November 20 + 

In the doldrums. Tired of this damnable far niente⁠—I am being gently smothered under a mountain of feathers. I should like to engage upon some cold, hard, glittering intellectualism. + 

“I want to read Kant,” I said. The Baby slept, E⁠⸺ was sewing and N⁠⸺ writing letters. I leaned back in my armchair beside the bookshelf and began to read out the titles of my books in a loud voice. + 

“My dear!” E⁠⸺ said. + 

“I am caressing my past,” I answered. “Wiedersheim’s Comparative Anatomy of Vertebrates, Smith Woodward’s Vertebrate Paleontology⁠—why it’s like visiting old prospects and seeing how the moss has grown over the stones.” + 

I hummed a comic song and then said: “As I can’t burn the house down, I shall go to bed.” + 

N⁠⸺: “You can talk if you like, it won’t interfere.” + 

E⁠⸺: “He’s talking to his besoms.” + 

“Certainly,” I said to N⁠⸺, absentmindedly. + 

E⁠⸺: “You ought to have said ‘Thank you.’ ” + 

I blew out my cheeks and E⁠⸺ laughed. + 

N⁠⸺: “How do you spell ‘regimental’?” + 

I told her⁠—wrongly, and E⁠⸺ said I was in a devilish mood. + 

“If we say that we have no sin” I chanted in reply, “we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us.” I next gave a bit out of a speech by Disraeli with exaggerated rhetorical gestures. + 

E⁠⸺ (with pity): “Poor young man.” + 

Presently she came over and in a tired way put her arms around my neck so I immediately began to sing “Rock of Ages, cleft for me,” in the bass, which immediately reminded me of dear old Dad, whose favourite hymn it was.⁠ ⁠… Then I imitated the Baby. And then to bed fretful and very bitter. + 