To return to the present owner of the name, on Sunday I went up to Campden Hill to hear the Schubert quintet—to see George Booth's house—to take notes for my story—to rub shoulders with respectability—all these reasons took me there and were cheaply gratified at 7/6.

Whether people see their own rooms with the devastating clearness that I see them, thus admitted once for one hour, I doubt. Chill superficial seemliness; but thin as a March glaze of ice on a pool. A sort of mercantile smugness. Horsehair and mahogany is the truth of it; and the white panels, Vermeer reproductions, Omega table and variegated curtains rather a snobbish disguise. The least interesting of rooms; the compromise; though of course that's interesting too. I took against the family system. Old Mrs. Booth enthroned on a sort of commode in widow's dress; flanked by devoted daughters; with grandchildren somehow symbolical cherubs. Such neat dull little boys and girls. There we all sat in our furs and white gloves.



Saturday, April 10th

I'm planning to begin Jacob's Room next week with luck. (That's the first time I've written that.) It's the spring I have in my mind to describe; just to make this note—that one scarcely notices the leaves out on the trees this year, since they seem never entirely to have gone—never any of that iron blackness of the chestnut trunks—always something soft and tinted; such as I can't remember in my life before. In fact, we've skipped a winter; had a season like the midnight sun; a new return to full daylight. So I hardly notice that chestnuts are out—the little parasols spread on our window tree; and the churchyard grass running over the old tombstones like green water.



Thursday, April 15th

My handwriting seems to be going to the dogs. Perhaps I confuse it with my writing. I said that Richmond * was enthusiastic over my James article? Well, two days ago, little elderly Walkley attacked it in The Times, said I'd fallen into H. J.'s worst mannerisms—hardbeaten "figures"—and hinted that I was a sentimental lady friend. Percy Lubbock was included too; but, rightly or wrongly, I delete the article from my mind with blushes, and see all my writing in the least becoming light. I suppose it's the old matter of "florid gush"—no doubt a true criticism, though the disease is my own, not caught from H. J., if that's any comfort. I must see to it though. The Times atmosphere brings it out; for one thing I have to be formal there, especially in the case of H. J., and so contrive an article rather like an elaborate design, which encourages ornament. Desmond, however, volunteered admiration. I wish one could make out some rule about praise and blame. I predict that I'm destined to have blame in any quantity. I strike the eye; and elderly gentlemen in particular get annoyed. An Unwritten Novel will certainly be abused: I can't foretell what line they'll take this time. Partly, it's the "writing well" that sets people off—and always has done, I suppose, "Pretentious" they say; and then a woman writing well, and writing in The Times—that's the line of it. This slightly checks me from beginning Jacob's Room. But I value blame.