W.N.P. Barbellion
The Journal of a Disappointed Man
April 22.
Who will rid me of the body of this death? My body is chained to me – a dead weight. It is my warder. I can do nothing without first consulting it and seeking its permission. I jeer at its grotesqueness. I chafe at the thongs it binds on me. On this bully I am dependent for everything the world can give me. How can I preserve my amour propre when I must needs be for ever wheedling and cajoling a despot with delicate meats and soft couches? – I who am proud, ambitious, and full of energy! In the end, too, I know it intends to carry me off… I should like though to have the last kick and, copying De Quincey, arrange to hand it over for dissection to the medical men – out of revenge.
"Hope thou not much; fear thou not at all" – my motto of late.
April 30.
I can well imagine looking back on these entries later on and blushing at the pettiness of my soul herein revealed… Only be charitable, kind reader. There are three Johns, and I am much mistaken if in these pages there will not be found something of the John known to himself, and an inkling, perhaps, of the man as he is known to his Creator. As a timid showman afraid that unless he emphasises the feature of his exhibit, they will be overlooked, let me, hat in hand, point out that I know I am an ass, that I am still hoping (in spite of ill health) that I am an enthusiast.
May 2.
Maeterlinck's Wisdom and Destiny is distilled Marcus Aurelius. I am rather tired of these comfortable philosophers. If a man be harassed by Fate with a red rag and a picador let him turn and rend him – or try to, anyway.
May 8.
Staying by the Sea
I have been living out of doors a lot lately and am getting sunburnt. It gives me infinite pleasure to be sunburnt – to appear the man of the open air, the open road, and the wild life. The sun intoxicates me to-day. The sea is not big enough to hold me nor the sky for me to breathe in. I feel I should like to be swaying with all the passions, throbbing with life and a vast activity of heart and sinew – to live magnificently – with an unquenchable thirst to drink to the lees, to plumb the depth of every joy and every sorrow, to see my life flash in the heat. Ah! Youth! Youth! Youth!!! In these moments of ecstasy my happiness is torrential. I have the soul of the poppy flaming in me then. I am rather like the poppy in many ways… It is peculiarly appropriate. It must be my flower! I am the poppy!!
May 9.
L – was digging up the ground in his garden to-day and one shovelful came up thick and shapely. He laid the sod on its back gently without breaking it and said simply, "Doesn't it come up nice?" His face was radiant! – Real happiness lies in the little things, in a bit of garden work, in the rattle of the teacups in the next room, in the last chapter of a book.
May 14.
Returned home. I hate living in this little town. If some one dies, he is sure to be some one you had a joke with the night before. A suicide – ten to one – implicates your bosom friend, or else the little man at the bookshop cut him down. There have been three deaths since I came home – I knew them all. It depresses me. The town seems a mortuary with all these dead bodies lying in it. Lucky for you, if you're a fat, rubicund, unimaginative physician.
May 16.
Two more people dead – one a school friend. Sat on a seat on the river bank and read the Journal of Animal Behaviour. It made me long to be at work. I foamed at the mouth to be sitting there perforce in an overcoat on a seat doing nothing like a pet dove. A weak heart makes crossing a road an adventure and turns each day into a dangerous expedition.
May 18.
A dirty ragamuffin on the river's bank held up a tin can to me with the softly persuasive words, —
"'Ere, Mister, BAIT."
"What are you going to do with it?"
"Fish."
"What for?"
"Salmon."
We have all tried to catch salmon with a bent pin. No matter though if no salmon be caught. Richard Jefferies said, "If there be no immortality still we shall have had the glory of that thought."
May 19.
Old Diaries
Spent some happy time reading over old diaries. I was grieved and surprised to find how much I had forgotten. To forget the past so easily seems scarcely loyal to oneself. I am so selfishly absorbed in my present self that I have grown not to care a damn about that ever increasing collection of past selves – those dear, dead gentlemen who one after the other have tenanted the temple of this flesh and handed on the torch of my life and personal identity before creeping away silently and modestly to rest.
June 6.
Brilliantly fine and warm. Unable to resist the sun, so I caught the ten train to S – and walked across the meadow (buttercups, forget-me-nots, ragged robins) to the Dipper stream and the ivy bridge. Read ardently in Geology till twelve. Then took off my boots and socks, and waded underneath the right arch of the bridge in deep water, and eventually sat on a dry stone at the top of the masonry just where the water drops into the green salmon pool in a solid bar. Next I waded upstream to a big slab of rock tilted at a comfortable angle. I lay flat on this with my nether extremities in water up to my knees. The sun bathed my face and dragon flies chased up and down intent on murder. But I cared not a tinker's Demetrius about Nature red in tooth and claw. I was quite satisfied with Nature under a June sun in the cool atmosphere of a Dipper stream. I lay on the slab completely relaxed, and the cool water ran strongly between my toes. Surely I was never again going to be miserable. The voices of children playing in the wood made me extra happy. As a rule I loathe children. I am too much of a youth still. But not this morning. For these were fairy voices ringing through enchanted woods.
