A Writer's Diary Read online

  1923

  Monday, June 4th

  I'm over peevish in private, partly in order to assert myself. I am a great deal interested suddenly in my book. I want to bring in the despicableness of people like Ott.* I want to give the slipperiness of the soul. I have been too tolerant often. The truth is people scarcely care for each other. They have this insane instinct for life. But they never become attached to anything outside themselves. Puff † said he loved his family and had nothing whatever to knock over. He disliked cold indecency. So did Lord David. This must be a phrase in their set. Puff said—I don't quite know what. I walked round the vegetable garden with him, passing Lytton flirting on a green seat; and round the field with Sackville West, who said he was better, and was writing a better novel, and round the lake with Menasseh (?) an Egyptian Jew, who said he liked his family and they were mad and talked like books; and he said that they quoted my writings (the Oxford youth) and wanted me to go and speak; and then there was Mrs. Asquith. I was impressed. She is stone white; with the brown veiled eyes of an aged falcon; and in them more depth and scrutiny than I expected; a character, with her friendliness and ease and decision. Oh if we could have had Shelley's poems; and not Shelley the man! she said. Shelley was quite intolerable, she pronounced; she is a rigid frigid puritan; and in spite of spending thousands on dress. She rides life, if you like; and has picked up a thing or two, which I should like to plunder and never shall. She led Lytton off and plucked his arm, and hurried—and thought "people" pursued her; yet was very affable with "people" when she had to be, and sat on the window sill talking to a black shabby embroideress, to whom Ott. is being kind. That's one of her horrors—she's always being kind in order to say to herself at night, then Ottoline invites the poor little embroideress to her party and so to round off her own picture of herself. To sneer like this has a physical discomfort in it. She told me I looked wonderfully well, which I disliked. Why? I wonder. Because I had had a headache perhaps, partly. But to be well and use strength to get more out of life is, surely, the greatest fun in the world. What I dislike is feeling that I'm always taking care, or being taken care of. Never mind—work, work. Lytton says we have still 20 years before us. Mrs. Asquith said she loved Scott.

  Wednesday, June 13th

  There was Lady Colefax in her hat with the green ribbons. Did I say that I lunched with her last week? That was Derby Day and it rained, and all the light was brown and cold and she went on talking, talking, in consecutive sentences like the shavings that come from planes, artificial, but unbroken. It was not a successful party, Clive and Lytton and me. For Clive's back; and he dined here with Leo Myers the other night; and then I went to Golders Green and sat with Mary Sheepshanks in her garden and beat up the waters of talk, as I do so courageously, so that life mayn't be wasted. The fresh breeze went brushing all the thick hedges which divide the gardens. Somehow, extraordinary emotions possessed me. I forget now what. Often now I have to control my excitement—as if I were pushing through a screen; or as if something beat fiercely close to me. What this portends I don't know. It is a general sense of the poetry of existence that overcomes me. Often it is connected with the sea and St. Ives. Going to 46 continues to excite. The sight of two coffins in the Underground luggage office I daresay constricts all my feelings. I have the sense of the flight of time; and this shores up my emotions.

  Tuesday, June 19th

  I took up this book with a kind of idea that I might say something about my writing—which was prompted by glancing at what K. M. said about her writing in The Dove's Nest. But I only glanced. She said a good deal about feeling things deeply: also about being pure, which I won't criticise, though of course I very well could. But now what do I feel about my writing?—this book, that is, The Hours,* if that's its name? One must write from deep feeling, said Dostoievsky. And do I? Or do I fabricate with words, loving them as I do? No, I think not. In this book I have almost too many ideas. I want to give life and death, sanity and insanity; I want to criticise the social system, and to show it at work, at its most intense. But here I may be posing. I heard from Ka † this morning that she doesn't like In the Orchard. At once I feel refreshed. I become anonymous, a person who writes for the love of it. She takes away the motive of praise, and lets me feel that without any praise I should be content to go on. This is what Duncan said of his painting the other night. I feel as if I slipped off all my ball dresses and stood naked—which as I remember was a very pleasant thing to do. But to go on. Am I writing The Hours from deep emotion? Of course the mad part tries me so much, makes my mind squirt so badly that I can hardly face spending the next weeks at it. It's a question though of these characters. People, like Arnold Bennett, say I can't create, or didn't in Jacob's Room, characters that survive. My answer is—but I leave that to the Nation: it's only the old argument that character is dissipated into shreds now; the old post-Dostoievsky argument. I daresay it's true, however, that I haven't that "reality" gift. I insubstantise, wilfully to some extent, distrusting reality—its cheapness. But to get further. Have I the power of conveying the true reality? Or do I write essays about myself? Answer these questions as I may, in the uncomplimentary sense, and still there remains this excitement. To get to the bones, now I'm writing fiction again I feel my force glow straight from me at its fullest. After a dose of criticism I feel that I'm writing sideways, using only an angle of my mind. This is justification; for free use of the faculties means happiness. I'm better company, more of a human being. Nevertheless, I think it most important in this book to go for the central things. Even though they don't submit, as they should, however, to beautification in language. No, I don't nail my crest to the Murrys, who work in my flesh after the manner of the jigger insect. It's annoying, indeed degrading, to have these bitternesses. Still, think of the eighteenth century. But then they were overt, not covert, as now.

