5 May 1913 – 11 May 1913

At R----. Mugged about all day. Put on a gramophone record--then crawled up into a corner of the large, empty drawing room and ate my heart out. Heart has a bitter taste--if it's your own.

Sat in the "morning room" feeling ill. In the chair opposite sat Aunt Fanny, aged 86, knitting. I listened to the click of her needles, while out in the garden a thrush sang, and there was a red sunset.

Before I left R----, A---- [My brother] had written to Uncle enclosing my doctor's letter. I don't know the details except that Dr. M---- emphasised the seriousness and yet held out hope that two months' rest would allay the symptoms.

At Home I made some offensive remark to H---- whom I met in the street. This set him off. "You blighter, I hope you marry a loose woman. May your children be all bandy-legged and squint-eyed, may your teeth drop out, and your toes have bunions," and so on in his usual lengthy commination. I turned to the third man. "Bob--this!--after all I've done for that young man! I have even gone out of my Way to cultivate in him a taste for poetry--until he is now, in fact, quite wrapped up in it--indeed, so much so, that for a time he was nothing but a brown paper parcel labelled Poetry." H. (doggedly): "When are you going to die?" "That Master H----," I answered menacingly, "is on the knees of the Gods." H.: "I shan't believe you're dead till I see your tombstone. I shall then say to the Sexton, 'Is he really dead, then?' and the Sexton will say, 'Well, 'ee's buried onny way.'" Bob was not quite in sympathy with our boisterous spirits.