A Writer's Diary Read online

  Mrs. Webb's book has made me think a little what I could say of my own life. I read some of 1923 this morning, being headachy again, and taking a delicious draught of silence. But then there were causes in her life: prayer; principle. None in mine. Great excitability and search after something. Great content—almost always enjoying what I'm at, but with constant change of mood. I don't think I'm ever bored. Sometimes a little stale; but I have a power of recovery—which I have tested; and am now testing for the 50th time. I have to husband my head still very carefully: but then, as I said to Leonard today, I enjoy epicurean ways of society; sipping and then shutting my eyes to taste. I enjoy almost everything. Yet I have some restless searcher in me. Why is there not a discovery in life? Something one can lay hands on and say "This is it"? My depression is a harassed feeling. I'm looking: but that's not it—that's not it. What is it? And shall I die before I find it? Then (as I was walking through Russell Square last night) I see the mountains in the sky: the great clouds; and the moon which is risen over Persia; I have a great and astonishing sense of something there, which is "it." It is not exactly beauty that I mean. It is that the thing is in itself enough: satisfactory; achieved. A sense of my own strangeness, walking on the earth is there too: of the infinite oddity of the human position; trotting along Russell Square with the moon up there and those mountain clouds. Who am I, what am I, and so on: these questions are always floating about in me: and then I bump against some exact fact—a letter, a person, and come to them again with a great sense of freshness. And so it goes on. But on this showing, which is true, I think, I do fairly frequently come upon this "it"; and then feel quite at rest.

  Tuesday, March 9th

  As for Mary's * party, there, save for the usual shyness about powder, paint, shoes and stockings, I was happy, owing to the supremacy of literature. This keeps us sweet and sane. George Moore—me I mean.

  He has a pink foolish face; blue eyes like hard marbles; a crest of snow-white hair; little unmuscular hands; sloping shoulders; a high stomach; neat, purplish well-brushed clothes; and perfect manners, as I consider them. That is to say he speaks without fear or dominance; accepting me on my merits; everyone on their merits. Still in spite of all uncowed, unbeaten, lively, shrewd. As for Hardy and Henry James, though, what shall one say?

  "I am a fairly modest man; but I admit I think Esther Waters a better book than Tess. But what is there to be said for that man? He cannot write. He cannot tell a story. The whole art of fiction consists in telling a story. Now he makes a woman confess. How does he do it? In the third person—a scene that should be moving, impressive. Think how Tolstoi would have done it!"

  "But," said Jack,* "War and Peace is the greatest novel in the world. I remember the scene where Natalia puts on a moustache and Rostov sees her for the first time as she is and falls in love with her."

  "No, my good friend, there is nothing very wonderful in that. That is an ordinary piece of observation. But, my good friend (to me—half hesitating to call me this) what have you to say for Hardy? You cannot find anything to say. English fiction is the worst part of English literature. Compare it with the French—with the Russians. Henry James wrote some pretty little stories before he invented his jargon. But they were about rich people. You cannot write stories about rich people; because, I think he said, they have no instincts. But Henry James was enamoured of marble balustrades. There was no passion in any of his people. And Anne Bronte was the greatest of the Brontes and Conrad could not write," and so on. But this is out of date.

  Saturday, March 20th

  But what is to become of all these diaries, I asked myself yesterday. If I died, what would Leo make of them? He would be disinclined to burn them; he could not publish them. Well, he should make up a book from them, I think; and then burn the body. I daresay there is a little book in them; if the scraps and scratching were straightened out a little. God knows. This is dictated by a slight melancholia, which comes upon me sometimes now and makes me think I am old; I am ugly. I am repeating things. Yet, as far as I know, as a writer I am only now writing out my mind.

