Monday, March 25th.
And this morning, in spite of being in a rage, I wrote the whole of that d — d chapter again, in a spasm of desperation and, I think, got it right, by breaking up, the use of thought skipping and parentheses. Anyhow that’s the hang of it. And I cut from 20 to 30 pages.
Wednesday, March 27th.
I see I am becoming a regular diarizer. The reason is that I cannot make the transition from Pargiters to Dante without some bridge. And this cools my mind. I am rather worried about the raid chapter: afraid if I compress and worry that I shall spoil. Never mind. Forge ahead and see what comes next.
Yesterday we went to the Tower, which is an impressive murderous bloody grey raven haunted military barrack prison dungeon place; like the prison of English splendour; the reformatory at the back of history; where we shot and tortured and imprisoned. Prisoners scratched their names, very beautifully, on the walls. And the crown jewels blazed, very tawdry.
And there were the orders, like Spinks or a Regent Street jewellers. And we watched the Scots Guards drill: and an officer doing a kind of tiger pace up and down - a wax faced barbers block officer trained to a certain impassive balancing. The sergeant major barked and swore. All in a hoarse bark: the men stamped and wheeled like - machines: then the officer also barked: all precise, inhuman, showing off. A degrading, stupefying sight. But in keeping with the grey walls, the cobbles, the executioner’s block. People sitting on the river bank among old cannon. Steps etc. very romantic: a dungeon like feeling.
Monday, April 1st.
At this rate I shall never finish the Purgatorio. But what’s the use of reading with half one’s mind running on Eleanor and Kitty. Oh that scene wants compacting. It’s too thin run. But I shall finish it before I go away. We think of three weeks in Holland and France; a week in Rome, flying there. We went to Kew yesterday and if vegetable notes are needed this is to signify that yesterday was the prime day for cherry blossom, pear trees and magnolia. A lovely white one with black cups to the flowers; another purple tinted, just falling. Another and another. And the yellow bushes and the daffodils in the grass. So to walk through Richmond - a long walk by the ponds. I verified certain details.
Tuesday, April 9th.
I met Morgan in the London Library yesterday and flew into a passion.
‘Virginia, my dear,’ he said. I was pleased by that little affectionate familiar tag.
‘Being a good boy and getting books on Bloomsbury?’ I said.
“Yes. You listen. Is my book down?’ he asked Mr Mannering.
‘We were just posting it,’ said Mr M.
‘And, Virginia, you know I’m on the Committee here,’ said Morgan. ‘And we’ve been discussing whether to allow ladies’ - It came over me that they were going to put me on: and I was then to refuse: ‘Oh but they do,’ I said. ‘There was Mrs Green.’
‘Yes, yes. There was Mrs Green. And Sir Leslie Stephen said never again. She was so troublesome. And I said haven’t ladies improved? But they were all quite determined. No, no, no, ladies are quite impossible. They wouldn’t hear of it.’
See how my hand trembles. I was so angry (also very tired) standing. And I saw the whole slate smeared. I thought how perhaps M. had mentioned my name, and they had said no no no: ladies are impossible. And so I quieted down and said nothing and this morning in my bath I made up a phrase in my book On Being Despised which is to run - a friend of mine, who was offered... one of those prizes - for her sake the great exception was to be made - who was in short to be given an honour - I forget what... She said And they actually thought I would take it. They were, on my honour, surprised, even at my very modified and humble rejection. You didn’t tell them what you thought of them for daring to suggest that you should rub your nose in that pail of offal? I remarked. Not for a hundred years, she observed. And I will bring in M. Pattison: and I will say sympathy uses the same force required to lay 700 bricks. And I will show how you can’t sit on committees if you also pour out tea - that by the way Sir L. S. spent his evenings with widow Green: yes, these flares up are very good for my book: for they simmer and become transparent: and I see how I can transmute them into beautiful clear reasonable ironical prose. God damn Morgan for thinking I’d have taken that... And dear old Morgan comes to tea today and then sits with Berry who’s had cataract.
