The Collector

List of the ways in which he has altered me. Either directly. Or confirmed alterations in progress.

1. If you are a real artist, you give your whole being to your art. Anything short of that, then you are not an artist. Not what G.P. calls a “maker.”

2. You don’t gush. You don’t have little set-pieces or set-ideas you gush out to impress people with.

3. You have to be Left politically because the Socialists are the only people who care, for all their mistakes. They feel, they want to better the world.

4. You must make, always. You must act, if you believe something. Talking about acting is like boasting about pic-tures you’re going to paint. The most terrible bad form.

5. If you feel something deeply, you’re not ashamed to show your feeling.

6. You accept that you are English. You don’t pretend that you’d rather be French or Italian or something else. (Piers always talking about his American grandmother.)

7. But you don’t compromise with your background. You cut off all the old you that gets in the way of the maker you. If you’re suburban (as I realize D and M are—their laugh-ing at suburbia is just a blind), you throw away (cauterize) the suburbs. If you’re working class, you cauterize the work-ing class in you. And the same, whatever class you are, be-cause class is primitive and silly.

(It’s not only me. Look at that time Louise’s boy-friend—the miner’s son from Wales—met him, and how they argued and snarled at each other, and we were all against G.P. for being so contemptuous about working-class people and working-class life. Calling them animals, not human beings. And David Evans, all white and stammering, don’t you tell me my father’s a bloody animal I’ve got to kick out of the way, and G.P. saying I’ve never hurt an animal in my life, you can always make out a case for hurting human beings, but human animals deserve every sympathy. And then David Evans coming up to me last month and actually admitting it had changed him, that evening.)

8. You hate the political business of nationality. You hate everything, in politics and art and everything else, that is not genuine and deep and necessary. You don’t have any time for silly trivial things. You live seriously. You don’t go to silly films, even if you want to; you don’t read cheap newspapers; you don’t listen to trash on the wireless and the telly; you don’t waste time talking about nothing. You use your life.

I must have always wanted to believe in those things; I did believe in them in a vague sort of way, before I met him. But he’s made me believe them; it’s the thought of him that makes me feel guilty when I break the rules.

If he’s made me believe them, that means he’s made a large part of the new me.

If I had a fairy godmother—please, make G.P. twenty years younger. And please, make him physically attractive to me.

How he would despise that!

It’s odd (and I feel a little guilty) but I have been feeling happier today than at any time since I came here. A feeling—all will turn out for the best. Partly because I did something this morning. I tried to escape. Then, Caliban has accepted it. I mean if he was going to attack me, he’d surely do it at some time when he had a reason to be angry. As he was this morning. He has tremendous self-control, in some ways.

I know I also feel happy because I’ve been not here for most of the day. I’ve been mainly thinking about G.P. In his world, not this one here. I remembered so much. I would have liked to write it all down. I gorged myself on memories. This world makes that world seem so real, so living, so beautiful. Even the sordid parts of it.

And partly, too, it’s been a sort of indulging in wicked vanity about myself. Remembering things G.P. has said to me, and other people. Knowing I am rather a special person. Knowing I am intelligent, knowing that I am beginning to understand life much better than most people of my age. Even knowing that I shall never be so stupid as to be vain about it, but be grateful, be terribly glad (especially after this) to be alive, to be who I am—Miranda, and unique.

I shall never let anyone see this. Even if it is the truth, it must sound vain.

Just as I never let other girls see that I know I am pretty; nobody knows how I’ve fallen over myself not to take that unfair advantage. Wandering male eyes, even the nicest, I’ve snubbed.

Minny: one day when I’d been gushing about her dress when she was going out to a dance. She said, shut up. You’re so pretty you don’t even have to try.

G.P. saying, you’ve every kind of face.

Wicked.

October 21st

I’m making him cook better. Absolute ban on frozen food. I must have fruit, green vegetables. I have steak. Salmon. I ordered him to get caviare yesterday. It irritates me that I can’t think of enough rare foods I haven’t had and have wanted to have.

Pig.

Caviare is wonderful.

I’ve had another bath. He daren’t refuse, I think he thinks “ladies” fall down dead if they don’t have a bath when they want one.