  Friday, April 30th

  The last of a wet windy month, excepting the sudden opening of all the doors at Easter and the summer displayed blazing, as it always is, I suppose, only cloud hidden. I have not said anything about Iwerne Minster. Now it would amuse me to see what I remember it by. Cranbourne Chase: the stunted aboriginal forest trees, scattered, not grouped in cultivations; anemones, bluebells, violets, all pale, sprinkled about, without colour, livid, for the sun hardly shone. Then Blackmore Vale; a vast air dome and the fields dropped to the bottom; the sun striking, there, there; a drench of rain falling, like a veil streaming from the sky, there and there; and the downs rising, very strongly scarped (if that is the word) so that they were ridged and ledged; then an inscription in a church "sought peace and ensured it" and the question who wrote these sonorous stylistic epitaphs?—and all the cleanliness of Iwerne village, its happiness and well-being, making me ask, as we tended to sneer, still this is the right method, surely; and then tea and cream—these I remember: the hot baths; my new leather coat; Shaftesbury, so much lower and less commanding than my imagination, and the drive to Bournemouth and the dog and the lady behind the rock, and the view of Swanage, and coming home.

  Yesterday I finished the first part of To the Lighthouse, and today began the second. I cannot make it out—here is the most difficult abstract piece of writing—I have to give an empty house, no people's characters, the passage of time, all eyeless and featureless with nothing to cling to: well, I rush at it, and at once scatter out two pages. Is it nonsense, is it brilliance? Why am I so flown with words and apparently free to do exactly what I like? When I read a bit it seems spirited too; needs compressing, but not much else. Compare this dashing fluency with Mrs. Dalloway (save the end). This is not made up; it is the literal fact.

  Tuesday, May 25th

  I have finished—sketchily I admit—the second part of To the Lighthouse—and may, then, have it all written over by the end of July. A record. 7 months, if it so turns out.

  Sunday, July 25th

  At first I thought it was Hardy, and it was the parlour maid, a small thin girl, wearing a proper cap. She came in with silver cake stands and so on. Mrs. Hardy talked to us about her dog. How long ought we to stay? Can Mr. Hardy walk much etc. I asked, making conversation, as I knew one would have to. She has the large sad lacklustre eyes of a childless woman; great docility and readiness, as if she had learnt her part; not great alacrity, but resignation, in welcoming more visitors; wears a sprigged voile dress, black shoes and a necklace. We can't go far now, she said, though we do walk every day, because our dog isn't able to walk far. He bites, she told us. She became more natural and animated about the dog, who is evidently the real centre of her thoughts—then the maid came in. Then again the door opened, more sprucely, and in trotted a little puffy-cheeked cheerful old man, with an atmosphere cheerful and business-like in addressing us, rather like an old doctor's or solicitor's, saying "Well now—" or words like that as he shook hands. He was dressed in rough grey with a striped tie. His nose has a joint in it and the end curves down. A round whitish face, the eyes now faded and rather watery, but the whole aspect cheerful and vigorous. He sat on a three-cornered chair (I am too jaded with all this coming and going to do more than gather facts) at a round table, where there were the cake stands and so on; a chocolate roll; what is called a good tea; but he only drank one cup, sitting on his three-cornered chair. He was extremely affable and aware of his duties. He did not let the talk stop or disdain making talk. He talked of father: said he had seen me, or it might have been my sister, but he thought it was me, in my cradle. He had been to Hyde Park Place—oh, Gate was it. A very quiet street. That was why my father liked it. Odd to think that in all these years he had never been down there again. He went there often. Your father took my novel—Far from the Madding Crowd. We stood shoulder to shoulder against the British public about certain ma
tters dealt with in that novel. You may have heard. Then he said how some other novel had fallen through that was to appear—the parcel had been lost coming from France—not a very likely thing to happen, as your father said—a big parcel of manuscript; and he asked me to send my story. I think he broke all the Cornhill laws—not to see the whole book; so I sent it in chapter by chapter and was never late. Wonderful what youth is! I had it in my head doubtless, but I never thought twice about it. It came out every month. They were nervous, because of Miss Thackeray I think. She said she became paralysed and could not write a word directly she heard the press begin. I daresay it was bad for a novel to appear like that. One begins to think what is good for the magazine, not what is good for the novel.

  "You think what makes a strong curtain," put in Mrs. Hardy jocularly. She was leaning upon the tea table, not eating—gazing out.

