W.N.P. Barbellion
The Journal of a Disappointed Man
PART III – MARRIAGE
September 12.
This evening we walked thro' the Churchyard reading tombstone inscriptions. What a lot of men have had wives!
I can't make out what has come over folk recently: the wit, wisdom and irony on the old tombstones have given place to maudlin sentiment and pious Bible references. Then on the anniversary of the death the custom among poorer classes is to publish such pathetic doggerel as the following – cuttings I have taken from time to time from the local newspaper in-:
"Her wish:
"'Farewell dear brother, Mother, sisters,
My life was passed in love for thee.
Mourn not for me nor sorrow take
But love my husband for my sake
Until the call comes home to thee,
Live thou in peace and harmony.'"
Again:
"A day of remembrance sad to recall
But still in my heart he is loved best of all
No matter how I think of him – his name I oft recall;
There is nothing left to answer me but his photo on the wall."
Or:
"One year has passed since that sad day,
When one we loved was called away.
God took her home; it was His will,
Forget her? – No, we never will."
These piteous screeds fill me with loving-kindness and with contempt alternately in a pendulum-like rhythm. What is the truth about them? Is the grief of these people as mean and ridiculous as their rhymes? Or is it a pitiful inarticulateness? Or is it merely vulgar advertisement of their sorrow? Or does it signify a passionate intention never to forget? – or a fear of forgetting, the rhymes being used as a fillip to the memory? Or – most miserable of all – is it just a custom, and one follow'ed in order to appear respectable in others' eyes? Are they poor souls? or contemptible fools?
September 14.
There is a ridiculous Cocker spaniel at the house where we are staying. He must have had a love affair and been jilted, or else he's a sort of village idiot. The landlady says he's not so silly as he looks – but he looks very silly: he languishes sentimentally, and when we laugh at him he looks "hurt." To-day we took him up on the Down and it seemed to brighten him up. Really, he is sane enough, with plenty of commonsense and good manners. But he is kept at home in the garden so much, lolling about all day, that as E – said, having nothing to do, he falls in love.
The Saturday Review writes: The effect of the "Brides and the Bath" Case on people with any trace of nice feeling is perhaps not particularly mischievous, tho' the thing is repulsive and hateful to them… To gloat over the details of repulsive horrors, simply from motives of curiosity– this is bad and degrading.
What a lot of repulsive things the nice refined people who read the Saturday Review must find in the world just now. For example the War. "Simply from motives of curiosity." Why certainly, no other than these, concerning one of the most remarkable murders in the annals of crime. And murders anyhow are damned interesting – which the Saturday Review isn't.
Chipples
I was surprised to discover the other day that when I talked of Chipples no one understood what I meant! It proves to be a dialect word familiar to all residents in Devonshire and designating spring onions. Anyway you won't find it in Murray's Dictionary; yet etymologically it is an extremely interesting word and a thoroughly good word with a splendid pedigree. To wit:
Italian: Cipollo.
Spanish: Cebolla.
French: Ciboule.
Latin: Cæpulla, dim. of cæpa (cf. cive, civot).
Now how did this pretty little alien manage to settle down among simple Devon folk? What has been the relation between Italy and – say Appledore, or Plymouth?17
October 6.
In London once more, living at her flat and using her furniture.
The Chalcidoidea
The Chalcidoidea are minute winged insects that parasitise other insects, and in the Memoirs of the Queensland Museum (Vol. I., 1912) you shall find an enormous catalogue of them by a person named Girault who writes the following dedication:
"I respectfully dedicate this little portion of work to science, common sense or true knowledge. I am convinced that human welfare is so dependent upon science that civilisation would not endure without it, and that what is meant by progress would be impossible. Also I am convinced that the great majority of mankind are too ignorant, that education is too archaic and impractical as looked at from the standpoint of intrinsic knowledge. There is too little known of the essential unity of the Universe and of things included, for instance, man himself. Opinions and prejudices rule in the place of what is true…"
Part II. is dedicated to:
"The genius of mankind, especially to that form of it expressed in monistic philosophy, whose conceived perception is the highest attainment reached by man."
I can only echo Whistler's remark one day as he stood before an execrably bad drawing "God bless my soul" – uttered slowly and thoughtfully and then repeated.
