Everything about that spring and summer when I was twenty-five was horrible, except for my work. That went well, because in June I was given the job which made me fashionable: a luxurious edition of Ronald Firbank’s novels to illustrate. To begin with it was to be in black and white, but an American publisher came in on it, then two from the Continent, so finally I was allowed to use colour and it was a lovely job. The publishers entered my illustrations in a competition which was supposed to be important, and they won an award, so that a double-page spread of them was reproduced in Graphis. After that the fashion magazines began to want me and one of them started to use the odd kind of fashion-drawings I could do: no one else had drawn clothes in that way before, though one or two have started to do so now.

If I had not had something to do which I could do well, and which I liked doing, and which took up much time and thought and energy … No, when I think of what it would have been like without any work I “fade away.”