1 December 1919 – 7 December 1919

Another of these skips, but I think the book draws its breath steadily if with deliberation. I reflect that I’ve not opened a Greek book since we came back; hardly read outside my review books, which proves that my time for writing has not been mine at all. I’m almost alarmed to find how intensely I’m specialised. My mind turned by anxiety, or other cause, from its scrutiny of blank paper, is like a lost child—wandering the house, sitting on the bottom step to cry. Night and Day flutters about me still, and causes great loss of time. George Eliot would never read reviews, since talk of her books hampered her writing. I begin to see what she meant. I don’t take praise or blame excessively to heart, but they interrupt, cast one’s eyes backwards, make one wish to explain or investigate. Last week I had a cutting paragraph to myself in Wayfarer; this week Olive Heseltine applies balm. But I had rather write in my own way of Four Passionate Snails than be, as K. M. maintains, Jane Austen over again.