October 24
… She is a tiny little old lady, very frail and very delicate, with a tiny voice like the noise of a fretsaw. She talks incessantly about things which do not interest you, until your face gets stiff with forcing a polite smile, and your voice cracked and your throat dry with saying, “Yes,” and “Really.”
Tonight I attend the Zoological Society to read my first paper, so I am really in a fluster and want to be quiet. Therefore to prevent her from talking I write two letters which I represent as urgent. At 6:15 desperate, so went out for a walk in the dark London streets. Returned to supper and to Her. After the wife, the husband is intellectual pyrotechnics. Referring to the Museum—
“Would you have there, I suppose, any insects, in a case like, what you might say to study to yourself when no one is by?” he inquired.
6:40. It is now one hour before I need leave for the meeting, and whether I sigh, cough, smoke, or read the paper, she goes on. She even refuses to allow me to scan the lines below photos in the Illustrated London News. I write this as the last sole resource to escape her devastating prattle and the ceaseless hum of her tiny gnat-like mind. She thinks (because I told her so) that I am preparing notes for the evening meeting.
Later: Spent an absolutely damnable day. Am sick, tired, bored, frantic with her voice which I have been able to share with no one except the intellectual giant, her husband, at tea time. In order to break the flow of chatter, I would rudely interrupt and go on talking, by this means keeping my end up for as long as I could, and enjoying a short respite from the fret-sawing voice. But I tired of this and it was of no permanent value. When I broke in, she still went on for a few sentences unable to stop, and lo! here was the spectacle of two persons alone together in a room both talking at the same time and neither listening. I persisted though—and she had to stop. Once started, I was afraid to stop—scared at the certain fact of the voice beginning to saw again. After a while the fountain of my artificial garrulity dried up, and the Voice at once leaped into the breach, resuming—amazing and incredible as it seems—at the precise point where it had left off. At 7 I am quite exhausted and sit on the opposite side of the hearth, staring with glassy eyes, arms drooping at my sides and mouth drooling. At 7:05 her cough increases, and she has to stop to attend to it. With a fiendish smile I push back my chair, and quietly watch her cough. … She coughs continuously now and can talk no longer. Thank God! 8 p.m., left for the meeting, where I read my paper in a state of awful nervousness. … I read out all I had to say and kept them amused for about ten minutes. I was very excited when Dr. ⸻ got up and praised the paper, saying it was interesting, and hoping I should continue the experiments. The chairman, Sir John Rose Bradford, asked a question, I answered it and then sat down. After the meeting we went upstairs to the library, had tea and chatted with some of the big people. … Zoology is certainly delightful, yet it seems to me the Zoologists are much as other people. I like Zoology. I wish I could do without Zoologists. …