14 July 1919 – 20 July 1919

One ought to say something about Peace day, I suppose, though whether it’s worth taking a new nib for that purpose I don’t know. I’m sitting wedged into the window and so catch almost on my head the steady drip of rain which is pattering on the leaves. In ten minutes or so the Richmond procession begins. I fear there will be few people to applaud the town councillors dressed up to look dignified and march through the streets. I’ve a sense of holland covers on the chairs; of being left behind when everyone’s in the country. I’m desolate, dusty, and disillusioned. Of course we did not see the procession. We have only marked the bins of refuse on the outskirts. Rain held off till some half hour ago. The servants had a triumphant morning. They stood on Vauxhall Bridge and saw everything. Generals and soldiers and tanks and nurses and bands took two hours in passing. It was they said the most splendid sight of their lives. Together with the Zeppelin raid it will play a great part in the history of the Boxall family. But I don’t know—it seems to me a servants’ festival; something got up to pacify and placate “the people”—and now the rain’s spoiling it; and perhaps some extra treat will have to be devised for them. That’s the reason of my disillusionment I think. There’s something calculated and politic and insincere, about these peace rejoicings. Moreover they are carried out with no beauty and not much spontaneity. Flags are intermittent; we have what the servants, out of snobbishness, I think, insisted upon buying, to surprise us. Yesterday in London the usual sticky stodgy conglomerations of people, sleepy and torpid as a cluster of drenched bees, were crawling over Trafalgar Square, and rocking about the pavements in the neighbourhood. The one pleasant sight I saw was due rather to the little breath of wind than to decorative skill; some long tongue-shaped streamers attached to the top of the Nelson column licked the air, furled and unfurled, like the gigantic tongues of dragons, with a slow, rather serpentine beauty. Otherwise theatres and music-halls were studded with stout glass pincushions which, rather prematurely, were all radiant within—but surely light might have shown to better advantage. However night was sultry and magnificent so far as that went, and we were kept awake some time after getting into bed, by the explosion of rockets which for a second made our room bright. (And now, in the rain, under a grey brown sky, the bells of Richmond are ringing —but church bells only recall weddings and Christian services.) I can’t deny that I feel a little mean at writing so lugubriously; since we’re all supposed to keep up the belief that we’re glad and enjoying ourselves. So on a birthday, when for some reason things have gone wrong, it was a point of honour in the nursery to pretend. Years later one could confess what a horrid fraud it seemed; and if, years later, these docile herds will own up that they too saw through it, and will have no more of it—well—should I be more cheerful? I think the dinner at the 1917 Club, and Mrs. Besant’s speech rubbed the gilt, if there were any grains remaining, effectually off the gingerbread. Hobson was sardonic. She—a massive and sulky featured old lady, with a capacious head, however, thickly covered with curly white hair—began by comparing London, lit up and festive, with Lahore. And then she pitched into us for our maltreatment of India, she, apparently, being “them” and not “us.” But I don’t think she made her case very solid, though superficially it was all believable, and the 1917 Club applauded and agreed. I can’t help listening to speaking as though it were writing and thus the flowers, which she brandished now and again, looked terribly artificial. It seems to me more and more clear that the only honest people are the artists, and that these social reformers and philanthropists get so out of hand and harbour so many discreditable desires under the disguise of loving their kind, that in the end there’s more to find fault with in them than in us. But if I were one of them?

Perhaps I will finish the account of the peace celebrations. What herd animals we are after all!—even the most disillusioned. At any rate, after sitting through the procession and the peace bells unmoved, I began after dinner to feel that if something was going on, perhaps one had better be in it. I routed up poor L. and threw away my Walpole. First lighting a row of glass lamps and seeing that the rain was stopped, we went out just before tea. Explosions had for some time promised fireworks. The doors of the public house at the corner were open and the room crowded; couples waltzing; songs being shouted, waveringly, as if one must be drunk to sing. A troop of little boys with lanterns were parading the green, beating sticks. Not many shops went to the expense of electric light. A woman of the upper classes was supported dead drunk between two men partially drunk. We followed a moderate stream flowing up the Hill. Illuminations were almost extinct half way up, but we kept on till we reached the terrace. And then we did see something—not much indeed, for the damp had deadened the chemicals. Red and green and yellow and blue balls rose slowly into the air, burst, flowered into an oval of light, which dropped in minuter grains and expired. There were hazes of light at different points. Rising over the Thames, among trees, these rockets were beautiful; the light on the faces of the crowd was strange; yet of course there was grey mist muffling everything and taking the blaze off the fire. It was a melancholy thing to see the incurable soldiers lying in bed at the Star and Garter with their backs to us, smoking cigarettes and waiting for the noise to be over. We were children to be amused. So at eleven we went home and saw from my study Ealing do its best to rejoice, and indeed one fire balloon went so high that L. believed it a star; but there were nine showing. Today the rain has left us in no doubt that any remaining festivities are to be completely quenched.