Theatrical thoughts

Sunday, February 28th., Midland Hotel, Manchester.

Ten days ago, walking up Sloane Street, I was suddenly visited by an idea for a play. But as I have sworn that nothing will ever induce me to write another play I dismissed it with thanks. Today that idea for a play re-visited me, again in Sloane Street. It had grown. I dismissed it again. I have this strange feeling it will return. I have broken oaths before!

Of course, for a lot of people who know of me at all, I am thought of as a playwriight, or a newspaper columnist, rather than a novelist. Although I have continued to write novels, my heyday, as it were, was decades ago. I think of myself though as a novelist first and foremost. Interesting the relationship between novels and plays. I have rather walked the tightrope between the two for most of my career.

A few good novels and many bad ones have been turned into bad plays; and one or two good novels have been turned into fair plays. Many bad plays have been turned into worse novels. But a good novel adapted from a good play is a rarity. In the realm of 'goodness', other things being equal, a novel will be more convincing, more truthful, than a play. The medium of the stage is so clumsy, so limited, and so absurdly difficult to control, that it puts authors at a terrible disadvantage in the effective conveyance of truth and beauty, a disadvantage for which no possible compensating advantages can fully atone. If Shakespeare had lived in a novel-writing age he would have written novels far greater than "Hamlet" is great as a play. He was obviously worried by the resrictions of the stage, but though he tried to break through them, they were often too much for him.

All modern authors, myself included, who habitually produce both plays and novels produce better novels than plays. What play of Galsworthy's can rank with "A Man of Property"? Somerset Maugham's "Of Human Bondage" is simply a different class from even the best of his plays. That said, I have been thinking about cinema. I have had some experience myself of writing for the cinema. At the moment it is even more clumsy than the theatre but what if  'talking' pictures progress successfully? It occurs to me that then the producer will have much greater control of the material and thus, potentially, the means to reliably convey truth and beauty. The motion picture may become a real alternative to the novel for those who have not the time or inclination to read. 

A walk in town with Cochran. Good, solid Victorian buildings here. First night of "Cochran's 1928 Revue" at 7.30. Packed. Atmosphere of success. Glimpse of stage afterwards. Cochran gave a supper.

Settling down

Saturday, February 27th., Cadogan Square, London.

I am a little concerned about my niece Margaret who, judging by her most recent letter, has formed anti-semitic views. She is young and has apparently decided that Jews in general are 'beastly' on the evidence of some unpleasant Jews she has met. I have written to counsel her not to get up in herself any general prejudice against a whole race of people for such flimsy reasons. I told her that I know a considerable number of excellent Jews and I have not noticed that gentiles are superior in any respect. Strange how anti-semitism has persisted for so long and so widely. I have invited her to visit after Easter and hope to have a good influence on her attitude then.

Things may be coming to a head in my burgeoning relationship with Dorothy Cheston. She was here for a dinner tete-a-tete the other evening, a very intimate occasion as I intended it to be. Various things were said by both of us which, taken at face value, would indicate an inclination to 'formalise' our relationship. I sense that her mind is not made up and I do not want to swing her one way or another by direct persuasion. She must decide for herself and accept the responsibility of that decision. Though I feel clear in my own mind there is a part of me, typically, which fears commitment. It cannot be denied. But if she says "Yes", then I will do the honourable thing.

I am feeling quite well settled here now. Wells and wife are coming to dinner tonight and will give their verdict on the place. My health has been much better of late, as everyone remarks. I am trying to get to bed regularly at 12.30 and starting work at 8 a.m. That said, I was at a musical party at Harriet Cohen's last evening and didn't get to bed until 1 a.m. But I have worked well today.

Bad nights

Friday, February 26th., Cadogan Square, London.

A bad few nights. More than usually bad. Some sort of cold on the kidneys I think, affecting the bladder. Very uncomfortable at times, but things improving now. From experience I have learned that the best thing to do with this sort of internal irritation is to have 'a good flush out'. So yesterday I drank nothing but water, and lots of it. Seems to be working. Tonight should be better - only usually disturbed! I wonder if I will ever sleep through a night again? I doubt it.

Not feeling like doing any work, I have been reading Wells's "The Invisible Man". I read it when it first came out but enjoyed it more this second time. In fact I was quite gripped by it. Wells has an ability to construct a vivid scene in the reader's imagination in very few words and once engaged it is hard not to continue to the end. In fact I did continue to the end in spite of some minor inconveniences to the rest of the household. Griffin, the Invisible Man, is a great creation and it is hard not to feel sorry for him in spite of his amorality; one feels that his character is a product of cumulative prejudices and that his behaviour is beyond his conscious control. I wonder if Wells intended the story to be allegorical? It feels to me as if it is - the alienation which may arise for an intelligent and active man in a society which has no niche for him. I must ask Wells about this when I see him next. He will probably laugh and say that I am over-intellectualising.

Making a change

Monday, February 26th., Trinity Hall Farm, Hockliffe. 

The latter half of "The Queen's Necklace" is one of the finest examples of Dumas's skill, supreme skill, in handling a purely artificial intrigue. The complexity of it is only equalled by its perfect clarity, its diversity only by its unity and coherence. I have also been reading Gaboriau's "Lecoq" and its sequel (which is not a sequel, but he solution of the problem) for the Academy. It struck me as among the best of all detective stories. And the plot has a touch of Dumas at his most melodramatic and 'plotty'.