The veil of the temple - which, whether university or cathedral, academic or ecclesiastical, I forget - was to be raised and as an exception she was to be allowed to enter in. But what about my civilization? For 2,000 years we have done things without being paid for doing them. You can’t bribe me now. Pail of offal? No: I said while very deeply appreciating the hon... In short one must tell lies, and apply every emollient in our power to the swollen skin of our brothers’ so terribly inflamed vanity. Truth is only to be spoken by those women whose fathers were pork butchers and left them a share in the pig factory.
Friday, April 12th.
This little piece of rant won’t be very intelligible in a year’s time. Yet there are some useful facts and phrases in it. I rather itch to be at that book. But I have been skirmishing round a headache, and can’t pull my weight in the morning.
Saturday, April 13th.
Let me make a note that it would be much wiser not to attempt to sketch a draft of On Being Despised, or whatever it is to be called, until The Ts. is done with. I was vagrant this morning and made a rash attempt, with the interesting discovery that one can’t propagate at the same time as write fiction. And as this fiction is dangerously near propaganda, I must keep my hands clear.
It’s true I’m half asleep, after the Zoo and Willy. But he threw some coals on my fire: the horror of the legal profession: its immense wealth: its conventions: a Royal Commission now sitting: its hidebound hoariness and so on: worth going into one of these days: and the medical profession and the osteopaths - worth a fling of laughter. But oh dear, not now. Now for Alfieri and Nash and other notables: so happy I was reading alone last night. We saw the great dumb fish at the Zoo and the gorillas: storms of rain, cloud: and I read Annie S. Swan on her life with considerable respect. Almost always this comes from autobiography: a liking, at least some imaginative stir: for no doubt her books, which she can’t count, and has no illusions about, but she can’t stop telling stories, are wash, pigs’, hogs’ - any wash you choose. But she is a shrewd capable old woman.
Saturday, April 20th.
The scene has now changed to Rodmell, and I am writing at the table L. made (supported on a cushion) and it is raining. Good Friday was a complete fraud - rain and more rain. I tried walking along the bank and saw a mole, running on the meadow - it glides rather - is like an elongated guinea pig. Pinka1 went and nuzzled it and then it managed to slide into a hole. At the same time through the rain I heard the cuckoo’s song. Then I came home and read and read - Stephen Spender: too quick to stop to think: shall I stop to think? read it again? It has considerable swing and fluency; and some general ideas; but peters out in the usual litter of an undergraduate’s table: wants to get everything in and report and answer all the chatter. But I want to investigate certain questions: why do I always fight shy of my contemporaries? What is really the woman’s angle? Why does so much of this seem to me in the air? But I recognize my own limitation: not a good ratiocinator, Lytton used to say. Do I instinctively keep my mind from analysing, which would impair its creativeness? I think there’s something in that. No creative writer can swallow another contemporary. The reception of living work is too coarse and partial if you’re doing the same thing yourself. But I admire Stephen for trying to grapple with these problems. Only of course he has to hitch them round - to use his own predicament as a magnet and thus the pattern is too arbitrary: if you’re not in his predicament. But as I say, I read it at a gulp without screwing my wits tight to the argument. This is a method I find very profitable: then go back and screw.
Saturday, April 27th.
All desire to practise the art of a writer has completely lef
t me. I cannot imagine what it would be like: that is, more accurately, I cannot curve my mind to the line of a book; no, nor of an article. It’s not the writing but the architecting that strains. If I write this paragraph, then there is the next and then the next. But after a month’s holiday I shall be as tough and springy as - say heather root: and the arches and the domes will spring into the air as firm as steel and light as cloud - but all these words miss the mark. Stephen Spender demands a letter of criticism; can’t write it. Nor can I describe with any certainty Mrs Collett, with whom both L. and I fell in love yesterday. A whippet woman; steel blue eyes; silver spotted jersey; completely free, edged, outspoken, the widow of the Lord Mayor’s son, who was killed before her eyes flying: After that she broke down and the only cure she said was to go to Hong Kong and stay with Bella. From that we did not expect anything much, to tell the truth; whereas she ridiculed the jubilee, the Lord Mayor and told us all about life in the Mansion House. The L.M. spends £20,000 out of his own pocket on his year of office; 10,000 on his sheriffdom; then buys an ermine coat for £1,000 in which to admit the King to Temple Bar. It rains; the King flashes past and the coat is spoilt. Her mother in law is a perfectly natural sensible woman who goes buying fish with a bag. The Queen gave her as a token of esteem two large shells engraved with the story of George and the Dragon. These mercifully are left at the Mansion House. The L.M. wears a dress that is heavy with bullion. A terrible state of display and ugliness - but she was so nice and unexpected I actually asked her to come and see us - which, had she known it, is a compliment we never pay even the royal family.