  Then we talked about manuscripts. Mrs. Smith had found the MS of F. from the M.C. in a drawer during the war and sold it for the Red Cross. Now he has his MSS back and the printer rubs out all the marks. But he wishes they would leave them as they prove it genuine.

  He puts his head down like some old pouter pigeon. He has a very long head; and quizzical bright eyes, for in talk they grow bright. He said when he was in the Strand 6 years ago he scarcely knew where he was and he used to know it all intimately. He told us that he used to buy second-hand books—nothing valuable—in Wyck Street. Then he wondered why Great James Street should be so narrow and Bedford Row so broad. He had often wondered about that. At this rate, London would soon be unrecognisable. But I shall never go there again. Mrs. Hardy tried to persuade him that it was an easy drive—only 6 hours or so. I asked if she liked it, and she said Granville Barker had told her that when she was in the nursing home she had "the time of her life." She knew everyone in Dorchester but she thought there were more interesting people in London. Had I often been to Siegfried's * flat? I said no. Then she asked about him and Morgan, said he was elusive, as if they enjoyed visits from him. I said I heard from Wells that Mr. Hardy had been up to London to see an air raid. "What things they say!" he said. "It was my wife. There was an air raid one night when we stayed with Barrie. We just heard a little pop in the distance. The searchlights were beautiful. I thought if a bomb now were to fall on this flat how many writers would be lost." And he smiled, in his queer way, which is fresh and yet sarcastic a little; anyhow shrewd. Indeed, there was no trace to my thinking of the simple peasant. He seemed perfectly aware of everything; in no doubt or hesitation; having made up his mind; and being delivered of all his work, so that he was in no doubt about that either. He was not interested much in his novels, or in anybody's novels: took it all easily and naturally. "I never took long with them" he said. "The longest was The Dinnasts (so pronounced)." "But that was really three books," said Mrs. Hardy. "Yes; and that took me six years; but not working all the time." "Can you write poetry regularly?" I asked (being beset with the desire to hear him say something about his books; but the dog kept cropping up. How he bit; how the inspector came out; how he was ill; and they could do nothing for him). "Would you mind if I let him in?" asked Mrs. Hardy, and in came Wessex, a very tousled, rough brown and white mongrel; got to guard the house, so naturally he bites people, said Mrs. H. "Well, I don't know about that," said Hardy, perfectly natural, and not setting much stock by his poems either it seemed. "Did you write poems at the same time as your novels?" I asked. "No," he said. "I wrote a great many poems. I used to send them about, but they were always returned," he chuckled. "And in those days I believed in editors. Many were lost—all the fair copies were lost. But I found the notes and I wrote them from those. I was always finding them. I found one the other day; but I don't think I shall find any more.

  "Siegfried took rooms near here and said he was going to work very hard, but he left soon.

  "E. M. Forster takes a long time to produce anything—7 years," he chuckled. All this made a great impression of the ease with which he did things. "I daresay Far from the Madding Crowd would have been a great deal better if I had written it differently," he said. But as if it could not be helped and did not matter.

  He used to go to the Lushingtons in Kensington Square and saw my mother there. "She used to come in and out when I was talking to your father."

  I wanted him to say one word about his writing before we left and could only ask which of his books he would have chosen if, like me, he had had to choose one to read in the train. I had taken the Mayor of Casterbridge. "That's being dramatised," put in Mrs. Hardy, and then brought Life's Little Ironies.

  "And did it hold your interest?" he asked. I stammered that I could not stop reading it, which was true, but sounded wrong. Anyhow, he was not going to be drawn and went off about giving a young lady a wedding present. "None of my books are fitted to be wedding presents," he said. "You must give Mrs. Woolf one of your books," said Mrs. Hardy, inevitably. "Yes I will. But I'm afraid only in the little thin paper edition," he said. I protested that it would be enough if he wrote his name (then was vaguely uncomfortable).

