Monday 28 February

& I have got into another stream of thought, if thought it can be called.

Let me collect a few logs, drifting in my mind, to represent the past few days.
Clive, standing at the door. 
She cries for the moon.
This was said of Mary. With it he went to Cassis for 3 months.

Again, If Mrs Woolf dont think me worth a penny stamp I said—this being Rose Bartholomew standing 
at her cottage door on Friday evening. Phrases suddenly seem to me very significant, & then I forget them. My 
brain is rather stale. Do I like The Lighthouse? I think I was disappointed. But God knows. I have to read it
again.

A letter from Vita & Dottie just come. She is not an explicit letter writer. But I must be fond of her, 
genuinely, to start as I did at the sight of Dottie's hand, thinking she wrote to say V. was ill.

For the rest I think Cowper is a good poet. I'd like to write about him. Shall we go to Greece, Italy 
or France? I'm glad I didn't dedicate my book to Roger. This I verified in his presence, the other night [23 
February]. He dined here with Raymond. Raymond is intellectually speaking underbred. Roger a pure aristocrat.
Philip [Ritchie] came in, his little green eyes hazed bunged up with drink. So to Rodmell. And now the wind is
making the tin screen over the gas fire rattle. How we protect ourselves from the elements! Coming back last
night I thought, owing to civilisation, I, who am now cold, wet, & hungry, can be warm & satisfied & listening 
to a Mozart 4tet in 15 minutes. And so I was.

That ring may be Tom. No. Tom dont run upstairs—only the lower classes do that.

And I dont think I shall go out in the rain, though I am going to spend this week in long romantic
London walks. I have successfully broken the neck of that screaming grey goose—society. There's nothing to 
be afraid of in dining with Ethel or Sibyl—& I'm shingled now. One spins round for a moment & then settles 
on one's feet. But about the Soul: the soul has sunk to the bottom. I am empty headed tonight, feeling the lack 
of Nessa rather, & all the prelude of Spring—the vague discomfort & melancholy & a feeling of having come 
to anchor. But I intend to work harder & harder. If they—the respectables, my friends, advise me against 
The Lighthouse, I shall write memoirs; have a plan already to get historical manuscripts & write Lives of the 
Obscure: but why do I pretend I should take advice? After a holiday the old ideas will come to me as usual; 
seeming fresher, more important than ever; & I shall be off again, feeling that extraordinary exhilaration, that 
ardour & lust of creation—which is odd, if what I create is, as it well may be, wholly bad. 

Today I bought a new watch. Last night I crept into L.'s bed to make up a sham quarrel about paying our 
fares to Rodmell. Now to finish Passage to India.