W.N.P. Barbellion
The Journal of a Disappointed Man
1913
January 3.
From the drawing-room window I see pass almost daily an old gentleman with white hair, a firm step, broad shoulders, healthy pink skin, a sunny smile – always singing to himself as he goes – a happy, rosy-cheeked old fellow, with a rosy-cheeked mind… I should like to throw mud at him. By Jove, how I hate him. He makes me wince with my own pain. It is heartless, indecently so, for an old man to be so blithe. Life has, I suppose, never lain in wait for him. The Great Anarchist has spared him a bomb.
January 19.
My Aunt, aged 75, who has apparently concluded from my constant absences from Church that my spiritual life is in a parlous way, to-day read me her portion from a large book with a broad purple-tasseled bookmark. I looked up from "I Promessi Sposi" and said "Very nice." It was about someone whose soul was not saved and who Would not answer the door when it was knocked. It is jolly to be regarded as a wicked, libidinous youth by an aged maiden Aunt.
January 22.
This Diary reads for all the world as if I were not living in mighty London. The truth is I live in a bigger, dirtier city – ill-health. Ill-health, when chronic, is like a permanent ligature around one's life. What a fine fellow I'd be if I were perfectly well. My energy for one thing would lift the roof off…
We conversed around the text: "To travel hopefully is better than to arrive and true success is to labour." She is – well, so graceful. My God! I love her, I love her, I love her!!!
February 3.
A Confession
H – B – invited me to tea to meet his fiancée.
Rather pleased with the invitation – I don't know why, for my idea of myself is greater than my idea of him and probably greater than his idea of himself.
Yet I went and got shaved, and even thought of buying a new pair of gloves, but poverty proved greater than vanity, so I went with naked hands. On arriving at Turnham Green, I removed my spectacles (well knowing how much they damage my personal appearance). However, the beauty of the thing was that, tho' I waited as agreed, he never turned up, and so I returned home again, crestfallen – and, with my spectacles on again.
February 9.
… "Now, W – , talk to me prettily," she said as soon as the door was closed on them.
"Oh! make him read a book," whined her sister, but we talked of marriage instead – in all its aspects. Bless their hearts, I found these two dear young things simply sodden with the idea of it.
In the middle I did a knee-jerk which made them scream with laughing – the patellar reflex was new to them, so I seized a brush from the grate, crossed to Her and gently tapped: out shot her foot, and – cried: "Oh, do do it to me as well." It was rare fun.
"Oh! pretty knee, what do I see?
And he stooped and he tied up my garter for me."
February 10.
News of Scott's great adventure! Scott dead a year ago!! The news, when I saw it to-night in the Pall Mall Gazette gave me cold thrills. I could have wept… What splendid people we humans are! If there be no loving God to watch us, it's a pity for His sake as much as for our own.
February 15.
Tried to kiss her in a taxi-cab on the way home from the Savoy – the taxi-cab danger is very present with us – but she rejected me quietly, sombrely. I apologised on the steps of the Flats and said I feared I had greatly annoyed her. "I'm not annoyed," she said, "only surprised" – in a thoughtful, chilly voice.
We had had supper in Soho, and I took some wine, and she looked so bewitching it sent me in a fever, thrumming my fingers on the seat of the cab while she sat beside me impassive. Her shoulders are exquisitely modelled and a beautiful head is carried poised on a tiny neck.
February 16.
Walking up the steps to her flat to-night made me pose to H – (who was with me) as Sydney Carton in the picture in A Tale of Two Cities on the steps of the scaffold. He laughed boisterously, as he is delighted to know of my last evening's misadventure.
At supper, a story was told of a man who knocked at the door of his lady's heart four times and at last was admitted. I remarked that the last part of the romance was weak. She disagreed. H – exclaimed, "Oh! but this man has no sentiment at all!"
"So much the worse for him," chimed in the others.
"He was 66 years of age," added Mrs. – .
"Too old," said P. "What do you think the best age for a man to marry?"
H.: "Thirty for a man, twenty-five for a woman."
She: "That's right: it still gives me a little time."
P.: "What do you think?" (to me).
I replied sardonically, —
"A young man may not yet and an old man not at all."
"That's right, old wet blanket," chirruped P – .
"You know," I continued, delighted to seize the opportunity to assume the role of youthful cynic, "Cupid and Death once met at an Inn and exchanged arrows, since when young men have died and old men have doted."
H – was charming enough to opine that it was impossible to fix a time for love. Love simply came.