Only persons of imagination can enter into my feelings at the moment. I have spent two thirds of my life in a squalid industrial town and the rest in a city. I think I knew every creosoted block in Fleet Street, every bookstall in Shoreditch, and every hosiers in Piccadilly. I certainly did know the order of the stations on the Inner Circle. Also the various frowns of publishers, the strange, hysteric, silly atmosphere of theatrical first-nights, the stars of the Empire and the Alhambra (by sight), and the vicious odours of a thousand and one restaurants. And now I am here 'in the country'. Not many people can stamp the top of their notepaper "Watling Street, England".

Down in the village early this morning I entered, not without a certain self-consciousness, the village shop. I had read about 'the village shop' in novels; I had even ventured to describe it in fiction of my own; and I was equally surprised and delighted to find that the village shop of fiction was also the village shop of fact. It was the mere truth that one could buy everything in this diminutive emporium, that the multifarious odours assailed the nostrils, and that the proprietor, who had never seen me before, instantly knew me and all about me. Soon I was in a fair way to knowing something about the proprietor.

As I left the shop a flamboyant person of, I should say, travelling stock asked me if I wanted to buy a pony. I didn't.

In Brighton

Thursday, February 24th., Royal York Hotel, Brighton.

Today I signed contracts with Duttons of New York for £1000. It is the most I have yet signed for in a day. It gives me some security financially, and confidence that others, hard-headed businessmen at that, have confidence in me. 

I walked about Brighton in cold showers this morning collecting my thoughts preparatory to writing my first love scene between Edwin and Hilda. Plenty of idlers about even though the weather is unsettled. I walked out to the end of the Palace Pier (1,722 feet long) and stood for a good while just looking out to sea. Not looking in fact, as my thoughts were turned inwards. But it was therapeutic and I turned, set my shoulders, and walked back here to begin work. I wrote 2,300 words and began to feel a wreck. 

The pier is advertised as 'the finest ever built'. Well, it may be. Must have cost a tremendous amount of money and one wonders how it can be viable financially. And of course it is not a one-off cost. It has been finished now for ten years and close inspection reveals that wind and waves are having their effect. So maintenance and repair must be a continual process. There is a sort of arrogance involved in throwing out a pier into the sea, as if the land is inadequate to contain human energy and ingenuity. I have thought of setting one of the scenes later in the book on the pier. We shall see!

Blown away

Tuesday, February 23rd., Cadogan Square, London.

I stepped outside for a breath of air this morning and was nearly blown away. As I write now I can hear the wind swirling round the building as if seeking a way in. Not surprising that ancient, and not so ancient, peoples believed that lost souls might be incorporated in wind. One does not expect to be so greatly assailed in the town; certainly not in the middle of a great city. The wind should be more properly a rural phenomenon, or especially a maritime one. I wasn't out long. But I had a breath or two of air!

I have been reading a book about Japan. It is a novel but intends I think to give an accurate account of that country to which I have never been. I like to read about strange places and often feel inclined to visit as a consequence. But I don't want to visit Japan. It sounds to be a terrible country. Terrible by reason of the cast-iron conventions which hold its society together. It is more Western than the Europe which it has too sedulously copied, and yet remains fantastically Oriental. In polite Japanese circles, and all Japanese circles are polite, everything it seems is 'honourable', both persons and things. 'Honourable' seems to be a key word of all social relations. Socially every Japanese is walking on a tight-rope over the Niagara of solecism all the time. There can be no relief for him, night and day.

I am to go up to Manchester by special train at the weekend for Cochran's "1928 Review". The book and lyrics are by Noel Coward, and there are alleged to be 28 tableaux and 500 costumes. I am promised that there will be a surfeit of pretty young women on the train. Otherwise, I would have preferred to go by car but Dorothy has robbed me of it for three weeks. She is somewhere in France with Audrey Anderson driving to the Riviera and back. Life is much calmer here in spite of the wind!

Springlike

Monday, February 22nd., Comarques, Thorpe-le-Soken.

Friday, Saturday and Sunday I corrected "These Twain" and cut it from 128,000 to 100,000 words. It is painful I find to expunge words one has sweated to produce, but necessary.

It has been remarkably mild today and I took a long walk down Golden Lane as far as the Beaumont Cut. There is still a little activity there but it is clear to see that the place is going to ruin. A chap I met there walking his dogs, who lives nearby, said there had been a canal of sorts there as early as Roman times, but the present cut was made in the nineteenth century in hope of exploiting the agricultural demand for lime. The lime kiln is still in good order. It would be worth preserving it for historic reasons, but that seems unlikely. In this country we generally only think about 'saving' things after they have fallen too far into disrepair. Two thames barges were employed to service the quay when it was in full operation but only the deteriorating remains of one is there now. Interesting to see even so. It is rather picturesque and would make a nice watercolour.

Hard to believe as I strolled back home in the spring-like sunshine that the country is at war and fighting is taking place only a hundred miles away as the crow flies. Thank god I am too old! I read on Saturday that Britain is now officially under 'blockade' by Germany. I expect that we shall all have to start tightening our belts.