Thursday 30 July
I am intolerably sleepy & annulled, & so write here. I do want indeed to consider my next book, but I am
inclined to wait for a clearer head. The thing is I vacillate between a single & intense character of father; & a far
wider slower book—Bob T. telling me that my speed is terrific, & destructive. My summer's wanderings with
the pen have I think shown me one or two new dodges for catching my flies. I have sat here, like an improviser
with his hands rambling over the piano. The result is perfectly inconclusive, & almost illiterate. I want to learn
greater quiet, & force. But if I set myself that task, don't I run the risk of falling into the flatness of N[ight].
& D[ay].? Have I got the power needed if quiet is not to become insipid. These questions I will leave, for the
moment, unanswered.
I should here try to sum up the summer, since August ends a season, spiritual as well as temporal. Well;
business has been brisk. I don't think I get many idle hours now, the idlest being, oddly enough, in the morning.
I have not forced my brain at its fences; but shall, at Rodmell. When the dull sleep of afternoon is on me, I'm
always in the shop, printing, dissing addressing; then it is tea, & Heaven knows we have had enough visitors.
Sometimes I sit still & wonder how many people will tumble on me without my lifting a finger: already, this
week, uninvited, on the verge of the holidays too, have come Mary, Gwen, Julian & Quentin, Geoffrey Keynes,
& Roger. Meanwhile we are dealing with Maynard. All Monday Murphy & I worked like slaves till 6 when I
was stiff as a coal heaver. We get telegrams & telephones; I daresay we shall sell our 10,000. On Tuesday at
12.30 Maynard retires to St Pancras Registry office with Lydia, & Duncan to witness (against his will.) So that
episode is over. But, dear me, I'm too dull to write, & must go & fetch Mr Dobrée's novel & read it, I think. Yet
I have a thousand things to say. I think I might do something in To the Lighthouse, to split up emotions more
completely. I think I'm working in that direction.