Excerpts From The Diary Of Virginia Woolf, Volume VAuthor(s): VIRGINIA WOOLF, Anne Olivier Bell and Andrew McNeillieReviewed work(s):Source: The American Poetry Review, Vol. 13, No. 5 (SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 1984), pp. 8-12Published by: American Poetry ReviewStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/27777437 .Accessed: 27/08/2012 08:19

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In addition to her novels, Virginia Woolf was the author of A Room of One's Own and Three Guineas.

Excerpted from THE DIARY OF VIRGINIA WOOLF, VOLUME V. DIARY ? 1984 by Quentin Bell and Angelica Garnett. To be published by Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc.

VIRGINIA WOOLF:

Excerpts From The Diary Of

Virginia Woolf, Volume V

edited by Anne Olivier Bell

assisted by Andrew McNeillie

rhese

entries, excerpted from the final volume of Virginia Woolf s

diary, cover the period from April to September 1939. They chronicle the events of a time important both for their author and for her country: amid the negotiations and false hopes for peace which preceded England's entry into war with Germany on September 3, Virginia Woolf had set

herself a strict regimen to complete her biography of art critic Roger Fry, while writing at intervals the first draft o/Pointz Hall, the work which would become Between the Acts, her last novel

The characters who people the diary are many, some famous, others not: the author's sister and brother-in-law, Vanessa and Clive Bell, and their son Quentin; the artist Duncan Grant, with whom Vanessa worked from about 1914 until her death in 1961 and by whom she had a daughter, Angelica, in 1918; John Lehmann of the Hogarth Press; Mabel Haskins, the Woolfs' domestic; artist and patron of the arts Helen Anrep, and her son Igor; composer, author and feminist Dame Ethel Smyth; and the economist John Maynard Keynes and his wife, Lydia Lopokova. Monks House, Leonard and Virginia Woolf s Sussex home, is the

primary setting for the events described At the time of the first entry, the

Woolf s are settling back there after tea-time visits the two previous days to Charleston, Vanessa's house, and to Tilton, the Keynes' estate neigh boring it.

Tuesday 11 April How much identity, to use my own private slang, is needed to sur

mount a little hillock: for instance, Lydia on Lappin & Lapinova yester day at Tilton; & Tilton's comfort, & quiet; all seem to make it harder for me to get on with revising Roger. Revising Roger at the rate of 2 weeks to a chapter will take me 3 months. Then there's the war. The finest Easter possible has this purple background. We wait like obedient chil dren to hear what we shall be told when Parliament meets on Thursday. At Tilton we talked first medicine; Maynard's drastic cure by Plesch; then politics; five minutes left for Tom's play. Every day, save 2, some

thing's turned up. Private peace is not accessible. Miss Robins tomorrow. Then Charleston. Then L.P. here. Maynard, even Maynard, cant find much that's hopeful now that Italy has nipped off Albania save that theres a unity of hatred. The men women children dogs &c. are solid for

war if war comes.1 But privately?how one rockets between private &

public?his eyes are bluer, his skin pinker, & he can walk without pain. Lydia has devoted herself to the treatment. They think Nessa suppresses Clive?wont have things out. Never will have anything out. But the[n] L[ydia]. is always on husbands side?a serf like spirit, natural in the cir cumstances. My allegiance is to N. & D. as usual: but I like all my friends

?though not the taste of Tilton.

Roasting hot: birds a chirp: butterflies. I am reading Dickens; by way of a refresher. How he lives; not writes:

both a virtue & a fault. Like seeing something emerge; without con

taining mind. Yet the accuracy & even sometimes the penetration?into Miss Squeers & Miss Price & the farmer [in Nicholas Nickleby] for

example?remarkable. I cant dip my critical mind, even if I try to. Then I'm reading Sevign?, professionally for that quick amalgamation of books that I intend. In future, I'm to write quick, intense, short books, & never be tied down. This is the way to keep off the settling down &

refrigeration of old age. And to flout all preconceived theories?For more & more I doubt if enough is known to sketch even probable lines, all too

emphatic & conventional. Maurice, the last of the LI. Davies brothers is dead; & Margaret lives

lives too carefully of life, I used to feel. Why drag on, always measuring -

& testing one's little bit of strength & setting it easy tasks so as to ac cumulate years?2