The beauty of it is that the Editor adds a serious footnote, dissociating himself, and a Scarabee to whom I shewed the Work, read it with a clouded brow and then said: "I think it rather out of place in a paper of this sort." (Tableau.)
October 12.
Down with influenza.
October 13.
A Zeppelin raid last night. I am down with a temperature, but our little household remained quite calm, thank God. We heard guns going off, and I had a fit of trembling as I lay in bed. Many dead of heart failure owing to the excitement.
October 14.
Still in bed. No raid last night. There were two raids on Wednesday, one at 9.30, and another at midnight. The first time the caretaker of the flats came up very alarmed to say "Zeppelins about," so we put out the lights. Then at midnight when everyone else was asleep I heard a big voice shout up from the street: "Lights out there. They're about again." Lay still in bed and waited. Distant gunfire.
October 17.
Bad heart attack.
October 18.
Heart intermits. Every three or four minutes. M – said that I ought to be getting used to it by now! Phew!! Very nervy and pusillanimous. Taking strychnine in strong doses. I hope dear E – does not catch the 'flu. She swallows quinine with large hopes.
October 19.
Staying at R – . Had a ghastly journey down, changing trains twice at Clapham Junction and at Croydon, heart intermitting all the time in every position. Poor E – with me. To-day surprised to find myself still alive.
October 20.
Better to-day. After much persuasion, I have got E – to let the flat so that we can get away into the country outside the Zeppelin zone.
October 24.
Back in London again. Am better, bolstered up with arsenic and strychnine. Too nervously excited to do any work.
October 25.
The letting of our flat is now in the hands of an agent, and E – , poor dear, is quite resigned to abandoning all her precious wallpapers, etc.
November 7.
The flat is let and we are now living in rooms at – , 20 miles out of London, to the Westward.
November 8.
It is a great relief to be down in the country. Zeppelins terrify me. Have just had a delightful experience in reading Conrad's new book, Victory– a welcome relief from all the tension of the past two months. To outward view, I have been merely a youth getting married, catching the 'flu and giving up a London flat.
Inwardly, I have been whizzing around like a Catherine Wheel. Consider the items:
Concussion of the spine.
Resulting paralysis of left leg ten days before marriage.
Zeppelin raid (heard a cannon go off for the first time).
Severe cold in the head day before marriage (and therefore wild anxiety).
Successful marriage with abatement of cold.
Return to our home.
Ten days later, down with influenza.
A second Zeppelin raid.
Bad heart attack.
Then flat sub-let and London evacuated.
The record nauseates me. I am nauseated with myself and my self-centredness… Suppose I have been "whizzing" as I call it – what then? They are but subjective trifles – meanwhile other men are seeing great adventures in Gallipoli and elsewhere. "The Triumph is gone," exclaimed the Admiral who in a little group of naval officers on board the flagship had been watching H.M.S. Triumph sink in the Ægean. He shuts his telescope with a click and returns in great dudgeon to his own quarters. How I envy all these men who are participating in this War – soldiers, sailors, war correspondents – all who live and throb and are not afraid. I am a timid youth, ansemic, wear spectacles, and am frightened by a Zep raid! How humiliating. I hate myself for a white-livered craven: I am suffocated for want of more life and courage. My damnable body is slowly killing off all my spirit and buoyancy. Even my mind is becoming blurred. My memory is like an old man's exactly. (Ask – .)
Yet thro' all my nausea, here I remain happy to discuss myself and my little mishaps. I'm damned sick of myself and all my neurotic whimperings, and so I hereby and now intend to lead a new life and throw this Journal to the Devil. I want to mangle it, tear it to shreds. You smug, hypocritical readers! you'll get no more of me. All you say I know is true before you say it and I know now all the criticism you are going to launch. So please spare yourself the trouble. You cannot enlighten me upon myself. I know. I disgust myself – and you, and as for you, you can go to the Devil with this Journal.
Finis
November 27.
To-day, armed with a certificate from my Doctor in a sealed envelope and addressed "to the Medical Officer examining Mr. W.N.P. Barbellion," I got leave to attend the recruiting office and offer my services to my King and Country. At the time, the fact that the envelope was sealed caused no suspicion and I had been comfortably carrying the document about in my pocket for days past.
