26 August 1940 – 1 September 1940

How I should like to write poetry all day long—that’s the gift to me of poor X, who never reads poetry because she hated it at school. She stayed from Tuesday to Sunday night, to be exact: and almost had me down. Why? Because (partly) she has the artist’s temperament without being an artist. She’s temperamental, but has no outlet. I find her charming: individual: honest and somehow pathetic. Her curious obtusity, her staleness of mind, is perceptible to her. And she hesitates. Ought one to make up? Y. says yes—I say no. The truth is she has no instinct for colour: no more than for music or pictures. A great deal of force and spirit and yet always at the leap something balks her. I can imagine her crying herself to sleep. So, having brought no rations, or book, she floundered on here. I called her, to mitigate her burden. My good dog. My Afghan hound—with her long too thick legs and her long body; and the shock of wild unbrushed hair on top. I’m glad I’m so nice looking, she said. And she is. But well, it taught me, that week of un-intermittent interruptions, bowls, tea parties, droppings in, what public school is like—no privacy. A good rub with a coarse towel for my old mind, no doubt. And Judith and Leslie are about to play bowls. This is why, my first solitary morning, after London and the protracted air raid—from 9:30 to 4 A.M.—I was so light, so free, so happy I wrote what I call P.H. poetry. Is it good? I suppose not, very. I should say, to placate V. W. when she wishes to know what was happening in August, 1940—that the air raids are now at their prelude. Invasion, if it comes, must come within three weeks. The harrying of the public is now in full swing. The air saws: the wasps drone; the siren—it’s now Weeping Willie in the papers—is as punctual as the vespers . . . We’ve not had our raid yet, we say. Two in London. One caught me in the London Library. There I saw reading in Scrutiny that Mrs. W. after all was better than the young. At this I was pleased. John Buchan—“V. W. is our best critic since M. Arnold and wiser and juster—” also pleased me. I must write to Pamela. Sales a little better. P.S. to the last page. We went out on to the terrace; began playing. A large two decker plane came heavily and slowly. L. said a Wellesley something. A training plane said Leslie. Suddenly there was pop pop from behind the church. Practising we said. The plane circled slowly out over the marsh and back, very close to the ground and to us. Then a whole volley of pops (like bags burst) came together. The plane swung off, slow and heavy and circling towards Lewes. We looked. Leslie saw the German black cross. All the workmen were looking. It’s a German: that dawned. It was the enemy. It dipped among the fir trees over Lewes and did not rise. Then we heard the drone. Looked up and saw two planes very high. They made for us. We started to shelter in the lodge. But they wheeled and Leslie saw the English sign. So we watched—they side slipped, glided, swooped and roared for about five minutes round the fallen plane as if identifying and making sure. Then made off towards London. Our version is that it was a wounded plane, looking for a landing. “It was a Jerry sure enough,” the men said: the men who are making a gun hiding by the gate. It would have been a peaceful matter of fact death to be popped off on the terrace playing bowls this very fine cool sunny August evening.

Now we are in the war. England is being attacked. I got this feeling for the first time completely yesterday; the feeling of pressure, danger, horror. The feeling is that a battle is going on—a fierce battle. May last four weeks. Am I afraid? Intermittently. The worst of it is one’s mind won’t work with a spring next morning. Of course this may be the beginning of invasion. A sense of pressure. Endless local stories. No—it’s no good trying to capture the feeling of England being in a battle. I daresay if I write fiction and Coleridge and not that infernal bomb article for U.S.A. I shall swim into quiet water.