A Writer's Diary Read online

  Tuesday, May 11th

  It is worth mentioning, for future reference, that the creative power which bubbles so pleasantly in beginning a new book quiets down after a time, and one goes on more steadily. Doubts creep in. Then one becomes resigned. Determination not to give in, and the sense of an impending shape keep one at it more than anything. I'm a little anxious. How am I to bring off this conception? Directly one gets to work one is like a person walking, who has seen the country stretching out before. I want to write nothing in this book that I don't enjoy writing. Yet writing is always difficult.

  Wednesday, June 23rd

  I was struggling, at this time, to say honestly that I don't think Conrad's last book a good one. I have said it. It is painful (a little) to find fault there, where almost solely, one respects. I can't help suspecting the truth to be that he never sees anyone who knows good writing from bad, and then being a foreigner, talking broken English, married to a lump of a wife, he withdraws more and more into what he once did well, only piles it on higher and higher, until what can one call it but stiff melodrama. I would not like to find The Rescue signed Virginia Woolf. But will anyone agree with this? Anyhow nothing shakes my opinion of a book. Nothing—nothing. Only perhaps if it's the book of a young person—or of a friend—no, even so, I think myself infallible. Haven't I lately dismissed Murry's play, and exactly appraised K.'s story, and summed up Aldous Huxley; and doesn't it somehow wound my sense of fitness to hear Roger mangling these exact values?

  Thursday, August 5th

  Let me try to say what I think as I read Don Quixote after dinner—Principally that writing was then story telling to amuse people sitting round the fire without any of our devices for pleasure. There they sit, women spinning, men contemplative, and the jolly, fanciful, delightful tale is told to them, as to grown up children. This impresses me as the motive of D. Q.: to keep us entertained at all costs. So far as I can judge, the beauty and thought come in unawares: Cervantes scarcely conscious of serious meaning, and scarcely seeing D. Q. as we see him. Indeed that's my difficulty—the sadness, the satire, how far are they ours, not intended—or do these great characters have it in them to change according to the generation that looks at them? Much, I admit, of the tale-telling is dull—not much, only a little at the end of the first volume, which is obviously told as a story to keep one contented. So little said out, so much kept back, as if he had not wished to develop that side of the matter—the scene of the galley slaves marching is an instance of what I mean. Did C. feel the whole of the beauty and sadness of that as I feel it? Twice I've spoken of "sadness."

  Is that essential to the modern view? Yet how splendid it is to unfurl one's sail and blow straight ahead on the gust of the great story telling, as happens all through the first part. I suspect the Fernando-Cardino-Lucinda story was a courtly episode in the fashion of the day, anyhow dull to me. I am also reading Ghoa le Simple—bright, effective, interesting, yet so arid and spick and span. With Cervantes everything there; in solution if you like; but deep, atmospheric, living people casting shadows solid, tinted as in life. The Egyptians, like most French writers, give you a pinch of essential dust instead, much more pungent and effective, but not nearly so surrounding and spacious. By God! What stuff I'm writing! Always these images. I write Jacob every morning now, feeling each day's work like a fence which I have to ride at, my heart in my mouth till it's over, and I've cleared, or knocked the bar out. (Another image, unthinking it was one. I must somehow get Hume's Essays and purge myself.)

  Sunday, September 26th

  But I think I minded more than I let on; for somehow Jacob has come to a stop, in the middle of that party too, which I enjoyed so much. Eliot coming on the heel of a long stretch of writing fiction (two months without a break) made me listless; cast shade upon me; and the mind when engaged upon fiction wants all its boldness and self-confidence. He said nothing—but I reflected how what I'm doing is probably being better done by Mr. Joyce. Then I began to wonder what it is that I am doing; to suspect, as is usual in such cases, that I have not thought my plan out plainly enough—so to dwindle, niggle, hesitate—which means that one's lost. But I think my two months of work are the cause of it, seeing that I now find myself veering round to Evelyn and even making up a paper upon Women, as a counterblast to Mr. Bennett's adverse views reported in the papers. Two weeks ago I made up Jacob incessantly on my walks. An odd thing, the human mind! so capricious, faithless, infinitely shying at shadows. Perhaps at the bottom of my mind, I feel that I'm distanced by L. in every respect.

  Monday, October 25th (First day of winter time)

  Why is life so tragic; so like a little strip of pavement over an abyss. I look down; I feel giddy; I wonder how I am ever to walk to the end. But why do I feel this: Now that I say it I don't feel it. The fire burns; we are going to hear the Beggar's Opera. Only it lies about me; I can't keep my eyes shut. It's a feeling of impotence; of cutting no ice. Here I sit at Richmond, and like a lantern stood in the middle of a field my light goes up in darkness. Melancholy diminishes as I write. Why then don't I write it down oftener? Well, one's vanity forbids. I want to appear a success even to myself. Yet I don't get to the bottom of it. It's having no children, living away from friends, failing to write well, spending too much on food, growing old. I think too much of whys and wherefores; too much of myself. I don't like time to flap round me. Well then, work. Yes, but I so soon tire of work—can't read more than a little, an hour's writing is enough for me. Out here no one comes in to waste time pleasantly. If they do, I'm cross. The labour of going to London is too great. Nessa's children grow up, and I can't have them in to tea, or go to the Zoo. Pocket money doesn't allow of much. Yet I'm persuaded that these are trivial things; it's life itself, I think sometimes, for us in our generation so tragic—no newspaper placard without its shriek of agony from someone. McSwiney this afternoon and violence in Ireland; or it'll be the strike. Unhappiness is everywhere; just beyond the door; or stupidity, which is worse. Still I don't pluck the nettle out of me. To write Jacob's Room again will revive my fibres, I feel. Evelyn is due; but I don't like what I write now. And with it all how happy I am—if it weren't for my feeling that it's a strip of pavement over an abyss.

