21 October 1929 – 27 October 1929

As it is true—I write only for an hour, then rush back feeling I cannot keep my brain on that spin any more—then typewrite, and am done by 12. I will here sum up my impressions before publishing A Room of One’s Own. It is a little ominous that Morgan won’t review it. It makes me suspect that there is a shrill feminine tone in it which my intimate friends will dislike. I forecast, then, that I shall get no criticism, except of the evasive jocular kind, from Lytton, Roger and Morgan; that the press will be kind and talk of its charm and sprightliness; also I shall be attacked for a feminist and hinted at for a Sapphist; Sybil will ask me to luncheon; I shall get a good many letters from young women. I am afraid it will not be taken seriously. Mrs. Woolf is so accomplished a writer that all she says makes easy reading . . . this very feminine logic . . . a book to be put in the hands of girls. I doubt that I mind very much. The Moths; but I think it is to be waves, is trudging along; and I have that to refer to, if I am damped by the other. It is a trifle, I shall say; so it is; but I wrote it with ardour and conviction. He wrote yesterday, 3 Dec. and said he very much liked it. We dined last night with the Webbs and I had Eddy* and Dotty to tea. As for these mature dinner parties one has some friendly easy talk with one man— Hugh Macmillan†—about the Buchans and his own career; the Webbs are friendly but can’t be influenced about Kenya; we sit in two lodging house rooms (the dining room had a brass bedstead behind a screen) eat hunks of red beef; and are offered whisky. It is the same enlightened, impersonal, perfectly aware of itself atmosphere. “My little boy shall have his toys”—but don’t let that go any further —“that’s what my wife says about my being in the Cabinet.” No they have no illusions. And I compared them with L. and myself, and felt, (I daresay for this reason) the pathos, the symbolical quality of the childless couple; standing for something, united.