8 April 1935 – 14 April 1935

I met Morgan in the London Library yesterday and flew into a passion. “Virginia, my dear,” he said. I was pleased by that little affectionate familiar tag. “Being a good boy and getting books on Bloomsbury?” I said. “Yes. You listen. Is my book down?” he asked Mr. Mannering. “We were just posting it,” said Mr. M. “And, Virginia, you know I’m on the Committee here,” said Morgan. “And we’ve been discussing whether to allow ladies”—It came over me that they were going to put me on: and I was then to refuse: “Oh but they do,” I said. “There was Mrs. Green.” “Yes, yes. There was Mrs. Green. And Sir Leslie Stephen said never again. She was so troublesome. And I said haven’t ladies improved? But they were all quite determined. No, no, no, ladies are quite impossible. They wouldn’t hear of it.” See how my hand trembles. I was so angry (also very tired) standing. And I saw the whole slate smeared. I thought how perhaps M. had mentioned my name, and they had said no no no: ladies are impossible. And so I quieted down and said nothing and this morning in my bath I made up a phrase in my book On Being Despised which is to run—a friend of mine, who was offered . . . one of those prizes—for her sake the great exception was to be made—who was in short to be given an honour—I forget what . . . She said And they actually thought I would take it. They were, on my honour, surprised, even at my very modified and humble rejection. You didn’t tell them what you thought of them for daring to suggest that you should rub your nose in that pail of offal? I remarked. Not for a hundred years, she observed. And I will bring in M. Pattison: and I will say sympathy uses the same face required to lay 700 bricks. And I will show how you can’t sit on committees if you also pour out tea—that by the way Sir L. S. spent his evenings with widow Green: yes, these flares up are very good for my book: for they simmer and become transparent: and I see how I can transmute them into beautiful clear reasonable ironical prose. God damn Morgan for thinking I’d have taken that . . . And dear old Morgan comes to tea today and then sits with Berry who’s had cataract. The veil of the temple—which, whether university or cathedral, academic or ecclesiastical, I forget—was to be raised and as an exception she was to be allowed to enter in. But what about my civilisation? For 2,000 years we have done things without being paid for doing them. You can’t bribe me now. Pail of offal? No: I said while very deeply appreciating the hon. . . . In short one must tell lies, and apply every emollient in our power to the swollen skin of our brothers’ so terribly inflamed vanity. Truth is only to be spoken by those women whose fathers were pork butchers and left them a share in the pig factory.

Let me make a note that it would be much wiser not to attempt to sketch a draft of On Being Despised, or whatever it is to be called, until The Ps. is done with. I was vagrant this morning and made a rash attempt, with the interesting discovery that one can’t propagate at the same time as write fiction. And as this fiction is dangerously near propaganda, I must keep my hands clear. It’s true I’m half asleep, after the Zoo and Willy. But he threw some coals on my fire: the horror of the legal profession: its immense wealth: its conventions: a Royal Commission now sitting: its hidebound hoariness and so on: worth going into one of these days: and the medical profession and the osteopaths—worth a fling of laughter. But oh dear, not now. Now for Alfieri and Nash and other notables: so happy I was reading alone last night. We saw the great dumb fish at the Zoo and the gorillas: storms of rain, cloud: and I read Annie S. Swan on her life with considerable respect. Almost always this comes from autobiography: a liking, at least some imaginative stir: for no doubt her books, which she can’t count, and has no illusions about, but she can’t stop telling stories, are wash, pigs’, hogs’—any wash you choose. But she is a shrewd capable old woman.