13 September 1926 – 19 September 1926

The blessed thing is coming to an end I say to myself with a groan. It’s like some prolonged rather painful and yet exciting process of nature, which one desires inexpressibly to have over. Oh the relief of waking and thinking it’s done —the relief and the disappointment, I suppose. I am talking of To the Lighthouse. I am exacerbated by the fact that I spent four days last week hammering out de Quincey, which has been lying about since June; so refused £30 to write on Willa Cather; and now shall be quit in a week I hope of this unprofitable fiction and could have wedged in Willa before going back. So I should have had £70 of my year’s £200 ready made by October. (My greed is immense; I want to have £50 of my own in the Bank to buy Persian carpets, pots, chairs, etc.) Curse Richmond, Curse the Times, Curse my own procrastinations and nerves. I shall do Cobden Sanderson and Mrs. Hemans and make something by them however. As for the book—Morgan said he felt “This is a failure,” as he finished the Passage to India. I feel—what? A little stale this last week or two from steady writing. But also a little triumphant. If my feeling is correct, this is the greatest stretch I’ve put my method to, and I think it holds. By this I mean that I have been dredging up more feelings and characters, I imagine. But Lord knows, until I look at my haul. This is only my own feeling in process. Odd how I’m haunted by that damned criticism of Janet Case’s “it’s all dressing . . . technique. (Mrs. Dalloway). The Common Reader has substance.” But then in one’s strained state any fly has liberty to settle and it’s always the gadflies. Muir praising me intelligently has comparatively little power to encourage—when I’m working, that is—when the ideas halt. And this last lap, in the boat, is hard, because the material is not so rich as it was with Lily on the lawn. I am forced to be more direct and more intense. I am making more use of symbolism, I observe; and I go in dread of “sentimentality.” Is the whole theme open to that charge? But I doubt that any theme is in itself good or bad. It gives a chance to one’s peculiar qualities—that’s all.