20 November 1916 – 26 November 1916

In the doldrums. Tired of this damnable far niente,--I am being gently smothered under a mountain of feathers. I should like to engage upon some cold, hard, glittering intellectualism. "I want to read Kant," I said. The Baby slept, E---- was sewing and N---- writing letters. I leaned back in my armchair beside the bookshelf and began to read out the titles of my books in a loud voice. "My dear!" E---- said. "I am caressing my past," I answered. "Wiedersheim's Comparative Anatomy of Vertebrates, Smith Woodward's Vertebrate Palæontology--why it's like visiting old prospects and seeing how the moss has grown over the stones." I hummed a comic song and then said: "As I can't burn the house down, I shall go to bed." N----: "You can talk if you like, it won't interfere." E----: "He's talking to his besoms." "Certainly," I said to N----, absent-mindedly. E----: "You ought to have said 'Thank you.'" I blew out my cheeks and E---- laughed. N----: "How do you spell 'regimental'?" I told her--wrongly, and E---- said I was in a devilish mood. "If we say that we have no sin" I chanted in reply, "we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us." I next gave a bit out of a speech by Disraeli with exaggerated rhetorical gestures. E---- (with pity): "Poor young man." Presently she came over and in a tired way put her arms around my neck so I immediately began to sing "Rock of Ages, cleft for me," in the bass, which immediately reminded me of dear old Dad, whose favourite hymn it was.... Then I imitated the Baby. And then to bed fretful and very bitter.