I am still feeling my way gradually and trying not to assert myself much just at present but have taken the somewhat lofty view of assuming that things will go on as usual and as they should, and showing intense surprise if everything is not quite right. Whitmore will have to be squashed I quite forsee, he seems to have a genius for happening to be doing the wrong thing at the wrong time. He and Hodgson were ragging about the first day when I led the way into lunch…
I went to tea in College with Benvenisti, Wood E and Heaton-Ellis…I sat on and talked to Benvenisti til nearly six about the pictures at the Franco-British and other things. This reminds me that I turned into the National Gallery this afternoon and looked at the new ‘Hals’ which is a fine painting but not to my mind to be compared to the ‘Laughing Cavalier’…