At a quarter past eight, this morning, the horse and trap were awaiting me outside, and bidding her “Goodbye” I got in and drove off—she riding on the step down so far, as the gate. Then we waved till we were out of sight. Back in London by 10 a.m. She makes slow progress, poor dear—her nerves are still very much of a jangle. But I am better, my heart is less wobbly.
“Describe the call-note of a motor omnibus.” “Why does the chicken cross the road?” and “What’s that?”—when a railway engine whistled in the distance.
Measure by this our happiness!
R⸺ cannot make me out. He says one day I complain bitterly at not receiving a Portuguese sonnet once a week, and the next all is well and Love reigneth. “Verily a Sphinx.”
Spent the afternoon at the Royal Army Medical College in consultation with the Professor of Hygiene. Amid all the paraphernalia of research, even when discussing a serious problem with a serious Major, I could not take myself seriously. I am incurably trivial and always feel myself an irresponsible youth, wondering and futile, among owlish grownups.
At 4 p.m. departed and went down on Vauxhall Bridge and watched a flour-barge being unloaded before returning to the Museum. I could readily hang on behind a cart, stare at an accident, pull a face at a policeman and then run away.
… It annoys me to find the laissez-faire attitude of our relatives. Not one with a remonstrance for us and yet all the omens are against our marriage. In the state of my nervous system and in the state of hers—we have both had serious nervous breakdowns—how impossible it seems! Yet they say all the old conventional things to us, about our happiness and so on! …
… Am I a moral monster? Surely a man who can combine such calculating callousness with really generous impulses of the heart is—what?
The truth is I think I am in love with her: but I am also mightily in love with myself. One or the other has to give.
If sometimes you saw me in my room by myself, you would say I was a ridiculous coxcomb. For I walk about, look out of the window then at the mirror—turning my head sideways perhaps so as to see it in profile. Or I gaze down into my eyes—my eyes always impress me—and wonder what effect I produce on others. This, I believe, is not so much vanity as curiosity. I know I am not prepossessing in appearance—my nose is crooked and my skin is blotched. Yet my physique—because it is mine—interests me. I like to see myself walking and talking. I should like to hold myself in my hand in front of me like a Punchinello and carefully examine myself at my leisure.
Saw my brother A⸺ off at Waterloo en route for Armageddon. Darling fellow. He shook hands with P⸺ and H⸺, and P⸺ wished him “Goodbye, and good luck.” Then he held my hand a moment, said “Goodbye, old man,” and for a second gave me a queer little nervous look. I could only say “Goodbye,” but we understand each other perfectly. … It is horrible. I love him tenderly.
Sleep
Sleep means unconsciousness: unconsciousness is a solemn state—you get it for example from a blow on the head with a mallet. It always weightily impresses me to see someone asleep—especially someone I love as today, stretched out as still as a log—who perhaps a few minutes ago was alive, even animated. And there is nothing so welcome, unless it be the sunrise, as the first faint gleam of recognition in the half-opened eye when consciousness like a mighty river begins to flow in and restore our love to us again.
When I go to bed myself, I sometimes jealously guard my faculties from being filched away by sleep. I almost fear sleep: it makes me apprehensive—this wonderful and unknowable Thing which is going to happen to me for which I must lay myself out on a bed and wait, with an elaborate preparedness. Unlike Sir Thomas Browne, I am not always so content to take my leave of the sun and sleep, if need be, into the resurrection. And I sometimes lie awake and wonder when the mysterious Visitor will come to me and call me away from this thrilling world, and how He does it, to which end I try to remain conscious of the gradual process and to understand it: an impossibility of course involving a contradiction in terms. So I shall never know, nor will anybody else.
I’ve had such a successful evening—you’ve no idea! The pen simply flew along, automatically easy, page after page in perfect sequence. My style trilled and bickered and rolled and ululated in an infinite variety; you will find in it all the subtlest modulations, inflections and suavities. My afflatus came down from Heaven in a bar of light like the Shekinah—straight from God, very God of very God. I worked in a golden halo of light and electric sparks came off my pen nib as I scratched the paper.
The Clever Young Man
Argued with R⸺ this morning. He is a type specimen of the clever young man. We both are. Our flowers of speech are often forced hothouse plants, paradoxes and cynicisms fly as thick as driving rain and Shaw is our great exemplar. I could write out an exhaustive analysis of the clever young man, and being one myself can speak from “inspired sources” as the newspapers say.
A common habit is to underline and memorise short, sharp, witty remarks he sees in books and then on future occasions dish them up for his own self-glorification. If the author be famous he begins, “As ⸻ says, etc.” If
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