THE JOURNAL OF A DISAPPOINTED MAN

BY

W.N.P. BARBELLION



WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY H.G. WELLS



NEW YORK

GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY

1919


"I returned, and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift,
nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet
riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time
and chance happeneth to them all.

"For man also knoweth not his time; as the fishes that are taken in an
evil net, and as the birds that are caught in the snare; so are the sons
of men snared in an evil time, when it falleth suddenly upon them."




INTRODUCTION

By H.G. WELLS

Your egoist, like the solitary beasts, lives only for himself; your
altruist declares that he lives only for others; for either there may be
success or failure but for neither can there be tragedy. For even if the
altruist meets nothing but ingratitude, what has he to complain of? His
premises abolish his grounds of complaint. But both egoist and altruist
are philosophical abstractions. The human being by nature and necessity
is neither egoist nor altruist; he trims a difficult course between the
two; for the most part we are, within the limits of our powers of
expression, _egotists_, and our desire is to think and if possible talk
and write about this marvellous experiment of ourselves, with all the
world--or as much as we can conveniently assemble--for audience. There
is variety in our styles. Some drape the central figure; some let it
rather appear than call attention to it; some affect a needless
frankness: "_I_ am an egotist, mind you, and I pretend nothing else";
some by adopting a pose with accessories do at least develop so great
and passionate an interest in the accessories as to generalise and
escape more or less completely from self. An egotism like an eggshell is
a thing from which to escape; the art of life is that escape. The
fundamental art of life is to recover the sense of that great
self-forgetful continuous life from which we have individually budded
off. Many people have done this through religion, which begins with a
tremendous clamour to some saviour god or other to recognise us and ends
in our recognition of him; or through science, when your egotist begins
with: "Behold me! I, I your humble servant, am a scientific man, devoted
to the clear statement of truth," and ends with so passionate a
statement of truth that self is forgotten altogether.

In this diary of an intensely egotistical young naturalist, tragically
caught by the creeping approach of death, we have one of the most moving
records of the youthful aspects of our universal struggle. We begin with
one of those bright schoolboys that most of us like to fancy we once
were, that many of us have come to love as sons or nephews or younger
brothers, and this youngster is attracted by natural science, by the
employments of the naturalist and by the thought of being himself some
day a naturalist. From the very beginning we find in this diary the
three qualities, from the narrowest to broadest. "Observe me," he says
to himself, "I am observing nature." There is the self-conscious,
self-centred boy. But he also says "I am observing nature!" And at
moments comes the clear light. He forgets himself in the twilight cave
with the bats or watching the starlings in the evening sky, he becomes
just you and I and the mind of mankind gathering knowledge. And the
diary, as the keen edge of untimely fate cuts down into the sensitive
tissue, shows us presently, after outcries and sorrow and darkness of
spirit, the habits of the observer rising to the occasion. Not for him,
he realises, are the long life, the honours of science, the Croonian
lecture, the listening Royal Society, one's memory embalmed in specific
or generic names, the sure place in the temple of fame, that once filled
his boyish dreams. But here is something close at hand to go on
observing manfully to the end, in which self may be forgotten, and that
is his own tormented self, with desire still great and power and hope
receding. "I will go on with this diary," I read between the lines. "You
shall have at least one specimen, carefully displayed and labelled. Here
is a recorded unhappiness. When you talk about life and the rewards of
life and the justice of life and its penalties, what you say must square
with this."

Such is what we have here. It will be going beyond the necessities of
this preface to expatiate upon a certain thread of unpremeditated and
exquisite beauty that runs through the story this diary tells. To all
sensitive readers it will be plain enough, and those who cannot see it
plain do not deserve to have it underlined for them, that, still
unseeing, they may pretend to see. Nor need we dilate upon the
development of the quality of this diary from the rather fussy egotism
of the earlier half. But it may be well to add a few explanatory facts
that the opening chapters rather take for granted. Barbellion began life
at a material as well as a physical disadvantage; neither of his parents
were sturdy people, his mother died at last of constitutional heart
weakness, and his father belonged to that most unfortunate class, the
poor educated, who live lives of worry in straitened circumstances.
Barbellion's father was a newspaper reporter in a west country town, his
income rarely exceeded a couple of hundred pounds a year; the
educational facilities of the place were poor, and young Barbellion had
to get such learning as he could as a day boy at a small private school,
his father supplementing this meagre training and presently taking him
on as an apprentice reporter. How the passion for natural science arose
does not appear in this diary; we already find the naturalist formed in
the first schoolboy entries. An uncle, a chemist, seems to have
encouraged the tendency, and to have given him textbooks and other help.
Somehow at any rate he acquired a considerable amount of knowledge; by
the time he was eighteen he was already publishing quite excellent
observations of his own in such periodicals as the _Zoologist_, and by
the time he was twenty he could secure an appointment as assistant
naturalist to the director of a well-known marine biological station. It
was a success, as the reader will learn, gained only to be renounced.
His father was ill and he had to stand by his family; our economical
country cannot afford to make biologists out of men who can earn a
living as hack reporters. Poverty and science are sisters wherever the
flag of Britain waves; for how could the rich live if we wasted money on
that sort of thing? But the dream was not altogether abandoned, and in
1911 Barbellion got a post, one of the dozen or so of rare and coveted
opportunities to toil in a scientific atmosphere that our Empire
affords; he secured an assistantship at the Natural History Museum,
South Kensington, to which a living wage was attached, a fair equivalent
to a reporter's earnings. The rest of the story needs no helping out.
Let me only add that since 1911 Barbellion, in spite of his steadily
diminishing strength, has published articles in both British and
American periodicals, that entirely justify the statement that in him
biological science loses one of the most promising of its recent
recruits. His scientific work is not only full and exact but it has
those literary qualities, the grace, the power of handling, the breadth
of reference, which have always distinguished the best English
biological work, and which mark off at once the true scientific man from
the mere collector and recorder of items. With this much introduction
Barbellion may be left to tell the tragedy of his hopes and of the dark,
unforeseen, unforeseeable, and inexplicable fate that has overtaken
him.




PART I--THE JOURNAL BEGINS WHEN ITS AUTHOR IS A LITTLE OVER 13 YEARS
OLD.

_[The Following are Selected Entries.]_




1903


_January_ 3.

Am writing an essay on the life-history of insects and have abandoned
the idea of writing on "How Cats Spend their Time."

_January_ 17.

Went with L---- out catapult shooting. While walking down the main road
saw a Goldfinch, but very indistinctly--it might not have been one. Had
some wonderful shots at a tree creeper in the hedge about a foot away
from me. While near a stream, L---- spotted what he thought to be some
Wild Duck and brought one down, hitting it right in the head. He is a
splendid shot. We discovered on examining it that it was _not_ Wild Duck
at all but an ordinary tame Wild Duck--a hen. We ran away, and to-night
L---- tells me he saw the Farmer enter the poulterer's shop with the
bird in his hand.

_January_ 19.

Went to A---- Wood with S---- and L----. Saw a Barn Owl (_Strix
flammea_) flying in broad daylight. At A---- Woods, be it known, there
is a steep cliff where we were all out climbing to inspect and find all
the likely places for birds to build in, next spring. S---- and I got along
all right, but L----, being a bit too careless, let go his hold on a
tree and fell headlong down. He turned over and over and seemed to us to
pitch on the back of his neck. However, he got up as cheerfully as ever,
saying, "I don't like that--a bit of a nasty knock."

_February_ 8.

Joe became the mother of one kitten to-day. It was born at 1.20. It is
a tiny little thing. One would almost call it deformed. It is gray.

_March_ 18.

Our Goldfinch roosts at 5.30. Joe's kitten is a very small one. "Magpie"
is its name.

_March_ 28.

Went our usual ramble. But we were unfortunate from the very beginning.
First, when we reached the "Nightjar Field," we found there were two men
at the bottom of it cutting the hedge, so we decided not to venture on,
as Gimbo and Bounce were with us, and it would look like poaching. Later
on, we came to a splendid wood, but had to withdraw hastily from it, an
old farmer giving us a severe chase. There were innumerable rabbits in
the wood, so, of course, the dogs barked hard. I gave them a sound
beating when we got back out of danger, The old farmer is known as "Bale
the Bell-hanger."

_April_ 2.

I was glad yesterday to see the egg season so well in. I shall have to
get blow-pipes and egg drills. Spring has really arrived and even the
grasshoppers are beginning to stridulate, yet Burke describes these
little creatures as being "loud and troublesome" and the chirp
unpleasant. Like Samuel Johnson, he must have preferred brick walls to
green hedges. Many people go for a walk and yet are unable to admire
Nature simply because their power of observation is untrained. Of course
some are not suited to the study at all and do not trouble themselves
about it. In that case they should not talk of what they do not
understand.... I might have noticed that I have used the term "Study of
Nature." But it cannot be called a _study_. It _is_ a pastime of sheer
delight, with naught but beautiful dreams and lovely thoughts, where we
are urged forward by the fact that we are in God's world which He made
for us to be our comfort in time of trouble.... Language cannot express
the joy and happy forgetfulness during a ramble in the country. I do
not mean that all the ins and outs and exact knowledge of a naturalist
are necessary to produce such delight, but merely the common
objects--Sun, Thrush, Grasshopper, Primrose, and Dew.

_April_ 21.

S---- and I have made a little hut in the woods out of a large natural
hole in the ground by a big tree. We have pulled down branches all
around it and stuck in upright sticks as a paling. We are training ivy
to grow over the sticks. We smoke "Pioneer" cigarettes here and hide the
packets in a hole under the roots of the tree. It's like a sort of
cupboard.

_August_ 6.

In the evening, S---- and I cycled to S----, and when it was dark we
went down on the rocks and lit a fire which crackled and burnt in the
dusk of the evening.... Intend to do a bit to Beetles these hols. Rev.
J. Wood in the _B.O.P_. has incited me to take them up, and it is really
time, for at present I am as ignorant as I can hang together of the
Coleoptera.

_December_ 24.

Went out with L---- to try to see the squirrels again. We could not find
one and were just wondering if we should draw blank when L---- noticed
one clinging to the bark of a tree with a nut in its mouth. We gave it a
good chase, but it escaped into the thickest part of the fir tree, still
carrying the nut, and we gave up firing at it. Later on, L---- got
foolishly mischievous--owing, I suppose, to our lack of sport--and
unhinged a gate which he carried two yards into a copse, and threw it on
the ground. Just then, he saw the Squirrel again and jumped over the
hedge into the copse, chasing it from tree to tree with his catty.
Having lost it, he climbed a fir tree into a Squirrel's drey at the top
and sat there on the tree top, and I, below, was just going to lift the
gate back when I looked up and saw a farmer watching me, menacing and
silent. I promptly dropped the gate and fled. L---- from his Squirrel's
drey, not knowing what had happened, called out to me about the
nest--that there was nothing in it. The man looked up and asked him who
he was and who I was. L---- would not say and would not come down. The
farmer said he would come up. L---- answered that if he did he would
"gob" [_i.e_. spit] on him. Eventually L---- climbed down and asked the
farmer for a glass of cider. The latter gave him his boot and L---- ran
away.




1904


_January_ 23.

Went to the meet of the Stag hounds. Saw a hind in the stream at
L----with not a horse, hound, or man in sight. It looked quite
unconcerned and did not seem to have been hunted. I tried to head it,
but a confounded sheep-dog got there before me and drove it off in the
wrong direction. I _was_ mad, because if I had succeeded in heading it
and had there been a kill, I should have got a slot. Got home at 6.30,
after running and walking fifteen miles--tired out.

_April_ 5.

Just read _Stalky & Co_. Of Stalky, Beetle, and McTurk, I like Beetle
best.

_April_ 14.

Won the School Gymnasium championship (under fifteen).

_August_ 25.

Had quite an adventure to-day. D---- and I cycled to the Lighthouse at
----. On the way, in crossing the sands near the Hospital Ship we espied
a lame Curlew which could hardly fly. I gave chase, but it managed to
scramble over a gut full of water about two yards wide. D---- took off
his boots and stockings and carried me over on his back, and we both
raced across the sands to where the Curlew lay in an exhausted state. I
picked him up and carried him off under my arm, like the boy with the
Goose that laid the golden eggs. All the time, the bird screamed loudly,
opening its enormously long bill and struggling to escape. Arrived at
the gut again, we found that the incoming tide had made the gut wider
and deeper so that we were cut off from the mainland, and found it
necessary to wade across at once before it got deeper. As I had to carry
a pair of field-glasses as well as my boots and stockings, I handed over
the struggling bird to D----. While wading across, I suddenly sank to my
waist in a sandpit. This frightened me, and I was glad to reach the
other side in safety. But on arrival I found D----, but no Curlew. In
wading across the current, he grew flurried and let it go. The tide
swept it upstream, and the poor bird, I fear, perished by drowning....
Knocked up my friend P----, who is skipper of the ship _N_---- and asked
him if he had a fire so that I could dry myself. He replied that they
had no fire but that his "missus" would look out a pair of pants for me.
Before falling in with this plan unconditionally, I thought it best to
inspect the garment. However, it was quite clean--a pair of blue serge
seaman's trousers, very baggy in the seat and far too long. But I turned
up the bottoms and hid the baggy part underneath my overcoat. So, I got
back home!

_September_ 8.

Wet all day. Toothache.

_September_ 9.

Toothache.

_September_ 10.

Toothache.

_September_ 11.

Toothache.

_Xmas Day._

Mother and Dad wanted to give me one of G.A. Henty's, but, fearing lest
I did not want it, they did not put my name in it, so that if I wished I
could change it. Intend doing this. Am reading the _Origin of Species_.
It requires careful study, but I understand it so far and shall go on.

_December_ 26.

I have caught nothing in my traps yet. A little while ago I set a
springe and two horse-hair nooses in the reed bed for water rails. I
have bought a book on practical trapping.




1905


_January_ 15.

I am thinking that on the whole I am a most discontented mortal. I get
fits of what I call "What's the good of anything" mania. I keep asking
myself incessantly till the question wears me out: "What's the good of
going into the country _naturalising_? what's the good of studying so
hard? where is it going to end? will it lead anywhere?"

_February_ 17.

When I can get hold of any one interested in Natural History I talk away
in the most garrulous manner and afterwards feel ashamed of myself for
doing it.

_May_ 15.

_The Captain_, in answer to my letter, advises me to join one of the
ordinary professions and then follow up Nat. History as a recreation, or
else join Science Classes at S. Kensington, or else by influence get a
post in the Natural History Museum. But I shall see.

_June_ 9.

During dinner hour, between morning and afternoon school, went out on
the S---- B---- River Bank, and found another Sedge Warbler's nest. This
is the fifth I have found this year. People who live opposite on the
T---- V---- hear them sing at night and think they are Nightingales!

_June_ 27.

On reviewing the past egg-season, I find in all I have discovered 232
nests belonging to forty-four species. I only hope I shall be as
successful with the beetle-season.

_August_ 15.

A hot, sultry afternoon, during most of which I was stretched out on the
grass beside an upturned stone where a battle royal was fought between
Yellow and Black Ants. The victory went to the hardy little Yellows....
By the way, I held a Newt by the tail to-day and it emitted a squeak! So
that the Newt has a voice after all.

_August_ 26.

