Saturday, May 25th.
Then we went up to what has been so far the worst week in the war. And so remains. On Tuesday evening, after my freshener, before Tom and Wm. P. came, the B.B.C. announced the taking of Amiens and Arras. The French P.M. told the truth and knocked all our ‘holding’ to atoms. On Monday they broke through. It’s tedious picking up details. It seems they raid with tanks and parachutists: roads crammed with refugees can’t be bombed. They crash on. Now are at Boulogne. But it also seems these occupations aren’t altogether solid. What are the great armies doing to let this 25 mile hole stay open? The feeling is we’re outwitted. They’re agile and fearless and up to any new dodge. The French forgot to blow up bridges. The Germans seem youthful, fresh, inventive. We plod behind. This went on the three London days.
Rodmell burns with rumours. Are we to be bombed, evacuated? Guns that shake the windows. Hospital ships sunk. So it comes our way.
Today’s rumour is the Nun in the bus who pays her fare with a man’s hand.
Tuesday, May 28th.
And today at 8, the French P.M. broadcast the treachery of the Belgian King. The Belgians have capitulated. The Government is not capitulating. Churchill to broadcast at 4. A wet dull day.
Wednesday, May 29th.
But hope revives. I don’t know why. A desperate battle. The Allies holding. How sick one gets of the phrase - how easy to make a Duff Cooper speech about valour; and history, where one knows the end of the sentence. Still it cheers, somehow. Poetry as Tom said is easier to write than prose. I could reel off patriotic speeches by the dozen. L. has been in London. A great thunderstorm. I was walking on the marsh and thought it was the guns on the channel ports. Then, as they swerved, I conceived a raid on London; turned on the wireless; heard some prattler; and then the guns began to lighten; then it rained. Began P.H. again today and threshed and threshed till perhaps a little grain can be collected. I sent off my Walpole too. After dinner I began Sidney Smith; plan being to keep short flights going; P-H. in between. Oh yes - one can’t plan, any more, a long book. H. Brace cable that they accept Roger - whom, which, I’d almost forgotten. So that’s a success: where I’d been expecting failure. It can’t be so bad as all that. 250 advance. But we shall I suppose certainly postpone. Reading masses of Coleridge and Wordsworth letters of a night - curiously untwisting and burrowing into that plaited nest.
Thursday, May 30th.
Walking today (Nessa’s birthday) by Kingfisher pool saw my first hospital train - laden, not funereal but weighty, as if not to shake bones: something - what is the word I want - grieving and tender and heavy laden and private - bringing our wounded back carefully through the green fields at which I suppose some looked. Not that I could see them. And the faculty for seeing in imagination always leaves me so suffused with something partly visual, partly emotional, I can’t, though it’s very pervasive, catch it when I come home - the slowness, cadaverousness, grief of the long heavy train, taking its burden through the fields. Very quietly it slid into the cutting at Lewes. Instantly wild duck flights of aeroplanes came over head; manoeuvred; took up positions and passed over Caburn.
Friday, May 31st.
Scraps, orts and fragments, as I said in P.H., which is now bubbling. I’m playing with words: and think I owe some dexterity to finger exercises here - but the scraps: Louie has seen Mr Westmacott’s man. ‘It’s an eyesore’ - his description of fighting near Boulogne. Percy weeding: ‘I shall conquer ’em in the end. If I was sure of our winning the other battle...’ Raid, said to be warned, last night. All the searchlights in extreme continual vibration: they have blots of light, like beads of dew on a stalk. Mr Hanna ‘stood by’ half the night Rumour, very likely rumour, which has transported the English in Belgium who, with their golf sticks, ball and some nets in a car coming from Flanders, were taken for parachutists: condemned to death; released; and returned to Seaford. Rumour, via Percy, transplanted them to ‘somewhere near Eastbourne’ and the villagers armed with rifles, pitchforks etc. Shows what a surplus of unused imagination we possess. We - the educated - check it; as I checked my cavalry on the down at Telscombe and transformed them into cows drinking. Making up again. So that I couldn’t remember, coming home, if I’d come by the mushroom path or the field. How amazing that I can tap that old river again: and how satisfying. But will it last? I made out the whole of the end: and need only fill in: the faculty, dormant under the weight of Roger, springs up. And to me it’s the voice on the scent again. ‘Any waste paper?’ Here I was interrupted by the jangling bell. Small boy in white sweater come, I suppose, for Scouts, and Mabel says they pester us daily at 37; and make off with the spoils. Desperate fighting. The same perorations. Coming through Southease I saw Mrs Cockell in old garden hat weeding. Out comes a maid in muslin apron and cap tied with blue riband. Why? To keep up standards of civilization?
