26 September 1932 – 2 October 1932

Yes, I will allow myself a new nib. Odd how coming back here upsets my writing mood. Odder still how possessed I am with the feeling that now, aged 50, I’m just poised to shoot forth quite free straight and undeflected my bolts whatever they are. Therefore all this flitter flutter of weekly newspapers interests me not at all. These are the soul’s changes. I don’t believe in ageing. I believe in forever altering one’s aspect to the sun. Hence my optimism. And to alter now, cleanly and sanely, I want to shuffle off this loose living randomness: people; reviews; fame; all the glittering scales; and be withdrawn, and concentrated. So I shan’t run about, just yet, buying clothes, seeing people. We are off to Leicester tomorrow, to the Labour Party Conference. Then back to the fever of publishing. My C.R. doesn’t cause me a single tremor. Nor Holtby’s book.* I’m interested in watching what goes on for the moment without wishing to take part—a good frame of mind when one’s conscious of power. Then I am backed now by the downs: the country: how happy L. and I are at Rodmell: what a free life that is— sweeping 30 or 40 miles; coming in when and how we like; sleeping in the empty house; dealing triumphantly with interruptions; and diving daily into that divine loveliness—always some walk; and the gulls on the purple plough; or going over to Tarring Neville—these are the flights I most love now—in the wide, the indifferent air. No being jerked, teased, tugged. And people come easily, flowering into intimacy in my room. But this is the past, or future. I am also reading D. H. L.† with the usual sense of frustration: and that he and I have too much in common—the same pressure to be ourselves: so that I don’t escape when I read him: am suspended: what I want is to be made free of another world. This Proust does. To me Lawrence is airless, confined: I don’t want this, I go on saying. And the repetition of one idea. I don’t want that either. I don’t want “a philosophy” in the least: I don’t believe in other people’s reading of riddles. What I enjoy (in the Letters) is the sudden visualisation: the great ghost springing over the wave (of the spray in Cornwall) but I get no satisfaction from his explanations of what he sees. And then it’s harrowing: this panting effort after something: and “I have £6.10 left” and then Government hoofing him out, like a toad: and banning his book: the brutality of civilised society to this panting agonised man: and how futile it was. All this makes a sort of gasping in his letters. And none of it seems essential. So he pants and jerks. Then too I don’t like strumming with two fingers—and the arrogance. After all, English has one million words: why confine yourself to 6? and praise yourself for so doing. But it’s the preaching that rasps me. Like a person delivering judgment when only half the facts are there: and clinging to the rails and beating the cushion. Come out and see what’s up here—I want to say. I mean it’s so barren: so easy: giving advice on a system. The moral is, if you want to help, never systematise—not till you’re 70: and have been supple and sympathetic and creative and tried out all your nerves and scopes. He died though at 45. And why does Aldous say he was an “artist”? Art is being rid of all preaching: things in themselves: the sentence in itself beautiful: multitudinous seas; daifodils that come before the swallow dares: whereas Lawrence would only say what proved something. I haven’t read him of course. But in the Letters he can’t listen beyond a point; must give advice; get you into the system too. Hence his attraction for those who want to be fitted: which I don’t; indeed I think it a blasphemy this fitting of Carswells into a Lawrence system. So much more reverent to leave them alone: nothing else to reverence except the Carswellism of Carswell. Hence his schoolboy tweaking and smacking of anyone offered to him: Lytton, Bertie, Squire—all are suburban, unclean. His ruler coming down and measuring them. Why all this criticism of other people? Why not some system that includes the good? What a discovery that would be—a system that did not shut out.