A Writer's Diary (15 page)

Friday, January 14th

This is out of order, but I have no new book and so must record here (and it was here I recorded the beginning of the
Lighthouse
) must record here the end. This moment I have finished the final drudgery. It is now complete for Leonard to read on Monday. Thus I have done it some days under the year and feel thankful to be out of it again. Since October 25th I have been revising and retyping (some parts three times over) and no doubt I should work at it again; but I cannot. What I feel is that it is a hard muscular book, which at this age proves that I have something in me. It has not run out and gone flabby: at least such is my feeling before reading it over.

Sunday, January 23rd

Well Leonard has read
To the Lighthouse
and says it is much my best book and it is a "masterpiece." He said this without my asking. I came back from Knole and sat without asking him. He calls it entirely new—'a psychological poem' is his name for it. An improvement upon
Dalloway;
more interesting. Having won this great relief, my mind dismisses the whole thing, as usual, and I forget it and shall only wake up and be worried again over proofs and then when it appears.

Saturday, February 12th

X's prose is too fluent. I've been reading it and it makes my pen run. When I've read a classic I am curbed and—not castrated; no, the opposite; I can't think of the word at the moment. Had I been writing "Y—" I should have run off whole pools of this coloured water; and then (I think) found my own method of attack. It is my distinction as a writer I think to get this clear and my expression exact. Were I writing travels I should wait till some angle emerged and go for that. The method of writing smooth narration can't be right; things don't happen in one's mind like that. But she is very skilful and golden voiced. This makes me think that I have to read
To the Lighthouse
tomorrow and Monday, straight through in print; straight through, owing to my curious methods, for the first time. I want to read largely and freely once; then to niggle over details. I may note that the first symptoms of
Lighthouse
are unfavourable. Roger it is clear did not like "Time Passes"; Harpers and the Forum have refused serial rights; Brace writes, I think, a good deal less enthusiastically than of
Mrs. D.
But these opinions refer to the rough copy, unrevised. And anyhow I feel callous: L.'s opinion keeps me steady; I'm neither one thing nor the other.

Monday, February 21st

Why not invent a new kind of play; as for instance:

Woman thinks ...
He does.
Organ plays.
She writes.
They say:
She sings.
Night speaks
They miss

I think it must be something on this line—though I can't now see what. Away from facts; free; yet concentrated; prose yet poetry; a novel and a play.

Monday, February 28th

But I intend to work harder and harder. If they—the re-spectables, my friends, advise me against the
Lighthouse,
I shall write memoirs; have a plan already to get historical manuscripts and write
Lives of the Obscure;
but why do I pretend I should take advice? After a holiday the old ideas will come to me as usual; seeming fresher, more important than ever;
and I shall be off again, feeling that extraordinary exhilaration, that ardour and lust of creation—which is odd, if what I create is, as it well may be, wholly bad.

Monday, March 14th

Faith Henderson
^*
came to tea; and, valiantly beating the waters of conversation, I sketched the possibilities which an unattractive woman, penniless, alone, might yet bring into being. I began imagining the position—how she would stop a motor on the Dover road and so get to Dover; cross the channel etc. It struck me, vaguely, that I might write a Defoe narrative for fun. Suddenly between twelve and one I conceived a whole fantasy to be called "The Jessamy Brides"—why, I wonder? I have rayed round it several scenes. Two women, poor, solitary at the top of a house. One can see anything (for this is all fantasy) the Tower Bridge, clouds, aeroplanes. Also old men listening in the room over the way. Everything is to be tumbled in pell mell. It is to be written as I write letters at the top of my speed; on the ladies of Llangollen; on Mrs. Fladgate; on people passing. No attempt is to be made to realise the character. Sapphism is to be suggested. Satire is to be the main note—satire and wildness. The ladies are to have Constantinople in view. Dreams of golden domes. My own lyric vein is to be satirised. Everything mocked. And it is to end with three dots ... so. For the truth is I feel the need of an escapade after these serious poetic experimental books leading whose form is always so closely considered. I want to kick up my heels and be off. I want to embody all those innumerable little ideas and tiny stories which flash into my mind at all seasons. I think this will be great fun to write; and it will rest my head before starting the very serious, mystical poetical work which I want to come next. Meanwhile, before I can touch the
Jessamy Brides,
I have to write my book on fiction and that won't be done till January, I suppose. I might dash off a page or two now and then by way of experiment. And it is possible that the idea will evaporate. Anyhow this records the odd horrid unexpected way in which these things suddenly create themselves—one thing on top of another in about an hour. So I made up
Jacob's Room
looking at the fire at Hogarth House; so I made up the
Lighthouse
one afternoon in the Square here.