In bed with a feverish cold. I am afraid I have very few Nat. His.
observations to make. It is hard to observe anything at all when lying
in bed in a dull bedroom with one small window. Gulls and Starlings
pass, steam engines whistle, horses' feet clatter down the street, and
sometimes the voice of a passer-by reaches me, and often the loud laugh
that speaks the vacant mind. I can also hear my own cough echoing
through my head, and, by the evening, the few pages of Lubbock's _Ants,
Bees, and Wasps_ which I struggled to get through during the day rattle
through my brain till I am disgusted to find I have them by heart. The
clock strikes midnight and I wait for the morning. Oh! what a weary
world.

_October_ 13.

Down with another cold. Feeling pretty useless. It's a wonder I don't
develop melancholia.

_November_ 6.

By 7 a.m. H---- and I were down on the mudflats of the River with
field-glasses, watching Waders. Ringed Plover in great numbers.




1906

_January_ 13.

I have always had one ambition to be a great naturalist. That is, I
suppose, a child's fancy, and I can see my folly in hoping for such
great things. Still, there is no reason why I should not become a
_learned_ naturalist if I study hard. I hope that whatever I do I shall
do in the hope of increasing knowledge of truth and not for my own fame.
This entry may suggest that I am horribly conceited. But really I am as
humble as possible. I know I have advanced beyond many others, and I
know I shall advance further, but why be conceited?... What a short life
we have, and what heaps of glorious work to be done! Supper bell--so I
am off.... This reads like Isaac Walton's funny mixtures of the sublime
with the ridiculous. He discusses abstract happiness and the best salmon
sauce all in one breath.

_February_ 26.

Although it is a grand achievement to have added but one jot or tittle
to the sum of human knowledge it is grander still to have added a
thought. It is best for a man to try to be both poet and naturalist--not
to be too much of a naturalist and so overlook the beauty of things, or
too much of a poet and so fail to understand them or even perceive those
hidden beauties only revealed by close observation.

_March_ 17.

Woke up this morning covered with spots, chest inflamed, and bad cough.
H---- carted me down from the Attic to the Lower Bedroom, and when the
Dr. came he confirmed the general opinion that I had measles. It is
simply disgusting, I have somewhere near 10,000 spots on me.

_April_ 27.

Went to A---- Woods, where, strange to say, I again saw Mary. But she
had a tribe of friends with her, so did not speak, but watched her from
a distance through my field-glasses.

_May_ 8.

On interviewing my old friend Dr. H----, found I had chickenpox. This
instead of being a Diary of a Naturalist's observations[1] will be one
of infectious diseases.

_May_ 28.

[Letter from Editor of _Countryside_ to my brother saying that if the
_Countryside_ grew he might be able to offer me a billet. "Meanwhile he
will be able to get along with his pen ... he will soon make a living
and in time too a name."] This is a bit of all right. I shall always be
on the look-out for a job on a N.H. Journal.

_December_ 7.

Went to F---- Duckponds. Flocks of Wigeon and Teal on the water. Taking
advantage of a dip in the land managed to stalk them splendidly, and for
quite a long time I lay among the long grass watching them through my
field-glasses. But during the day Wild Duck are not particularly lively
or interesting birds. They just rest serenely on the water like floating
corks on a sheet of glass. Occasionally one will paddle around lazily.
But for the most part they show a great ennui and seem so sleepy and
tired that one would almost think to be able to approach and feed them
out of the hand. But I moved one hand carelessly and the whole flock was
up in a minute and whizzing across the river. Afterwards, at dusk, on
returning to the ponds, they had come back; but now that the sun was
down, those dozy, flapdoodle creatures of the afternoon were transformed
into quacking, quarrelsome, blustering birds that squabbled and chivvied
each other, every moment seizing the chance of a luxurious dip, flinging
the ice-cold water off their backs with a shake of the tail that seemed
to indicate the keenest-edged delight.

It was now quite dark. A Snipe rose at my feet and disappeared into the
darkness. Coots and Moorhens clekked, and a Little Grebe grew bold and
began to dive and fish quite close to me, methodically working its way
upstream and so quartering out its feeding area.

A happy half-hour! Alas! I enjoy these moments the more as they recede.
Not often do I realise the living present. That is always difficult. It
is the mere shades--the ghosts of the dead days--that are dearest to me.

Spent my last day at school. De Quincey says (or was it Johnson?) that
whenever we do anything for the last time, provided we have done it
regularly for years before, we are a little melancholy, even though it
has been distasteful to us.... True.

_December_ 14.

Signed my Death Warrant, _i.e._, my articles apprenticing me to
journalism for five years. By Jove! I shall work frantically during the
next five years so as to be ready at the end of them to take up a
Natural History appointment.


[1] Up to 1911, the Journal is mainly devoted to records of observations
in general Natural History and latterly in Zoology alone.




1907


_March_ 1.

As long as he has good health, a man need never despair. Without good
health, I _might_ keep a long while in the race, yet as the goal of my
ambition grew more and more unattainable I should surely remember the
words of Keats and give up: "There is no fiercer Hell than the failure
of a great ambition."

_March_ 14.

Have been reading through the Chemistry Course in the Harmsworth
_Self-Educator_ and learning all the latest facts and ideas about
radium. I would rather have a clear comprehension of the atom as a solar
system than a private income of £100 a year. If only I had eyes to go on
reading without a stop!

_May_ 1.

Met an old gentleman in E----, a naturalist with a great contempt for
the Book of Genesis. He wanted to know how the Kangaroo leapt from
Australia to Palestine and how Noah fed the animals in the Ark. He
rejects the Old T. theogony and advised me to read "Darwin and J.G.
Wood!" Silly old man!

_May_ 22.

To Challacombe and then walked across Exmoor. This is the first time I
have been on Exmoor. My first experience of the Moors came bursting in
on me with a flood of ideas, impressions, and delights. I cannot write
out the history of to-day. It would take too long and my mind is a
palpitating tangle. I have so many things to record that I cannot record
one of them. Perhaps the best thing to do would be to draw up an
inventory of things seen and heard and trust to my memory to fill in the
details when in the future I revert to this date. Too much joy, like too
much pain, simply makes me prostrate. It wounds the organism. It is too
much. I shall try to forget it all as quickly as possible so as to be
able to return to egg-collecting and bird-watching the sooner as a calm
and dispassionate observer. Yet these dear old hills. How I love them. I
cannot leave them without one friendly word. I wish I were a shepherd!

At the "Ring of Bells" had a long yarn with the landlord, who, as he
told us the story of his life, was constantly interrupted but never
disconcerted by the exuberant loyalty and devotion of his wife--a stout,
florid, creamy woman, who capped every story with: "Ees quite honest,
sir; no 'arm at all in old Joshua."

_June_ 5.

A half-an-hour of to-day I spent in a punt under a copper beech out of
the pouring rain listening to Lady ----'s gamekeeper at A---- talk about
beasts and local politics--just after a visit of inspection to the
Heronry in the firs on the island in the middle of the Lake. It was
delightful to hear him describing a Heron killing an Eel with "a dap on
the niddick," helping out the figure with a pat on the nape of his thick
bull neck.

_July_ 22.

Am reading Huxley's _Crayfish_. H---- brought me in that magnificent
aculeate _Chrysis ignita_.

_August_ 15.

Met _her_ in the market with M----. I just lifted my hat and passed on.
She has the most marvellous brown eyes I have ever seen. She is
perfectly self-possessed. A bad sign this.

_August_ 18.

When I feel ill, cinema pictures of the circumstances of my death flit
across my mind's eye. I cannot prevent them. I consider the nature of
the disease and all I said before I died--something heroic, of course!

_August_ 31.

She is a ripping girl. Her eyes are magnificent. I have never seen any
one better looking.

_October_ 1.

In the afternoon dissected a Frog, following Milnes Marshall's Book. Am
studying Chemistry and attending classes at the Evening School and
reading Physiology (Foster's). Am also teaching myself German. I wish I
had a microscope.

_October_ 3.

What heaps of things to be done! How short the time to do them in! An
appetite for knowledge is apt to rush one off one's feet, like any other
appetite if not curbed. I often stand in the centre of the Library here
and think despairingly how impossible it is ever to become possessed of
all the wealth of facts and ideas contained in the books surrounding me
on every hand. I pull out one volume from its place and feel as if I
were no more than giving one dig with a pick in an enormous quarry. The
Porter spends his days in the Library keeping strict vigil over this
catacomb of books, passing along between the shelves and yet never
paying heed to the almost audible susurrus of desire--the desire every
book has to be taken down and read, to live, to come into being in
somebody's mind. He even hands the volumes over the counter, seeks them
out in their proper places or returns them there without once realising
that a Book is a Person and not a Thing. It makes me shudder to think of
Lamb's _Essays_ being carted about as if they were fardels.

_October_ 16.

Dissected an Eel. Cassell's _Natural History_ says the Air-bladder is
divided. This is not so in the one I opened. Found what I believe to be
the lymphatic heart in the tail beneath the vent.




1908


_March_ 10.

Am working frantically so as to keep up my own work with the daily
business of reporting. Shorthand, type-writing, German, Chemistry
classes, Electricity lectures, Zoology (including dissections) and field
work. Am reading Mosenthal's _Muscle and Nerve_.

_April_ 7.

Sectioned a leech. H---- has lent me a hand microtome and I have
borrowed an old razor. My table in the Attic is now fitted up quite like
a Laboratory. I get up every morning at 6 a.m. to dissect. Have worked
at the Anatomy of _Dytiscus, Lumbricus_, another Leech, and _Petromyzon
fluviatilis_ all collected by myself. The "branchial basket" of
_Petromyzon_ interested me vastly. But it's a brute to dissect.[1]

_May_ 1.

Cycled to the Lighthouse at the mouth of the Estuary. Underneath some
telegraph wires, picked up a Landrail in excellent condition. The colour
of the wings is a beautiful warm chestnut. While sweeping the sandhills
with my field-glasses in search of Ring Plover, which nest there in the
shingle beaches, I espied a Shelduck (_Tadorna_) squatting on a piece of
level ground. On walking up cautiously, found it was dead--a Drake in
splendid plumage and quite fresh and uninjured. Put him in my poacher's
pocket, alongside of the Landrail. My coat looked rather bulgy, for a
Shelduck is nearly as big as a Goose. Heard a Grasshopper Warbler--a
rare bird in North ----. Later, after much patient watching, saw the
bird in a bramble bush, creeping about like a mouse.

On the sea-shore picked up a number of Sea Mice (_Aphrodite_) and
bottled them in my jar of 70 per cent., as they will come in useful for
dissection. Also found the cranium of a _Scyllium_, which I will
describe later on.

Near the Lighthouse watched some fishermen bring in a large Salmon in a
seine net worked from the shore. It was most exciting. Cycled down three
miles of hard sand with the wind behind me to the village where I had
tea and--as if nothing could stay to-day's good luck--met Margaret ----.
I showed her one by one all my treasures--Rail, Duck, Skull, Sea Mice,
etc., and felt like Thomas Edward, beloved of Samuel Smiles. To her I
must have appeared a very ridiculous person.

"How do you know it's the skull of a dog-fish?" she asked, incredulous.

"How do I know anything?" I said, a little piqued.

On arriving home found T---- awaiting me with the news that he had
discovered a Woodpecker's nest. When will the luck cease? I have never
had such a flawless ten hours in _le grand air_. These summer days eat
into my being. The sea has been roaring into my ears and the sun blazing
down so that even the backs of my hands are sunburnt. And then: those
coal-black eyes. Ah! me, she _is_ pretty.

_May_ 2.

Dissected the Sheldrake. Very entertained to discover the extraordinary
asymmetry of the syrinx....

_May_ 3.

Dissected Corncrake, examining carefully the pessulus, bronchidesmus
(incomplete), _tympani-form and semi-lunar_ membranes of a very
interesting syrinx....

_May_ 6.

Dissected one of the Sea Mice. It has a remarkable series of hepatic
ducts running into the alimentary canal as in Nudibranchs....

_May_ 9.

_Spring in the Woods_

Among the Oak Saplings we seemed enveloped in a cloud of green. The tall
green grasses threw up a green light against the young green of the
Oaks, and the sun managed to trickle through only here and there. Bevies
of swinging bluebells grew in patches among the grass. Overhead in the
oaks I heard secret leaf whispers--those little noiseless noises. Birds
and trees and flowers were secretive and mysterious like expectant
motherhood. All the live things plotted together, having the same big
business in hand. Out in the sunlit meadows, there was a different
influence abroad. Here everything was gay, lively, irresponsible. The
brook prattled like an inconsequential schoolgirl. The Marsh Marigolds
in flamboyant yellow sunbonnets played ring-a-ring-a-roses.

An Oak Sapling should make an elderly man avuncular. There are so many
tremendous possibilities about a well-behaved young oak that it is
tempting to put a hand upon its shoulder and give some seasoned,
timberly advice.

_June_ 1.

_A Small Red Viper_

Went to L---- Sessions. After the Court rose, I transcribed my notes
quickly and walked out to the famous Valley of Rocks which Southey
described as the ribs of the old Earth poking through. At the bottom of
one of the hills saw a snake, a Red Viper. Put my boot on him quickly so
that he couldn't get away and then recognised him as a specimen of what
I consider to be the fourth species of British Serpent--_Vipera rubra_.
The difficulty was to know how to secure him. This species is more
ferocious than the ordinary _V. bera_, and I did not like the idea of
putting my hand down to seize him by the neck. I stood for some time
with my foot so firmly pressed down on its back that my leg ached and I
began to wonder if I had been bitten. I held on and presently hailed a
baker's cart coming along the road. The man got out and ran across the
grass to where I stood. I showed him what I had beneath my boot and he
produced a piece of string which I fastened around the snake's tail and
so gently hauled the little brute up. It already appeared moribund, but
I squashed its head on the grass with my heel to make certain. After
parting with the baker, to whom all thanks be given, I remember that
Adders are tenacious of life and so I continue to carry him at string's
length and occasionally wallop him against a stone. As he was lifeless I
wrapped him in paper and put him in my pocket--though to make assurance
doubly sure I left the string on and let its end hang out over my
pocket. So home by a two hours' railway journey with the adder in the
pocket of my overcoat and the overcoat on the rack over my head. Settled
down to the reading of a book on Spinoza's _Ethics_. At home it proved
to be quite alive, and, on being pulled out by the string, coiled up on
the drawing-room floor and hissed in a fury, to my infinite surprise.
Finished him off with the poker and so spoilt the skin.

_July_ 18.

Have had toothache for a week. Too much of a coward to have it out.
Started for P---- early in the morning to report Mr. Duke, K.C. After a
week's pain, felt a little dicky. All the way in the train kept
hardening myself to the task in front of me by recollecting the example
of Zola, who killed pain with work. So all day to-day I have endeavoured
to act as if I had no pain--the worst of all pains--toothache. By the
time I got home I was rather done up, but the pain was actually less.
This gave me a furious joy, and, after days of morose silence, to-night
at supper I made them all laugh by bursting out violently with, "I don't
know whether you know it but I've had a horrible day to-day." I
explained at length and received the healing ointment of much sympathy.
Went to bed happy with tooth still aching. I fear it was scarcely
playing the strict Zolaesque game to divulge the story of my
sufferings.... No, I am not a martyr or a saint. Just an ordinary devil
who's having a rough time.

_August_ 17.