We warned him to be careful on the boat going out.
"Yes, I know," said H – (who is in love with P – ).
"My brother had a dose of moonlight on board a boat when he sailed and he's been happy ever since."
P.: "How romantic!"
H.: "A great passion!"
"The only difference," I interjected in a sombre monotone, "between a passion and a caprice is that the caprice lasts a little longer."
"Sounds like a book," She said in contempt.
It was – Oscar Wilde!
P – insisted on my taking a biscuit. "Don't mind me," she said. "Just think I'm a waitress and take no notice at all."
H.: "Humph! I never see him taking no notice of a waitress."
(Sneers and Curtain.)
February 24.
H – came home last night and told me that she said as he came away, "Tell W – I hate him." So it's all right. I shall go over to-morrow again – Hurrah! My absence has been felt then.
March 7.
Came home, lay on my bed, still dressed, and ruminated…
First a suspicion then a conviction came to me that I was a cad – a callous, selfish, sensation-hunting cad… For the time being the bottom was knocked out of my smug self-satisfaction. For several long half-hours I found myself drifting without compass or stars. I was quite di orientated, temporarily thrown off the balance of my amour propre. Then I got up, lit the gas and looking at myself in the mirror, found it was really true, – I was a mean creature, wholly absorbed in self.
As an act of contrition, I ought to have gone out into the garden and eaten worms. But the mirror brought back my self-consciousness and I began to crawl back into my recently discarded skin – I began to be less loathesome to myself. For as soon as I felt interested or amused or curious over the fact that I had been really loathesome to myself I began to regain my equilibrium. Now, I and myself are on comparatively easy terms with one another. I am settled on the old swivel… I take a lot of knocking off it and if shot off soon return.
To-day, she was silent and melancholy but wonderfully fascinating. One day I am desperate and the next cold and apathetic. Am I in love? God knows! She came to the door to say "Good night," and I deliberately strangled my desire to say something.
March 9.
In bed till 12.30 reading Bergson and the O.T.
Over to the flat to supper. E – was cold and silent. She spurned me. No wonder. I talked volubly and quite brilliantly with the definite purpose of showing up J – 's somnolence. I also pulled his leg. He hates me. No wonder. After supper, he went in to her studio and remained there alone with her while she worked. At 11 p.m. he was still there when I came away in a whirlwind of jealousy, regrets, and rage. G – said he was going to stay on until he saw "the blighter off the premises." Neither of us would go in to turn him out.
I love her deeply and once my heart jumped when I thought I heard her coming into the room. But it was only P – . Did not see her again – even to say "Good-night."
March 10.
Work in the evening in our bedroom – two poor miserable bachelors – H – reading Equity Law, a rug around his legs before an empty grate, while I am sitting at the table in top-coat, with collar up, and writing my magnum opus, which is to bring me fame, fortune and – E – !
H – says that this morning I was putting on my shoes when he pointed out a large hole in the heel of my sock.
"Damn! I shall have to wear boots," I said – at least he says I said it, and I am quite ready to believe him. Such unconsciousness of self is rare with me.
March 15.
[At a public dinner at the Holborn Restaurant] J – replied to the toast of the Ladies. Feeble! H – and I stood and had a silent toast to E – and N – by just winking one eye at each other. He sat opposite me.
If I had been asked to reply to this toast I should have said with the greatest gusto, something as follows, —
[Here follows the imaginary speech in full, composed the same night before going to sleep.]
Yet I am taken for a soft fool! My manner is soft, self-conscious, shy. What a lot of self-glorification I lose thereby! What a lot of self-torture I gain in its stead!
March 17.
To-day went to the B.M. but did very little work. Thought over the matter carefully and decided to ask E – to marry me. Relief to be able to decide. I was happy too.
Yesterday P – came in to us from E – 's studio and said, —
"E – sends her love."
"To whom?" H – inquired.
"I don't know," P – replied, smiling at me.
March 18.
Had a long conversation with H – last night. He says all E – intended to convey was that the quarrel was over… I felt relieved, because I have no money, but – a large ambition. Then I am selfish, and have not forgotten that I want to spend my holidays in the Jura, and next year three weeks at the Plymouth Laboratory.
March 19.
Went over to see E – . We had an awkward half-an-hour alone together. She was looking bewitching! I am plunging more and more into love. Had it on the tip of my tongue once. I am dreadfully fond of her.
"I have a most profound gloom over me," I said.