JOURNEY TO HOLLAND, GERMANY, ITALY AND FRANCE
Monday, May 6th. Zutphen Ideas that struck me.
That the more complex a vision the less it lends itself to satire: the more it understands the less it is able to sum up and make linear. For example: Shakespeare and Dostoievsky, neither of them satirize. The age of understanding: the age of destroying - and so on.
Belchamber.
A moving, in its way, completed story. But shallow. A superficial book. But also a finished one. Rounded off. Only possible if you keep one inch below; because the people, like Sainty, have to do things without diving deep; and this runs in the current; which lends itself to completeness. That is, if a writer accepts the conventions and lets his characters be guided by them, not conflict with them, he can produce an effect of symmetry: very pleasant, suggestive; but only on the surface. That is, I can’t care what happens: yet I like the design. Also disgust at the cat monkey psychology, to which he is admirably faithful. A sensitive sincere mind - however, doing his embroidery and making his acute observation. Not a snob either.
Thursday, May 9th.
Silting in the sun outside the German Customs. A car with the swastika on the back window has just passed through the barrier into Germany. L. is in the Customs. I am nibbling at Aaron’s Rod. Ought I to go in and see what is happening? A fine dry windy morning. The Dutch Customs took 10 seconds. This has taken 10 minutes already. The windows are barred. Here they came out and the grim man laughed at Mitzi. But L. said that when a peasant came in and stood with his hat on, the man said this office is like a church and made him move it. Heil Hitler said the little thin boy opening his bag, perhaps with an apple in it, at the barrier. We become obsequious - delighted that is when the officer smiles at Mitzi - the first stoop in our back.
That a work of art means that one part gets strength from another part.
Monday, May 13th. Brenner Odd to see the countries change into each other. Beds now made of layers on top. No sheets. Houses building. Austrian, dignified. Winter lasts at Innsbruck till July. No spring. Italy fronts me on a blue bar. The Czecho-Slovaks are in front going to the Customs house.
Terugia
Came through Florence today. Saw the green and white cathedral and the yellow Arno dribbling into shallows. A thunderstorm. Irises purple against the clouds. So to Arezzo. A most superb church with dropped hull.
Lake Trasimen: stood in a field of red purple clover: plover’s egg lake; grey olives, exquisite, subtle; sea cold, shell green. So on, regretting that we did not stay to Perugia. Brafani where we stayed in 1908. Now all the same. The same ardent sunburnt women. But lace and so on for sale. Better to have stayed at Trasimen. I went into an Albergo yesterday to buy rolls and found a sculptured fireplace, all patriarchal - servants and masters. Cauldron on the fire. Probably not much change since 16th century: the people preserve liquids. Men and women scything. A nightingale singing where we sat. Little frogs jumping into the stream.
Brafani: three people watching the door open and shut. Commenting on visitors like fates - summing up, placing. A woman with a hard lined aquiline face - red lips - bird like - perfectly self-satisfied. French pendulous men, a rather poor sister. Now they sit nibbling at human nature. We are rescued by the excellence of our luggage.
Rome: tea. Tea in café. Ladies in bright coats and white hats. Music. Look out and see people like movies. Abyssinia. Children lugging. Café haunters. Ices. Old man who haunts the Greco.
Sunday café: N. and A. drawing. Very cold. Rome a mitigated but perceptible Sunday. Fierce large jowled old ladies. Q. talking about Monaco. Talleyrand. Some very poor black wispy women. The effect of dowdiness produced by wispy hair. The Prime Minister’s letter offering to recommend me for the Companion of Honour. No.
Tuesday, May 21st.
Oddities of the human brain: woke early and again considered dashing off my book on Professions, to which I had not given a single thought these 7 or 8 days. Why? This vacillates with my novel - how are they both to come out simultaneously. But it is a sign that I must get pen to paper again. Yet at the moment I am going rag marketing with N. and A., who don’t come.
