Elizabeth Smart
“While winding
myself into that awful green dress which cuts into the back of my neck, and my
awful girdle that smells of rubber and heat and holes, Bill Atkin
arrived. He is dark and ganster-looking but tall and slimmish in a white tie. Susan was shocked at me keeping
him waiting….” (Necessary
Secrets 4).
“Bill said write
all the time keep a diary – so here it is” (5).
“The girl gave me a
wash and wanted to pluck my eyebrows which made me mad – why should they always
want to standardize even me? I am sick of this
“I think I will write
a book. But what on? Really, it is awfully hard to
decide. I think I will go to bed and sleep, then
perhaps I shall have some ideas. Go to bed. Yes. At once.
Go without anything for today? No action? No word? That is hideous destruction
of youth and waste of life. Yes it is waste of life. I shall sleep and forget”
(31)
“The sun and the
grass and the shining sky made one think of places that are all that – where
you can wallow in them. I cannot enjoy anything unless I can be part of it.
Harmonize. Sense it itself. The whole beauty, the whole life – the whole point
of a place is lost if I have to walk through it in high-heeled clob-hob shoe, stockings – or miserable dresses and coats
and girdles or garters of any kind. No use. No use at all” (23).
“Read To the Lighthouse. Finished
it. First half specially good. Mrs. Ramsay not unlike Mummy in some ways” (39).
“I looked at the
queer lake and thought it is like something. What is it like? Oh! It’s like a
wet olive. That’s good I said. It will go well in my diary. It is like a wet
olive. It will be impressive. Then thought: I am copying Virginia Woolf. I am being influenced and “making phrases.” I am
cheating. I am not being myself – but taking her construction putting on a
light meaning and saying O how original I am – and how apt. Then – isn’t all
this truth-speaking and self-analysis, isn’t it all her influence or someone’s
– not your own? All this pretending to get at the core.
It’s not true, really. But then I thought as I scrubbed my back with a lint
cloth and French Fern soap (brown and oval) isn’t it permissible to be
stimulated by people honourably, to be made more alert and alive and noting of
things by others? To be shown and taught. Cannot I be stimulated by Virginia Woolf and Katherine Mansfield (who is sometimes reflected
in V.W.) and Mary Webb and Barrie and the others? Yes, why not? To be only my
own original nature self – to be the thing that is the strongest urge at my
depths – that is to lay all that down and laugh at it and walk on a mountain
alone – really alone in a wild place. And not want to meet a soul. And that is
really true and it is the urge and the flame and it needs no fanning. Things
seem false if they are conscious. Conscious fun – nothing –
revolting. Spontaneous they must be – bursting and
self-forgetful” (38).
“Why tell her I did
not even know it was banned. That several “
How people can contaminate things!
She almost made it unclean for me. But no. There it
was and I was swept on its great tide. She had made me feel as though I should
read it in a dark corner secretly and then hide it. But when I finished that
great declaration of D.H.L’s faith in the last
letter, I was conquered, and not ashamed of the book
and not influenced by small minds…Why on earth are sensual joys supposed to be
so low?” (45)
travels to
“I must marry a poet. It’s the only
thing. Why don’t I know any?
My neck is dirty.
No! I am a fool. A
complete egotist brooding on myself because I haven’t enough to occupy me.
All I need is hard work, exercise” (81).
“After dinner we
saw the movie Mr. Deeds Goes to Town with Gary Cooper and Jean Arthur and it
restored a bit of sanity. I stood resigned never again to have the wayward
desires of youth and flesh and listened while Mrs. Watt embarrassed me by
asking a large Mr. Lowry of New Zealand how much to tip” (107).
“I don’t want to get married any
more. I dreamt I was married to John. First of all we were all at church
singing hymns. Peggy and Lady Pentland
behind. John was very sweet and helpful. But then I had to make an
enormous bed for Lady Pentland and she didn’t like
the way I was making it. It had piles and piles of extra blankets and things
for padding. I was trying terribly hard, but I couldn’t please her. John was
somewhere in the background, sympathetic but unable to do more.
How can I possibly marry and sign
away my life?
If I married John wouldn’t Charles
disturb moy life? And what if I married Charlie? I
suppose it’s too late to marry Frampton. Then there are always the velvet eyes
of the world. I couldn’t consider anyone else. O what about Gilbert? Yes. He’s
another symbol. Men, careers, one excludes all others for ever. Where is an
occupation that embraces all things? And where a man?” (115).
“The poets are the most exciting things I
know, - Auden, Archibald McLeish, Conrad Aiken, Emily
Dickinson, Spender, etc.” (124).
“Barkers’
new poems arrived and I say how ashamed I am to have thought mine were poetry for he alone says exactly what I wanted to say, and even
the very word sounds I was wanting to utter, and the same elastic bounding
back” (245).
George Barker – b.
1913 in