25 March 1940 – 31 March 1940

What shall I think of that liberating and freshening? I’m in the mood when I open my window at night and look at the stars. Unfortunately it’s 12:15 on a grey dull day, the aeroplanes are active, Botten§ is to be buried at 3; and I’m brain creased after Margery, after John and after Q. But it’s the little antlike nibblings of M. that infect me—ants run in my brain—emendations, tributes, feelings, dates—and all the detail that seems to the non-writer so easy—(“just to add this about Joan” etc.) and to me is torture. Thumbing those old pages—and copying into the carbon. Lord, lord! And influenza damped. Well I recur, what shall I think of? The river. Say the Thames at London Bridge: and buying a notebook; and then walking along the Strand and letting each face give me a buffet; and each shop; and perhaps a Penguin. For we’re up in London on Monday. Then I think I’ll read an Elizabethan—like swinging from bough to bough. Then back here I’ll saunter . . . oh yes and we’ll travel our books round the Coast—and have tea in a shop and look at antiques; and there’ll be a lovely farmhouse—or a new lane—and flowers; and bowls with L., and reading very calmly for C.R.s. but no pressure; and May coming and asparagus and butterflies, Perhaps I’ll garden a little; oh and print; and change my bedroom furniture. Is it age, or what, that makes life here alone, no London, no visitors, seem a long trance of pleasure. . . . I’m inducing a state of peace and sensation feeling—not idea feeling. The truth is we’ve not seen spring in the country since I was ill at Asheham—1914—and that had its holiness in spite of the depression. I think I’ll also dream a poet-prose book; perhaps make a cake now and then. Now, now—never any more future skirmishing or past regretting. Relish the Monday and the Tuesday, and don’t take on the guilt of selfishness! feeling: for in God’s name I’ve done my share, with pen and talk, for the human race. I mean young writers can stand on their own feet. Yes, I deserve a spring—I owe nobody nothing. Not a letter I need write (there are the poems in MS all waiting) nor need I have week-enders. For others can do that as well as I can, this spring. Now being drowned by the flow of running water, I will read Whymper till lunch time.

I would like to tell myself a nice little wild improbable story to spread my wings after this cramped ant-like morning—which I will not detail—for details are the death of me. Thank God, this time next week I shall be free—free of entering M.’s corrections and my own into margins. The story? Oh, about the life of a bird, its cheep cheep—its brandishing of a twig by my window—its sensations. Or about Botten becoming one with the mud—the glory fading—the million tinted flowers sent by the doleful mourners. All black like a moving pillar box the woman was—or the man in a black cardboard casing. A story doesn’t come. No, but I may unfurl a metaphor—No. The windows very dove grey and dim blue islanded—a rust red on L. and V.* and the marsh green and dark like the floor of the sea. At the back of my head the string is still wound tight. I will unwind it playing bowls. To carry the virtues of the sketch—its random reaches, its happy finds— into the finished work is probably beyond me. Sydney Smith did in talk.