Friday, June 7th.
Just back this roasting hot evening. The great battle which decides our life or death goes on. Last night an air raid here. Today battle sparks. Up till 2.30 this morning.
Sunday, June 9th.
I will continue - but can I? The pressure of this battle wipes out London pretty quick. A gritting day. As sample of my present mood, I reflect: capitulation will mean All Jews to be given up. Concentration camps. So to our garage. That’s behind correcting Roger, playing bowls. One taps any source of comfort - Leigh Ashton at Charleston yesterday for instance. But today the line is bulging. Last night aeroplanes (G.?) over: shafts of light following. I papered my windows. Another reflection: I don’t want to go to bed at midday: this refers to the garage.
What we dread (it’s no exaggeration) is the news that the French Government have left Paris. A kind of growl behind the cuckoos and t’other birds. A furnace behind the sky. It struck me that one curious feeling is, that the writing ‘I’ has vanished. No audience. No echo. That’s part of one’s death. Not altogether serious, for I correct Roger, send finally I hope tomorrow: and could finish P.H. But it is a fact - this disparition of an echo.
Monday, June 10th.
A day off. I mean one of those odd lapses of anxiety which may be false. Anyhow they said this morning that the line is unbroken - save at certain points. And our army has left Norway and is going to their help. Anyhow - it’s a day off - a coal gritty day. L. breakfasted by electric light. And cool mercifully after the furnace. Today, too, I sent off my page proofs, and then have read my Roger for the last time. The Index remains. And I’m in the doldrums; a little sunk, and open to the suggestion, conveyed by the memory of Leonard’s coolness, enforced by John’s silence, that it’s one of my failures.
Saturday, June 22nd.
Waterloo I suppose. And the fighting goes on in France; and the terms aren’t yet public; and it’s a heavy grey day, and I’ve been beaten at bowls, feel depressed and irritated and vow I’ll play no more, but read my book. My book is Coleridge: Rose Macaulay; the Bessborough letters - rather a foolish flight inspired by Hary-o: I would like to find one book and stick to it. But can’t. I feel, if this is my last lap, oughtn’t I to read Shakespeare? But can’t. I feel oughtn’t I to finish off P.H.: oughtn’t I to finish something by way of an end? The end gives its vividness, even its gaiety and recklessness to the random daily life. This, I thought yesterday, may be my last walk. On the down above Bay dean I found some green glass tubes. The corn was glowing with poppies in it. And I read my Shelley at night. How delicate and pure and musical and uncorrupt he and Coleridge read, after the Left Wing Group. How lightly and firmly they put down their feet, and how they sing; and how they compact; and fuse and deepen. I wish I could invent a new critical method - something swifter and lighter and more colloquial and yet intense: more to the point and less composed; more fluid and following the flight; than my C.R. essays. The old problem: how to keep the flight of the mind, yet be exact. All the difference between the sketch and the finished work. And now dinner to cook. A role. Nightly raids in the east and south coast. 6, 3, 22 people killed nightl
y.
A high wind was blowing: Mabel, Louie picking currants and gooseberries. Then a visit to Charleston threw another stone into the pond. And at the moment, with P.H. only to fix upon, I’m loosely anchored. Further, the war - our waiting while the knives sharpen for the operation - has taken away the outer wall of security. No echo comes back. I have no surroundings. I have so little sense of a public that I forget about Roger coming or not coming out. Those familiar circumvolutions - those standards - which have for so many years given back an echo and so thickened my identity are all wide and wild as the desert now. I mean, there is no ‘autumn’, no winter. We pour to the edge of a precipice... and then? I can’t conceive that there will be a 27th June 1941. This cuts away something even at tea at Charleston. We drop another afternoon into the millrace.
Wednesday, July 24th.
