LITMIR.BIZ

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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 I time. The first day one’s miserable; the second happy. There I 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 civilization 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 recognize 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 Christians—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 in 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 I 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).

      Saturday, August 13th.

      ‘Coleridge was as little fitted for action as Lamb, but on a different account. His person was of a good height, but as sluggish and solid as the other’s was light and fragile. He had, perhaps, suffered it to look old before its time, for want of exercise. His hair was white at 50; and as he generally dressed in black and had a very tranquil demeanour, his appearance was gentlemanly, and for several years before his death was reverend. Nevertheless, there was something invincibly young in the look of his face. It was round and fresh-coloured, with agreeable features, and an open, indolent, goodnatured mouth. This boylike expression was very becoming in one who dreamed and speculated as he did when he was really a boy, and who passed his life apart from

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