Now redoing the marmalade with one apple. It would have set into toffee else.
Sunday, 17 February
I am on the edge of an ocean of self-pity tonight. If I walk a little further it will be up to my thighs, to my neck, I shall be comfortably drowned in it.
I want the larger security that comes from confidence in an established career: to be able to see my way fairly clearly for several years ahead, as one does presumably in a successful marriage. Here is our home, say the happy couple, here is our material, and now we can set about building our future together on a firm foundation. Oh I know. It does not always work out, one or other fails, the unforeseen bomb destroys the home. But I seem to have jogged on for so long alone, just seeing my way through the scrub, hacking the path as I go, laboriously and expensively with tools that have been provided for me. I cannot plan a broad road, though I may dream of it often.
I stood for four-and-a-half hours to see the King lying in state. It was well worth it. One felt part of a great tradition, an integral part of a great living, growing community with deep roots, an immense heritage. I’m proud to be British in this moment of our history. The Observer published a remarkably good leader last week on the symbolism of our monarchy – I think they are absolutely right in their views. In today’s Observer a Debrett’s editor discloses that Elizabeth II and Prince Philip between them are descended from every Royal house which has occupied the throne – Wessex, Godwin, Normandy, Blois, Anjou, Tudor, Stuart, Hanoverian. I can’t find words for the feeling that this information rouses in me. But am uplifted, inspired, and turned away from the personal puddle in which I would have wallowed.
Tuesday, 19 February
Letters all yesterday evening – difficult ones, like writing to Edith Evans to thank her for supporting an unknown writer, which entailed a phone conversation with Gus to find out what plays I had seen her in.
9.30 p.m. Pharaoh [new name for Tom-Tit] has been sick twice again. With nothing inside him it was only froth and liquid. It seems I have spent the entire evening clearing up and slopping about with pail, rags and disinfectant, such is life with six cats.
Friday, 22 February
Starlet died just before noon today. This damnable, damnable enteritis – nothing we can do to help. I established them both in the spare room, where they just got weaker and weaker in spite of vet’s penicillin. Veterinary science has no real answer yet for this virus. At 4.30 this morning I heard Star’s little voice become husky and anguished. She purred when I came and quietened. I had to spend the rest of the night in that room with them – each time I returned to my own bed I heard Star crying. She was terribly weak when the vet came. He thought there was little hope then, but gave another penicillin injection. Half an hour later, as I sat exhausted and sad, drinking much-needed coffee in the kitchen, she died, alone. I would have held her paw if only I had known. I was in and out of that room from 4.30 onwards – and it had to happen when I was not there. I felt bitterly that I had failed again, let yet one more poor cat down when she needed me.
Pharaoh just ticks on, but I never know when I may find him quiet and still too. He now lies just by my chair, he will not stay in his box. He is flat, with nose to ground, tense to the touch, but still breathing and will sometimes lift his head when stroked, and purr faintly. There is also the perpetual fear that one of the other four remaining cats will succumb too.
Priscilla will type the cat book for me and I hope to take the manuscript next week. I still have additions to make and now dear Starlet’s little paragraph to alter. I hope I shall not have to change the tense for Pharaoh too. I want so much for him to live.
Monday, 25 February
But he did not. Here I may spill my grief. Release the knot that is tightening in my heart. He died, dreadfully, late on Saturday, sometime after 11 p.m. Poor little Pharaoh, growing colder, lying miserably, too weak to move, trembling violently after the least exertion. I would have spared him those last hours. I mourn for that little star of light who bounded purring to my shoulder, for the solid weight of Pharaoh to my breast, his silly sentimental nose at my chin. And for all my plans and dreams for a dynasty of magnificent Pharaohs that lie buried now under the blackberries.
Thursday, 28 February
Sickness continues amongst the cats, but not so severely. Pepper has been isolated and under observation but seems all right again. Squib is off his food and was twice sick this morning. People are so kind – E.D., Lydia, N. who phoned with message from her sister, Ethel – all expressing sympathy.
