March 23
I expect we have all of us at one time or another heard ourselves addressing to annoying, objectionable acquaintances some such stinging castigation as Hazlitt’s letter to Gifford, or Burke’s letter to a Noble Lord, or Johnson’s letter to Lord Chesterfield, or Rousseau’s letter to the Archbishop of Paris. If only I could indulge myself! At this moment I could glut my rancours on six different persons at least!
What a raging discontent I have suffered today! What cynicism, what bitterness of spirit, what envy, hate, exasperation, childish petulance, what pusillanimous feelings and desires, what crude efforts to flout simple, ingenuous folk with my own thwarted, repressed self-assertiveness!
A solemn fellow told me he had heard from Johnson who said he had already had much success from collecting in moss. With an icy politeness I asked who Johnson was. Who the Hell is Johnson? As a quid pro quo I began to talk of Yves Delage, which left him as much in the dark as he left me. Our Gods differ, we have a different hierarchy.
“Well, how’s your soul?” said R⸺, bursting in with a sardonic smile.
I gave him a despairing look and said:
“Oh! a pink one with blue spots,” and he left me to my fate.
Had tea with the ⸻ and was amazed to find on the music tray in the drawing-room of these inoffensive artists a copy of ⸻’s Memoir on Synapta. Within his hearing, I said, “Did you and Mrs. ⸻ find this exciting reading?” And I held it up with a sneer. I felt I had laid bare a nerve and forthwith proceeded to make it twinge. ⸻, of course, was glib with an explanation, yet the question remains incalculable—just how pleased that young man is with himself.
After tea went out into the Studio and watched these two enthusiasts paint. I must have glowered at them. I—the energetic, ambitious, pushing youth—of necessity sitting down doing nought, as unconsidered as a child playing on the floor. I recollected my early days in my attic laboratory and sighed. Where is my energy now?
Mrs. ⸻ plays Chopin divinely well. How I envied this man—to have a wife play you Chopin!