_Prawning_

Had a glorious time on the rocks at low tide prawning. Caught some
Five-Bearded Rocklings and a large _Cottus bubalis_. The sun did not
simply shine to-day--it came rushing down from the sky in a cataract and
flooded the sands with light. Sitting on a rock, with prawning net over
my knees I looked along three miles of flat hard and yellow sands. The
sun poured down on them so heavily that it seemed to raise a luminous
golden yellow dust for about three feet high.

On the rocks was a pretty flapper in a pink sunbonnet--also prawning in
company of S----, the artist, who has sent her picture to the Royal
Academy. They saw I was a naturalist, so my services were secured to
pronounce my judgment on a "fish" she had caught. It was a Squid, "an
odd little beast," in truth, as she said. "The same class of animal," I
volunteered, "as the Cuttlefish and Octopus."

"Does it sting?"

"Oh, no!"

"Well, it ought to with a face like that." She laughed merrily, and the
bearded but youthful artist laughed too.

"I don't know anything about these things," he said hopelessly.

"Nor I," said the naturalist modestly. "I study fish."

This was puzzling. "Fish?" What was a Squid then?

... The artist would stop now and then and raise his glasses at a
passing ship, and Maud's face occasionally disappeared in the pink
sunbonnet as she stooped over a pool to examine a seaweed or crab.

She's a dear--and she gave me the Squid. What a merry little cuss!

_September_ 1.

Went with Uncle to see a Wesleyan minister whose fame as a microscopist,
according to Uncle, made it worth my while to visit him. As I expected,
he was just a silly old man, a diatomaniac fond of pretty-pretty slides
and not a scientific man at all. He lectures Bands of Hope on the
Butterfly's Life History and hates his next-door neighbour, who is also
a microscopist and incidentally a scientific man, because he interests
himself in "parasites and those beastly things."

I remarked that his friend next door had shown me an Amphioxus.

"Oh! I expect that's some beastly bacteria thing," he said petulantly.
"I can't understand Wilkinson. He's a pervert."

I told him what _Amphioxus_ was and laughed up my sleeve. He likes to
think of Zoology as a series of pretty pictures illustrating beautiful
moral truths. The old fellow's saving grace was enthusiasm.... Having
focused an object for us, he would stand by, breathless, while we
squinted down his gas-tube, and gave vent to tremendous expletives of
surprise such as "Heavens," or "Jupiter." His eyes would twinkle with
delight and straightway another miracle is selected for us to view.
"They are all miracles," he said.

"Those are the valves"--washing his hands with invisible soap--"no one
has yet been able to solve the problem of the Diatom's valves. No one
knows what they are--no, nor ever will know--why?--why can't we see
behind the valves?--because God is behind the valves--that is why!"
Amen.

_October_ 1.

Telegraphed 1,000 words of Lord ----'s speech at T----.

Spent the night at a comfortable country inn and read Moore's lyrics.
"Row gently here, my Gondolier," ran through my head continuously. The
Inn is an old one with a long narrow passage that leads straight from
front door to back with wainscoted smoke room and parlours on each side.
China dogs, bran on the floor, and the picture of Derby Day with horses
galloping incredibly, the drone of an old crony in the bar, and a
pleasant barmy smell. Slept in a remarkable bedroom full of massive
furniture, draped with cloth and covered with trinkets. The bed had a
tremendous hood over it like a catafalque, and lying in it made me think
I was an effigy. Read Moore till the small hours and then found I had
left my handbag downstairs. Lit a candle and went on a voyage of
discovery. Made a considerable noise, but roused no one. Entered
drawing-room, kitchen, pantries, parlour, bar--everywhere looking for my
bag and dropping candle grease everywhere! Slept in my day shirt. Tired
out and slept like a top.

_November_ 3.

_Aristotle's Lantern_

Dissected the Sea Urchin (_Echinus esculentus_). Very excited over my
first view of Aristotle's Lantern. These complicated pieces of animal
mechanism never smell of musty age--after æons of evolution. When I open
a Sea Urchin and see the Lantern, or dissect a Lamprey and cast eyes on
the branchial basket, such structures strike me as being as finished and
exquisite as if they had just a moment before been tossed me fresh from
the hands of the Creator. They are fresh, young, they smell _new_.

_December_ 3.

Hard at work dissecting a Dogfish. Ruridecanal Conference in the
afternoon. I enjoy this double life I lead. It amazes me to be laying
bare the brain of a dogfish in the morning and in the afternoon to be
taking down in shorthand what the Bishop says on Mission Work.

_December_ 4.

Went to the Veterinary Surgeon and begged of him the skull of a horse.
Carried the trophy home under my arm--bare to the public view. "Why,
Lor', 'tis an ole 'orse's jib," M---- said when I got back.


[1] There are numerous drawings of dissections scattered through the
Journal about this period.




1909


_March_ 7.

My programme of work is: (1) Continue German. (2) Sectioning embryo of
(_a_) Fowl, (_b_) Newt. (3) Paper on Arterial System of Newts. (4)
Psychology of Newts. (5) General Zoological Reading.

_May_ 2.

To C---- Hill. Too much taken with the beauty of the Woods to be able to
do any nesting. Here are some of the things I saw: the bark on several
of the trees in the mazzard orchards rubbed into a beautifully smooth,
polished surface by the Red Devon Cows when scratching where it itched;
I put my hand on the smooth almost cherry-red patch of bark and felt
delighted and grateful that cows had fleas: the young shoots of the
whortle-berry plants on the hill were red tipped with the gold of an
almost horizontal sun. I caught a little lizard which slipped across my
path.... Afar off down in the valley I had come through, in a convenient
break in a holly bush, I could just see a Cow sitting on her matronly
haunches in a field. She flicked her ears and two starlings settled on
her back. A Rabbit swept out of a sweet-brier bush, and a Magpie flew
out of the hedge on my right.

In another direction I could see a field full of luscious, tall, green
grass. Every stalk was so full of sap that had I cut one I am sure it
would have bled great green drops. In the field some lambs were
sleeping; one woke up and looked at me with the back of its head to the
low sun, which shone through its two small ears and gave them a
transparent pink appearance.

No sooner am I rebaptized in the sun than I have to be turning home
again. No sooner do "the sudden lilies push between the loosening fibres
of the heart" than I am whisked back into the old groove--the daily
round. If only I had more time!--more time in which to think, to love,
to observe, to frame my disposition, to direct as far as in me lies the
development and unfolding of my character, if only I could direct all my
energies to the great and difficult profession of life, of being man
instead of trifling with one profession that bores me and dabbling in
another.

_June_ 5.

_On Lundy Island_

Frankie is blowing Seagulls' eggs in the scullery. His father, after a
day's work at the farm, is at his supper very hungry, yet immensely
interested, and calls out occasionally,--

"'Ow you're getting on, Foreman?"

"All right, Capt.," says Frankie affectionately, and the unpleasant
asthmatic, wheezy noise of the egg-blowing goes on.... There are three
dogs asleep under the kitchen table; all three belong to different
owners and neither one to A----.

_June_ 6.

Our egg-collecting with the Lighthouse Keepers. They walk about the
cliffs as surefooted as cats, and feed their dogs on birds' eggs
collected in a little bag at the end of a long pole. One dog ate three
right off in as many minutes, putting his teeth through and cracking the
shell, then lapping up the contents. Crab for tea.

_June_ 7.

After a glorious day at the N. end of the Island with the Puffins, was
forced to-night to take another walk, as the smell of Albert's tobacco,
together with that of his stockinged feet and his boots removed, was
asphyxiating.

_June_ 9.

The governess is an awfully pretty girl. We have been talking together
to-day and she asked me if I were a naturalist. I said "Yes." She said,
"Well, I found a funny little beetle yesterday and Mr. S---- said I
ought to have given it to you." Later, I felt she was looking at me, so
I looked at her, across the beach. Yes! it was true. When our eyes met
she gave me one of the most provokingly pretty smiles, then turned and
went up the cliff path and so out of my life--to my everlasting regret.

Return to-night in a cattle steamer.

_June_ 18.

Dr.----, M.A., F.R.S., D.C.L., LL.D., called in the office to-day, and
seeing Dad typing, said, "Are you Mr. Barbellion?" Dad replied in the
affirmative, whereupon the Doctor handed him his card, and Dad said he
thought it was his son he wanted to see. He is an old gentleman aged
eighty or thereabouts, with elastic-sided boots, an umbrella, and a
guardian nephew--a youngster of about sixty. But I paid him due
reverence as a celebrated zoologist and at his invitation [and to my
infinite pride] accompanied him on an excursion to the coast, where he
wanted to see _Philoscia Couchii_, which I readily turned up for him.

I chanced to remark that I thought torsion in gastropods one of the most
fascinating and difficult problems in Zoology. Why should a snail be
twisted round?

"Humph," said he, "why do we stand upright?" I was not such a fool as to
argue with him, so pretended his reply was a knock-out. But it enabled
me to size him up intellectually.

In the evening dined with him at his hotel.... He knows Wallace and
Haeckel personally, and I sat at his feet with my tongue out listening
to personal reminiscences of these great men. However, he seemed never
to have heard of Gaskell's Theory on the Origin of Vertebrates.

_June_ 27.

Walked to V----. As usual, Nature with clockwork regularity had all her
taps turned on--larks singing, cherries ripening, and bees humming. It
all bored me a little. Why doesn't she vary it a little?

_August_ 8.

A cold note from Dr. ---- saying that he cannot undertake the
responsibility of advising me to give up journalism for zoology.

A hellish cold in the head. Also a swingeing inflammation of the eyes.
Just heard them singing in the Chapel over the way: "God shall wipe away
all tears from their eyes." Hope so, I'm sure.

_August_ 9.

A transformation. After a long series of drab experiences in Sheffield,
etc., the last being the climax of yesterday, an anti-cyclone arrived
this morning and I sailed like an Eagle into cloudless, windless
weather! _The Academy_ has published my article, my cold is suddenly
better, and going down by the sea this afternoon met Mary ----!

_August_ 20.

Had an amusing letter from my maiden-aunt F----, who does not like "the
agnostic atmosphere" in my _Academy_ article. Poor dear! She is sorry if
I really feel like that, and, if I do, what a pity to put it into print.
Then a Bible reference to the Epistle to the Romans.

_Xmas Day_.

Feeling ill--like a sloppy Tadpole. My will is paralysed. I visit the
Doctor regularly to be stethoscoped, ramble about the streets, idly scan
magazines in the Library and occasionally rink--with palpitation of the
heart as a consequence. In view of the shortness, bitterness, and
uncertainty of life, all scientific labour for me seems futile.




1910


_January_ 10.

Better, but still very dicky: a pallid animal: a weevil in a nut. I have
a weak heart, an enervated nervous system; I suffer from lack of funds
with which to carry on my studies; I hate
newspaper-reporting--particularly some skinny-witted speaker like ----;
and last, but not least, there are women; all these worries fight over
my body like jackals over carrion. Yet Zoology is all I want. Why won't
Life leave me alone?

_January_ 15.

Reading Hardy's novels. He is altogether delightful in the subtlety with
which he lets you perceive the first tiny love presentiments between his
heroes and heroines--the casual touch of the hands, the peep of a foot
or ankle underneath the skirt--all these in Hardy signify the cloud no
bigger than a man's hand. They are the susurrus of the breeze before the
storm, and you await what is to follow with palpitating heart.

_February_ 3.

For days past have been living in a state of mental ebullition. All
kinds of pictures of Love, Life, and Death have been passing through my
mind. Now I am too indolent and nerveless to set them down. Physically I
am such a wreck that to carry out the least intention, such as putting
on my boots, I have to flog my will like an Arab with a slave "in a sand
of Ayaman." Three months ago when I got up before breakfast to dissect
rabbits, dogfish, frogs, newts, etc., this would have seemed impossible.

_February_ 6.

Still visit Dr. ----'s surgery each week. I have two dull spots at the
bottom of each lung. What a fine expressive word is _gloom_. Let me
write it: GLOOM....

One evening coming home in the train from L---- County Sessions I
noticed a horrible, wheezy sound whenever I breathed deep. I was scared
out of my life, and at once thought of consumption. Went to the Doctor's
next day, and he sounded me and reassured me. I was afraid to tell him
of the little wheezy sound at the apex of each lung, and I believed he
overlooked it. So next day, very harassed, I went back to him again and
told him. He _hadn't_ noticed it and looked glum. Have to keep out of
doors as much as possible.

The intense internal life I lead, worrying about my health, reading
(eternally reading), reflecting, observing, feeling, loving and
hating--with no outlet for superfluous steam, cramped and confined on
every side, without any friends or influence of any sort, without even
any acquaintances excepting my colleagues in journalism (whom I
contemn)--all this will turn me into the most self-conscious, conceited,
mawkish, gauche creature in existence.

_March_ 6.

The facts are undeniable: Life is pain. No sophistry can win me over to
any other view. And yet years ago I set out so hopefully and
healthfully--what are birds' eggs to me _now_? My ambition is enormous
but vague. I am too distributed in my abilities ever to achieve
distinction.

_March_ 22.

Had a letter from the Keeper of Zoology at the British Museum, advising
me of three vacancies in his Dept., and asking me if I would like to
try, etc.... So that Dr. ----'s visit to me bore some fruit.[1] Spent
the morning day-dreaming.... Perhaps this is the flood tide at last! I
shall work like a drayhorse to pull through if I am nominated.... I
await developments in a frightfully turbulent state of mind. I have a
frantic desire to control the factors which are going to affect my
future so permanently. And this ferocious desire, of course, collides
with a crash all day long with the fact that however much I desire there
will still remain the unalterable logic of events.

_April_ 7.

... How delicious all this seemed! To be alive--thinking, seeing,
enjoying, walking, eating--all quite apart from the amount of money in
your purse or the prospects of a career. I revelled in the sensuous
enjoyment of my animal existence.

_June_ 2.

Up to now my life has been one of great internal strife and
struggle--the struggle with a great ambition and a weak will--unequal to
the task of coping with it. I have planned on too big a scale, perhaps.
I have put too great a strain on my talents, I have whipped a flagging
will, I have been for ever cogitating, worrying, devising means of
escape. Meanwhile, the moments have gone by unheeded and unenjoyed.

_June_ 10.

Legginess is bad enough in a woman, but bandy legginess is impossible.

Solitude is good for the soul. After an hour of it, I feel as lofty and
imperial as Marcus Aurelius.

The best girl in the best dress immediately looks disreputable if her
stockings be downgyved.

Some old people on reaching a certain age go on living out of habit--a
bad habit too.

How much I can learn of a stranger by his laugh.

Bees, Poppies, and Swallows!--and all they mean to him who really knows
them! Or a White Gull on a piece of floating timber, or a troop of shiny
Rooks close on the heels of a ploughman on a sunny autumn day.

_June_ 30.

My egoism appals me. Likewise the extreme intensification of the
consciousness of myself. Whenever I walk down the High Street on a
market day, my self-consciousness magnifies my proportions to the size
of a Gulliver--so that it is grievous to reflect that in spite of that
the townsfolk see me only as an insignificant bourgeois youth who
reports meetings in shorthand.

_July_ 17.

We sang to-night in Church, "But when I know Thee as Thou art, I'll
praise Thee as I ought." Exactly! Till then, farewell. We are a great
little people, we humans. If there be no next world, still the Spirit of
Man will have lived and uttered its protest.

_July_ 22.

