Chagford, Tuesday 1 May 1945
Arrived at Chagford last night. A disagreeable journey as a lunatic female porter took my luggage from the train at Taunton and I was obliged to wait three hours in Exeter amid squalls of sleet and snow. I bought some books of engravings.
At the weekend Laura took to her bed with a high temperature. Magdalen Eldon arrived and took to her bed with aches. Dru alternated between bed and armchair suffering from distendend liver. Eddie looked as though he should have been in bed and poor Mr Belloc as though the grave were the only place for him. He has grown a splendid white beard and in his cloak, which with his hat he wore indoors and always, he seemed an archimandrite. He lost and stole and whatever went into his pockets, toast, cigarettes, books never appeared, like the reverse of a conjuror's hat. He talked incessantly, proclaiming with great clarity the grievances of forty years ago: that the English worshipped the Germans and respected only wealth in one another; that the rich enslaved the poor by lying to them; that the dons at Oxford were paid by the rich to lie. Perhaps in forty years' time I shall make myself tedious denouncing Communism in this way. 'The Bank of England would not let Napoleon found an empire.' 'The French are a Catholic people.' At times he was coaxed by the women to sing and then, with face alight with a simple joy and many lapses of memory, he quavered out old French marching songs and snatches from the music halls of his youth. He is conscious of being decrepit and forgetful, but not of being a bore.
I have the news that my application to go back to Jugoslavia has been refused and I am well content. Honour is satisfied. I am glad to have done all I could to go back and glad not to be going. The end of the war is hourly expected. Mussolini obscenely murdered, continual rumours that Hitler's mind has finally gone. Communism gains in France. Russia insults USA. I will now get to work on St Helena.
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