I wish the world was not so ugly and unhappy. And there is so much cynicism. And why does Science label and ticket everything so that the world is like a shop, with their price on all the articles? There are still a few auction rooms where people bid for what they think most worth while, but they are getting fewer and fewer. And people love money so, and I shall too I expect when I have got out of what our elders tell me is youthful introspection. But why shouldn’t one go through something which is so alive and beautiful as that. But they only say, smiling, “Yes; I went through all that once; you will soon get over that.” I shall fight for money and ruin others. Down with Science. Romanticism, all spiritual greatness is going. Soon music will be composed by scientific formulæ; painting has been in France, and look how photography has put art back. Oh, for a Carlyle now! Some prophet one could follow. 15 March. Spent a whole afternoon at work on the marionette stage. I carpentered while E. V. C. tinkered up the scenes he has painted. Between us we got through surprisingly little in a surprisingly long time. My story in the new _Noat Days_ will appear shortly. I read the proofs of the story at extreme speed and thought I had never read anything worse or feebler. The paltry humour sickened me, though the end did seem to have some kick in it. 19 March. The marionette show becomes more and more hectic. One hardly has time to breathe. There is a performance on Saturday: the day after the day after to-morrow. Nothing done, of course, and the Studio a scene of hysterical budding artists, mad enough in private life, but when under the influence of so strong and so public an emotion surpass themselves in do-nothing-with-the-most-possible-noise-and-trouble. 1 April. The marionette play continues to be an immense pleasure. We give a children’s performance to-morrow at three. Answers from mothers pour in: I am afraid it may be too full. How well do little children see? They are so _very_ low down when they sit. I think the life of a stage manager must be one of the most trying on this earth. Good Friday. _On a Pretty Woman_, “And that infantile fresh air of hers” (from Browning). “If you take a photograph of a man digging, in my opinion he is sure to look as if he were not digging” (Van Gogh). Have been reading Van Gogh’s letters. They are the hardest things I have ever taken on. He is so very much in earnest, and so very difficult to understand. I think I have got a good deal of what he means. A wonderful postcard from B. G. in Venice: We are here till Thursday, wondering who has won the Boat Race, the National, the Junior School Quarter-Mile and the Hammersmith Dancing Record. Read a little Carlyle to a few of the House. What else could it be but incomprehensible to them? “Mad,” they called it. Anything of genius is “mad” in a Public School. And rightly so, I suppose. 4 April.