June 8.
Brilliantly fine and warm. Went by train to C – Woods. Took first-class return on account of the heat. Crossed the meadow and up the hill to the mill leat, where we bathed our feet and read. Ate a powerful lunch and made several unsuccessful grabs at Caddie flies. I want one to examine the mouth parts. After lunch we sat on the foot-bridge over the stream, and I rested on it flat in the face of the sun. The sun seemed to burn into my very bones, purging away everything that may be dark or threatening there. The physical sensation of the blood flow beneath the skin was good to feel, and the heat made every tissue glow with a radiant well-being. When I got up and opened my eyes all the colours of the landscape vanished under the silvery whiteness of the intense sunlight.
We put on our boots and socks (our feet seemed to have swollen to a very large size) and wandered downstream to a little white house, a gamekeeper's cottage, where the old woman gave us cream and milk and home-made bread in her beautiful old kitchen with open hearth. China dogs, of course, and on the wall an old painting representing the person of a page boy (so she said) who was once employed up at the squire's. An unwholesome atmosphere of pigs pervaded the garden, but as this is not pretty I ought to leave it out…
June 14.
Brilliantly fine. Went by the early train to S – . Walked to the ivy bridge and then waded upstream to the great slab of rock where I spread myself in the sun as before. The experiment was so delightful it is worth repeating a hundred times. In this position I read of the decline and fall of Trilobites, of the Stratigraphy of the Lias and so on. Geology is a very crushing science, yet I enjoyed my existence this morning with the other flies about that stream.
June 20.
Sat at Liverpool University for the practical exam. Zoology, Board of Education.
At the close the other students left but I went on working. Prof. Herdman asked me if I had finished. I said "No," so he gave me a little more time. Later he came up again, and again I said "No," but he replied that he was afraid I must stop. "What could you do further?" he asked, picking up a dish of plankton. I pointed out a Sagitta, an Oikopleura, and a Noctiluca, and he replied, "Of course I put in more than you were expected to identify in the time, so as to make a choice possible." Then he complimented me on my written papers which were sent in some weeks ago, and looking at my practical work he added, "And this, too, seems to be quite excellent."
I thanked him from the bottom of a greedy and grateful heart, and he went on, "I see you describe yourself in your papers as a journalist, but can you tell me exactly what has been your career in Zoology?" I answered of course rather proudly that I had had no career in Zoology.
"But what school or college have you worked at?" he persisted.
"None," I said a little doggedly. "What I know I have taught myself."
"So you've had no training in Zoology at all?"
"No, sir."
"Well, if you've taught yourself all you know, you've done remarkably well."
He still seemed a little incredulous, and when I explained how I got a great many of my marine animals for dissection and study at the Plymouth Marine Laboratory, he immediately asked me suspiciously if I had ever worked there. We shook hands, and he wished me all success in the future, to which I to myself devoutly said Amen.
Came home very elated at having impressed some one at last.
Now for Dublin.
June30.
Oeconomic biology may be very useful but I am not interested in it. Give me the pure science. I don't want to be worrying my head over remedies for potato disease nor cures for fleas in fowls. Heaven preserve me from ever becoming a County Council lecturer or a Government Entomologist!5… Give me the recluse life of a scholar or investigator, full of leisure, culture, and delicate skill. I would rather know Bergson than be able to stay at the Ritz Hotel. I would rather be able to dissect a star-fish's water-vascular system than know the price of Consols. I should make a most industrious country gentleman with £5,000 a year and a deer park… My idea is to withdraw from the mobile vulgus and spend laborious days in the library or laboratory. The world is too much with us. I long for the monotony of monastic life! Father Wasmann and the Abbé Spallanzani are the type. Let me set my face towards them. Such lives afford poor material for novelists or dramatists, but so much the better. Hamlet makes fine reading, but I don't want to be Hamlet myself.
July 6.
In the afternoon went out dredging in fifteen fathoms off the pier at I – , but without much success… Got a large number of interesting things, however, in the tow net, including some advanced eggs of Loligo and a Tomopteris…
July 7.
Went to the trout stream again. After stretching a muslin net crosswise on the water for insects floating down, sat on the footbridge and read Geology for the Dublin Examination. Later, waded downstream to a hazel bush on the right bank beneath a shady oak. Squatted right down on the bush, which supported me like an arm-chair – and, with legs dangling in the cool water, opened a Meredith and enjoyed myself.
