Saturday, 23 January.

Need something happen every day at Ventnor? Danged if there need!

Monday, 24 January.

... The new rich arrive, Rolls-Royce and all.

Tuesday, 25 January.

Those new rich! So new, so rich, so drearily unostentatious! Young new richard bald, pan-snayed, ill-dressed; young new wife and sister-in-law dowdy; young new secretary without a dinner-jacket to his backside; young new baby and young new nurse all over the place; young new Rolls-Royce, careering over the island, the only sign of wealth.

If only there were a few diamonds, a few banded cigars, a few h’s dropping on the floor with a dull thud, one could at least laugh. But the drabness, the gloom of these particular new rich: O my lungs and O my liver!...

Thursday, 27 January.

It is terrible, the number of people who come to this hotel; and I regret the pleasant, non-“paying” days when we were six visitors and three musicians, with a full staff of servants to wait on us. There are now over thirty people at meals, one uglier than the other. And as soon as one goes two others take his place....