by Doreen Bates
Abinger Bottom
FRIDAY 7 FEBRUARY
I set out this evening to go with Margot to Murder in the Cathedral but was turned back at Charing Cross owing to feeling sick. We caught the same train back and at E Croydon I leaned out and was sick on to the line. It has been bitterly cold and I suppose it is just a chill. I hope it is but wonder whether it is a baby in spite of E’s precautions. It is too soon anyway, probably, to make itself felt. I hope it is and it isn’t. A lovely full moon and Sirius twinkling fiercely in the freezing air. We were both frozen when we got home and surprised the parents.
MONDAY 24 FEBRUARY
Joad’s lecture thrilled me. He was just winding to the close of Aristotle – his idea of God. It has been difficult and rather dull, a contrast to Plato, partly because Plato is more understandable, partly because Joad prefers him. Aristotle seems so mechanical and merely logical – dry, analytical, uninspired – with none of the leaps you meet in Plato – just a plodding, practical, classifying scientist. Yet now that we have struggled with him I got a glimmering of satisfaction, a thrill from the efficiency of his intricate machine. The jigsaw fitted so perfectly, the whole scheme suddenly came to life as a marvellous creation of a human mind. I felt its fascination and could imagine the compulsion it would exercise over a mind different from mine. For me it is too mechanical – merely the skeleton of the universe, not flexible enough to be living. However, it was a good lecture.
We had dinner at the Armorel, near the BM. Over coffee at Birkbeck I told him he ought to use his mind to do something solid. After the lecture he said that I had chosen a bad time. He had been depressed since Saturday, humiliated by the Chinese Art. I think he is mistaken. He considers that the Lohan at the BM shows the Chinese view of the universe, detached and supercilious, looking at nature without the power to alter or understand it or enjoy it – helpless but superior. This is one element of the humiliation. Another is that he feels he is lazy and indolent – the Chinese industry and application and patience are a reproach to him. I can understand this and I feel the same.
SUNDAY 1 MARCH
This is Sunday evening after my bath and I have decided to resume this diary. I intended to write a good account of last week – full and vital – for a permanent record. Hence I have written nothing. It was a good week – one of the best we have had, not up to Shropshire perhaps, but good – a week to remember and to look back on with thankfulness, a gift from the gods which can never be taken away whatever evil or unhappiness there may be ahead. On Tuesday we had half a day’s leave. I met E at Chancery Lane. We had a long leisurely roll+cheese lunch at the ABC and then went to the Chinese Art exhibition again. E knew his way around it and decided what he wanted to see and insisted on me seeing it too whether I liked it or not. He said it was slipshod to look at only what I liked at first glance – I could never get a connected idea of the whole if I did not look at, say, everything in a room. Eventually we had been there for four and a half hours and I was dead tired. E made me walk through the Park to Zeeta’s for dinner. I was so weary that the traffic scared me and I could hardly drag one foot after the other.
SATURDAY 21 MARCH
A good day completely. The first day of Spring, and for the first time I remember a worthy introduction. Sunny and mild, the only clouds a few misty white (ones) high up against the blue sky. A soft slight wind from the south, exactly ‘thy azure sister of the spring shall blow Her clarion o’er the dreaming earth’ from the West Wind. A perfect day to be remembered when the inevitable east winds and frosts return. All the morning I kept glancing at the window guessing that by 12.0 the sky would have clouded over. The forecast was ‘unsettled and showers later’ so I wore my brown costume and took my mac quite unnecessarily. Met E at Waterloo which was swarming with sporty people whose goal was either Twickenham (for the England–Scots match) or Sandown Park races. He said, ‘Get a ticket to Effingham Junction,’ and we caught the crowded 12.45 electric. We were not left alone till Bookham, when he seized the opportunity to kiss me. I bought an orange near the station which we ate walking along the road. We turned off the road along a path by a stream. We consulted the map and I sat on the tiny parapet of the bridge. E sat down too and we loved and laughed till he said, ‘Let’s do it properly.’ We went further on and lay among some rhododendrons in a grove of pines. I lay watching the tops of the pines etched black against the blue sky, swaying gently in the wind. I have always liked pines but I have never felt them to be so completely beautiful. My love for E and enjoyment of his body fused with the beauty of the trees and their movement to make one of the most overwhelming experiences I have had. It was, as it were, a double mingling of form and motion. This is quite inadequate to convey the happiness I felt at the harmony of everything but I think this was one of the significant and clear experiences which will remain in my memory and make itself a part of me, as tho’ I shall be different in some profound way because of it. In 10 minutes I heard a dog bark nearby and the spell was broken.