Of course I attended merely as a matter of form under pressure of the authorities, as I knew I was totally unfit – but not quite how unfit. After receiving this precious certificate, I learnt that K – was recruiting Doctor at W – , and he offered to "put me thro' in five minutes," as he knows the state of my health. So at a time agreed upon, I went to-day and was immediately rejected as soon as he had stethoscoped my heart. The certificate therefore was not needed, and coming home in the train I opened it out of curiosity…
I was quite casual and thought it would be merely interesting to see what M – said.
It was.
"Some 18 months ago," it ran, "Mr. Barbellion shewed the just visible symptoms of – " and altho' this fact was at once communicated to my relatives it was withheld from me and M – therefore asked the M.O. to respect this confidence and to reject me without stating on what grounds. He went on to refer to my patellar and plantar reflexes, by which time I had had enough, tore the paper up and flung it out of the railway carriage window.
I then returned to the Museum intending to find out what – was in Clifford Allbutt's System of Medicine. I wondered whether it was brain or heart; and the very thought gave me palpitation. I hope it is heartsomething short and sharp rather than lingering. But I believe it must be – of the brain, the opposite process of softening occurring in old age. I recall M-'s words to me before geting married: that I had this "nerve weakness," but I was more likely to succumb to pneumonia than to any nervous trouble, and that only 12 months' happiness would be worth while.
On the whole I am amazed at the calm way in which I take this news. I was a fool never to have suspected serious nerve trouble before. Does dear E – know? What did M – tell her when he saw her before our marriage?
November 28.
As soon as I woke up in this clear, country air this morning, I thought: – . I have decided never to find out what it is. I shall find out in good time by the course of events.
A few years ago, the news would have scared me. But not so now. It only interests me. I have been happy, merry, and quite high-spirited to-day.
December 5.
I believe it's creeping paralysis. My left leg goes lame after a short walk. Fortunately E – does not take alarm.
December 17.
Spent the last two days, both of us, in a state of unrelieved gloom. The clouds never lifted for a moment – it's awful. I scarcely have spoken a word… And eugenically, what kind of an infant would even a Mark Tapley expect of a father with a medical history like mine, and a mother with a nervous system like hers?.. Could anything be more unfortunate? And the War? What may not have happened by this time next year? My health is grotesque.
December 20.
I wonder if she knows. I believe she does but I am afraid to broach the matter in case she doesn't. I think she must know something otherwise she would show more alarm over my leg, and when I went to the Recruiting Office she seemed to show no fear whatever lest they took me. Several times a day in the middle of a talk, or a meal, or a kiss, this problem flashes thro' my mind. I look at her but find no solution. However – for the present – the matter is not urgent.
1916
February 1.
Since I last wrote – a month ago – I have recovered my buoyancy after a blow which kept me under water so long I thought I should never come up and be happy again… I was reciting my woes to R – , and gaining much relief thereby, when we espied another crony on the other side of the street, crossed over at once, bandied words with him and then walked on, picking up the thread of my lugubrious story just where I had left off – secretly staggered at my emotional agility. I've got to this now, – I simply don't care.
February 2.
"And she draiglet all her petticoatie, Coming thro' the rye." These words have a ridiculous fascination for me; I cannot resist their saccharine, affectionate, nay amorous jingle and keep repeating them aloud all over the house – as Lamb once kept reciting "Rose Aylmer."
February 16.
We took possession of our country cottage to-day: very charming and overlooking a beautiful Park.
Have just discovered the Journal of the De Goncourts and been reading it greedily. Life has really been a commodity. I am boiling over with vitality, chattering amiably to everyone about nothing – argumentative, sanguine, serious, ridiculous. I called old R – a Rapscallion, a Curmudgeon, and a Scaramouche, and E – a trull, a drab, a trollop, a callet. "You certainly are a unique husband," said that sweet little lady, and I…
With me, one of the symptoms of delirium is always a melodramatic truculence! I shake my fist in R – 's face and make him explode with laughing… The sun to-day, and the great, whopping white clouds all bellied out, made me feel inside quite a bright young dog wriggling its body in ecstatic delight let loose upon the green sward.
"You must come down for a week end," I said to R – at lunch. "Come down as soon as you can. You will find every comfort. It is an enormous house – I have not succeeded in finding my way about it and – it's dangerous to lose yourself – makes you late for dinner. When you arrive our gilded janitor will say: 'I believe Mr. Barbellion is in the library.'"
"Black eunuchs wait on you at dinner, I suppose," R – rejoined.
