19 March.
The marionette show becomes more and more hectic. One hardly has time to breathe. There is a performance on Saturday: the day after the day after to-morrow. Nothing done, of course, and the Studio a scene of hysterical budding artists, mad enough in private life, but when under the influence of so strong and so public an emotion surpass themselves in do-nothing-with-the-most-possible-noise-and-trouble.
1 April.
The marionette play continues to be an immense pleasure. We give a children’s performance to-morrow at three. Answers from mothers pour in: I am afraid it may be too full. How well do little children see? They are so very low down when they sit. I think the life of a stage manager must be one of the most trying on this earth.
Good Friday.
On a Pretty Woman, “And that infantile fresh air of hers” (from Browning).
“If you take a photograph of a man digging, in my opinion he is sure to look as if he were not digging” (Van Gogh). Have been reading Van Gogh’s letters. They are the hardest things I have ever taken on. He is so very much in earnest, and so very difficult to understand. I think I have got a good deal of what he means.
A wonderful postcard from B. G. in Venice:
We are here till Thursday, wondering who has won the Boat Race, the National, the Junior School Quarter-Mile and the Hammersmith Dancing Record.
Read a little Carlyle to a few of the House. What else could it be but incomprehensible to them? “Mad,” they called it. Anything of genius is “mad” in a Public School. And rightly so, I suppose.