  I foresee, to return to The Hours, that this is going to be the devil of a struggle. The design is so queer and so masterful. I'm always having to wrench my substance to fit it. The design is certainly original and interests me hugely. I should like to write away and away at it, very quick and fierce. Needless to say, I can't. In three weeks from today, I shall be dried up.

  Friday, August 17th

  The question I want to debate here is the question of my essays: and how to make them into a book. The brilliant idea has just come to me of embedding them in Otway conversation. The main advantage would be that I could then comment and add what I had had to leave out, or failed to get in, e.g. the one on George Eliot certainly needs an epilogue. Also to have a setting for each would "make a book"; and the collection of articles is in my view an inartistic method. But then this might be too artistic; it might run away with me; it will take time. Nevertheless I should very much enjoy it. I should graze nearer my own individuality. I should mitigate the pomposity and sweep in all sorts of trifles. I think I should feel more at my ease. So I think a trial should be made. The first thing to do is to get ready a certain number of essays. There could be an introductory chapter. A family which reads the papers. The thing to do would be to envelop each essay in its own atmosphere. To get them into a current of life, and so to shape the book; to get a stress upon some main line—but what the line is to be, I can only see by reading them through. No doubt fiction is the prevailing theme. Anyhow the book should end with modern literature.

  These are, roughly, the headings.

  Wednesday, August 29th

  I've been battling for ever so long with The Hours, which is proving one of my most tantalising and refractory of books. Parts are so bad, parts so good; I'm much interested; can't stop making it up yet—yet. What is the matter with it? But I want to freshen myself, not deaden myself, so will say no more. Only I must note this odd symptom; a conviction that I shall go on, see it through, because it interests me to write it.

  Thursday, August 30th

  I was called, I think, to cut wood; we have to shape logs for the stove, for we sit in the lodge ev
ery night and my goodness, the wind! Last night we looked at the meadow trees, flinging about, and such a weight of leaves that every brandish seems the end. Only a strewing of leaves from the lime tree, though, this morning. I read such a white dimity rice pudding chapter of Mrs. Gaskell at midnight in the gale Wives and Daughters, I think: it must be better than old wives' tale all the same. You see, I'm thinking furiously about Reading and Writing. I have no time to describe my plans. I should say a good deal about The Hours and my discovery: how I dig out beautiful caves behind my characters: I think that gives exactly what I want; humanity, humour, depth. The idea is that the caves shall connect and each comes to daylight at the present moment. Dinner!

  Wednesday, September 5th

  And I'm slightly dashed by the reception of my Conrad conversation, which has been purely negative. No one has mentioned it. I don't think M. or B. quite approved. Never mind; to be dashed is always the most bracing treatment for me. A cold douche should lie taken (and generally is) before beginning a book. It invigorates; makes one say "Oh all right. I write to please myself" and so go ahead. It also has the effect of making me more definite and outspoken in my style, which I imagine all to the good. At any rate, I began for the fifth but last time, I swear, what is now to be called The Common Reader; and did the first page quite moderately well this morning. After all this stew, it's odd how, as soon as I begin, a new aspect, never all this two or three years thought of, at once becomes clear; and gives the whole bundle a new proportion. To curtail, I shall really investigate literature with a view to answering certain questions about ourselves. Characters are to be merely views: personality must be avoided at all costs. I'm sure my Conrad adventure taught me this. Directly you specify hair, age etc. something frivolous, or irrelevant gets into the book, Dinner!

