It is going to be very cold when I get up, which will be almost
immediately--very cold indeed. It was zero yesterday; it may be below
the line to-day, twenty or thirty below the line--even more. A
little slam, perhaps, in spades. There are icicles hanging from the
window-frame; and it is a curious thing, when one comes to think of
it, what a lot of things there are that rhyme with icicle: tricycle,
bicycle, phthisical, psychical--no, I am wrong, not psychical ...
Anyhow, it is going to be very cold. Some people do not mind the cold.
There are people bathing in the Serpentine at this moment, I suppose,
and apparently nothing can be done about it. They ju-just break the
ice and ju-jump in. And yet it is not their ice; it is the KING'S.
It seems to me that it ought to be made illegal, this breaking of
the KING's ice, like the breaking of windows in Whitehall. These
ice-breakers seem to me as bad as the people who say, "It's going to
be a nice old-fashioned Christmas, with Yule-logs and things." Not
that I object to Yule-logs. I have some in my own Yule-shed, hand-sawn
by myself, though I am not a good hand-sawyer. When I get about
halfway through, the saw begins to gnash its teeth and groan at me.
It seems to me that what is wanted is a machine for turning the logs
round and round while one holds the saw steady. But there is something
beautiful in burning the Yule-logs of one's own fashioning that makes
one feel like the sculptor when at last the living beauty has burst
forth under his chisel from the shapeless stone. Besides, they are
cheaper than coal.
As I say, when people talk of "Yule-logs and things," it is not the
Yule-logs that I object to. It is the things. Nasty cold things like
clean shirts and collars and bedroom door-handles--there ought to be
hot water in bedroom door-handles--nasty cold things that make one say
"Ugh." I have a theory that the word "Ugh" was invented on some such
morning as this. Previously people had been contented with noises like
"Ouch" and "Ouf" and "Ur-r," though they realised how inadequate they
were. And then one day, one very cold 0/40 day, inspiration came
to the frenzied brain of a genius, and he wrote down that single
exquisite heart-cry and hurried it off to the printer. People knew
then that the supreme mating of sound and sense, which we have agreed
to call poetry, had once more been achieved.
But I have wandered a little from the Serpentine. Has it ever struck
you what people who bathe in the Serpentine on days like this are like
during the rest of the year?
Suppose it is a balmy spring morning, a mild temperate afternoon in
early summer, a soft autumn twilight when everyone else is happy and
content, what are they doing then? Positively bathed in perspiration,
groaning under the burden of the sun, mopping their shining foreheads
and putting cabbage-leaves under their hats. And then at last comes
the day they have longed for and looked forward to all through the
twelve-months' heat-wave, a beautiful day forty degrees below the
belt. They spring out of bed and fling wide the casement. That is
what they intend to do, at least. As a matter of fact, of course,
it is stuck, and they have to bash it out with a bolster, sending the
icicles clinking into the basement. "Delicious!" they say, leaning out
and breathing deep. Then they chip a piece of ice out of the water-jug
with a hammer, rub it on their faces and begin to shave.
They shave in their cotton pyjamas, with bare feet, humming a song.
Then they put on old flannels and a blazer, wrap a towel round their
neck, light a cigarette, pick up a mattock and stroll to Hyde Park.
When they get there they feloniously break the KING'S ice. Then they
"ugh." The mere thought of these people ughing with a great splash
into the Serpentine makes me feel ill. When I think of them afterwards
sitting lazily on the bank and letting the blizzard dry their hair,
basking in the snow for an hour or two and reading their morning
paper, and every now and then throwing a snowball or a piece of "ugh"
into the water, I hate them. Nobody ought to be allowed to bathe in
the Serpentine on days like this except the swans, who paddle all
night to hold the ice at bay. I wonder if I could get a swan and keep
it in the water-jug.
Half-past eight? Yes, I did hear, thank you. I am really going to get
up very soon now.
What I am going to do is to make one tiger-like leap--tiger-like leap,
I say--for the bathroom door and turn the hot-water tap full on until
the whole of the upper part of the house is filled with steam.