"Why don't you try and get rid of it?" she asked.
"I can't until Zeus has pity and rolls away the clouds."
April 21.
We are sitting up in our beds which are side by side in a room on the top story of a boarding house in – Road.
It is 11.30 p.m. and I am leaning over one one side lighting the oil lamp so as to boil the kettle to make Ovaltine before going to sleep.
"Whom have I seduced?" I screamed. "You rotter, don't you know that a dead passion full or regrets is as terrible as a dead body full of worms? There, I talk literature, my boy, if you were only Bos well enough to take it down… As for K – , I shall never invite him to dinner again. He comes to me and whines that nobody loves him, and so I say, 'Oh! poor lad, never mind, if you're bored, why, come to my rooms of an evening and hear me talk – you'll have the time of your life.' And now he's cheeky."
H. (sipping his drink and very much preoccupied with it) replied abstractedly, "When you die you'll go to Hell." (I liked his Homeric simplicity.) "You ought to be buried in a fireproof safe."
Silence.
H. (returning to the attack), "I hope she turns you down."
"Thank you," I said.
"As for P – ," he resumed, "she's double-Dutch to me."
"Go to the Berlitz School," I suggested, "and learn the language."
"You bally fool… All you do is to sit there and smile like a sanguinary cat. Nothing I say ever rouses you. I believe if I came to you and said, 'Here, Professor, is a Beetle with 99 legs that has lived on granite in the middle of the Sahara for 40 days and 40 nights,' you'd simply answer, 'Yes, and that reminds me I've forgotten to blow my nose.'"
The two pyjamaed figures shake with laughing, the light goes out and the sanguinary conversation continues on similar lines until we fall asleep.
April 26.
Two Months' Sick Leave
In a horrible panic – the last few days – I believe I am developing locomotor ataxy. One leg, one arm, and my speech are affected, i. e. the right side and my speech centre. M – is serious… I hope the disease, whatever it is, will be sufficiently lingering to enable me to complete my book.
R – is a dear man. I shall not easily forget his kindness during this terrible week… Can the Fates have the audacity?.. Who can say?
April 27.
I believe there can be no doubt that I have had a slight partial paralysis of my right side (like Dad). I stutter a little in my speech when excited, I cannot write properly (look at this handwriting), and my right leg is rocky at the knee. My head swims.
It is too inconceivably horrible to be buried in the Earth in such splendid spring weather. Who can tell me what is in store for me?.. Life opens to me, I catch a glimpse of a vision, and the doors clang to again noiselessly. It is dark. That will be my history. Am developing a passionate belief in my book and a fever of haste to complete it before the congé définitif.
April 29.
Saw M – again, who said my symptoms were alarming certainly, but he was sure no definite diagnosis could be made.
April 30.
Went with M – to see a well-known nerve specialist – Dr. H – . He could find no symptoms of a definite disease, tho' he asked me suspiciously if I had ever been with women.
Ordered two months' complete rest in the country. H – chased me round his consulting room with a drum-stick, tapping my nerves and cunningly working my reflexes. Then he tickled the soles of my feet and pricked me with a pin – all of which I stood like a man. He wears a soft black hat, looks like a Quaker, and reads the Verhandlungen d. Gesellschaft d. Nervenarzten.
M – is religious and after I had disclosed my physique to him yesterday (for the 99th time) he remained on his knees by the couch in his consulting room (after working my reflexes) for a moment or two in the attitude of prayer. When the Doctor prays for you – better call in the undertaker. My epitaph "He played Ludo well." The game anyhow requires moral stamina – ask H – .
May 5.
At R – . Mugged about all day. Put on a gramophone record – then crawled up into a corner of the large, empty drawing room and ate my heart out. Heart has a bitter taste – if it's your own.
May 6.
Sat in the "morning room" feeling ill. In the chair opposite sat Aunt Fanny, aged 86, knitting. I listened to the click of her needles, while out in the garden a thrush sang, and there was a red sunset.
May 8.
Before I left R – , A – [My brother] had written to Uncle enclosing my doctor's letter. I don't know the details except that Dr. M – emphasised the seriousness and yet held out hope that two months' rest would allay the symptoms.
May 11.
At Home
I made some offensive remark to H – whom I met in the street. This set him off.
"You blighter, I hope you marry a loose woman. May your children be all bandy-legged and squint-eyed, may your teeth drop out, and your toes have bunions," and so on in his usual lengthy commination.
I turned to the third man.
