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before. In fact, we've skipped a winter; had a season like the midnight sun; a new return to full daylight. So I hardly notice that chestnuts are out—the little parasols spread on our window tree; and the churchyard grass running over the old tombstones like green water.

    Thursday, April 15th
    My handwriting seems to be going to the dogs. Perhaps I confuse it with my writing. I said that Richmond * was enthusiastic over my James article? Well, two days ago, little elderly Walkley attacked it in
The Times,
said I'd fallen into H. J.'s worst mannerisms—hardbeaten "figures"—and hinted that I was a sentimental lady friend. Percy Lubbock was included too; but, rightly or wrongly, I delete the article from my mind with blushes, and see all my writing in the least becoming light. I suppose it's the old matter of "florid gush"—no doubt a true criticism, though the disease is my own, not caught from H. J., if that's any comfort. I must see to it though.
The Times
atmosphere brings it out; for one thing I have to be formal there, especially in the case of H. J., and so contrive an article rather like an elaborate design, which encourages ornament. Desmond, however, volunteered admiration. I wish one could make out some rule about praise and blame. I predict that I'm destined to have blame in any quantity. I strike the eye; and elderly gentlemen in particular get annoyed.
An Unwritten Novel
will certainly be abused: I can't foretell what line they'll take this time. Partly, it's the "writing well" that sets people off—and always has done, I suppose, "Pretentious" they say; and then a woman writing well, and writing in
The Times—
that's the line of it. This slightly checks me from beginning
Jacob's Room.
But I value blame. It spurs one, even from Walkley; who is (I've looked him out) 65, and a cheap little gossip, I'm glad to think, laughed at, even by Desmond. But don't go forgetting that there's truth in it; more than a grain in the criticism that I'm damnably refined in
The Times;
refined and cordial; I don't think it's easy to help it; since, before beginning the H. J. article, I took a vow I'd say what I thought, and say it in my own way. Well, I've written all this page and not made out how to steady myself when the
Unwritten Novel
appears.

    Tuesday, May 11th
    It is worth mentioning, for future reference, that the creative power which bubbles so pleasantly in beginning a new book quiets down after a time, and one goes on more steadily. Doubts creep in. Then one becomes resigned. Determination not to give in, and the sense of an impending shape keep one at it more than anything. I'm a little anxious. How am I to bring off this conception? Directly one gets to work one is like a person walking, who has seen the country stretching out before. I want to write nothing in this book that I don't enjoy writing. Yet writing is always difficult.

    Wednesday, June 23rd
    I was struggling, at this time, to say honestly that I don't think Conrad's last book a good one. I have said it. It is painful (a little) to find fault there, where almost solely, one respects. I can't help suspecting the truth to be that he never sees anyone who knows good writing from bad, and then being a foreigner, talking broken English, married to a lump of a wife, he withdraws more and more into what he once did well, only piles it on higher and higher, until what can one call it but stiff melodrama. I would not like to find
The Rescue
signed Virginia Woolf. But will anyone agree with this? Anyhow nothing shakes my opinion of a book. Nothing—nothing. Only perhaps if it's the book of a young person—or of a friend—no, even so, I think myself infallible. Haven't I lately dismissed Murry's play, and exactly appraised K.'s story, and summed up Aldous Huxley; and doesn't it somehow wound my sense of fitness to hear Roger mangling these exact values?

    Thursday, August 5th
    Let me try to say what I think as I read
Don