The Journal of a Disappointed Man

November 16.

Arthur came down for the week end. He likes the Lady of Shalott. She is "not handsome, but arresting, striking" and "capable of tragedy." That I believe she has achieved already… If she were a bit more gloomy and a bit more beautiful, she'd be irresistible.

November 22.

He: "Have a cigarette? I enjoy lighting your cigarettes."

She: "I don't know how to smoke properly."

He: "You smoke only as you could."

She: "How's that?"

H.: "Gracefully, of course."

S.: "Do you think I like pretty things being said to me?"

H.: "Why not, if they are true. Flattery is when you tell an ugly woman she is beautiful. Have you so poor an opinion of yourself to think all I say of you is flattery?"

S.: "Yes. I am only four bare walls, – with nothing inside."

H.: "What a deliciously empty feeling that must be. … But I don't think you're so simple as all that. You bewilder me sometimes."

S.: "Why?"

H.: "I feel like Sindbad the Sailor."

S.: "Why?"

H.: "Because I'm not George Meredith." The title of "husband" frightens me.

December 9.

It's a fearful strain to go on endeavouring to live up to time with a carefully laid-out time-table of future achievements. I am hurrying on with my study of Italian in order to read the Life of Spallanzani in order to include him in my book – to be finished by the end of next year; I am also subsidising Jenkinson's embryological lectures at University College with the more detailed account of practical and experimental work in his text-book; I have also started a lengthy research upon the Trichoptera – all with a horrible sense of time fleeing swiftly and opportunities for work too few ever to be squandered, and, in the background, behind all this feverish activity, the black shadow that I might die suddenly with nothing done – next year, next month, next week, to-morrow, now!

Then sometimes, as to-night, I have misgivings. Shall I do these things so well now as I might once have done them? Has not my ill-health seriously affected my mental powers? Surely the boy of 1908-10 was almost a genius or – seen at this distance – a very remarkable youth in the fanatical zeal with which he sought to pursue, and succeeded in gaining, his own end of a zoological education for himself.

It is a terrible suspicion to cross the mind of an ambitious youth that perhaps, after all, he is a very commonplace mortal – that his life, whether comedy or tragedy, or both, or neither, is any way insignificant, of no account.

It is still more devastating for him to have to consider whether the laurel wreath was not once within his grasp, and whether he must not ascribe his own incalculable loss to his stomach simply.

December 15.

A very bad heart attack. As I write it intermits every three or four beats. Who knows if I shall live thro' to-night?

December 16.

Here I am once more. A passable night. After breakfast the intermittency recommenced – it is better now, with a dropped beat only about once per half-hour, so that I am almost happy after yesterday, which was Hell. The world is too good to give up without remonstrance at the beck of a weak heart.

Before I went to sleep last night, my watch stopped – I at once observed the cessation of its tick and wondered if it were an omen. I was genuinely surprised to find myself still ticking when I awoke this morning. A moment ago a hearse passed down the street… Yes, but I'm damned if I haven't a right to be morbid after yesterday. To be ill like this in a boarding-house! I'd marry to-morrow if I had the chance.

December 22.

Sollas's "Ancient Hunters"

Read Sollas's book Ancient Hunters– very thrilling – mind full of the Aurignacians, Mousterians, Magdalenians! I have been peering down such tremendous vistas of time and change that my own troubles have been eclipsed into ridiculous insignificance. It has been really a Pillar of Strength to me – a splendid tonic. Palæontology has its comfortable words too. I have revelled in my littleness and irresponsibility. It has relieved me of the harassing desire to live, I feel content to live dangerously, indifferent to my fate; I have discovered I am a fly, that we are all flies, that nothing matters. It's a great load off my life, for I don't mind being such a micro-organism – to me the honour is sufficient of belonging to the universe – such a great universe, so grand a scheme of things. Not even Death can rob me of that honour. For nothing can alter the fact that I have lived; I have been I, if for ever so short a time. And when I am dead, the matter which composes my body is indestructible – and eternal, so that come what may to my "Soul," my dust will always be going on, each separate atom of me playing its separate part – I shall still have some sort of a finger in the Pie. When I am dead, you can boil me, burn me, drown me, scatter me – but you cannot destroy me: my little atoms would merely deride such heavy vengeance. Death can do no more than kill you.

December 27.

"It is a pleasure to note the success attending the career of Mr. W.N.P. Barbellion now engaged in scientific work on the staff of the Natural History Museum …" etc., etc.

This is a cutting from the local paper – one of many that from time to time I once delightedly pasted in the pages of the Journal. Not so now.

… At 23, I am a different being. Surrounded by all the stimulating environment of scientific research, I am cold and disdainful. I keep up the old appearances but underneath it is quite different. I am a hypocrite. I have to wear the mask and cothornoi, finding the part daily more difficult to bear. I am living on my immense initial momentum – while the machinery gradually slows up. My career! Gadzooks.

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?