"Bob – this! – after all I've done for that young man! I have even gone out of my Way to cultivate in him a taste for poetry – until he is now, in fact, quite wrapped up in it – indeed, so much so, that for a time he was nothing but a brown paper parcel labelled Poetry."
H. (doggedly): "When are you going to die?"
"That Master H – ," I answered menacingly, "is on the knees of the Gods."
H.: "I shan't believe you're dead till I see your tombstone. I shall then say to the Sexton, 'Is he really dead, then?' and the Sexton will say, 'Well, 'ee's buried onny way.'"
Bob was not quite in sympathy with our boisterous spirits.
May 15.
Gardening
Sought out H – as he was watering his petunias in the garden. He informed me he was going to London on Monday.
H.: "Mother is coming too."
B.: "Why?"
H.: "Oh! I'm buying my kit – shirts and things. I sail at the beginning of July."
B.: "I suppose shirts are difficult to buy. You wouldn't know what to do with one if you had one. Your mother will lead you by the hand into a shop and say, 'H – , dear, this is a shirt,' and you'll reply with pathos, 'Mother what are the wild shirts saying?'"
H.: "You're a B.F." (goes on watering).
"I wonder what you'd do if you were let loose in a big garden," I began.
H.: "I should be as happy as a bird. I should hop about, chirrup and lay eggs. You should have seen my tomato plants last year – one was as tall as father."
B.: "Now tell me of the Gooseberry as big as Mother."
Mutual execrations. Then we grinned and cackled at each other, emitting weird and ferocious cachinnations. Several times a day in confidential, serious tones – after one of these explosions – we say, "I really believe we're mad." You never heard such extraordinary caterwaulings. Our snappy conversations are interrupted with them every minute or so!
Stagnancy
A stagnant day. Lay still in the Park all day with just sufficient energy to observe. The Park was almost empty. Every one but me at work. Nothing is more dreary than a pleasure ground on workdays. There was one man a little way off throwing a ball to a clever dog. Behind me on the path, some one came along wheeling a pram. I listened in a kind of coma to the scrunching of the gravel in the distance a long time after the pram was out of sight. Far away – the tinkle of Church bells in a village across the river, and, in front, the man still throwing the ball to his clever dog.
May 25.
Death
… I suppose the truth is I am at last broken to the idea of Death. Once it terrified me and once I hated it. But now it only annoys me. Having lived with the Bogey for so long, and broken bread with him so often, I am used to his ugliness, tho' his persistent attentions bore me. Why doesn't he do it and have done with me? Why this deference, why does he pass me everything but the poison? Why am I such an unconscionably long time dying?
What embitters me is the humiliation of having to die, to have to be pouring out the precious juices of my life into the dull Earth, to be no longer conscious of what goes on, no longer moving abroad upon the Earth creating attraction and repulsions, pouring out one's ego in a stream. To think that the women I have loved will be marrying and forget, and that the men I have hated will continue on their way and forget I ever hated them – the ignominy of being dead! What voluble talker likes his mouth to be stopped with earth, who relishes the idea of the carrion worm mining in the seat of the intellect?
May 29.
Renunciation
Staying at the King's Hotel, – . Giddiness very bad. Death seems unavoidable. A tumour on the brain?
Coming down here in the train, sat in corner of the compartment, twined one leg around the other, rested my elbow on the window ledge, and gazed out helplessly at the exuberant green fields, green woods, and green hedgerows. The weather was perfect, the sun blazed down.
Certainly, I was rather sorry for myself at the thought of leaving it all. But I girded up my loins and wrapped around me for a while the mantle of a nobler sentiment; i. e. I felt sorry for the others as well – for the two brown carters in the road ambling along with a timber waggon, for the two old maids in the same compartment with me knitting bedsocks, for the beautiful Swallows darting over the stream, for the rabbit that lopped into the fern just as we passed – they too were all leaving it.
The extent of my benign compassion startled me – it was so unexpected. Perhaps for the first time in my life I forgot all about my own miserable ambitions – I forgave the successful, the time-servers, the self-satisfied, the overweening, the gracious and condescending – all, in fact, who hitherto have been thorns in my flesh and innocently enough have goaded me to still fiercer efforts to win thro'. "Poor people," I said. "Leave them alone. Let them be happy if they can." With a submissive heart, I was ready to sit down in the rows of this world's failures and never have thought one bitter word about success. To all those persons who in one way or another had foiled my purposes I extended a pardon with Olympian gravity, and, strangest of all, I could have melted such frosty moral rectitudes with a genuine interest in the careers of my struggling contemporaries. With perfect self-abnegation, I held out my hand to them and wished them all "God Speed."
