9 September 1935 – 15 September 1935

Mornings which are neither quiet nor heavenly, but mixed of hell and ecstasy: never have I had such a hot balloon in my head as re-writing The Years: because it’s so long; and the pressure is so terrific. But I will use all my art to keep my head sane. I will stop writing at 11:30 and read Italian or Dryden and so dandle myself along. To Ethel* at Miss Hudson’s yesterday. As I sat in the complete English gentleman’s home, I wondered how anybody could tolerate that equipage; and thought how a house should be portable like a snail shell. In future perhaps people will flirt out houses like little fans; and go on. There’ll be no settled life within walls. There were endless clean, well repaired rooms. A maid in a cap. Cakes on pagoda trays. A terrible array of glossy brown furniture and books—red sham leather. Many nice old rooms, but the manor house has been embellished and made of course self consciously elaborate. A ballroom; a library —empty. And Miss Hudson all brushed up with her Pekinese, a competent exmayor of Eastbourne, with waved grey hair; and all so neat and stout; and the silver frames askew; and the air of order, respectability, commonplace. “I’m going to call on the vicar’s wife.” Ethel immensely red and stout: churning out, poor old woman, the usual indefatigable egotism about deafness and her Mass. She must have a scene every six months. No. But of course, to go deaf, to be 76 —well, back to Charleston with Eve and Angelica.

What a combination for the superstitious! Driving off to visit Margaret and Lilian at Dorking: and I have got into a mild flood I think with The Years. The difficulty is always at the beginning of chapters or sections where a whole new mood has to be caught, plumb in the centre. Richmond accepts my Marryat and thanks me for his poor little knighthood!