  1921

  Tuesday, March 1st

  I am not satisfied that this book is in a healthy way. Suppose one of my myriad changes of style is antipathetic to the material? or does my style remain fixed? To my mind it changes always. But no one notices. Nor can I give it a name myself. The truth is that I have an internal, automatic scale of values; which decides what I had better do with my time. It dictates "this half hour must be spent on Russian." "This must be given to Wordsworth." Or "Now I'd better dam my brown stockings." How I come by this code of values I don't know. Perhaps it's the legacy of puritan grandfathers. I suspect pleasure slightly. God knows. And the truth is also that writing, even here, needs screwing of the brain—not so much as Russian, but then half the time I learn Russian I look in the fire and think what I shall write tomorrow. Mrs. Flanders is in the orchard. If I were at Rodmell I should have thought it all out walking on the flats. I should be in fine writing trim. As it is Ralph,* Carrington † and Brett ‡ have this moment gone; I'm dissipated; we dine and go out to the Guild. I can't settle as I should to think of Mrs. Flanders in the orchard.

  Sunday, March 6th

  Nessa approves of Monday or Tuesday—mercifully; and thus somewhat redeems it in my eyes. But I now wonder a little what the reviewers will make of it—this time next month. Let me try to prophesy. Well, The Times will be kindly, a little cautious. Mrs. Woolf, they will say, must beware of virtuosity. She must beware of obscurity. Her great natural gifts etc.... She is at her best in the simple lyric, or in Kew Gardens. An Unwritten Novel is hardly a success. And as for A Society, though spirited, it is too one-sided. Still Mrs. Woolf can always be read with pleasure. Then, in the Westminster, Pall Mall and other serious evening papers I shall be treated very shortly with sarcasm. The general
line will be that I am becoming too much in love with the sound of my own voice; not much in what I write; indecently affected; a disagreeable woman. The truth is, I expect, that I shan't get very much attention anywhere. Yet, I become rather well known.

  Friday, April 8th. 10 minutes to 11 a.m.

  And I ought to be writing Jacob's Room; and I can't, and instead I shall write down the reason why I can't—this diary being a kindly blankfaced old confidante. Well, you see, I'm a failure as a writer. I'm out of fashion: old: shan't do any better: have no headpiece: the spring is everywhere: my book out (prematurely) and nipped, a damp firework. Now the solid grain of fact is that Ralph sent my book out to The Times for review without date of publication in it. Thus a short notice is scrambled through to be in "on Monday at latest," put in an obscure place, rather scrappy, complimentary enough, but quite unintelligent. I mean by that they don't see that I'm after something interesting. So that makes me suspect that I'm not. And thus I can't get on with Jacob. Oh and Lytton's book is out and takes up three columns; praise I suppose. I do not / trouble to sketch this in order; or how my temper sank and sank till for half an hour I was as depressed as I ever am. I mean I thought of never writing any more—save reviews. To rub this in we had a festival party at 41: to congratulate Lytton; which was all as it should be, but then he never mentioned my book, which I suppose he has read; and for the first time I have not his praise to count on. Now if I'd been saluted by the Lit. Sup. as a mystery—a riddle, I shouldn't mind; for Lytton wouldn't like that sort of thing, but if I'm as plain as day, and negligible?

  Well, this question of praise and fame must be faced. (I forgot to say that Doran has refused the book in America.) How much difference does popularity make? (I'm putting clearly, I may add, after a pause in which Lottie has brought in the milk and the sun has ceased to eclipse itself, that I'm writing a good deal of nonsense.) One wants, as Roger said very truly yesterday, to be kept up to the mark; that people should be interested and watch one's work. What depresses me is the thought that I have ceased to interest people—at the very moment when, by the help of the press, I thought I was becoming more myself. One does not want an established reputation, such as I think I was getting, as one of our leading female novelists. I have still, of course, to gather in all the private criticism, which is the real test. When I have weighed this I shall be able to say whether I am "interesting" or obsolete. Anyhow, I feel quite alert enough to stop, if I'm obsolete. I shan't become a machine, unless a machine for grinding articles. As I write, there rises somewhere in my head that queer and very pleasant sense of something which I want to write; my own point of view. I wonder, though, whether this feeling that I write for half a dozen instead of 1500 will pervert this?—make me eccentric—no, I think not. But, as I said, one must face the despicable vanity which is at the root of all this niggling and haggling. I think the only prescription for me is to have a thousand interests—if one is damaged, to be able instantly to let my energy flow into Russian, or Greek, or the press, or the garden, or people, or some activity disconnected with my own writing.

