I’ll tell you what I wish they’d do—seriously: divide up the arena into a series of cubicles where, unobserved and in perfect privacy, a man could execute all the various movements of his body and limbs which the music prompts. It would be such a delicious self-indulgence and it’s torture to be jammed into a seat where you can’t even tap one foot or wave an arm.
The concert restored my moral health. I came away in love with people I was hating before and full of compassion for others I usually condemn. A feeling of immeasurable well being—a jolly bonhomie enveloped me like incandescent light. At the close when we stood up to sing the National Anthem we all felt a genuine spirit of camaraderie. Just as when Kings die, we were silent musing upon the common fate, and when the time came to separate we were loath to go our several ways, for we were comrades who together had come through a great experience. For my part I wanted to shake hands all round—happy travellers, now alas! at the journey’s end and never perhaps to meet again—never.
R⸺ and I walked up through Kensington Gardens like two young Gods!
“I even like that bloody thing,” I said, pointing to the Albert Memorial.
We pointed out pretty girls to one another, watched the children play ring-a-ring-a-roses on the grass. We laughed exultingly at the thought of our dismal colleagues … though I said (as before!) I loved ’em all—God bless ’em—even old ⸻. R⸺ said it was nothing short of insolence on their part to have neglected the opportunity of coming to the Concert.
Later on, an old gaffer up from the country stopped us to ask the way to Rotten Row—I overwhelmed him with directions and happy descriptive details. I felt like walking with him and showing him what a wonderful place the world is.
After separating from R⸺ very reluctantly—it was horrible to be left alone in such high spirits, walked up towards the Round Pond, and caught myself avoiding the shadows of the trees—so as to be every moment out in the blazing sun. I scoffed inwardly at the timorousness of pale, anaemic folk whom I passed hiding in the shadows of the elms.
At the Round Pond, came across a Bulldog who was biting out great chunks of water and in luxuriant wastefulness letting it drool out again from each corner of his mouth. I watched this old fellow greedily (it was very hot), as well pleased with him and his liquid “chops” as with anything I saw, unless it were a girl and a man lying full length along the grass and kissing beneath a sunshade. I smiled; she saw me, and smiled, too, in return, and then fell to kissing again.
Dinosaurs
There are books which are Dinosaurs—Sir Walter Raleigh’s History of the World, Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. There are men who are Dinosaurs—Balzac completing his Human Comedy, Napoleon, Roosevelt. I like them all. I like express trains and motor lorries. I enjoy watching an iron girder swinging in the air or great cubes of ice caught up between iron pincers. I must always stop and watch these things. I like everything that is swift or immense: London, lightning, Popocatepetl. I enjoy the smell of tar, of coal, of fried fish, or a brass band playing a Liszt Rhapsody. And why should those foolish Maenads shout Women’s Rights just because they burn down a church? All bonfires are delectable. Civilisation and top hats bore me. My own life is like a tame rabbit’s. If only I had a long tail to lash it in feline rage! I would return to Nature—I could almost return to Chaos. There are times when I feel so dour I would wreck the universe if I could.11
Sunset in Kensington Gardens
The instinct for worship occurs rhythmically—at morning and evening. This is natural, for twice a day at sunrise and sunset—however work-sodden we may be, however hypnotised by daily routine—our natural impulse is (provided we are awake) to look to the horizon at the sun and stand a moment with mute lips. During the course of the day or night, we are too occupied or asleep—but sunrise is the great hour of the departure and sunset is the arrival at the end. Everything puts on a mysterious appearance—tonight the tops of the elms seemed supernaturally high and, pushing up into the sky, had secret communion with the clouds; the clouds seemed waiting for a ceremony, a way had been prepared by the tapissier, a moment of suspense while one cloud stretched to another like courtiers in whispered conversation; a rumour of the approach; then slowly the news came through that the sun had arrived for immediate departure.
Have finished my essay. But am written out—obviously. Tonight I struggled with another, and spent two hours sucking the end of my pen. But after painfully mountainous parturition, all I brought forth were the two ridiculous mice of one meretricious trope and one grammatical solecism. I can sometimes sit before a sheet of paper, pen in hand, unable to produce a word.
For a walk with R⸺ in the country, calling for tea at his Uncle’s house at ⸻. Played clock golf and made the acquaintance of Miss ⸻, a tall, statuesque lady, with golden hair, as graceful as an antelope and very comely, her two dear little feet clad in white shoes peeping out (as R⸺ said) like two white mice one after the other as she moved across the lawn.
Coming home I said to R⸺ histrionically, “Some golden-haired little boy will some day rest his head upon her bosom, beautiful in line and depth, all unconscious of his luck or of his part in a beautiful picture—would that I were the father to make that group a fait accompli.” R⸺, with meticulous
