Saturday 11 December
I have never been able to afford 2/ for a good piece of washleather, yet I buy a dozen boxes of matches
for 1/6.
I am giving up the hope of being well dressed.
Violet Dickinson has just had a third serious operation & I went to an old Curiosity shop instead of
going to see her.
Leonard is lunching with Maynard & a great registered parcel has just been delivered containing Dadie's
dissertation.
It is now close on 3.30.
Some superstition prevents me from reading Yeats' autobiography as I should like.
I am very happy at the moment: having arranged my week on the whole well.
But I have been rather unscupulous. I have put off the Stephens, at Thorpe: & shall probably stay at
Knole.
A few thoughts to fill up time waiting for dinner.
An article all about London:
How Vita's inkpot flowered on her table.
Logan's vanity: I write everything 8 times—
(So thats how its done I thought: he thought thats the only way to produce writing like mine)
But all my thoughts perish instantly. I make them up so vast. How to blunt the sting of an unpleasant
remark: to say it over & over & over again. Walked to Violet's; took her a red carnation & a white one. My
feelings quickened as I drew near. I visualised the operation as I stood on the doorstep.
I also have made up a passage for The Lighthouse: on people going away & the effect on one's feeling
for them.
But reading Yeats turns my sentences one way: reading Sterne turns them another.