Tuesday, 9 February
The Empress Rooms … Joan Spall didn’t rush off to catch her train at 6.30, but was waiting suspiciously for someone in the lobby. I would so like to believe that C.S., in a discreet effort to get to know me, is trying to win Joan’s confidence first.
Wednesday, 14 April
I have finished The Suburban Chronicle.79 It must now be read and criticised by sundry friends, then typed and turned loose among the publishers. I do not expect that it will be accepted anywhere very easily, but if it only brings me into contact with literary circles I shall be satisfied.
Sunday, 9 May
Coronation, coronation, coronation. The crowds nauseate and excite me. They nauseate me because their voices are loud, their clothes ugly, their manners vulgar. They excite me because they are excited and so friendly and good-humoured. I shrink from the vulgarity and messy emotionalism fostered by the commercial magnates – this sort of thing [from the Evening News, 8 May]: ‘If you are amongst those who have still things to buy – clothes, extra delicacies for the table, something new for the home, seats for the shows you want to see – utilise the short time left to your best advantage. Make an extra careful study of the advertisement columns of The Evening News, so that you may know without delay where your requirements are to be met to your certain satisfaction.’
I would like to feel one of a great, unified people paying homage to their new King, but I cannot. It is all so false. I wonder how much interest and loyalty they would show if it didn’t suit our tradesmen and the Church to excite it through the Press. People are saying it’s the last Coronation England is likely to have.
Saturday, 15 May
Saw something of the Coronation crowds and the fireworks on the Heath. Brilliant in spite of the rain. Had a long letter from Nockie, she suggests I go out to share a flat with her in Malta. Had a bad Scrimshaw attack on Thursday. Extraordinary. Thought I’d got over it.
Saturday, 22 May
The Suburban Chronicle came back, so magnificently typed and bound that it took me two days to summon my courage to read it. I felt as an artist must feel when he sees his first picture framed and realises it is not as good as it seemed on his easel. But I have sent it now to Jonathan Cape with a letter.
Sunday, 14 June
Jonathan Cape have returned the Chronicle.
Friday, 23 July
The Gods have given a sign. In returning The Suburban Chronicle, Lovat Dickson himself writes to me.80 ‘The manuscript shows ability and cleverness. It reads rather like a first effort at writing by a talented person who does not know what she wants to write about. I think if you were to alter this or attempt something else you might do well with it. I want you to know that we shall always welcome and give careful attention to anything that you may send in to us to see.’
Sunday, 22 August
Today I must get the News of the World. On Monday 9th I went to the tennis court but no one was there, and someone had left a News of the World in which a buyer’s glove-judging contest tempted me. I spent the evening entering for it – a foolish bait of £500. Results published today.
Friday, 27 August
There was peace in Hampstead this afternoon as I walked up Willow Road, Flask Walk and Heath Street. People passing quietly about their business, children playing, old women walking their dogs, cats in the gutters. A cool afternoon, the sky a far, faint tremulous blue, fishes along the edges of the ponds, and I have never seen reflections in the water so clear and still. We shall remember such days with longing.
Thursday, 16 September
[From affixed blue letter paper headed ‘British India Line’.]
I have … boarded this tub for Malta. The travel agency phoned me on the Tuesday to tell me of this vacancy. I nearly died in the rush to get on board in time, and am now dying again with boredom.
Crowd on board mixed. Am singularly fortunate to be in the same cabin with Mrs Molly Joy, a nurse at the military hospital. Pretty, rather plump, full of energy, very outspoken and sure of herself within her orbit (anyone outside it is accordingly an imbecile). I like her. Gorgeously selfish. I doubt she would have noticed me if I hadn’t been in her cabin.
There are several young females on board, but most of them going East of Suez and chaperoned. One slender young thing called Kitty – whom everyone seems to despise – an artist of sorts, and I’m not sure I shouldn’t get on with her well. She skips and hops a lot – they say she’s affected. The half-caste who sits opposite M.J. at meals interests me. He has a very cultured voice, a Scotch name, good manners, but the colour in him is unmistakable – African probably, and it makes him, I think, a little self-conscious. (Later: I’ve nicknamed him Sharkie.)
What I detest about life onboard ship is its close, gossipy, uncharitable atmosphere.
Monday, 20 September
Malta. Never, never can I regret this evening. Landing at 10.30 p.m., a riotous party onboard, Nockie to meet me, drinks, drinks, drinks, and now here I am at 26, Strada Tigue. This is going to be no ordinary foreign excursion. I can hardly believe I’m here, the depressions of the past week washed away in gin, white wine, Benedictine, shandy and beer. Dear Sharkie, I’m glad I’m not staying on that boat or I might have fallen heavily, coloured though he was.
I have been given a room with a marvellous view: wide, wide windows, air wafting over the rooftops from the sea. We are going to have a good time here, Nockie and I, and I shall write my novel for Lovat Dickson.
Saturday, 25 September
Within a week the sirocco has reduced me to tears, for no particular reason except possibly the foretaste I have had of the difficulties that lie ahead. I know that Nockie is not going to be easy to live with. No person of her intense individuality could be. For the English here she has a supreme contempt, she dismisses them as a chattering, artificial horde of hysterical women and half-witted men.
My impressions of Malta: sticky, sticky heat, dust, ugly sandstone houses, bright sunlight, tiring on the eyes, the colour everywhere is dead – the colour of bleached bones, ill-treated cats, herds of degraded goats driven about the streets, screaming children, bawling hawkers, few trees, tawdry shops, priests, church bells, a gale-whipped Mediterranean from my window, wind, always wind. But through Nockie the place becomes a treasure island; treasure hidden, waiting for us to discover it.81
Thursday, 3 March 1938
I am on Spinola Palace roof, watching the Fleet go out for their spring exercises. An aircraft carrier seems to be leaving, decorated with bunting. Far out at sea were four destroyers and four cruisers. They have turned, and stand as if at attention.
The sky is grey with light, low clouds. Sounds of rifle practice from nearby barracks, traffic along the road, dogs barking, the flip-flop of Carrozzi horses, the wind has carried away my blotting paper, below me wanders a fat boy playing with