Also I'm reading Rochefoucauld. Thats the real point of my little Brown book?that it makes me read?with a pen?following the scent: & read the good books; not the slither of MSS & the stridency of the young chawking?the word expresses callow bills agape & chattering?for sympathy. Chaucer I take at need. So if I had any time?but perhaps next week will be more solitudinous?I should, if it weren't for the war

glide my way up & up in to that exciting layer so rarely lived in: where

my mind works so quick it seems asleep; like the aeroplane propellers. But I must retype the last Clifton passage; & so be quit for tomorrow & clear the decks for Cambridge. Rather good, I expect it is: condensed &

moulded.

*****

Friday 28 April Very much screwed in the brain by trying to get Roger's marriage

chapter into shape; & also warmed by L. saying last night that he was fonder of me than I of him. A discussion as to which would mind the other's death most. He said he depended more upon our common life than I did. He gave the garden as an instance. He said I lived more in a

world of my own. I go for long walks alone. So we argued. I was very happy to think I was so much needed. Its strange how seldom one feels this: yet 'life in common' is an immense reality. For instance, I cant go to The Wreckers tonight with Ethel Smyth because: 1. I have a little tem

perature: 2: (& more serious) I'd rather stay at home with L. Its no use

fighting against this. Its one of the facts.3 Oh such a dismal tea with Mrs W. yesterday. She is completely lifeless

?like an old weed on a rock. And always recurring to the complaints. That was how, by the way, we came to discuss our deaths. L. said he

hoped he would predecease me. Her lonely old age is so intolerable. But its lonely, he said, because she has adopted an unreal attitude. Lived in a

sentim[ent]al make believe. Sees herself as the adored matriarch, & forces the children to adopt her attitude. Hence the unreality of all relations. This obsession of hers has also shut her off from all other interests: doesn't care for any impersonal thing?art, music, books.

Wont have a companion or reader; must depend on her sons. Constant innuendoes therefore about the goodness of Herbert & Harold; inference that L. neglects her; hints that I have taken him away from his family; absorbed him in mine. So in that crowded pink hot room we sat for 2 hours trying to beat up subjects for conversation. And there were awful silences, & our heads filled with wool; & all was dusty, dreary, old, &

hopeless. Yet she followed us out on to the stair & made L. swear that she looks better? "Sure Len? Sure I look better?" as if she still clings hard to life & cant be removed. So to walk in the hail in Ken. Gardens; & see the

PAGE 8 THE AMERICAN POETRY REVIEW

cherry trees livid & lurid in the yellow storm haze. Very cold winter

spring.

Friday 28 July

The use of this book is to write things out, hence: the Greenhouse. I'm so unhappy. A portmanteau word. Analysed: headache; guilt; remorse . . . The house, L.'s house, ... oh dear, his hobby?his peach tree?to be

pulled down because of me. How can I get sensible? I mind so much. Oh dear?the conflict?the ugliness: v: L.'s wish. And is it worth this

misery? ?oughtn't I to have said go ahead, when he came to me in the Bath this morning? The men had come?Shd. they put it up? I said you must decide. So he sent them away & its to be pulled down. How to live it over? Forget he says: but I shant... & cant read or write? . . .

I have composed myself, momentarily, by reading through this years diary. Thats a use for it then. It composes. Why? I think shows one a

stretch, when one's grubbing in an inch. Head relieved anyhow by reading. Odd that I can read here without repulsion. Why? My own mind I suppose claws me when others slip.

