“Maya & I went up to London & spent the remainder of the morning at Selfridges, after a fruitless attempt to visit Helen Webb. It’s a wonderful place, but the assistants have the haughty manner that terrifies me in shops & I do hate being always called madam. I bought a cotton gown & a nightgown & a pair of knickers. We dined there & were badly robbed. “
WEEK 133: (31st May – 6th June 1920)
“Maya & I went on to a labour meeting at Chalfont St. Peter about taxation, & I read a pamphlet on the proposed levy on capital while they were “committing.” Nora & Charlie missed their train to London & came back for the night. C. is delicate & still rundown from working too hard in France, & Maya thinks he is badly in want of looking after, but there’s no one to do it. Mr M. talks to him at length about motors – it seems a most absorbing subject.“
WEEK 131: (17th – 22nd May 1920)
“I went to the Coliseum to see Her Barrier was objectionable enough to complain to the theatre committee about – Miss Doyle had been telling D. – it was awful. It was rather beastly, & such rot! But there was a comic one before it where three men were killed & went to hell & were shut into a pit of fire by devils with huge red hot pitchforks, which was lovely.”
WEEK 124: (29th March – 4th April 1920)
“I read a good deal of the Valley of the Moon by Jack London. The American language is awful, & makes a book very difficult to read and gets tired of the pursuit of bodily experience too, and I never liked Saxon particularly, but Billy is sometimes nice, & one is allowed to hear more of his physical charms than usual with a man. “
WEEK 79: (12th – 16th May 1919)
“Then I went to the club committee & found a row going on, J. Wylie had said in a speech on Labour day that the less some people said about what they had done for Ireland the better, & Brazil took this to himself & was raging, & wanted J. W. to withdraw it, & so did everyone else except Ald. Power, who never encourages people to be offended, J. Wylie & myself. J. W. had already said he didn’t mean Brazil, but that wdn’t satisfy them. They prating how a withdrawal was the only way to restore harmony, whereas it seemed to me a forced withdrawal was the best way to increase & perpetuate ill feeling.”