  Monday, October 15th

  I am now in the thick of the mad scene in Regent's Park. I find I write it by clinging as tight to fact as I can, and write perhaps 50 words a morning. This I must rewrite some day. I think the design is more remarkable than in any of my books. I daresay I shan't be able to carry it out. I am stuffed with ideas for it. I feel I can use up everything I've ever thought. Certainly, I'm less coerced than I've yet been. The doubtful point is, I think, the character of Mrs. Dalloway. It may be too stiff, too glittering and tinselly. But then I can bring innumerable other characters to her support. I wrote the 100th page today. Of course, I've only been feeling my way into it—up till last August anyhow. It took me a year's groping to discover what I call my tunnelling process, by which I tell the past by instalments, as I have need of it. This is my prime discovery so far; and the fact that I've been so long finding it proves, I think, how false Percy Lubbock's doctrine is—that you can do this sort of thing consciously. One feels about in a state of misery—indeed I made up my mind one night to abandon the book—and then one touches the hidden spring. But lor' love me! I've not re-read my great discovery, and it may be nothing important whatsoever. Never mind. I own I have my hopes for this book. I am going on writing it now till, honestly, I can't write another line. Journalism, everything, is to give way to it.

  1924

  Monday, May 26th

  London is enchanting. I step out upon a tawny coloured magic carpet, it seems, and get carried into beauty without raising a finger. The nights are amazing, with all the white porticos and broad silent avenues. And people pop in and out, lightly, divertingly like rabbits; and I look down Southampton Row, wet as a seal's back or red and yellow with sunshine, and watch the omnibuses going and coming and hear the old crazy organs. One of these days I will write about London, and how it takes up the private life and carries it on, without any effort. Faces passing lift up my mind; prevent it from settling, as it does in the stillness at Rodmell.

  But my mind is full of The Hours. I am now saying that I will write at it for 4 months, June, July, August and September, and then it will be done, and I shall put it away for three months, during which I shall finish my essays; and then that will be—October, November, December—January; and I shall revise it January February March April; and in April my essays will come out, and in May my novel. Such is my programme. It is reeling off my mind fast, and free now; as ever since the crisis of August last, which I count the beginning of it, it has gone quick, being much interrupted though. It is becoming more analytical and human I think; less lyrical; but I feel as if I had loosed the bonds pretty completely and could pour everything in. If so—good. Reading it remains. I aim at 80,000 words this time. And I like London for writing it, partly because, as I say, life upholds one; and with my squirrel cage mind it's a great thing to be stopped circling. Then to see human beings freely and quickly is an infinite gain to me. And I can dart in and out and refresh my stagnancy.

  61

  Saturday, August 2nd

  Here we are at Rodmell, and I with 20 minutes to fill in before dinner. A feeling of depression is on me, as if we were old and near the end of all things. It must be the change from London and incessant occupation. Then, being at a low ebb with my book—the death of Septimus—and I begin to count myself a failure. Now the point of the Press is that it entirely prevents brooding; and gives me something solid to fall back on. Anyhow, if I can't write, I can make other people write; I can build up a business. The country is like a convent. The soul swims to the top. Julian * has just been and gone, a tall young man who, inveterately believing myself to be young as I do, seems to me like a younger brother; anyhow we sit and chatter, as easily as can be. It's all so much the same—his school continues Thoby's school. He tells me about boys and masters as Thoby used to. It interests me just in the same way. He's a sensitive, very quick witted, rather combative boy; full of Wells, and discoveries and the future of the world. And, being of my own blood, easily understood. Going to be very tall, and go to the Bar, I daresay. Nevertheless, in spite of the grumbling with which this began, honestly I don't feel old; and it's a question of getting up my steam again in writing. If only I could get into my vein and work it thoroughly, deeply, easily, instead of hacking at this miserable 200 words a day. And then, as the manuscript grows I have the old fear of it. I shall read it and find it pale. I shall prove the truth of Murry's saying, that there's no way of going on after Jacob's Room. Yet if this book proves anything, it proves that I can only write along those lines, and shall never desert them, but explore further and further and shall, heaven be praised, never bore myself an instant. But this slight depression—what is it? I think I could cure it by crossing the channel and writing nothing for a week. I want to see something going on busily without help from me: a French market town for example. Indeed, have I the energy, I'll cross to Dieppe; or compromise by exploring Sussex on a motor bus. August ought to be hot. Deluges descend. We sheltered under a haystack today. But oh the delicacy and complexity of the soul—for haven't I begun to tap her and listen to her breathing after all? A change of house makes me oscillate for days. And that's life; that's wholesome. Never to quiver is the lot of Mr. Allinson, Mrs. Hawkesford and Jack Squire. In two or three days, acclimatised, started, reading and writing, no more of this will exist. And if we didn't live venturously, plucking the wild goat by the beard, and trembling over precipices, we should never be depressed, I've no doubt; but already should be faded, fatalistic and aged.

