W.N.P. Barbellion
The Journal of a Disappointed Man
In summer time, successive rows of Foxgloves one behind the other in barbaric splendour are ranged around the grassy rubble slopes like spectators in an amphitheatre awaiting the spectacle. Fire-bellied Efts slip here and there lazily thro' the water. Occasionally a Grass-snake would swim across the pool and once I caught one and on opening his stomach found a large fire-bellied Eft inside. The sun beats fiercely into this deep hollow and makes the water tepid. On the surface grows a glairy Alga, which was once all green but now festers in yellow patches and causes a horrible stench. Everything is absolutely still, air and water are stagnant. A large Dytiscus beetle rises to the surface to breathe and every now and then large bubbles of marsh gas come sailing majestically up from the depth and explode quietly into the fetid air. The horrificness of this place impressed me even when I was intent only on fishing there for bugs and efts. Now, seen in retrospect, it haunts me.
May 28.
It is only by accident that certain of our bodily functions are distasteful. Many birds eat the faeces of their young. The vomits of some Owls are formed into shapely pellets, often of beautiful appearance, when composed of the glittering multi-coloured elytra of Beetles, etc. The common Eland is known to micturate on the tuft of hair on the crown of its head, and it does this habitually, when lying down, by bending its head around and down – apparently because of the aroma, perhaps of sexual importance during mating time, as it is a habit of the male alone.
At lunch time, had an unpleasant intermittency period in my heart's action and this rather eclipsed my anxiety over a probable Zeppelin Raid. Went home to my rooms by 'bus, and before setting off to catch my train for West Wycombe to stay for the week-end at a Farm with E – swallowed two teaspoonfuls of neat brandy, filled my flask, and took a taxi to Paddington. At 3.50 started to walk to C – H – Farm from W. Wycombe Station, where E – has been lodging for some weeks taking a rest cure after a serious nervous breakdown thro' overwork. As soon as I stepped out of the train, I sniffed the fresh air and soon made off down the road, happy to have left London and the winter and the war far behind. The first man of whom I inquired the way happened to have been working at the Farm only a few weeks ago, so I relied implicitly on his directions, and as it was but a mile and a half decided that my wobbly heart could stand the strain. I set out with a good deal of pleasurable anticipation. I was genuinely looking forward to seeing E – , altho' in the past few weeks our relations had become a little strained, at least on my part, mainly because of her little scrappy notes to me scribbled in pencil, undated, and dull! Yet I could do with a volume of "Sonnets from the Portuguese." These letters chilled me. In reply, I wrote with cold steel short, lifeless formal notes, for I felt genuinely aggrieved that she should care so little how she wrote to me or how she expressed her love. I became ironical with myself over the prospect of marrying a girl who appeared so little to appreciate my education and mental habits. [What a popinjay! – 1917.] My petty spirit grew disenchanted, out of love. I was false to her in a hundred inconsiderable little ways and even deliberately planned the breaking off of the engagement some months hence when she should be restored to normal health.
But once in the country and, as I thought, nearing my love at every step and at every bend in the road, even anticipating her arms around me with real pleasure (for she promised to meet me half way), I on a sudden grew eager for her again and was assured of a happy week-end with her. Then the road grew puzzling and I became confused, uncertain of the way. I began to murmur she should have given me instructions. Every now and then I had to stop and rest as my heart was beating so furiously. Espying a farm on the left I made sure I had arrived at my destination and walked across a field to it and entered the yard where I heard some one milking a cow in a shed. I shouted over the five-barred gate into empty space, "Is this C – H – Farm?" A labourer came out of the shed and redirected me. It was now ten to five. I was tired and out of sorts, and carried a troublesome little handbag. I swore and cursed and found fault with E – and the Universe.
I trudged on, asking people, as I went, the way, finally emerging from the cover of a beautiful wood thro' a wicket gate almost at the entrance to the Farm I sought. At the front door we embraced affectionately and we entered at once, I putting a quite good face upon my afternoon's exertions – when I consider my unbridled fury of a short time before. E – , as brown as a berry, conducted me to my bedroom and I nearly forgot to take this obvious opportunity of kissing her again.
"How are you?" I asked.
"All right," she said, fencing.
"But really?"
"All right."
(A little nettled): "My dear, that isn't going to satisfy me. You will have to tell me exactly how you are."
