A Writer's Diary (37 page)

No, I am not going to titivate Gibbon—that is condense by a thousand words. Too much screw needed, and my brain unstrung. Merely scribbling here: over a log fire, on a cold but bright Easter morning; sudden shafts of sun, a scatter of snow on the hills early; sudden storms, ink black, octopus pouring, coming up; and the rooks fidgeting and pecking on the elm trees. As for the beauty, as I always say when I walk the terrace after breakfast, too much for one pair of eyes. Enough to float a whole population in happiness, if only they would look. Curiously a combination, this garden, with the church, and the cross of the church black against Asheham Hill. That is all the elements of the English brought together, accidentally. We came down on Thursday, packed in the rush in London; cars spinning all along the roads: yesterday at last perfect freedom from telephones and reviews, and no one rang up. I began
Lord Ormont and his Aminta
and found it so rich, so knotted, so alive, and muscular after the pale little fiction I'm used to, that, alas, it made me wish to write fiction again. Meredith underrated. I like his effort to escape plain prose. And he had humour and some insight too—more than they allow him now. Also Gibbon. And so I'm well fitted out; but
can't write more than this without the old tightening and throbbing at the back of the head.

Friday, April 2nd

How I interest myself! Quite set up and perky today with a mind brimming because I was so damnably depressed and smacked on the cheek by Edwin Muir in the
Listener
and by Scott James in the
Life and Letters
on Friday. They both gave me a smart snubbing: E. M. says
The Years
is dead and disappointing. So in effect did'S. James. All the lights sank; my reed bent to the ground. Dead and disappointing—so I'm found out and that odious rice pudding of a book is what I thought it—a dank failure. No life in it. Much inferior to the bitter truth and intense originality of Miss Compton Burnett. Now this pain woke me at 4
A.M.
and I suffered acutely. All day driving to Janet and back I was under the cloud. But about 7 it lifted; there was a good review, of 4 lines, in the
Empire Review.
The best of my books: did that help? I don't think very much. But the delight of being exploded is quite real. One feels braced for some reason; amused; round; combative; more than by praise.

Saturday, April 3rd

Now I have to broadcast on 29th. It will go like this: can't be a craft of words. Am going to disregard the title and talk about words: why they won't let themselves be made a craft of. They tell the truth: they aren't useful. That there should be two languages: fiction and fact. Words are inhuman ... won't make money—need privacy. Why. For their embraces, to continue the race. A dead word. The purists and the im-purists. These are only impressions, not fixations. I respect words too. Associations of words. Felicity brings in absent thee. We can easily make new words. Squish squash: crick crack. But we can't use them in writing.

Sunday, April 4th

Another curious idiosyncrasy. Maynard thinks
The Years
my best book: thinks one scene, E. and Crosby, beats Tchekov's
Cherry Orchard
—and this opinion though from the centre, from a very fine mind, doesn't flutter me as much as Muir's blame; it sinks in slowly and deeply. It's not a vanity feeling; the other is; the other will die as soon as the week's number of the
Listener
is past. L. went to Tilton and had a long quiet cronies talk. Maynard said that he thought
The Years
very moving: more tender than any of my books: did not puzzle him like
The Waves;
symbolism not a worry; very beautiful; and no more said than was needed; hadn't yet finished it. But how compose the two opinions; it's my most human book; and most inhuman? Oh to forget all this and write—as I must tomorrow.

Friday, April 9th

"Such happiness wherever it is known is to be pitied for tis surely blind." Yes, but my happiness isn't blind. That is the achievement, I was thinking between 3 and 4 this morning, of my 55 years. I lay awake so calm, so content, as if I'd stepped off the whirling world into a deep blue quiet space and there open eyed existed, beyond harm; armed against all that can happen. I have never had this feeling before in all my life; but I have had it several times since last summer: when I reached it, in my worst depression, as if I stepped out, throwing aside a cloak, lying in bed, looking at the stars, these nights at Monks House. Of course it ruffles, in the day, but there it is. There it was yesterday when old Hugh came and said nothing about
The Years.