  Sunday, August 3rd

  But it's a question of work. I am already a good deal pulled together by sticking at my books: my 250 words at fiction first, and then a systematic beginning, I daresay the 80th, upon The Common Reader, who might be finished in a flash I think, did I see the chance to flash and have done with it. But there's a lot of work in these things. It strikes me, I must now read Pilgrim's Progress: Mrs. Hutchinson. And should I demolish Richardson? whom I've never read. Yes, I'll run through the rain into the house and see if Clarissa is there. But that's a block out of my day and a long long novel. Then I must read the Medea. I must read a little translated Plato.

  Friday, August 15th

  Into all these c
alculations, broke the death of Conrad, followed by a wire from the Lit. Sup. earnestly asking me kindly to do a leader on him, which flattered and loyal, but grudgingly, I did; and it's out; and that number of the Lit. Sup. corrupted for me (for I can't, and never shall be able to, read my own writings. Moreover, now little Walkley's on the war path again I expect a bite next Wednesday). Yet I have never never worked so hard. For, having to do a leader in five days, I made hay after tea—and couldn't distinguish tea hay from morning hay either. So doesn't this give me two extra hours for critical works anyhow (as Logan calls them)? So I'm trying it—my fiction before lunch and then essays after tea. For I see that Mrs. Dalloway is going to stretch beyond October. In my forecasts I always forget some most important intervening scenes: I think I can go straight at the grand party and so end; forgetting Septimus, which is a very intense and ticklish business, and jumping Peter Walsh eating his dinner, which may be some obstacle too. But I like going from one lighted room to another, such is my brain to me; lighted rooms; and the walks in the fields are corridors; and now today I'm lying thinking. By the way, why is poetry wholly an elderly taste? When I was 20, in spite of Thoby who used to be so pressing and exacting, I could not for the life of me read Shakespeare for pleasure; now it lights me as I walk to think I have two acts of King John tonight, and shall next read Richard II. It is poetry that I want now—long poems. Indeed I'm thinking of reading the Seasons. I want the concentration and the romance, and the words all glued together, fused, glowing; have no time to waste any more on prose. Yet this must be the very opposite to what people say. When I was 20 I liked eighteenth century prose; I liked Hakluyt, Merimee. I read masses of Carlyle, Scott's life and letters, Gibbon, all sorts of two volume biographies, and Shelley. Now it's poetry I want, so I repent like a tipsy sailor in front of a public house.... I don't often trouble now to describe cornfields and groups of harvesting women in loose blues and reds, and little staring yellow frocked girls. But that's not my eyes' fault: coming back the other evening from Charleston, again all my nerves stood upright, flushed, electrified (what's the word?) with the sheer beauty—beauty astounding and superabounding. So that one almost resents it, not being capable of catching it all and holding it all at the moment. One's progress through life is made immensely interesting by trying to grasp all these developments as one passes. I feel as if I were putting out my fingers tentatively on (here is Leonard, who has ordered me a trap in which to drive Dadie * to Tilton † tomorrow) either side as I grope down a tunnel, rough with odds and ends. And I don't describe encounters with herds of Alderneys any more—though this would have been necessary some years ago—how they barked and belled like stags round Grizzle; and how I waved my stick and stood at bay; and thought of Homer as they came flourishing and trampling towards me; some mimic battle. Grizzle grew more and more insolent and excited and skirmished about yapping. Ajax? That Greek, for all my ignorance, has worked its way into me.