She switched on the light, went out swiftly into the passage, and meeting him conducted him to her office, while I as swiftly put on overcoat and scarf, and slipped out through the open door, stumbling over his bicycle, but of course not stopping to pick it up. Later she telephoned to say it was all right. Very relieved! … She recalls Richepin’s La Glu.
She is a fine sedative. Her movements are a pleasant adagio, her voice piano to pianissimo, her conversation breaks off in thrilling aposiopeses.
An awful comedy this morning—for as soon as I was securely “gagged” the dentist went out of the room. She approached, leered at me helpless, and said provokingly, “Oh! you do look funny.” Minx. On returning he said to her, “Would you like to hold his hand?”
She: “Oh! not just now.”
And they grinned at one another and at me waiting to be tortured.
… On the Station waited for an hour for the train. Gave her a box of sweets and the Bystander. We walked up the platform to extreme end in the dark and kissed! But it was very windy and cold. (I noticed that!) So we entered an empty luggage guard’s van on rail beside platform left there by shunters. Here we were out of the wind and far better off. But a shunter came along and turned us out. She gave me a silver matchbox. But I believe for various reasons that it is one of her own and not a new one. Said “Goodbye.”
At R⸺. Played the negligent flaneur, reclining on the Chesterfield, leaning against the grand piano, or measuring my length on the mat before the fire.
Tomorrow I begin duties at the British Museum of Natural History. I cannot quite imagine myself a Museum assistant. Before I get there I know I shall be the strangest assistant on the staff. It will be singing my song in a Strange land and weeping—I hope not too bitterly—down by the waters of a very queer Babylon.
Still, I have burnt my bridges like Caesar—or burnt my ships like Cortez. So forward!
In London
1912
Am at last beginning to get more content with the work at the Museum, so that I muse on Bernard Shaw’s saying, “Get what you like or you’ll grow to like what you get.” I have a terrible suspicion that the security of tenure here is like the lion’s den in the fable—Nulla vestiga retrorsum. Of course I am wonderfully proud of being at the Museum, although I am disappointed and write as if I were quite blasé.
I should be disappointed if at the end of my career (if I live to see it through) I do not win the F.R.S. I should very much like it. … My nature is very mixed—ambitious above all things and yet soon giddy with the audacity of my aspirations. The B.M. and my colleagues make me feel most inferior in fact, but in theory—in the secrecy of my own bedchamber—I feel that there are few men there my equal.
Down with influenza. A boardinghouse with the flu!
Went home to recuperate, a beef jelly in one pocket and sal volatile in the other. On arrival, my blanched appearance frightened Mother and the others, so went to bed at once. “Fate’s a fiddler, life’s a dance.”
Weak enough to sit down before dressing-table while I shave and brush my hair. Dyspepsia appalling. The Doctor in Kensington seemed to think me an awful wreck and asked if I were concealing—
Reading Baudelaire and Verlaine.
Bathing
Sat on a seat overlooking the sand hills with stick between my legs like an old man, and watched a buxom wench aet. twenty-five run down the path pursued by “Rough” and two little girls in blue. Later they emerged from a striped bathing tent in the glory of blue bathing dresses. It made me feel quite an old man to see the girl galloping out over the hard level sands to the breakers, a child clinging to each hand. Legs and arms twinkled in the sun which shone with brilliance. If life were as level as those sands and as beautiful as that trio of girls!
Two Young Men Talking
With H⸺ in his garden. He is a great enthusiast.
“I disapprove entirely of your taste in gardening,” I said. “You object to the ‘ragged wilderness’ style, I like it. You like lawns laid out for croquet and your privet hedges pruned into ‘God Save the King’ or ‘Dieu et mon droit.’ My dear boy, if you saw Mr. ⸻’s wilderness at ⸻ you’d be so shocked you’d cut and run, and I imagine there’d be an affecting reunion between you and your beloved geraniums. For my part, I don’t like geraniums: they’re suburban, and all of a piece with antimacassars and stuffed birds under glass bells. The colour of your specimens, moreover,” I rapped out, “is vulgar—like the muddied petticoats of old market women.”
H⸺, quite unmoved, replied slowly, “Well, here are some like the beautiful white cambric of a lady of fashion. You’ve got no taste in flowers—you’re just six feet of grief and patience.” We roared with laughing.
“Do stop watering those damned plants,” I exclaimed at last. But he went on. I exclaimed again and out of sheer ridiculousness, in reply he proceeded to water the cabbages, the gravel path, the oak tree—and me! While I writhed