_Our Simian Ancestry_

How I hate the man who talks about the "brute creation," with an ugly
emphasis on _brute_. Only Christians are capable of it. As for me, I am
proud of my close kinship with other animals. I take a jealous pride in
my Simian ancestry. I like to think that I was once a magnificent hairy
fellow living in the trees and that my frame has come down through
geological time _via_ sea jelly and worms and Amphioxus, Fish,
Dinosaurs, and Apes. Who would exchange these for the pallid couple in
the Garden of Eden?

_August_ 9.

I do not ever like going to bed. For me each day ends in a little
sorrow. I hate the time when it comes to put my books away, to knock out
my pipe and say "Good-night," exchanging the vivid pleasures of the day
for the darkness of sleep and oblivion.

_August_ 23.

Spent the afternoon and evening till ten in the woods with Mary ----.
Had tea in the Haunted House, and after sat in the Green Arbor until
dark, when I kissed her. "Achilles was not the worse warrior for his
probation in petticoats."

_September_ 1.

I hope to goodness she doesn't think I want to marry her. In the Park in
the dark, kissing her. I was testing and experimenting with a new
experience.

_September_ 4.

Last evening, after much mellifluous cajolery, induced her to _kiss me_.
My private opinion about this whole affair is that all the time I have
been at least twenty degrees below real love heat. In any case I am
constitutionally and emotionally unfaithful. I said things which I did
not believe just because it was dark and she was charming.

_September_ 5.

Read Thomas à Kempis in the train. It made me so angry I nearly flung it
out of the window. "Meddle not with things that be too deep for thee,"
he says, "but read such things as yield compunction to the heart rather
than elevation to the head." Forsooth! Can't you see me?

_September_ 15.

A puzzling afternoon: weather perfect, the earth green and humming like
a top, yet a web of dream overlaid the great hill, and at certain
moments, which recurred in a kind of pulsation, accompanied by
subjective feelings of vague strife and effort, I easily succeeded in
letting all I saw--the field and the blackberry bush, the whole valley
and the apple orchards--change into something unreal, flimsy, gauzelike,
immaterial, and totally unexperienced. Suddenly when the impression was
most vivid, the whole of this mysterious tapestry would vanish away and
I was back where 2 and 2 make 4. Oh! Earth! how jealously you guard your
secrets!

_October_ 4.

Sat at the Civil Service Commission in Burlington House for the exam,
for the vacancy in the B.M. No luck at all with the papers. The whole of
my nine months' assiduous preparation helped me in only two questions.
In fine, I have not succeeded, I shall not obtain the appointment, and
in a few weeks I shall be back in the wilds of

N---- again under the old regime, reporting platitudes from greasy
guardians of the poor, and receiving condolences from people not
altogether displeased at some one else's misfortune.

_October_ 14.

Returned home from London. Felt horribly defeated in crossing the
threshold. It was so obviously _returning_ after an unsuccessful flight.

_October_ 22.

Dissected a _Squilla_ for which I paid 2s. 6d. to the Plymouth Marine
Laboratory.

_October_ 23.

_Ambition_

Am attempting to feel after some practical philosophy of
living--something that will enable me to accept disappointment with
equanimity and Town Council meetings with a broad and tolerant smile. At
present, ambition consumes me. I was ambitious before I was breeched. I
can remember wondering as a child if I were a young Macaulay or Ruskin
and secretly deciding that I was. My infant mind even was bitter with
those who insisted on regarding me as a normal child and not as a
prodigy. Since then I have struggled with this canker for many a day,
and as success fails to arrive it becomes more gnawing.

_October_ 24.

In the morning a Town Council and in the afternoon a Rural Council. With
this abominable trash in my notebook waiting to be written up and turned
into "copy," and with the dream pictures of a quiet studious life in
Cromwell Road not yet faded from my mind, where can I turn for
consolation? That I have done my best? That's only a mother's saying to
her child.

Perhaps after all it is a narrow life--this diving and delving among
charming little secrets, plying diligently scalpel and microscope and
then weaving the facts obtained into theoretic finespun. It is all
vastly entertaining to the naturalist but it leaves the world unmoved. I
sometimes envy the zealot with a definite mission in life. Life without
one seems void. The monotonous pursuit of our daily vocations--the
soldier, sailor, candlestick-maker--so they go on, never living but only
working, never thinking but only hypnotising themselves by the routine
and punctuality of their lives into just so many mechanical toys
warranted to go for so long and then stop when Death takes them.... It
amazes me that men must spend their precious days of existence for the
most part in slaving for food and clothing and the bare necessaries of
existence.

To sum up my despondency, what's the good of such a life? Where does it
lead? Where am I going? Why should I work? What means this procession of
nights and days wherein we are all seen moving along intent and stern as
if we had some purpose or a goal?... Of course to the man who believes
in the next world and a personal God, it is quite another matter. The
Christian is the Egoist _par excellence_. He does not mind annihilation
by arduous labour in this world if in the next he shall have won eternal
life.... He is reckless of to-day, extravagant in the expenditure of his
life. This intolerable fellow will be cheerful in a dungeon. For he
flatters himself that God Almighty up in Heaven is all the time watching
through the keyhole and marking him down for eternal life.

_October_ 26.

The nose-snuffling, cynical man who studies La Rochefoucauld, and prides
himself on a knowledge of human motives, is pleased to point out that
every action and every motive is selfish, from the philanthropist who
advertises himself by his charities to the fanatic who lays down his
life for a cause. Even secret charities, for they give pleasure to the
doer. So your cynic thinks he has thus, with one stroke of his
psychological scalpel, laid human nature bare in all its depravities.
All he has done really is to reclassify motives--instead of grouping
them as selfish and unselfish (which is more convenient) he lumps them
together as selfish, a method by which even he is forced to recognise
different grades of selfishness. For example, the selfishness of a
wife-beater is lower than the selfishness of a man who gives up his life
for another.

_October_ 28.

The result arrived. As I thought, I have failed, being fourth with only
three vacancies.

_November_ 7.

It is useless to bewail the course of fortune. It cannot be much credit
to possess--though we may covet--those precious things, to possess which
depends on circumstances outside our control.

_November_ 9.

Dined at the Devonshire Club in St. James's Street, W., with Dr.
H----and Mr. ----, the latter showing the grave symptomatic phenomena of
a monocle and spats. A dinner of eight courses. Only made one mistake
--put my salad on my dish instead of on the side dish. Horribly nervous
and reticent. I was apparently expected to give an account of myself and
my abilities--and with that end in view, they gave me a few pokes in my
cranial ribs. But I am a peculiar animal, and, before unbosoming myself,
I would require a happier _mise-en-scène_ than a West End Club, and a
more tactful method of approach than ogling by two professors, who
seemed to think I was a simple penny-in-the-slot machine. I froze from
sheer nervousness and nothing resulted.

_November_ 11.

Returned home and found a letter awaiting me from Dr. A---- offering me
£60 a year for a temporary job as assistant at the Plymouth Marine
Laboratory.

Left London horribly depressed. They evidently intend to shuffle me off.

Read Geo. Gissing's novel, _Born in Exile_. Godwin Peak, with his
intense pride of individuality, self-torturing capacities, and
sentimental languishment, reminds me of myself.

_November_ 20.

A purulent cold in the nose. My heart is weak. Palpitation after the
least exertion. But I shall soon be swinging my cudgels in the battle of
life, so it won't do to be hypochondriacal.... Let all the powers of the
world and the Devil attack me, yet I will win in the end--though the
conquest may very well be one which no one but myself will view.

Have accepted the Plymouth appointment.

_November_ 30.

Struggling in the depths again within the past few days with heart
attacks. Am slowly getting better of them and trying to forget as soon
as may be visions of sudden death, coffins, and obituary notices.

_December_ 2.

_Death_

At first, when we are very young, Death arouses our curiosity, as it did
Cain in the beginning.[2] It is a strange and very rare phenomenon which
we cannot comprehend, and every time we hear of some one's death, we try
to recall that person's appearance in life and are disappointed if we
can't. The endeavour is to discover what it is, this Death, to compare
two things, the idea of the person alive and the idea of him dead. At
last some one we know well dies--and that is the first shock.... I shall
never forget when our Matron died at the D---- School.... As the years
roll on, we get used to the man with the scythe and an acquaintance's
death is only a bit of gossip.

Suppose the Hellfire of the orthodox really existed! We have no
assurance that it does not! It seems incredible, but many incredible
things are true. We do not _know_ that God is not as cruel as a Spanish
inquisitor. Suppose, then, He is! If, after Death, we wicked ones were
shovelled into a furnace of fire--we should have to burn. There would be
no redress. It would simply be the Divine Order of things. It is
outrageous that we should be so helpless and so dependent on any
one--even God.

_December_ 9.

Sometimes I think I am going mad. I live for days in the mystery and
tears of things so that the commonest object, the most familiar
face--even my own--become ghostly, unreal, enigmatic. I get into an
attitude of almost total scepticism, nescience, solipsism even, in a
world of dumb, sphinx-like things that cannot explain themselves. The
discovery of how I am situated--a sentient being on a globe in space
overshadows me. I wish I were just nothing.

_Later_: While at a public meeting, the office-boy approached me and
immediately whispered without hesitation,--

"Just had a telephone message to say that your father is at the
T----Railway Station, lying senseless. He has evidently had an
apoplectic fit."

(How those brutal words, "lying senseless," banged and bullied and
knocked me down. Mother was waiting for me at the door in a dreadful
state and expecting the worst.)

Met the train with the Doctor, and took him home in the cab--still
alive, thank God, but helpless. He was brave enough to smile and shake
me by the hand--with his left, though he was speechless and the right
side of his body helpless. A porter discovered him at the railway
terminus lying on the floor of a second-class carriage.

_December_ 10.

He is a trifle better. It is fifteen years since he had the first
paralytic stroke.

Am taking over all his work and have written at once resigning the
Plymouth appointment.

_December_ 23.

It really did require an effort to go upstairs to-day to his bedroom and
say cheerfully I was not going to P. after all, and that the matter was
of no consequence to me. I laughed gaily and Dad was relieved. A
thundering good joke. What annoys me is that other folk--the brainless,
heartless mob, as Schopenhauer remarks, still continue to regard me as
one of themselves.... I had nearly escaped into a seaside laboratory,
and now suddenly to be flung back into the dirt and sweat of the
newspaper world seems very hard, and it _is_ very hard.

_December_ 26.

_Windy Ash_

With the dog for a walk around Windy Ash. It was a beautiful winter's
morning--a low sun giving out a pale light but no warmth--a luminant,
not a fire--the hedgerows bare and well trimmed, an Elm lopped close
showing white stumps which glistened liquidly in the sun, a Curlew
whistling overhead, a deeply cut lane washed hard and clean by the
winter rains, a gunshot from a distant cover, a creeping Wren, silent
and tame, in a bramble bush, and over the five-barred gate the granite
roller with vacant shafts. I leaned on the gate and saw the great whisps
of cloud in the sky like comets' tails. Everything cold, crystalline.


[1] He had spoken about me to the Museum authorities, and it was his
influence which got me the nomination to sit for the examination.

[2] In Byron's poem.

1911


_January_ 2.

As a young man--a _very_ young man--my purpose was to plough up all
obstacles, brook no delays, and without let or hindrance win through to
an almost immediate success! But witness 1910! "My career" so far has
been like the White Knight's, who fell off behind when the horse
started, in front when it stopped, and sideways occasionally to vary the
monotony.

_January_ 30.

Feeling ill and suffering from attacks of faintness. My ill health has
produced a change in my attitude towards work. As soon as I begin to
feel the least bit down, I am bound to stop at once as the idea of
bending over a desk or a dissecting dish, of reading or studying,
nauseates me when I think that perhaps to-morrow or next day or next
week, next month, next year I may be dead. What a waste of life it seems
to work! Zoology is repugnant and philosophy superfluous beside the
bliss of sheer living--out in the cold polar air or indoors in a chair
before a roaring fire with hands clasped, watching the bustling,
soothing activity of the flames.

Then, as soon as I am well again, I forget all this, grow discontented
with doing nothing and work like a Tiger.

_February_ 11.

Walked in the country. Coming home, terrified by a really violent attack
of palpitation. Almost every one I met I thought would be the
unfortunate person who would have to pick me up. As each one in the
street approached me, I weighed him in the balance and considered if he
had presence of mind and how he would render first aid. After my friend,
P.C. ----, had passed, I felt sorry that the tragedy had not already
happened, for he knows me and where I live. At length, after sundry
leanings over the river wall, arrived at the Library, which I entered,
and sat down, when the full force of the palpitation was immediately
felt. My face burned with the hot blood, my hand holding the paper shook
with the angry pulse, and my heart went bang! bang! bang! and I could
feel its beat in the carotids of the neck and up along the Torcular
herophili and big vessels in the occipital region of the head. Drew in
each breath very gently for fear of aggravating the fiend. Got home
(don't know how) and had some sal volatile. Am better now but very
demoralised.

_February_ 13.

Feel like a piece of drawn threadwork, or an undeveloped negative, or a
jelly fish on stilts, or a sloppy tadpole, or a weevil in a nut, or a
spitchcocked eel. In other words and in short--ill.

_February_ 16.

After some days with the vision of sudden death constantly before me,
have come to the conclusion that it's a long way to go to die. Am coming
back anyhow. Yet these are a few terrible pages in my history.

_March_ 4.

... The Doctor's orders "Cease Work" have brought on in an aggravated
form my infatuation for zoological research. I lie in bed and
manufacture rolling periods in praise of it, I get dithyrambic over the
zoologists themselves--Huxley, Wallace, Brooks, Lankester. I chortle to
reflect that in zoology there are no stock exchange ambitions, there is
no mention of slum life, Tariff Reform is not included. In the repose of
the spacious laboratory by the seaside or in the halls of some great
Museum, life with its vulgar struggles, its hustle and obscenity,
scarcely penetrates. Behind those doors, life flows slowly, deeply. I am
ascetic and long for the monastic seclusion of a student's life.

_March_ 5.

_From One Maiden Lady to Another_. (_Authentic_)

"My dear Sister,--You have been expecting to hear from me I know, I have
had inflammation to my eyes twice in 3 weeks so I thought I had better
let the Doctor see and he says it is catarrh of the eyes and windpipe. I
am inhaling and taking lozenges and medicine. You will be sorry to learn
Leonora Mims has been taken to a Sanatorium with Diptheria, we heard
yesterday, she is better, poor Mrs. Mims herself quite an invalid, she
has to walk with a stick, I believe you know she has had to have her
breast cut off, they keep a servant as she can't do anything, old Mrs.
Point is 87 I think it is so they too have a lot of trouble, Fred Mims
has just got married....

"Poor old Mrs. Seemsoe is just the same, she doesn't know anybody but
she talks, the nurse put a grape in her mouth but she didn't know what
to do with it, I think it is very sad. She was taken about a fortnight
before Easter. Will you tell me dear if this is right receipt for
clothes 1/2 oz. carbolic in 1/2 pint of rose water. Harry Gammon's 2
little children have measles, poor Maisie has gone with her Aunt Susan,
poor old Joe Gammon they say had very little to leave, we don't know
where Robert gets his money from. I dare say you saw that Tom Sagg has
married another of Ned Smith's daughters and we hear these Smith girls
are rare housekeepers and this girl that has married Tom Sagg has made
all her own linen. Mrs. Wilkins, the butcher's wife is going to have a
little one after 15 years, our Vicar has been laid up with an abscess,
he told us about his brother the other day, he says as brothers they
love each other very much. We have 3 very sad cases of men ill in the
village. We had 4 but one man died of cancer.