Orlando
leading to
The Waves.
(8 July 1933).

Monday, March 21st

My brain is ferociously active. I want to have at my books as if I were conscious of the lapse of time; age and death. Dear me, how lovely some parts of the
Lighthouse
are! Soft and pliable, and I think deep, and never a word wrong for a page at a time. This I feel about the dinner party and the children in the boat; but not of Lily on the lawn. That I do not much like. But I like the end.

Sunday, May 1st

And then I remember how my book is coming out. People will say I am irreverent—people will say a thousand things. But I think, honestly, I care very little this time—even for the opinion of my friends. I am not sure if it is good; I was disappointed when I read it through the first time. Later I liked it. Anyhow it is the best I can do. But would it be a good thing to read my things when they are printed, critically? It is encouraging that in spite of obscurity, affectation and so on my sales rise steadily. We have sold, already, 1220 before publication, and I think it will be about 1500, which for a writer like I am is not bad. Yet, to show I am genuine, I find myself thinking of other things with absorption and forgetting that it will be out on Thursday.

Thursday, May 5th

Book out. We have sold (I think) 1690 before publication—twice
Dalloway.
I write however in the shadow of the damp cloud of
The Times Lit. Sup.
review, which is an exact copy of the
J.'s R., Mrs. Dalloway
review, gentlemanly, kindly, timid, praising beauty, doubting character, and leaving me moderately depressed. I am anxious about "Time Passes." Think the whole thing may be pronounced soft, shallow, insipid, sentimental. Yet, honestly, I don't much care; want to be let alone to ruminate.

Wednesday, May 11th

My book. What is the use of saying one is indifferent to reviews when positive praise, though mingled with blame, gives one such a start on, that instead of feeling dried up, one feels, on the contrary, flooded with ideas? I gather from vague hints, through Margery Joad, through Clive, that some people say it is my best book. So far Vita praises; Dotty
^*
enthuses; an unknown donkey writes. No one has yet read it to the end, I daresay; and I shall hover about, not anxious but worried for two more weeks, when it will be over.

Monday, May 16th

The book. Now on its feet so far as praise is concerned. It has been out 10 days: Thursday a week ago. Nessa enthusiastic—a sublime, almost upsetting spectacle. She says it is an amazing portrait of mother; a supreme portrait painter; has lived in it; found the rising of the dead almost painful. Then Ottoline, then Vita, then Charlie, then Lord Olivier, then Tommie, then Clive.

Saturday, June 18th

This is a terribly thin diary for some reason. Half the year has been spent and left only these few sheets. Perhaps I have been writing too hard in the morning to write here also. Three weeks wiped out by headache. We had a week at Rodmell, of which I remember various sights, suddenly unfolding before me spontaneously (for example, the village standing out to sea in the June night, houses seeming ships; the marsh a fiery foam) and the immense comfort of lying there lapped in peace. I lay out all day in the new garden, with the terrace. It is already being made. There were blue tits nested in the hollow neck of my Venus. Vita came over one very hot afternoon and we walked to the river with her. Pinker
^†
now swims after Leonard's stick. I read—any trash; Maurice Baring; sporting memoirs. Slowly ideas began trickling in; and then suddenly I rhapsodised (the night L. dined with the Apostles) and told over the story of the Moths, which I think I will write very quickly, perhaps in between chapters of that long impending book on fiction. Now the Moths will I think fill out the skeleton which I dashed in here; the play-poem idea; the idea of some continuous stream, not solely of human thought, but of the ship, the night etc., all flowing together: intersected by the arrival of the bright moths. A man and a woman are to be sitting at table talking. Or shall they remain silent? It is to be a love story; she is finally to let the last great moth in. The contrasts might be something of this sort; she might talk, or think, about the age of the earth; the death of humanity; then the moths keep on coming. Perhaps the man could be left absolutely dim. France: hear the sea; at night; a garden under the window. But it needs ripening. I do a little work on it in the evening when the gramophone is playing late Beethoven sonatas. (The windows fidget at their fastenings as if we were at sea.)