"Oh! yes and golden chandeliers and a marble stair-case – all in barbaric splendour."
"Yes, I shall certainly be glad to come down," said R – , phlegmatically.
And so on and so on. Words, idle words all day in a continuous rush. And I am sure that the match which fired the gun-powder was the discovery of the De Goncourts' Journal! It's extraordinary how I have been going on from week to week quite calmly for all the world as if I had read all the books and seen all the places and done everything according to the heart's desire. This book has really jolted me out of my complacency: to think that all this time, I have been dead to so much! Why I might have died unconscious that the De Goncourts had ever lived and written their colossal book and now I am aware of it, I am all in a fever to read it and take it up into my brain: I might die now before I have finished it – a thought that makes me wild with desire just as I once endured most awful pangs when I felt my health going, and believed that I might die before having ever been in love – to die and never to have been in love! – for an instant at a time this possibility used to make me writhe.
March 22.
R – has an unpleasant habit of making some scarifying announcement drawing forth an explosive query from me and then lapsing at once into an eleusinian silence: he appears to take a sensuous pleasure in the pause that keeps you expectant. I could forgive a man who keeps you on tenterhooks for two puffs in order to keep his pipe alight, but R – shuts up out of sheer self-indulgence and goes on gazing at the horizon with the eyes of a seer (he thinks) trying to cod me he sees a portent there only revealed to God's elect.
I told him this in the middle of one of his luxurious silences. "I will tell you," he said deliberately, "when we reach the Oratory." (We were in Brompton Road.)
"Which side of it?" I enquired anxiously. "This or that?"
"That," said he, "will depend on how you behave in the meantime."
April 3.
We met a remarkable Bulldog to-day in the street, humbly following behind a tiny boy to whom it was attached by a piece of string. At the time we were following in the wake of three magnificent Serbian Officers, and I was particularly interesting myself in the curious cut of their top boots. But the Bulldog was the Red Herring in our path.
"Is that a Dog?" I asked the little boy.
He assured me that it was, and so it turned out to be, tho' Bull-frog would have been a better name for it, the forelegs being more bandied, the back broader and the mouth wider than in any Bulldog I have ever seen. It was a super-Bulldog.
We turned and walked on. "There," said R – , "now we have lost our Serbian Officers."
April 4.
"May I use your microscope?" he asked.
"By all means," I said with a gesture of elaborate politeness.
He sat down at my table, in my chair, and used my instrument – becoming at once absorbed and oblivious to my banter as per below:
"As Scotchmen," I said, "are monuments rather than men, this latest raid on Edinboro's worthy inhabitants must be called vandalsim rather than murder."
No answer. I continued to stand by my chair.
"How pleased Swift, Johnson, Lamb, and other anti-Caledonians would be…"
"Hope you don't mind my occupying your chair a little longer," the Scotchman said, "but this is a larva, has curious maxillæ…" and his voice faded away in abstraction.
"Oh! no – go on," I said, "I fear it is a grievous absence of hospitality on my part in not providing you with a glass of whiskey. Can I offer you water, Sir?"
No answer.
Another enthusiast ushered himself in, was greeted with delight by the first and invited to sit down. I pulled out a chair for him and said:
"Shave, sir, or hair cut?"
"If you follow along to the top of the galea," No. I droned on imperturbably, "you will…" etc.
I got tired of standing and talking to an empty house but at last they got up, apologising and making for the door.
I entreated them not to mention the matter – my fee should be nominal – I did it out of sheer love, etc.
They thanked me again and would have said more but I added blandly:
"You know your way out?" They assured me they did (having worked in the place for 30 years and more) – I thanked God – and sat down to my table once more.
(These reports of conversations are rather fatuous: yet they give an idea of the sort of person I have to deal with, and also the sort of person I am among this sort of person.)
April 6.
The Housefly Problem– 1916
For weeks past we have all been in a terrible flutter scarcely paralleled by the outbreak of Armageddon in August, 1914. The spark which fired almost the whole building was a letter to the Times written by Dr. – , making public an ignominious confession of ignorance on the part of Entomologists as to how the Housefly passed the winter. In reply, many correspondents wrote to say they hibernated, and one man was even so temerarious as to quote to us Entomologists the exact Latin name of the Housefly: viz., Musca domestica. We asked for specimens and enormous numbers of flies at once began to arrive at the Museum, alive and dead – and not a Housefly among them! So there was a terrible howdedo.