Yes, there are things to write about: but I want at the moment, the eve of publication moment, to discover my emotions. They are fitful: thus not very strong - nothing like so strong as before The Years - oh dear, nothing like. Still they twinge. I wish it were this time next week. There’ll be Morgan and Desmond. And I fear Morgan will say - just enough to show he doesn’t like, but is kind. D. will certainly depress. The Times Lit. Sup. (after its ill temper about Reviewing) will find chinks. T. and T. will be enthusiastic. And - that’s all. I repeat that two strains, as usual, will develop: fascinating; dull: life-like; dead. So why do I twinge? Knowing it almost by heart. But not quite. Mrs Lehmann enthusiastic. John silent. I shall of course be sneered at by those who sniff at Bloomsbury. I’d forgotten that. But as L. is combing Sally I can’t concentrate. No room of my own. For 11 days I’ve been contracting in the glare of different faces. It ended yesterday with the W.I.: my talk - it was talked - about the Dreadnought. A simple, on the whole natural, friendly occasion. Cups of tea: biscuits; and Mrs Chavasse, in a tight dress, presiding: out of respect for me, it was a Book tea. Miss Gardner had Three Guineas pinned to her frock: Mrs Thompsett Three Weeks: and someone else a silver spoon. No I can’t go on to Ray’s death, about which I know nothing, save that that very large woman, with the shock of grey hair, and the bruised lip; that monster, whom I remember typical of young womanhood, has suddenly gone. She had a kind of representative quality, in her white coat and trousers; wall building; disappointed, courageous, without - what? - imagination?
Lady Oxford said that there was no virtue in saving, more in spending. She hung over my neck in a spasm of tears. Mrs Campbell has cancer. But in a twinkling she recovered, began to spend. A cold chicken, she said, was always under cover on the sideboard at my service. The country people used butter. She was beautifully dressed in a rayed silk, with a dark blue tie; a dark blue “fluted Russian cap with red flap. This was given her by her milliner: the fruit of spending.
All the walls, the protecting and reflecting walls, wear so terribly thin in this war. There’s no standard to write for: no public to echo back; even the ‘tradition’ has become transparent. Hence a certain energy and recklessness - part good part bad I daresay. But ifs the only line to take. And perhaps the walls, if violently beaten against, will finally contain me. I feel tonight still veiled. The veil will be lifted tomorrow when my book comes out. That’s what may be painful: may be cordial. And then I may feel once more round me the wall I’ve missed - or vacancy? or chill? I make these notes, but am tired of notes, tired of Gide, tired of de Vigny notebooks. I want something sequacious now and robust. In the first days of the war I could read notes only.
Thursday, July 25th.
I’m not very nervous at the moment: indeed at worst it’s only a skin deep nervousness; for after all, the main people approve: still I shall be relieved if Morgan approves. That I suppose I shall know tomorrow. The first review (Lynd) says: ‘deep imaginative sympathy... makes him an attractive figure (in spite of wild phrases): There is little drama... at the same time those interested in modern art will find it of absorbing interest..
What a curious relation is mine with Roger at this moment - I who have given him a kind of shape after his death. Was he like that? I feel very much in his presence at the moment; as if I were intimately connected with him: as if we together had given birth to this vision of him: a child born of us. Yet he had no power to alter it. And yet for some years it will represent him.
Friday, July 2 6th.
I think I have taken, say a good second, judging from the Lit. Sup. review. No Morgan. Times say it takes a very high place indeed among biographies. Times say I have a genius for the relevant. Times (art critic I gather) goes on to analyse Roger’s tones etc. Times intelligent, but not room for more. It’s a nice quiet feeling now. With my Coleridge beneath me, and this over, as it really very nearly (how I hate that clash) is, I’m aware of something permanent and real in my existence. By the way, I’m rather proud of having done a solid work. I am content, somehow. But when I read my post it’s like putting my hand in a jar of leeches and so I’ve a mint of dull dreary letters to write. But it’s an incredibly lovely - yes lovely is the word - transient, changing, warm, capricious summer evening. Also I won two games. A large hedgehog was found drowned in the lily pool; L. tried to resuscitate it. An amusing sight. 2/6 is offered by the Government for live hedgehogs. I’m reading Ruth Benedict with pressure of suggestions - about culture patterns - which suggests rather too much. Six volumes of Aug. Hare also suggest - little articles. But I’m very peaceful, momentarily, this evening. Saturday I suppose a no review day. Immune is again the right word. No, John hasn’t read it. When the twelve planes went over, out to sea, to fight, last evening, I had I think an individual, not communal B.B.C. dictated feeling. I almost instinctively wished them luck. I should like to be able to take scientific notes of reactions. Invasion may be tonight: or not at all - that’s Joubert’s summing up. And - I had something else to say - but what? And dinner to get ready.
