Several times I have gone to bed and hoped I should never wake up. Life grows daily more impossible. Today I put a slide underneath the microscope and looked at it. It was like looking at something through the wrong end of a telescope. I sat with eye glued to the ocular, so as to keep up a pretence of work in case someone came in. My mind was occupied with quite different affairs. If one is pondering on Life and Death, it is a terrible task to have to study Mites.
I look forward to it all the morning, I enter into it with joyful relief with no thought of the dreadful moment impending when I must return and reenter my room. By being wise like this, I manage to husband my spirits and am relatively cheerful for one hour in the middle of each difficult day.
Am doing no work at all. … I sit motionless in my chair and beat the devil’s tattoo with my thumbs and think, think, think in the same horrible circle hour after hour. I am unable to work. I haven’t the courage to. I’ve lost my nerve.
At five I return “home” to the Boardinghouse and get more desperate.
Two old maids sat down to dinner tonight, one German youth (a lascivious, ranting, brainless creature), a lady typist (who takes drugs they say), a dipsomaniac (who has monthly bouts—H⸺ carried him upstairs and put him to bed the other night), two invertebrate violinists who play in the Covent Garden Orchestra, a colonial lady engaged in a bedroom intrigue with a man who sits at my table. What are these people to me? I hate them all. They know it and are offended.
After dinner, put on my cap and rushed out anywhere to escape. Walked to the end of the street, not knowing where I was going or what doing. Stopped and stared with fixed eyes at the traffic in Kensington Road, undetermined what to do with myself and unable to make up my mind (volitional paralysis). Turned round, walked home, and went straight to bed 9 p.m., anxiously looking forward to tomorrow evening when I go to see her again, but at the same time wondering how on earth I am to get through tomorrow’s round before the evening comes. … This is a hand-to-mouth existence. My own inner life is scorching up all outside interests. Zoology appears as a curious thing in a Baghdad bazaar. I sit in my room at the B.M. and play with it; I let it trickle through my fingers and roll away like a child playing with quicksilver.
Over to the flat. She was looking beautiful in a black dress, with a white silk blouse, and a Byron collar, negligently open in front as if a button had come out. She said I varied: sometimes I went up in her estimation, sometimes down; once I went down very low. I understood her to say I was now up! Alleluia!
… It would take too long and I am too tired to write out all the varying phases of this day’s life—all its impressions and petty miseries chasing one another across my consciousness or leapfrogging over my chest like gleeful fiends.8
Thoroughly enjoyed the journey up to town this morning. I secretly gloated over the fact that the train was dashing along over the rails to London bearing me and all the rest of the train’s company upon their pursuits—wealth, fame, learning. I was inebriated with the speed, ferocity, and dash of living. … If the train had charged into the buffers I should have hung my head out of the window and cheered. If a man had got in my way, I’d have knocked him down. The wheels of the carriage were singing a lusty song in which I joined.
… We talked of men and women, and she said she thought men were neither angels nor devils but just men. I said I thought women were either angels or devils.
“I am afraid to ask you which you think me.”
“You needn’t,” I said shortly.
Horribly upset with news from home. Mother is really ill. The Doctor fears serious nerve trouble and says she will always be an invalid. This is awful, poor dear! It’s dreadful, and yet I have a tiny wish buried at the bottom of my heart that she may be removed early from us rather than linger in pain of body and mind. Especially do I hope she may not live to hear any grievous news of me. … What irony that she should lose the use of her right arm only two years after Dad’s death from paralysis. It is cruel for it reminds her of Dad’s illness. … What, too, would she think if she could have heard M⸺’s first words to me yesterday on one of my periodical visits to his consulting room, “Well, how’s the paralysis?”
In the evening went over to see her. She was wearing a black silk gown and looked handsome. … She is always the same sombre, fascinating, lissom, soft-voiced She! She herself never changes. … What am I to do? I cannot give her up and yet I do not altogether wish to take her to my heart. It distresses me to know how to proceed. I am a wily fish.
Sat in the gardens with her. We sat facing the sun for a while until she was afraid of developing freckles and turned around, deliberately turning her back on good King Sol. … I said it was disrespectful.
“Oh! he doesn’t mind,” she said. “He’s a dear. He kissed me and said, ‘Turn round my dear if you like.’ ”
Isn’t she tantalising?
I wanted to say sarcastically, “I wonder you let him kiss you,” but there was a danger of the remark
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