A Writer's Diary Read online

  Monday, May 4th

  This is the temperature chart of a book. We went to Cambridge, and Goldie said he thought me the finest living critic: said, in his jerky angular way: "Who wrote that extraordinarily good article on the Elizabethans two or three months ago in the Lit. Sup.?" I pointed to my breast. Now there's one sneering review in Country Life, almost inarticulate with feebleness, trying to say what a Common reader is, and another, says Angus, in the Star, laughing at Nessa's cover. So from this I prognosticate a good deal of criticism on the ground that I'm obscure and odd; and some enthusiasm; and a slow sale, and an increased reputation. Oh yes, my reputation increases.

  Saturday, May 9th

  As for The Common Reader, the Lit. Sup. had close on two columns sober and sensible praise—neither one thing nor the other—my fate in The Times. And Goldie writes that he thinks "this is the best criticism in English—humorous, witty and profound." My fate is to be treated to all extremes and all mediocrities. But I never get an enthusiastic review in the Lit. Sup. And it will be the same for Dalloway, which now approaches.

  Thursday, May 14th

  I meant to register more of my books' temperatures. C.R. does not sell; but is praised. I was really pleased to open the Manchester Guardian this morning and read Mr. Fausset on the Art of V. W.; brilliance combined with integrity; profound as well as eccentric. Now if only The Times would speak out thus, but The Times mumbles and murmurs like a man sucking pebbles. Did I say that I had nearly two mumbling columns on me there? But the odd thing is this: honestly I am scarcely a shade nervous about Mrs. D. Why is this? Really I am a little bored, for the first time, at thinking how much I shall have to talk about it this summer. The truth is that writing is the profound pleasure and being read the superficial. I'm now all on the strain with desire to stop journalism and get on to To the Lighthouse. This is going to be fairly short; to have father's character done complete in it; and mother's; and St. Ives; and childhood; and all the usual things I try to put in—life, death, etc. But the centre is father's character, sitting in a boat, reciting We perished, each alone, while he crushes a dying mackerel. However, I must refrain. I must write a few little stories first and let the Lighthouse simmer, adding to it between tea and dinner till it is complete for writing out.

  Friday, May 15th

  Two unfavourable reviews of Mrs. D. (Western Mail and Scotsman); unintelligible, not art etc. and a letter from a young man in Earls Court. "This time you have done it—you have caught life and put it in a book..." Please forgive this outburst, but further quotation is unnecessary; and I don't think I should bother to write this if I weren't jangled. What by? The sudden heat, I think, and the racket of life. It is bad for me to see my own photograph.

  Wednesday, May 19th

  Well, Morgan admires. This is a weight off my mind. Better than Jacob he says: was sparing of words; kissed my hand, and on going said he was awfully pleased, very happy (or words to that effect) about it. He thinks—but I won't go into detailed criticism; I shall hear more; and this is only about the style being simpler, more like other people's this time.

  Monday, June 1st

  Bank holiday, and we are in London. To record my books' fates slightly bores me; but now both are floated, and Mrs. D. doing surprisingly well. 1070 already sold. I recorded Morgan's opinion; then Vita was a little doubtful; then Desmond, whom I see frequently about his book, dashed all my praise by saying that Logan thought the C.R. well enough, but nothing more. Desmond has an abnormal power for depressing me. He takes the edge off life in some extraordinary way. I love him; but his balance and goodness and humour, all heavenly in themselves, somehow diminish lustre. I think I feel this not only about my work but about life. However, now comes Mrs. Hardy to say that Thomas reads, and hears the C.R. read, with "great pleasure." Indeed, save for Logan, and he's a salt-veined American, I have had high praise. Also Tauchnitz asks about them.