Friday, August 2nd.
Complete silence surrounds that book. It might have sailed into the blue and been lost. ‘One of our books did not return’ as the B.B.C. puts it. No review by Morgan: no review at all. No letter. And though I suspect Morgan has refused, finding it unpalatable, still I remain - yes, honestly - quiet minded and prepared to face a complete, lasting silence.
Sunday, August 4th.
Just time, while Judith and Leslie1 finish their game, to record on a great relief - Desmond’s review really says all I wanted said. The book delights friends and the younger generation say Yes, yes, we know him: and it’s not only delightful but important. That’s enough. And it gave me a very calm rewarded feeling - not the old triumph, as over a novel, but the feeling I’ve done what was asked of me, given my friends what they wanted. Just as I’d decided I’d given them nothing but the materials for a book I hadn’t written. Now I can be content: needn’t worry what people think: for Desmond is a good bell-ringer; and will start the others - I mean, the talk among intimates will follow, more or less, his lines. Herbert Read and Maccoll have bit their hardest; put their case; now only Morgan remains, and perhaps a personal dart from W. Lewis.
Tuesday, August 6th.
Yes, I was very happy again when I saw Clive’s blue envelope at breakfast (with John) this morning: It’s Clive almost - what? - devout: no, quiet, serious, completely without sneer, approving. As good in its way as the best of my books - the best biography for many years - the first part as good as the last and no break. So I’m confirmed in what I felt, even when I had that beak pecking walk in March with a temperature of 101 with Leonard - confirmed in what I feel - that the first part is really more generally interesting, though less complex and intensified than the last. I’m sure it was necessary - as a solid pavement for the whole to stand on.
Saturday, August 10th.
And then Morgan slightly damped me: but I was damp already from Leslie hum haw the night before and the day before and again tomorrow. So Morgan and Vita slightly damped: and Bob slightly elated and Ethel, and some old boy in the Spectator, attacking Read. But God’
s truth, that’s the end of it all. No more reviews and if I had solitude - no men driving stakes, digging pink gun emplacements, and no neighbours, doubtless I could expand and soar - into P.H., into Coleridge; but must first - damn John - re-write the L.T. Incessant company is as bad as solitary confinement.
Friday, August 16th.
Third edition ordered. L. said, at 37 on Wednesday ‘It’s booming.’ The boom is dulled by our distance. And why does a word of tepidity depress more than a word of praise exalts? I don’t know. I refer to Waley: I don’t refer to Pamela - great work of art etc. Well, it’s taking its way. It’s settling. It’s done. And I’m writing P.H., which leaves a spare hour. Many air raids. One as I walked. A haystack was handy. But walked on, and so home. All clear. Then sirens again. Then Judith and Leslie. Bowls. Then Mrs Ebbs etc. to borrow table. All clear. I must make a stopgap for the last hour, or I shall dwindle, as I’m doing here. But P.H. is a concentration - a screw. So I will go in; and read Hare and write to Ethel. Very hot, even out here.
They came very close. We lay down under the tree. The sound was like someone sawing in the air just above us. We lay flat on our faces, hands behind head. Don’t close your teeth, said L. They seemed to be sawing at something stationary. Bombs shook the windows of my lodge. Will it drop I asked? If so, we shall be broken together. I thought, I think, of nothingness - flatness, my mood being flat. Some fear I suppose. Should we take Mabel to garage. Too risky to cross the garden L. said. Then another came from Newhaven. Hum and saw and buzz all round us. A horse neighed in the marsh. Very sultry. Is it thunder? I said. No, guns, said L., from Ringmer, from Charleston way. Then slowly the sound lessened. Mabel in kitchen said the windows shook. Air raid still on: distant planes; Leslie playing bowls. I well beaten. My books only gave me pain, Charlotte Brontë said. Today I agree. Very heavy, dull and damp. This must at once be cured. The all clear. 5 to 7. 144 down last night.
Complete Works of Virginia Woolf Page 591
