15 August 1932 – 21 August 1932

Now I think I have corrected the C.R. till I can correct no longer. And I have a few minutes’ holiday before I need take the proofs in to L. Shall I then describe how I fainted again? That is the galloping hooves got wild in my head last Thursday night as I sat on the terrace with L. How cool it is after the heat! I said. We were watching the downs draw back into fine darkness after they had burnt like solid emerald all day. Now that was being softly finely veiled. And the white owl was crossing to fetch mice from the marsh. Then my heart leapt: and stopped: and leapt again: and I tasted that queer bitterness at the back of my throat; and the pulse leapt into my head and beat and beat, more savagely, more quickly. I am going to faint, I said, and slipped off my chair and lay on the grass. Oh no, I was not unconscious. I was alive: but possessed with this struggling team in my head: galloping, pounding. I thought something will burst in my brain if this goes on. Slowly it muffled itself. I pulled myself up and staggered, with what infinite difficulty and alarm, now truly fainting and seeing the garden painfully lengthened and distorted, back, back, back—how long it seemed— could I drag myself?—to the house: and gained my room and fell on my bed. Then pain, as of childbirth; and then that too slowly faded; and I lay presiding, like a flickering light, like a most solicitous mother, over the shattered splintered fragments of my body. A very acute and unpleasant experience.

A curious day in London yesterday. I said to myself standing at L.’s window, Look at the present moment because it’s not been so hot for 21 years. There was a hot wind, as if one passed over a kitchen, going from the studio to the Press. Outside girls and young men lying in white on the square grass. So hot we couldn’t sit in the dining room. L. fetched and carried and hardly let me walk upstairs carrying my own body. Coming back we had the car shut and the windscreen open—thus sat in a hot rough gale which, as we came to the lanes and woods, became deliciously cold and green. The coolest place is the front seat of a car going at 40 or 50 miles with the windscreen open. Today, at 12:30, a wind rose: clouds descended; now at 3:45 it’s almost a normal warm summer day. For 10 days this heat has lasted. After my faint my head soon throbs; or so I think. I think a little of dying suddenly and reflect, Well then go about eating and drinking and laughing and feeding the fish. Odd—the silliness one attributes to death—the desire one has to belittle it and be found, as Montaigne said, laughing with girls and good fellows. And L. is staking out the dewpond and I am going in to be photographed. Three more books appearing on Mrs. Woolf: which reminds me to make a note, sometime, on my work. A very good summer, this, for all my shying and jibbing, my tremors this morning. Beautifully quiet, airy, powerful. I believe I want this more humane existence for my next—to spread carelessly among one’s friends—to feel the width and amusement of human life: not to strain to make a pattern just yet: to be made supple, and to let the juice of usual things, talk, character, seep through me, quietly, involuntarily, before I say Stop and take out my pen. Yes, my thighs now begin to run smooth: no longer is every nerve upright. Yesterday we took plums to old Mrs. Grey. She is shrunk and sits on a hard chair in the corner. The door open. She twitches and trembles. Has the wild expressionless stare of the old. L. liked her despair: “I crawls up to bed hoping for the day; and I crawls down hoping for the night. I’m an ignorant old woman—can’t write or read. But I prays to God every night to take me—oh to go to my rest. Nobody can say what pains I suffer. Feel my shoulder,” and she began shuffling with a safety pin. I felt it. “Hard as iron; full of water, and my legs too.” She pulled down her stocking. “The dropsy. I’m ninety-two; and all my brothers and sisters are dead; my daughter’s dead; my husband is dead. . . . ” She repeated her misery, her list of ills, over and over; could see nothing else; could only begin all over again; and kissed my hand, thanking us for our pound. This is what we make of our lives—no reading or writing—keep her alive with* doctors when she wishes to die. Human ingenuity in torture is very great.