Fox was pleased at my admiring Carlyle.
18 November.
Harington Brown asked me for an MS. for the magazine he is producing: gave him Sonny, but don’t suppose it will be suitable, though I am sure it has some worth. The thing is only about 1400 words, and when he refuses it I am going to send it up to some London magazine which will take very short stories, and at present I don’t know of one.
I rather hope that H. B. won’t accept the thing. The ephemerals are always putrescent, and nobody with any sense reads them. There have been about three editions of it so far, one a term.
19 November, after lunch.
Have been accepted by H. B., with mixed feelings on my part. However, his thing is a cut above the usual ephemeral and is quite sensible, but there is a sense of degradation attached to appearing in print. But I hope this means that I can write; it’s not bad work as I’m only just seventeen. Perhaps it is too good, and I shan’t do anything again.
Carlyle’s flight to Varennes in his Revolution is almost too painful to read, so exciting is it to me. It is all untrue, of course, they did not go half as slow as he would make out, nevertheless it is superb.
Thank God there are only a few more weeks of this football.
*****
NOAT, 26 January.