Friday 14 January
This is out of order, but I have no new book, & so must record here (& it was here I recorded the
beginning of The Lighthouse) must record here the end. This moment I have finished the final drudgery. It is
now complete for Leonard to read on Monday. Thus I have done it some days under the year, & feel thankful to
be out of it again. Since October 25th I have been revising & retyping (some parts 3 times over) & no doubt I
should work at it again; but I cannot. What I feel is that it is a hard muscular book, which at this age proves that I
have something in me. It has not run out & gone flabby, at least such is my feeling before reading it over.
Sunday 23 January
Well Leonard has read To the Lighthouse, & says it is much my best book, & it is a 'masterpiece'.
He said this without my asking. I came back from Knole & sat without asking him. He calls it entirely new 'a
psychological poem', is his name for it. An improvement upon Dalloway: more interesting. Having won this
great relief, my mind dismisses the whole thing, as usual; & I forget it, & shall only wake up & be worried again
over proofs & then when it appears.
We went to Cornwall (dare I characterise Will hearing him talk next door—it is Sunday—he is dining
with us). He is a water-blooded waspish little man, all on edge, vain, peevish, nervous. Ka is matronly, but
substantial. Some views I retain—one of the valley in the evening light—but others were only a dull impression
of life suspended & frozen, & the chin sawing of Mervyn: all chapped, becolded. We came home for these
reasons a day early, & next morning I had a letter from the New York H[erald]. & T[ribune] asking me to go
there, passage paid, 120 in my pocket &, perhaps, expenses, & write 4 articles. We accepted, on conditions; but
have not heard yet. Meanwhile we hesitate, for if Leonard came, we should probably be £150 out of pocket. So
it seems. The adventure is tempting. But the grind of moneymaking is scarcely to be endured unnecessarily. We
could go to Greece, or Italy for less.
Then Nessa has gone, poor dear creature. I came in two days ago & found her white at the
telephone; Elly at the other end saying that Duncan's illness was probably typhoid. I think a left handed marriage
makes these moments more devastating: a sense remains, I think of hiding one's anguish; of insecurity. Angus
writes the most cautious alarming letters. Anyhow she went yesterday in a snowstorm, & we kissed on the
pavement in the snow. We are very intimate—a great solace to me. Vita goes on Saturday. Tomorrow I dine
with her at Colefaxes: a brilliant party: no clothes: hair down my back as usual. Does it very much matter? I
reached that point of philosophy at Knole the other night, with the bountiful womanly Mrs Rubens & his
Lordship the figure of an English nobleman, decayed, dignified, smoothed, effete; respectable I think in his
modest way. But I never have enjoyed a party. Balls at Buckingham Palace are worth looking at. He spends the
day sitting on Com[mi]tees at Maidstone; interviews parsons about livings; likes chess & crime. Vita took me
over the 4 acres of building, which she loves: too little conscious beauty for my taste: smallish rooms looking on
to buildings: no views: yet one or two things remain: Vita stalking in her Turkish dress, attended by small boys,
down the gallery, wafting them on like some tall sailing ship—a sort of covey of noble English life: dogs
walloping, children crowding, all very free & stately: & [a] cart bringing wood in to be sawn by the great
circular saw. How do you see that? I asked Vita. She said she saw it as something that had gone on for hundreds
of years. They had brought wood in from the Park to replenish the great fires like this for centuries: & her
ancestresses had walked so on the snow with their great dogs bounding by them. All the centuries seemed lit up,
the past expressive, articulate; not dumb & forgotten; but a crowd of people stood behind, not dead at all; not
remarkable; fair faced, long limbed; affable; & so we reach the days of Elizabeth quite easily. After tea, looking
for letters of Dryden's to show me, she tumbled out a love letter of Ld Dorset's (17th century) with a lock of his
soft gold tinted hair which I held in my hand a moment. One had a sense of links fished up into the light which
are usually submerged. Otherwise no particular awe or any great sense of difference or distinction. They are not
a brilliant race. The space & comeliness of it all struck me. I came home to Marjorie Strachey, Tom Eliot, Nessa
& Roger. A little constricted our society: no talk of the clergy or of the country; but how lively & agile
compared with the
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