Monday, February 17th

THE COLD has let up in the last twenty-four hours. Amazing how the release makes itself felt as tiredness at first. The animals want to be outdoors all the time, now that it is 32° instead of 22°, or 10°, or zero, as it was all last week. The cat scoots up trees, and races around, waving her tail. The dog by comparison seems a little subdued like me and is snoozing on the doorsill. It didn’t rain enough yesterday to wash away the snow, I am happy to note. The sea is ruffled in a massive way, no whitecaps; it looks as impenetrable and shining as bronze. Valentine freesias and yellow roses on my desk are still exquisite. At this season freesia is the flower, with its delicious scent and airy delicate trumpets.

On Saturday, February 15th, I was looking at the six o’clock news when Julian Huxley’s face appeared on the screen. Of course, I knew what that meant. He died at home, I hope peacefully. Although I have prayed that he might slip away, death when it comes is always a shock to the survivors. I burst into tears. And Tamas, asleep in the front hall, immediately got up and came, very concerned, to lick my tears.

All night I tossed about and couldn’t sleep for the memories and images of Julian and Juliette that rose up. When I was working on my first novel they lent me their apartment at Whipsnade (the zoo outside London). In the daytime there were lots of people about (the apartment was over a very good restaurant), but at night there was total silence except for the animal sounds … the peacock’s scream, the distant roar of a lion or tiger, the wolves howling in the wolf wood. My days were heavenly, workful, but whenever I needed a break I had the whole zoo to explore. The wallabies were free to roam, gentle creatures, with occasionally a baby looking out of its mother’s pocket. I took a sketchbook around and sometimes spent an hour drawing a bear or some other creature. I have no talent, but drawing something makes one really look at it, and that was the point for me—a meditation on “bear.”

The tensions are beginning to build up … lectures ahead, promises made … my blessed concentrated peace is almost at an end till the autumn comes again. This afternoon a minister is coming to see me from some distance away. I do hope he has not come to “convert” me. He wrote a friend to ask whether I believed in God and this visitation appears to be the result of a letter I wrote her to answer his question. Why is it that religious people so often badger and needle one? In my experience people who assert their religion are so very rarely religious in their actions. The saints I have known, Sister Maria Stella, the contemplative, Sister Mary David, who is doing such wonderful work among the very poor Blacks near Beaufort, never talk about religion and, above all, never put emotional pressure on others.