This Christmas term has passed all too quickly. Elspeth has been wrapped up in Prunella and watches her growth with ever-increasing delight. I see the infant in the early morning and talk to her while I am shaving: she is now cutting teeth and doing her level best to talk. Her remarks at present consist of "Gug-gug-Da-da," and incomprehensible noises pitched high and low in the scale: she laughs like a grown-up person: she only cries when the piano is being played or the gramophone put on. She lies and kicks in her cot, her pram or arm-chair by the hour: she is quite contented crooning and laughing to herself. She wriggles her hands and toes about incessantly and is as bad as any animal about her bottle: her eyes dilate with fury if it is delayed, and with pleasure when it appears. Her interest in everything that goes on is positively comic: she is afraid of nothing except sudden noises and allows herself to be handled by any stranger. All the masters' wives love her: she must be really a beauty because every one is agreed about it. I think her eyes are lovely and her contentment is a thing to marvel at. The patience required for lying for months trying to learn to talk, with teeth slowly coming, hair slowly growing, strength gradually being built up, must be immense. Her intuition is perhaps the most noticeable thing about her: she knows when she is being "ragged," she knows somehow exactly what it is that people are trying to convey to her, and she answers any one's smile with a beautiful grin which is entirely her own. She is, however, a complete deterrent to work. I always want to be with her, to have her on my lap and pet her, but I curb my desires strictly. After all, I've got my writing to attend to, Sybil to teach, the boys' work to correct and games to referee. My novel appeared in the autumn and to my intense surprise went into a second edition almost at once: the critics were unanimous and loud in their praise, which astonished me, for it seemed to me to lack any kind of pretensions to style, clarity, cohesion, or even sense. None the less the writing of books is not a paying game. An article brings in quick returns, costs very little energy, and is not at all wearing to the nervous system. After finishing my first book I was a wreck.
Spurred on by the success of this I have already written another in imitation of the younger novelists of the day, in which I have portrayed a horrible character obsessed by sex: I don't quite know why: the writing of it affected me greatly and I am as limp as a rag now it is done, and want to burn it, but my publisher is delighted with it and wants to bring it out in the spring. For the sake of the money I suppose I must let it go. Fortune seems to be smiling on me. Another publisher has already made me sign contracts for two novels and a volume of my collected poems, so I have my work cut out in the near future to cope with the demand. Added to this, the best-known literary agent in the country has now approached me and asked me to let him place all my work. All the agents I have tried hitherto have failed me hopelessly, but it is an honour to have Harrod for an agent, I am told, so I have signed his agreement too. The only fly in the ointment is that there is a great scarcity of paper and trouble in the printing trade; still, people are reading books more than ever. I shall never forget the day when I first saw a book of mine in the window of a London book-shop. Fame (of a sort) I felt had at last reached me. Three years ago I should never have dreamt such a thing possible, and my little notoriety has already brought me great friends.
When the Christmas term is over we are to spend some days with quite a number of leading literary lights, to whose conversation I am looking forward. Common Room were incensed at my book because they thought that they detected pictures of themselves. I can't for the life of me think where, for the characters were all weaved entirely out of my own brain. Apparently some of the opinions I put into the mouths of my worst characters have been taken literally as my own, which is pernicious nonsense. I should have thought after all this time that most people here would know what ideals I stand for. As a matter of fact no one has lately taken much trouble to cultivate the acquaintance either of Elspeth or myself. They look on me as eccentric, they have not worried to sympathize with me over my troubles and I am afraid that they think that Elspeth does not want to know them because she goes out so seldom. We live very much to ourselves. It is hard to see how we could do otherwise when one realizes how we spend each day. I have to go on writing most of the time to earn our daily bread: we haven't a penny private means. We are not very economical, though we try hard to be so, and prices are steadily rising.
I have had one bit of luck, however. I have been appointed Examiner for the Oxford and Cambridge Locals in Mathematics and English, and though the work entails a good deal of drudgery, it also makes an appreciable difference to our income. Incidentally I very much like going through English essay and literature questions. I like to compare all the different methods of teaching English that obtain throughout the country.
The term has passed without incident: Sybil has learnt a good deal of history and written some excellent short stories. Boys come up to borrow books and to discuss problems that worry them. I have had no occasion to punish any boy for some time. Old Boys come back frequently and keep us reminded that after all there is a war on, which we are apt to forget when we have a petty feud of our own raging. I have refereed a good deal of "footer," and struggled hard to keep my platoon up to the mark. The only complaint I have about life is that the days are too short and I want to do far more than I can.
January 19, 1917
We spent a splendid holiday in London going from house to house of new friends and seeing for the first time how the artistic and literary section of London live. They are very different from the Marlton people: their codes are much less stringent, they are far more tolerant, they seem to get much more out of life. They are intensely interested in art, painting, sculpture, music, the drama, and all æsthetic delights. Elspeth was taken up at once by them: she has the sort of uncommon beauty that passes more or less without comment in Marlton but in London is looked upon with admiration. She seems much healthier and more vivacious in town: the life agrees with her. I spent some days with her at Bath and some quietly in St. John's Wood, writing for dear life at one of my new novels for Manson. The worst of novel-writing is that it gives one no time at all for articles and the money one derives from it does not come in for so long a time after. I am told that the book writer achieves a kudos which the mere short-story and article writer never gets. I doubt it, but it may be so. Anyway I doubt whether I shall write many books, the wastage of nervous tissue is too great. While I am at work on a subject I want to go on and on at lightning speed until I have finished, and when I have finished I am perilously near lunacy.
February 10, 1917
A frightful blow has befallen us. I have been turned out of Marlton for writing my second novel. I am to leave at the end of the term. So after eight years I am thrown out of my profession: a quaint finish for the overkeen enthusiast. I quite see that I was a fool to write it. It was all owing to my unreasonable haste. I spoke out too plainly: I didn't condemn my villain enough or show the hatred I bear to vice. It is useless to explain now: all the pent-up fury of those who imagine themselves injured by me has broken out and I am overwhelmed. I was supposed to be taking part in a play that the school and town were getting up in aid of the hospital and I was requested to resign my part because no one would act in it if I persisted in going on. I have been lectured by heaps of my junior colleagues here as if I had committed a most heinous crime. I don't quite know what to make of it all. That the book is a bad one I can scarcely doubt, for the critics have been as unanimous in their condemnation of it as they were unanimous in praising my first. I must be much madder than I thought I was, because I still fail to see why my influence, which was generally allowed to be on the side of the angels, should suddenly become malign and foul because I create foul characters in a book.