On the other side of me was a Russian, whose name I could not catch: he was very proud of his country, which was, he said, the first revolutionary country, and was still a sort of model of revolution to all others. He was very rich, and kept four motor-cars. When I expressed surprise about this, he explained that communism did not mean an equal sharing of all possessions by all the people, but a free opportunity for men’s natural powers of leadership to come out. (I was told afterwards that his came out in the form of holding up a supply of wheat, for which, my informant added, he would certainly have been lynched in America.) He was very enthusiastic about education, which naturally interested me, and I asked him what sort of curriculum the children went through in the elementary schools. He said they learned not to respect the nobility, not to believe in God, not to love their wives, not to obey their parents, not to join the army, and many, many other things. I said it all sounded rather negative, but he could not understand this word; so I said I did not understand why people needed to be taught such things, but he could not see this.

The room got very hot towards the end of the proceedings. We sang Auld Lang Syne before we separated. We go back to Munich to-morrow.

Vienna, June 24, 1939. I met one of the greatest doctors here at a dance, and he danced so badly that I sat out with him and talked hard to prevent him wanting to go back to the ball-room. He said I ought to go and see the patients at the great Hospital of Rest, where there was a new treatment being tried; you had to sit in a series of draughts, which were carefully graduated so as to get stronger and stronger. It was a wonderful thing, especially for rheumatism. There was another cure which meant that you had to be coated with tar all over. I asked whether they made any charge for admission to see these patients, and he said yes, unless I had got one of the new “Go-everywhere” coupons. I asked whether the psycho-analysts were still strong among the medical faculty, and he said he thought their influence was declining. They had declared that all music was demoralizing, and that had made trouble with the Senators at Bayreuth. They had also wanted to kill all pet dogs.

Bayreuth, August 3, 1939. Almost the first thing we did when we got here was to go to the much-advertised “continuous performance” of the “Ring.” So far as the music was concerned, I simply proved once more the mendacity of the friends who always tell you you don’t have to be musical to appreciate Wagner—not a note of it meant anything to me. And, though the scenery was certainly gorgeous, the whole thing seemed to me over-acted, especially in the amount of facial expression the actors found it necessary to put in. But what enthralled me was the merely mechanical triumph of the whole thing; never for one moment did the cinema-operator get out of time with the gramophone; of course if he had the effect would have lowered the dignity of the whole performance. It was wonderful to watch how the devotees sat there silent, hour after hour; I had one old gentleman pointed out to me who attends every day from nine to one, and again from half-past two to half-past six. It was impossible not to be impressed. With my “Go-everywhere” coupon I was allowed to look behind the scenes, and the gramophone was certainly marvellous. It is said to be the largest in the world, and I could easily have stood up in the mouth of the funnel. There is a story of a cinema-operator who was so worried at having got the pictures one bar out that he went home and shot himself—they are a marvellous people. We also went to the Wagner Mausoleum, where they have continuous lectures on the operas. An old professor, whose name I did not catch, brought forward various reasons, which I did not understand, for believing that Parsifal was written with some special political object, whose nature I cannot remember.

Buda-Pest, September 18, 1939. I was introduced to the great Hungarian novelist, Myslok. He asked me how many of his works I had read; I said none. As he seemed disappointed, I added that I had recently had to spend most of my time reading geography. “Geography!” he said. “What is that? It is only the science of the earth, and what is earth? Only one big piece of dirt”—he pronounced the word with great emphasis and contempt. I was rather nettled, and said I supposed at that rate geography was very much the same as reading modern novels. He asked me which of his characters I liked best: I said I had not read any of his works. He said that was very strange, because they had all been translated into English. I said I always found translations of foreign books dull reading; somehow the thing altered so much in the process. He agreed with me enthusiastically, and said that when his last novel was translated the English publisher had insisted on cutting out the part where the hero (I forget his name now) trampled on the heroine because he did not like her dress. I was feeling rather vague and inattentive, and asked, “Did it kill her?” He said no, but she limped like a crab all the rest of the book. He then asked if I did not think this the finest book he had ever written. I said I had not had the pleasure of reading any of his works. He then asked me to call on him, but he looks so dreadfully like poor Mr. Hoskyns that I really don’t think I can.

Mainz, November 2, 1939. There is a great Congress of Food Reformers going on here, and the hotel-keepers are in despair. Our waiter told us that we were the only people in the hotel who would take the table d’hôte, and even of the diners à la carte three complained that they were starving owing to a shortage of their favourite diet. Dates, he said, were what they wanted mostly, and all the dates in the town had been sold out long since. “Why they not go hold blinking Congress in the Sahara?” he said, polishing the plates furiously. We went to a lecture on the nutritive qualities of the locust, which I had always hitherto regarded as a sort of pis aller, and I am afraid I came away unconverted. Any number of journalists were present, and we asked the waiter afterwards whether they did not help out the cuisine rather; but he said they took nothing except beer.

These, I am afraid, are only selections from the faded old leaves of my foreign diary, and they are not even representative selections—I seem to have thought a great deal about clothes in those days, and a good deal about young men. I had two proposals, one in Munich and one in Prague, but I managed to get rid of my suitors without invoking the aid of old Miss Linthorpe. It was the news of her dangerous illness that called me back to England before my time was really up. I arrived at home quite unexpected; my father, I remember, greeted me on the door-step with “Hullo, Opal! I’ve been round in 81.”

CHAPTER V
ON THE SICK LIST

More soda-water, and more dry toast?