  Sunday, June 14th

  A disgraceful confession—this is Sunday morning and just after ten, and here I am sitting down to write diary and not fiction or reviews, without any excuse, except the state of my mind. After finishing those two books, though, one can't concentrate directly on a new one; and then the letters, the talk, the reviews, all serve to enlarge the pupil of my mind more and more. I can't settle in, contract, and shut myself off. I've written 6 little stories, scrambled them down untidily and have thought out, perhaps too clearly, To the Lighthouse. And both books so far are successful. More of Dalloway has been sold this month than of Jacob in a year. I think it possible we may sell 2,000. The Common one is making money this week. And I get treated at great length and solemnity by old gentlemen.

  Thursday, June 18th

  No, Lytton does not like Mrs. Dalloway, and, what is odd, I like him all the better for saying so, and don't much mind. What he says is that there is a discordancy between the ornament (extremely beautiful) and what happens (rather ordinary—or unimportant). This is caused, he thinks, by some discrepancy in Clarissa herself: he thinks she is disagreeable and limited, but that I alternately laugh at her and cover her, very remarkably, with myself. So that I think as a whole, the book does not ring solid; yet, he says, it is a whole; and he says sometimes the writing is of extreme beauty. What can one call it but genius? he said! Coming when, one never can tell. Fuller of genius, he said, than anything I had done. Perhaps, he said, you have not yet mastered your method. You should take something wilder and more fantastic, a framework that admits of anything, like Tristram Shandy. But then I should lose touch with emotions, I said. Yes, he agreed, there must be reality for you to start from. Heaven knows how you're to do it. But he thought me at the beginning, not at the end. And he said the C.R. was divine, a classic, Mrs. D being, I fear, a flawed stone. This is very personal, he said, and old fashioned perhaps; yet I think there is some truth in it, for I remember the night at Rodmell when I decided to give it up, because I found Clarissa in some way tinselly. Then I invented her memories. But I think some distaste for her persisted. Yet, again, that was true to my feeling for Kitty and one must dislike people in art without its mattering, unless indeed it is true that certain characters detract from the importance of what happens to them. None of this hurts me, or depresses me. It's odd that when Clive and others (several of them) say it is a masterpiece, I am not much exalted; when Lytton picks holes, I get back into my working fighting mood, which is natural to me. I don't see myself a success. I like the sense of effort better. The sales collapsed completely for three days; now a little dribble begins again. I shall be more than pleased if we sell 1500. It's now 1250.

  July 20th. Have sold about 1530.

  Saturday, June 27th

  A bitter cold day, succeeding a chilly windy night, in which were lit all the Chinese lanterns of Roger's garden party. And I do not love my kind. I detest them. I pass them by. I let them break on me like dirty rain drops. No longer can I summon up that energy which, when it sees one of these dry little shapes floating past, or rather stuck on the rock, sweeps round them, steeps them, infuses them, nerves them, and so finally fills them and creates them. Once I had a gift for doing this, and a passion, and it made parties arduous and exciting. So when I wake early now I luxuriate most in a whole day alone; a day of easy natural poses, a little printing; slipping tranquilly off into the deep water of my own thoughts navigating the underworld; and then replenishing my cistern at night with Swift. I am going to write about Stella and Swift for Richmond, as a sign of grace, after sweeping guineas off the Vogue counter. The first fruit of the C.R. (a book too highly praised now) is a request to write for the Atlantic Monthly. So I am getting pushed into criticism. It is a great standby—this power to make large sums by formulating views on Stendhal and Swift. (But while I try to write, I am making up To the Lighthouse—the sea is to be heard all through it. I have an idea that I will invent a new name for my books to supplant "novel." A new—by Virginia Woolf. But what? Elegy?)

  Monday, July 20th

  Here the door
opened and Morgan came in to ask us out to lunch with him at the Etoile, which we did, though we had a nice veal and ham pie at home (this is in the classic style of journalists). It comes of Swift perhaps, the last words of which I have just written, and so fill up time here. I should consider my work list now. I think a little story, perhaps a review, this fortnight; having a superstitious wish to begin To the Lighthouse the first day at Monk's House. I now think I shall finish it in the two months there. The word "sentimental" sticks in my gizzard (I'll write it out of me in a story—Ann Watkins of New York is coming on Wednesday to enquire about my stories). But this theme may be sentimental; father and mother and child in the garden; the death; the sail to the Lighthouse. I think, though, that when I begin it I shall enrich it in all sorts of ways; thicken it; give it branches—roots which I do not perceive now. It might contain all characters boiled down; and childhood; and then this impersonal thing, which I'm dared to do by my friends, the flight of time and the consequent break of unity in my design. That passage (I conceive the book in 3 parts. 1. at the drawing room window; 2. seven years passed; 3. the voyage) interests me very much. A new problem like that breaks fresh ground in one's mind; prevents the regular ruts.