July 28.
Had to write backing out of the Dublin Examination for which I am nominated to sit. I am simply not fit for the racket of such a journey in my present state of health. My chances of success, too, are not such as to warrant my drawing on Dad for the money. He is still ill, and secretly agitated, I fear, because I am so bent on giving up his work. It looks, however, as if newspaper journalism is to be my fate. It was the refinement of torture having to write.
July 31.
Had a letter from Dr. S – enough to wring tears from a monument.
Sat like a valetudinarian in the Park all day getting fresh air – among the imbeciles, invalids, and children. Who cares? "But, gentlemen, you shall hear."
August 4.
Still another chance – quite unexpectedly received a second nomination this morning to sit for another exam, for two vacancies in the British Museum. Good luck this.
August 11.
Very hot, so went to S – , and bathed in the salmon pool. Stretched myself out in the water, delighted to find that I had at last got to the very heart of the countryside. I was not just watching from the outside – on the bank. I was in it, and plunging in it, too, up to my armpits. What did I care about the British Museum or Zoology then? All but the last enemy and object of conquest I had overcome – for the moment perhaps even Death himself was under heel – I was immortal – in that minute I was always prostrate in the stream – sunk deep in the bosom of old Mother Earth who cannot die!
August 14.
At 4 p.m. to the Salmon Pool for a bathe. 87.3 in the shade. The meadow was delicious in the sunshine. It made me want to hop, flirt my tail, sing. I felt ever such a bright-eyed wily bird!
August 17.
Caught the afternoon train to C – , but unfortunately forgot to take with me either watch or tubes (for insects). So I applied to the station-master, a youth of about eighteen, who is also signalman, porter, ticket-collector, and indeed very factotal – even to the extent of providing me with empty match boxes. I agreed with him to be called by three halloos from the viaduct just before the evening train came in. Then I went up to the leat, set up my muslin net in it for insects floating down, and then went across to the stream and bathed. Afterwards, went back and boxed the insects caught, and returned to the little station, with its creepers on the walls and over the roof, all as delightfully quiet as ever, and the station youth as delightfully silly. Then the little train came around the bend of the line – green puffing engine and red coaches, like a crawling caterpillar of gay colour.
August 20.
A trapper killed a specimen of Tropidonotus natrix and brought it to me. I gave him sixpence for it and am just going to dissect it.
August 21.
There are folk who notice nothing. (Witness Capt. McWhirr in Conrad's Typhoon.) They live side by side with genius or tragedy as innocent as babies; there are heaps of people who live on a mountain, a volcano, even, without knowing it. If the stars of Heaven fell and the Moon were turned into blood some one would have to direct their attention to it… Perhaps after all, the most obvious things are the most difficult to see. We all recognise Keats now, but suppose he was only "the boy next door" – why should I read his verses?
August 27.
Preparing a Snake's Skull
Prepared the skull of grass snake. I fancy I scooped out the eyes with patent delight – I suppose symbolically, as though, on behalf of the rest of suffering humanity, I were wiping off the old score against the beast for its behaviour in the Garden of Eden.
September 5.
At 2.30 Dad had three separate "strokes" of paralysis in as many minutes, the third leaving him helpless. They sent for me in the Library, where I was reading, and I hurried home. Just as I entered the bedroom where he and Mother were another attack came on, and it was with the utmost difficulty that with her help I managed to get him from the chair to the bed. He struggled with his left arm and leg and made inarticulate noises which sounded as if they might be groans. I don't know if he was in pain. Dear Mother.
September 14.
Dad cannot live long. Mother bears up wonderfully well. Tried to do some examination work but failed utterly. A – is watching in the sick-room with Mother who will not leave.
8.30. The nurse says he will not live through the night.
8.45. Telegraphed for A – to come.
11.00. A – came downstairs and had a little supper.
12.00. Went to bed. H – and the others lit a fire and we have all sat around it silent, listening to its murmur. Every one felt cold. Dad has been unconscious for over an hour.
1.45 a.m. Heard a noise, then heard Mother coming downstairs past my bedroom door with some one – sobbing. I knew it must be all over. H – was helping her down. Waited in my bedroom in the dark for three parts of an hour, when H – came up, opened the door slowly and said, "He's gone, old man." It was a tremendous relief to know that since he had to die his sufferings and cruel plight were over. Fell asleep from sheer exhaustion and slept soundly.
September 18.
The funeral. It is not death but the dreadful possibilities of life which are so depressing.6
September 21.
