A Writer's Diary (26 page)

Sunday, January 15th

I have come out here, our last morning, to write letters, so, naturally, I write this book. But then I haven't written a line these three weeks—only typed
Flush,
which, Heaven be praised, I "finished," almost without inverted commas, yesterday. Ah but my writing
Flush
has been gradually shoved out, as by a cuckoo born in the nest, by
The Pargiters.
How odd the mind's functions are! About a week ago, I began the making up of scenes—unconsciously: saying phrases to myself; and so, for a week, I've sat here, staring at the typewriter and speaking aloud phrases of
The Pargiters.
This becomes more and more maddening. It will however all be run off in a few days, when I let myself write again. I am reading Parnell. Yes; but this
scene making increases the rate of my heart with uncomfortable rapidity. While I was forcing myself to do
Flush
my old headache came back—for the first time this autumn. Why should the
Ps.
make my heart jump; why should
Flush
stiffen the back of my neck? What connection has the brain with the body? Nobody in Harley Street could explain, yet the symptoms are purely physical and as distinct as one book is from the other.

Thursday, January 19th

It must be confessed that
The Pargiters
are like cuckoos in my nest—which should be
Flush.
I have only 50 pages to correct and send to Mabel; and these cursed scenes and dialogues will go on springing up in my head; and after correcting one page, I sit mooning for 20 minutes. I daresay this will increase the blood pressure when I come to write. But it is a tiresome bewildering distraction now.

Saturday, January 21st

Well,
Flush
lingers on and I cannot despatch him. That's the sad truth. I always see something I could press tighter or enwrap more completely. There's no trifling with words—can't be done: not when they're to stand "forever." So I am battening down my
Pargiters,
say till Wednesday—it shan't be later, I swear. And now I grow doubtful of the value of those figures. I'm afraid of the didactic: perhaps it was only that spurious passion that made me rattle away before Christmas. Anyhow I enjoyed it immensely and shall again—oh to be free, in fiction, making up my scenes again—however discreetly. Such is my cry this very fine cold January morning.

Thursday, January 26th

Well,
Flush
is, I swear, despatched. Nobody can say I don't take trouble with my little stories. And now, having bent my mind for 5 weeks sternly this way, I must unbend it the other—the Pargiter way. No critic ever gives full weight to the desire of the mind for change. Talk of being manysided—naturally one must go the other way. Now if I ever had the wits to go
into the Shakespeare business I believe one would find the same law there—tragedy comedy and so on. Looming behind
The Pargiters
I can just see the shape of pure poetry beckoning me. But
The Pargiters
is a delightful solid possession to be enjoyed tomorrow. How bad I shall find it.

Thursday, February 2nd

Not that I much want a move in March, with
The Pargiters
on my hands. I am going however to work largely, spaciously, fruitfully on that book. Today I finished—rather more completely than usual—revising the first chapter. I am leaving out the interchapters—compacting them in the text: and project an appendix of dates. A good idea? And Galsworthy died two days ago, it suddenly struck me, walking just now by the Serpentine after calling on Mrs. W. (who's been dying—is recovering) with the gulls opening their scimitars—masses of gulls. Galsworthy's dead: and A. Bennett told me he simply couldn't stick Galsworthy. Had to praise Jack's books to Mrs. G. But I could say what I liked against Galsworthy. That stark man lies dead.

Saturday, March 25th

It is an utterly corrupt society I have just remarked, speaking in the person of Elvira Pargiter, and I will take nothing that it can give me etc. etc.: Now, as Virginia Woolf, I have to write—oh dear me what a bore—to the Vice Chancellor of Manchester University and say that I refuse to be made a Doctor of Letters. And to Lady Simon, who has been urgent in the matter and asks us to stay. Lord knows how I'm to put Elvira's language into polite journalese. What an odd coincidence! that real life should provide precisely the situation I was writing about. I hardly know which I am, or where: Virginia or Elvira: in the Pargiters or outside. We dined with Susan Lawrence two nights ago. A Mrs. Stocks of Manchester University was there. How delighted my husband will be to give you your degree in July! she began. And had rattled off a great deal about the delight of Manchester in seeing me hon-oured, before I had to pluck up courage and say: "But I won't
take it." After that there was a general argument, with the Nevinsons, (Evelyn Sharp) Susan Lawrence etc. They all said they would take a degree from a University though not an honour from the state. They made me feel a little silly, priggish and perhaps extreme: but only superficially. Nothing would induce me to connive at all that humbug. Nor would it give me, even illicitly, any pleasure. I really believe that Nessa and I—she went with me and used my arguments about the silliness of honours for women—are without the publicity sense. Now for the polite letters. Dear Vice Chancellor—

Tuesday, March 28th

The polite letters have been sent. So far I have [not] had, nor could have had, any answer. No, thank Heaven, I need not emerge from my fiction in July to have a tuft of fur put on my head. It is the finest spring ever known—soft, hot, blue, misty.