One of the correspondents was named "Masefield." "Not Masefield the poet?" an excited dipterist asked. I reassured him.
"I've a good mind," said Dr. – , "to reply to this chap who's so emphatic and give him a whigging – only he's climbing down a bit in this second letter in to-day's issue." I strongly advocated clemency.
But still the affair goes on. Every morning sees more letters and more flies sent by all sorts of persons – we seem to have set the whole world searching for Houseflies – Duchesses, signalmen, farmers, footmen. Every morning each fresh batch of flies is mounted on pins by experts in the Setting Room, and an Assistant's whole time is devoted to identifying, arranging, listing and reporting upon the new arrivals. At the last meeting of the Trustees a sample collection was displayed to show indubitably that the insects which hibernate in houses are not Musca domestica but Pollenia rudis. I understand the Trustees were appreciative.
An observant eye can now discover state visits to our dipterists from interested persons carrying their flies with them, animated discussions in the corridor, knots of excited enthusiasts in the Lavatory, in the Library, everywhere – and everywhere the subject discussed is the same: How does the Housefly pass the winter? As one passes one catches: "In Bakehouses certainly they are to be found but…" or a wistful voice, "I wish I had caught that one in my bathroom three winters ago – I am certain it was a Housefly." The Doctor himself – a gallant Captain – wanders from room to room stimulating his lieutenants to make suggestions, and examining every answer to the great interrogative on its merits, no matter how humble or insignificant the person who makes it. Then of an afternoon he will entirely disappear, and word goes round that he has set forth to examine a rubbish heap in Soho or Pimlico. As the afternoon draws to its close someone enquires if he has come back yet; next morning a second asks if I had seen him, then a third announces mournfully that he has just been holding conversation with him, but that nothing at all was found in the rubbish heap.
The great sensation of all occurred last week when somebody ran along the corridor crying that Mr. – had just found a Housefly in his room. We were all soon agog with the news, and the excited Captain was presently espied setting out for the scene of operations with a killing bottle and net. The insect was promptly impounded and identified as a veritable Musca domestica. A consultation being held to sit on the body, a lady finally laid information that two "forced Houseflies" hatched the day before had escaped from her possession. She suggested Mr. – 's specimen was one of them.
"How would it get from your room to Mr. – 's?" she was immediately asked. And breathless, we all heard her answer deliberately and quite audibly that the fugitive may have gone out of her window, up the garden and in by Mr. – 's window, or it may have gone out of her door, up the corridor and in by his door. I wanted to know why it should have entered Mr. – 's room as he is not a dipterist but a microlepidopterist. They looked at me sternly and we slowly dispersed.
This morning, the Dr. came to me with a newspaper cutting in his hand, saying, "The Times is behindhand." He handed me the slip. It was a clipping from to-day's Times about a sackful of flies which had been taken from Wandsworth Clock Tower in a state of hibernation.
"Behindhand?" I asked timidly, for I felt that all the story was not in front of me.
"Why, yes. Don't you know?"
I knew nothing, but was prepared for anything.
"The Star, two days ago," he informed me, "had a paragraph about this – headed 'Tempus fugit' " – this last in a resentful tone as tho' the frivolous reporter were attempting to discredit our mystery.
There was a long pause. Neither of us spoke. Then he slowly said:
"I wonder why The Times is so behindhand. This is two days late."
May 5.
Hulloa, old friend: how are you? I mean my Diary. I haven't written to you for ever so long, and my silence as usual indicates happiness. I have been passing thro' an unbroken succession of calm happy days, walking in the woods with my darling, or doing a little gentle gardening on coming home in the evening – and the War has been centuries away. Later on towards bedtime, E – reads Richard Jefferies, I play Patience and Mrs. – makes garments for Priscilla.
The only troubles have been a chimney which smokes and a neighbour's dog which barks at night. So to be sure, I have made port after storm at last – and none too soon. To-day my cheerfulness has been rising in a crescendo till to-night it broke in such a handsome crest of pure delight that I cannot think of going to bed without recording it.