  Sunday, April 9th

  I must note the symptoms of the disease, so as to know it next time. The first day one's miserable; the second happy. There was an Affable Hawk * on me in the New Statesman which at any rate made me feel important (and it's that that one wants) and Simpkin Marshall rang up for a second fifty copies. So they must be selling. Now I have to stand all the twitching and teasing of private criticism which I shan't enjoy. There'll be Roger tomorrow. What a bore it all is!—and then one begins to wish one had put in other stories and left out the Haunted House, which may be sentimental.

  Tuesday, April 12th

  I must hurriedly note more symptoms of the disease, so that I can turn back here and medicine myself next time. Well; I'd worn through the acute stage and come to the philosophic semi-depressed, indifferent, spent the afternoon taking parcels round the shops, going to Scotland Yard for my purse, when L. met me at tea and dropped into my ear the astonishing news that Lytton thinks the String Quartet "marvellous." This came through Ralph, who doesn't exaggerate, to whom Lytton need not lie; and did for a moment flood every nerve with pleasure, so much so that I forgot to buy my coffee and walked over Hungerford Bridge twanging and vibrating. A lovely blue evening too, the river sky colour. And then there was Roger who thinks I'm on the track of real discoveries and certainly not a fake. And we've broken the record of sales, so far. And I'm not nearly so pleased as I was depressed; and yet in a state of security; fate cannot touch me; the reviewers may snap; and the sales decrease. What I had feared, was that I was dismissed as negligible.

  Friday, April 29th

  I ought to say something of Lytton. I have seen him oftener these last days than for a whole year perhaps. We have talked about his book and my book. This particular conversation took place in Verreys: gilt feathers: mirrors: blue walls and Lytton and I taking our tea and brioche in a corner. We must have sat well over an hour.

  "And I woke last night and wondered where to place you," I said. "There's St. Simon and La Bruyère."

  "Oh God," he groaned.

  "And Macaulay," I added.

  "Yes, Macaulay," he said. "A little better than Macaulay."

  But not his man, I insisted. "More civilisation of course. And then you've only written short books."

  "I'm going to do George IV next," he said.

  "Well, but your place," I insisted.

  "And yours?" he asked.

  "I'm the 'ablest of living women novelists,'" I said. "So the British Weekly says."

  "You influence me," he said.

  And he said he could always recognise my writing though I wrote so many different styles.

  "Which is the result of hard work," I insisted. And then we discussed histories; Gibbon; a kind of Henry James, I volunteered.

  "Oh dear no—not in the least," he said.

  "He has a point of view and sticks to it," I said. "And so do you. I wobble." But what is Gibbon?

  "Oh, he's there all right," Lytton said. "Forster says he's an Imp. But he hadn't many views. He believed in 'virtue' perhaps."

  "A beautiful word," I said.

  "But just read how the hordes of barbarians devastated the City. It's marvellous. True, he was queer about the early Christions—didn't see anything in them at all. But read him. I'm going to next October. And I'm going to Florence, and I shall be very lonely in the evenings."

  "The French have influenced you more than the English, I suppose," I said.

  "Yes. I have their definiteness. I'm formed."

  "I compared you with Carlyle the other day," I said. "I read the Reminiscences. Well, they're the chatter of an old toothless gravedigger compared with you; only then he has phrases."

  "Ah yes, he has them," said Lytton. "But I read him to Norton and James the other day and they shouted—they wouldn't have it."

  "I'm a little anxious though about 'mass.'"

  "That's my danger, is it?"

  "Yes. You may cut too fine," I said. "But it's a magnificent subject—George IV—and what fun, setting to work on it."

  "And your novel?"

  "Oh, I put in my hand and rummage in the bran pie."

  "That's what's so wonderful. And it's all different."

  "Yes, I'm 20 people."

  "But one sees the whole from the outside. The worst of George IV is that no one mentions the facts I want. History must be written all over again. It's all morality—"

  "And battles," I added.

  And then we walked through the streets together, for I had to buy coffee.

  Thursday, May 26th

  I sat in Gordon Square yesterday for an hour and a half talking to Maynard. Sometimes I wish I put down what people say instead of describing them. The difficulty is that they say so little. Maynard said he liked praise; and always wanted to boast. He said that many men marry in order to have a wife to boast to. But, I said, it's odd that one boasts considering that no one is ever taken i
n by it. It's odd too that you, of all people, should want praise. You and Lytton are passed beyond boasting—which is the supreme triumph. There you sit and say nothing. I love praise, he said. I want it for the things I'm doubtful about. Then we got upon publishing, and the Hogarth press; and novels. Why should they explain what bus he took? he asked. And why shouldn't Mrs. Hilbery be sometimes the daughter of Katharine. Oh, it's a dull book, I know, I said; but don't you see you must put it all in before you can leave out. The best thing you ever did, he said, was your Memoir on George. You should pretend to write about real people and make it all up. I was dashed of course (and Oh dear what nonsense—for if George is my climax I'm a mere scribbler).