13 June 1938 – 19 June 1938

Stop to light a pipe on the Icknield Way, a scrubby street of yellow villas. Now St. James Deeping. After Croyland, a magnificent moulded Church. Now very hot: flat; an old gent, fishing. Spread out and exposed. River above road level. On now to Gainsborough. Lunch at Peterborough: factory chimneys. Railway gate opened; off again. Gainsborough. A red Venetian palace rising among bungalows: in a square of unkempt grass. Long windows, leaning walls. A maze of little lanes. A strange forgotten town. Sunday at Housesteads. Thorn trees: sheep. The wall and white headed boys in front. Miles and miles of lavender campagna. One thread coloured frail road crossing the vast uncultivated lonely land. Today all cloud and blue and wind. The wall is a wave with a sharp crest, as of a wave drawn up to break. Then flat. Bogs under the crest. Waiting now for the rain to stop, for it blew and rained that day on the wall. Now a few miles from Corbridge waiting in the middle of the moor. Very black. Larks singing. Lunch deferred. A party of ninety lunching at the Inn at Piercebridge. A sense of local life eighteenth century inn diners to celebrate some sport. So on to a Manse in a garden: a very solid private house that takes in residents. Hot ham and fruit, but real cream, looking over an ugly range. The country early today was fen Wash country; Then the Pennines. These are shrouded in a heat mist. Larks singing. L. now looking for water for Sally* (but this should precede the wall). Sunday. Sitting by the road under the Roman wall while L. cleans sparking plugs. And I have been reading translations of Greek verse and thinking idly. When one reads the mind is like an aeroplane propeller invisibly quick and unconscious—a state seldom achieved. Not a bad Oxford introduction, trying to be in touch, up to date: scholarly but Oxford. Cows moving to the top of the hill by some simultaneous sympathy. One draws the others. Wind rocks the car. Too windy to climb up and look at the lake. Reason why the hills are still Roman— the landscape immortal . . . what they saw I see. The wind, the June wind, the water, and snow. Sheep bedded in the long turf like pearls. No shade, no shelter. Romans looking over the border. Now nothing comes. Tuesday. Now in Midlothian. Stopping for petrol. On the way to Stirling. Scotch mist driven across the trees. Normal Scots weather. Great hills. Ugly puritanical houses. The Hydro built 90 years ago. A woman called and said she had seen Mrs. Woolf walking in Melrose on Saturday. Second sight as I was not there. Galashiels a manufacturing town. Hideous. Fragments of talk overheard at the Hydro Melrose. Soft voiced old Scotch ladies sitting in their accredited places by the fire under the window. “I was wondering why you walked about with an umbrella.” One who is stitching, “I wonder if I should wash it and begin again. I’m working on a dirty ground.” Here I interpose: We stopped at Dryburgh to see Scott grave. It is under the broken palanquin of a ruined chapel. Just enough roof to cover it. And there he lies—Sir Walter Scott, Baronet. In a caddy made of chocolate blancmange with these words cut large and plain on the lid. As Dame Charlotte who is buried beside him is covered with the same chocolate slab it must have been his taste. And there’s something fitting in it. For the Abbey is impressive and the river running at the bottom of the field. And all the old Scots ruins standing round him. I picked a white syringa in memory but lost it. An airy place but Scott is much pressed together. The col. by his side and Lockhart his son in law at his feet. Then there’s Haig’s stuck about with dark red poppies. But the old ladies are discussing Dr. John Brown whose brother was a doctor in Melrose. Soon one’s head would ache and one’s senses fuddle. One would eat too many cakes at tea and there’s a huge dinner at 7. “I think he’s very nice—her husband. She’s got a personality of her own. A very nice cir-r-cle. Where do they live? Retired to Perthshire. . . . I’m three stitches out . . . Miss Peace came along to the reading room with her friend and wanted a fire. Couldn’t she have rung the bell or something? Out you cornel (unpicking the knitting). There so much opened up now. Two years ago was the Centenary (of Dryburgh?). I went to the meeting. There was a service—most interesting. All the Ministers. Five on the platform. Possibly the Moderator. At any rate it was very nice and it was a beautiful day and the place was very full. The birds joined in the music. Alan Haig’s birthday. There was a service at Dryburgh. I like D. I’ve not been to Jedburgh—awfully pretty.” No, I don’t think I can write it all out. The old creatures are sitting on a sofa not much older than I am I daresay. Yes, they’re about 65. “Edinburgh’s nice—I like it. We have to go away before we appreciate it. You have to go away from your birthplace. Then when you go back everything changed. A year does it—two years do it. I should leave it (of the work) and see the effect afterwards. What church d’you go to? Church of Scotland—not to St. Giles. It used to be the Tron. We go to St. Giles. It was St. George’s parish—my husband was an elder in St. George’s parish Charlotte Square. D’you like Waugh? I like him in a way I don’t hear him, and it’s a common complaint. He gives very hard sermons—you can’t take anything away. The choir’s beautiful. I can’t get a sitting from which you can hear. I feel it infra dig rushing with the crowd. The crowd hasn’t reached—I’ve just got to sit still— I’m having a service—I hear the prayers, the young men the music. It was pretty well where they come in from the Thistle chapel. They passed me bang. I rose and moved along. There are some seats the people never come to, and often the best seats. I like St. Giles, a lovely old place. The old lady whose seat I had told me the church was all renovated. Chambers did it, and when it came to the opening not a seat retained for the Chambers family. Badly arranged. Someone provided seats for them. A stupid thing. Always some higher church alteration. I like the episcopal. If it be episcopal let it be: if Church of Scotland, let it be Church of Scotland. Dr. Waugh’s brother is at Dundee. He would like Roseneath. Someone said that the minister at Roseneath is delicate.” Wind rages: trees leafless: bannocks and a blue pound note the only changes. Glencoe. Menaching. Leaf green hills, islands floating. A moving string of cars; no inhabitants, only tourists . . . Ben Nevis with stripes of snow. The sea. Little boats: feeling of Greece and Cornwall. Yellow flags and great foxgloves: no farms, villages or cottages: a dead land over-run with insects. An old man who could not get up from his chair. Two other ladies, her legs overflowing her shoes. All dress for dinner, and sit in the drawing room. This was the good inn at Crianlarich. Lake with hanging stalactites green trees in the middle. Bowl of the hills. Hills with velvet leaf green. The Bannington of Eaton Place. She had found winter green for her father-in-law, a botanist. Sky light at 11. Bad review of Three Guineas by G. M. Young. Pain lasted ten minutes: over then. Loch Ness swallowed Mrs. Hambro. She was wearing pearls. And then, sick of copying, I tore the rest of it up—a lesson, next journey, not to make endless pencil notes that need copying. Some too I regret. Some Boswell experiments in inns. Also the woman whose grandmother worked for the Wordsworths and remembered him as an old man in a cloak with a red lining muttering poetry. Sometimes he would pat the children on the head but never spoke to them. On the other hand, H. Coleridge was always drinking at the pub with the men.