The Journal of a Disappointed Man

Had tea in the Pagoda tea-rooms, dry toast and brown bread and butter. Two young men opposite me were quietly playing the fool.

"Hold my hand," one said audibly enough for two lovers to hear, comfortably settled up in a corner. Even at a side view I could see them kissing each other in between mouthfuls of bread and butter and jam.

On rising to go, one of the two hilarious youths removed my cap and playfully placed it on top of the bowler which his friend was wearing.

"My cap, I think," I said sharply, and the young man apologised with a splutter. I glared like a kill-joy of sixty.

On the 'bus, coming home, thro' streets full of motor traffic and all available space plastered with advertisements that screamed at you, I espied in front three pretty girls, who gave me the "Glad Eye." One had a deep, musical voice, and kept on using it, one of the others a pretty ankle and kept on showing it.

At Kew, two Italians came aboard, one of whom went out of his way to sit among the girls. He sat level with them, and kept turning his head around, giving them a sweeping glance as he did so, to shout remarks in Italian to his friend behind. He thought the girls were prostitutes, I think, and he may have been right. I was on the seat behind this man and for want of anything better to do, studied his face minutely. In short, it was fat, round, and greasy. He wore black moustachios with curly ends, his eyes were dark shining, bulgy, and around his neck was wrapped a scarf inside a dirty linen collar, as if he had a sore throat. I sat behind him and hated him steadily, perseveringly.

At Hammersmith the three girls got off, and the bulgy-eyed Italian watched them go with lascivious eyes, looking over the rail and down at them on the pavement – still interested. I looked down too. They crossed the road in front of us and disappeared.

Came home and here I am writing this. This is the content of to-day's consciousness. This is about all I have thought, said, or done, or felt. A stagnant day!

March 26.

Home with a bad influenza cold. In a deplorable condition. The best I could do was to sit by the fire and read newspapers one by one from the first page to the last till the reading became mechanical. I found myself reading an account of the Lincoln Handicap and a column article on Kleptomania, while advertisements of new books were devoured with relish as delicacies. My mind became a morass of current Divorce Court News, Society Gossip – "if Sir A. goes Romeward, if Miss B. sings true" – and advertisements. I went on reading because I was afraid to be alone with myself.

B – arrived at tea and after saying he felt very "pin-eyed" swallowed a glass of Bols gin – the Gin of Antony Bols – and recovered sufficiently to inform me delightedly that he had just won £50. He told me all the story; meanwhile, I, tired of wiping and blowing my nose, sat in the dirty armchair hunched up with elbows on knees and let it drip on to the dirty carpet. B – , of course, noticed nothing, which was fortunate.

Some kinds of damned fool would have been kindly and sympathetic. I must say I like old B – . I like him for his simpleness and utter absence of self-consciousness, which make him as charming as a child. Moreover, he often makes me a present of invaluable turf tips. Of course, he is a liar, but his lies are harmless and on his mouth like milk on an infant's. My own lies are much more dangerous. And when you are ill, to be treated as tho' you were well is good for hypochondriacs.

April 15.

H – 's wedding. Five minutes before time, I am told I made a dramatic entry into the church clad in an audaciously light pair of Cashmere trousers, lemon-coloured gloves, with top hat and cane. The latter upset the respectability frightfully – it is not comme il faut.

April 16.

… If I am to admit the facts they are that I eagerly anticipate love, look everywhere for it, long for it, am unhappy without it. She fascinates me – admitted. I could, if I would, surrender myself. Her affection makes me long to do it. I am sick of living by myself. I am frightened of myself. My life is miserable alone, and sometimes desperately miserable when I long for a little sympathy to be close at hand.

I have often tried to persuade R – to share a flat with me, because I don't really wish to marry. I struggle against the idea, I am egotist enough to wish to shirk the responsibilities.

But then I am a ridiculously romantic creature With a wonderful ideal of a woman I shall never meet or if I do she won't want me – "that (wholly) impossible She." R – in a flat with me would partly solve my difficulties. I don't love her enough for marriage. Mine must be a grand passion, a bouleversement– for I am capable of it.

April 17.