It was a strange metempsychosis. Yet of a truth it is no use being niggardly over our lives. We are all of us "shelling out." And we can afford to be generous, for we shall all – some early, some late – be bankrupt in the end. For my part, I've had a short and boisterous voyage and shan't be sorry to get into port. I give up all my plans, all my hopes, all my loves and enthusiasms without remonstrance. I renounce all – I myself am already really dead.
May 30.
Last night the sea was as flat as a pavement, a pretty barque with all her sails out to catch the smallest puff of wind – the tiniest inspiration – was nevertheless without motion – a painted ship on a tapestry of violet. H – Hill was an immense angular mass of indigo blue. Even rowing boats made little progress and the water came off the languid paddles in syrupy clots. Everything was utterly still, the air thick – like cottonwool to the touch and very stifling; vitality in living things leaked away under a sensuous lotus influence. Intermittently after the darkness had come, Bullpoint Lighthouse shone like the wink of a lascivious eye.
Pottering about all day on the Pier and Front, listening to other people's talk, catching snippets of conversation – not edifying. If there were seven wise men in the town, I would not save it. Damn the place!
May 31.
… I espied her first in the distance and turned my head away quickly and looked out to sea. A moment after, I began to turn my head round again slowly with the cautiousness and air of suspicion of a Tortoise poking its head out from underneath his shell. I was terrified to discover that in the meantime she had come and sat down on the seat immediately behind me with her back to mine. We sat like this back to back for some time and I enjoyed the novel experience and the tension. A few years ago, the bare sight of her gave me palpitation of the heart, and, on the first occasion that I had the courage to stop to speak, I felt livid and the skin on my face twitched uncontrollably.
Presently I got up and walked past – in the knowledge that she must now be conscious of my presence after a disappearance of three years. Later we met face to face and I broke the ice. She's a pretty girl… So too is her sister.
Few people, except my barber, know how amorous I am. He has to shave my sinuous lips.
June 3.
Spent many dreadful hours cogitating whether to accept their invitation to dinner… I wanted to go for several reasons. I wanted to see her in a home-setting for the first time, and I wanted to spend the evening with three pretty girls. I also had the idea of displaying myself to the scrutinising gaze of the family as the hero of the old romance: and of showing Her how much I had progressed since last we met and what a treasure she had lost.
On the other hand, I was afraid that the invitation was only a casual one, I feared a snuffy reception, a frosty smile and a rigid hand. Could I go up and partake of meat at their board, among brothers and sisters taking me for an ogre of a jilt, and she herself perhaps opposite me making me blush perpetually to recall our one-time passionate kisses, our love letters and our execrable verses to each other! There seemed dreadful possibilities in such an adventure. Yet I badly wanted to experience the piquant situation.
At 7 p.m., half an hour before I was due, decided on strong measures. I entered a pub and took a stiff whisky and soda, and then set off with a stout heart to take the icy family by storm – and if need be live down my evil reputation by my amiability and urbanity!
I went – and of course everything passed off in the most normal manner. She is a very pretty girl – like velvet. Before dinner, we walked in the garden – and talked only of flowers.
June 4.
On the Hill, this morning, felt the thrill of the news of my own Death: I mean I imagined I heard the words, —
"You've heard the news about B – ?"
Second Voice: "No, what?"
"He's dead."
Silence.
Won't all this seem piffle if I don't die after all! As an artist in life I ought to die; it is the only artistic ending – and I ought to die now or the Third Act will fizzle out in a long doctor's bill.
June 5.
A New Pile in the Pier
Watched some men put a new pile in the pier. There was all the usual paraphernalia of chains, pulleys, cranes, and ropes, with a massive wooden pile swinging over the water at the end of a long wire hawser. Everything was in the massive style – even the men – very powerful men, slow, ruminative, silent men.
Nothing very relevant could be gathered from casual remarks. The conversation was without exception monosyllabic: "Let go," or "Stand fast." But by close attention to certain obscure movements of the man on the ladder near the water's edge, it gradually came thro' to my consciousness that all these powerful, silent men were up against some bitter difficulty. I cannot say what it was. The burly monsters were silent about the matter… In fact they appeared almost indifferent – and tired, oh! so very tired of the whole business. The attitude of the man nearest me was that for all he cared the pile could go on swinging in mid-air to the crack of Doom.
