5–11 February 1940

For some reason hope has revived. Now what served as bait? A letter from Joe Ackerly approving my Corelli? Not much. Tom dining with us? No. I think it was largely reading Stephen’s autobiography: though it gave me a pang of envy, by its youth and its vigour, and some good novelist’s touches—I could pick holes though. But it’s odd—reading that and South Riding both mint new, gives me a fillip after all the evenings I grind at Burke and Mill. A good thing to read one’s contemporaries, even rapid twinkling slice of life novels like poor W. H.’s. And then, I’ve polished off, to the last gaiter button, the three d——d chapters for London on Monday; and got my teeth I think firm into the last Transformations: and though of course I shall get the black shivers when I reread, let alone submit to Nessa and Margery, I can’t help thinking I’ve caught a good deal of that iridescent man in my oh so laborious butterfly net. I daresay I’ve written every page—certainly the last—10 or 15 times over. And I don’t think I’ve killed: I think I’ve brisked. Hence an evening glow. Yet the wind cuts like a scythe; the dining room carpet is turning to mould; and John Buchan has fallen on his head and is apparently dying. Monty Shearman is also dead; and Campbell. L.’s absurd nice old parson friend—his bachelor Buffy friend. Now the wind rises: something rattles, and thank God I’m not on the North Sea, nor taking off to raid Heligoland. Now I’m going to read Freud. Yes, Stephen gave me three hours of continuous illusion—and if one can get that still, there’s a world—what’s the quotation?—there’s a world outside? No. From Coriolanus?