hairdresser insists upon giving me a
"wave."

I am beginning to associate with actors. I detest them, but it is only in
their company that I can feel I am not glaringly conspicuous. Their talk
infects me. I notice a growing tendency to dramatic brevity, to dashes and
pauses in my style, to a punctuation of bows and attitudes. Barnaby has
remarked it too. I offended Wembly by calling him "Dear Boy" yesterday. I
dread the end, but I cannot escape from it.

The fact is, I am being obliterated. Living a grey, retired life all my
youth, I came to the theatre a delicate sketch of a man, a thing of tints
and faint lines. Their gorgeous colouring has effaced me altogether.
People forget how much mode of expression, method of movement, are a
matter of contagion. I have heard of stage-struck people before, and
thought it a figure of speech. I spoke of it jestingly, as a disease. It
is no jest. It is a disease. And I have got it badly! Deep down within me
I protest against the wrong done to my personality--unavailingly. For
three hours or more a week I have to go and concentrate my attention on
some fresh play, and the suggestions of the drama strengthen their awful
hold upon me. My manners grow so flamboyant, my passions so professional,
that I doubt, as I said at the outset, whether it is really myself that
behaves in such a manner. I feel merely the core to this dramatic casing,
that grows thicker and presses upon me--me and mine. I feel like King
John's abbot in his cope of lead.

I doubt, indeed, whether I should not abandon the struggle altogether--
leave this sad world of ordinary life for which I am so ill fitted,
abandon the name of Cummins for some professional pseudonym, complete my
self-effacement, and--a thing of tricks and tatters, of posing and
pretence--go upon the stage. It seems my only resort--"to hold the mirror
up to Nature." For in the ordinary life, I will confess, no one now seems
to regard me as both sane and sober. Only upon the stage, I feel
convinced, will people take me seriously. That will be the end of it. I
_know_ that will be the end of it. And yet ... I will frankly confess
... all that marks off your actor from your common man ... I
_detest_. I am still largely of my Aunt Charlotte's opinion, that
play-acting is unworthy of a pure-minded man's attention, much more
participation. Even now I would resign my dramatic criticism and try a
rest. Only I can't get hold of Barnaby. Letters of resignati