I forget that we came down; & its been fine, rather; lovely on the marsh. Hay cutting. Figures spaced on the marsh. Old Bob thanks me for my letter. Much hurt by Stephen's review. A letter from Susie

Tweedsmuir?deadly dull at Quebec. Reading Gide's diaries, recom mended by poor death mask Eddie [Sackville-West]. An interesting knotted book. Its queer that diaries now pullulate. No one can settle to a work of art. Comment only. That explains but scarcely excuses Peter Lucas; & his exhibition of Prudence.4 Shd. one judge people by what they write? Shd. people show their naked skins? Eddie shows his death mask ?Dear, I forgot my shudder at Helen's son [omission]; nor can dissect my mix up of the debt, the dislike of Igor's great fleshy mouth. (I'm whistling to keep up my spirits this very strained grey day?the Green house morning.) I must now carry off lunch. What annoys me is L.'s adroitness in fathering the guilt on me. His highhandedness. I see the

temptation. "Oh you dont want it?so I submit." This spoilt bowls last

night. We shied them at the Jack. Yet so happy in our reconciliation. "Do

you ever think me beautiful now?" "The most beautiful of women"?

Monday 7 August [Bank Holiday]

I am now going to make the rash & bold experiment of breaking off, from condensing Vision & Design,5 to write here for 10 minutes instead of revising, as I ought, my mornings grind.

Oh yes. I thought of several things to write about. Not exactly diary. Reflections. Thats the fashionable dodge. Peter Lucas & Gide both at it. Neither can settle to creative art (I think, sans Roger, I could). Its the comment?the daily interj ection?that comes handy in times like these. I too feel it. But what was I thinking?

I have been thinking about Censors. How visionary figures admonish us. Thats clear in an MS I'm reading. If I say this So & So will think me '

sentimental. If that. . . will think me Bourgeois. All books now seem to me surrounded by a circle of invisible censors. Hence their selfconscious ness, their restlessness. It wd. be worth while trying to discover what

they are at the moment. Did Wordsworth have them? I doubt it. I read Ruth before breakfast. Its stillness, its unconsciousness, its lack of

distraction, its concentration & the resulting "beauty" struck me. As if the mind must be allowed to settle undisturbed over the object in order to secrete the pearl.

Thats an idea for an article. The figurative expression is that all the surroundings of the mind have

come much closer. A child crying in the field brings poverty: my comfort: to mind. Ought I to go to the village sports? Ought thus breaks in to my contemplation.

Oh & I thought, as I was dressing, how interesting it would be to describe the approach of age, & the gradual coming of death. As people describe love. To note every symptom of failure: but why failure? To treat age as an experience that is different from the others; & to detect

every one of the gradual stages towards death which is a tremendous

experience, & not as unconscious at least in its approaches, as birth is. I must now return to my grind. I think rather refreshed. Clive at Cn yesterday, with an enormous white jersey which he patted

& prodded from time to time. A little testy about his room. I needn't say I've been palmed off with the worst in [the] house.

Desiring sympathy, Duncan said, & admiration. All his books were put in order by the others. Rather an elderly tea party. Q. away.6

*****

Wednesday 30 August

Not at war yet. Par[liamen]t met: yesterday. Negotiations. We are firm. A pause. L. & I discussing the Broadcast are up & down. Very black ?then less so. L. pessimistic more than I am this morning. He thinks that H[itier], is making up his mind to spring. Raging voices began again last night in German. Last years mad voice heard again, as if he were

lashing himself up. At the same time, a reply of 8 pages has been sent last night to the Cabinet. The French are out of it this time.7

I'm dull headed. Spreading my mind out to synthesise the last chapter. Well, its a good thing as a distraction. Also wrote a synopsis of a story for Chabrun [Chambrun]. Will they really order 3,000 words on that

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flimsy sketch for $200? Seems impossible. Nobody keeps engagements or answers letters. A kind of block & suspension. No furniture unpacked.

We go up tomorrow.

Brilliant?yes, the light is very evanescent?shining?weather. Very hot. To Lewes about shoes &c. All the tradespeople one wd say indif ferent. Question of buying bicycles. Lots of bicycles. But why? Oh d'you think there'll be a war?

Now I must listen to the one 'clock. Red faced boys in khaki guarding Rodmell Hill. The soldiers in the

village. Otherwise quiet & usual eno' . . .

