A Writer's Diary (25 page)

Saturday, August 20th

A curious day in London yesterday. I said to myself standing at L.'s window, Look at the present moment because it's not been so hot for 21 years. There was a hot wind, as if one passed over a kitchen, going from the studio to the Press. Outside girls and young men lying in white on the square grass. So hot we couldn't sit in the dining room. L. fetched and carried and hardly let me walk upstairs carrying my own body. Coming back we had the car shut and the windscreen open—thus sat in a hot rough gale which, as we came to the lanes and woods, became deliciously cold and green. The coolest place is the front seat of a car going at 40 or 50 miles with the windscreen open. Today, at 12:30, a wind rose: clouds descended; now at 3:45 it's almost a normal warm summer day. For 10 days this heat has lasted. After my faint my head soon throbs; or so I think. I think a little of dying suddenly and reflect, Well then go about eating and drinking and laughing and feeding the fish. Odd—the silliness one attributes to death—the desire one has to belittle it and be found, as Montaigne said, laughing with girls and good fellows. And L. is staking out the dewpond and I am going in to be photographed. Three more books appearing on Mrs. Woolf: which reminds me to make a note, sometime, on my work.

A very good summer, this, for all my shying and jibbing, my tremors this morning. Beautifully quiet, airy, powerful. I believe I want this more humane existence for my next—to
spread carelessly among one's friends—to feel the width and amusement of human life: not to strain to make a pattern just yet: to be made supple, and to let the juice of usual things, talk, character, seep through me, quietly, involuntarily, before I say Stop and take out my pen. Yes, my thighs now begin to run smooth: no longer is every nerve upright. Yesterday we took plums to old Mrs. Grey. She is shrunk and sits on a hard chair in the corner. The door open. She twitches and trembles. Has the wild expressionless stare of the old. L. liked her despair: "I crawls up to bed hoping for the day; and I crawls down hoping for the night. I'm an ignorant old woman—can't write or read. But I prays to God every night to take me—oh to go to my rest. Nobody can say what pains I suffer. Feel my shoulder," and she began shuffling with a safety pin. I felt it. "Hard as iron; full of water, and my legs too." She pulled down her stocking. "The dropsy. I'm ninety-two; and all my brothers and sisters are dead; my daughter's dead; my husband is dead...." She repeated her misery, her list of ills, over and over; could see nothing else; could only begin all over again; and kissed my hand, thanking us for our pound. This is what we make of our lives—no reading or writing—keep her alive with
^*
doctors when she wishes to die. Human ingenuity in torture is very great.