THURSDAY 2 APRIL
A too eventful week again, which can just be catalogued in the 5 mins before we turn the light off. Monday a rehearsal which went quite well. Tuesday – hectic morning, lunch with E in an ABC basement with an uneven floor, dress rehearsal at Cripplegate – ham, cakes and tea and bread and butter with the crowd (jolly, with West on one side and Scales on the other), an airy walk round the city looking at Smithfield and bits of London Wall with Williams and West – the show.
Yesterday lunch with Nancy and met E at 6.15 – a hasty meal at Lyons Corner House and then Things to Come at Leicester Square cinema. ‘The best film I have seen,’ said E afterwards and I almost agreed. I felt quite proud of my official association with London Films. It is a film in a hundred – a gamble commercially, but what courage to spend thousands on a film which would be banned in half of Europe and might not be popular in the other half as it is wholly concerned with ideas, has no sex, no humour, little story and no pretty scenery. Yet a breath of fresh air – a subject that matters and a translation of Wells’ spirit with no distortion to another medium.
FRIDAY 24 APRIL
This is the last time I shall write in my twenties for tomorrow I shall be 30. When I lunched with E today he teased me about it – was ready to pounce. I don’t mind it and I don’t regret the years that have gone. I think if we hadn’t loved I might have felt a panic, as tho’ life was slipping away and I was missing something vital, but as it is I feel humble and unworthy of the riches that have fallen to me in the 30 years of my stay on this queer world. I only regret that I do so little, that I render back nothing in return.
Now for the 30s.
MONDAY 27 APRIL
It was mild today, tho’ less mild than I expected. I wore my black costume and new jumper, full of vanity and pride.
Met E at the top of the escalator at Tottenham Ct Rd where he waited for me after passing me on the stairs. ‘How do you expect me to recognize you in those clothes?’ he said. We had dinner (celery soup, mushroom omelette, cauliflower) at Bertorelli’s and a small bottle of Sauternes. There was a sparkle and gaiety about the dinner (even before we had touched the wine) due either to my new clothes and pleasure that he liked them, or to being in a new place. We bickered and teased and he said when our glasses were filled, ‘May you soon be 40!’ Sweet. It was as entrancing as those first picnic lunches in the park. Joad on Spinoza and we were late – didn’t leave Bertorelli’s till 10 to 8. Afterwards we walked over Waterloo Bridge and he said, ‘What a pity we can’t go to bed together.’ How weak it is to be exhilarated by new clothes. Still, I wear my clothes for him alone.
THURSDAY 30 APRIL
Yesterday Joad was not lecturing so we went walking. Got to Ashtead at 5.45 having picnicked hastily first. We set out, leaving the big new houses behind, towards Epsom and walked in a circle one and a half to two miles from Headley and Leatherhead. The country was surprisingly unspoilt. Within sight of the grandstand we passed a farm crouching in a little fold
of the land surrounded by corn fields, just green with larks singing over them. Not far away we heard the monotonous sobbing note of a nightingale, and earlier a cuckoo called idiotically. A perfect evening. I felt quiet and tranquil as if I were passively inhaling the perfection to store up for ever in my mind. Completely satisfied and happy, yet when E sat under a pine tree in the dusk and kissed me I could do nothing but cry. For an hour and a half we loved, and off and on I cried and cried from too much love, as if I could not hold it. There was a clear beauty about the evening which uplifted and intensified my love and made it at once grave and joyous.
