21 January 1935 – 27 January 1935

Yes, I ought to have explained why I wrote the Sickert. I always think of things too late. I am reading The Faery Queen—with delight. I shall write about it. I took Angelica shopping. “Do you mind if I read The Heir of Redcliffe?” she said at tea, amusing me. What a curious sense the clothes sense is! Buying her coat, mine, hearing the women talk, as of race horses, about new skirts. And I am fluttered because I must lunch with Clive tomorrow in my new coat. And I can’t think out what I mean about conception: the idea behind F.Q. How to express a kind of natural transition from state to state. And the air of natural beauty. It is better to read the originals. Well, Clive’s lunch will jump me out of this. And now that the play is over, we must begin to see people here: and go to Hamlet and plan our spring journey. I am taking a fortnight off fiction. My mind became knotted. I think of making Theresa sing: and so lyricise the argument. Get as far from T (so called after my Sarah and Elvira provisionally). But oh heavens the duck squashy—this is from the pressed duck Jack once gave us: all juice; one squab of juice. I am reading Point Counterpoint. Not a good novel. All raw, uncooked, protesting. A descendant, oddly enough, of Mrs. H. Ward: interest in ideas; makes people into ideas. A man from America returns my letters and says he is glad to see me as I am.