After tea, I recovered myself and we went for a walk together. The beauty of the country warmed me up, and in the wood we kissed – I for my part happy and quite content with the present state of our relations, i. e., affectionate but not perfervid.
May 29.
Got up early and walked around the Farm before breakfast. Everything promises to be delightful – young calves, broods of ducklings, and turkeys, fowls, cats and dogs. In the yard are two large Cathedral barns, with enormous pent roofs sloping down to within about two feet of the ground and entered by way of great double doors that open with the slowness and solemnity of a Castle's portal studded with iron knobs. It thrilled me to the marrow on first putting my head outside to be greeted with the grunt of an invisible pig that I found scraping his back on the other side of the garden wall.
In the afternoon, E – and I sat together in the Beech Wood: E – on a deck chair and I on a rug on the ground. In spite of our beautiful surroundings we did not progress very well, but I attributed her slight aloofness to the state of her nerves. She is still far from recovered. These wonderful Beech Woods are quite new to me. The forest beech is a very different plant from the solitary tree. In the struggle to reach the light the Forest Beech grows lean and tall and gives an extraordinary suggestion of wiry powerful strength. On the margins of the wood, Bluebells were mobilised in serried ranks. Great Tits whistled – in the language of our allies – "Bijou, Bijou" and I agreed with every one of them.
Some folk don't like to walk over Bluebells or Buttercups or other flowers growing on the ground. But it is foolish to try to pamper Nature as if she were a sickly child. She is strong and can stand it. You can stamp on and crush a thousand flowers – they will all come up again next year.
By some labyrinthine way which I cannot now recall, the conversation worked round to a leading question by E. – if in times like these we ought not to cease being in love? She was quite calm and serious. I said "No, of course not, silly." My immediate apprehension was that she had perceived the coldness in my letters and I was quite satisfied that she was so well able to read the signs in the sky. "But you don't wish to go on?" she persisted. I persisted that I did, that I had no misgivings, no second thoughts, that I was not merely taking pity on her, etc. The wild temptation to seize this opportunity for a break I smothered in reflecting how ill she was and how necessary to wait first till she was well again. These thoughts passed swiftly, vaguely like wraiths thro' my mind: I was barely conscious of them. Then I recalled the sonnet about coming in the rearward of a conquered woe and mused thereon. But I took no action. [Fortunately – for me. 1916.]
Presently with cunning I said that there was no cloud on my horizon whatever – only her "letters disappointed me a little – they were so cold," but "as soon as I saw you again, darling, those feelings disappeared."
As soon as they were spoken I knew they were not as they might seem, the words of a liar and hypocrite. They became true. E – looked very sweet and helpless and I loved her again as much as ever.
"It's funny," she said, "but I thought your letters were cold. Letters are so horrid."
The incident shews how impossible is intellectual honesty between lovers. Truth is at times a hound which must to kennel.
"Write as you would speak," said I. "You know I'm not one to carp about a spelling mistake!"
The latter remark astonished me. Was it indeed I who was speaking? All the week I had been fuming over this. Yet I was honest: the Sun and E.'s presence were dispelling my ill-humours and crochets. We sealed our conversation with a kiss and swore never to doubt each other again. E.'s spell was beginning to act. It is always the same. I cannot resist the actual presence of this woman. Out of her sight, I can in cold blood plan a brutal rupture. I can pay her a visit when the first kiss is a duty and the embrace a formality. But after 5 minutes I am as passionate and devoted as before. It is always thus. After leaving her, I am angry to think that once more I have succumbed.
In the evening we went out into a field and sat together in the grass. It is beautiful. We lay flat on our backs and gazed up at the sky.
S.H. has died of enteric at Malta. In writing to Mrs. H., instead of dwelling on what a splendid fellow he was I belaboured the fact that I still remembered our boyish friendship in every detail and still kept his photo on my mantelpiece and altho' "in later years" I didn't suppose we "had a great deal in common I discovered that a friendship even between two small boys cannot wholly disappear into the void." Discussing myself when I ought to have been praising him! Ugh! She will think what a conceited, puff-breasted Jackanapes. These phrases have rankled in my mind ever since I dropped the letter into the letter-box. "Your Stanley, Mrs. H., was of course a very inferior sort of person and naturally, you could hardly expect me to remain friendly with him but rest assured I hadn't forgotten him," etc.
