Friday 4 October – Sunday 6 October. We take advantage of no Saturday classes for Robert by spending the weekend in London. We leave on the 6:30 Stanstead Express, then the Tube from Liverpool Street Station to Tottenham Court Road, walking with our suitcases to the Kingsley Hotel[1] off of New Oxford on Bloomsbury Way by St. George's, close to the British Museum. Cathy and I have dinner at an Italian restaurant (pasta with pesto). Quite nice. It's been a long time since good Italian food. The Kingsley is in a good area, though the Waldorf is quite a bit nicer and closer to the theatres.
Saturday I jog down Oxford Street to Edgeware Road. In the morning we visit the Tower of London, where we take the tour and see the Crown Jewels, which everyone loves despite the fact that Thomas fell asleep in my arms, and had an accident while I held him! Afterwards we encounter the Tower Hill Pageant, which is a car ride through ancient London and a museum of ancient artifacts. Following this we go to St. Paul's and then to Harrod's. In the evening we eat at the original Spaghetti House on Goodge Street. Jeffrey and I walk back to the hotel. There is a bit of rain today but nothing bad.
The weather is quite nice on Sunday. In the morning I go running in search of a Catholic Church, finally finding one near our hotel, but we are not in time. There is a movie being made in Russell Square. We take the walking tour of Aristocratic London (St. James) from Green Park Underground. Our group includes a woman from Carson City! Afterwards we walk to the Hard Rock for lunch, then to the Natural History Museum. I try for the 5:30 mass at Westminster Cathedral, but we are too late. We are in time for the 6 p.m. mass by Holborn Station, but by then everyone has had it. The lesson: mass in the morning or forget it!
While Cathy and I are walking down Shaftesbury, by the hotel, I discover, in a gallery window, the lithograph of the Pissing Dogs, which hung over the guest toilet at the Kemp's home in Moraga, when I used to visit them in law school. The store was closed, but it was like seeing an old friend.
Monday 7 October. 8:40 am. Thought I would just come over and write, and need to do that more, perhaps write in a.m., edit in afternoon. . . . 9:45 a.m. Waiting for inspiration to strike! 10 o'clock. Thomas is lovable, but I have had several cups of coffee and seem to have broken my expensive fountain pen. I enjoy his company. With the caffeine levels rising, however, I am not appreciative of the many Leggo Eiffel Towers but distracted!
4:35 p.m. Today I struggled, for the first time on this trip, at writing, feeling the frustration of not knowing what to say, where to start, where I should go. Starts at a novel, a play. I know I said I will write every day and see what becomes of it, but I couldn't today and finally went back to my autobiography and worked on it to my satisfaction, knowing this was not what I wanted to be doing. Finally went on a walk at 2:40 down the road to the B1038 (Newport Road) and north to Audley End. Read Eliot for awhile and it made me feel better, but also how much I seem to have taken Eliot's lines and applied them to my own life, living out Prufrock. I noticed for the first time today that my reference to Las Vegas as the Unreal City comes from "The Wasteland." Letters to Uncle Sidney and Aunt Tillie, the Norwegian girls, my 7th grade teacher, Sr. McCormack, and Jan.
Read an excellent article today by Louis Simpson on modern poetry, read little articles about intellectuals in Thatcher's time and Housman's metric notes.
Walk notes: how many different kinds of red berried trees and bushes! Wild cherry, hawthorn, elder, common yew. Spiders are something! Watched a ladybird (ladybug) next to two spiders and one web: were they eyeing her, trying to figure out which one would get her? Walking up to Debden Road, I suddenly saw a house fully covered in red ivy and it literally took my breath away. Sunrise 7:10, Sunset 6:26.
Ideas: let go! Don't be like Prufrock, fear of approval, disapproval = inaction. IDEA: little things damn us and save us. IDEA: guy like me, time to make up his mind. IDEA: Wasteland is about these days!
Tuesday 8 October. 9:35. I continue to walk in the morning and, if I have time, sit down in the graveyard and say my morning prayers. Now that I have a better image, I will have to go back and reread "Elegy in a Country Churchyard," though the church in Saffron Walden is rather far from a country church.
Trying to come up with some ideas as I walk. This morning simply to have my character's reaction to things, not necessarily conversations, which seem to present more of an obstacle. Thinking, as I returned, I do not want to go back.
Dick L. died on Friday, lung cancer at 46. I saw him in May at Bally's. Even then he had the look of death about him, though his energy and attitude were in sharp contrast to his appearance. He was gruff, unpleasant at times, but genuine, and quite brilliant, though perhaps his bullish nature made him seem smarter than he actually was. The couple of times I complemented him on his legal abilities, he demurred. "I'm just a hustler."
Amazing how I think of myself as a brilliant writer, despite my lack of achievement!
Friday 11 October. 7:40 a.m. Just realized that when I can't breathe, in the springtime in Las Vegas, I must feel something of how Jesus felt on the cross. As a boy of eight or nine I used to wish for the stigmata, but never thought of the pain. I only wanted a sign. Now when my breath is short, I should feel better that I suffer, if only a little.
Saturday – Sunday, 12 -13 October. A quiet weekend. Sunny days. I began the practice of taking Robert into Cambridge for school and staying there, walking and shopping in Cambridge. Sunday we have an early lunch and then watch Anna Karenina with Garbo. Afterwards, the boys and I walk out toward the east part of town.
[1] Not many London hotels can claim a place in literary history. But The Kingsley certainly can. Named after Charles Kingsley, author of the classics Westward Ho! and The Water Babies, it was once home to EM Forster, one of the famous ‘Bloomsbury Group’, who worked on A Room with a View while living here.
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