The Waves.

We saw Vita given the Hawthornden. A horrid show up, I thought: not of the gentry on the platform—Squire, Drinkwater, Binyon only—of us all; all of us chattering writers. My wordl how insignificant we all looked! How can we pretend that we are interesting, that our works matter? The whole business of writing became infinitely distasteful. There was no one I could care whether he read, liked, or disliked "my writing." And no one could care for my criticism either; the mildness, the conventionality of them all struck me. But there may be a stream of ink in them that matters more than the look of them—so tightly clothed, mild and decorous—showed. I felt there was no one full grown mind among us. In truth, it was the thick dull middle class of letters that met, not the aristocracy.

Wednesday
,
June 22nd

Women haters depress me and both Tolstoi and Mrs. Asquith hate women. I suppose my depression is a form of vanity. But then so are all strong opinions on both sides. I hate Mrs. A's hard, dogmatic empty style. But enough: I shall write about her tomorrow. I write every day about something and have deliberately set apart a few weeks to money-making, so that I may put £50 in each of our pockets by September. This will be the first money of my own since I married. I never felt the need of it till lately. And I can get it, if I want it, but shirk writing for money.

Thursday, June 23rd

This diary shall batten on the leanness of my social life. Never have I spent so quiet a London summer. It is perfectly easy to slip out of the crush unobserved. I have set up my standard as an invalid and no one bothers me. No one asks me to do anything. Vainly, I have the feeling that this is of my choice, not theirs; and there is a luxury in being quiet in the heart of chaos. Directly I talk and exert my wits in talk I get a dull damp rather headachy day. Quiet brings me cool clear quick mornings, in which I dispose of a good deal of work and toss my brain into the air when I take a walk. I shall feel some triumph if I skirt a headache this summer.

Thursday, June 30th

Now I must sketch out the Eclipse.