L
ONDON.
Sunday, October 2nd

Yes, I will allow myself a new nib. Odd how coming back here upsets my writing mood. Odder still how possessed I am with the feeling that now, aged 50, I'm just poised to shoot forth quite free straight and undeflected my bolts whatever they are. Therefore all this flitter flutter of weekly newspapers interests me not at all. These are the soul's changes. I don't believe in ageing. I believe in forever altering one's aspect to the sun. Hence my optimism. And to alter now, cleanly and sanely, I want to shuffle off this loose living randomness: people; reviews; fame; all the glittering scales; and be withdrawn, and concentrated. So I shan't run about, just yet, buying
clothes, seeing people. We are off to Leicester tomorrow, to the Labour Party Conference. Then back to the fever of publishing. My
C.R.
doesn't cause me a single tremor. Nor Holtby's book.
^*
I'm interested in watching what goes on for the moment without wishing to take part—a good frame of mind when one's conscious of power. Then I am backed now by the downs: the country: how happy L. and I are at Rodmell: what a free life that is—sweeping 30 or 40 miles; coming in when and how we like; sleeping in the empty house; dealing triumphantly with interruptions; and diving daily into that divine loveliness—always some walk; and the gulls on the purple plough; or going over to Tarring Neville—these are the flights I most love now—in the wide, the indifferent air. No being jerked, teased, tugged. And people come easily, flowering into intimacy in my room. But this is the past, or future. I am also reading D. H. L.
^†
with the usual sense of frustration: and that he and I have too much in common—the same pressure to be ourselves: so that I don't escape when I read him: am suspended: what I want is to be made free of another world. This Proust does. To me Lawrence is airless, confined: I don't want this, I go on saying. And the repetition of one idea. I don't want that either. I don't want "a philosophy" in the least: I don't believe in other people's reading of riddles. What I enjoy (in the Letters) is the sudden visualisation: the great ghost springing over the wave (of the spray in Cornwall) but I get no satisfaction from his explanations of what he sees. And then it's harrowing: this panting effort after something: and "I have £6.10 left" and then Government hoofing him out, like a toad: and banning his book: the brutality of civilised society to this panting agonised man: and how futile it was. All this makes a sort of gasping in his letters. And none of it seems essential. So he pants and jerks. Then too I don't like strumming with two fingers—and the arrogance. After all, English has one million words: why confine yourself to 6? and praise yourself for so doing. But it's the preaching that rasps me. Like a person delivering judgment when only
half the facts are there: and clinging to the rails and beating the cushion. Come out and see what's up here—I want to say. I mean it's so barren: so easy: giving advice on a system. The moral is, if you want to help, never systematise—not till you're 70: and have been supple and sympathetic and creative and tried out all your nerves and scopes. He died though at 45. And why does Aldous say he was an "artist"? Art is being rid of all preaching: things in themselves: the sentence in itself beautiful: multitudinous seas; daifodils that come before the swallow dares: whereas Lawrence would only say what proved something. I haven't read him of course. But in the Letters he can't listen beyond a point; must give advice; get you into the system too. Hence his attraction for those who want to be fitted: which I don't; indeed I think it a blasphemy this fitting of Carswells into a Lawrence system. So much more reverent to leave them alone: nothing else to reverence except the Carswellism of Carswell. Hence his schoolboy tweaking and smacking of anyone offered to him: Lytton, Bertie, Squire—all are suburban, unclean. His ruler coming down and measuring them. Why all this criticism of other people? Why not some system that includes the good? What a discovery that would be—a system that did not shut out.

Wednesday, November 2nd

He is a rattle headed, bolt eyed young man, raw boned, loose jointed, who thinks himself the greatest poet of all time. I daresay he is—it's not a subject that interests me enormously at the moment. What does? My own writing of course. I've just polished up the
L.S.
for
The Times
—a good one, I think, considering the currents that sway round that subject in
The Times
of all papers. And I have entirely remodelled my "Essay." It's to be an Essay-Novel, called
The Pargiters
^*
—and it's to take in everything, sex, education, life etc.: and come, with the most powerful and agile leaps, like a chamois, across precipices from 1880 to here and now. That's the notion anyhow, and I have been in such a haze and dream and intoxication,
declaiming phrases, seeing scenes, as I walk up Southampton Row that I can hardly say I have been alive at all, since 10th October.

Everything is running of its own accord into the stream, as with
Orlando.
What has happened of course is that after abstaining from the novel of fact all these years—since 1919—and
N. & D.
is dead—I find myself infinitely delighting in facts for a change, and in possession of quantities beyond counting: though I feel now and then the tug to vision, but resist it. This is the true line, I am sure, after
The Waves—The Pargiters
—this is what leads naturally on to the next stages—the essay-novel.

Monday, December 19th

Yes, today I have written myself to the verge of total extinction. Praised be I can stop and wallow in coolness and downs and let the wheels of my mind—how I beg them to do this—cool and slow and stop altogether. I shall take up
Flush
again, to cool myself. By Heaven, I have written 60,320 words since October 11th. I think this must be far the quickest going of any of my books: comes far ahead of
Orlando
or the
Lighthouse.
But then those 60 thousand will have to be sweated and dried into 30 or 40 thousand—a great grind to come. Never mind. I have secured the outline and fixed a shape for the rest. I feel, for the first time, No I mustn't take risks crossing the road, till the book is done....