M
ONKS
H
OUSE.
Monday, June 1st

I have at last got going with
Three Guineas—niter
five days' grind, re-copying, to some extent re-writing; my poor old brain hums again—largely I think because I had a good long walk yesterday and so routed the drowse—it was very hot. At any rate I must use this page as a running ground—for I can't screw all the three hours; I must relax and race here the last hour. That's the worst of writing—its waste. What can I do with the last hour of my morning? Dante again. But oh how my heart leaps up to think that never again shall I be harnessed
to a long book. No. Always short ones in future. The long book still won't be altogether downed—its reverberations grumble. Did I say—no, the London days were too tight, too hot, and distracted for this book—that H. Brace wrote and said they were happy to find that
The Years
is the best-selling novel in America? This was confirmed by my place at the head of the list in the
Herald Tribune.
They have sold 25,000—my record, easily. (Now I am dreaming of
Three Guineas
.) We think if we make money of buying perhaps an annuity. The great desirable is not to have to earn money by writing. I am doubtful if I shall ever write another novel. Certainly not unless under great compulsion such as
The Years
inspired in me. Were I another person, I would say to myself, Please write criticism; biography; invent a new form for both; also write some completely unformal fiction: short: and poetry. Fate has here a hand in it, for when I've done
Three Guineas
—which I hope to have written, not yet for publication though, in August—I intend to put the script aside and write Roger. What I think best would be to work hard at
Three Guineas
for a month—June: then begin reading and re-reading my Roger notes. By the way, I have been sharply abused in
Scrutiny
who, L. says, calls me a cheat in
The Waves
and
The Years;
most intelligently (and highly) praised by F. Faulkner in America—and that's all. (I mean that's all I need I think write about reviews now: I suspect the clever young man is going to enjoy downing me—so be it: but in private Sally Graves and Stephen Spender approve: so, to sum up, I don't know, this is honest, where I stand; but intend to think no more of it. Gibbon was rejected by the
N. Republic
, so I shall send no more to America. Nor will I write articles at all except for the
Lit. Sup.
for whom I am going now to do Congreve.)

Monday, June 14th
The Years
still is top of the list.

Monday July 12th.
The Years
is still top of the list and has been weekly.

August 23rd.
Years
now 2nd or 3rd. 9 editions.

Yesterday, October 22nd, it was last on the list.

Tuesday, June 22nd

Isn't it shameful to write here first thing, not to tackle Congreve? But my brain after talking to Miss Sarton, to Murray, to Ann gave out after dinner, so that I couldn't read
Love for Love.
And I won't do
Three Guineas
till Monday—till I've had a quiet breather. Then the Prof. Chapter: then the final. So now to draw the blood off that brain to another part—according to H. Nicolson's prescription, which is the right one. I would like to write a dream story about the top of a mountain. Now why? About lying in the snow; about rings of colour; silence; and the solitude. I can't though. But shan't I, one of these days, indulge myself in some short releases into that world? Short now for ever. No more long grinds: only sudden intensities. If I could think out another adventure. Oddly enough I see it now ahead of me—in Charing Cross Road yesterday—as to do with books: some new combination. Brighton? A round room on the pier—and people shopping, missing each other—a story Angelica told in the summer. But how does this make up with criticism? I'm trying to get the four dimensions of the mind ... life in connection with emotions from literature. A day's walk—a mind's adventure; something like that. And it's useless to repeat my old experiments: they must be new to be experiments.

