Transgressions Installment LXXIX

March 1, 1937, Monday

I went with Clay to the Left Club’s rally at Albert Hall, where Harry Pollitt said that we should all support the Spanish Loyalists and the Popular Front.

March 2, 1937, Tuesday

Tea in Haxton’s rooms to meet Louis MacNeice. Watt was there and their brilliant undergraduate friend Cairncross, who rather overplays the glum, self-important Scot. After tea Haxton suggested that I take MacNeice for a walk until it was time for his train. We set out, leaving the three others to whatever conspiracy was afoot this afternoon. MacNeice was very interesting about Auden et al. Also about politics:? “Why do you think there’s going to be a war?? No one wants a war, everyone—Conservatives and Communists—want peace.”? I quoted something from Vile Bodies:? “We will all walk into the jaws of destruction, protesting our pacific intentions.”? MacNeice:? “I haven’t heard anyone mention Vile Bodies in years.”?

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Christopher Caudwell has been killed in Spain. He must be the first critic to die for an ideal.

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Jack has a copy of the illustrated edition of the Seven Pillars of Wisdom:? “Not a very good book, I’m afraid, but quite a terrific investment.”

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March 5, 1937, Friday

Saxl:? He read my paper as I sat & watched him. “Yes, something here, but you must read . . .”? A long list of books and articles, most in German. I’m also to consult the photographs in the Warburg and look at red & black vases in the British Museum. Compare to Mantegna.

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It is said that the danger of a general European war has been reduced by the ban on Spanish volunteers.

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A letter from Mother. It is cold at home. The United States Steel Corporation has signed a contract with the Steel Organizing Committee, recognising the union, granting a forty hour week and wages of a $ a day. That would be about what it costs to be a student in Cambridge.

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There are rumors of a Habsburg restoration in Austria and of French right wing efforts to bring down the Popular Front government & form a French-Italian alliance against the British Empire.

I went with Jeanne to the Mercury Theatre to see The Ascent of F6, which had incidental music by Benjamin Britten. All that talent and yet I didn’t think it actually became what it wanted.

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March 12, 1937, Friday

Rain, floods in the Fens. Cambridge is cut off from Lowestoft. I suppose Lowestoft will survive.

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Phipps and his friends:? “There are those who work with their bodies and those who work with their minds and there are thieves.”?

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“Don’t forget those who can’t find work.”?

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“Don’t forget those who don’t have to work.”?

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“Those are the thieves.”

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With Clay to see The Revenger’s Tragedy by Tourneur at the ADC:? “Adultery is my nature; I was begat after some gluttonous dinner.”? N.b. The Renaissance theory of the interrelationship among the deadly sins. Clay says that Rylands doesn’t like the production. I bought a copy of the play and sent it to Livia.

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Saxl:? The dialectic again:? Plato::Geek vases; Plato::The Florentine Academy; sacred subjects/patronage portraits/Botticelli/Giorgione. Working through this has actually gotten easier since my conversation with Watt. I’m beginning to realize that I don’t have to know everything there is to know, just what Giorgione knew, or lived in. Of course it was easier for him as he didn’t also have to be an undergraduate at Cambridge.

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In the afternoon with Haxton to Rosenberg’s Gallery, Bruton Street: Ingres to van Gogh. Haxton liked a Courbet realist landscape, some Degas dancers, a Seurat drawing (La Nouvrice). A stunning van Gogh:? La Pluie, a rainy day view from the asylum at St. Rémy.

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Letter to the editor of The New Rambler giving the weekly budget for an unemployed man, 64 years of age, receiving poor relief of twelve shillings a week:

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Rent, one room

6/-

No cooking or heating

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Drink water only

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Corporation bath

-/3d.

Clothing

-/8d.

Candles, matches, soap

-/6d.

Laundry

-/7d.

Food

4/-

Total

12 shillings, that is ￡30 p.a.

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The food budget for a day is as follows:? Bread -/2d., meatpie -/3d., beetroot -/2d. In other words, he is slowly starving.

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Rees has reviewed Orwell’s new book on this subject. He criticizes Orwell for saying that the only way to abolish poverty is for the middle and working classes to unite, all the while ignoring working class political organizations and satirizing middle class Socialism.

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Watt:? “Orwell’s all for revolution as long as it doesn’t happen.”

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March 14, 1937, Sunday

Haxton says Julian Bell is back from China:? “Seems to have seen too much out there. I imagine he might be ready for some serious work.”

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The newspapers are full of the elopement of Esmond Romilly, who has taken his new bride? to Spain. How old are they?? 18 and 17?? What does it matter?? Of course she’s the daughter of a peer and he’s the grand nephew of a duke.

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In bed this afternoon Livia said:? “This is nothing to you. You’ll have dozens more lovers. But I . . .”? I put my hand over her mouth. She bit it, laughed, swung a leg across mine and we went at it again.

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Haxton says he will introduce me to Francis Watson (who used to be bursar of the Courtauld Institute and is now assistant director at the Wallace Collection). Watson has been asked by the Director, James Mann, to catalogue the furniture. “He might need some help at some point.”

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March 16, 1937

Ivor Romilly presented his budget estimates to the House this afternoon, Livia and Sybil watching from the Gallery with Lady Anglesey & co. Livia said it went well. The Press is full of a controversy between Cecil and other Conservatives about Germany:? the later arguing for allowing German hegemony in Central Europe (“from the Baltic to the Black Sea”), the former saying that would be the end of the Empire.

