No, Lytton does not like Mrs Dalloway, and, what is odd, I like him all the better for saying so, and don’t much mind. What he says is that there is a discordancy between the ornament (extremely beautiful) and what happens (rather ordinary—or unimportant). This is caused, he thinks, by some discrepancy in Clarissa herself: he thinks she is disagreeable and limited, but that I alternately laugh at her and cover her, very remarkably, with myself. So that I think as a whole, the book does not ring solid; yet, he says, it is a whole; and he says sometimes the writing is of extreme beauty. What can one call it but genius? he said! Coming when, one never can tell. Fuller of genius, he said, than anything I had done. Perhaps, he said, you have not yet mastered your method. You should take something wilder and more fantastic, a framework that admits of anything, like Tristram Shandy. But then I should lose touch with emotions, I said. Yes, he agreed, there must be reality for you to start from. Heaven knows how you’re to do it. But he thought me at the beginning, not at the end. And he said the C.R. was divine, a classic, Mrs D. being, I fear, a flawed stone. This is very personal, he said, and old fashioned perhaps; yet I think there is some truth in it, for I remember the night at Rodmell when I decided to give it up, because I found Clarissa in some way tinselly. Then I invented her memories. But I think some distaste for her persisted. Yet, again, that was true to my feeling for Kitty and one must dislike people in art without its mattering, unless indeed it is true that certain characters detract from the importance of what happens to them. None of this hurts me, or depresses me. It’s odd that when Clive and others (several of them) say it is a masterpiece, I am not much exalted; when Lytton picks holes, I get back into my working fighting mood, which is natural to me. I don’t. Have see myself a success. I like the sense of effort better. The sales collapsed completely for three days; now a little dribble begins again. I shall be more than pleased if we sell 1500. It’s now 1250.
Saturday, June 27th.
A bitter cold day, succeeding a chilly windy night, in which were lit all the Chinese lanterns of Roger’s garden party. And I do not love my kind. I detest them. I pass them by. I let them break on me like dirty rain drops. No longer can I summon up that energy which, when it sees one of these dry little shapes floating past, or rather stuck on the rock, sweeps round them, steeps them, infuses them, nerves them, and so finally fills them and creates them. Once I had a gift for doing this, and a passion, and it made parties arduous and exciting. So when I wake early now I luxuriate most in a whole day alone; a day of easy natural poses, a little printing; slipping tranquilly off into the deep water of my own thoughts navigating the underworld; and then replenishing my cistern at night with Swift. I am going to write about Stella and Swift for Richmond, as a sign of grace, after sweeping guineas off the Vogue counter. The first fruit of the C.R. (a book too highly praised now) is a request to write for the Atlantic Monthly. So I am getting pushed into criticism. It is a great standby—this power to make large sums by formulating views on Stendhal and Swift. (But while I try to write, I am making up To the Lighthouse—the sea is to be heard all through it. I have an idea that I will invent a new name for my books to supplant ‘novel’. A new by Virginia Woolf. But what? Elegy?)
Monday, July 20th.
Here the door opened and Morgan came in to ask us out to lunch with him at the Etoile, which we did, though we had a nice veal and ham pie at home (this is in the classic style of journalists). It comes of Swift perhaps, the last words of which I have just written, and so fill up time here. I should consider my work list now. I think a little story, perhaps a review, this fortnight; having a superstitious wish to begin To the Lighthouse the first day at Monk’s House. I now think I shall finish it in the two months there. The word ‘sentimental’ sticks in my gizzard (I’ll write it out of me in a story—Ann Watkins of New York is coming on Wednesday to enquire about my stories). But this theme may be sentimental; father and mother and child in the garden; the death; the sail to the Lighthouse. I think, though, that when I begin it I shall enrich it in all sorts of ways; thicken it; give it branches—roots which I do not perceive now. It might contain all characters boiled down; and childhood; and then this impersonal thing, which I’m dared to do by my friends, the flight of time and the consequent break of unity in my design. That passage (I conceive the book in 3 parts. 1. at the drawing room window; 2. seven years passed; 3. the voyage) interests me very much. A new problem like that breaks fresh ground in one’s mind; prevents the regular ruts.
What shall I read at Rodmell? I have so many books at the back of my mind. I want to read voraciously and gather material for the Lives of the Obscure—which is to tell the whole history of England in one obscure life after another. Proust I should like to finish. Stendhal, and then to skirmish about hither and thither. These 8 weeks at Rodmell always seem capable of holding an infinite amount. Shall we buy the house at Southease? I suppose not.
Thursday, July 30th.
I am intolerably sleepy and annulled and so write here. I do want indeed to consider my next book, but I am inclined to wait for a clearer head. The thing is I vacillate between a single and intense character of father; and a far wider slower book—Bob T. telling me that my speed is terrific and distinctive. My summer’s wanderings with the pen have I think shown me one or two new dodges for catching my flies. I have sat here, like an improviser with his hands rambling over the piano. The result is perfectly inconclusive and almost illiterate. I want to learn greater quiet and force. But if I set myself that task, don’t I run the risk of falling into the flatness of N. & D.I Have I got the power needed if quiet is not to become insipid? These questions I will leave, for the moment, unanswered. So that episode is over. But, dear me, I’m too dull to write and must go and fetch Mr Dobrée’s novel and read it, I think. Yet I have a thousand things to say. I think I might do something in To the Lighthouse, to split up emotions more completely. I think I’m working in that direction.
Saturday, September 5th.
And why couldn’t I see or feel that all this time I was getting a little used up and riding on a flat tyre? So I was, as it happened; and fell down in a faint at Charleston, in the middle of Q.’s birthday party; and then have lain about here, in that odd amphibious life of headache, for a fortnight. This has rammed a big hole in my 8 weeks which were to be stuffed so full. Never mind. Arrange whatever pieces come your way.
Never be unseated by the shying of that undependable brute, life, hag-ridden as she is by my own queer, difficult, nervous system. Even at 43 I don’t know its workings, for I was saying to myself, all the summer, ‘I’m quite adamant now. I can go through a tussle of emotions peaceably that two years ago, even, would have raked me raw.’
I have made a very quick and flourishing attack on To the Lighthouse, all the same—22 pages straight off in less than a fortnight. I am still crawling and easily enfeebled, but if I could once get up steam again, I believe I could spin it off with infinite relish. Think what a labour the first pages of Dalloway were! Each word distilled by a relentless clutch on my brain.
Monday, September 13th, perhaps
A disgraceful fact—I am writing this at 10 in the morning in bed in the little room looking into the garden, the sun beaming steady, the vine leaves transparent green, and the leaves of the apple tree so brilliant that, as I had my breakfast, I invented a little story about a man who wrote a poem, I think, comparing them with diamonds, and the spiders’ webs, (which glance and disappear astonishingly) with something or other else; which led me to think of Marvell on a country life, so to Herrick and the reflection that much of it was dependent upon the town and gaiety—a reaction. However, I have forgotten the facts. I am writing this partly to test my poor bunch of nerves at the back of my neck—will they hold or give again, as they have done so often?—for I’m amphibious still, in bed and out of it; partly to glut my itch (‘glut’ an ‘itch’!) for writing. It is the great solace and scourge.
Tuesday, September 22nd.
How my handwriting goes down hill! Another sacrifice to The Hogarth Press. Yet what I owe The Hogarth Press is barely paid by the whole of my handwriting. Haven’t I just written to Herbert Fisher refusing to do a book for the Home University Series on Post-Victorian?—knowing that I can write a book, a better book, a book off my own bat, for the Press if I wish! To think