1 January 1940 – 7 January 1940

An obituary: Humbert Wolfe. Once I shared a packet of choc, creams with him, at Eileen Powers. An admirer sent them. This was a fitting tribute. A theatrical looking glib man. Told me he was often asked if I were his wife. Volunteered that he was happily married, though his wife lived—Geneva? I forget. Remember thinking, Why protest? What’s worrying you? Oh it was the night Arnold Bennett attacked me in the Evening Standard. Orlando? I was going to meet him at Sybil’s next day. There was a queer histrionic look in him, perhaps strain in him. Very self assured, outwardly. Inwardly lacerated by the taunt that he wrote too easily and deified satire; that’s my salvage from an autobiography of him—one of many, as if he were dissatisfied and must always draw and redraw his own picture. I suppose the origin of many of the new middle aged autos. So the inspirer of these vague winter night memories—he who sends for the last time a faint film across my tired head—lies with those blackberry eyes shut in that sulphurous cavernous face. (If I were writing I should have to remove either lies or eyes. Is this right? Yes, I think for me; nor need it spoil the run: only one must always practise every style: it’s the only way to keep on the boil: I mean the only way to avoid crust is to set a faggot of words in a blaze. That phrase flags. Well, let it. These pages only cost a fraction of a farthing, so that my exchequer isn’t imperilled.) Mill I should be reading. Or Little Dorrit, but both are gone stale, like a cheese that’s been cut and left. The first slice is always the best.