4 September 1916 – 10 September 1916

... I was so ashamed of having to fall back upon such ignominious publications for my literary efforts that on presenting him with two copies, I told the following lie to save my face: "They were two essays of mine left over at the beginning of the War, you know. My usual channel became blocked so I had to have recourse to these." "Where do you publish as a rule?" he innocently asked. "Oh! several in the Manchester Guardian," I told him out of vanity. "But of course every respectable journal now has closed down to extra-war topics." I lie out of vanity. And then I confess to lying--out of vanity too. So that one way or another I am determined to make kudos out of myself. Even this last reflection is written down with an excessive appreciation of its wit and the intention that it shall raise a smile.

Still nothing to report. The anxiety is telling on us all. The nurse has another case on the 22nd. I looked at myself in the mirror this morning--nude, a most revolting picture. An emaciated human being is the most unlovely thing in creation. Some time ago a smart errand boy called out "Bovril" after me in the street. On my way to the Station met two robust, brawny curates on the way to the daily weekday service--which is attended only by two decrepit old women in black, each with her prayer-book caught up to her breast as if she were afraid it might gallop off. That means a parson apiece--and in war time too.

My sympathy with myself is so unfailing that I don't deserve anybody else's. In many respects, however, this Journal I believe gives the impression that I behave myself in the public gaze much worse than I actually do. You must remember that herein I let myself go at a stretch gallop: in life I rein in, I am almost another person. Would you believe it, E---- says I am full of quick sympathy with others and extraordinarily cheerful, nay gay. Verily I lead a curious double existence: among most people, I pass for a complaisant, amiable, mealy-mouthed, furry if conceited creature. Here I stand revealed as a contemptuous, arrogant malcontent. My life has embittered me an fond, I have the crabbed temper of the disappointed man insufficiently developed yet to be very plainly visible beneath my innate affable, unassuming, humble, diffident, cheerful characteristics. With fools on every hand I am becoming insolent, aggressive, self-declamatory. Last evening came home and got down Robert Buchanan's sonnet, "When He returns and finds the world so drear," and felt constrained to read it out to E----. I poured out its acid sentiment with the base revenge of a vitriol thrower, and then became quiescent. It is a helpless feeling, sitting still and watching circumstances pounding away at my malleable character and moulding it wrongly.