31 October 1932 – 6 November 1932

He is a rattle headed, bolt eyed young man, raw boned, loose jointed, who thinks himself the greatest poet of all time. I daresay he is—it’s not a subject that interests me enormously at the moment. What does? My own writing of course. I’ve just polished up the L.S. for The Times—a good one, I think, considering the currents that sway round that subject in The Times of all papers. And I have entirely remodelled my “Essay.” It’s to be an Essay-Novel, called The Pargiters* —and it’s to take in everything, sex, education, life etc.: and come, with the most powerful and agile leaps, like a chamois, across precipices from 1880 to here and now. That’s the notion anyhow, and I have been in such a haze and dream and intoxication, declaiming phrases, seeing scenes, as I walk up Southampton Row that I can hardly say I have been alive at all, since 10th October. Everything is running of its own accord into the stream, as with Orlando. What has happened of course is that after abstaining from the novel of fact all these years—since 1919—and N. & D. is dead—I find myself infinitely delighting in facts for a change, and in possession of quantities beyond counting: though I feel now and then the tug to vision, but resist it. This is the true line, I am sure, after The Waves—The Pargiters—this is what leads naturally on to the next stages—the essay-novel.