I lunched with him at Letley’s today and felt quite different. We might not have been the same people except for an added affection in his look at me, or perhaps affection is not the word – depth is better, as if he had found more of me, delved further and added this deeper knowledge to his ordinary everyday superficial idea of me. We talked shop and about Margot going to LSE and provisionally arranged to go to Figaro.
SUNDAY 3 MAY
Yesterday we went to the Vic matinée of Figaro. The opera is lovely – the better one knows it the better it seems, and shorter. In some ways I enjoy music with him better than anything because he hears only the best, and music he knows, so the only criticism is of the execution. I can enjoy a thing more whole-heartedly knowing he is enjoying it too. To plays or films or pictures he gives a much more ‘all or none’ reaction than I do. I can usually find something to enjoy in any serious thing. I have, as it were, various planes of appreciation, while he is always in relation to the absolute standard.
MONDAY 4 MAY
An almost full moon shone clearly from a dark sky over Waterloo Bridge as we walked over it after Joad’s lecture. We went to UC and did the psychogalvanometer experiment. I make a good subject but a bad experimenter in this. I can’t think of suitable stimuli for E. I get somewhat inhibited. I wore my red frock and he looked at it properly for the first time and liked it. He held me to him for half a minute before we emerged. We had dinner and then went to hear Joad on Spinoza at 8.30. We bickered a little but with a strong underlying and almost emerging affection. I said something foolish and he said, ‘Just what a woman would say.’ I said, ‘I can’t help that’ – he said, ‘No, poor thing, failing to be a man you are a woman!’ I said, ‘I don’t mind, I quite like it. I’d rather now.’ He said, ‘I might see that as a compliment.’ I said, ‘On the reverse, now I know what a man’s mind is like I’d rather have mine!’ Then I said, ‘How, as a compliment?’ After I had pressed him he said, ‘Perhaps now you’ve experienced the satisfaction a woman can feel – now I’ve shown you – you feel it’s worth it.’ I said, ‘Yes, and more.’ A small, light conversation but it shows so much – how we laugh at each other, how we bicker and tease and fight, how we read each other, how satisfied we are, completely and firmly and fundamentally when it just comes out simply expressed like that, as a matter of course – only put into words because I made him put it. We both knew just what we meant before.
I am reading a queer Russian historical-philosophical book by a man who was imprisoned for liberalism by the Czarist government and for religion by the communists. He thinks Europe is breaking up – in politics, economics, religion, art. His dissatisfaction with now accords with my feeling. I have almost wholly lost my optimism as I refuse the things that seem good more and more. I grow to hate the ‘goods’ of this age – speed, noise, glare, short cuts to everything, synthetic and canned foods, clothes, amusements, arts. Perhaps all roads lead to the same place if you plod on – the road to beauty, the steep ascent to truth, the painful path to goodness.
TUESDAY 12 MAY
Lunched with E and we had a long and vigorous discussion on pacifism. He had read Huxley’s booklet and disagreed while I agreed, in theory at least. His view is that peace must rest on force and the non-resister over-simplifies the problem. I felt oddly depressed over him, as tho’ this difference between us is fundamental.
THURSDAY 14 MAY
Perhaps I shall remember today all my life and especially when I am dismal, just to remind myself that I have been lucky with a happiness perfect and unsought and undeserved. I can do little to record even the concrete ingredients of this day because my mind is drowsy with fresh air, my face is glowing from the sun and wind and I am tired and sleepy. The Telegraph announced ‘Rain: rather warm’ on its front page, but at breakfast the sun shone too brilliantly into my eyes and the cuckoo shouted from the hedge. I set off in a silk check blouse, no hat or mac and brown check coat. It was a perfect Spring day – sunshine with a cool breeze, just right for walking. We walked from Reigate over Colley Hill to Walton Heath where we picnicked, then on to Box Hill and Bookham, all footpath or lane except 2 miles of country road from Walton to Box Hill. We loved on Walton Heath among the gorse bushes and violets, short and sweet. We looked into Bookham church (and missed the train).