Thursday, April 6th

Oh I'm so tired! I've written myself out over
The Pargiters,
this last lap. I've brought it down to Elvira in bed—the scene I've had in my mind ever so many months, but I can't write it now. It's the turn of the book. It needs a great shove to swing it round on its hinges. As usual, doubts rush in. I get it all too quick, too thin, too surface bright? Well, I'm too jaded to crunch it up, if that's so; and so shall bury it for a month—till we're back from Italy perhaps; and write on Goldsmith etc. meanwhile. Then seize on it fresh and dash it off in June, July, August, September. Four months should finish the first draft—100,000 words, I think. 50,000 words written in 5 months—my record.

Thursday, April 13th

No I have worked myself too dry this time. There is not one idea left in the orange. But we go today and I shall sun, with only a few books. No, I will
not
write; I will
not
see people. A little nip from Gissing in the
T.L.S.
which I must answer. But indeed I can't find words—use the wrong ones—that's my state:
the familiar state after these three months writing—what fun that book is to me!

Tuesday, April 25th

That's all over—our ten days: and I wrote daily, almost, at Goldsmith—don't much see the point of my Goldsmiths and so on—and read Goldsmith, and so on. Yes: I should now be correcting
Flush
proofs—I doubt that little book to some extent: but I'm in a doubting mood: the scrambled mood of transience, for on Friday 5th we go to Siena; so I can't settle and make up my story, in which lies permanence. And as usual I want to seethe myself in something new—to break the mould of habit entirely and get that escape which Italy and the sun and the lounging and the indifference of all that to all this brings about. I rise, like a bubble out of a bottle....

But
The Pargiters.
I think this will be a terrific affair. I must be bold and adventurous. I want to give the whole of the present society—nothing less: facts as well as the vision. And to combine them both. I mean,
The Waves
going on simultaneously with
Night and Day.
Is this possible? At present I have assembled 50,000 words of "real" life: now in the next 50 I must somehow comment; Lord knows how—while keeping the march of events. The figure of Elvira is the difficulty. She may become too dominant. She is to be seen only in relation to other things. This should give I think a great edge to both of the realities—this contrast. At present I think the run of events is too fluid and too free. It reads thin: but lively. How am I to get the depth without becoming static? But I like these problems, and anyhow there's a wind and a vigour in this naturalness. It should aim at immense breadth and immense intensity. It should include satire, comedy, poetry, narrative; and what form is to hold them all together? Should I bring in a play, letters, poems? I think I begin to grasp the whole. And it's to end with the press of daily normal life continuing. And there are to be millions of ideas but no preaching—history, politics, feminism, art, literature—in short a summing up of all I know, feel, laugh at, despise, like, admire, hate and so on.

Friday, April 28th

A mere note. We got out of the car last night and began walking down to the Serpentine. A summer evening. Chestnuts in their crinolines, bearing tapers; grey green water and so on. Suddenly L. bore off; and there was Shaw, dwindled shanks, white beard; striding along. We talked by a railing for 15 minutes. He stood with his arms folded, very upright, leaning back: teeth gold tipped. Just come from the dentist and "lured" out for a walk by the weather. Very friendly. That is his art, to make one think he likes one. A great spurt of ideas. "You forget that an aeroplane is like a car—it bumps—We went over the great wall—saw a little dim object in the distance. Of course the tropics are the place. The people are the original human beings. We are smudged copies. I caught the Chinese looking at us with horror—that we should be human beingsl Of course the tour cost thousands: yet to see us you'd think we hadn't the price of the fare to Hampton Court. Lots of old spinsters had saved up for years to come. Oh but my publicity I It's terrifying. An hour's bombardment at every port. I made the mistake of accepting 
^*
invitation. I found myself on a platform with the whole university round me. They began shouting We want Bernard Shaw. So I told them that every man at 21 must be a revolutionary. After that of course the police imprisoned them by dozens. I want to write an article for the
Herald
pointing out what Dickens said years ago about the folly of Parliament. Oh I could only stand the voyage by writing. I've written 3 or 4 books. I like to give the public full weight. Books should be sold by the pound. What a nice little dog. But aren't I keeping you and making you cold?" (touching my arm). Two men stopped along the path to look. Off he strode again on his dwindled legs. I said Shaw likes us. L. thinks he likes nobody. What will they say of Shaw in 50 years? He is 76 he said: too old for the tropics.