Sunday, 2 March
Pepper has recovered. Squib continues without any appetite but seems otherwise all right. May our troubles be nearly at an end. And Peg coming out on Thursday. Beethoven’s Appassionata now being played – lovely, lovely liquid blue notes.
Dear N. She sails for Takoradi in Ghana at end of March. Uplifted at the thought of her new adventure, which I think she will at last find really rewarding.
Wednesday, 5 March
I suppose that after tomorrow life will never be quite the same again. I shall be in contact with new faces, new influences, and not all of them pleasant. Morning mail is already exciting. Tomorrow I shall be an author! Said my friend Teddy O’Sullivan, the village tobacconist the other day, ‘Feeling nervous?’ Yes. Right across my diaphragm.
Lovely Peggy: A Life of Margaret Woffington is a reliable and traditionally built biography of an intriguing subject. Jean displays both a great admiration and knowledge of her heroine, pursuing her from a modest upbringing in Dublin at the beginning of the eighteenth century to her triumphs on the Covent Garden stage and her public role as the object of desire for half of Georgian London. There are many passages that mirror the author’s own life, not least her strident independence. But Jean’s own claims for her book were unduly modest: ‘I do not know … that I have added much to what was already known about her,’ she wrote in the introduction. ‘But at least, as far as I have been able, it is all collected into one volume and in sequence … It has been the creation of a picture, a mosaic built from isolated fine pieces never before related. If some of the glamour hitherto surrounding her role as courtesan is thereby lost, I hope she appears more human and understandable.’
In her acknowledgements she thanked those who had offered professional help, and also Priscilla, Tom, Gus and Nockie.
Wednesday, 12 March
Letters are a burden that grows heavier and heavier – it seems such a waste of writing energy, though I suppose that seems very rude. I like receiving letters, especially when they say in them nice things about Peg. I have heard from my old headmistress, Mrs Parker. She must be nearly 90, in her 80s at least. Was such an old gorgon in our day at Princess Helena College.
Friday, 21 March
In the Times Lit Supp today nearly three-quarters of a col on Lovely Peggy. It is a just, very well written, good review, but in its tail is a deadly sting. Scholarship, style, construction, logic. I was prepared for blows in any of these directions, but not for this one: The characters he/she says do not come to life. ‘The book lacks living force.’
This is shattering. But I do not feel shattered – only disconcerted and confused. All day long I’ve been pushing the arrow aside saying, ‘but it isn’t true … Peg lived for me, she seems to have lived for N., for Tom, for G…. for Edith Evans …’ The one thing I thought I had done, if I had failed in others, was to bring Peg to life, to recreate her in her surroundings.
I fear now that other critics may take their line from this one. I am then damned. All the little people who cannot think for themselves, the floating voters and the fungoids will follow and natter, ‘Yes, very good, of course, but it doesn’t live …’ I wonder how much influence the TLS has? Halliday is anxious for the Sunday reviews.
I thought at first: I shall go to see Graham Howe about this. If the book really is lifeless then it has been a huge waste of time and energy. If all ‘official’ opinion agrees on this point I shall need help. Wait … wait
.
Reading the review through again, I am bewildered further. ‘The greater part of’ the account of Peg ‘is concerned with her private life.’ But it isn’t! There wasn’t enough material about her private life. I thought it was almost too heavy with stage matters.
Sunday, 23 March
Am relieved to find a similar criticism made by Naomi Lewis today of the new Mrs Gaskell biography. Not so sharp, but still there, so that Miss Hopkins must be feeling as I do about her creativity.
I went to see Alec Clunes in The Constant Couple. It is astounding good fortune that he is putting on this play just now – his Wildair is a delight.200 Show-cards of Lovely Peggy are being displayed in the theatre. I have written to Clunes expressing due appreciation. Such material here for a romantic situation! I cannot help dallying with it, though I know it is foolhardy. Author and actor meet. Flash, bang and a delirious ending.
