Item 68: Diary entries for October 24–29, 1911

Though occasionally interrupted by visits from friends on holiday, or by literary tourists making pilgrimages to Italy in hopes of meeting him, Beerbohm’s daily life in Rapallo from 1910 onwards was placid to the point of dullness. As the diary he kept intermittently for 20 years attests, his main activity on some days was a stroll or drive into town. But autumn 1911 was greatly enlivened by letters from William Heinemann, the publisher of Beerbohm’s Zuleika Dobson, reporting the success of the novel with readers and critics, and by the arrival of copies of British newspapers containing enthusiastic, favorable reviews. Not everyone recognized it as a take-no-prisoners assault on the foolishness of celebrity worship; some enjoyed it instead as a charming love letter to Oxford.