Pachmann
After sitting on the wall around the fountain in the middle of Trafalgar Square, eating my sandwiches and feeding the Pigeons with the crumbs, I listened for a moment to the roar of the traffic around three sides of the Square as I stood in the centre quite alone, what time one fat old pigeon, all unconcerned, was treading another. It was an extraordinary experience: motor horns tooted incessantly and it seemed purposelessly, so that one had the fancy that all London was out for a joy-ride – it was a great British Victory perhaps, or Peace Day.
Then walked down Whitehall to Westminster Bridge in time to see the 2 o'clock boat start upstream for Kew. I loitered by the old fellow with the telescope who keeps his pitch by Boadicea: I saw a piper of the Scots Guards standing near gazing across the river but at nothing in particular – just idling as I was. I saw another man sitting on the stone steps and reading a dirty fragment of newspaper. I saw the genial, red-faced sea-faring man in charge of the landing stage strolling up and down his small domain, – chatting, jesting, spitting, and making fast a rope or so. Everything was alive to the finger tips, vividly shining, pulsating.
Arrived at Queen's Hall in time for Pachmann's Recital at 3.15… As usual he kept us waiting for 10 minutes. Then a short, fat, middle-aged man strolled casually on to the platform and everyone clapped violently – so it was Pachmann: a dirty greasy looking fellow with long hair of dirty grey colour, reaching down to his shoulders and an ugly face. He beamed on us and then shrugged his shoulders and went on shrugging them until his eye caught the music stool, which seemed to fill him with amazement. He stalked it carefully, held out one hand to it caressingly, and finding all was well, went two steps backwards, clasping his hands before him and always gazing at the little stool in mute admiration, his eyes sparkling with pleasure, like Mr. Pickwick's on the discovery of the archeological treasure. He approached once more, bent down and ever so gently moved it about 7/8ths of an inch nearer the piano. He then gave it a final pat with his right hand and sat down.
He played Nocturne No. 2, Prelude No. 20, a Mazurka and two Etudes of Chopin and Schubert's Impromptu No. 4.
At the close we all crowded around the platform and gave the queer, old-world gentleman an ovation, one man thrusting up his hand which Pachmann generously shook as desired.
As an encore he gave us a Valse – "Valse, Valse," he exclaimed ecstatically, jumping up and down in his seat in time to the music. It was a truly remarkable sight: on his right the clamorous crowd around the platform; on his left the seat holders of the Orchestra Stalls, while at the piano bobbed this grubby little fat man playing divine Chopin divinely well, at the same time rising and falling in his seat, turning a beaming countenance first to the right and then to the left, crying, "Valse, Valse." He is as entertaining as a tumbler at a variety hall.
As soon as he had finished, we clapped and rattled for more, Pachmann meanwhile standing surrounded by his idolaters in affected despair at ever being able to satisfy us. Presently he walked off and a scuffle was half visible behind the scenes between him and his agent who sent him in once more.
The applause was wonderful. As soon as he began again it ceased on the instant, and as soon as he left off it started again immediately – nothing boisterous or rapturous but a steady, determined thunder of applause that came regularly and evenly like the roar from some machine.
May 20.
Spent a quiet day. Sat at my escritoire in the Studio this morning writing an Essay, with a large 4-fold window on my left, looking on to woods and fields, with Linnets, Greenfinches, Cuckoos calling. This afternoon while E – rested awhile I sat on the veranda in the sun and read Antony and Cleopatra… Yes, I'm in harbour at last. I'd be the last to deny it but I cannot believe it will last. It's too good to last and it's all too good to be even true. E – is too good to be true, the home is too good to be true, and this quiet restful existence is too wonderful to last in the middle of a great war. It's just a little deceitful April sunshine, that's all…18
Had tea at the – . A brilliant summer's evening. Afterwards, we wandered into the garden and shrubbery and sat about on the turf of the lawn, chatting and smoking. Mr. – played with a rogue of a white Tomcat called Chatham, and E – talked about our neighbour, "Shamble legs," about garden topics, etc. Then I strolled into the drawing-room where Cynthia was playing Chopin on a grand piano. Is it not all perfectly lovely?
How delicious to be silent, lolling on the Chesterfield, gazing abstractedly thro' the lattice window and listening to the lulling charities of Nocturne No. 2, Op. 37! The melody in the latter part of this nocturne took me back at once to a cloudless day in an open boat in the Bay of Combemartin, with oars up and the water quietly and regularly lapping the gunwales as we rose and fell. A state of the most profound calm and happiness took possession of me.