A Humble Confession

The Hon. – , son and heir of Lord – , to-day invited me to lunch with him in – Square. He's a handsome youth of twenty-five, with fair hair and blue eyes… and O! such an aristocrat. Good Lord.

But to continue: the receipt of so unexpected an invitation from so glorious a young gentleman at first gave me palpitation of the heart. I was so surprised that I scarcely had enough presence of mind to listen to the rest of his remarks and later, it was only with the greatest difficulty that I could recall the place where we arranged to meet. His remarks, too, are not easy to follow, as he talks in a stenographic, Alfred-Jingle-like manner, jerking out disjected members of sentences, and leaving you to make the best of them or else to Hell with you – by the Lord, I speak English, don't I? If I said, "I beg your pardon," he jerked again, and left me often equally unenlightened.

On arriving at his home, the first thing he did was to shout down the stairs to the basement: "Elsie, Elsie," while I gazed with awe at a parcel on the hall table addressed to "Lord – ." Before lunch we sat in his little room and talked about – , but I was still quite unable to regain my self-composure. I couldn't for the life of me forget that here was I lunching with Lord – 's son, on equal terms, with mutual interests, that his sisters perhaps would come in directly or even the noble Lord himself. I felt like a scared hare. How should I address a peer of the realm? I kept trying to remember and every now and then for some unaccountable reason my mind travelled into – shire and I saw Auntie C – serving out tea and sugar over the counter of the baker's shop in the little village. I luxuriated in the contrast, tho' I am not at all inclined to be a snob.

He next offered me a cigarette, which I took and lit. It was a Turkish cigarette with one end plugged up with cotton-wool – to absorb the nicotine – a, thing I've never seen before. I was so flurried at the time that I did not notice this and lit the wrong end. With perfect ease and self-possession, the Honourable One pointed out my error to me and told me to throw the cigarette away and have another.

By this time I had completely lost my nerve. My pride, chagrin, excessive self-consciousness were entangling all my movements in the meshes of a net. Failing to tumble to the situation, I inquired, "Why the wrong end? Is there a right and a wrong end?" Lord – 's son and heir pointed out the cotton-wool end, now blackened by my match.

"That didn't burn very well, did it?"

I was bound to confess that it did not, and threw the smoke away under the impression that these wonderful cigarettes with right and wrong ends must be some special brand sold only to aristocrats, and at a great price, and possessing some secret virtue. Once again, handsome Mr. – drew out his silver cigarette-case, selected a second cigarette for me, and held it towards me between his long delicate fingers, at the same time pointing out the plug at one end and making a few staccato remarks which I could not catch.

I was still too scared to be in full possession of my faculties, and he apparently was too tired to be explicit to a member of the bourgeoisie, stumbling about his drawing-room. The cotton-wool plug only suggested to me some sort of a plot on the part of a dissolute scion of a noble house to lure me into one of his bad habits, such as smoking opium or taking veronal. I again prepared to light the cigarette at the wrong end.

"Try the other end," repeated the young man, smiling blandly. I blushed, and immediately recovered my balance, and even related my knowledge of pipes fitted to carry similar plugs…

During lunch (at which we sat alone) after sundry visits to the top of the stairs to shout down to the kitchen, he announced that he thought it wasn't last night's affair after all which was annoying the Cook (he got home late without a latch-key) – it was because he called her "Cook" instead of Mrs. Austin. He smiled serenely and decided to indulge Mrs. A., his indulgent attitude betraying an objectionable satisfaction with the security of his own unassailable social status. There was a trace of gratification at the little compliment secreted in the Cook's annoyance. She wanted Mr. Charles to call her Mrs. Austin, forsooth. Very well! and he smiled down on the little weakness de haute en bas.

I enjoyed this little experience. Turning it over in my mind (as the housemaid says when she decides to stay on) I have come to the conclusion that the social parvenu is not such a vulgar fellow after all. He may be a bore – particularly if he sits with his finger tips apposed over a spherical paunch, festooned with a gold chain, and keeps on relating in extenso how once he gummed labels on blacking bottles. Often enough he is a smug fellow, yet, truth to tell, we all feel a little interested in him. He is a traveller from an antique land, and we sometimes like to listen to his tales of adventure and all he has come through. He has traversed large territories of human experience, he has met strange folk and lodged in strange caravanserai. Similarly with the man who has come down in the world – the fool, the drunkard, the embezzler – he may bore us with his maudlin sympathy with himself yet his stories hold us. It must be a fine experience within the limits of a single life to traverse the whole keyboard of our social status, whether up or down. I should like to be a peer who grinds a barrel organ or (better still) a one-time organ-grinder who now lives in Park Lane. It must be very dull to remain stationary – once a peer always a peer.

