was above Mrs. Henry Wood and read Lamb, and had a distant interest in Stevenson, he asked, "What is this Yellow Book, Mr. Bennett?" as if he were inquiring into the nature of the differential calculus or bimetallism. But both of them know all about latchkeys, burglars, the programmes at the Empire and the Alhambra, and so on. The Clerk was fond of horses. he liked riding because there was "a lot of danger in it - you might get thrown off". Then he explained the difficulties.

The Yellow Book, published in London from 1894 to 1897 by Elkin Mathews and John Lane, later by John Lane alone, was a quarterly literary periodical (priced at 5s.) that lent its name to the "Yellow Nineties". It was a leading journal of the British 1890s; to some degree associated with Aestheticism and Decadence, the magazine contained a wide range of literary and artistic genres, poetry, short stories, essays, book illustrations, portraits, and reproductions of paintings. Aubrey Beardsley was its first art editor, and he has been credited with the idea of the yellow cover, with its association with illicit French fiction of the period. Authors who contributed were: Max Beerbohm, Arnold Bennett, "Baron Corvo", Ernest Dowson, George Gissing, Sir Edmund Gosse, Henry James, Richard Le Gallienne, Charlotte Mew, Arthur Symons, H. G. Wells, William Butler Yeats.

They made several attempts to go, and finally left at 11.5, the clerk with genial smiles and punctilious salutations, the wife rather stiffer, but breaking out into a warm, genuine smile and a "We've had such a pleasant evening," for Mrs. K.

Additionally for January 30th., see 'Courting' -
http://earnoldbennett.blogspot.co.uk/2013/01/courting.html

Several times lately, about 10 p.m., I have noticed a couple that stand under the big tree at the corner next to the pillar box, shielded by the tree-trunk from the lamplight. They stand motionless, with hands nearly meeting around each other's backs, tightly clasped. They were there tonight. The man was holding an umbrella over them. Can't see what sort of people they are. In the first place I don't like to intrude and in the second place the shade is so dark. One day I will include this scene in a novel.