Thursday, November 5th.
The miracle is accomplished. L. put down the last sheet about 12 last night; and could not speak. He was in tears. He says it is ‘a most remarkable book’ - he likes it better than The Waves - and has not a spark of doubt that it must be published. I, as a witness, not only to his emotion but to his absorption, for he read on and on, can’t doubt his opinion. What about my own? Anyhow the moment of relief was divine. I hardly know yet if I’m on my heels or head, so amazing is the reversal since Tuesday morning. I have never had such an experience before.
Monday, November 9th.
I must make some resolutions about this book. I find it extremely difficult. I get into despair. It seems so bad. I can only cling to L.’s verdict. Then I get distracted: I tried, as an anodyne, to take up an article; a memoir; to review a book for The Listener. They make my mind race. I must fix it upon The Years. I must do my proofs - send them off. I must fix my mind on it all the morning. I think the only way is to do that, and then let myself do something else between tea and dinner. But immerse in The Years all the morning - nothing else. If the chapter is difficult, concentrate for a short time. Then write here. But don’t dash off into other writing till after tea. When it is done, we can always ask Morgan.
Tuesday, November 10th.
On the whole it has gone better this morning. It’s true my brain is so tired of this job it aches after an hour or less. So I must dandle it, and gently immerse it. Yes, I think it’s good; in its very difficult way.
I wonder if anyone has ever suffered so much from a book as I have from The Years. Once out I will never look at it again. It’s like a long childbirth. Think of that summer, every morning a headache, and forcing myself into that room in my nightgown; and lying down after a page: and always with the certainty of failure. Now that certainty is mercifully removed to some extent. But now I feel I don’t care what anyone says so long as I’m rid of it. And for some reason I feel I’m respected and liked. But this is only the haze dance of illusion, always changing. Never write a long book again. Yet I feel I shall write more fiction - scenes will form. But I am tired this morning: too much strain and racing yesterday.
Monday, November 30th.
There is no need whatever in my opinion to be unhappy about The Years. It seems to me to come off at the end. Anyhow, to be a taut, real, strenuous book. Just finished it; and feel a little exalted. It’s different from the others of course: has I think more ‘real’ life in it; more blood and bone. But anyhow, even if there are appalling watery patches, and a grinding at the beginning, I don’t think I need lie quaking at nights. I think I can feel assured. This I say sincerely to myself; to hold to myself during the weeks of dull anticipation. Nor need I care much what people say. In fact I hand my compliment to that terribly depressed woman, myself, whose head ached so often; who was so entirely convinced a failure; for in spite of everything I think she brought it off and is to be congratulated. How she did it, with her head like an old cloth, I don’t know. But now for rest: and Gibbon.
Thursday, December 31st.
There in front of me lie the proofs - the galleys - to go off today, a sort of stinging nettle that I cover over. Nor do I wish even to write about it here.
A divine relief has possessed me these last days - at being quit of it - good or bad. And, for the first time since February I should say my mind has sprung up like a tree shaking off a load. And I’ve plunged into Gibbon and read and read, for the first time since February, I think. Now for action and pleasure again and going about. I could make some interesting and perhaps valuable notes on the absolute necessity for me of my work. Always to be after something. I’m not sure that the intensiveness and exclusiveness of writing a long book is a possible state: I mean, if ever in future I do such a thing - and I doubt it - I will force myself to vary it with little articles. Anyhow, now I am not going to think Can I write? I am going to rush into unselfconsciousness and work: at Gibbon first; then Roger and Three Guineas. Which of the two comes first, how to dovetail, I don’t know. Anyhow even if The Years is a failure, I’ve thought considerably and collected a little hoard of ideas. Perhaps I’m now again on one of those peaks where I shall write two or three little books quickly; and then have another break. At least I feel myself possessed of skill enough to go on with. No emptiness. And in proof of this will go in, get my Gibbon notes and begin a careful sketch of the article.
1937.
Thursday, January 28th.
Sunk once more in the happy tumultuous dream: that is to say began Three Guineas this morning and can’t stop thinking it. My plan is to write it out now, without more palaver, and think perhaps it might be roughed in by Easter; but I shall allow myself, make myself, scribble a little article or two between whiles. Then I hope to float over the horrid March 15th: wire today to say Years haven’t reached America. I must plate myself against that sinking and mud. And so far as I can tell, this method is almost too effective.
Thursday, February 18th.