"Yr loving Sister Amy."

Voilà!

_March_ 7.

If I die I should like to be buried in the cherry orchards at V----.

How the beastly mob loves a tragedy! The sudden death of the Bank
Manager is simply thrilling the town, and the newspapers sell like hot
cakes. Scarcely before the body is cold the coincidence of his death on
the anniversary of his birth is discussed in every household; every one
tells everybody else where they saw him last "he looked all right then."
The policeman and the housemaid, the Mayor and the Town Clerk, the
cabman and the billposter, stand and discuss the deceased gentleman's
last words or what the widow's left with. "Ah! well, it is very sad,"
they remark to one another with no emotion and continue on their way.

_March_ 10.

On coming downstairs in the evening played Ludo with H----. At one stage
I laughed so much in conjunction with that harlequin H---- that I got
cramp in the abdominal muscles and the tears trickled down my face.

_March_ 13.

H---- and I play Ludo incessantly. We've developed the gambling fever,
and our pent-up excitement every now and then explodes in fiendish
cackles, and Mother looks up over her spectacles and says, "William,
William, they'll hear in the street presently."

_A Character_

For this world's unfortunates, his is the ripe sympathy of a
well-developed nature, standing in strong contrast with the rest of his
personality, which is wholly self-centred, a little ungenerous, and what
strong men of impeccable character call "weak." If you are ill he is
delightful, if you are robust or successful he can be very
objectionable. To an influenza victim he goes out of his way to carry a
book, but if you tell him with gusto you have passed your exam, he says,
"Oh, but there's not much behind it, is there?" "Oh! no," I answer,
comforting him, "it is really a misfortune to be a success." And so only
the bankrupts, dipsos (as he calls them), ne'er-do-weels, and sudden
deaths ever touch his heart or tap his sympathy. He is a short, queery,
dressy little fellow, always spruce and clean. His joy consists in a
glass of beer, a full stomach, a good cigar, or a pretty girl to flirt
with. He frequents drinking saloons and billiard rooms, goes to dances
and likes to be thought a lady's man. "Urn," he will say, with the air
of a connoisseur, "a little too broad in the beam," as some attractive
damsel walks down the street. Any day about twelve you can see both of
us, "the long and the short of it" (he is only half my height and I call
him .5), walking together in the Park, and engaged in the most heated
discussion over some entirely trivial matter, such as whether he would
marry a woman with sore eyes, etc., etc. More than once we have caught
cabmen idle on the cab-rank or policemen on point duty jerking their
thumbs backward at us and expressing some facetious remarks which we
longed to overhear. I usually walk in the gutter to bring my height down
a bit.

A good raconteur himself, he does not willingly suffer a story from
another. The varmint on occasion finishes your joke off for you, which
is his delicate way of intimating that he has heard it before. He is a
first-class mimic, and sends every one into a thousand fits while he
gives you in succession the Mayor and all the Corporation. He also
delights me at times by mimicking me. His mind is receptive rather than
creative: it picks up all sorts of gaudy ideas by the wayside like a
magpie, and I sometimes enjoy the exquisite sensation of hearing some of
these petty pilferings (which he has filched from me) laid at my feet as
if they were his own. The ideas which are his own are always
unmistakable.

His favourite poems are Omar and the Ballad of Reading Jail, his
favourite drinks Medoc or a Cherry Mixture. Me he describes as
_serpentilous_ with _Gibbon-like arms,_ pinheaded, and so on. He amuses
me. In fact I love him.

_March_ 16.

No one will ever understand without personal experience that an
exceedingly self-conscious creature like myself driven in on himself to
consume himself is the unhappiest of men. I have come to loathe myself:
my finicking, hypersensitive, morbid nature, always thinking, talking,
writing about myself for all the world as if the world beyond did not
exist! I am rings within rings, circles concentric and intersecting, a
maze, a tangle: watching myself behave or misbehave, always reflecting
on what impression I am making on others or what they think of me.
Introduce me to a stranger and I swell out as big as Alice.
Self-consciousness makes me pneumatic, and consequently so awkward and
clumsy and swollen that I don't know how to converse--and God help the
other fellow.

_Later_: Youth is an intoxication without wine, some one says. Life is
an intoxication. The only sober man is the melancholiac, who,
disenchanted, looks at life, sees it as it really is, and cuts his
throat. If this be so, I want to be very drunk. The great thing is to
live, to clutch at our existence and race away with it in some great
and enthralling pursuit. Above all, I must beware of all ultimate
questions--they are too maddeningly unanswerable--let me eschew
philosophy and burn Omar.

In this week's _T.P.'s Weekly_ a youth advertises:--"Young thinkers
interested in philosophy, religion, social reform, the future of
humanity, and all freethought, please communicate with 'Evolution,' aged
21!" All right for 21.

_Later_: I have in mind some work on the vascular system of larval
newts. In the autumn I see a large piece of work to be done in animal
psychology--namely, frequency of stimulus and its relation to habit
formation. Yet the doctor advises long rest and the office work remains
to be done. I must hack my way through somehow. I sit trying to
disentangle these knots; then some one plays a dreamy waltz and all my
fine edifices of the will vanish in mist. Is it worth while? Why not
float with the tide? But I soon throw off these temptations. If I live,
I shall play a fine game! I am determined. A lame-dog life is of no use.

_April_ 17.

_Railway Travel_

A journey in a railway train makes me sentimental. If I enter the
compartment a robust-minded, cheerful youth, fresh and whistling from a
walk by the sea, yet, as soon as I am settled down in one corner and the
train is rattling along past fields, woods, towns, and painted stations,
I find myself indulging in a saccharine sadness--very toothsome and
jolly. I pull a long face and gaze out of the window wistfully and look
sad. But I am really happy--and incredibly sentimental.

The effect is produced, I suppose, by the quickly changing panoramic
view of the country, and as I see everything sliding swiftly by, and
feel myself being hurtled forward willy-nilly, I am sub-conscious of the
flight of Time, of the eternal flux, of the trajectory of my own
life.... Timid folk, of course, want some Rock of Ages, something
static. They want life a mill pond rather than the torrent which it is,
a homely affair of teacups and tabby cats rather than a dangerous
expedition.

_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.

_June_ 30.

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![1]... 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_.[2]

_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,[3] 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!


[1] See entry for October 8, 1913.

[2] Italics added 1917.

[3] The paper was "Distant Orientation in Batrachia"--detailing
experiments on the homing faculty in newts.




PART II--IN LONDON




1912


_January_ 21.

Am at last beginning to get more content with the work at the Museum, so
that I muse on Bernard Shaw's saying, "Get what you like or you'll grow
to like what you get." I have a terrible suspicion that the security of
tenure here is like the lion's den in the fable--_Nulla vestiga
retrorsum_. Of course I am wonderfully proud of being at the Museum,
although I am disappointed and write as if I were quite blasé.

_January_ 25.

I should be disappointed if at the end of my career (if I live to see it
through) I do not win the F.R.S. I should very much like it.... My
nature is very mixed--ambitious above all things and yet soon giddy with
the audacity of my aspirations. The B.M. and my colleagues make me feel
most inferior in fact, but in theory--in the secrecy of my own
bedchamber--I feel that there are few men there my equal.

_April_ 26.

Down with influenza. A boarding-house with the 'flue!

_May_ 8.

Went home to recuperate, a beef jelly in one pocket and sal volatile in
the other. On arrival, my blanched appearance frightened Mother and the
others, so went to bed at once. "Fate's a fiddler, life's a dance."

_May_ 12.

Weak enough to sit down before dressing-table while I shave and brush my
hair. Dyspepsia appalling. The Doctor in Kensington seemed to think me
an awful wreck and asked if I were concealing----

Reading Baudelaire and Verlaine.

_May_ 24.

_Bathing_

Sat on a seat overlooking the sand-hills with stick between my legs like
an old man, and watched a buxom wench aet. 25 run down the path pursued
by "Rough" and two little girls in blue. Later they emerged from a
striped bathing tent in the glory of blue bathing dresses. It made me
feel quite an old man to see the girl galloping out over the hard level
sands to the breakers, a child clinging to each hand. Legs and arms
twinkled in the sun which shone with brilliance. If life were as level
as those sands and as beautiful as that trio of girls!

_May_ 26.

_Two Young Men Talking_

With H---- in his garden. He is a great enthusiast.

"I disapprove entirely of your taste in gardening," I said. "You object
to the 'ragged wilderness' style, I like it. You like lawns laid out for
croquet and your privet hedges pruned into 'God Save the King' or 'Dieu
et mon droit.' My dear boy, if you saw Mr. ----'s wilderness at
----you'd be so shocked you'd cut and run, and I imagine there'd be an
affecting reunion between you and your beloved geraniums. For my part, I
don't like geraniums: they're suburban, and all of a piece with
antimacassars and stuffed birds under glass bells. The colour of your
specimens, moreover," I rapped out, "is vulgar--like the muddied
petticoats of old market women."

H----, quite unmoved, replied slowly, "Well, here are some like the
beautiful white cambric of a lady of fashion. You've got no taste in
flowers--you're just six feet of grief and patience." We roared with
laughing.

"Do stop watering those damned plants," I exclaimed at last. But he
went on. I exclaimed again and out of sheer ridiculousness, in reply he
proceeded to water the cabbages, the gravel path, the oak tree--and me!
While I writhed with laughing.

_May_ 27.

_By the Sea_

Sat upon a comfortable jetty of rock and watched the waves without a
glimmer of an idea in my mind about anything--though to outward view I
might have been a philosopher in cerebral parturition with thoughts as
big as babies. Instead, little rustling dead leaves of thoughts stirred
and fluttered in the brain--the pimple _e.g._ I recollected on my Aunt's
nose, or the boyishness of Dr. ----'s handwriting, or Swinburne's lines:
"If the golden-crested wren Were a nightingale--why, then Something seen
and heard of men Might be half as sweet as when Laughs a child of
seven."

I continued in this pleasurable coma all the afternoon and went home
refreshed.

_May_ 29.

Have returned to London and the B.M. My first day at the M. Sat at my
table in a state of awful apathy.

At least temporarily, I am quite disenchanted of Zoology. I work--God
save the mark--in the Insect Room!

On the way home, purchased:--

Peroxide of hydrogen (pyorrhœa threatened). One bottle of physic (for
my appalling dyspepsia).

One flask of brandy for emergencies (as my heart is intermittent again).

Prussic acid next.

Must have been near pneumonia at R----. Auntie was nervous, and came in
during the night to see how I was.

_June_ 20.

It caused me anguish to see my article returned from the _Fortnightly_
and lying in a big envelope on the table when I returned home this
evening. I can't do any work because of it, and in desperation rushed
off to the stately pleasure domes of the White City, and systematically
went through all the thrills--from the Mountain Railway to the Wiggle
Woggle and the 'Witching Waves.

_June_ 21.

To-day I am easier. The cut worm forgives the plough. But how restless
this disappointment has made me.... I have no plans for recuperation and
cannot settle down to work.

_July_ 6.

On my doctor's advice, went to see Dr. P----, a lung specialist.
M----found a dull spot on one of my lungs, and, not feeling very sure,
and without telling me the nature of his suspicion, he arranged for Dr.
P---- to see me, allowing me to suppose he was a stomach authority as my
dyspepsia is bad.

Well: it is _not_ consumption, but my lungs and physique are such that
consumption might easily supervene. As soon as Dr. P---- had gone,
M----appended the following lugubrious yarn:--

Whenever I catch cold, I must go and be treated at once, all my leisure
must be spent out of doors, I must take cream and milk in prodigious
quantities and get fat at all costs. There is even a question of my
giving up work.

_July_ 10.

A young but fat woman sitting in the sun and oozing moisture is as nasty
as anything in Baudelaire.

_July_ 14.

_A "Brilliant Career"_

My old head master once prophesied for me "a brilliant career." That was
when I was in the Third Form. Now I have more than a suspicion that I am
one of those who, as he once pointed out, grow sometimes out of a
brilliant boyhood into very commonplace men. This continuous ill health
is having a very obvious effect on my work and activities. With what
courage I possess I have to face the fact that to-day I am unable to
think or express myself as well as when I was a boy in my teens--witness
this Journal!

I intend to go on however. I have decided that my death shall be
disputed all the way.

Oh! it is so humiliating to die! I writhe to think of being overcome by
so unfair an enemy before I have demonstrated myself to maiden aunts who
mistrust me, to colleagues who scorn me, and even to brothers and
sisters who believe in me.

As an Egotist I hate death because I should cease to be I.

Most folk, when sick unto death, gain a little consolation over the
notoriety gained by the fact of their decease. Criminals enjoy the pomp
and circumstance of their execution. Voltaire said of Rousseau that he
wouldn't mind being hanged if they'd stick his name on the gibbet. But
my own death would be so mean and insignificant. Guy de Maupassant died
in a grand manner--a man of intellect and splendid physique who became
insane. Tusitala's death in the South Seas reads like a romance. Heine,
after a life of sorrow, died with a sparkling witticism on his lips;
Vespasian with a jest.

But I cannot for the life of me rake up any excitement over my own
immediate decease--an unobtrusive passing away of a rancorous,
disappointed, morbid, and self-assertive entomologist in a West
Kensington Boarding House--what a mean little tragedy! It is hard not to
be somebody even in death.

       *       *       *       *       *

A sing-song to-night in the drawing-room; all the boarding-house present
in full muster. There was a German, Schulz, who sat and leered at his
inamorata--a sensual-looking, pasty-faced girl--while she gave us
daggers-and-moonlight recitations with the most unwarranted
self-assurance (she boasts of a walking-on part at one of the theatres);
there was Miss M---- listening to her fiancé, Capt. O---- (home from
India), singing Indian Love Songs at her; there was Miss T----, a sour
old maid, who knitted and snorted, not fully conscious of this young
blood coursing around her; Mrs. Barclay Woods pursued her usual
avocation of imposing on us all the great weight of her immense social
superiority, clucking, in between, to her one chick--a fluffy girl of 18
or 19, who was sitting now in the draught, now too close to a "common"
musician of the Covent Garden Opera; finally our hostess, a divorcee,
who hated all males, even Tom-cats. We were a pathetic little
company--so motley, ill-assorted--who had come together not from love or
regard but because man is a gregarious animal. In fact, we sat secretly
criticising and contemning one another ... yet outside there were so
many millions of people unknown, and overhead the multitude of the stars
was equally comfortless.

_Later_: ... Zoology on occasion still fires my ambition! Surely I
cannot be dying yet.

Whatever misfortune befalls me I do hope I shall be able to meet it
unflinchingly. I do not fear ill-health in itself, but I do fear its
possible effect on my mind and character.... Already I am slowly
altering, as the Lord liveth. Already for example my sympathy with
myself is maudlin.

Whenever the blow shall fall, some sort of a reaction _must_ be given.
Heine flamed into song. Beethoven wrote the 5th Symphony. So what shall
I do when my time comes? I don't think I have any lyrics or symphonies
to write, so I shall just have to grin and bear it--like a dumb
animal.... As long as I have spirit and buoyancy I don't care what
happens--for I know that or so long I cannot be accounted a failure. The
only _real_ failure is one in which the victim is left spiritless,
dazed, dejected with blackness all around, and within, a knife slowly
and unrelentingly cutting the strings of his heart.