* * * * *

Sunday 3 September

This is I suppose certainly the last hour of peace. The time limit is out at 11. PM to broadcast at 11.15. L. & I "stood by" 10 minutes ago. Why repeat what'U be in all the papers? We argued. L. said Greenwood was

right?forcing the PM in the House last night.81 argued its "they" as usual who do this. We as usual remain outside. If we win,?then what? L. said its better to win; because the Germans, vanquished, are what they are. Mus[solini']s last try, a try on. All the formulae are now a mere surface for gangsters. So we chopped words. I suppose the bombs are

falling on rooms like this in Warsaw. A fine sunny morning here; apples shining. Mabel came to my regret last night. Atmosphere at once stiff &

prickly. Mustn't mind, says L. No children yet come. Nessa & Angelica over as I took up the book yesterday. 14 in house: 3 children dumped.

Maynard has given Q. a job as tractor driver.9 This is a relief. No one knows how we're to fight. Rumours beginning. A flurry of people shopping in Lewes yesterday: the flight of cars with beds fairly thick.

Shops rather empty. People buying stuff for windows. Little girl says If we have a chink they'll spy us out. Flint [grocer] cross. Many of them that?as if half unhappy half resentful. No excitement visible. M[abel]. said train very empty. I believe little exact notes are more interesting than reflections?the only reflection is that this is bosh & stuffing com

pared with the reality of reading say Tawney; writing, & re-writing one sentence of Roger.10 So this experiment proves the reality of the mind. Two hours sewing [black-out] curtains. An anodyne, pleasant to do

something: but so tepid & insipid. One's too tired, emotionally, to read a

page. I tried Tawney last night?cdn't concentrate. Church bells ringing. Mrs Ebbs carrying a sheaf of gladioli. Where from? Breaky Bottom.

They hardly ever come to church, but now & then send lovely flowers for the church.11 Question: if we had a church? The relief of having some common outside interest or belief. If it were a belief ... Q. & A. to eat John's grouse.

Its the unreality of force that muffles every thing. Itys now about 10.33.

Not to attitudinise is one reflection. Nice to be entirely genuine & obscure. Then of course I shall have to work to make money. That's a comfort. Write articles for America. I suppose take on some writing for some society. Keep the Press going. Of course no beds or heat on at 37. So far plenty of petrol. Sugar rationed. So I shall now go in. Nothing in the garden or meadows that strikes me out of the way?& certainly I cant write.12

Wednesday 6 Sep tember

Our first air raid warning at 8.30 this morning. A warbling that grad ually insinuates itself as I lay in bed. So dressed & walked on the terrace with L. Sky clear. All cottages shut. Breakfast. All clear. During the interval a raid on Southwark. No news.

The Hepworths came on Monday.13 Rather like a sea voyage. Forced conversation. Boredom. All meaning has run out of everything. Scarcely worth reading papers. The BBC gives any news the day before. Empti ness. Inefficiency. I may as well record these things. My plan is to force

my brain to work on Roger. But Lord this is the worst of all my life's

experiences. I note that force is the dullest of experiences. It means

feeling only bodily feelings: one gets cold & torpid. Endless interrup tions. We have done the curtains. We have carried coals &c into the

cottage for the 8 Battersea women & children. The expectant mothers are all quarrelling. Some went back yesterday. We took the car to be

hooded, met Nessa, were driven to tea at Charleston. Yes, its an empty meaningless world now. Am I a coward? Physically I expect I am. Going to London tomorrow I expect frightens me. At a pinch eno' adrenalin is secreted to keep one calm. But my brain stops. I took up my watch this

morning & then put it down. Lost. That kind of thing annoys me. No doubt one can conquer this. But my mind seems to curl up & become undecided. To cure this one had better read a solid book like Tawney, an exercise of the muscles. The Hepworths are travelling books in Brighton. Shall I walk? Yes. Its the gnats & flies that settle on noncombatants. This war has begun in cold blood. One merely feels that the killing machine has to be set in action. So far, The Athena has been sunk.14 It seems entirely meaningless?a perfunctory slaughter, like taking a jar in one hand, a hammer in the other. Why must this be smashed? Nobody knows. This feeling is different from any before. And all the blood has been let out of common life. No movies or theatres allowed. No letters, except strays from America. "Reviewing" rejected by Atlantic.15 No friends write or ring up. Yes, a long sea voyage, with strangers making conversation, & lots of small bothers & arrangements seems the closest I can get. Of course all creative power is cut off.