The Luxury of Lunacy
Yesterday, I read a paper at the Zoological Society about lice. There was a goodly baldness of sconce and some considerable length of beard present that listened or appeared to listen to my innocent remarks with great solemnity and sapience… I badly wanted to tell them some horrid stories about human lice but I had not the courage. I wanted to jolt these middle-aged gentlemen by performing a few tricks but I am too timid for such adventures. But before going to sleep I imagined a pandemonium in which with a perfectly glacial manner I produced lice alive from my pockets, conjured them down from the roof in a rain, with the skilful sleight of hand drew them out of the chairman's beard, made the ladies scream as I approached, dared to say they were all lousy and unclean and finished up with an eloquent apostrophe after the manner of Thomas de Quincey (and of Sir Walter Raleigh before him) beginning:
"O just, subtle and eloquent avenger, pierce the hides of these abominable old fogies, speckle their polished calvaria with the scarlet blood drops…"
But I hadn't the courage. Shelley in a crowded omnibus suddenly burst out: "O let us sit upon the ground and tell sad stories of the deaths of Kings, etc." I've always wanted to do something like that and when I have £5 to spare I hope to pull the communication cord of an express train – my hands tingle as often as I look at it. Dr. Johnson's courage in tapping the lamp-posts is really everyone's envy tho' we laugh at him for it and say, green-eyed, that he was mad. In walking along the pavement, I sometimes indulge myself in the unutterable, deeply rooted satisfaction of stepping on a separate flagstone where this is possible with every stride. And if this is impossible or not easy, there arises in me a vague mental uneasiness, some subconscious suspicion that the world is not properly geometrical and that the whole universe perhaps is working out of truth. I am also rather proud of my courageous self-surrender to the daemon of laughter, especially in those early days when H. and I used to sit opposite one another and howl like hyenas. After the most cacophonous cachinnations as soon as we had recovered ourselves he or I would regularly remark in serious and confidential tones, "I say – we really are going mad." But what a delightful luxury to be thus mad amid the great, spacious, architectural solemnity with gargoyles and effigies of a scientific meeting! Some people never do more than chuckle or smile – and they are often very humorous happy people, ignorant nevertheless of the joy of riding themselves on the snaffle and losing all control.
While boating on – last summer, we saw two persons, a man and a girl sitting together on the beach reading a book with heads almost touching.
"I wonder what they're reading?" I said, and I was dying to know. We made a few facetious guesses.
"Shall I ask?"
"Yes, do," said Mrs. – .
The truth is we all wanted to know. We were suddenly mad with curiosity as we watched the happy pair turning over leaf after leaf.
While R – leaned on his oars, I stood up in the boat and threatened to shout out a polite enquiry – just to prove that the will is free. But seeing my intention the boat-load grew nervous and said seriously, "No," which unnerved me at the last moment so I sat down again. Why was I so afraid of being thought a lunatic by two persons in the distance whom I had never seen and probably would never see again? Besides I was a lunatic – we all were.
In our post-prandial perambulations about S. Kensington G – and I often pass the window of a photographer's shop containing always a profusion of bare arms, chests, necks, bosoms belonging to actresses, aristocrats and harlots – some very beautiful indeed. Yet on the whole the window annoys us, especially one picture of a young thing with an arum lily (ghastly plant!) laid exquisitely across her breast.
"Why do we suffer this?" I asked G – , tapping the window ledge as we stood.
"I don't know," he answered lamely – morose. (Pause while the two embittered young men continue to look in and the beautiful young women continue to look out.)
Thoroughly disgruntled I said at last: "If only we had the courage of our innate madness, the courage of children, lunatics and men of genius, we should get some stamp paper, and stick a square beneath each photograph with our comments."
Baudelaire describes how he dismissed a glass vendor because he had no coloured glasses – "glasses of rose and crimson, magical glasses, glasses of Paradise" – and, stepping out on to his balcony, threw a flowerpot down on the tray of glasses as soon as the man issued into the street below, shouting down furiously, "The Life Beautiful! The Life Beautiful."
Bergson's theory is that laughter is a "social gesture" so that when a man in a top hat treads on a banana skin and slips down we laugh at him for his lack "of living pliableness." At this rate we ought to be profoundly solemn at Baudelaire's action and moreover a "social gesture" is more likely to be an expression of society's will to conformity in all its members rather than any dangerous "living pliableness." Society hates living pliableness and prefers drill, routine, orthodoxy, conformity. It hated the living pliableness of Turner, of Keats, of Samuel Butler and a hundred others.