  Then there was de la Mare. His last book of stories seemed to them such a pity. Hardy had liked some of his poems very much. People said he must be a sinister man to write such stories. But he is a very nice man—a very nice man indeed. He said to a friend who begged him not to give up poetry, "I'm afraid poetry is giving up me." The truth is he is a very kind man and sees anyone who wants to see him. He has 16 people for the day sometimes. "Do you think one can't write poetry if one sees people?" I asked. "One might be able to—I don't see why not. It's a question of physical strength," said Hardy. But clearly he preferred solitude himself. Always however he said something sensible and sincere, and thus made the obvious business of compliment-giving rather unpleasant. He seemed to be free of it all; very active minded; liking to describe people; not to talk in an abstract way; for example Col. Lawrence, bicycling with a broken arm "held like that" from Lincoln to Hardy, listened at the door to hear if there was anyone there. "I hope he won't commit suicide," said Mrs. Hardy pensively, still leaning over the tea cups, gazing despondently. "He often says things like it, though he has never said quite that perhaps. But he has blue lines round his eyes. He calls himself Shaw in the army. No one is to know where he is. But it got into the papers." "He promised me not to go into the air," said Hardy. "My husband doesn't like anything to do with the air," said Mrs. Hardy.

  Now we began to look at the grandfather clock in the corner. We said we must go—tried to confess we were only down for the day. I forgot to say that he offered L. whisky and water, which struck me that he was competent as a host and in every way. So we got up and signed Mrs. Hardy's visitors books; and Hardy took my Life's Little Ironies off and trotted back with it signed; and Woolf spelt Wolff, which I daresay had given him some anxiety. Then Wessex came in again. I asked if Hardy could stroke him. So he bent down and stroked him, like the master of the house. Wessex went on wheezing away.

  There was not a trace anywhere of deference to editors, or respect for rank or extreme simplicity. What impressed me was his freedom, ease and vitality. He seemed very "Great Victorian" doing the whole thing with a sweep of his hand (they are ordinary smallish, curled up hands) and setting no great stock by literature; but immensely interested in facts; incidents; and somehow, one could imagine, naturally swept off into imagining and creating without a thought of its being difficult or remarkable; becoming obsessed; and living in imagination. Mrs. Hardy thrust his old grey hat into his hand and he trotted us out on to the road. "Where is that?" I asked him, pointing to a clump of trees on the down opposite, for his house is outside the town, with open country (rolling, massive downs, crowned with little tree coronets before and behind) and he said, with interest, "That is Weymouth. We see the lights at night—not the lights themselves, but the reflection of them." And so we left and he trotted in again.

  Also I asked him if I might see the picture of Tess which Morgan had described, an old picture: whereupon he led me
to an awful engraving of Tess coming into a room from a picture by Herkomer. "That was rather my idea of her," he said. But I said I had been told he had an old picture. "That's fiction," he said. "I used to see people now and then with a look of her."

  Also Mrs. Hardy said to me "Do you know Aldous Huxley?" I said I did. They had been reading his book, which she thought "very clever." But Hardy could not remember it: said his wife had to read to him—his eyes were now so bad. "They've changed everything now," he said. "We used to think there was a beginning and a middle and an end. We believed in the Aristotelian theory. Now one of those stories came to an end with a woman going out of the room." He chuckled. But he no longer reads novels. The whole thing—literature, novels etc., all seemed to him an amusement, far away too, scarcely to be taken seriously. Yet he had sympathy and pity for those still engaged in it. But what his secret interests and activities are—to what occupation he trotted off when we left him—I do not know. Small boys write to him from New Zealand and have to be answered. They bring out a "Hardy number" of a Japanese paper, which he produced. Talked too about Blunden. I think Mrs. Hardy keeps him posted in the doings of the younger poets.

  RODMELL 1926

  As I am not going to milk my brains for a week, I shall here write the first pages of the greatest book in the world. This is what the book would be that was made entirely solely and with integrity of one's thoughts. Suppose one could catch them before they became "works of art"? Catch them hot and sudden as they rise in the mind—walking up Asheham hill for instance. Of course one cannot; for the process of language is slow and deluding. One must stop to find a word. Then, there is the form of the sentence, soliciting one to fill it.