26 April 1926 – 2 May 1926

The last of a wet windy month, excepting the sudden opening of all the doors at Easter and the summer displayed blazing, as it always is, I suppose, only cloud hidden. I have not said anything about Iwerne Minster. Now it would amuse me to see what I remember it by. Cranbourne Chase: the stunted aboriginal forest trees, scattered, not grouped in cultivations; anemones, bluebells, violets, all pale, sprinkled about, without colour, livid, for the sun hardly shone. Then Blackmore Vale; a vast air dome and the fields dropped to the bottom; the sun striking, there, there; a drench of rain falling, like a veil streaming from the sky, there and there; and the downs rising, very strongly scarped (if that is the word) so that they were ridged and ledged; then an inscription in a church “sought peace and ensured it” and the question who wrote these sonorous stylistic epitaphs?—and all the cleanliness of Iwerne village, its happiness and well-being, making me ask, as we tended to sneer, still this is the right method, surely; and then tea and cream—these I remember: the hot baths; my new leather coat; Shaftesbury, so much lower and less commanding than my imagination, and the drive to Bournemouth and the dog and the lady behind the rock, and the view of Swanage, and coming home. Yesterday I finished the first part of To the Lighthouse, and today began the second. I cannot make it out—here is the most difficult abstract piece of writing —I have to give an empty house, no people’s characters, the passage of time, all eyeless and featureless with nothing to cling to: well, I rush at it, and at once scatter out two pages. Is it nonsense, is it brilliance? Why am I so flown with words and apparently free to do exactly what I like? When I read a bit it seems spirited too; needs compressing, but not much else. Compare this dashing fluency with Mrs. Dalloway (save the end). This is not made up; it is the literal fact.