I spent p.m. yesterday at the BM and when I got home a telegram waited. Ring Eastbourne at once. Babs has had her appendix out, and the poor head of the School of Domestic Education frantic because unable to contact me to know whether B. should go into a general ward under National Health or a private nursing home and dad to pay. They managed to phone Ethel and decided on the nursing home, to which I am sure Pooh will agree.
Friday, 28 March
N. will be now – where? The Channel, or the Bay of Biscay? She sailed yesterday afternoon, I cannot believe she is gone. Four of us saw her onto the train at Euston.
Must not let reviewers make me doubt my identity. More crits arrived this week, on the whole favourable, but again one said he found a lack of warmth in the book. (Quite kindly, and would like to read a book by me on Garrick!) But nearly all stress painstaking scholarliness. I find this unnerving – I wonder if I am really heading towards Reading Room Mole status.
Thursday, 10 April
I hunger and thirst for an encouraging comment from a reputable quarter. I don’t mind how brief, so long as it contains no damning innuendoes. How I wish critics didn’t have to be so cleverly critical. Even the local Express slights me by making no mention of the book whatsoever. I begin to suspect myself of persecution mania, for I find myself thinking up all sorts of dreary and futile reasons for the local cold-shouldering. I think of the queer little journalist woman I see often about in the village and Slough: shrunken and shabby with projecting teeth, and evil, weasel eyes that glitter from beneath the brim of the same ancient felt hat jammed tightly over bobbed hair – a stunted relic of the 20s. I do not know her at all, have never met her socially or officially, but am sure she knows who I am and all there is to know about me. A witch like this could well persuade her editor I was not worth bothering about if she had decided to dislike me. Though I have given her no cause intentionally, and it could only be that she has misinterpreted my abstracted moods for scornful indifference.
Not that the local paper could make or mar my reputation, but it would have been flattering to have been interviewed, as my publishers thought possible. It is just a month now since Peg appeared, and nothing shattering has happened. What I expected I do not know. To wake up and find myself famous?
Easter Sunday
Writing makes one of necessity very self-conscious. One has to be very sure about the worth of one’s work and why one is doing it. The whole situation tends to encourage one’s egocentricities. So long as one remains aware of failure and is not disheartened by it and can continue striving to achieve.
N. has here, I am sure, done the right thing for herself in going to teach the African young. She has shifted her focus of striving in the right direction. I do not mean that I should want to do anything like this, or to give up trying to write. I must just be more aware of its temptations and pitfalls, its tendency to encourage selfishness and the sin of pride. Peg has taken me 5–6 years to get done and published, and I shall be lucky if we sell 2,000. This would just clear my debts and leave me a profit of about £30.
Tuesday, 15 April
There is one thing that remains through the battle constant. I write. I cannot stop myself writing. If I get not a thing more published, not even a three-guinea article, I will not stop writing my journal. This seems to me potent. It may be a disease, a haemorrhage. I may get nothing more published (that is the most fearful doubt of all), yet I shall write. I have faith. There are I-don’t-know-how-many notebooks like this one hidden away upstairs to prove it.
Wednesday, 16 April
This morning I woke all gloom and dumps again. The final straw was to see that my longed-for bath water was disappearing instead of mounting in the bath. The plug for some reason has gone on strike – it doesn’t seem to have perished but simply would not stay in the hole. This brought on such a paroxysm of rage, I bit a piece out of the rubber.
Tomorrow I go into Slough, and then to lunch and afternoon with Liz. I shall look for a grey cardigan, and it is not going to be a nasty cheap thing that shrinks the first time it is washed.
Tuesday, 22 April
Recovery began on Friday with the tonic I expect I really needed: an excellent review of Peg by Susan Connely in John O’London’s Weekly – a full page, not an unkind stab in it anywhere.