April 20.

Miss – heard me sigh to-day and asked what it might mean. "Only the sparks flying upward," I answered lugubriously.

A blackguard is often unconscious of a good deal of his wickedness. Charge him with wickedness and he will deny it quite honestly – honest then, perhaps, for the first time in his life.

An Entomologist is a large hairy man with eyebrows like antennæ.

Chronic constipation has gained for me an unrivalled knowledge of all laxatives, aperients, purgatives and cathartic compounds. At present I arrange two gunpowder plots a week. It's abominable. Best literature for the latrine: picture puzzles.

April 23.

A Foolish Bird

With a menacing politeness, B – to-day inquired of a fat curate who was occupying more than his fair share of a seat on top of a 'bus, —

"Are you going to get up or stay where ye are, sir?"

The foolish bird was sitting nearly on top of B – , mistaking a bomb for an egg.

"I beg your pardon," replied the fat curate.

B – repeated his inquiry with more emphasis in the hideous Scotch brogue.

"I suppose I shall stay here till I get down presently."

"I don't think you will," said B – .

"What do you mean?" asked the fat one in falsetto indignation.

"This," B – grunted, and shunted sideways so that the poor fellow almost slid on to the floor.

A posse of police walking along in single file always makes me laugh. A single constable is a Policeman, but several in single file are "Coppers." I imagine every one laughs at them and I have a shrewd suspicion it is one of W.S. Gilbert's legacies – the Pirates of Penzance having become part of the national Consciousness.

On Lighting Chloe's Cigarette

R – remarked to-day that he intended writing a lyric on lighting Chloe's cigarette.

"Ah!" I said at once appreciative, "now tell me, do you balance your hand – by gently (ever so gently) resting the extreme tip of your little finger upon her chin, and" (I was warming up) "do you hold the match vertically or horizontally, and do you light it in the dark or in the light? If you have finesse, you won't need to be told that the thing is to get a steady flame and the maximum of illumination upon her face to last over a period for as long as possible."

"Chloe," replied R – , "is wearing now a charming blouse with a charming V-shaped opening in front. Her Aunt asked my Mother last night tentatively, 'How do you like Chloe's blouse? Is it too low?' My Mother scrutinised the dear little furry, lop-eared thing and answered doubtfully, 'No, Maria, I don't think so.'"

"How ridiculous! Why the V is a positive signpost. My dear fellow," I said to R – , "I should refuse to be bluffed by those old women. Tell them you know."

Carlyle called Lamb a despicable abortion. What a crime!

May 2.

Developed a savage fit. Up to a certain point, perhaps, but beyond that anxiety changes into recklessness – you simply don't care. The aperients are causing dyspepsia and intermittent action of the heart, which frightens me. After a terrifying week, during which at crises I have felt like dropping suddenly in the street, in the gardens, anywhere, from syncope, I rebelled against this humiliating fear. I pulled my shoulders back and walked briskly ahead along the street with a dropped beat every two or three steps. I laughed bitterly at it and felt it could stop or go on – I was at last indifferent. In a photographer's shop was the picture of a very beautiful woman and I stopped to look at her. I glowered in thro' the glass angrily and reflected how she was gazing out with that same expression even at the butcher's boy or the lamp-lighter. It embittered me to think of having to leave her to some other man. To me she represented all the joy of life which at any moment I might have had to quit for ever. Such impotence enraged me and I walked off up the street with a whirling heart and the thought, "I shall drop, I suppose, when I get up as far as that." Yet don't think I was alarmed. Oh! no. The iron had entered me, and I went on with cynical indifference waiting to be struck down.

… She is a very great deal to me. Perhaps I love her very much after all.

May 3.