Sunday, May 26th.
I’m writing at six on a Sunday evening, with a band playing and stopping and children shouting in a too luxurious hotel where the waiters bring one the menu and I mix my French scandalously with odd scraps of painfully acquired Italian. Still I can rattle off Gli Indifferenti lying on my bed for pleasure. Oh the loveliness of the land still here and there - for instance that first morning’s drive out of Rome - the sea and the lip of the unviolated land: and the umbrella pines, after Civita Vecchia: then of course all the intense boredom of Genoa and the Riviera, with its geraniums and its bougainvillea and its sense of shoving you between hill and sea and keeping you there in a bright luxury light without room to turn, so steep the vulture neck hills come down. But we slept at Lerici the first night which does the bay, the brimming sea and the green sailing ship and the island and the sparkling fading red and yellow night lamps to perfection. But that kind of perfection no longer makes me feel for my pen. It’s too easy. But driving today I was thinking of Roger - Brignolles - Corges - my word, the olives and the rust red earth and the flat green and the trees. But now the band has begun again and we must go down to dine sumptuously off local trout. Off tomorrow and home on Friday. But though I’m impatient for my brain to eat again, I can dally out these last days better than sometimes. Why? Why? I go on asking myself. And feel I could soon polish off those final scenes: a possible amplification of the first paragraph occurred to me. But I don’t want to grind at ‘writing’ too hard. To open my net wide. It occurs to me, as we drive, how I’m disliked, how I’m laughed at; and I’m rather proud of my intention to take the fence gallantly. But writing again!
Wednesday, June 5th.
Back here1 again, and the grim wooden feeling that has made me think myself dead since we came back is softening slightly. It’s beginning this cursed dry hand empty chapter again in part. Every time I say it will be the devil! but I never believe it. And then the usual depressions come. And I wish for death. But I am now seeing that the last 200 pages will assert themselves and force me to write a play more or less: all broken up: and I stop to begin making up; Also, after the queer interlude, at once life - that is the telephone beginning - starts. So that one is forcibly chafed. (I meant to make a note about t
he dramatic shape which forces itself upon me.)
Monday, June 10th. Whit Monday At Monk’s House. Working very hard. I think I shall rush these scenes off. Yet I cannot write this morning (Tuesday). How can I say, naturally, I have inherited the Rose and the Star!
Thursday, June 13th.
In some ways, it’s rather like writing The Waves - these last scenes. I bring my brain to a state of congestion, have to stop; go upstairs, run into towsled Mrs Brewster, come back; find a little flow of words. It’s the extreme condensation; the contrasts; the keeping it all together. Does this mean that it’s good? I feel I have a round of great pillar to set up and can only drag and sweat. It’s something like that. It’s getting barer and more intense. And then what a relief when I have the upper air scenes - like the one with Eleanor! only they have to be condensed too. It’s the proper placing that strains me.
Tuesday, July 16th.
A curious sense of complete failure. Margery hasn’t written to me about my speech: according to Janie, Pamela thought the whole thing a failure. And it was for this that I ruined my last pages! I can’t write this morning, can’t get into the swing. Innumerable worries, about getting people to dine and so on, afflict me. My head is all jangled. And I have to get that d — d speech printed, or refuse to. The director has written. Never again, oh never again!
I think though that I can get the last pages right, if I can only dream myself back into them. Yes, but how dream, when I have to see Susie and Ethel, to see Miss Belsher’s house, to ring up and write notes and order this and that? Well, be still and ruminate; it’s only 16th: there’s a fortnight before August. And I’m sure that there is a remarkable shape somewhere concealed there. It’s not mere verbiage, I think. If necessary I could put it away. But I think no: merely go on and perhaps write a very rapid short sketch, in ink - that’s a good plan. Go back and get the central idea, and then rocket into it. And be very controlled and keep a hand on myself too. And perhaps read a little Shakespeare. Yes, one of the last plays: I think I will do that, so as to loosen my muscles. But oh this anxiety, and the perpetual knocking of the cup out of my hand.
Complete Works of Virginia Woolf Page 582