Walton Heath
My knees suffered in the descent from Box Hill. We could see Chanctonbury quite clearly. We hardly bickered at all as E pointed out on Bookham station, but we were completely happy and at ease and satisfied, I certainly and he almost as certainly. There was an extra sort of bond between us connected in some obscure way, I think, with our argument about pacifism – not that we talked much philosophy, tho’ we did spasmodically, a little, mostly at tea. It is odd that I did not dwell on, and look forward to this as much as I have to some days, and yet on the whole it has been one of the loveliest days we have ever had.
THURSDAY 21 MAY
Went to Adler’s lecture at UC. He is short and tubby. He spoke fluent English with merely a few queer pronunciations and reversed order and one or two odd mistakes. An alive man with expressive gestures. A strong sense of humour especially in looking at himself and his individual psychology. Not a trace of pompousness. He is a practical psychologist before everything, with a tremendous sense of responsibility, a hopeful faith in evolution of mankind, a wide view and an artistic outlook, as impressive for what he is as for what he says. In fact, his effect depends on both but more on the man. He is a missionary preaching salvation of society. He knows where each has gone wrong as a child – the feeble anti-social with vanity who becomes neurotic, the active anti-social who compensates for inferiority feeling and becomes delinquent and criminal.
Tea with E who told me that K’s mother is in hospital so he will have to stay home for Whitsun. In any case he may have to go to Sheffield as his mother is sinking. So we are fated. If only Whit had been a fortnight earlier!
FRIDAY 22 MAY
Still cold, tho’ the wind has dropped. This evening I heard the swish of heavy rain on the elder tree while I was eating a solitary dinner. The sky was solid grey. When I poured away the tea leaves there was the lovely dusty smell of rain on the dry earth. Margot came home at 10.0 so I had an evening mainly with Lady Chatterley. So far I like it better than any of Lawrence except perhaps Sons and Lovers which seems good in another way. Lady Chatterley is less feverish and unhealthy. There is more simplicity and repose in it. It is more detached and impersonal, almost like a will. The writing, tho’ careless in places, has marvellous vitality and clarity and vividness. The concreteness of intense vision, less abstract morality, less ‘fluff’ and unrevised soliloquy. Possibly the improvement (to me) is due to taking a woman for the main character. This necessarily forced him to be more objective.
Lunched with E at Hills. I was rather dismal and didn’t bother to conceal it as I could have. This was mean as he has more to worry about than I have.
TUESDAY 9 JUNE
I am weary with longing for him and desolate for lack of him. I looked at myself in the bath and thought, ‘What waste!’ If he could have come to me tonight my weariness would have fallen from me like a vest and I would have battled with him and accepted him with joy and power. As it is he is alone in his bed and I – I am waiting for Margot to finish her bath. I have no jealousy for K. I have not seen her, but how I hate her in her quiet, persistent intercepti
ng of us. A discipline, perhaps, to score my love deeper with pain instead of dissipating it in an unrestrained procession of physical ecstasies? I don’t know. If chance, in blind cruelty, should free him when I am too old to have a child I could not marry him. The irony of it! I do not know why I should be so dismal tonight (except from just denying physical desire).
This morning Margot and I had heard that we can go on the Voltaire. I had a glimmering of excitement which I fostered till at lunch with E. I gloated too much, not quite unconsciously.
TUESDAY 16 JUNE
A queer thing happened tonight which I must try to write down before it fades completely. I felt rather yawny today at the office after 3 days on the Isle of Wight. I went to UC at 5.15 to do practical with E and after a while we did the ergograph experiment – the finger pull, and he did it. There isn’t much to do as experimenter and I got rather bored at the end of an hour. At 7.0 we went to Lyons for a coffee. I felt (as usual) rather aggrieved when he talked about his holidays without mentioning me, but on the way to Goodge St I resolved not to sulk but just to let go – to give him what he wants to the best of my ability and expect nothing in return – ‘whosoever would save his life shall lose it’ floated through my head. This is just to indicate my state of mind.