—My bureau-drawers I keep neatly in order—lingerie and other articles arranged convenient to my hand in white rows and fragrant tidy piles: with the exception of the upper left-hand drawer which is a bit of terrific snarled chaos. In it is an inky handkerchief of an old vintage: in it are several un-mated crumpled gloves: in it are some olive-pits: in it is an empty sticky liquid cold-cream bottle with tufts of eider-down power-puff stuck to it: in it is a tangle of smudged ribbons: in it are two pieces of pink rock-candy: in it is a spent yellow-silk garter: in it is a torn sponge: in it are blackened pieces of chamois-skin: in it is a broken scissors: in it are three twisted ragged black-net veils: in it is a brass curtain ring: in it is a broken scattered string of coral beads: in it is a lump of wax: in it is a piece of knotted twine: in it are little bunches of cotton-wool: in it is a spilled box of powder whitening everything: in it is a spilled box of matches: in it is a jet bracelet broken into small pieces: in it is a broken hand-mirror: in it are some crushed cigarettes: in it is a ruined blue plume: in it is a warped leather purse: in it is a damaged lump of red fingernail paste: in it is a stick of gum arabic: in it is a bisque kewpie defiled by wax, ink, paste, powder and rock-candy: in it are some partly melted vestas: in it are other bits of rubbish: all in wildest disorder. Why I do not empty the drawer and burn the rubbish I don’t at all know.
—I sometimes take one or two of the neighborhood children to a picture-show.
—Sometimes as I lean at my window I alternate looking at the distant deeply-blue mountains by looking at the near-by women who chance to pass on the stone pavement below—the smartly-clad and lighthearted-seeming ones. I look at their good shoulders in pastel-toned silk and at their trim silk ankles and proud flaring skirts and insolent beautiful hats—the buoyant worldly insouciance of their ensembles—as their owners walk along on happy errands. As I look I feel Me to be behind prison bars looking out in thin psychic jealousy: regret for a time when I also went thus buoyantly on happy worldly errands and an odd raging silent impatience for a time when I may again. But with it too the wavering acquiescence in this analytic-writing mood.—‘pussy-cat-mieow,’ I ruminate, ‘can’t have any milk until her best petticoat’s mended with silk.’
—One kind of man I impatiently scorn is the kind that looks bored if I mention Ibsen or ceramics or Aztec civilization but is interested instantly, alertly if I mention my garters. Equally I abhor the type that begrudges me my own private phases of amorousness: not those who condemn me for them: not those who dislike them in me: not those who deplore them: but who begrudge me them.
—Always I come up a stairway softly. Always I close doors softly. I make no noise.
—The quaintest character I have met with in fiction is Huckleberry Finn’s father, looked at as a father. Next in quaintness I place Sally Brass, regarded as a human being.
—I like a glass of very hot water and a dish of preserved damson plums on a sultry August day: and another of each on top of that: and another of each on top of that.
—I like the word addle: I hate the word redress. I would fain have my ‘wrongs’ ever addled than redressed: merely for the word prejudice.
—I would rather that almost any physical disaster should befall me than that I ever achieve an ‘abdomen.’ When an abdomen comes in at the door life’s romances fly fast out the windows: so it looks to me. May death overtake me haply before the menopause.
—The pictures I have crowded on a small side-wall space two feet from my eyes as I sit at my desk are: Theda Bara as Carmen: the late Queen Isabella of Spain: Marie Lloyd, loved of the London populace: a velvety-looking black-and-orange print of a leopard: Blanche Sweet, loveliest of film actors: John Keats, a small old print: Ethel Barrymore, a pencil drawing made by herself: Nell Gwyn, a photograph of a Lely portrait: Watts’s ‘Hope’: Stanley Ketchel, dead middle-weight fighter: ‘Jane Eyre’ by a Polish artist: Fanny Brawn, the solitary extant silhouette print: Ty Cobb: two children: Charlotte Corday in the Prison de l’Abbaye: Susan B. Anthony: a Chinese lady: Andrea del Sarto: Queen Boadicea: and Christy Mathewson.