16 April 1928 – 22 April 1928

Home again, as foretold, last night, and to settle the dust in my mind, write here. We have been across France and back—every inch of that fertile field traversed by the admirable Singer. And now towns and spires and scenes begin to rise in my mind as the rest sinks. I see Chartres in particular, the snail, with its head straight, marching across the flat country, the most distinguished of churches. The rose window is like a jewel on black velvet. The outside is very intricate yet simple; elongated; somehow preserved from the fantastic and ornate. Grey weather dashed all over this; and I remember coming in at night in the wet often and hearing the rain in hotels. Often I was bobbing up and down on my two glasses of vin du pays. It was rather a rush and a cram—as these jumbled notes testify. Once we were high up on a mountain in a snow storm; and rather afraid of a long tunnel. Twenty miles often cut us off from civilisation. One wet afternoon we punctured in a mountain village and I went in and sat with the family—a nice scrupulous polite woman, a girl who was pretty, shy, had a friend called Daisy at Earlsfield. They caught trout and wild boars. Then on we went to Florae, where I found a book—Girardin’s memoirs in the old bookcase that had been sold with the house. Always some good food and hot bottles at night. Oh and my prize—£40 from the French. And Julian. And one or two hot days and the Pont du Garde in the sun; and Les Beaux (this is where Dante got his idea of Hell, Duncan said) and mounting all the time steadily was my desire for words, till I envisaged a sheet of paper and pen and ink as something of miraculous desirability—could even relish the scratch as if it were a divine kind of relief to me. And there was St. Remy and the ruins in the sun. I forget now how it all went—how thing fitted to thing; but the eminences now emerge and I noticed how, talking to Raymond at the Nation this afternoon, we had already pitched on the high points. Before that, crossing the graveyard* in the bitter windy rain, we saw Hope† and a dark cultivated woman. But on they went past us, with the waver of an eye. Next moment I heard “Virginia” and turned and there was Hope coming back—“Jane‡ died yesterday,” she murmured, half asleep, talking distraught, “out of herself.” We kissed by Cromwell’s daughter’s grave, where Shelley used to walk, for Jane’s death. She lay dead outside the graveyard in that back room where we saw her lately raised on her pillows, like a very old person whom life has tossed up and left; exalted, satisfied, exhausted. Hope the colour of dirty brown paper. Then to the office, then home to work here; and now to work and work, as hard as I can.

And I find myself again in the old driving whirlwind of writing against time. Have I ever written with it? But I vow I won’t spend longer at Orlando, which is a freak; it shall come out in September, though the perfect artist would revoke and rewrite and polish—infinitely. But hours remain over to be filled with reading something or other—I’m not sure what. What sort of summer do I desire? Now that I have £16 to spend before July 1st (on our new system) I feel freer; can afford a dress and a hat and so may go about, a little, if I want. And yet the only exciting life is the imaginary one. Once I get the wheels spinning in my head, I don’t want money much, or dress, or even a cupboard, a bed at Rodmell or a sofa.