14 January 1935 – 20 January 1935

The play came off last night, with the result that I am drybrained this morning and can only use this book as a pillow. It was said, inevitably, to be a great success; and I enjoyed—let me see what? Bunny’s praise; Oliver’s;* but not much Christabel’s or the standing about pumping up vivacities with David, Cory, Elizabeth Bowen: yet on the whole it is good to have an unbuttoned laughing evening once in a way. Roger’s ghost knocked at the door—his portrait of Charlie Sanger was delivered in the thick of the rehearsal. And how Francis would have enjoyed this, Leonard said. These are our ghosts now. But they would applaud the attempt. So to sleep: and now, God bless my soul, as Tennyson would say, I must rinse and freshen my mind and make it work soberly on something hard. There’s my Dante; and Renan. And the horrid winter lap begins; the pale unbecoming days, like an aging woman seen at 11 o’clock. However, L. and I shall go for a walk this afternoon; and that seems to me an enormous balance at the Bank! solid happiness. I have an idea for a “play.” Summer’s night. Someone on a seat. And voices speaking from the flowers.