  What shall I read at Rodmell? I have so many books at the back of my mind. I want to read voraciously and gather material for the Lives of the Obscure—which is to tell the whole history of England in one obscure life after another. Proust I should like to finish. Stendhal, and then to skirmish about hither and thither. These 8 weeks at Rodmell always seem capable of holding an infinite amount. Shall we buy the house at Southease? I suppose not.

  Thursday, July 30th

  I am intolerably sleepy and annulled and so write here. I do want indeed to consider my next book, but I am inclined to wait for a clearer head. The thing is I vacillate between a single and intense character of father; and a far wider slower book—Bob T. * telling me that my speed is terrific and distinctive. My summer's wanderings with the pen have I think shown me one or two new dodges for catching my flies. I have sat here, like an improviser with his hands rambling over the piano. The result is perfectly inconclusive and almost illiterate. I want to learn greater quiet and force. But if I set myself that task, don't I run the risk of falling into the flatness of N. & D.f Have I got the power needed if quiet is not to become insipid? These questions I will leave, for the moment, unanswered. So that episode is over. But, dear me, I'm too dull to write and must go and fetch Mr. Dobrée's novel and read it, I think. Yet I have a thousand things to say. I think I might do something in To the Lighthouse, to split up emotions more completely. I think I'm working in that direction.

  Saturday, September 5th

  And why couldn't I see or feel that all this time I was getting a little used up and riding on a flat tyre? So I was, as it happened; and fell down in a faint at Charleston, in the middle of Q.'s birthday party; and then have lain about here, in that odd amphibious life of headache, for a fortnight. This has rammed a big hole in my 8 weeks which were to be stuffed so full. Never mind. Arrange whatever pieces come your way. Never be unseated by the shying of that undependable brute, life, hag-ridden as she is by my own queer, difficult, nervous system. Even at 43 I don't know its workings, for I was saying to myself, all the summer, "I'm quite adamant now. I can go through a tussle of emotions peaceably that two years ago, even, would have raked me raw."

  I have made a very quick and flourishing attack on To the Lighthouse, all the same—22 pages straight off in less than a fortnight. I am still crawling and easily enfeebled, but if I could once get up steam again, I believe I could spin it off with infinite relish. Think what a labour the first pages of Dalloway were! Each word distilled by a relentless clutch on my brain.

  Monday, September 13th, perhaps

  A disgraceful fact—I am writing this at 10 in the morning in bed in the little room looking into the garden, the sun beaming steady, the vine leaves transparent green, and the leaves of the apple tree so brilliant that, as I had my breakfast, I invented a little story about a man who wrote a poem, I think, comparing them with diamonds, and the spiders' webs, (which glance and disappear astonishingly) with something or other else; which led me to think of Marvell on a country life, so to Herrick and the reflection that much of it was dependent upon the town and gaiety—a reaction. However, I have forgotten the facts. I am writing this partly to test my poor bunch of nerves at the back of my neck—will they hold or give again, as they have done so often?—for I'm amphibious still, in bed and out of it; partly to glut my itch ("glut" an "itch"!) for writing. It is the great solace and scourge.