My head whirls with conflicting emotions, struggling, desperate ideas,
and a flood of impressions of all sorts of things that are never
sufficiently sifted and arranged to be caught down on paper. I am
brought into this world, hustled along it and then hustled out of it,
with no time for anything. I want to be on a great hill and square up
affairs.

_August_ 28.

... After tea, we all three walked in Kensington Gardens and sat on a
seat by the Round Pond. My umbrella fell to the ground, and I left it
there with its nose poking up in a cynical manner, as She remarked.

"It's not cynical," I said, "only a little knowing. Won't you let yours
fall down to keep it company? Yours is a lady umbrella and a
good-looking one--they might flirt together."

"Mine doesn't want to flirt," she answered stiffly.

_September_ 13.

_At C----, a tiny little village by the sea in N----._

Looking up from a rockpool, where I had been watching Gobies, I saw
three children racing across the sands to bathe, I saw a man dive from a
boat, and I saw a horse-man gallop his mare down to the beach and plunge
about in the line of breakers. The waters thundered, the mare whinnied,
the children shouted to one another, and I turned my head down again to
the rockpool with a great thumping heart of happiness: it was so lovely
to be conscious of the fact that out there this beautiful picture was
awaiting me whenever and as often as I chose to lift my head. I
purposely kept my head down, for the picture was so beautiful I did not
want to hurt it by breathing on it, and I kept my head down out of a
playful self-cheating delight; I decided not to indulge myself.

_September_ 16.

Out in the Bay dredging for Echinoderms with "Carrots." Brilliantly
fine. The haul was a failure, but, being out in a boat on a waveless sea
under a cloudless sky, I was scarcely depressed at this! We cruised
along from one little bay to another, past smugglers' caves and white
pebble beaches, the dredge all the while growling along the sea bottom,
and "Carrots" and I lying listless in the bows. I was _immensely happy_.
My mercury was positively ringing the bell.

Who, then, is "Carrots"? He is a fine brawny boat-man who jumps over the
rocks like a Chamois, swims like a Fish, pulls like an Ox, snorts like a
Grampus--a sort of compound zoological perfection, built eclectically.

_September_ 18.

_Early Boughies_

Up the village, Mrs. Beavan keeps a tiny little shop and runs a very
large garden. She showed us all about the garden, and introduced us to
her husband, whom we discovered in an apple tree--an old man, aged 76,
very hard of hearing, and with an impediment in his speech. He at once
began to move his mouth, and I caught odd jingles of sound that sounded
like nothing at all--at first, but which gradually resolved themselves
on close attention to such familiar landmarks as "Early Boughies,"
"Stubbits," "Ribstone Pippins" into a discourse on Apples.

The following curious conversation took place between me and the deaf
gaffer, aged 76, standing in the apple tree,--

"These be all appulls from Kent--I got 'em all from Kent."

"How long have you lived in C----?"

"Bunyard & Son--that's the firm--they live just outside the town of
Maidstone."

"Do you keep Bees here?"

"One of these yer appulls is called Bunyard after the firm--a fine fruit
too."

"Your good wife must be of great assistance to you in your work."

"Little stalks maybe, but a large juishy appull for all that."

Just then I heard Mrs. B---- saying to E----,--

"Aw yes, he's very active for 76. A little deaf, but he manages the
garden all 'eesulf, I bolsters 'un up wi' meat and drink--little and
often as they zay for children.... Now there's a bootifull tree, me
dear, that 'as almost beared itself to death, as you may say."

She picked an apple off it shouting to poor Tom still aloft,--

"Tom what's the name of this one?"

"You should come a bit earlier, zir," replied T. "'Tis late a bit now
doan't 'ee zee?"

"No--what's its name I want," shouted his spouse.

"Yes, yes, give the lady one to take home--there's plenty for all," he
said.

"What is the NAME? THE NAME OF THIS YER APPULL," screamed Mrs. B., and
old Tom moving his bones slowly down from the tree answered quite
unmoved,--

"Aw the name? Why, 'tis a common kind of appull--there's a nice tree of
'em up there."

"Oh! never mind, 'tis a Gladstone," said Mrs. B., turning to us.

"A very fine Appull," droned the old boy.

_September_ 28.

Back in town again. Wandered about in a somnambulistic way all the
afternoon till I found myself taking tea in Kew Gardens. I enjoyed the
wind in my face and hair. Otherwise there is nothing to be said--a
colourless day.

_October_ 10.

Came across the following arresting sentence: "Pale, anæmic, cadaverous,
bad teeth and disordered digestion and a morbid egotism." Yes, but my
teeth are _not_ bad.

_October_ 20.

_On the N. Downs_

Under the oak where I sat the ground was covered with dead leaves. I
kicked them, and I beat them with my stick, because I was angry that
they were dead. In the coppice, leaves were quietly and majestically
floating earthwards in the pomp of death. It was very thrilling to
observe them.

It was a curious sensation to realise that since the last time I sat
under the old oak I had been right up to the N. of England, then right
down to the S.W., and back once more to London town. I bragged about my
kinetic activity to the stationary oak and I scoffed at the old hill for
having to remain always in the same place.

It gave me a pleasing sense of infinite superiority to _come back_ and
see everything the same as before, to sit on the same old seat under the
same old oak. Even that same old hurdle was lying in the same position
among the bracken. How sorry I was for it! Poor wretch--unable to
move--to go to Whitby, to go to C----, to be totally ignorant of the
great country of London....

Day dreamed. My own life as it unrolls day by day is a source of
constant amazement, delight, and pain. I can think of no more
interesting volume than a detailed, intimate, psychological history of
my own life. I want a perfect comprehension at least of myself....

We are all such egotists that a sorrow or hardship--provided it is great
enough--flatters our self-importance. We feel that a calamity by
overtaking us has distinguished us above our fellows. A man likes not to
be ignored even by a railway accident. A man with a grievance is always
happy.

_October_ 23.

Over to see E----. Came away disillusioned.

_October_ 25.

Met her in Smith's book shop looking quite bewitching. Hang it all, I
thought I had finished. Went home with her, watched her make a pudding
in the kitchen, then we sat by the firelight in the drawing-room and had
supper. Scrumptious (not the supper).

_October_ 27.

Quarrelled with D----! The atmosphere is changed at the flat--my
character is ruined. D---- has told them I'm a loose fellow. I've always
contrived to give him that impression--I liked to be cutting my
throat--and now it's cut!

_November_ 1.

D---- came and carried me off to the flat, where they asked why I hadn't
been over--which, of course, pleased me immensely.

_November_ 6.

Doctor M---- is very gloomy about my health and talks of S. Africa,
Labrador, and so on. I'm not responding to his treatment as I should.

_November_ 11.

Met her this evening in Kensington Road. "I timed this well," said she,
"I thought I should meet you." Good Heavens, I am getting embroiled.
Returned to the flat with her and after supper called her "The Lady of
Shalott."

"I don't think you know what you're talking about"--this stiffly.

"Perhaps not," I answered. "I leave it to you."

"Oh! but it rests with you," she said.

Am I in love? God knows--but I don't suppose God cares.

_November_ 15.

On M----'s advice went to see a stomach specialist--Dr. Hawkins. As I
got there a little too early walked up the street--Portland Place--on
the opposite side (from shyness) past an interminable and nauseating
series of night bells and brass plates, then down again on the right
side till I got to No. 66 which made me flutter--for ten doors ahead I
mused is the house I must call at. It made me shiver a little.

The specialist took copious notes of my evidence and after examining me
retired to consult with M----. What a parade of ceremony! On coming
back, the jury returned a verdict of "Not proven." I was told I ought to
go out and live on the prairies--and in two years I should be a _giant_!
But where are the prairies? What 'bus? If I get worse, I must take
several months' leave. I think it will come to this.

_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
disorientated, 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 of regrets is as terrible as a dead body full of
worms? There, I talk literature, my boy, if you were only Boswell
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 of 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!

Then I stretched my whole length out along a flat plank on the sands,
which was as dry as a bone and warm. There was not a soul on the sands.
Everything was bare, clean, windswept. My plank had been washed clean
and white. The sands--3 miles of it--were hard and purified, level. My
eye raced along in every direction--there was nothing--not a bird or a
man--to stop it. In that immense windswept space nothing was present
save me and the wind and the sea--a flattering moment for the egotist.

       *       *       *       *       *

At the foot of the cliffs on the return journey met an old man gathering
sticks. As he ambled along dropping sticks into a long sack he called
out casually, "Do you believe in Jesus Christ?" in the tone of voice in
which one would say, "I think we shall have some rain before night."
"Aye, aye," came the answer without hesitation from a boy lying on his
back in the sands a few yards distant, "and that He died to save me."

Life is full of surprises like this. The only other sounds I have heard
to-day were the Herring Gull's cackle. Your own gardener will one day
look over his rake and give you the correct chemical formula for
carbonic acid gas. I met a postman once reading Shelley as he walked his
rounds.

_June_ 28.

I am writing this by the lamp in the cabin among the sandhills waiting
for H---- to arrive from town with provisions. I wear a pair of bags, a
dirty sweater, and go without hat or shoes and stockings. There is a
"Deadwood Dick" atmosphere here. I'm a sort of bronco-breaker or rancher
off duty writing home. In a minute I haven't the slightest doubt, H----
will gallop into the compound, tether his colt and come in "raising
Cain" for a belly-full of red meat.... If I am going to live after all
(touch wood) I shall go abroad and be in the open.

I eat greedily, am getting very sunburnt, am growing hairy (that means
strength!), and utter portentous oaths. If I stayed here much longer I
should grow a tail and climb trees.

After a supper of fried eggs and fried bread done to a nicety, turned in
at ten, and both of us lay warm and comfortable in bed, smoking
cigarettes and listening to Hoffmann's Barcarolle on the gramophone. We
put the lamp out, and it pleased us to watch the glow of each other's
cigarettes in the dark.... Neither of us spoke.... Went to sleep at
midnight. Awoke at sunrise to hear an Owl still hooting, a Lark singing,
and several Jackdaws clattering on our tin roof with their claws as they
walked.

_July_ 1.

_In London Again_

Returned to London very depressed. Am not so well as I was three weeks
ago. The sight of one eye is affected, and I am haunted by the
possibility of blindness. Then I have a numb feeling on one side of my
face, and my right arm is less mobile.

Left darling Mother in a very weak state in bed, with neuritis and a
weak heart. She cried when I said "Goodbye," and asked me to go to
Church as often as I could, and to read a portion of Scripture every
day. I promised. Then she added, "For Dad's sake;" just as if I would
not do it for her. Poor dear, she suffers a deal of pain. She does not
know how ill I am. I have not told her.

_July_ 3.

Back at work. A terrible day. Thoughts of suicide--a pistol.

_July_ 8.

I get thro' each day with the utmost difficulty. I have to wrestle with
every minute. Each hour is a conquest. The three quarters of an hour at
lunch comes as a Godsend. I look forward to it all the morning, I enter
into it with joyful relief with no thought of the dreadful moment
impending when I must return and re-enter my room. By being wise like
this, I manage to husband my spirits and am relatively cheerful for one
hour in the middle of each difficult day.

_July_ 9.

Several times I have gone to bed and hoped I should never wake up. Life
grows daily more impossible. To-day I put a slide underneath the
microscope and looked at it. It was like looking at something thro' the
wrong end of a telescope. I sat with eye glued to the ocular, so as to
keep up a pretence of work in case some one came in. My mind was
occupied with quite different affairs. If one is pondering on Life and
Death, it is a terrible task to have to study Mites.

_July_ 10.

Am doing no work at all.... I sit motionless in my chair and beat the
devil's tattoo with my thumbs and think, think, think in the same
horrible circle hour after hour. I am unable to work. I haven't the
courage to. I've lost my nerve.

At five I return "home" to the Boarding-house and get more desperate.

Two old maids sat down to dinner to-night, one German youth (a
lascivious, ranting, brainless creature), a lady typist (who takes drugs
they say), a dipsomaniac (who has monthly bouts--H---- carried him
upstairs and put him to bed the other night), two invertebrate
violinists who play in the Covent Garden Orchestra, a colonial lady
engaged in a bedroom intrigue with a man who sits at my table. What are
these people to me? I hate them all. They know it and are offended.

After dinner, put on my cap and rushed out anywhere to escape. Walked to
the end of the street, not knowing where I was going or what doing.
Stopped and stared with fixed eyes at the traffic in Kensington Road,
undetermined what to do with myself and unable to make up my mind
(volitional paralysis). Turned round, walked home, and went straight to
bed 9 p.m., anxiously looking forward to to-morrow evening when I go to
see her again, but at the same time wondering how on earth I am to get
through to-morrow's round before the evening comes.... This is a
hand-to-mouth existence. My own inner life is scorching up all outside
interests. Zoology appears as a curious thing in a Bagdad bazaar. I sit
in my room at the B.M. and play with it; I let it trickle thro' my
fingers and roll away like a child playing with quicksilver.

_July_ 11.

Over to the flat. She was looking beautiful in a black dress, with a
white silk blouse, and a Byron collar, negligently open in front as if
a button had come out. She said I varied: sometimes I went up in her
estimation, sometimes down; once I went down very low. I understood her
to say I was now UP! Alleluia!

_July_ 14.

... It would take too long and I am too tired to write out all the
varying phases of this day's life--all its impressions and petty
miseries chasing one another across my consciousness or leap-frogging
over my chest like gleeful fiends.[1]

_July_ 21.

Thoroughly enjoyed the journey up to town this morning. I secretly
gloated over the fact that the train was dashing along over the rails to
London bearing me and all the rest of the train's company upon their
pursuits--wealth, fame, learning. I was inebriated with the speed,
ferocity, and dash of living.... If the train had charged into the
buffers I should have hung my head out of the window and cheered. If a
man had got in my way, I'd have knocked him down. The wheels of the
carriage were singing a lusty song in which I joined.

_July_ 30.

... We talked of men and women, and she said she thought men were
neither angels nor devils but just men. I said I thought women were
either angels or devils.

"I am afraid to ask you which you think me."

"You needn't," I said shortly.

_August_ 9.

Horribly upset with news from home. Mother is really ill. The Doctor
fears serious nerve trouble and says she will always be an invalid. This
is awful, poor dear! It's dreadful, and yet I have a tiny wish buried at
the bottom of my heart that she may be removed early from us rather
than linger in pain of body and mind. Especially do I hope she may not
live to hear any grievous news of me.... What irony that she should lose
the use of her right arm only two years after Dad's death from
paralysis. It is cruel for it reminds her of Dad's illness.... What,
too, would she think if she could have heard M----'s first words to me
yesterday on one of my periodical visits to his consulting room, "Well,
how's the _paralysis_?"

       *       *       *       *       *

In the evening went over to see her. She was wearing a black silk gown
and looked handsome.... She is always the same sombre, fascinating,
lissom, soft-voiced She! She herself never changes.... What am I to do?
I cannot give her up and yet I do not altogether wish to take her to my
heart. It distresses me to know how to proceed. I am a wily fish.

_August_ 10.

Sat in the gardens with her. We sat facing the sun for a while until she
was afraid of developing freckles and turned around, deliberately
turning her back on good King Sol.... I said it was disrespectful.

"Oh! he doesn't mind," she said. "He's a dear. He kissed me and said,
'Turn round my dear if you like.'"