I have now written for three weeks at Three Guineas and have done 38 pages. Now I’ve used up that vein momently and want a few days change. At what? Can’t at the moment think.
Saturday, February 20th.
I turn my eyes away from the Press as I go upstairs, because there are all the review copies of The Years packed and packing. They go out next week: this is my last weekend of comparative peace. What do I anticipate with such clammy coldness? I think chiefly that my friends won’t mention it; will turn the conversation rather awkwardly. I think I anticipate considerable lukewarmness among the friendly reviewers - respectful tepidity; and a whoop of Red Indian delight from the Grigs who will joyfully and loudly announce that this is the longdrawn twaddle of a prim prudish bourgeois mind, and say that now no one can take Mrs W. seriously again. But violence I shan’t so much mind. What I think I shall mind most is the awkwardness when I go, say to Tilton or Charleston, and they don’t know what to say. And since we shan’t get away till June I must expect a very full exposure to this damp firework atmosphere. They will say it’s a tired book; a last effort... Well, now that I’ve written that down I feel that even so I can exist in that shadow. That is if I keep hard at work. And there’s no lack of that. I discussed a book of illustrated incidents with Nessa yesterday; we are going to produce 12 lithographs for Christmas, printed by ourselves. As we were talking, Margery Fry rang up to ask me to see Julian Fry about Roger. So that begins to press on me. Then L. wants if possible to have Three Guineas for the autumn: and I have my Gibbon, my broadcast, and a possible leader on Biography to fill in chinks. I plan to keep out of literary circles till the mild boom is over. And this, waiting, under consideration, is after all the worst. This time next month I shall feel more at ease. And it’s only now and then I mind now.
Sunday, February 21st.
I’m off again, after five days lapse (writing Faces and Voices) on Three Guineas: after a most dismal hacking got a little canter and hope now to spin ahead. Odd that one sometimes does a transition quite quickly. A quiet day for a wonder - no one seen yesterday: so I went to Caledonian Market, couldn’t find spoon shop: bought yellow gloves 3/- and stockings 1/- and so home. Started reading French again: Misanthrope and Colette’s memoirs given me last summer by Janie when I was in the dismal drowse and couldn’t fix on that or anything. Today the reviewers (oh d n this silly thought) have their teeth fixed in me; but what care I for a goosefeather bed, etc. In fact, once I get into the canter over Three Guineas I think I shall see only the flash of the white rails and pound along to the goal.
Sunday, February 28th.
I’m so entirely imbued with Three Guineas that I can hardly jerk myself away to write here. (Here in fact I again dropped my pen to think about my next paragraph - universities) - how will that lead to professions and so on. It’s a bad habit.
Sunday, March 7th.
As will be seen on the last page my spiritual temperature went up with a rush; why I don’t know, save that I’ve be
en having a good gallop at Three Guineas. Now I have broached the fatal week and must expect a sudden drop. It’s going to be pretty bad, I’m certain; but at the same time I am convinced that the drop needn’t be fatal: that is, the book may be damned, with faint praise; but the point is that I myself know why it’s a failure, and that its failure is deliberate. I also know that I have reached my point of view, as writer, as being. As writer I am fitted out for another two books - Three Guineas and Roger (let alone articles): as being the interest and safety of my present life are unthrowable. This I have, honestly, proved this winter. Ifs not a gesture. And honestly the diminution of fame, that people aren’t any longer enthusiastic, gives me the chance to observe quietly. Also I am in a position to hold myself aloof. I need never seek out anyone. In short either way I’m safe, and look forward, after the unavoidable tosses and tumbles of the next ten days, to a slow, dark, fruitful spring, summer and autumn. This is set down I hope once and for all. And please to remember it on Friday when the reviews come in.
Friday, March 12th.
Oh the relief! L. brought the Lit. Sup. to me in bed and said It’s quite good. And so it is; and Time and Tide says I’m a first rate novelist and a great lyrical poet. And I can already hardly read through the reviews: but feel a little dazed, to think then it’s not nonsense; it does make an effect. Yet of course not in the least the effect I meant. But now, my dear, after all that agony, I’m free, whole; round: can go full ahead. And so stop this cry of content and sober joy. Off to M.H. Julian back today. I use my last five minutes before lunch to note that though I have slipped the gall and fret and despair even of the past few weeks wholly today, and shan’t I think renew them; I have once more loaded myself with the strain of Three Guineas, at which I have been writing hard and laboriously. So now I’m straining to draw that cart across the rough ground. It seems therefore that there is no rest; no sense of It’s finished. One always harnesses oneself by instinct; and can’t live without the strain. Now The Years will completely die out from my mind.