Perfect summer weather.

[Later.] Its like an invalid who can look up & take a cup of tea?Sud

PAGE 10 THE AMERICAN POETRY REVIEW

denly one can take to the pen with relish. Result of a walk in the heat, clearing the fug & setting the blood working. This book will serve to accumulate notes, the fruit of such quickenings. And for the 100th time I

repeat?any idea is more real than any amount of war misery. And what one's made for. And the only contribution one can make?This little

pitter patter of ideas is my whiff of shot in the cause of freedom?so I tell

myself, thus bolstering up a figment?a phantom: recovering that sense of something pressing from outside which consolidates the mist, the non-existent.

I see Priestley consolidating his idea of himself too. Begins his article, Helping to receive refugees &c. . . . thus bringing before himself P. the active, the helper in the cause of common life: & so doubtless releasing his rush of ideas. But I dont like P.'s figment, necessary as it may be.161 conceived the idea, walking in the sun baked marsh where I saw one clouded yellow, of making an article out of these 15 odd diaries. This will be an easy slope of work: not the steep grind of Roger. But shall I ever have a few hours to read in? I must. Tonight the Raid has diminished from a raid on Southwark; on Portsmouth; on Scarborough, to an

attempt on the E. Coast without damage. Tomorrow we go up.

Monday 11 September I have just read 3 or 4 Characters of Theophrastus, stumbling from

Greek to English, & may as well make a note of it.17 Trying to anchor my mind on Greek. Rather successful. As usual, how Greek sticks, darts, eels in & out! No Latin wd have noted that a boor remembers his loans in the middle of the night. The Greek has his eye on the object. But its a

long distance one has to roll away to get at Theophrastus & Plato. But worth the effort.

Mrs Nicholls a great frost. A painted metallic shrill nagging woman; with a mind that pecks the same rotten apple again?this side, that side. Her daughter: & her future: & Tigger the Dalmatian: full of her shoddy contacts; her cocktails: shall I buy a housecoat for raids or trousers? At

last, at 8 am, she left us; but depressed, for one doesnt like coins to turn out false. Of course she ruined Sunday tea: Charleston over. Much

grumbling from Clive at their inmates. Nessa who is making a chicken house is philosophic. But she compares the Grants & Breretons.18

To London on Thursday. Pitiless fine weather. Over London a light spotted veil?the ballons. Very empty streets. A curious strained silence. At the Press, Miss P[erkins, clerk], listening for Sirens. So I listened. Sat in the sunny window. Cases all empty but piled up. Mabel & I laid carpets. Sandwiches with John. Stephen came in. His great joints seemed to crack. Eyes stared. Is writing reams about himself. Can't settle to

poetry. London after sunset a mediaevel city of darkness & brigandage. Mrs [Cyril] Connolly told by a taxi man he had just been robbed &

knocked over the head. The darkness they say is the worst of it. The air raid had been very trying?at 2.30. John had drunk a glass of water & sat in the cellar. No one can control their nerves. So I was glad to be on the road home. No raids yet. Poland being conquered, & then?we shall be attended to.

I've offered to write for the NS. I dont know if wisely: but it's best to have a job, & I dont think I can stand aloof with comfort at the moment. So my reasons are half in half. Intolerable tedium.?no papers: no letters; & all this made up talk with Nicholls.

Cooler now.

Saturday 23 September Meanwhile Poland has been gobbled up. Russia & Germany divide it.

An aircraft carrier has been sunk. But there have been no raids.19 And

I?having said impulsively that I would write for the NS by way of using my faculties patriotically?have written 2 & used up every morning to the margin. Also people have been staying here ... oh such a fritter &

agitation?solid weekends with Mrs Nicholls, Miss Perkins, Miss Woodward?both very good samples: public house life & greengrocers. So distracted I've scudded over the surface of the days. And now

Stephen is on us alone; & so we shall be lip sore & addle headed. Then theres John on Monday.