About 10 on Tuesday night several very long trains, accurately filled (ours with civil servants) left Kings Cross. In our carriage were Vita, Harold, Quentin, L. and I. This is Hatfield I daresay, I said. I was smoking a cigar. Then again, This is Peterborough, L. said. Before it got dark we kept looking at the sky; soft fleecy; but there was one star, over Alexandra Park. Look, Vita, that's Alexandra Park, said Harold. The Nicolsons got sleepy; H. curled up with his head on V.'s knee. She looked like Sappho by Leighton, asleep; so we plunged through the midlands; made a very long stay at York. Then at 3 we got out our sandwiches and I came in from the W.C. to find Harold being rubbed clean of cream. Then he broke the china sandwich box. Here L. laughed without restraint. Then we had another doze, or the N.'s did; then here was a level crossing, at which were drawn up a long line of motor omnibuses and motors, all burning pale yellow lights. It was getting grey—still
a fleecy mottled sky. We got to Richmond about 3:30; it was cold and the N.'s had a quarrel, Eddie said, about V.'s luggage. We went off in the omnibus, saw a vast castle (who does that belong to, said Vita, who is interested in castles). It had a front window added and a light I think burning. All the fields were aburn with June grasses and red tasselled plants none coloured as yet, all pale. Pale and grey too were the little uncompromising Yorkshire farms. As we passed one, the farmer and his wife and sister came out, all tightly and tidily dressed in black, as if they were going to church. At another ugly square farm, two women were looking out of the upper windows. These had white blinds drawn down half across them. We were a train of 3 vast cars, one stopping to let the others go on; all very low and powerful; taking immensely steep hills. The driver once got out and put a small stone behind our wheel—inadequate. An accident would have been natural; there were also many motor cars. These suddenly increased as we crept up to the top of Bardon Fell. Here were people camping beside their cars. We got out and found ourselves very high, on a moor, boggy, heathery, with butts for grouse shooting. There were grass tracks here and there and people had already taken up positions. So we joined them, walking out to what seemed the highest point looking over Richmond. One light burned down there. Vales and moors stretched, slope after slope, round us. It was like the Haworth country. But over Richmond, where the sun was rising, was a soft grey cloud. We could see by a gold spot where the sun was. But it was early yet. We had to wait, stamping to keep warm. Ray had wrapped herself in the blue striped blanket off a double bed. She looked incredibly vast and bedroomish. Saxon looked very old. Leonard kept looking at his watch. Four great red setters came leaping over the moor. There were sheep feeding behind us. Vita had tried to buy a guinea pig—Quentin advised a savage—so she observed the animals from time to time. There were thin places in the clouds and some complete holes. The question was whether the sun would show through a cloud or through one of these hollow places when the time came. We began to get anxious. We saw rays coming through the bottom of the clouds. Then,
for a moment, we saw the sun, sweeping—it seemed to be sailing at a great pace and clear in a gap; we had out our smoked glasses; we saw it crescent, burning red; next moment it had sailed fast into the cloud again; only the red streamers came from it; then only a golden haze, such as one has often seen. The moments were passing. We thought we were cheated; we looked at the sheep; they showed no fear; the setters were racing round; everyone was standing in long lines, rather dignified, looking out. I thought how we were like very old people, in the birth of the world—druids on Stonehenge; (this idea came more vividly in the first pale light though). At the back of us were great blue spaces in the cloud. These were still blue. But now the colour was going out. The clouds were turning pale; a reddish black colour. Down in the valley it was an extraordinary scrumble of red and black; there was the one light burning; all was cloud down there, and very beautiful, so delicately tinted. Nothing could be seen through the cloud. The 24 seconds were passing. Then one looked back again at the blue; and rapidly, very very quickly, all the colours faded; it became darker and darker as at the beginning of a violent storm; the light sank and sank; we kept saying this is the shadow; and we thought now it is over—this is the shadow; when suddenly the light went out. We had fallen. It was extinct. There was no colour. The earth was dead. That was the astonishing moment; and the next when as if a ball had rebounded the cloud took colour on itself again, only a sparky ethereal colour and so the light came back. I had very strongly the feeling as the light went out of some vast obeisance; something kneeling down and suddenly raised up when the colours came. They came back astonishingly lightly and quickly and beautifully in the valley and over the hills—at first with a miraculous glittering and ethereality, later normally almost, but with a great sense of relief. It was like recovery. We had been much worse than we had expected. We had seen the world dead. This was within the power of nature. Our greatness had been apparent too. Now we became Ray in a blanket, Saxon in a cap etc. We were bitterly cold. I should say that the cold had increased as the light went down. One felt very livid. Then—it was over till 1999. What remained was the sense of the comfort which we get used to, of plenty of light, and colour. This for some time seemed a definitely welcome thing. Yet when it became established all over the country, one rather missed the sense of its being a relief and a respite, which one had had when it came back after the darkness. How can I express the darkness? It was a sudden plunge, when one did not expect it; being at the mercy of the sky; our own nobility; the druids; Stonehenge; and the racing red dogs; all that was in one's mind. Also, to be picked out of one's London drawing room and set down on the wildest moors in England, was impressive. For the rest, I remember trying to keep awake in the gardens at York while Eddy talked and falling asleep. Asleep again in the train. It was hot and we were messy. The carriage was full of things. Harold was very kind and attentive. Eddy was peevish. Roast beef and pineapple chunks, he said. We got home at 8:30 perhaps.