31 August 1925 – 6 September 1925

And why couldn’t I see or feel that all this time I was getting a little used up and riding on a flat tyre? So I was, as it happened; and fell down in a faint at Charleston, in the middle of Q.’s birthday party; and then have lain about here, in that odd amphibious life of headache, for a fortnight. This has rammed a big hole in my 8 weeks which were to be stuffed so full. Never mind. Arrange whatever pieces come your way. Never be unseated by the shying of that undependable brute, life, hag-ridden as she is by my own queer, difficult, nervous system. Even at 43 I don’t know its workings, for I was saying to myself, all the summer, “I’m quite adamant now. I can go through a tussle of emotions peaceably that two years ago, even, would have raked me raw.” I have made a very quick and flourishing attack on To the Lighthouse, all the same—22 pages straight off in less than a fortnight. I am still crawling and easily enfeebled, but if I could once get up steam again, I believe I could spin it off with infinite relish. Think what a labour the first pages of Dalloway were! Each word distilled by a relentless clutch on my brain.