Guards standing near gazing across the river but at nothing in particular—just idling as I was. I saw another man sitting on the stone steps and reading a dirty fragment of newspaper. I saw the genial, red-faced seafaring man in charge of the landing stage strolling up and down his small domain—chatting, jesting, spitting, and making fast a rope or so. Everything was alive to the finger tips, vividly shining, pulsating.
Arrived at Queen’s Hall in time for Pachmann’s Recital at 3:15. … As usual he kept us waiting for 10 minutes. Then a short, fat, middle-aged man strolled casually on to the platform and everyone clapped violently—so it was Pachmann: a dirty greasy looking fellow with long hair of dirty grey colour, reaching down to his shoulders and an ugly face. He beamed on us and then shrugged his shoulders and went on shrugging them until his eye caught the music stool, which seemed to fill him with amazement. He stalked it carefully, held out one hand to it caressingly, and finding all was well, went two steps backwards, clasping his hands before him and always gazing at the little stool in mute admiration, his eyes sparkling with pleasure, like Mr. Pickwick’s on the discovery of the archeological treasure. He approached once more, bent down and ever so gently moved it about ⅞ths of an inch nearer the piano. He then gave it a final pat with his right hand and sat down.
He played Nocturne No. 2, Prelude No. 20, a Mazurka and two Etudes of Chopin and Schubert’s Impromptu No. 4.
At the close we all crowded around the platform and gave the queer, old-world gentleman an ovation, one man thrusting up his hand which Pachmann generously shook as desired.
As an encore he gave us a Valse—“Valse, Valse,” he exclaimed ecstatically, jumping up and down in his seat in time to the music. It was a truly remarkable sight: on his right the clamorous crowd around the platform; on his left the seat holders of the Orchestra Stalls, while at the piano bobbed this grubby little fat man playing divine Chopin divinely well, at the same time rising and falling in his seat, turning a beaming countenance first to the right and then to the left, crying, “Valse, Valse.” He is as entertaining as a tumbler at a variety hall.
As soon as he had finished, we clapped and rattled for more, Pachmann meanwhile standing surrounded by his idolaters in affected despair at ever being able to satisfy us. Presently he walked off and a scuffle was half visible behind the scenes between him and his agent who sent him in once more.
The applause was wonderful. As soon as he began again it ceased on the instant, and as soon as he left off it started again immediately—nothing boisterous or rapturous but a steady, determined thunder of applause that came regularly and evenly like the roar from some machine.
Spent a quiet day. Sat at my escritoire in the Studio this morning writing an Essay, with a large 4-fold window on my left, looking on to woods and fields, with Linnets, Greenfinches, Cuckoos calling. This afternoon while E⸺ rested awhile I sat on the veranda in the sun and read Antony and Cleopatra. … Yes, I’m in harbour at last. I’d be the last to deny it but I cannot believe it will last. It’s too good to last and it’s all too good to be even true. E⸺ is too good to be true, the home is too good to be true, and this quiet restful existence is too wonderful to last in the middle of a great war. It’s just a little deceitful April sunshine, that’s all. …25
Had tea at the ⸻. A brilliant summer’s evening. Afterwards, we wandered into the garden and shrubbery and sat about on the turf of the lawn, chatting and smoking. Mr. ⸻ played with a rogue of a white Tomcat called Chatham, and E⸺ talked about our neighbour, “Shamble legs,” about garden topics, etc. Then I strolled into the drawing-room where Cynthia was playing Chopin on a grand piano. Is it not all perfectly lovely?
How delicious to be silent, lolling on the Chesterfield, gazing abstractedly through the lattice window and listening to the lulling charities of Nocturne No. 2, Op. 37! The melody in the latter part of this nocturne took me back at once to a cloudless day in an open boat in the Bay of Combemartin, with oars up and the water quietly and regularly lapping the gunwales as we rose and fell. A state of the most profound calm and happiness took possession of me.
From the local paper:
“A comrade in the Gloucesters writing to a friend at ⸻ mentions that Pte. J⸺ has been fatally shot in action. J⸺ was well known here for years as an especially smart young news vendor.”
What a bitter disappointment it is to realise that people the most intimately in love with one another are really separated by such a distance. A woman is calmly knitting socks or playing Patience while her husband or sweetheart lies dead in Flanders. However strong the tie that binds them together yet they are insufficiently en rapport for her to sense even a catastrophe—and she must wait till the War Office forsooth sends her word. How humiliating that the War Office must do what Love cannot. Human love seems then such a superficial thing. Every person is a distinct egocentric being. Each for himself and the Devil take the hindmost. “Ah! but she didn’t know.” “Yes, but she ought to have known.” Mental telepathy and clairvoyance should be common at least to all lovers.
This morning in bed I heard a man with a milkcart say in the road to a villager at about 6:30 a.m., “… battle … and we lost six cruisers.” This was the first I knew of the Battle of Jutland. At 8 a.m. I read