Car mended. But rain pouring.
Sunday, March 14th.
I am in such a twitter owing to two columns in the Observer praising The Years that I can’t, as I foretold, go on with Three Guineas. Why I even sat back just now and thought with pleasure of people reading that review. And when I think of the agony I went through in this room, just over a year ago... when it dawned on me that the whole of three years’ work was a complete failure: and then when I think of the mornings here when I used to stumble out and cut up those proofs and write three lines and then go back and lie on my bed - the worst summer in my life, but at the same time the most illuminating - it’s no wonder my hand trembles. What most pleases me though is the obvious chance now since de Selincourt sees it, that my intention in The Years may be not so entirely muted and obscured as I feared. The TLS. spoke as if it were merely the death song of the middle classes: a series of exquisite impressions: but he sees that it is a creative, a constructive book. Not that I’ve yet altogether read him: but he has pounced on some of the key sentences. And this means that it will be debated, and this means that Three Guineas will strike very sharp and clear on a hot iron: so that my immensely careful planning won’t be baulked by time of life etc. as I had made certain. Making certain however was an enormous discovery for me, though.
Friday, March 19th.
Now this is one of the strangest of my experiences - ‘they’ say almost universally that The Years is a masterpiece. The Times says so. Bunny etc: Howard Spring. If somebody had told me I should write this, even a week, ago, let alone six months ago, I should have given a jump like a shot hare. How entirely and absolutely incredible it would have been! The praise chorus began yesterday: by the way I was walking in Covent Garden and found St Pauls, C.G., for the first time, heard the old char singing as she cleaned the chairs in the ante hall; then went to Burnets; chose stuff; bought the Evening Standard and found myself glorified as I read it in the Tube. A calm quiet feeling, glory: and I’m so steeled now I don’t think the flutter will much worry me. Now I must begin again on Three Guineas.
Saturday, March 27th.
No, I am not going to titivate Gibbon - that is condense by a thousand words. Too much screw needed, and my brain unstrung. Merely scribbling here: over a log fire, on a cold but bright Easter morning; sudden shafts of sun, a scatter of snow on the hills early; sudden storms, ink black, octopus pouring, coming up; and the rooks fidgeting and pecking on the elm trees. As for the beauty, as I always say when I walk the terrace after breakfast, too much for one pair of eyes. Enough to float a whole population in happiness, if only they would look. Curiously a combination, this garden, with the church, and the cross of the church black against Asheham Hill. That is all the elements of the English brought together, accidentally. We came down on Thursday, packed in the rush in London; cars spinning all along the roads: yesterday at last perfect freedom from telephones and reviews, and no one rang up. I began Lord Ormont and his Aminta and found it so rich, so knotted, so alive, and muscular after the pale little fiction I’m used to, that, alas, it made me wish to write fiction again. Meredith underrated. I like his effort to escape plain prose. And he had humour and some insight too - more than they allow him now. Also Gibbon. And so I’m well fitted out; but can’t write more than this without the old tightening and throbbing at the back of the head.
Friday, April 2nd.
How I interest myself! Quite set up and perky today with a mind brimming because I was so damnably depressed and smacked on the cheek by Edwin Muir in the Listener and by Scott James in the Life and Letters on Friday. They both gave me a smart snubbing: E. M. says The Years is dead and disappointing. So in effect did S. James. All the lights sank; my reed bent to the ground. Dead and disappointing - so I’m found out and that odious rice pudding of a book is what I thought it - a dank failure. No life in it. Much inferior to the bitter truth and intense originality of Miss Compton Burnett. Now this pain woke me at 4 a.m. and I suffered acutely. All day driving to Janet and back I was under the cloud. But about 7 it lifted; there was a good review, of 4 lines, in the Empire Review. The best of my books: did that help? I don’t think very much. But the delight of being exploded is quite real. One feels braced for some reason; amused; round; combative; more than by praise.
Saturday, April 3rd.