Bad heart attack all day. Intermittency is very refined torture to one who wants to live very badly. Your pump goes a "dot and carry one," or say "misses a stitch," what time you breathe deep, begin to shake your friend's hand and, make a farewell speech. Then it goes on again and you order another pint of beer.

It is a fractious animal within the cage of my thorax, and I never know when it is going to escape and make off with my precious life between its teeth. I humour and coax and soothe it, but, God wot, I haven't much confidence in the little beast. My thorax it appears is an intolerable kennel.

May 10.

In a very cheerful mood. Pleased with myself and everybody till a seagull soared overhead in Kensington Gardens and aroused my vast capacities for envy – I wish I could fly.

May 24.

In L – with my brother, A – . The great man is in great form and very happy in his love for N – . He is a most delightful creature and I love him more than any one else in the wide world. There is an almost feminine tenderness in my love.

We spent a delightful day, talking and arguing and insulting one another… At these seances we take delight in anaesthetising our hearts for the purposes of argument, and a third person would be bound to suppose we were in the throes of a bitter quarrel. We pile up one vindictive remark on another, ingeniously seeking out – and with malice – weak points in each other's armour, which previous exchange of confidences makes it easy to find. Neither of us hesitates to make use of such private confessions, yet our love is so strong that we can afford to take any liberty. There is, in fact, a fearful joy in testing the strength of our affection by searching for cutting rejoinders – to see the effect. We rig up one another's cherished ideals like Aunt Sallies and then knock them down, we wax sarcastic, satirical, contemptuous in turn, we wave our hands animatedly (hand-waving is a great trick with both of us), get flushed, point with our fingers, and thump the table to clinch some bit of repartee. Yet it's all smoke. Our love is unassailable – it's like the law of gravitation, you cannot dispute it, it underlies our existence, it is the air we breathe.

N – is charming, and thought we were quarrelling, and therefore intervened on his side!

May 31.

R – outlined an impression he had in Naples one day during a sirocco of the imminence of his own death. It was evidently an isolated experience and bored me a little as I could have said a lot myself about that. When he finished I drew from my pocket an envelope with my name and three addresses scribbled on it to help the police in case of syncope as I explained. I have carried this with me for several years and at one time a flask of brandy.

June 3.

Went to see the Irish Players in The Playboy. Sitting in front of me was a charming little Irish girl accompanied by a male clod with red-rimmed eyes like a Bull-terrier's, a sandy, bristly moustache like a housemaid's broom, and a face like a gluteal mass, and a horrid voice that crepitated rather than spoke.

She was dark, with shining blue eyes, and a delightful little nose of the utmost import to every male who should gaze upon her. Between the acts, the clod hearkened to her vivacious conversation – like an enchanted bullock. Her vivacity was such that the tip of her nose moved up and down for emphasis and by the end of the Third Act I was captured entirely. Lucky dog, that clod!

After the play this little Irish maiden caught my eye and it became a physical impossibility for me to check a smile – and oh! Heavens! – she gave me a smile in return. Precisely five seconds later, she looked again to see if I was still smiling – I was – and we then smiled broadly and openly on one another – her smile being the timorous ingénue's not the glad eye of a femme de joie. Later, on the railway platform whither I followed her, I caught her eye again (was ever so lucky a fellow?), and we got into the same carriage. But so did the clod – ah! dear, was ever so unlucky a fellow? Forced to occupy a seat some way off, but she caught me trying to see her thro' a midnight forest of opera hats, lace ruffles, projecting ears and fat noses.

Curse! Left her at High Street Station and probably will never see her again. This is a second great opportunity. The first was the girl on Lundy Island. These two women I shall always regret. There must be so many delightful and interesting persons in London if only I could get at them.

June 4.

Rushed off to tell R – about my little Irish girl. Her face has been "shadowing" me all day.

June 6.

A violent argument with R – re marriage. He says Love means appropriation, and is taking the most elaborate precautions to forfend passion – just as if it were a militant suffragette. Every woman he meets he first puts into a long quarantine, lest perchance she carries the germ of the infectious disease. He quotes Hippolytus and talks like a mediæval ascetic. Himself, I imagine, he regards as a valuable but brittle piece of Dresden china which must be saved from rough handling and left unmolested to pursue its high and dusty destiny – an old crock as I warned him. By refusing to plunge into life he will live long and be a well preserved man, but scarcely a living man – a mummy rather. I told him so amid much laughter.