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March 19, 1937, Friday

Rain. I spent the morning with the papers. They say: There were heavy Italian casualties in an attack on Madrid which was repelled by Government air craft . . . Cripps is calling on workers to refuse to make munitions . . . On the other hand, Labour supports rearmament in Parliament. Italy wants peace, in order to digest Abyssinia . . . The German General Staff say that in the next war the side allied with Italy will lose. They’re hoping for a rapprochement between Mussolini and Chamberlain.

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Forster, in The New Rambler, is critical of cost & commercial aspects of the Coronation.

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A review of The Years, calling it an ordinary book in contrast to The Waves, but admirable. The other papers have been more enthusiastic. I’m afraid I don’t have any time for it at the moment. Maybe in the summer.

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March 20, 1937

Livia is wonderful the way that she is equally at home drinking tea with a miner’s wife while touring the North with Jack or drinking champagne with Cabinet Ministers. I would find both equally terrifying. On the other hand, I heard her asking someone yesterday:? “You can’t actually be free without an independent income, can you?”? No, I suppose not.

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Speaking of which, we dropped in on the exhibition and sale of autographed books and manuscripts organized by the International Association of Writers for the Defence of Culture at Foyle’s Bookshop, Charing Cross Road. I’m not sure why one would want an autographed copy of a book one could buy for less, unautographed. Livia, on the other hand, bought a few things on the grounds that it was simply a form of charity.

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Jack says that the Committee of Imperial Defence think that Germany has “expansion eastward on her mind” and wish to wean France away from its Soviet alliance in favor of a five-power anti-Soviet alliance, including Germany, while Britain and France are still strong enough to have some influence over Hitler. He is quite excited about it.

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The Italians have been stopped in front of Madrid by the International Brigade.

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Air raid warning sirens are being tested in London. People are getting kitted out with gas masks.

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March 22, 1937, Monday

Rain. More floods in the Fens.

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Jack says that Dawson of The Times is puzzled about why the Germans are always annoyed with his paper. He says he spends his nights taking out anything he thinks will hurt their susceptibilities.

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“Someone gave me this for you.”? Watt handed me an envelope with my name on it & no other marks. It contained a letter from Fiona. “As friends say that you are making inquiries, and that these might draw attention, I thought I should write and tell you that I am well. I am living in a certain city, where I busy myself working for something called the Foreign Excellent Raincoat Company and running a sort of postal service. Things are very inexpensive here. I have a lovely room with a view across picturesque rooftops, rented from a good woman with the right kind of background who feeds me and tries to clean the place from time to time. One feels that one is making a contribution. F.”

At dinner the other night Livia put me next to a young ballerina. Quite beautiful, with dark eyes and dark hair. I tried to talk to her about art, as I have never understood ballet. She listened, but didn’t comment. I stupidly went on and on. Finally she said, “I don’t think you realize that I’m only fourteen.”? Livia was watching us, amused.

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March 25, 1937, Thursday

The weather is clear and cold, which didn’t help Cambridge. We lost the Boat Race for the first time in fourteen years.

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I went with Clay to a Chamber concert in the Corn Exchange:? Mozart’s G Minor Quintet. He said that it was good for him, like a tonic, as he has been troubled of late and sleepless. I didn’t ask why.

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March 26, 1937, Friday

To the Wallace Collection to see Watson. He introduced me to Mann, the director and we talked about my becoming an attaché in the fall. It seems that might happen. (“Not impossible.”) They suggested that I spend some time looking at the furniture collections in the Metropolitan and the Frick when I am in New York over the summer.

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Reports of a government victory at Madrid,? “stay-in-strikes” in Detroit. The Austrian Chancellor Dr. Schuschnigg has dismissed the pro-Nazi Security Minister.

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200th anniversary of G?ttingen University invitations have been refused by British universities, due to the lack of academic freedom. Enrolment at G?ttingen is down 40% as only the politically reliable are admitted.

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There is a new Papal Encyclical on the German Government’s breach of the Concordat.

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Jack says “Lord Cecil is sitting like a spider in the middle of his web,” feeding off a steady stream of letters from members of the Armed Forces. “Some reach him from men at the highest, one might even say, near-royal, levels,” which, I suppose, would be Mountbatten. “People, as they used to say, still loyal to the King across the water.”? Mountbatten.

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Haxton says that there are three kinds of art criticism:? historical, technical, aesthetic. He liked a recent exhibition of Rodin’s drawings, which he thought realistic in contrast to R’s Romantic sculpture.

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March 27, 1937, Saturday

Sudden storms, pouring rain interspersed with periods of cold bright sunlight.

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A poem by Cornford in the Left Review, “Full Moon at Tierz—Before the Storming of Huesca”:? “The past, a glacier, gripped the mountain wall . . . Raise the red flag triumphantly/For Communism and for Liberty.”?

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March 28, 1937, Sunday

Easter.

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March 30, 1937, Tuesday

?A cold, overcast day

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The Left Book Club has sent me Orwell’s Road to Wigan Pier. The first few pages include a quite disgusting description of boardinghouse life. I don’t think I’ll finish it.

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A driving expedition with Clay, Haxton and Watt to see a rehearsal of the Jooss Ballet with Clay’s mother, who is very much the great lady in the old American style. Watt was eloquent in praise of the bodies of the—male—dancers. “I’ll take that one, and that one, and that one over there.”? This said at the top of his voice.

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A letter from Mother, about the weather, which is still winter in Vermont.

#historicalfiction #1930s #London