MARGINAL COMMENT
By HAROLD NICOLSON
MR. WINSTON CHURCHILL, I have been told, regards people who keep diaries with suspicion and contempt. His argument is (so my informant assures me) that the diarist is inclined to leave out of his life what he enters in his journal ; meaning thereby that the tiny energy needed to record one's daily doings gives a spurious impression of activity and conceals from the indolent the wastage of their existence. It is certainly true that those who keep regular diaries are self-flattered by a sense of punctual achievement ; they retire to bed with the feeling that they have done a good day's work ; whereas in fact all that they have done is to devote some thirty minutes to recording that they have done nothing at all. Sir John Squire many years ago wrote an excellent short story-about a man who kept a diary ; he was a lazy and self-indulgent man who was stung by the reproaches of an active niece ; so he decided that he would keep a diary. Year after year the great locked and bound volumes accumulated upon his shelves ; although his life until then had been cosy but obscure, he found his name figuring in the gossip columns as " our modem Pepys "; invitations showered upon him, young authors would send him their manuscripts, Ambassadors con- fide to him the secrets of their negotiations, Prime Ministers consult him regarding the composition of their Cabinets ; he had a lovely time. When he died, his literary executors (who had been chosen for their surpaMing eminence) held a joint session at which the twenty volumes were formally unlocked ; they consisted entirely of blank sheets of paper. I suppose it is true that, had one been a friend of Pepys and known the posthumous value of his diary, one might have been anxious to achieve thereby some vicarious immor- tality and become self-conscious, or perhaps self-important, in his presence. Yet I am sure that, were I convinced (as I am not) that any of my intimates keep a diary which is likely to interest posterity, the feeling inspired by this conviction would not be a feeling of pleasure but one of embarrassed anxiety.
* * * * I have myself kept a diary for some twenty years. I refer to it occasionally, for the purpose of verifying dates, names or places. Considering that the period which it covers, and the events and conversations which it records, should contain at least some pallid reflection of this great revolutionary epoch, it is a document of almost inconceivable dullness. This may be due to the fact that when I was myself concerned with these events I was too busy to devote much time to my diary, and that when I had the leisure to make extensive entries I had ceased to be closely concerned with events. But that is not the sole explanation. My diary is a dull diary because of its reticence. It would be nice to ascribe this reticence to personal modesty, and to a desire not to expose to posterity the faults of my friends. I fear however that the discretion of my diary must be ascribed to vanity rather than to modesty, in that I am fully aware that any man who writes a frank record of his thoughts, habits and feelings leaves behind him a damning testimony to his own frailty. The affection with which the frank diarist is regarded by posterity is due to the fact that his personal confessions enhance the self-esteem of his readers : we regard Amid, Novalis and even Rousseau as somewhat pitiable figures; even a great civil servant such as Pepys is derided for his absurdity. A good diarist must always be lacking, not in reticence merely, but also in self-respect ; he must possess a powerful strain of humility.
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I am thus startled, and a little shamed, when I find one of my contemporaries writing, and even publishing, a diary which tells the truth about himself. It is quite all right when a man like Mr. Cyril Connolly, confident as he is in the serene seas of culture, recounts his experiences among masterpieces or takes a complex out for a short run. He can conceal hiniself behind the intimacy of his own confessions and the languid beauty of his style. But when a precise and logical thinker such as Mr. C. E. M. Joad starts divulging his prejudices and affections I have the uneasy feeling of having strayed all careless into a nudist colony. I have been reading this week Professor Joad's latest volume A Year More or Less (Gollancz. 12s. 6d.). It contains extracts from his diary from August, 1946, to October, 1947. It is intended to be a self-revealing document, but the Joad it reveals is not the amiable dialectician whom I know, but a tetchy, incompetent, querulous person who finds fault. In place of the zestful conversationalist whom I know, I am confronted by a man who, when left alone in the afternoon, surrenders to melancholy, to :—" Accidie, the noonday demon . . . which takes all the colour and savour out of things, whispering into our ears that nothing is worth trying or doing or saying or thinking." In place of the stalwart who plays hockey vigorously, goes bathing in November and strides in thunderstorms along the Roman Wall, I am met by an elderly pessimist who finds hockey boring, dislikes cold, and is miserable in a Durham hail-storm. In place of the Bohemian who is content in any doss-house, I find a fussy gentleman, who dislikes hot-water pipes that gurgle or having meals in a hotel restaurant alone. In place of the confident emphatic lecturer, we find a man terrified by the presence of Bertrand Russell among his audience. In place of the countryman of sound yeoman stock, we are given a delightful picture .of the incompetent farmer, hiding his own incompetence behind a barn.
Reading Professor Joad's diary, which is anything but dull, has confirmed me in my determination to keep my own diary reticent, even at the risk of dullness. Once one starts confessing to one's diary the things that one hesitates to confess to oneself, it becomes a dustbin into which one flings the ordures of one's self-distrust. There come moments in every week when the past seems meaning- less and the future dark with menace ; but those are one's bad moments ; there is no need at all to write them down. Professor Joad, for instance, 'goes to Paris in April. That is an experience which should provide exaltation even for the elderly. He admits that Paris, for him, is " still the centre of the world, the fountain head of our civilization, and the French still the heads and leaders of our species." In spite of this conviction, Professor Joad feels cross. Tie is annoyed because the bath-water is tepid, the coffee undrinkable, the exchange complicated, Pernod unobtainable, and the French impatient. He is angry because he does not know what to do with his evenings and because the Parisians insist upon talking their language rapidly. A philosopher should be immune to such irritations and comfort himself with the reflection that even in later middle age there remains much of the beautiful and the good. I have a suspicion that all this accidie is due to having taken too much exercise when young. The moment comes when one can no longer walk twenty miles a day or play hockey with undergraduates. If one has accustomed oneself to violent movement up to the age of fifty, the deprivation of physical exercise has a bad effect upon the liver. Deep melancholy results.
* * * * When I was a young man I also shared the illusion that unless I took regular exercise I should die. I was cured of this fantasy by a French professor with whom I was studying the language at Blois. " Do I strike you," he asked me, " as less healthy than your teachers at Oxford ? Yet I assure you that I have never taken any exercise in my life. If you allow this English fallacy to dominate you, then you are preparing for yourself a dyspeptic middle age." From that day I have only taken exercise when I desired to do so. With the result that I am not rendered unhappy if water-pipes gurgle, if I am given sandwiches for luncheon, if I am unable to obtain Pernod, if I am clumsy at tying knots, if I am left alone during the afternoon, and if the French talk quick. My diary, although reticent and therefore dull, is an uncomplaining document.
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