Now I have to broadcast on 29th. It will go like this: can’t be a craft of words. Am going to disregard the title and talk about words: why they won’t let themselves be made a craft of. They tell the truth: they aren’t useful. That there should be two languages: fiction and fact. Words are inhuman... won’t make money - need privacy. Why. For their embraces, to continue the race. A dead word. The purists and the impurists. These are only impressions, not fixations. I respect words too. Associations of words. Felicity brings in absent thee. We can easily make new words. Squish squash: crick crack. But we can’t use them in writing.
Sunday, April 4th.
Another curious idiosyncrasy. Maynard thinks The Years my best book: thinks one scene, E. and Crosby, beats Tchekhov’s Cherry Orchard - and this opinion though from the centre, from a very fine mind, doesn’t flutter me as much as Muir’s blame; it sinks in slowly and deeply. It’s not a vanity feeling; the other is; the other will die as soon as the week’s number of the Listener is past. L. went to Tilton and had a long quiet cronies talk. Maynard said that he thought The Years very moving: more tender than any of my books: did not puzzle him like The Waves; symbolism not a worry; very beautiful; and no more said than was needed; hadn’t yet finished it. But how compose the two opinions; it’s my most human book; and most inhuman? Oh to forget all this and write - as I must tomorrow.
Friday, April 9th.
‘Such happiness wherever it is known is to be pitied for ’tis surely blind.’ Yes, but my happiness isn’t blind. That is the achievement, I was thinking between 3 and 4 this morning, of my 55 years. I lay awake so calm, so content, as if I’d stepped off the whirling world
into a deep blue quiet space and there open eyed existed, beyond harm; armed against all that can happen. I have never had this feeling before in all my life; but I have had it several times since last summer: when I reached it, in my worst depression, as if I stepped out, throwing aside a cloak, lying in bed, looking at the stars, these nights at Monk’s House. Of course it ruffles, in the day, but there it is. There it was yesterday when old Hugh came and said nothing about The Years.
Monday, June 1st. Monk’s House I have at last got going with Three Guineas - after five days’ grind, re-copying, to some extent re-writing; my poor old brain hums again - largely I think because I had a good long walk yesterday and so routed the drowse - it was very hot. At any rate I must use this page as a running ground - for I can’t screw all the three hours; I must relax and race here the last hour. That’s the worst of writing - its waste. What can I do with the last hour of my morning? Dante again. But oh how my heart leaps up to think that never again shall I be harnessed to a long book. No. Always short ones in future. The long book still won’t be altogether downed - its reverberations grumble. Did I say - no, the London days were too tight, too hot, and distracted for this book - that H. Brace wrote and said they were happy to find that The Years is the best-selling novel in America? This was confirmed by my place at the head of the list in the Herald Tribune. They have sold 25,000 - my record, easily. (Now I am dreaming of Three Guineas.) We think if we make money of buying perhaps an annuity. The great desirable is not to have to earn money by writing. I am doubtful if I shall ever write another novel. Certainly not unless under great compulsion such as The Years inspired in me. Were I another person, I would say to myself, Please write criticism; biography; invent a new form for both: also write some completely unformal fiction: short: and poetry. Fate has here a hand in it, for when I’ve done Three Guineas - which I hope to have written, not yet for publication though, in August - I intend to put the script aside and write Roger. What I think best would be to work hard at Three Guineas for a month - June: than begin reading and re-reading my Roger notes. By the way, I have been sharply abused in Scrutiny who, L. says, calls me a cheat in The Waves and The Years-, most intelligently (and highly) praised by F. Faulkner in America - and that’s all. (I mean that’s all I need I think write about reviews now: I suspect the clever young man is going to enjoy downing me - so be it: but in private Sally Graves and Stephen Spender approve: so, to sum up, I don’t know, this is honest, where I stand; but intend to think no more of it. Gibbon was rejected by the N. Republic, so I shall send no more to America. Nor will I write articles at all except for the Lit. Sup. for whom I am going now to do Congreve.) silence; and the solitude. I can’t though. But shan’t I, one of these days, indulge myself in some short releases into that world? Short now for ever. No more long grinds: only sudden intensities. If I could think out another adventure. Oddly enough I see it now ahead of me - in Charing Cross Road yesterday - as to do with books: some new combination. Brighton? A round room on the pier - and people shopping, I missing each other - a story Angelica told in the summer. But how does this make up with criticism? I’m trying to get the four dimensions of the mind... life in connection with emotions from literature. A day’s walk - a mind’s adventure; something like that. And it’s useless to repeat my old experiments: they must be new to be experiments.
Complete Works of Virginia Woolf Page 585
