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[Page 91]
May 6
116.
Real rain – big heavy splashing rain and then clear air, and clearness over the fields: this last night. This morning clear but dull leaden skies, and a heat in the air from a hidden sun.
Early – about 3 a.m., a great bombardment, and the early morning of yesterday another. But the casualties from the line, keeping well down.
117.
Turning in I read a short tale of Balzac's in "Christ in Flanders" – "El Verdugo". It's a tale I've read of – referred to in some essay of Wilde's or some such writer – of a Spanish noble family – sentenced to death, meeting death at the hand of the family's firstborn. That the line might be unbroken, at the commands of the whole family, the eldest acts as executioner.
It opened up a long argumenting in the cellar as to the most desirable method of death – by hanging or beheading, Les and self favouring beheading, the majority for hanging. There is something grotesquely horrible about the gibbet and the disjointed marionetting of a neck-hung corpse.
The block is definite and clean from grotesquerie.
May 6
115.
Mail, T.L.S., May 2, and a Balaclava from Australia! T.L.S. good in announcements but poor in reviews. Francis Ledwidge's last book – posthumous "Last Songs" received with J. Stephen's "Reincarnation". J.C. Squire's "The Gold Tree" announced in a limited signed edition of 500 copies at half a guinea! Wrote to T.B.C. for it and Cardinal Gibbons' "Faith of Our Fathers", and to C.W. Beaumont a 20 F. note for "Tale of Igor" & "The Little School" of Sturge Moore's. (Payed today!)
Another half guinea book – books are the two volumes of Herbert Trench, "Poems: with Fables in Prose": no review but the publishers Constable. Grant Richards definitely announces Waugh's Resentment and two books of S.P.B. Mais – "A Schoolmaster's Diary" and "Lovers of Silver", both at 6/-.
James Joyce is seemingly of the moderns, his novel "The Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man" broke the old orders in its title, and by a few reviews seemed good. Two of his plays are now out, "Dubliners", 5/- and Exiles, 3/6, both by G.R.
Now "The Oracle of Colour" from Beaumonts is overdue: but always books from him have been long delayed, then the charmingly written letters of apology accompanying the books at last are as enjoyed as the parcel itself.