A Day in Autumn
A cool, breezy autumn day. The beach was covered with patches of soapy foam that shook tremulously in the wind – all the rocks and everything were drenched with water, and the spray came off the breaking waves like steam. A red sun went lower and lower and the shadows cast by the rocks grew very long and grotesque. Underneath the breaking waves, the hollows were green and dark like sea caverns. Herring gulls played about in the air balancing themselves as they faced the breeze, then sweeping suddenly around and downwards with the wind behind them. We all sat down on the rocks and were very quiet, almost monosyllabic. We pointed out a passing vessel to one another or chucked a bit of shingle into the sea. You would have said we were bored. Yet deep down in ourselves we were astir and all around us we could hear the rumours of divine passage, soft and mysterious as the flight of birds migrating in the dark.
The wind rose and tapped the line against the flag-staff at the Coastguard Station. It roared through my hair and past my ears for an hour on end till I felt quite windswept and bleak. On the way home we saw the wind darting hither and thither over the long grass like a lunatic snake. The wind! Oh! the wind – I have an enormous faith in the curative properties of the wind. I feel better already.
October 17.
Staying in Surrey. Exam, over and I feel fairly confident – after an agony for a few days before on account of the development of a cold which threatened to snatch the last chance out of my hands.
Justifiable Mendacity
Sitting on a gate on the N. Downs I saw a long way below me in the valley a man standing in a chalk pit and wielding a stick vigorously. For some reason or another the idea came to me that it would be interesting if he were in the act of killing a Snake – he so far away below and I above and unnoticed quietly watching him. At dinner to-night, this revised version of the story came out quite pat and natural and obviously interested the assembly. I added graphically that the man was too far away from me to be able to say what species of Snake it was he was killing. I possess the qualifications of an artistic liar. Yet I can't regard such a story as a lie – it was rather a justifiable emendation of an otherwise uninteresting incident.
October 24.
Une Caractère
… She is a tiny little old lady, very frail and very delicate, with a tiny voice like the noise of a fretsaw. She talks incessantly about things which do not interest you, until your face gets stiff with forcing a polite smile, and your voice cracked and your throat dry with saying, "Yes," and "Really."
To-night I attend the Zoological Society to read my first paper, so I am really in a fluster and want to be quiet. Therefore to prevent her from talking I write two letters which I represent as urgent. At 6.15 desperate, so went out for a walk in the dark London streets. Returned to supper and to Her. After the wife, the husband is intellectual pyrotechnics. Referring to the Museum, —
"Would you have there, I suppose, any insects, in a case like, what you might say to study to yourself when no one is by?" he inquired.
6.40. It is now one hour before I need leave for the meeting, and whether I sigh, cough, smoke, or read the paper, she goes on. She even refuses to allow me to scan the lines below photos in the Illustrated London News. I write this as the last sole resource to escape her devastating prattle and the ceaseless hum of her tiny gnat-like mind. She thinks (because I told her so) that I am preparing notes for the evening meeting.
Later: Spent an absolutely damnable day. Am sick, tired, bored, frantic with her voice which I have been able to share with no one except the intellectual giant, her husband, at tea time. In order to break the flow of chatter, I would rudely interrupt and go on talking, by this means keeping my end up for as long as I could, and enjoying a short respite from the fret-sawing voice. But I tired of this and it was of no permanent value. When I broke in, she still went on for a few sentences unable to stop, and lo! here was the spectacle of two persons alone together in a room both talking at the same time and neither listening. I persisted though – and she had to stop. Once started, I was afraid to stop – scared at the certain fact of the voice beginning to saw again. After a while the fountain of my artificial garrulity dried up, and the Voice at once leaped into the breach, resuming – amazing and incredible as it seems – at the precise point where it had left off. At 7 I am quite exhausted and sit on the opposite side of the hearth, staring with glassy eyes, arms drooping at my sides and mouth druling. At 7.05 her cough increases, and she has to stop to attend to it. With a fiendish smile I push back my chair, and quietly watch her cough… She coughs continuously now and can talk no longer. Thank God! 8 p.m., left for the meeting, where I read my paper in a state of awful nervousness… I read out all I had to say and kept them amused for about ten minutes. I was very excited when Dr. – got up and praised the paper,7 saying it was interesting, and hoping I should continue the experiments. The chairman, Sir John Rose Bradford, asked a question, I answered it and then sat down. After the meeting we went upstairs to the library, had tea and chatted with some of the big people… Zoology is certainly delightful, yet it seems to me the Zoologists are much as other people. I like Zoology. I wish I could do without Zoologists…
October 30.