But to return to lunacy: the truth is we are all mad fundamentally and are merely schooled into sanity by education. Pascal wrote: "Men are so necessarily mad that not to be mad would amount to another form of madness." And, in fact, the man who has succeeded in extirpating this intoxication of life is usually said to be "temporarily insane." In those melancholy interludes of sanity when the mind becomes rationalised we all know how much we have been deceived and gulled, what an extraordinary spectacle humanity presents rushing on in noise and tumult no one knows why or whither. Look at that tailor in his shop – why does he do it? Some day in the future he thinks he will… But the day never, comes and he is nevertheless content.
May 30.
A brilliantly sunny day. This funny old farm-house where we are staying quite delights me. It is pleasant, too, to dawdle over dressing, to put away shaving tackle for a day or so, to jump out of bed in the morning and thrust my head out of the window into the fresh and stock-scented air of the garden, listen to the bird chorus or watch a "scrap" in the poultry-run. Then all unashamed, I dress myself before a dear old lady in a flowery print gown concealing 4 thin legs and over the top of the mirror a piece of lace just like a bonnet, caught up in front by a piece of pink ribbon. On the walls Pear's Soap Annuals, on a side table Swiss Family Robinson and Children of the New Forest. Then there are rats under the floors, two wooden staircases which wind up out of sight, two white dairies, iron hapses on all the doors and a privy at the top of the orchard. (Tell me – how do you explain the psychosis of a being who on a day must have seized hammer and nail and an almanac picture of a woman in the snow with a basket of goodies – "An Errand of Mercy" – carried all three to the top of the orchard and nailed the picture up on the dirty wall in the semi-darkness of an earth-closet?)
Got up quite early before breakfast and went birds'-nesting… It would take too long and be too sentimental for me to record my feelings on looking into the first nest I found – a Chaffinch's, the first wild bird's eggs I have seen for many years. As I stood with an egg between thumb and forefinger, my memories flocked down like white birds and surrounded me. I remained still, fed them with my thoughts and let them perch upon my person – a second St. Francis of Assisi. Then I shoo'ed them all away and prepared for the more palpitating enjoyment of to-day.
After breakfast we sat in the Buttercup field – my love and I – and "plucked up kisses by the roots that grew upon our lips." The sun was streaming down and the field thickly peopled with Buttercups. From where we sat we could see the whole of the valley below and Farmer Whaley – a speck in the distance – working a machine in a field. We watched him idly. The gamekeeper's gun went off in one of the covers. It was jolly to put our heads together right down deep in the Buttercups and luxuriously follow the pelting activities of the tiny insects crawling here and there in the forest of grass, clambering over a broken blade athwart another like a wrecked tree or busily enquiring into some low scrub at the roots. A chicken came our way and he seemed an enormous bird from the grass-blade's point of view. How nice to be a chicken in a field of Buttercups and see them as big as Sunflowers! or to be a Gulliver in the Beech Woods! to be so small as to be able to climb a Buttercup, tumble into the corolla and be dusted yellow or to be so big as to be able to pull up a Beech-tree with finger and thumb! If only a man were a magician, could play fast and loose with rigid Nature? what a multitude of rich experiences he could discover for himself!
I looked long and steadily this morning at the magnificent torso of a high forest Beech and tried to project myself into its lithe tiger-like form, to feel its electric sap vitalising all my frame out to the tip of every tingling leaf, to possess its splendid erectness in my own bones. I could have flung my arms around its fascinating body but the austerity of the great creature forbad it. Then a Hawk fired my ambition! – to be a Hawk, or a Falcon, to have a Falcon's soul, a Falcon's heart – that splendid muscle in the cage of the thorax – and the Falcon's pride and sagacious eye!14
When the sun grew too hot we went into the wood where waves of Bluebells dashed up around the foot of the Oak in front of us… I never knew before, the delight of offering oneself up – an oblation of one's whole being; I even longed for some self-sacrifice, to have to give up something for her sake. It intoxicated me to think I was making another happy…
After a lunch of scrambled eggs and rhubarb and cream went up into the Beech Wood again and sat on a rug at the foot of a tree. The sun filtered in thro' the greenery casting a "dim, religious light."
"It's like a cathedral," I chattered away, "stained glass windows, pillars, aisles – all complete."