Yes, I will be free and entire and absolute and mistress of my life by October 1st, 1933. Nobody shall come here on their terms; or haul me off to them on theirs. Oh and I shall write a poet's book next. This one, however, releases such a torrent of fact as I did not know I had in me. I must have been observing and collecting these 20 years—since
Jacob's Room
anyhow. Such a wealth of things seen present themselves that I can't choose even—hence 60,000 words all about one paragraph. What I must do is to keep control; and not be too sarcastic; and keep the right degree of freedom and reserve. But oh how easy this writing is compared with
The Waves!
I wonder what the degree of carat-gold is in the two books. Of course this is external: but there's a good deal of gold—more
than I'd thought—in externality. Anyhow, "what care I for my goose feather bed? I'm off to join the raggle taggle gipsies oh!" The gipsies, I say: not Hugh Walpole and Priestley—no. In truth
The Pargiters
is first cousin to
Orlando,
though the cousin is the flesh:
Orlando
taught me the trick of it. Now—oh but I must stop for 10 days at least—no 14—if not 21 days—now I must compose the 1880-1900 chapter, which needs skill. But I like applying skill I own. I am going to polish off my jobs: and tomorrow we go. A very fruitful varied and I think successful autumn—thanks partly to my tired heart: so I could impose terms: and I have never lived in such a race, such a dream, such a violent impulsion and compulsion—scarcely seeing anything but
The Pargiters.

R
ODMELL.
Friday, December 23rd

This is not the first day of the New Year: but the discrepancy may be forgiven.
^*
I must write off my dejected rambling misery—having just read over the 30,000 words of
Flush
and come to the conclusion that they won't do. Oh what a waste—what a bore! Four months of work and heaven knows how much reading—not of an exalted kind either—and I can't see how to make anything of it. It's not the right subject for that length: it's too slight and too serious. Much good in it but would have to be much better. So here I am two days before Christmas pitched into one of my grey welters. True, it's partly over writing
The Pargiters.
But I can't get back into
Flush
ever, I feel: and L. will be disappointed; and the money loss too—that's a bore. I took it up impetuously after
The Waves
by way of a change: no forethought in me: and so got landed: it would need a month's hard work—and even then I doubt it. In that time I might have done Dryden and Pope. And I'm thus led to begin—no to end—the year with a doleful plaint. It is blazing hot; like spring, with the bees on the flowers. Never mind; this is not a reverse of the first order—not at all.

This is in fact the last day of 1932, but I am so tired of polishing off
Flush
—such a pressure on the brain is caused by doing ten pages daily—that I am taking a morning off and shall use it here, in my lazy way, to sum up the whole of life ... the dew pond is filling; the goldfish are dead; it is a clear pale blue eyed winter's day; and and—and my thoughts turn with excitement to
The Pargiters,
for I long to feel my sails blow out and to be careering with Elvira, Maggie and the rest over the whole of human life. And indeed I cannot sum this up, being tired in my head.

January 3rd, 1933

This is a little out of place,
^*
but then so am I. We are up for Angelica's party last night and I have half an hour to spend before shooting in the new Lanchester (not ours—one lent) back to Rodmell. We have been there just short of one fortnight and I ate myself into the heart of print and solitude—so as to adumbrate a headache. And to wipe off the intensity of concentration trying to re-write that abominable dog
Flush
in 13 days, so as to be free—oh heavenly freedom—to write
The Pargiters.
I insisted upon a night of chatter.

Thursday, January 5th

I am so delighted with my own ingenuity in having after only ten years or so, made myself, in five minutes, a perfect writing board, with pen tray attached, so that I can't ever again fly into a fury bereft of ink and pen at the most critical moment of a writer's life and see my sudden sentence dissipate itself all for lack of a pen handy—and besides I'm so glad to be quit
of page 100 of
Flush
—this the third time of writing that White-chapel scene, and I doubt if it's worth it, that I can't help disporting myself on this free blue page, which thank God in heaven, needs no re-writing. It is a wet misty day: my windows out here are all fog ... if only because I'm in sublime reading fettle: seriously I believe that the strain of
The Waves
weakened my concentration for months—and then all that article compressing for the
C.R.
I am now at the height of my powers in that line, and have read, with close and powerful attention, some 12 or 15 books since I came here. What a joy—what a sense as of a Rolls Royce engine once more purring its 70 miles an hour in my brain.... I am also encouraged to read by the feeling that I am on the flood of creativeness in
The Pargiters
—what a liberation that gives one—as if everything added to that torrent—all books become fluid and swell the stream. But I daresay this is a sign only that I'm doing what is rather superficial and hasty and eager. I don't know. I've another week of
Flush
here, and then shall come to grips with my 20 years in one chapter problem. I visualise this book now as a curiously uneven time sequence—a series of great balloons, linked by straight narrow passages of narrative. I can take liberties with the representational form which I could not dare when I wrote
Night and Day—a.
book that taught me much, bad though it may be.