12 October 1914 – 18 October 1914

Am better to-day. My better self is convinced that it is silly and small-minded to think so much about my own puny destiny--especially at times like these when--God love us all--there is a column of casualties each day. The great thing to be thankful for is that I am alive and alive now, that I was alive yesterday, and even may be to-morrow. Surely that is thrilling enough. What, then, have I to complain of? I'm a lucky dog to be alive at all. My plight is bad, but there are others in a worse one. I'm going to be brave and fight on the side of Nietzsche. Who knows but that one day the dancing star may yet be born!

Spent the evening in my lodgings struggling with my will. Too flabby to work, disinclined to read, a dreadful vague unrest possessing me. I couldn't sit still in my chair, so walked around the table continuously like a squirrel in a cage. I wanted to be going out somewhere, talking to some one, to be among human beings. Many an evening during the past few months, I have got up and gone down the road to look across at the windows of the flat, to see if there were a red light behind the curtains, and, if so, wonder if she were there, and how she was. My pride would never allow me to visit there again on my own initiative. K---- has managed to bring about a rapprochement but I go very seldom. Pride again. I wanted to do so to-night. I thought I would just go down the road to look up at the windows. That seemed to be some comfort. Why do I wish to do this? I do not know. From a mere inspection one would say that I am in love. But remember I am also ill. Three times to-night I nearly put on my boots and went down to have a look up! What ridiculous weakness! Yet this room can be a frightful prison. Shall I? I cannot decide. I see her figure constantly before me--gentle, graceful, calm, stretching forth both hands and to me.... Seized a pack of cards and played Patience and went on playing Patience because I was afraid to stop. Given a weak constitution, a great ambition, an amorous nature, and at the same time a very fastidious one, I might have known I was in for trouble.

Marie Bashkirtseff Some time ago I noticed a quotation from one, Marie Bashkirtseff in a book on Strindberg, and was struck with the likeness to a sentiment of my own. Who are you? I wondered. This evening went to the Library and read about her in Mathilde Blind's introductory essay to her Journal. I am simply astounded. It would be difficult in all the world's history to discover any two persons with temperaments so alike. She is the "very spit of me "! I devoured Mathilde Blind's pages more and more astonished. We are identical! Oh, Marie Bashkirtseff! how we should have hated one another! She feels as I feel. We have the same self-absorption, the same vanity and corroding ambition. She is impressionable, volatile, passionate--ill! So am I. Her journal is my journal. All mine is stale reading now. She has written down all my thoughts and forestalled me! Already I have found some heart-rending parallels. To think I am only a replica: how humiliating for a human being to find himself merely a duplicate of another. Is there anything in the transmigration of souls? She died in 1886. I was born in 1889.

A man is always looking at himself in the mirror if for no other reason than to tie his tie and brush his hair. What does he think of his face? He must have private opinions. But it is usually considered a little out of taste to entertain opinions about one's personal appearance. As for myself, some mirrors do me down pretty well, others depress me! I am bound to confess I am biassed in favour of the friendly mirror. I am not handsome, but I look interesting--I hope distinguished. My eyes are deep-set ... but my worst moments are when the barber combs my hair right down over my forehead, or when I see a really handsome man in Hyde Park. Such occasions direct my gaze reflexly, and doubt like a thief in the night forces the back door! To-day, M---- sent me dancing mad by suggesting that I copied R---- in my manner of speech and opinions. Now R---- has a damned pervasive way of conducting himself--for all the world as if he were a high official of the Foreign Office. I, on the contrary, am shy, self-conscious, easily overlooked, and this makes me writhe. As we are inseparable friends--everybody assumes that I am his tacky-lacky, a kind of appoggiatura to his big note. He, they suppose, is my guide, philosopher, and Great Maecenas--Oxford befriending the proletariat. The thought of it makes me sick--that any one should believe I imbibe his ideas, echo his conceits, and even ape his gestures and manner of voice. "Lost yourself?" inquired a despicable creature the other morning as I came out of R----'s room after finding him out. I could have shot him dead! ... As for ---- more than one person thinks that he alone is the brilliant author until at last he himself has got into the way of thinking it. "It makes me hate you like mad," I said to him to-day. "How can I confront these people with the naked truth?" R---- chuckled complacently. "If I deny your alleged supremacy, as I did this morning, or if suddenly, in a fit of spleen, I'm induced to declare that I loathe you (as I sometimes do)"--(more chuckles) "that your breath stinks, your eyes bulge, that you have swollen jugulars and a platter face: they will think I am either jealous or insincere.... To be your Echo tho'!--my God!" I spat. We then grinned at one another, and I, being bored, went to the lavatory and read the newspaper secure from interruption. Resignation In the Tube, a young widow came in and sat in front of me--pale-faced, grief-stricken, demure--a sort of "Thy Will be Done" look. The adaptability of human beings has something in it that seems horrible. It is dreadful to think how we have all accommodated ourselves to this War. Christian resignation is a feeble thing. Why won't this demure widow with a loud voice blaspheme against this iniquitous world that permits this iniquitous war?