Civilisation has shrunk. The Amenities are wilting. Theres no petrol today: so we are back again with our bicycles at Asheham 1915. And once more L. & I calculate our income. Can I give A. her allowance? How much must we both earn? Once more we are journalists. I've offered to do an article, required by The Times, on artists & the crisis; offered others. My old age of independence is thus in danger. But in fact its hard to keep aloof & do my books. Theres a pressure about an article?even

White & Bewick?that keeps one absorbed. But how sick of 1500 words

by Wednesday I shall get!20 Then one begins stinting paper, sugar, butter, buying little hoards of

matches. The elm tree that fell has been cut up. This will see us through 2 winters. They say the war will last 3 years. We had an SOS from

Kingsley. He came for the night. What was it he cdn't say on the

telephone? Nothing. Should h? come out in favour of peace? Cha[mberlai]n has the terms in his pocket. All in the know say we are beaten. Troops guard the East end. A bomb?& he means to bomb the docks?will lead to revolution. He was happy?but chuckling, quick & low, like a delirious bird. Always seeing himself, & pleased to see himself a martyr. Nothing of the least importance is said though in his article. A sensationalist?his mind rotted with hot coterie talk?all pitted & soft as a hot dis[h]cloth? steaming, unwholesome, unreal. Yet I rather liked him?a Celt.21

I forget who else has been. Nessa painting L.22 Drove to Newhaven yes

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terday to buy plaster of Paris for Q. & we saw the 2 hospital ships painted green & white in the harbour. Many games of bowls. No reading. No Theophrastus?only article reading. But this must be stopped, as I'm now up to time with my little Hutterers; & thank God old Mabel who is like one of the clammy kitchen flies, goes back on Tuesday. London no

worse, she says than anywhere. An opinion I encourage.

Notes 1. Alive at last to the dangers of Hitler's military and territorial ambitions in

Eastern Europe, a disillusioned Mr. Chamberlain announced on 31 March that Britain and France would guarantee support to Poland should her independence be threatened (which it was); when Parliament reassembled on 13 April?after the invasion and annexation of Albania by Mussolini's troops on Good Friday (7 April)?this guarantee was extended to Greece and Roumania. The Hungarian born Dr. Janos Plesch (1879-1957) gave up his practice in Germany when the Nazis came to power, and settled in England; he had treated Keynes since 1937 and became a friend as well as his doctor.

2. Margaret Llewelyn Davies, now seventy-eight, had six brothers; Maurice

(1865-1939) was the third. 3. Ethel Smyth's opera The Wreckers was given its last performance of the

season at Sadler's Wells this evening. 4. VW had written to R.C. Trevelyan to thank him for his Collected Works,

Volume 1: Poems (1939) which had been disparagingly reviewed by Stephen Spender in the NS&N [New Statesman and Nation] of 22 July 1939. Lady Tweedsmuir's letter of 14 July from The Citadel, the Governor-General's Quebec residence, is in the Monks House Papers, Sussex. Andr? Gide's Journal 1885-1939 (1939). With the title Journal under the Terror, F.L. Lucas in 1938 published what he called "the unedited truth of . . . day-to-day impressions of a year [1937] in modern Europe." From November onwards it contains references to his wife

Prudence's nervous breakdown.

5. i.e.: VW's heading to Chapter 10 of Roger Fry, which deals with his book of this title.

6. Clive in fact had three of the best rooms in Charleston, and a private bath room.

7. Since the signing of the German-Soviet Pact there had been intense diplo matic activity in an attempt to avert Hitler's intended attack on Poland and, on his part, to prevent Britain and France fulfilling their obligations towards her.

8. The House of Commons met on Saturday 2 September; Chamberlain, still

hoping to avoid a European war, reported that Mussolini had proposed an immediate cessation of hostilities and a conference . . . Arthur Greenwood

(1880-1954), Deputy Leader of the Labour Party, urged to "speak for England," insisted that the time for compromise was past and that England's duty was to honour her guarantee of aid to Poland.

9. Quentin Bell had been rejected for military service because of his history of

tuberculosis.

10. R.H. Tawney (1880-1962), economic historian and social critic; his most influential book was Religion and the Rise of Capitalism (1926).