Isn't she tantalising?

I wanted to say sarcastically, "I wonder you let him kiss you," but
there was a danger of the remark reviving the dead.

_August_ 14.

I tried my best, I've sought every loophole of escape, but I am quite
unable to avoid the melancholy fact that her thumbs are--lamentable. I
am genuinely upset about it for I like her. No one more than I would be
more delighted if they were otherwise.... Poor dear! how I love her!
That's why I'm so concerned about her thumbs.

_August_ 21.

A wire from A---- came at 11.50 saying "Darling Mother passed peacefully
away yesterday afternoon." ... Yesterday afternoon I was writing Zoology
and all last night I slept soundly.... It was quite sudden. Caught the
first train home.

_August_ 23.

The funeral.

_August_ 31.

Staying at the Hotel du Guesclin at Cancale near St. Malo with my dear
A----.

This flood of new experiences has knocked my diary habit out of gear. To
be candid, I've forgotten all about myself. I've been too engrossed in
living to stand the strain of setting down and in cold blood writing out
all the things seen and heard. If I once began I should blow thro' these
pages like a whirlwind.... But what a waste of time with M. le batelier
waiting outside with his bisque to take us mackerel fishing!...

_September_ 8.

Returned to Southampton yesterday. Have spent the night at Okehampton in
Devonshire _en route_ for T---- Rectory. This morning we hatched the
ridiculous idea of hiring two little Dartmoor ponies and riding out from
the town. A---- rides fairly well tho' he has not been astride a beast
for years. As for me, I cannot ride at all! Yet I had the idea that I
could easily manage a pretty little pony with brown eyes and a long
tail. On going out into the Inn yard, was horrified--two horses
saddled--one a large traction beast.... I climbed on to the smaller one,
walked him out of the yard and down the road in good style without
accident. Once in the country, however, my animal, the fresher of the
two, insisted on a smart trot which shook me up a good deal so that I
hardly kept my seat. This eventually so annoyed the animal that it
began to fidget and zigzag across the road--no doubt preparing to break
away at a stretch gallop when once it had rid itself of the
incomprehensible pair of legs across its back.

I got off quickly and swopped horses with A----.

Walked him most of the way, while A---- cantered forward and back to
cheer me on. Ultimately however this beast, too, got sick of walking and
began to trot. For a time I stood this well and began to rise in my
saddle quite nicely. After two miles, horrible soreness supervened, and
I had to get off--very carefully, with a funny feeling in my legs--even
looked down at them to assure myself they were not bandy! In doing so,
the horse--this traction monster--stepped on my toe and I swore.

On nearing the village, L---- arrived, riding A----'s animal and holding
his sides for laughing at me as I crawled along holding the carthorse by
the bridle. Got on again and rode into the Rectory grounds in fine style
like a dashing cavalier, every one jeering at me from the lawn.

_September_ 28.

Having lived on this planet now for the space of 24 years, I can claim
with some cogency that I am qualified to express some sort of opinion
about it. I therefore hereby record that I find myself in an absorbingly
interesting place where I live, move and have my being, dominated by one
monstrous feature above all others--the mystery of it all! Everything is
so astonishing, my own existence so incredible!

Nothing explains itself. Every one is dumb. It is like walking about at
a masqued Ball.... Even I myself am a mystery to me. How wonderful and
frightening that is--to feel yourself--your innermost and most
substantial possession to be a mystery, incomprehensible. I look at
myself in the mirror and mock at myself. On some days I am to myself as
strange and unfamiliar as a Pterodactyl. There is a certain grim humour
in finding myself here possessed of a perfectly arbitrary arrangement
of lineaments when I never asked to be here and never selected my own
attributes. To the dignity of a human being it seems like a coarse
practical joke.... My own freakish physique is certainly a joke.

_October_ 4.

_In London Again_

K---- comes in from her dancing class, nods to me, hugs her sister
around the neck and says,--

"Oh! you dear thing, you've got a cold."

"I shouldn't do that," I remark, green-eyed, "she's in an awful wax
to-night."

She: "Oh! I don't mind K----!"

(Laughter!)

_October_ 8.

Heard a knock at the door last night, and, thinking it was R----, I
unbolted it and let in a tramp who at once asked God to bless me and
crown all my sorrow with joy. An amiable fellow to be sure--so I gave
him some coppers and he at once repeated with wonderful fervour, "God
bless you, sir."

"I wish He would," I answered, "I have a horrible cold."

"Ah, I know, I gets it myself and the hinfluenza--have you had that,
sir?"

In ten minutes I should have told him all my personal history. But he
was thirsting for a drink and went off quickly and left me with my heart
unburthened. London is a lonely place.

To-day journeyed to ---- where I gave evidence as an _expert_ in Economic
Entomology at the County Court in a case concerning damage to furniture
by mites for which I am paid £8 8s. fee and expenses and travelled first
class. What irony! (See June 30, 1911.)

_October_ 11.

I may be a weak, maundering, vacillating fool but I cannot help loving
her on one day, being indifferent the next and on some occasions even
disliking her.... To-day she was charming, with a certain warm glossy
perfection on her face and hair.... And she loves me--I could swear it.
"And when a woman woos ..." etc. How difficult for a vain and lonely man
to resist her. She tells me many times in many dainty ways that she
loves me without so much as stopping her work to talk.

I wish I were permanently and irresistibly enamoured. I want a
_bouleversement_....

_October_ 13.

Went to see a Harley Street oculist about the sight of one eye, which
has caused a lot of trouble and worry of late and continuously haunted
me with the possibility of blindness. At times, I see men as trees
walking and print becomes hopelessly blurred.

The Specialist however is reassuring. The eye is healthy --no
neuritis--but the adjustment muscles have been thrown out of gear by the
nervous troubles of last spring.

       *       *       *       *       *

Was ever man more sorely tempted? Here am I lonely and uncomfortable in
diggings with a heart like nascent oxygen.... Shall I? Yes, but.... And
I have neither health nor wealth.

_October_ 22.

_The British Museum Reading Room_

I saw it for the first time to-day! Gadzooks!! This is the only fit
ejaculation to express my amazement! It's a pagan temple with the Gods
in the middle and all around, various obscure dark figures prostrating
themselves in worship.

For any one who is not simply a Sheep or Cow or whose nervous
organisation is a degree more sensitive than the village blacksmith's,
it is a besetting peril to his peace of mind to be constantly moving
about an independent being, with loves and hates, and a separate
identity among other separate identities, who prowl and prowl around
like the hosts of Midian--ready to snarl, fight, seize you, bore you,
exasperate you, to arouse all your passions, call up all the worst from
the depths where they have lain hidden.... A day spent among my fellows
goads me to a frenzy by the evening. I am no longer fit for human
companionship. People string me up to concert pitch. I develop
suspicions of one that he is prying, of another that he patronises.
Others make me horribly anxious to stand well in their eyes and horribly
curious to know what they think of me. Others I hate and loathe--for no
particular reason. There is a man I am acquainted with concerning whom I
know nothing at all. He may be Jew, Gentile, Socinian, Pre-adamite,
Anabaptist, Rosicrucian--I don't know, and I don't care, for I hate him.
I should like to smash his face in. I don't know why.... In the whole
course of our tenuous acquaintance we have spoken scarce a dozen words
to each other. Yet I should like to blow up his face with dynamite. If I
had £200 a year private income I should be in wait for him to-morrow
round a corner and land him one--just to indicate my economic
independence. He would call for the police and the policeman--discerning
creature--on arrival, would surely say, "With a face like that, I'm not
surprised."

       *       *       *       *       *

R---- said to me this morning, "Well, have you heard?" with an
exuberance of curiosity that made my blood boil--he was referring to my
Essay still at the bar of the opinion of the Editor of the _English
Review_. "You beast," I snapped and walked off.

R---- shouted with laughter for he realizes my anger with him is only
semi-serious: it is meant and not meant: meant, for it is justified by
the facts; not meant, for I can't be too serious over anything _au
fond_.

       *       *       *       *       *

Of all the grim and ridiculous odds and ends of chance that Fortune has
rolled up to my feet, my friendship with a man like B---- is the
grimmest and most ridiculous. He is a bachelor of sixty, rather
good-looking, of powerful physique and a faultless constitution.... His
ignorance is colossal and he once asked whether Australia, for example,
tho' surrounded by water, is not connected up with other land underneath
the sea. Being himself a child in intelligence (tho' commercially
cunning), he has a great respect for my brains. Being himself a strong
man, he views my ill-health with much contempt. His private opinion is
that I am in consumption. When asked once by a lady if I were not going
to be "a great man" one day, he replied, "Yes--if he lives." I ought to
walk six miles a day, drink a bottle of stout with my dinner, and eat
plenty of _onions_. His belief in the curative properties of onions is
strong as death....

His system of prophylaxis may be quickly summarised,--

(1) Hot whisky _ad lib_. and off to bed.

(2) A woman.

These two sterling preventives he has often urged upon me at the same
time tipping out a quantity of anathemas on doctors and physic....

He is a cynic. He scoffs at the medical profession, the Law, the Church,
the Press. Every man is guilty until he is proved innocent. The Premier
is an unscrupulous character, the Bishop a salacious humbug. No doctor
will cure, for it pays him to keep you ill. Every clergyman puts the
Sunday-school teacher in the family way. His mouth is permanently
distorted by cynicism.

He is vain and believes all women are in love with him. When playing the
Gallant, he turns on a special voice, wears white spats, and looks like
a Newmarket "Crook."

"I lost my 'bus," a girl says to him. "Lost your bust," he answers, in
broad Scotch. "I can't see that you've done that." ... His sexual career
has been a remarkable one, he claiming to have brought many women to
bed, and actually to have lain with women of almost all European
nationalities, for he has been a great traveller....

This man is my devoted friend!... And truth to tell I get on with him
better than I do with most people. I like his gamey flavour, his utter
absence of self-consciousness, and his doggy loyalty to myself--his
weaker brother. He may be depraved in his habits, coarse in his
language, boorish in his manners, ludicrous in the wrongness of all his
views. But I like him just because he is so hopeless. I get on with him
because it is so impossible to reclaim him--my missionary spirit is not
intrigued. If he only dabbled in vice (for an experiment), if he had
pale, watery ideas about current literature--if--to use his own
favourite epithet--he were _genteel_, I should quarrel.

_October_ 30.

Having developed a passion for a piece of sculpture by R. Boeltzig
called the Reifenwerferin--the most beautiful figure of a woman. I am
already devoted to Rodin's "Kiss" and have a photo of it framed in my
bedroom. Have written to Bruciani's.

I suspect that my growing appreciation of the plastic art is with me
only distilled sensuality. I enjoy my morning bath for the same reason.
My bath is a daily baptism. I revel in the pleasure of the pain of the
cold water. I whistle gleefully because I am clean and cool and nude
early in the morning with the sun still low, before the day has been
stained by clothes, dirt, pain, exasperation, death.... How I love
myself as I rub myself down!--the cool, pink skin--I could eat it! I
want to be all day in a cold bath to enjoy the pain of mortifying the
flesh--it is so beautiful, so soft, so inscrutable--if I cut out chunks
of it, it would only bleed.

_November_ 8.

The other morning R---- said hyperbolically that he hadn't slept all
night for fear that, before he had time to put an arresting hand on my
shoulder and say "Don't," I might have gone and become "Entangled." ...

... No, I'm as firm as a rock, my dear. But in imagination the affair
was continued as follows,--

She: "I am fond of you, you know."

He: "I wish you wouldn't say these things to me--they're quite
embarrassing."

She: "Oh! my dear, I'm not serious, you know--you're such a vain young
man."

He: "Well, it's equally embarrassing any way."

She: "Then I _am_ serious."

Tears.

I say: "I wish you would take me only for what I am--a blackguard with
no good intentions, yet no very evil ones--but still a blackguard, whom
you seem to find has engaging manners."

I breathe freely hoping to have escaped this terrible temptation and
turn to go. But she, looking up smiling thro' a curtain of wet
eyelashes, asks,--

"Won't the blackguard stop a little longer?" In a moment my earth works,
redoubts, and bastions fall down, I rush forward impetuously into her
arms shouting, "I _will_, I _will_, I will as long as for eternity."

(Curtain.)

I dramatised this little picture and much more last night before going
to sleep when I was in a fever. I should succumb at once to the first
really skilful coquette.

_November_ 9.

_Ludo_

We played Ludo together this evening and she won 2s. 6d. Handsomely
gowned in black and wearing black ornaments, she sat with me in the
lamplight on the sofa in the Morris Room, with the Ludo board between us
placed on a large green cushion. Her face was white as parchment and
her hair seemed an ebony black. I lolled in the opposite corner, a thin,
elongated youth, with fair hair all stivvered up, dressed in a
light-brown lounge suit with a good trouser crease, a soft linen collar
and--a red tie! Between us, on its green cushion the Ludo board with its
brilliantly coloured squares:--all of it set before a background formed
by the straight-backed, rectangular, settle-like sofa, with a charming
covering which went with the rest of the scheme.

"Rather decorative,"---- remarked in an audible voice, turning her head
on one side and quizzing. I can well believe it was. _She_ looked wholly
admirable.

_November_ 21.

_My Nightmare_

Can't get rid of my cough. I have so many things to do--I am living in a
fever of haste to get them done. Yet this cough hinders me. There is
always something which drags me back from the achievement of my desires.
It's like a nightmare; I see myself struggling violently to escape from
a monster which draws continuously nearer, until his shadow falls across
my path, when I begin to run and find my legs tied, etc. The only
difference is that mine is a nightmare from which I never wake up. The
haven of successful accomplishment remains as far off as ever. Oh! make
haste.

_November_ 29.

The _English Review_ has returned my Essay!--This is a keen
disappointment to me. "I wish I could use this, but I am really too
full," the Editor writes. To be faintly encouraged and delicately
rejected--why I prefer the printed form.

_December_ 1.

_More Irony_

Renewed my cold--I do nothing all day but blow my nose, cough, and curse
Austin Harrison.

M---- thinks the lungs are all right. "There is nothing there, I think,"
said he, this morning. Alleluia! I've had visions of consumption for
weeks past and M---- himself has been expecting it. I always just escape:
I always almost get something, do something, go somewhere, I have
dabbled in a variety of diseases, but never got one downright[2]--but
only enough to make me feel horribly unfit and very miserable without
the consolation of being able to regard myself as the heroic victim of
some incurable disorder. Instead of being Stevenson with tuberculosis,
I've only been Jones with dyspepsia. So, too, in other directions, big
events have always just missed me: by Herculean efforts I succeeded in
giving up newspaper journalism and breaking thro' that steel
environment--but only to become an Entomologist! I once achieved success
in an Essay in the _Academy_, which attracted attention--a debut,
however, that never developed. I had not quite arrived. It is always
_not quite_.

Yesterday, I received a state visit from the Editor of the _Furniture
Record_ seeking advice on how to eradicate mites from upholstering! I
received him ironically--but little did he understand.

I shot up like a ball on a bagatelle board all steamy into zoology (my
once beloved science) but at once rolled dead into the very low hole of
Economic Entomology! Curse.... Why can't I either have a first-rate
disease or be a first-rate zoologist?