Home once more. The Natural History Museum impressed me enormously. It is a magnificent building – too magnificent to work there – to follow one's profession in a building like that seems an altogether too grandiose manner of life. A pious zoologist might go up to pray in it – but not to earn his daily bread there.
October 31.
I'm in, in, in!!!!!!!!! being first with 141 marks to spare. Old M – [the servant] rushes up to my sister's bedroom with the news just after 7 a.m., and she says, "Fine, fine," and comes down in her nightgown to my bedroom, where we drink our morning cup of tea together – and talk! I'm delighted. What a magnificent obstacle race it has been! Still one ditch – the medical exam! Wired to friends.
November 1.
This is the sort of letter which is balm to me: – "My darling W – , – I need hardly tell you how absolutely delighted we were at the grand news of this morning. You must be feeling a huge glow of satisfaction with the knowledge of your object attained through untold difficulties. I don't wish to butter you up, or to gush, but I must honestly say that I feel tip-top proud of my old Beano. I admire your brains more than ever, and also your indomitable pluck and grit, and your quiet bravery in disappointment and difficulty…"
November 14.
The three most fascinating books in Science that I have so far read are (easily): – 1. Darwin's Expression of the Emotions. 2. Gaskell's Origin of Vertebrates. 3. Bergson's Le Rire.
Went to the dentist in the afternoon. Evening chiefly occupied in reading Le Rire. By my halidom, it is an extraordinarily interesting book!
November 29.
… I am always looking out for new friends – assaying for friendship… There is no more delightful adventure than an expedition into a rich, many-sided personality. Gradually over a long probation – for deep minds are naturally reticent – piece after piece is added to the geography of your friend's mind, and each piece pleases or entertains, while in return you let him steal away piece after piece of your own territory, perhaps saving a bit up here and there – such as an enthusiasm for Francis Thompson's poetry – and then letting it go unexpectedly. It's a delightful reciprocity.
I dream of "the honeyed ease of the Civil Servant's working day" (Peacock). Yet the French say Songes sont mensonges.
December 13.
In the Park it was very dark and she said, —
"If I lose you I shan't be able to find my way home."
"Oh! I'll look after you," I said.
Both being of the same mind at the same time we sat down on a seat together when a fortunate thing happened. It began to rain. So I offered her part of my overcoat. She nestled in under my arm and I kissed her out of hand. Voilà! A very pretty little girl, 'pon my word.
December 20.
The thing is obsessing me. After an early supper called and found my lady ready to receive me. No one else at home. So walked into the oak-panelled room with the red-curtained windows, took off my coat and scarf. She followed and switched off the light. There was a roaring fire in the grate. She is very amorous and I am not Hippolytus, so we were soon closely engaged in the large chair before the fire. As we sailed thus, close hauled to the wind, with double entendres and she trembled in the storm (and I was at the helm) the garden gate slammed and both of us got up quickly. I next heard a key turn in the lock and a foot in the passage: "Mr. – " she said…
She switched on the light, went out swiftly into the passage, and meeting him conducted him to her office, while I as swiftly put on overcoat and scarf, and slipped out through the open door, stumbling over his bicycle, but of course not stopping to pick it up. Later she telephoned to say it was all right. Very relieved!.. She recalls Richepin's La Glu.
December 21.
She is a fine sedative. Her movements are a pleasant adagio, her voice piano to pianissimo, her conversation breaks off in thrilling aposiopoeses.
An awful comedy this morning – for as soon as I was securely "gagged" the dentist went out of the room. She approached, leered at me helpless, and said provokingly, "Oh! you do look funny." Minx. On returning he said to her, "Would you like to hold his hand?"
She: "Oh! not just now."
And they grinned at one another and at me waiting to be tortured.
December 23.
… On the Station waited for an hour for the train. Gave her a box of sweets and the Bystander. We walked up the platform to extreme end in the dark and kissed! But it was very windy and cold. (I noticed that!) So we entered an empty luggage guard's van on rail beside platform left there by shunters. Here we were out of the wind and far better off. But a shunter came along and turned us out. She gave me a silver match-box. But I believe for various reasons that it is one of her own and not a new one. Said "Good-bye."
December 28.
At R – . Played the negligent flaneur, reclining on the Chesterfield, leaning against the grand piano, or measuring my length on the mat before the fire.
December 31.
To-morrow I begin duties at the British Museum of Natural History. I cannot quite imagine myself a Museum assistant. Before I get there I know I shall be the strangest assistant on the staff. It will be singing my song in a Strange land and weeping – I hope not too bitterly – down by the waters of a very queer Babylon.
Still, I have burnt my bridges like Cæsar – or burnt my ships like Cortez. So forward!