11. Breaky Bottom is an isolated farm in a fold of the downs west of Rodmell. 12. The Prime Minister broadcast to the nation at 11:15 a.m. on Sunday 3 Sep

tember: as Germany had not replied to his Government's ultimatuum that their forces be withdrawn from Poland by 11 a.m. that day, he announced that Great Britain was already at war with Germany.

13. Barbara Hepworth from the Hogarth Press and her sister stayed at Monks House from 4-7 September.

14. On 3 September the liner Athenia, bound for Canada with 1400 passengers and crew, was torpedoed by a German submarine and sunk 250 miles west of the

Hebrides; 112 lives were lost. 15. VW finished writing her essay "Reviewing" in June 1939; it was pub

lished, with a dissenting note by LW, as a Hogarth Sixpenny Pamphlet on 2 November 1939, but did not appear in America.

16. See J.B. Priestly in the News Chronicle, 4 September 1939: "Two-ton Annie": "We had been asked to lend a hand at receiving and distributing the

patients, who had been evacuated from Portsmouth hospitals. So there I was, at the end of Ryde Pier, watching the sick folk arrive ..."

17. Theophrastus, a pupil of Plato and of Aristotle; his "Characters" consist of brief delineations of moral types.

18. Norah Nicholls of the Hogarth Press office staff stayed at Monks House from Saturday to Monday morning. Julian and Quentin's governess Mrs.

Brereton and her daughter formed part of Vanessa's household at Charleston towards the end of the 1914-18 war; now it was a refuge from the expected dangers of war for Duncan Grant's mother and her sister Violet McNeil.

19. Invading German forces from the West and Russian from the East over ran Poland and met at Brest-Litovsk on 18 September; by the end of the month the partition of the country secretly agreed in the German-Soviet Pact was effec tive and ratified. HMS Courageous was torpedoed and sunk in the Bristol Channel on 17 September with a loss of over 500 men.

20. Nothing came of the proposed Times article; that on "White's Selborne" was published in the NS&N on 30 September 1939; that on the artist William Bewick (1795-1866), based on his Life and Letters ... (1871) edited by Thomas Landseer, and J.G. Tait's 1939 edition of the first volume of Sir Walter Scott's Journal (1825-26), appeared under the title "Gas at Abbotsford" in theM><?iV"on 27 January 1940.

21. Kingsley Martin came to Monks House for the night on 19 September; his

leading article in the NS&N of 23 September, "Brest-Litovsk Revenged," makes no allusion to the alleged peace terms proposed to the Allies by Hitler following the "collapse'

' of Poland?which were not made public until the end of the month.

22. Vanessa Bell's finished portrait of LW hung at Monks House until his death, when it was given to the National Portrait Gallery by Mrs. Ian Parsons; the preliminary study is in a private collection in Chicago.

Once I gave a talk on Garcia Lorca, years after his death, and someone in the audience asked me: "In your 4Oda a Federico Garcia Lorca/ why do you say that they paint hospitals blue for him?"

"Look, my friend," I replied, "asking a poet that kind of question is like asking a woman her age. Poetry is not static matter but a flowing current that quite often escapes from the hands of the creator himself. His raw material consists of elements that are and at the same time are not, of things that exist and do not exist. Anyway, Fll try to give you an honest answer. For me, blue is the most beautiful color. It suggests space as man sees it, like the dome of the sky, rising toward liberty and joy. Federico's presence, his personal magic, instilled a mood of joy around him. My line probably

means that even hospitals, even the sadness of hospitals, could be transformed by the magic spell of his influence and suddenly changed into beautiful blue buildings."

from Pablo Neruda's Memoirs, translated by Hardie St. Martin

Neruda quotation reprinted with the permission of Farrar, Straus & Giroux, Inc., from MEMOIRS by Pablo Neruda, translated from the Spanish by Hardie St. Martin. Translation copyright 1976, 1977, by Farrar, Straus & Giroux, Inc. Translated from the Spanish CONF?ESO QUE HE VIVIDO. MEMORIAS, Copyright 1974 by the Estate of Pablo Neruda.

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