LITMIR.BIZ

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confess what a horrid fraud it seemed; and if, years later, these docile herds will own up that they too saw through it, and will have no more of it—well—should I be more cheerful? I think the dinner at the 1917 Club, and Mrs Besant’s speech rubbed the gilt, if there were any grains remaining, effectually off the gingerbread. Hobson was sardonic. She—a massive and sulky featured old lady, with a capacious head, however, thickly covered with curly white hair—began by comparing London, lit up and festive, with Lahore. And then she pitched into us for our maltreatment of India, she, apparently, being ‘them’ and not ‘us’. But I don’t think she made her case very solid, though superficially it was all believable, and the 1917 Club applauded and agreed. I can’t help listening to speaking as though it were writing and thus the flowers, which she brandished now and again, looked terribly artificial. It seems to me more and more clear that the only honest people are the artists, and that these social reformers and philanthropists get so out of hand and harbour so many discreditable desires under the disguise of loving their kind, that in the end there’s more to find fault with in them than in us. But if I were one of them?

      Sunday, July 20th.

      Perhaps I will finish the account of the peace celebrations. What herd animals we are after all!—even the most disillusioned. At any rate, after sitting through the procession and the peace bells unmoved, I began after dinner to feel that if something was going on, perhaps one had better be in it. I routed up poor L. and threw away my Walpole. First lighting a row of glass lamps and seeing that the rain was stopped, we went out just before tea. Explosions had for some time promised fireworks. The doors of the public house at the corner were open and the room crowded; couples waltzing; songs being shouted, waveringly, as if one must be drunk to sing. A troop of little boys with lanterns were parading the green, beating sticks. Not many shops went to the expense of electric light. A woman of the upper classes was supported dead drunk between two men partially drunk. We followed a moderate stream flowing up the Hill. Illuminations were almost extinct half way up, but we kept on till we reached the terrace. And then we did see something—not much indeed, for the damp had deadened the chemicals. Red and green and yellow and blue balls rose slowly into the air, burst, flowered into an oval of light, which dropped in minuter grains and expired. There were hazes of light at different points. Rising over the Thames, among trees, these rockets were beautiful; the light on the faces of the crowd was strange; yet of course there was grey mist muffling everything and taking the blaze off the fire. It was a melancholy thing to see the incurable soldiers lying in bed at the Star and Garter with their backs to us, smoking cigarettes and waiting for the noise to be over. We were children to be amused. So at eleven we went home and saw from my study Ealing do its best to rejoice, and indeed one fire balloon went so high that L. believed it a star; but there were nine showing. Today the rain has left us in no doubt that any remaining festivities are to be completely quenched.

      Tuesday, October 21st.

      This is Trafalgar day and yesterday is memorable for the appearance of Night and Day. My six copies reached me in the morning and five were despatched, so that I figure the beaks of five friends already embedded. Am I nervous? Oddly little; more excited and pleased than nervous. In the first place, there it is, out and done with; then I read a bit and liked it; then I have a kind of confidence, that the people whose judgment I value will probably think well of it, which is much reinforced by the knowledge that even if they don’t I shall pick up and start another story on my own. Of course, if Morgan and Lytton and the others should be enthusiastic, I should think the better of myself. The bore is meeting people who say the usual things. But on the whole I see what I’m aiming at; what I feel is that this time I’ve had a fair chance and done my best; so that I can be philosophic and lay the blame on God.

      Thursday, October 23rd.

      The first fruits of Night and Day must be entered. ‘No doubt a work of the highest genius’, Clive Bell. Well, he might not have liked it: he was critical of The Voyage Out. I own I’m pleased: yet not convinced that it is as he says. However, this is a token that I’m right to have no fears. The people whose judgment I respect won’t be so enthusiastic as he is, but they’ll come out decidedly on that side, I think.

      Thursday, October 30th.

      I have the excuse of rheumatism for not writing more; and my hand tired of writing, apart from rheumatism. Still, if I could treat myself professionally as a subject for analysis I could make an interesting story of the past few days, of my vicissitudes about N. and D. After Clive’s letter came Nessa’s—unstinted praise; on top of that Lytton’s: enthusiastic praise; a grand triumph; a classic; and so on; Violet’s sentence of eulogy followed; and then, yesterday morning, this line from Morgan ‘I like it less than The Voyage Out: Though he spoke also of great admiration and had read in haste and proposed re-reading, this rubbed out all the pleasure of the rest. Yes, but to continue. About 3 in the afternoon I felt happier and easier on account of his blame than on account of the others’ praise—as if one were in the human atmosphere again, after a blissful roll among elastic clouds and cushiony downs. Yet I suppose I value Morgan’s opinion as much as anybody’s. Then there’s a column in The Times this morning; high praise; and intelligent too; saying among other things that N. and D., though it has less brilliance on the surface, has more depth than the other; with which I agree. I hope this week will see me through the reviews; I should like intelligent letters to follow; but I want to be writing little stories; I feel a load off my mind all the same.

      Thursday, November 6th.

      Sydney and Morgan dined with us last night. On the whole, I’m glad I sacrificed a concert. The doubt about Morgan and N. and D. is removed; I understand why he likes it less than V.O.; and, in understanding, see that it is not a criticism to discourage. Perhaps intelligent criticism never is. All the same, I shirk writing it out, because I write so much criticism. What he said amounted to this: N. and D. is a strictly formal and classical work; that being so one requires, or he requires, a far greater degree of lovability in the characters than in a book like V.O., which is vague and universal. None of the characters in N. and D. is lovable. He did not care how they sorted themselves out. Neither did he care for the characters in V.O., but there he felt no need to care for them. Otherwise, he admired practically everything; his blame does not consist in saying that N. and D. is less remarkable than t’other. O and beauties it has in plenty—in fact, I see no reason to be depressed on his account. Sydney said he had been completely upset by it and was of opinion that I had on this occasion ‘brought it off’. But what a bore I’m becoming! Yes, even old Virginia will skip a good deal of this; but at the moment it seems important. The Cambridge Magazine repeats what Morgan said about dislike of the characters; yet I am in the forefront of contemporary literature. I’m cynical about my figures, they say; but directly they go into detail, Morgan, who read the Review sitting over the gas fire, began to disagree. So all critics split off, and the wretched author who tries to keep control of them is torn asunder. For the first time this many years I walked along the river bank between ten and eleven. Yes, it’s like the shut up house I once compared it to; the room with its dust sheets on the chairs. The fishermen are not out so early; an empty path; but a large aeroplane on business. We talked very rarely, the proof being that we (I anyhow) did not mind silences. Morgan has the artist’s mind; he says the simple things that clever people don’t say; I find him the best of critics for that reason. Suddenly out comes the obvious thing that one has overlooked. He is in trouble with a novel of his own, fingering the keys but only producing discords so far.

      Friday, December 5th.

      Another of these skips, but I think the book draws its breath steadily if with deliberation. I reflect that I’ve not opened a Greek book since we came back; hardly read outside my review books, which proves that my time for writing has not been mine at all. I’m almost alarmed to find how intensely I’m specialized. My mind turned by anxiety, or other cause, from its scrutiny of blank paper, is like a lost child—wandering the house, sitting on the bottom step to cry. Night and Day flutters—about me still, and causes great loss of time. George Eliot would never read reviews, since talk of her books hampered her writing. I begin to see what she meant. I don’t take praise or blame excessively to heart, but they interrupt, cast one’s—eyes backwards, make one wish to explain

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