"It would be nice to be married in a Cathedral like this," she said. "At C – Hall Cathedral, by the Rev. Canon Beech…"
"Sir Henry Wood was the organist."
"Yes," she said, "and the Rev. Blackbird the precentor."
We laughed over our silliness!
Shrew-mice pattered over the dead leaves and one came boldly into view under a bramble bush – she had never seen one before. Overhead, a ribald fellow of a Blackbird whistled a jaunty tune. E – laughed. "I am sure that Blackbird is laughing at us," she said. "It makes me feel quite hot."
This evening we sat on the slope of a big field where by lowering our eyes we could see the sun setting behind the grass blades – a very pretty sight which I do not remember, ever to have noted before. A large blue Carabus beetle was stumbling about, Culvers cooed in the woods near by. It was delightful to be up 600 feet on a grassy field under the shadow of a large wood at sunset with my darling.
May 31.
Sitting at tea in the farm house to-day E – cried suddenly, pointing to a sandy cat in the garden:
"There, – he's the father of the little kittens in the barn and I'll tell you how we know. P – noticed the kittens had big feet and later on saw that old Tom stalking across the garden with big feet of exactly the same kind."
"So you impute the paternity of the kittens to the gentleman under the laurel bushes?"
I looked at the kittens to-night and found they had extra toes. "Mr. Sixtoes," as W – calls him also possesses six toes, so the circumstantial evidence looks black against him.
June 1.
In the Beech Wood all the morning. Heigh-ho! it's grand to lie out as straight as a line on your back, gaze upwards into the tree above, and with a caressing eye follow its branches out into their multitudinous ramifications forward and back – luxurious travel for the tired eye. … Then I would shut my eyes and try to guess where her next kiss would descend. Then I opened my eyes and watched her face in the most extravagant detail, I counted the little filaments on her precious mole and saw the sun thro' the golden down of her throat…
Sunlight and a fresh wind. A day of tiny cameos, little coups d'œil, fleeting impressions snapshotted on the mind: the glint on the keeper's gun as he crossed a field a mile away below us, sunlight all along a silken hawser which some Spider engineer had spun between the tops of two tall trees spanning the whole width of a bridle path, the constant patter of Shrew-mice over dead leaves, the pendulum of a Bumble-bee in a flower, and the just perceptible oscillation of the tree tops in the wind. While we are at meals the perfume of Lilac and Stocks pours in thro' the window and when we go to bed it is still pouring in by the open lattice.
June 2.
Each day I drop a specially selected Buttercup in past the little "Peeler," at the apex of the "V" to lie among the blue ribbons of her camisoles – those dainty white leaves that wrap around her bosom like the petals around the heart of a Rose. Then at night when she undresses, it falls out and she preserves it.
In the woods, hearing an extra loud patter on the leaves, we turned our heads and saw a Frog hopping our way. I caught him and gave an elementary lesson in Anatomy. I described to her the brain, the pineal organ in Anguis, Sphenodon's pineal eye, etc. Then we fell to kissing again… Every now and then she raises her head and listens (like a Thrush on the lawn) thinking she hears someone approach. We neither of us speak much … and at the end of the day, the nerve endings on my lips are tingling.
Farmer Whaley is a funny old man with a soft pious voice. When he feeds the Fowls, he sucks in a gentle, caressing noise between his lips for all the world as if he fed them because he loved them, and not because he wants to fatten them up for killing. His daughter Lucy, aged 22, loves all the animals of the farm and they all love her; the Cows stand monumentally still while she strokes them down the blaze or affectionately waggles their dewlaps. This morning, she walked up to a little Calf in the farm-yard scarce a fortnight old which started to "back" in a funny way, spraddling out its legs and lowering its head. Miss Lucy laughed merrily and cried "Ah! you funny little thing," and went off on her way to feed the Fowls who all raced to the gate as soon as they heard her footsteps. She brought in two double-yolked Ducks' eggs for us to see and marvel at. In the breakfast room stands a stuffed Collie dog in a glass case. I'd as soon embalm my grandmother and keep her on the sideboard.
I asked young George, the farm-boy, what bird went like this: I whistled it. He looked abashed and said a Chaffinch. I told Miss Lucy who said George was a silly boy, and Miss Lucy told Farmer Whaley who said George ought to know better – it was a Mistle-Thrush.