"You're a reactionary," says he.

"Yes, but why should a reactionary be a naughty boy?"

June 7.

My ironical fate lured me this evening into another discussion on marriage in which I had to take up a position exactly opposite to the one I defended yesterday against R – . In fact, I actually subverted to my own pressing requirements some of R – 's own arguments! The argument, of course, was with Her.

Marriage, I urged, was an economic trap for guileless young men, and for my part (to give myself some necessary stiffening) I did not intend to enter upon any such hazardous course, even if I had the chance. Miss Miss – said I was a funk – to me who the day before had been hammering into R – my principle of "Plunge and damn the consequences." I was informed I was an old woman afraid to go out without an umbrella, an old tabby cat afraid to leave the kitchen fire, etc., etc.

"Yes, I am afraid to go out without an umbrella," I argued formally, "when it's raining cats and dogs. As long as I am dry, I shall keep dry. As soon as I find myself caught in the rain or victimised by a passion, I shan't be afraid of falling in love or getting wet. It would be a misadventure, but I am not going in search of one."

All the same the discussion was very galling, for I was acting a part.

… The truth is I have philandered abominably with her. I know it. And now I am jibbing at the idea of marriage… I am such an egotist, I want, I believe, a Princess of the Blood Royal.

June 9.

Some days ago sent a personal advertisement to the newspaper to try to find my little Irish girl who lives at Notting Hill Gate. To-day they return me the money and advert, no doubt mistaking me for a White Slave trafficker. And by this time, I'm thinking, my little Irish girl can go to blazes. Shall spend the P.O. on sweets or monkey nuts.

June 10

Lupus

It is raining heavily. I have just finished dinner. In the street an itinerant musician is singing dolefully, "O Rest in the Lord." In my dirty little sitting room I begin to feel very restless, so put on my hat and cloak and walk down towards the Station for a paper to read. It is, all very dark and dismal, and I gaze with hungry eyes in thro' some of the windows disclosing happy comfortable interiors. At intervals thunder growls and lightning brightens up the deserted dirtiness of the Station Waiting Room. A few bits of desolate paper lie about on the floor, and up in one corner on a form a crossing-sweeper, motionless and abject, driven in from his pitch by the rain. His hands are deep in his trousers' pockets, and the poor devil lies with legs sprawling out and eyes closed: over the lower part of his face he wears a black mask to hide the ravages of lupus… He seemed the last man on earth – after every one else had died of the plague. Not a soul in the station. Not a train. And this is June!

June 15.

Measuring Lice

Spent the day measuring the legs and antennæ of lice to two places of decimals!

To the lay mind how fantastic this must seem! Indeed, I hope it is fantastic. I do not mind being thought odd. It seems almost fitting that an incurable dilettante like myself should earn his livelihood by measuring the legs of lice. I like to believe that such a bizarre manner of life suits my incurable frivolousness.

I am a Magpie in a Bagdad bazaar, hopping about, useless, inquisitive, fascinated by a lot of astonishing things: e. g., a book on the quadrature of the circle, the gabbertushed fustilugs passage in Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy, names like Mr. Portwine or Mr. Hogsflesh, Tweezer's Alley or Pickle Herring Street, the excellent, conceitful sonnets of Henry Constable or Petticoat Lane on a Sunday morning.

Colossal things such as Art, Science, etc., frighten me. I am afraid I should develop a thirst that would make me wish to drink the sea dry. My mind is a disordered miscellany. The world is too distracting. I cannot apply myself for long. London bewilders me. At times it is a phantasmagoria, an opium dream out of De Quincey.

June 17.

Prof. Geo. Saintsbury's book on Elizabethan literature amuses me. George, there can be no doubt, is a very refined, cultivated fellow. I bet he don't eat periwinkles with a pin or bite his nails – and you should hear him refer to folk who can't read Homer in the original or who haven't been to Oxford – to Merton above all. He also says non so che for je ne sais quoi.