Last night—to relieve myself for a moment from correcting that silly book
Flush
—oh what a waste of time—I will record Bruno Walter. He is a swarthy, fattish man; not at all smart.
Not at all the "great conductor." He is a little Slav, a little Semitic. He is very nearly mad: that is, he can't get "the poison" as he called it of Hitler out of him. "You must not think of the Jews," he kept on saying. "You must think of this awful reign of intolerance. You must think of the whole state of the world. It is terrible—terrible. That this meanness, that this pettiness, should be possible! Our Germany, which I loved, with our tradition, our culture. We are now a disgrace." Then he told us how you can't talk above a whisper. There are spies everywhere. He had to sit in the window of his hotel in Leipzig a whole day, telephoning. All the time soldiers were marching. They never stop marching. And on the wireless, between the turns, they play military music. Horrible, horrible! He hopes for the monarchy as the only hope. He will never go back there. His orchestra had been in existence for 150 years: but it is the spirit of the whole, that is awful. We must band together. We must refuse to meet any German. We must say that they are uncivilised. We will not trade with them or play with them. We must make them feel themselves outcasts—not by fighting them; by ignoring them. Then he swept off to music. He has the intensity—genius?—which makes him live everything he feels. Described conducting: must know every player.

J
UAN
L
ES
P
INS.
Tuesday, May 9th

Yes, I thought, I will make a note of that face—the face of the woman stitching a very thin, lustrous green silk at a table in the restaurant where we lunched at Vienne. She was like fate—a consummate mistress of all the arts of self-preservation: hair rolled and lustrous; eyes so nonchalant; nothing could startle her; there she sat stitching her green silk with people going and coming all the time; she not looking, yet knowing, fearing nothing; expecting nothing—a perfectly equipped middle class Frenchwoman.

At Carpentras last night there was the little servant girl with honest eyes, hair brushed in a flop and one rather black tooth. I felt that life would crush her out inevitably. Perhaps 18, not more; yet on the wheel, without hope; poor, not weak but
mastered—yet not enough mastered but to desire furiously travel, for a moment, a car. Ah but I am not rich, she said to me—which her cheap little stockings and shoes showed anyhow. Oh how I envy you, able to travel. You like Carpentras? But the wind blows ever so hard. You'll come again? That's the bell ringing. Never mind. Come over here and look at this. No, I've never seen anything like it. Ah yes, she always likes the English. ("She" was the other maid, with hair like some cactus in erection.) Yes I always like the English she said. The odd little honest face, with the black tooth, will stay on at Carpentras I suppose: will marry? will become one of those stout black women who sit in the door knitting? No: I foretell for her some tragedy: because she had enough mind to envy us the Lanchester.

P
ISA.
Friday, May 12th

Yes, Shelley chose better than Max Beerbohm. He chose a harbour; a bay; and his home, with a balcony, in which Mary stood, looks out across the sea. Sloping sailed boats were coming in this morning—a windy little town, of high pink and yellow southern homes, not much changed I suppose: very full of the breaking of waves, very much open to the sea; and the rather desolate house standing with the sea just in front. Shelley, I suppose, bathed, walked, sat on the beach there; and Mary and Mrs. Williams had their coffee on the balcony. I daresay the clothes and the people were much the same. At any rate, a very good great man's house in its way. What is the word for full of the sea? Can't think tonight, sky high in a bedroom at the Nettano in Pisa, much occupied by French tourists. The Arno swimming past with the usual coffee coloured foam. Walked in the cloisters: this is true Italy, with the old dusty smell; people swarming in the streets; under the—what is the word for—I think the word for a street that has pillars is Arcade. Shelley's house waiting by the sea, and Shelley not coming, and Mary and Mrs. Williams watching from the balcony and then Trelawney coming from Pisa and burning the body on the shore—that's in my mind. All the colours here are white bluish marble against a very light saturated sky.
The tower leaning prodigiously. Clerical beggar at the door in a mock fantastic leather hat. The clergy walking. It was in these cloisters—Campo Santo—that L. and I walked 21 years ago and met the Palgraves and I tried to hide behind the pillars. And now we come in our car; and the Palgraves—are they dead, or very old? Now at any rate we have left the black country: the bald necked vulture country with its sprinkling of redroofed villas. This is the Italy one used to visit in a railway train with Violet Dickinson—taking the hotel bus.