28 June 1915 – 4 July 1915

Saw my brother A---- off at Waterloo en route for Armageddon. Darling fellow. He shook hands with P---- and H----, and P---- wished him "Goodbye, and good luck." Then he held my hand a moment, said "Goodbye, old man," and for a second gave me a queer little nervous look. I could only say "Goodbye," but we understand each other perfectly.... It is horrible. I love him tenderly.

Sleep Sleep means unconsciousness: unconsciousness is a solemn state--you get it for example from a blow on the head with a mallet. It always weightily impresses me to see someone asleep--especially someone I love as to-day, stretched out as still as a log--who perhaps a few minutes ago was alive, even animated. And there is nothing so welcome, unless it be the sunrise, as the first faint gleam of recognition in the half-opened eye when consciousness like a mighty river begins to flow in and restore our love to us again. When I go to bed myself, I sometimes jealously guard my faculties from being filched away by sleep. I almost fear sleep: it makes me apprehensive--this wonderful and unknowable Thing which is going to happen to me for which I must lay myself out on a bed and wait, with an elaborate preparedness. Unlike Sir Thomas Browne, I am not always so content to take my leave of the sun and sleep, if need be, into the resurrection. And I sometimes lie awake and wonder when the mysterious Visitor will come to me and call me away from this thrilling world, and how He does it, to which end I try to remain conscious of the gradual process and to understand it: an impossibility of course involving a contradiction in terms. So I shall never know, nor will anybody else.

I've had such a successful evening--you've no idea! The pen simply flew along, automatically easy, page after page in perfect sequence. My style trilled and bickered and rolled and ululated in an infinite variety; you will find in it all the subtlest modulations, inflections and suavities. My afflatus came down from Heaven in a bar of light like the Shekinah--straight from God, very God of very God. I worked in a golden halo of light and electric sparks came off my pen nib as I scratched the paper.

The Clever Young Man Argued with R---- this morning. He is a type specimen of the clever young man. We both are. Our flowers of speech are often forced hot-house plants, paradoxes and cynicisms fly as thick as driving rain and Shaw is our great exemplar. I could write out an exhaustive analysis of the clever young man, and being one myself can speak from "inspired sources" as the newspapers say. A common habit is to underline and memorise short, sharp, witty remarks he sees in books and then on future occasions dish them up for his own self-glorification. If the author be famous he begins, "As ---- says, etc." If unknown the quotation is quietly purloined. He is always very self-conscious and at the same time very self-possessed and very conceited. You tell me with tonic candour that I am insufferably conceited. In return, I smile, making a sardonic avowal of my good opinion of myself, my theory being that as conceit is, as a rule, implicit and, as a rule, blushingly denied, you will mistake my impudent confession for bluff and conclude there is really something far more substantial and honest beneath my apparent conceit. If, on the other hand, I am conceited, why I have admitted it--I agree with you--but tho' there is no virtue in the confession being quite detached and unashamed--still you haven't caught me by the tail. It is very difficult to circumvent a clever young man. He is as agile as a monkey. His principal concern of course is to arouse and maintain a reputation for profundity and wit. This is done by the simple mechanical formula of antithesis: if you like winkles he proves that cockles are inveterately better; if you admire Ruskin he tears him to ribbons. If you want to learn to swim--as it is safer, he shows it is more dangerous to know how to swim and so on. I know his whole box of tricks. I myself am now playing the clever young man by writing out this analysis just as if I were not one myself. You doubt my cleverness? Well, some years ago in R----'s presence I called ----"the Rev. Fastidious Brisk,"--the nickname be it recalled which Henley gave to Stevenson (without the addition of "Rev."). At the time I had no intention of appropriating the witticism as I quite imagined R---- was acquainted with it. His unexpected explosion of mirth, however, made me uncomfortably uncertain of this, yet for the life of me I couldn't muster the honesty to assure him that my feather was a borrowed one. A few weeks later he referred to it again as "certainly one of my better ones"--but still I remained dumb and the time for explanations went for once and all. Now see what a pretty pickle I am in: the name "Brisk" or "F.B." is in constant use by us for this particular person--he goes by no other name, meanwhile I sit and wonder how long it will be before R---- finds me out. There are all sorts of ways in which he might find out: he might read about it for himself, someone might tell him or--worst of all--one day when we are dining out somewhere he will announce to the whole company my brilliant appellation as a little after-dinner diversion: I shall at once observe that the person opposite me knows and is about to air his knowledge; then I shall look sternly at him and try to hold him: he will hesitate and I shall land him with a left and right: "I suppose you've read Henley's verses on Stevenson?" I remark easily and in a moment or so later the conversation has moved on.