30 August 1926 – 5 September 1926

Women in tea garden at Bramber—a sweltering hot day: rose trellises; whitewashed tables; lower middle classes; motor omnibuses constantly passing; bits of grey stone scattered on a paper-strewn greensward, all that’s left of the Castle. Woman leaning over the table, taking command of the treat, attended by two elder women, whom she pays for to girl waitress (or marmalade coloured fat girl, with a body like the softest lard, destined soon to marry, but as yet only 16 or so). WOMAN: What can we have for tea? GIRL (very bored, arms akimbo): Cake, bread and butter, tea. Jam? WOMAN: Have the wasps been troublesome? They get into the jam— (as if she suspected the jam would not be worth having). Girl agrees. WOMAN: Ah, wasps have been very prominent this year. GIRL: That’s right. So she doesn’t have jam. This amused me, I suppose. For the rest, Charleston, Tilton,* To the Lighthouse, Vita, expeditions: the summer dominated by a feeling of washing in boundless warm fresh air—such an August not come my way for years; bicycling; no settled work done, but advantage taken of air for going to the river or over the downs. The novel is now easily within sight of the end, but this, mysteriously, comes no nearer. I am doing Lily on the lawn; but whether it’s her last lap, I don’t know. Nor am I sure of the quality; the only certainty seems to be that after tapping my antennae in the air vaguely for an hour every morning I generally write with heat and ease till 12:30; and thus do my two pages. So it will be done, written over that is, in 3 weeks, I forecast, from today. What emerges? At this moment I’m casting about for an end. The problem is how to bring Lily and Mr. R. together and make a combination of interest at the end. I am feathering about with various ideas. The last chapter which I begin tomorrow is In the Boat: I had meant to end with R. climbing on to the rock. If so, what becomes of Lily and her picture? Should there be a final page about her and Carmichael looking at the picture and summing up R.’s character? In that case I lose the intensity of the moment. If this intervenes between R. and the lighthouse, there’s too much chop and change, I think. Could I do it in a parenthesis? So that one had the sense of reading the two things at the same time? 5th September. I shall solve it somehow, I suppose. Then I must go on to the question of quality. I think it may run too fast and free and so be rather thin. On the other hand, I think it is subtler and more human than Jacob’s Room and Mrs. Dalloway. And I am encouraged by my own abundance as I write. It is proved, I think, that what I have to say is to be said in this manner. As usual, side stories are sprouting in great variety as I wind this up: a book of characters; the whole string being pulled out from some simple sentence, like Clara Pater’s “Don’t you find that Barker’s pins have no points to them?” I think I can spin out all their entrails this way; but it is hopelessly undramatic. It is all in oratio obliqua. Not quite all; for I have a few direct sentences. The lyric portions of To the Lighthouse are collected in the 10-year lapse and don’t interfere with the text so much as usual. I feel as if it fetched its circle pretty completely this time; and I don’t feel sure what the stock criticism will be. Sentimental? Victorian? Then I must begin to plan out my book on literature for the Press. Six chapters. Why not groups of ideas, under some rough heading—for example: Symbolism. God. Nature. Plot. Dialogue. Take a novel and see what the competent parts are. Separate this and bring under them instances of all the books which display them biggest. Probably this would pan out historically. One could spin a theory which would bring the chapters together. I don’t feel that I can read seriously and exactly for it. Rather I want to sort out all the ideas that have accumulated in me. Then I want to write a bunch of “Outlines” to make money (for under a new arrangement, we’re to share any money over £200 that I make); this I must leave rather to chance, according to what books come my way. I am frightfully contented these last few days, by the way. I don’t quite understand it. Perhaps reason has something to do with it.