Charles Snow - George Passant

K and the others made this the most perfect weekend I have ever known. They were alive, we were all on terms of absolute confidence. I was overwhelmed with happiness, unqualified happiness, such happiness as comes unawares and only in rare moments. I was bathed in the warmth of joyous living, so that any trouble seemed incredible.

18 APRIL 1929

Next weekend, so I have just heard, some clod has rented the farm and we cannot be accommodated. Why in heaven should I be denied what is my food and life by the sheer inconsequent whim of some unknown fool?

Although he did not admit it for some months, it was probably about this time that he became engrossed in Katherine — in love with her, perhaps. Never before, at any rate, had any girl in the group meant as much: Mona, now married to an acquaintance of Jack’s, had only been one of many ‘fancies’. In the diary about this date he dismissed her: ‘She was a bright little thing. I could have slept with her if my theory had permitted it — I suppose Jack did not feel any scruples’. There had been another girl, Phyllis, who had by this time finished her training as an elementary schoolmistress, and taken a job in the county; George had toyed half-heartedly with the idea of marrying her, a couple of years back.

But Katherine moved him far more deeply: she came upon him when he was trying to maintain all his ideals over the ‘little world’.

I never met her, or knew much of her, except that she was very poor and possessed the delicate and virginal beauty which most excited George. He struggled against recognising the passion. After that outburst over the farm, he tried to miss the group’s meetings there. He found himself in one of his whirls of womanising, unusually long drawn out.

RELAPSES

7 MAY

FACES IN LONDON

Somehow I have not got the School and the group in my bones as I used to have. This is strange after the promise of a month ago. I am in a tangle of desires, scattering money more frantically in than ever did. I met Winnie in Oxford Street: she is one of the nicest girls I have managed to know. Curious — her face comes and goes. Why? (Peggy’s went long since. Dorothy’s went, also the Cambridge girl, and the Bear Street one. It needs some effort to recall Hilda.)

(The names were all of women he had picked up on the streets.)

21 MAY

I am still a libido, though I get some joy from life. No moralising; things happen well when they do happen. Last night it was the old crowd in Nottingham. Some of the old hands are in trouble. Connie owes to a moneylender, poor soul. Thelma sees financial ruin coming. I told her that the ‘good wife and mother stunt’ is off. Why am I so attracted by prostitutes? I finished up with Pat, Connie’s successor and the best of all.

3 JUNE

RETURN TO THE GROUP

I have wrestled with repentance. Late though it be, I am wholly in love with the group again. I came back to a weekend at the farm — my first for a month — with extraordinary gratitude that they should receive me with a show of happiness and admiration. Jack was not there, and I am ashamed to say that made me easier in mind. They seem to respect me. Little do they know that I am really the prodigal son.

4 JUNE

I think I am in love with K. I cannot write until I have thought it out.

6 JUNE

I still cannot see my way clear. For hours I have rehearsed renunciatory speeches to myself. Yet I know I shall never make them. About one thing I must be certain, now and whatever happens in the future; nothing must impair any single person near me. I am beginning to think I have never been in love before — in my purely selfish life, it is the greatest thing that has happened. But that is a trifle beside the people I can still look after. If I neglect that work, there is nothing left of me except an ordinary man and a handful of sensations.

10 JUNE

I met K by accident tonight. She shook hands as we parted. Her touch is like no other touch. In the whispering air I rode home to a quiet house.

From the diary one gained no clear impression of K. She was probably a complex and sensitive person, easily hurt and full of self-distrust. Her relation with George was strained and unhappy, almost from the beginning: ‘the only time I have been utterly miserable over a woman,’ he wrote. With the odd humour that came less often in his diary than in speech, he added on 24 July: ‘K let me hold her hand: but that may have been because there was no feeling in her arm’.

His distress and ‘longing’ (a word which entered frequently that summer) drove him more completely into the group. He resigned from the one or two organisations in the town to which he still belonged — five years before, he had taken part in many. He kept protesting against ‘extra work for Eden’. ‘I am a solicitor’s clerk. I do not consider I am under any obligation to do more than a competent solicitor’s clerk usually does. He has no call on me outside office hours.’

He ceased to mention his law lectures, in which he used to take so great a pride.

The same summer — Daphne, who was then nineteen, and Freda (the F of the accounts which George showed me early in the investigation) joined the group.

8 SEPTEMBER 1929

Last night saw what may be — what ought to be — the concluding stage in the K business. She let everyone see what she thought of me. Perhaps she will not come near us again. Jack, Rachel and Olive came to see me tonight. Rachel was all sympathy, and Olive did not disguise her own affair. When Rachel had gone, however, Olive got down to some of the agency’s accounts. They are rather good, though the trickle of money does not relieve my financial doldrums. It gives Jack a living, though. He was fine and high-handed about K. Either I ought to make love to her, he insisted, or she ought to be thrown out. I think that he was being genuinely warm-hearted, he was thinking only of my peace of mind.

But it is all very well for them to brandish their freedom. They have got to realise that I am in a different position. They say I have created the position and difficulty for myself. That makes it all the more essential.

14 SEPTEMBER

The meek don’t want the earth. Yet I have thought of her all day. Is it possible that she is anxious not to give herself away too cheaply? Or does she simply hate and despise me?

If I am not to have her, let me clear the lumber out of my heart and regain the old freedom. If I could only fall in love with Rachel — but this K business spoils every other relation.

17 SEPTEMBER

Martineau called in for an hour or two. He still wanders on his lonely, meaningless crusade, and remains his gentle self. I told him the agency was going adequately on. He did not seem interested. In the circumstances, I thought it unnecessary to say more. The family this evening asked me for more money: finance will soon be disastrous again.

28 SEPTEMBER

Perhaps K has gone for good. I have never been in so many troubles. I am baying at the moon. Sometimes the group itself seems like a futile little invention of my own. I am thoroughly despondent. The root of the trouble is a discontent which is not confined to me. There is money, which still harasses me. Apart from K, I begin to think the major cause of my present discontent lies in ambition. It will not be so easy to die in obscurity as I once thought.

3 OCTOBER

K is in a state of semi-return. Last night was the second weekend running in Nottingham, but if K comes back I need not go again. Pat’s face is too often a disembodied smile, wickedly turned up, saying ‘all right’ or ‘whisky’.

11 OCTOBER

We have had a good weekend at the farm. The people there were all living more abundantly than if I had never happened. I have despaired too easily. I still believe in them and myself, in spite of occasional tremors. In any case, what else could there be in life?