My sports car - that important addition to any young man’s personal image - had played no part in my recent travels. As already stated, I had loaned it to Jimmy Skinner on the understanding that he would pay me the sum that I had been fined (in addition to losing my driving licence for six months) for my Speed Dangerous offence. On reflection I did come to realize how I had made an unwise deal, in that Jimmy had already given some indication of being a dangerous driver - having smashed up a car that he’d borrowed from Raymond Carr. And his promise to get my TR 2 insured for his personal use was never honoured.

Now that he was calling in at Longleat to return my car, he laughed this aside by saying how he’d always known that it wouldn’t prove necessary. But it left me mildly distrustful of him. He was a good friend, but he was liable to breach such agreements without perceiving that he was now in debt to me for the sum of whatever that insurance might have cost him. He was returning the car to me undamaged, I must admit, but after excessive mileage in that he’d used it to tour round Britain, even if he’d left it in England when he had set out for Spain. But I hesitate to think how it might have effected our friendship if he’d now been coming to tell me that my TR 2 had been written off, with my own insurance policy responsible for paying me the cost of a new car.

There are more important matters to consider however, than the survival of my car - matters more central to my personal identity, which was beginning to firm up all round. In that recent discussion with Henry on the subject of what I intended to do with my life, this would appear to be the first occasion that I had no thought in my head that I should try to join the Foreign Office. I was stating quite firmly that I was going to paint and to write. I had committed myself to that gamble, without leaving any routes open for a withdrawal of such intent.

I knew how I was still ludicrously inadequate in some aspects of my probationary work. As an artist, I had never excelled at drawing games and the like - which was much in contrast to [X], whose letters were filled with small sketches and caricatures. Perhaps I should mention that [M] was a draughtsman of even superior proficiency to herself. I’d never matched either of them in such spontaneous fluency when it came to displays of their artistic talent at any weekend gathering. My own draughtsmanship might be good on capturing movement, or character, in an Expressionist vein. But I was capable of grossly amateur performance when required to conjure up figures from imagination. Much of the skill that I had acquired related to the use of colour and texture in oils, rather than to line and form in the drawing.

With regard to my talents as a potential author, it was really in my letter-writing that I excelled. I was in my element in that, despite all the seriousness in which I viewed my life and the situation of living, when writing to my mother, or more especially to [X], I was capable of viewing myself from an externalized position as the odd (sometimes loveable) social misfit that others envisaged me to be. So I was developing an ability to poke fun at myself in a manner that had the capacity to amuse my readers.

[X] had once told me (with a laugh) how all of [L]’s letters to her had long since fed the flames of the winter fires at [P]. So it was with some trepidation that, many years later (when I was just starting to compile these early volumes of my autobiography), I enquired from her if I might take copies from all those letters which I myself had sent her. It was indeed evident that I had embarrassed her by my request, and she let it be known that at some point in her life, when moving houses perhaps, my letters had been "lost". This is a matter of regret to me. [X]’s own letters certainly gush with an amusing vitality, but I am inclined to suppose that my own may have been quite as good, or even in some respects better. I remain unable to prove this point however!

What I wrote to her was in fact a precursor to the style that I was seeking to develop for my journals, but with a greater emphasis perhaps, upon my desire to keep her smiling, and interested in me. It was all on a formula that they were communications to a truly intimate friend. But the transition to perceiving myself in that recipient role (within the journal) only developed gradually. At this particular stage, the letters would have been far more amusing to read than the journal. But they were setting a pattern which kept my style moving in that direction.

Another way of looking at my journals over this period is to see that I was striving to work out ME for my own sake. But I haven’t inflicted the tedium of reading the journal (precisely as I wrote it) upon my current readers. While remaining true to what went down on paper at that time, I have done a considerable editing job which greatly enhances its readability. And I have endeavoured to reincorporate within the body of the journal, the attitude from what I wrote to various people in my letters - most of which have been lost.

Between the letters and the journal, I was indeed making great strides of progress in my writing ability - as much as I’d progressed in my painting skills over the year when I was in Paris. Yet perhaps my greatest asset as a potential creative artist of any kind was the determination I was developing, not to be deflected from the course that I had set for myself. If I could be single-minded in my pursuit of that goal, I felt sure that (somewhere along the line) I’d find the remedies to whatever weaknesses there might be in my various techniques. The episode where I was left kneeling on the flint threshold of the Seminarists’ chapel up in the Sierra Nevada might be the right kind of example for me to quote. Despite much uncertainty as to what kind of a person I might really be, and with what ultimate attitude, there was an essential uncrackable toughness beneath it all - or crass cussedness, as Henry might prefer to describe it. But when I felt committed to something, I was unlikely to give up - come what may.

One of the great benefits from travelling abroad had been that it opened just one more window on how to view my identity from a differing culture’s point of view. I had already seen how the French view Englishmen, and just a little of how they view us in Germany; but the Spanish outlook constituted something different again. And along with this process, I was becoming the better able to discern my Englishness - and thus to know myself.

It was the contrast between the (perhaps superficial) fervour of their Catholicism and their evident lack of concern for the widespread poverty in their midst, which had created the most lasting impression on my mind. Don Jaime’s attitude on this question had been that he paid up happily enough what the Church demanded of him for charitable measures which came under their control - which absolved him from feeling any guilt about it being an uncaring society in which he dwelt. This naturally prompted me to make comparisons in my own mind about the society from which I came - to take note of the qualities in our welfare state, and to give some credit to the influence of caring socialists in our society.

There was another issue which also struck me - the fact of it being so important to Spaniards (and to other people that I met within their society) whether one happened to be a Catholic or Protestant. It hadn’t been like that in either France or Germany, so this was entirely new to me. It irritated me more than impressing me - because it was so divisive. But I took note that I was living in a world which was sometimes that kind of a place.

I had now reached the end of my first year at Oxford, and already felt that I was beginning to acquire the techniques and disciplines which might greatly improve the quality in my capacity to think. It was this perhaps, more than anything else, which characterized the Oxford experience. I was learning to perceive how there is a framework in which our Western ideas have to be expressed. And until I had mastered it, there would be as much confusion in my head as there was in the external world. The learning might be all ahead of me, but I knew how I had at least made a start.

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