21 April 1913 – 27 April 1913

We are sitting up in our beds which are side by side in a room on the top story of a boarding house in ---- Road. It is 11.30 p.m. and I am leaning over one one side lighting the oil lamp so as to boil the kettle to make Ovaltine before going to sleep. "Whom have I seduced?" I screamed. "You rotter, don't you know that a dead passion full of regrets is as terrible as a dead body full of worms? There, I talk literature, my boy, if you were only Boswell enough to take it down.... As for K----, I shall never invite him to dinner again. He comes to me and whines that nobody loves him, and so I say, 'Oh! poor lad, never mind, if you're bored, why, come to my rooms of an evening and hear me talk--you'll have the time of your life.' And now he's cheeky." H. (sipping his drink and very much preoccupied with it) replied abstractedly, "When you die you'll go to Hell." (I liked his Homeric simplicity.) "You ought to be buried in a fireproof safe." Silence. H. (returning to the attack), "I hope she turns you down." "Thank you," I said. "As for P----," he resumed, "she's double-Dutch to me." "Go to the Berlitz School," I suggested, "and learn the language." "You bally fool.... All you do is to sit there and smile like a sanguinary cat. Nothing I say ever rouses you. I believe if I came to you and said, 'Here, Professor, is a Beetle with 99 legs that has lived on granite in the middle of the Sahara for 40 days and 40 nights,' you'd simply answer, 'Yes, and that reminds me I've forgotten to blow my nose.'" The two pyjamaed figures shake with laughing, the light goes out and the sanguinary conversation continues on similar lines until we fall asleep.

Two Months' Sick Leave In a horrible panic--the last few days--I believe I am developing locomotor ataxy. One leg, one arm, and my speech are affected, i.e. the right side and my speech centre. M---- is serious.... I hope the disease, whatever it is, will be sufficiently lingering to enable me to complete my book. R---- is a dear man. I shall not easily forget his kindness during this terrible week.... Can the Fates have the audacity?... Who can say?

I believe there can be no doubt that I have had a slight partial paralysis of my right side (like Dad). I stutter a little in my speech when excited, I cannot write properly (look at this handwriting), and my right leg is rocky at the knee. My head swims. It is too inconceivably horrible to be buried in the Earth in such splendid spring weather. Who can tell me what is in store for me?... Life opens to me, I catch a glimpse of a vision, and the doors clang to again noiselessly. It is dark. That will be my history. Am developing a passionate belief in my book and a fever of haste to complete it before the congé définitif.