June 30.
Dinosaurs
There are books which are Dinosaurs—Sir Walter Raleigh's History of the World, Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. There are men who are Dinosaurs—Balzac completing his Human Comedy, Napoleon, Roosevelt. I like them all. I like express trains and motor lorries. I enjoy watching an iron girder swinging in the air or great cubes of ice caught up between iron pincers. I must always stop and watch these things. I like everything that is swift or immense: London, lightning, Popocatepetl. I enjoy the smell of tar, of coal, of fried fish, or a brass band playing a Liszt Rhapsody. And why should those foolish Mænads shout Women's Rights just because they burn down a church? All bonfires are delectable. Civilisation and top hats bore me. My own life is like a tame rabbit's. If only I had a long tail to lash it in feline rage! I would return to Nature—I could almost return to Chaos. There are times when I feel so dour I would wreck the universe if I could.[1]
(1917: I think after three years of Armageddon I feel quite ready to go back to top hats and civilisation.)
July 8.
Sunset in Kensington Gardens
The instinct for worship occurs rhythmically—at morning and evening. This is natural, for twice a day at sunrise and sunset—however work-sodden we may be, however hypnotised by daily routine—our natural impulse is (provided we are awake) to look to the horizon at the sun and stand a moment with mute lips. During the course of the day or night, we are too occupied or asleep—but sunrise is the great hour of the departure and sunset is the arrival at the end. Everything puts on a mysterious appearance—to-night the tops of the elms seemed super-naturally high and, pushing up into the sky, had secret communion with the clouds; the clouds seemed waiting for a ceremony, a way had been prepared by the tapissier, a moment of suspense while one cloud stretched to another like courtiers in whispered conversation; a rumour of the approach; then slowly the news came thro' that the sun had arrived for immediate departure.
July 14.
Have finished my essay. But am written out—obviously. To-night I struggled with another, and spent two hours sucking the end of my pen. But after painfully mountainous parturition, all I brought forth were the two ridiculous mice of one meretricious trope and one grammatical solecism. I can sometimes sit before a sheet of paper, pen in hand, unable to produce a word.
July 19.