22 May 1933 – 28 May 1933

I have just said to myself if it were possible to write, those white sheets would be the very thing, not too large or too small. But I do not wish to write, except as an irritant. This is the position. I sit on L.’s bed; he in the only armchair. People tap up and down on the pavement. This is Vienne. It is roasting hot—hotter and hotter it gets—and we are driving through France; and it’s Tuesday and we cross on Friday and this strange interval of travel, of sweeping away from habitation and habits will be over. On and on we go—through Aix, through Avignon, on and on, under arches of leaves, over bare sandy roads, under grey black hills with castles, beside vines: and I’m thinking of the Pargiters: and L. is driving; and when we come to poplars we get out and lunch by the river; and then on; and take a cup of tea by the river: fetch our letters, learn that Lady Cynthia Mosley is dead: picture the scene; wonder at death; and drowse and doze in the heat, and decide to sleep here—hotel de la Poste; and read another letter and learn that the Book Society will probably take Flush and speculate what we shall do if we have £1,000 or £2,000 to spend. And what would these little burghers of Vienne, who are drinking coffee, do with that sum, I ask? The girl is a typist; the young men clerks. For some reason they start discussing hotels at Lyons, I think; and they haven’t a penny piece between them; and all the men go into the urinal, one sees their legs; and the Morocco soldiers go in their great cloaks; and the children play ball and people stand lounging and everything becomes highly pictorial, composed, legs in particular—the odd angles they make: and the people dining in the hotel; and the queer air it all has, since we shall leave early tomorrow, of something designing Vienne on my mind, significantly. Now the draw of home, and freedom and no packing tells on us—oh to sit in an arm chair; and read and not have to ask for Eau Mineral, with which to brush our teeth! 52 TAVISTOCK SQUARE. Tuesday, May 30th Yes, but of all things coming home from a holiday is undoubtedly the most damned. Never was there such aimlessness, such depression. Can’t read, write or think. There’s no climax here. Comfort yes: but the coffee’s not so good as I expected. And my brain is extinct—literally hasn’t the power to lift a pen. What one must do is to set it—my machine I mean—in the rails and give it a push. Lord—how I pushed yesterday to make it start running along Goldsmith again. There’s that half finished article. Lord Salisbury said something about dished up speeches being like the cold remains of last night’s supper. I see white grease on the pages of my article. Today it’s a little warmer—tepid meat: a slab of cold mutton. It’s coldish, dullish here. Yes, but I hear the clock tick and suspect, though I must not look, that the wheels are just beginning to turn on the rails. We go to Monks House for Whitsun, which is Monday—the suburban, the diminished Monks House, No, I can’t look at The Pargiters. It’s an empty snail shell. And I’m empty with a cold slab of a brain. Never mind. 1 shall dive head foremost into The Pargiters. And now I shall make my mind run along Italian— what’s his name—Goldoni. A few verbs I think. It occurs to me that this state, my depressed state, is the state in which most people usually are.