4 June 1923 – 10 June 1923

I’m over peevish in private, partly in order to assert myself. I am a great deal interested suddenly in my book. I want to bring in the despicableness of people like Ott.* I want to give the slipperiness of the soul. I have been too tolerant often. The truth is people scarcely care for each other. They have this insane instinct for life. But they never become attached to anything outside themselves. Puff† said he loved his family and had nothing whatever to knock over. He disliked cold indecency. So did Lord David. This must be a phrase in their set. Puff said—I don’t quite know what. I walked round the vegetable garden with him, passing Lytton flirting on a green seat; and round the field with Sackville West, who said he was better, and was writing a better novel, and round the lake with Menasseh (?) an Egyptian Jew, who said he liked his family and they were mad and talked like books; and he said that they quoted my writings (the Oxford youth) and wanted me to go and speak; and then there was Mrs. Asquith. I was impressed. She is stone white; with the brown veiled eyes of an aged falcon; and in them more depth and scrutiny than I expected; a character, with her friendliness and ease and decision. Oh if we could have had Shelley’s poems; and not Shelley the man! she said. Shelley was quite intolerable, she pronounced; she is a rigid frigid puritan; and in spite of spending thousands on dress. She rides life, if you like; and has picked up a thing or two, which I should like to plunder and never shall. She led Lytton off and plucked his arm, and hurried—and thought “people” pursued her; yet was very affable with “people” when she had to be, and sat on the window sill talking to a black shabby embroideress, to whom Ott. is being kind. That’s one of her horrors—she’s always being kind in order to say to herself at night, then Ottoline invites the poor little embroideress to her party and so to round off her own picture of herself. To sneer like this has a physical discomfort in it. She told me I looked wonderfully well, which I disliked. Why? I wonder. Because I had had a headache perhaps, partly. But to be well and use strength to get more out of life is, surely, the greatest fun in the world. What I dislike is feeling that I’m always taking care, or being taken care of. Never mind—work, work. Lytton says we have still 20 years before us. Mrs. Asquith said she loved Scott.