Wednesday, June 23rd

It's ill writing after reading
Love for Love—a.
masterpiece. I never knew how good it is. And what exhilaration there is in reading these masterpieces. This superb hard English! Yes, always keep the classics at hand to prevent flop. I can't write out my feeling, though; must decant it tomorrow in an article. But neither can I settle to read poor Rosemary's verses, as I should with a view to this evening. How could L. S. in
D.N.B.
deny C. feeling, pain—more in that one play than in all Thackeray: and the indecency often honesty. But enough—I went shopping, whitebait hunting, to Selfridges yesterday and it grew roasting hot and I was in black—such astonishing chops and changes this summer—often one's caught in a storm, frozen or roasted. As I reached 52, a long trail of fugitives—like a
caravan in a desert—came through the square: Spaniards flying from Bilbao, which has fallen, I suppose. Somehow brought tears to my eyes, though no one seemed surprised. Children trudging along; women in London cheap jackets with gay handkerchiefs on their heads, young men, and all carrying either cheap cases, and bright blue enamel kettles, very large, and canisters, fitted I suppose with gifts from some charity—a shuffling trudging procession, flying—impelled by machine gun in Spanish fields to trudge through Tavistock Square, along Gordon Square, then where?—clasping their enamel kettles. A strange spectacle. They went on, knowing which way: I suppose someone directed them. One boy was chatting, the others absorbed, like people on the trek. A reason why we can't write like Congreve I suppose.

Sunday, July 11th

A gap: not in life, but in comment. I have been in full flood every morning with
Three Guineas.
Whether I shall finish by August becomes doubtful. But I am in the middle of my magic bubble. Had I time I would like to describe the curious glance of the world—the pale disillusioned world—that I get so violently now and then, when the wall thins—either I'm tired or interrupted. Then I think of Julian near Madrid: and so on. Margaret LI. Davies writes that Janet
^*
is dying, and will I write on her for
The Times—a.
curious thought, rather: as if it mattered who wrote, or not. But this flooded me with the idea of Janet yesterday. I think writing, my writing, is a species of mediumship. I become the person.

Monday, July 19th

Just back from M.H. but I
can't
and
won't
write anything—too bothered and dithered. Also, I screwed my head tight—too tight—knocking together a little obituary of Janet for
The Times.
And couldn't make it take the folds well: too stiff and mannered. She died. Three notes from Emphie
^†
this morning. She died on Thursday, shut her eyes and "looks so
beautiful." Today they are cremating her, and she had had printed a little funeral service—with the death day left blank. No words: an adagio from Beethoven and a text about gentleness and faith which I would have included had I known. But what does my writing matter? There is something fitting and complete about the memory of her, thus consummated. Dear old harum scarum Emphie will have her solitary moments to herself. To us she will always be a scatterbrain; yet to me very touching and I remember that phrase in her letter, how she ran into Janet's room at midnight, and they had a nice little time together. She was always running in. Janet was the steadfast contemplative one, anchored in some private faith which didn't correspond with the world's. But she was oddly inarticulate. No hand for words. Her letters, save that the last began "My beloved Virginia," always cool and casual. And how I loved her, at Hyde Park Gate: and how I went hot and cold going to Windmill Hill: and how great a visionary part she has played in my life, till the visionary became a part of the fictitious, not of the real life.

Friday, August 6th

Will another novel ever swim up? If so, how? The only hint I have towards it is that it's to be dialogue: and poetry: and prose; all quite distinct. No more long closely written books. But I have no impulse; and shall wait; and shan't mind if the impulse never formulates; though I suspect one of these days I shall get that old rapture. I don't want to write more fiction. I want to explore a new criticism. One thing I think proved, I shall never write to "please," to convert; now am entirely and for ever my own mistress.

Tuesday, August 17th

Not much to say. It's true, the only life this summer is in the brain. I get excited writing. Three hours pass like 10 minutes. This morning I had a moment of the old rapture—think of it!—over copying
The Duchess and the Jeweller
for Chambrun, N.Y. I had to send a synopsis. I expect he'll regret the
synopsis. But there was the old excitement, even in that little extravagant flash—more than in criticism I think.

Happily—if that's the word—I get these electric shocks—Cables asking me to write. Chambrun offer £500 for a 9,000 word story. And I at once begin making up adventures—ten days of adventures—a man rowing with black knitted stockings on his arms. Do I ever write, even here, for my own eye? If not, for whose eye? An interesting question, rather.

L
ONDON.
Tuesday, October 12th