The letters are brought us each morning by a tramp with a game leg who secretes his Majesty's Mails in a shabby bowler hat, the small packages and parcels going to the roomy tail pocket of a dirty morning coat. A decayed gentleman of much interest to us.
June 3.
We have made a little nest in the wood and I lead her into it by the hand over the briars and undergrowth as if conducting her to the grand piano on a concert platform. I kissed her…
Then in a second we switch back to ordinary conversation. In an ordinary conversational voice I ask the trees, the birds, the sky.
"What's become of all the gold?"
"What's become of Waring?"
"What is Love? 'Tis not hereafter."
"Where are the snows of yesteryear?"
"Who killed Cock Robin?"
"Who's who?"
And so on thro' all the great interrogatives that I could think of"till she stopped my mouth with a kiss and we both laughed.
"Miss Penderkins," I say. "Miss Penderlet, Miss Pender-au-lait, Miss Pender-filings."
What do I mean? she cries. "What's the point of the names? Why take my name in vain? Why? What? How?"
She does not know that clever young men sometimes trade on their reputation among simpler folk by pretending that meaningless remarks conceal some subtlety or cynicism, some little Attic snap.
I have been teaching her to distinguish the songs of different birds and often we sit a long while in the Cathedral Wood while I say, "What's that?" and "What's that?" and she tells me. It is delightful to watch her dear serious face as she listens… This evening I gave a viva voce examination as per below:
"What does the Yellow Hammer say?"
"What colour are the Hedge Sparrow's eggs?"
"Describe the Nightjar's voice."
"How many eggs does it lay?"
"Oh! you never told me about the Nightjar," she cried outraged.
"No: it's a difficult question put in for candidates taking honours."
Then we rambled on into Tomfoolery. "Describe the call-note of a motor omnibus." "Why does the chicken cross the road?" and "What's that?" – when a railway engine whistled in the distance.
Measure by this our happiness!
June 4.
At a quarter past eight, this morning, the horse and trap were awaiting me outside, and bidding her "Goodbye" I got in and drove off – she riding on the step down so far, as the gate. Then we waved till we were out of sight. Back in London by 10 a.m. She makes slow progress, poor dear – her nerves are still very much of a jangle. But I am better, my heart is less wobbly.
June 5.
R – cannot make me out. He says one day I complain bitterly at not receiving a Portuguese sonnet once a week, and the next all is well and Love reigneth. "Verily a Sphinx."
June 7.
Spent the afternoon at the Royal Army Medical College in consultation with the Professor of Hygiene. Amid all the paraphernalia of research, even when discussing a serious problem with a serious Major, I could not take myself seriously. I am incurably trivial and always feel myself an irresponsible youth, wondering and futile, among owlish grown-ups.
At 4 p.m. departed and went down on Vauxhall Bridge and watched a flour-barge being unloaded before returning to the Museum. I could readily hang on behind a cart, stare at an accident, pull a face at a policeman and then run away.
June 20.
… It annoys me to find the laissez-faire attitude of our relatives. Not one with a remonstrance for us and yet all the omens are against our marriage. In the state of my nervous system and in the state of hers – we have both had serious nervous break-downs – how impossible it seems! Yet they say all the old conventional things to us, about our happiness and so on!..
… Am I a moral monster? Surely a man who can combine such calculating callousness with really generous impulses of the heart is – what?
The truth is I think I am in love with her: but I am also mightily in love with myself. One or the other has to give.
June 25.
If sometimes you saw me in my room by myself, you would say I was a ridiculous coxcomb. For I walk about, look out of the window then at the mirror – turning my head sideways perhaps so as to see it in profile. Or I gaze down into my eyes – my eyes always impress me – and wonder what effect I produce on others. This, I believe, is not so much vanity as curiosity. I know I am not prepossessing in appearance – my nose is crooked and my skin is blotched. Yet my physique – because it is mine – interests me. I like to see myself walking and talking. I should like to hold myself in my hand in front of me like a Punchinello and carefully examine myself at my leisure.
June 28.
Saw my brother A – off at Waterloo en route for Armageddon. Darling fellow. He shook hands with P – and H – , and P – wished him "Goodbye, and good luck." Then he held my hand a moment, said "Goodbye, old man," and for a second gave me a queer little nervous look. I could only say "Goodbye," but we understand each other perfectly… It is horrible. I love him tenderly.