They continued slow, laborious efforts to overcome the secret difficulty. But these gradually slackened and finally ceased. One massive man after another abandoned his post in order to lean over the rails and gaze like a mystic into the depths of the sea. No one spoke. No one saw anything not even in the depths of the sea. One spat, and with round, sad eyes contemplated the trajectory of his brown bolus (he had been chewing) in its descent into the water.
The foreman, an original thinker, lit a cigarette, which relieved the tension. Then, slowly and with majesty, he turned on his heel, and walked away. With the sudden eclipse of the foreman's interest, the incident closed. I should have been scarcely surprised to find him behind the Harbour-master's Office playing "Shove-ha'penny" or skittles with the pile still swinging in mid-air… After all it was only a bloody pile.
June 11.
Depression
Suffering from depression… The melancholy fit fell very suddenly. All the colour went out of my life, the world was dirty gray. On the way back to my hotel caught sight of H – , jumping into a cab, after a visit to S – Sands. But the sight of him aroused no desire in me to shout or wave. I merely wondered how on earth he could have spent a happy day at such a Sandy place.
On arriving at – , sank deeper into my morass. It suffocated me to find the old familiar landmarks coming into view … the holiday-makers along the streets how I hated them – the Peg Top Hill how desolate – all as before – how dull. The very fact that they were all there as before in the morning nauseated me. The sea-coast here is magnificent, the town is pretty – I know that, of course. But all looked dreary and cheerless – just the sort of feeling one gets on entering an empty house with no fire on a winter's day and nowhere to sit down… I felt as lonely and desolate as a man suddenly fallen from the clouds into an unknown town on the Antarctic Continent built of ice and inhabited by Penguins. Who are these people? I asked myself irritably. There perhaps on the other side of the street was my own brother. But I was not even faintly interested and told the cabman to drive on. The spray from the sea fogged my spectacles and made me weary.
June 14.
The Restlessness o,' the Sea
The restlessness of the sea acts as a soporific on jangled nerves. You gaze at its incessant activities, unwillingly at first because they distract your attention from your own cherished worries and griefs, – but later you watch with complete self-abandon – it wrenches you out of yourself – and eventually with a kind of stupid hypnotic stare.
Dr. Spurgeon
The day has been overcast, but to-night a soft breeze sprang up and swept the sky clear as softly as a mop. The sun coming out shone upon a white sail far out in the channel, scarcely another vessel hove in sight. The white sail glittered like a piece of silver paper whenever the mainsail swung round as the vessel tacked. Its solitariness and whiteness in a desert of marine blue attracted the attention and held it till at last I could look at nothing else. The sight of it – so clean and white and fair – set me yearning for all the rarest and most exquisite things my imagination could conjure up – a beautiful girl, with fair and sunburnt skin, brown eyes, dark eyebrows, and small pretty feet; a dewdrop in a violet's face; an orange-tip butterfly swinging on an umbel of a flower.
The sail went on twinkling and began to exert an almost moral influence over me. It drew out all the good in me. I longed to follow it on white wings – an angel I suppose – to quit this husk of a body "as raiment put away," and pursue Truth and Beauty across the sea to the horizon, and beyond the horizon up the sky itself to its last tenuous confines, no doubt with a still small voice summoning me and the rest of the elect to an Agapemone, with Dr. Spurgeon at the door distributing tracts.
I can scoff like this now. But at the time my exaltation was very real. My soul strained in the leash. I was full of a desire for unattainable spiritual beauty. I wanted something. But I don't know what I want.
June 16.
My Sense of Touch
My sense of touch has always been morbidly acute. I like to feel a cigarette locked in the extreme corner of my mouth. When I remove it from my mouth then I hold it probably up in the fork between two fingers. If I am waiting for a meal I finger the cool knives and forks. If I am in the country I plunge my hands with outspread fingers into a mass of large-topped grasses, then close my fingers, crush and decapitate the lot.
June 27.
Camping Out at S – Sands
A brilliant summer day. Up early, breakfasted, and, clad in sweater and trousers, walked up the sands to the boathouse with bare feet.
Everything was wonderful! I strode along over the level sands infatuated with the sheer ability to put one leg in front of the other and walk. I loved to feel the muscles of my thighs working, and to swing my arms in rhythm with the stride. The stiff breeze had blown the sky clear, and was rushing through my long hair, and bellowing into each ear. I strode as Alexander must have done!