  Tuesday, September 22nd

  How my handwriting goes down hill! Another sacrifice to the Hogarth Press. Yet what I owe the Hogarth Press is barely paid by the whole of my handwriting. Haven't I just written to Herbert Fisher refusing to do a book for the Home University Series on Post-Victorian?—knowing that I can write a book, a better book, a book off my own bat, for the Press if I wish! To think of being battened down in the hold of those University Dons fairly makes my blood run cold. Yet I'm the only woman in England free to write what I like. The others must be thinking of series and editors. Yesterday I heard from Harcourt Brace that Mrs. D. and C.R. are selling 148 and 73 weekly—isn't that a surprising rate for the fourth month? Doesn't it portend a bathroom and a w.c., either here or Southease? I am writing in the watery blue sunset, the repentance of an ill tempered morose day, which vanished, the clouds, I have no doubt, showing gold over the downs, and leaving a soft gold fringe on the top there.

  Tuesday, December 7th

  I am reading the Passage to India, but will not expatiate here, as I must elsewhere. This book for the H.P. I think I will find some theory about fiction; I shall read six novels and start some hares. The one I have in view is about perspective. But I do not know. My brain may not last me out. I cannot think closely enough. But I can—if the C.R. is a test—beat up ideas and express them now without too much confusion. (By the way, Robert Bridges likes Mrs. Dalloway; says no one will read it; but it is beautifully written, and some more, which L., who was told by Morgan, cannot remember.)

  I don't think it is a matter of "development" but something to do with prose and poetry, in novels. For instance Defoe at one end; E. Bronte at the other. Reality something they put at different distances. One would have to go into conventions; real life; and so on. It might last me—this theory—but I should have to support it with other things. And death—as I always feel—hurrying near. 43: how many more books? Katie * came here; a sort of framework of discarded beauty hung on a battered shape now. With the firmness of the flesh and the blue of the eye, the formidable manner has gone. I can see her as she was at 22 H.P.G.† 25 years ago; in a little coat and skirt; very splendid; eyes half shut; lovely mocking voice; upright; tremendous; shy. Now she babbles along.

  "But no duke ever asked me, my dear Virginia. They called me the Ice Queen. And why did I marry Cromer? I loathed Egypt; I loathed invalids. I've had two very happy times in my life—childhood—not when I grew up, but later, with my boys' club, my cottage and my chow—and now. Now I have all I want. My garden—my dog."

  I don't think her son enters in very largely. She is one of these cold eccentric great Englishwomen, enormously enjoying her rank and the eminence it lends her in St. John's Wood, and now free to poke into all the dusty holes and corners, dressed like a charwoman, with hands like apes' and fingernails clotted with dirt. She never stops talking. She lacks much body to her. She has almost effused in mist. But I enjoyed it, though I think she has few affections and no very passionate interests. Now, having cried my cry, and the sun coming out, to write a list of Christmas presents.

  1926

  Tuesday, February 23rd

  I am blown like an old flag by my novel. This one is To the Lighthouse. I think it is worth saying for my own interest that at last, at last, after that battle Jacob's Room, that agony—all agony but the end—Mrs. Dalloway, I am now writing as fast and freely as
I have written in the whole of my life; more so—20 times more so—than any novel yet. I think this is the proof that I was on the right path; and that what fruit hangs in my soul is to be reached there. Amusingly, I now invent theories that fertility and fluency are the things: I used to plead for a kind of close, terse effort. Anyhow this goes on all the morning: and I have the devil's own work not to be flogging my brain all the afternoon. I live entirely in it, and come to the surface rather obscurely and am often unable to think what to say when we walk round the Square, which is bad I know. Perhaps it may be a good sign for the book though. Of course it is largely known to me: but all my books have been that. It is, I feel that I can float everything off now; and "everything" is rather a crowd and weight and confusion in the mind.

  Saturday, February 27th

  I think I shall initiate a new convention for this book—beginning each day on a new page—my habit in writing serious literature. Certainly I have room to waste a little paper in this year's book. As for the soul; why did I say I would leave it out? I forget. And the truth is, one can't write directly about the soul. Looked at, it vanishes; but look at the ceiling, at Grizzle,* at the cheaper beasts in the Zoo which are exposed to walkers in Regent's Park, and the soul slips in. It slipped in this afternoon. I will write that I said, staring at the bison: answering L. absentmindedly: but what was I going to write?