p. 69, Dec. 5, 1910: I have been reading The Illustrious Prince, which Mrs. Wigram, you remember, gave me just before leaving New Zealand, a book I have thoroughly enjoyed—and the last novel, probably, that I shall read until we are well up in the warm sunshine on the way home. If I read novels habitually there would be no diary writing. As it is, the only quiet time in the day is from 4.30 a.m. or 5 a.m. to breakfast at 8 a.m.—and my writing is all done then.
p. 127: May 7, 1911: “Evening drawing and as it was my night watch, I prepared my lecture on sketching, i.e. I read Ruskin’s Elements of Drawing, which I have here, and made my lecture on that.”
p. 134: June 18, 1911: “Whole day reading Ponting’s book on Japan In Lotus Land Japan which I think is beautiful in illustration and in the feeling of its writing.”
p. 162: Aug 3, 1911: “Afternoon read Roosevelt’s African game trails and his chapter on Thayer’s view of protective coloration.”
p. 163: Aug. 16, 1911: “We can read and write in the hut now by daylight for an appreciable time. The whole day working at S.P.T. We want to get another number out by the middle of September….”
Aug 20, 1911: “Tenth Sunday after Trinity. Blowing still. Church. Spent the whole day reading the Confessio medici [Stephen Paget] again.”
p. 166: Aug. 26, 1911: “Read Kim again for a change.” [Finished on 3 Sept.
p. 168: Sept. 8, 1911: “Painting most of the day and reading Sherlock Holmes, The Memoirs and The Return.”
p. 203: Nov. 21: “We found the motor party, Evans, Day, Lashly, and Hooper all fit and well and very hungry indeed. They had been waiting here six days and had read Pickwick through.
p. 211: Dec. 6, 1911, during blizzard enroute South Pole: “I sleep most of the time lying up between the meals and seeing to the horses. Also have read a good deal of Tennyson—The Princess, Maud, etc.—in a volume I brought. Wind still from S. and S.E. Very wet and heavy snow.”
p. 212: Dec. 8, 1911: “Have been reading and re-reading Tennyson’s In Memoriam this blizzard and have been realizing what a perfect piece of faith and hope and religion it is, makes me feel that if the end comes to me here of hereabout there will be no great time for Ory to sorrow. All will be as it is meant to be, and Ory’s faith and hope and trust will be to her what Tennyson’s was to him. But In Memoriam is difficult reading, and the beauty of it wants pains to find, but it is splendid when found.”