9 October.
Two youths have been insolent to me in the Music Schools. Am I considered the school idiot? If so I am not surprised; any way I was most polite to them—next time measures will be taken. The best way with these people is to ask them their names; it generally shuts them up. I believe my appearance is too weak; I shall have to grow mustachios. I am always the person the lost Asiatic asks his way from, and French come to me as fly to fly-paper, ditto the hysterical matron. Such is fame.
12 October.
Guy Denver tells me the following: It is extremely cold, and he and Conway are walking together. Says Conway, “God, I am cold!” Guy: “Then why don’t you wear an overcoat?” “Oh! then I should be classed with the John Haye and Ben Gore lot.” That is what the fear of popular opinion drives the ordinary Public Schoolboy to; that sort of thing is constantly recurring like the plague.
15 October.
This afternoon a delicious six-mile walk with B. G. The weather was perfect, a warm sun and everything misty, with “the distances very distant,” as Kipling puts it. Though we did not rock the world with our utterances, it was very enjoyable indeed.
20 October.
Greene has ordered several chickens’ heads, lights, etc., to be sent up to White, which we hope will be a nice surprise. It is rather a good idea.
Have been painting a portrait of Napoleon, cubist and about three foot square, with B. G., who has got it as a punishment from a new master. He will soon lose that most refreshing originality. Moreover he said that B. G. was not to do anything comic, which showed that he was already beginning to lose it. It just depends how much the others have instilled into him to see his manner of receiving our glaring monstrosity.
New phrase I have invented: “To play Keating’s to someone else’s beetle.” Used with great success on Seymour who is enraged by it.