Thursday, May Day
I found the perfect grey cardigan and put my live cigarette end right through the back of it the same night. It has been mended professionally, but the place still shows a little. I could have strangled myself. Now I will have some tea, listen to Mrs Dale and then Get On.201
Later: I wonder why I listen to Mrs Dale. It’s all such drivel. No – the matter isn’t drivel really, it’s the sort of stuff of which daily life is made for thousands. As someone else has said: it’s ordinary things being said in an extraordinary way. Mrs Morgan, Susie and all the characters don’t seem at all real to me.
Tuesday, 3 June
I feel profoundly sad, despairing, even apprehensive about Tom. I have lost real contact there. Always with the Communists one is aware that one isn’t on their side of their fence. Theirs seems such an upside-down, distorted, turmoil of a world. With Tom it becomes a nightmare, without love, hope or charity for any thing or person that cannot be dyed vermillion. He irritates even his own best friends. I wish him luck and success – but Tom, dear Tom, do not destroy the world instead of building it. What is terrifying about Communism in Britain is that it seems to attract so many of Tom’s type: violent, abusive, unstable, obstinate and unscrupulous. The embittered have-nots, the army of the maladjusted.
Wednesday, 2 July
My story about biting the bath plug has met with huge success. E.D. suggests that I keep the plug hung in a convenient place and bite chunks out of it whenever overcome with rage. But not to let myself be seen doing so, or I should be locked up.
Thursday, 10 July
Wee Cottage, Egypt,
Farnham Common,
Slough,
Bucks
My dearest Nockie-Leo,
I thought you might like a long letter by ordinary mail for your birthday. I managed to get a Silas Marner and sent it from Slough about a week ago. It was the hottest day of the year (92 in London!). It was only 5s., so I still have 7s. 6d. in hand owing to you and am keeping an eye open for short stories. I was in Charing Cross Rd the other day, in Watkins for a special cat book which they had obtained with difficulty and were keeping for me. The price – second-hand – was 27s. 6d.! Which so took the wind from my sales and money from my purse I could only crawl home without daring to look in other bookshops. But I hope to be in the vicinity again before long.
The cat book was sent off about 10 days ago. I don’t suppose I shall receive a verdict for some weeks. Rather a bad time just now, readers and executives will be on holiday. Saw H. and B. publisher Halliday last week. Peg sales are not exactly staggering, but he is very pleased with reception and says that it was well worth publishing. Thinks biography is my ‘line’ and urges me to persevere. Some comfort to one’s pride if not one’s pocket. Then there is the novel to which I
am now committed and can hardly withdraw.202 Have been trying to read some contemporary historical novels, to find out how others set about it, and find most of them so far such drivel I can’t even finish the first chapter.
Your letter of the 6th arrived today at teatime, so I was able to enjoy it while having a cuppa. The kittens sound great fun; you will find them good companions. It is delightful to know how much you like the Africans. Felt that you would, and I am sure they will love you. Europeans always seem to get ‘crusted’ when they settle abroad. It is probably, as you say, when they find themselves in unaccustomed positions of power. Did you ever see Banana Ridge? It was a silly farce with Robertson Hare in leading role. I forget the plot, but have always remembered the wonderful caricature of the stupid little Englishman abroad, lording it over the natives (Hare played it beautifully) and then at home finding himself just nobody! It is sad that so often this type gets drawn abroad. I’ve seen it among the English where my brother has been stationed.
14 July: I had a letter from Luigi today – the first squeak out of her since March. She is in Melbourne now, and has found herself a good job as a draughtsman in a government department, working with a Lithuanian, an Austrian, a Pole, a Swiss, and another from S. Rhodesia! At present she is engaged on army kitchens and canteens – a change from luxury Mayfair hotels and chapels. She finds the native Aussie much less bumptious and more likeable than those who come over here.
Tuesday, 22 July
It is an afternoon in which to be idle. It is a good thing to know when to be idle and how to be idle. I don’t think I do, or have ever done – this has only just dawned on me. I read Graham Howe’s books over and over, and am forever making discoveries, finding what I have missed or failed to understand before.
A Notable Woman Page 51