Now just think what a much better figure I should have cut, from the
artistic view point, had I remained a newspaper reporter who had taught
himself prodigious embryology out of F.M. Balfour's Textbook, who had
cut sections of fowls' eggs and newt embryos with a hand microtome, who
had passionately dissected out the hidden, internal anatomy of a great
variety of animals, who could recite Wiedersheim's _Comparative Anatomy
of Vertebrates_ and patter off the difference between a nephridium and a
cœlomic duct without turning a hair--or the phylogenetic history (how
absorbing!) of the kidney--pronephros, mesonephros and metanephros and
all the ducts!... All this, over now and wasted. My hardly-won
knowledge wrenched away is never brought into use--it lies piled up in
my brain rotting. I could have become a first-rate comparative
anatomist.

_December_ 3.

Cold better. So back at work--gauging ale at Dunfermline as R---- puts
it.

_December_ 9.

In the evening found it quite impossible to stay in the house any
longer: some vague fear drove me out. I was alarmed to be alone or to be
still. It is my cough, I think.

Had two glasses of port at the Kensington Hotel, conversed with the
barmaid, and then came home.

_December_ 10.

"Don't be an old fossil," she said to me to-night, irrelevantly.

"_A propos_ of what?" I inquired.

"Mother, here's W---- proposing to E----! Do come," cried ----, with
intent to confuse. I laughed heartlessly.

Dear, dear, where will it all end? It's a sad business when you fall in
love with a girl you don't like.

_December_ 26.

Spent a romping day at the Flat. Kissed her sister twice under the
mistletoe, and in the evening went to a cinema. After supper made a mock
heroic speech and left hilarious.


[1] "The life of the Soul is different; there is nothing more changing,
more varied, more restless ... to describe the incidents of one hour
would require an eternity."--_Journal of Eugénie de Guérin_.

[2] See entry for November 27, 1915.




1914


_February_ 4.

... Finally and in conclusion I have fallen ill again, have again
resumed my periodical visits to the Doctor, and am swallowing his
rat-poison in a blind faith as aforetime. In fact, I am in London,
leading the same solitary life, seeing no one, talking to no one, and
daily struggling with this demon of ill-health. Can no one exorcise him?
The sight of _both_ my eyes is affected now. Blindness?

B---- continues whoring, drinking, sneering. R---- as usual, devoid of
emotion, cold, passionless, Shavian, and self-absorbed, still titillates
his mind with etching, sociology, music, etc., and I have at last ceased
to bore him with what he probably calls the febrile utterances of an
overwrought mind.

Such is my world! Oh! I forgot--on the floor below me is a corpse--that
of an old gentleman who passed away suddenly in the night. In the small
hours, the landlady went for the Doctor over the way, but he refused to
come, saying the old man was too aged. So the poor gentleman died
alone--in this rat hole of a place.

_February_ 7.

Intending to buy my usual 3d. packet of Goldflakes, entered a
tobacconist's in Piccadilly, but once inside surprised to find myself in
a classy west-end establishment, which frightened my flabby nature into
buying De Reszke's instead. I hadn't the courage to face the aristocrat
behind the counter with a request for Goldflakes--probably not stocked.
What would he think of me? Besides, I shrank from letting him see I was
not perfectly well-to-do.

_February_ 14.

I wonder what this year has in store for me? The first twenty-four years
of my life have hunted me up and down the keyboard--I have been right to
the top and also to the bottom--very happy and very miserable. Yet I
prefer the life that is a hunt and an adventure. I don't really mind
being chased like this. I almost thrive on the excitement. If I knew
always where to look with any degree of certainty for my next day's life
I should yawn! "What if to-day be sweet," I say, and never look ahead.
To me, next week is next century.

The danger and uncertainty of my life make me cherish and hug closely to
my heart various little projects that otherwise would seem unworthy. I
work at them quickly, frantically, sometimes, afraid to whisper to a
living soul what expectations I dare to harbour in my heart. What if
_now_ the end be near? Not a word! Let me go onward.

_February_ 15.

To-day I have reviewed the situation carefully, exhaustively. I have
peered into every aspect of my life and achievements and everything I
have seen nauseates me. I can find no ray of comfort in anything I have
done or in anything I might do. My life seems to have been a wilderness
of futile endeavour. I started wrong from the very beginning. At the
moment of my birth I was coming into the world in the wrong place and
under wrong conditions. Why seek to overcome such colossal initial
disadvantages? In this mood I found fault with my parentage, my
inheritance, all my mental and physical disabilities....

This must be a form of incipient insanity. Even as a boy, I can remember
being preternaturally absorbed in myself and preternaturally
discontented. I was accustomed to exhaust my mind by the most harassing
cross-examinations--no Counsel at the Bar ever treated a witness more
mercilessly. After a day of this sort of thing, when silently and
morbidly in every spare moment, at meals, in school, or on a walk, I
would incessantly ply the questions, "What is the ultimate value of your
work, _cui bono_?" etc. I went to bed in the evening with a feeling of
hopelessness and dissatisfaction--haggard with considerations and
reconsiderations of my outlook, my talent, my character, my future. In
bed, I tossed from side to side, mentally exhausted with my efforts to
obtain some satisfying conclusion--always hopeful, determined to the
last to be able to square up my little affairs before going to sleep.
But out of this mazy, vertiginous mass of thinking no satisfaction ever
came. _Now_, I thought--or the _next moment_--or as soon as I review and
revise myself in this or in that aspect, I shall be content. And so I
went on, tearing down and reforming, revising and reviewing, till
finally from sheer exhaustion and very unhappy I fell asleep.

Next morning I was all right.

_February_ 20.

Am feeling very unwell. My ill-health, my isolation, baulked ambitions,
and daily breadwinning all conspire to bring me down. The idea of a
pistol and the end of it grows on me day by day.

_February_ 21.

After four days of the most profound depression of spirits, bitterness,
self-distrust, despair, I emerged from the cloud to-day quite suddenly
(probably the arsenic and strychnine begins to take effect) and walked
up Exhibition Road with the intention of visiting the Science Museum
Library so as to refer to Schafer's _Essentials of Histology_ (I have to
watch myself carefully so that I may act _at once_ as soon as the
balance of mind is restored). In the lobby was a woman screaming as if
in pain, with a passer-by at her side saying sternly, "What is the
matter with you?" as if she were making herself ridiculous by suffering
pain in public.

I passed by quickly, pretending not to notice lest--after all--I should
be done out of my _Essentials of Histology._ Even in the Library I very
nearly let the opportunity slide by picking up a book on squaring the
circle, the preface and introduction of which I was forced to read.

_March_ 4.

_The Entomological Society_

There were a great many Scarabees present who exhibited to one another
poor little pinned insects in collecting-boxes ... It was really a
one-man show, Prof. Poulton, a man of very considerable scientific
attainments, being present, and shouting with a raucous voice in a way
that must have scared some of the timid, unassuming collectors of our
country's butterflies and moths. Like a great powerful sheep-dog, he got
up and barked, "Mendelian characters," or "Germ plasm," what time the
obedient flock ran together and bleated a pitiful applause. I suppose,
having frequently heard these and similar phrases fall from the lips of
the great man at these reunions, they have come to regard them as
symbols of a ritual which they think it pious to accept without any
question. So every time the Professor says, "Allelomorph," or some such
phrase, they cross themselves and never venture to ask him what the hell
it is all about.

_March_ 7.

_A Scots Fir_

Have been feeling very "down" of late, but yesterday I saw a fine Scots
Fir by the roadside--tall, erect, as straight as a Parthenon pillar. The
sight of it restored my courage. It had a tonic effect. Quite
unconsciously I pulled my shoulders back and walked ahead with renewed
vows never to flinch again. It is a noble tree. It has strength as a
giant, and a giant's height, and yet kindly withal, the branches
drooping down graciously towards you--like a kind giant extending its
hands to a child.

_March_ 22.

_A Stagnant Day_

Went to bed late last night so I slept on soundly till 9 a.m. Went down
to the bath-room, but found the door was shut, so went back to my
bedroom again, lay down and dosed a while, thinking of nothing in
particular. Went down again--door still locked--swore--returned once
more to my room and reclined on the bed, with door open, so that I could
hear as soon as the bath-room door opened.... Rang the bell, and
Miss ---- brought up a jug of hot water to shave with, and a tumbler of hot
water to drink (for my dyspepsia). She, on being interrogated, said
there was some one in the bath-room. I said I wanted a bath too, so as
she passed on her way down she shouted, "Hurry up, Mr. Barbellion wants
a bath as well." Her footsteps then died away as she descended lower
into the basement, where the family lives, sleeps, and cooks our food.

At length, hearing the door open, I ejaculated, "the Lord be praised,"
rushed down, entered the bath-room and secured it from further
intruders. I observed that Miss ---- senior had been bathing her members,
and that the bath, tho' empty, was covered inside with patches of soap
--unutterably black! Oh! Miss ----!

Dressed leisurely and breakfasted. When the table was cleared wrote a
portion of my essay on _Spallanzani_....

Then, being giddy and tired, rang for dinner. Miss ---- laid the table.
She looked very clean. I said, "Good-morning," and she suitably replied,
and I went on reading, the _Winning Post_. Felt too slack to be amiable.
Next time she came in, I said as pleasantly as I could, "Is it all
ready?" and being informed proceeded to eat forthwith.

In the afternoon, took a 'bus to Richmond. No room outside, so had to go
inside--curse--and sit opposite a row--curse again--of fat, ugly,
elderly women, all off to visit their married daughters, the usual
Sunday jaunt. At Hammersmith got on the outside, and at Turnham Green
was caught in a hail storm. Very cold all of a sudden, so got off and
took shelter in the doorway of a shop, which was of course closed, the
day being Sunday. Rain, wind, and hail continued for some while, as I
gazed at the wet, almost empty street, thinking, re-thinking and
thinking over again the same thought, viz., that the 'bus ride along
this route was exceptionally cheap--probably because of competition with
the trams.

The next 'bus took me to Richmond. Two young girls sat in front, and
kept looking back to know if I was "game." I looked _through_ them.
Walked in the Park just conscious of the singing of Larks and the
chatter of Jays, but harassed mentally by the question, "To whom shall I
send my essay, when finished?" To shelter from the rain sat under an oak
where four youths joined me and said, "Worse luck," and "Not half," and
smoked cigarettes. They gossipped and giggled like girls, put their arms
around each other's necks. At the dinner last night, they said, they had
Duck and Tomato Soup and Beeswax ("Beesley, you know, the chap that goes
about with Smith a lot") wore a fancy waistcoat with a dinner jacket.
When I got up to move on, they became convulsed with laughter. I
scowled.

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
---- 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_.

_June_ 26.

... I placed the volume on the mantelpiece as if it were a bottle of
physic straight from my Dispensary, and I began to expostulate and
expound, as if she were a sick person and I the doctor.... She seemed a
little nettled at my proselytising demeanour and gave herself out to be
very preoccupied--or at any rate quite uninterested in my physic. I read
the book last night at one sitting and was boiling over with it.

"I fear I have come at an inconvenient time," I said, with a sardonic
smile and strummed on the piano.... "I must really be off. Please read
it (which sounded like 'three times a day after meals') and tell me how
you like it. (Facetiously.) Of course don't give up your present manual
for it, that would be foolish and unnecessary." ... I rambled
on--disposed to be very playful.

At last calmly and horribly, in a thoughtful voice she answered,--

"I think you are very rude; you play the piano after I asked you to
stop and walk about just as if it were your own home."

I remained outwardly calm but inwardly was very surprised and full of
tremors. I said after a pause,--

"Very well, if you think so.... Good-bye."

No answer; and I was too proud to apologise.

"Good-bye," I repeated.

She went on reading her novel in silence while I got as far as the
door--very upset.

"_Au revoir_."

No answer.

"Oh," said I, and went out of the room leaving my lady for good and all
and I'm not sorry.

In the passage met Miss ----. "What?" she said, "going already?"

"Farewell," I said sepulchrally. "A very tragic farewell," which left
her wondering.

_June_ 29.

_At the Albert Hall_

Went with R---- to the Albert Hall to the _Empress of Ireland_ Memorial
Concert with massed bands. We heard the Symphonie Pathétique, Chopin's
Funeral March, Trauermarsch from Götterdammerung, the Ride of the
Valkyries and a solemn melody from Bach.

This afternoon I regard as a mountain peak in my existence. For two
solid hours I sat like an Eagle on a rock gazing into infinity--a very
fine sensation for a London Sparrow....

I have an idea that if it were possible to assemble the sick and
suffering day by day in the Albert Hall and keep the Orchestra going all
the time, then the constant exposure of sick parts to such heavenly air
vibrations would ultimately restore to them the lost rhythm of health.
Surely, even a single exposure to--say Beethoven's Fifth Symphony--must
result in some permanent reconstitution of ourselves body and soul. No
one can be quite the same after a Beethoven Symphony has streamed thro'
him.

If one could _develop_ a human soul like a negative the effect I should
say could be seen.... I'll tell you what I wish they'd do--seriously:
divide up the arena into a series of cubicles where, unobserved and in
perfect privacy, a man could execute all the various movements of his
body and limbs which the music prompts. It would be such a delicious
self-indulgence and it's torture to be jammed into a seat where you
can't even tap one foot or wave an arm.

The concert restored my moral health. I came away in love with people I
was hating before and full of compassion for others I usually condemn. A
feeling of immeasurable well being--a jolly bonhomie enveloped me like
incandescent light. At the close when we stood up to sing the National
Anthem we all felt a genuine spirit of camaraderie. Just as when Kings
die, we were silent musing upon the common fate, and when the time came
to separate we were loath to go our several ways, for we were comrades
who together had come thro' a great experience. For my part I wanted to
shake hands all round--happy travellers, now alas! at the journey's end
and never perhaps to meet again--never.

R---- and I walked up thro' Kensington Gardens like two young Gods!

"I even like that bloody thing," I said, pointing to the Albert
Memorial.

We pointed out pretty girls to one another, watched the children play
ring-a-ring-a-roses on the grass. We laughed exultingly at the thought
of our dismal colleagues ... tho' I said (as before!) I loved 'em
all--God bless 'em--even old ----. R---- said it was nothing short of
insolence on their part to have neglected the opportunity of coming to
the Concert.

Later on, an old gaffer up from the country stopped us to ask the way to
Rotten Row--I overwhelmed him with directions and happy descriptive
details. I felt like walking with him and showing him what a wonderful
place the world is.

After separating from R---- very reluctantly--it was horrible to be left
alone in such high spirits, walked up towards the Round Pond, and caught
myself avoiding the shadows of the trees--so as to be every moment out
in the blazing sun. I scoffed inwardly at the timorousness of pale,
anæmic folk whom I passed hiding in the shadows of the elms.

At the Round Pond, came across a Bulldog who was biting out great chunks
of water and in luxuriant waste-fulness letting it drool out again from
each corner of his mouth. I watched this old fellow greedily (it was
very hot), as well pleased with him and his liquid "chops" as with
anything I saw, unless it were a girl and a man lying full length along
the grass and kissing beneath a sunshade. I smiled; she saw me, and
smiled, too, in return, and then fell to kissing again.

_June_ 30.

_Dinosaurs_

There are books which are Dinosaurs--Sir Walter Raleigh's _History of
the World_, Gibbon's _Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire_. There are
men who are Dinosaurs--Balzac completing his Human Comedy, Napoleon,
Roosevelt. I like them all. I like express trains and motor lorries. I
enjoy watching an iron girder swinging in the air or great cubes of ice
caught up between iron pincers. I must always stop and watch these
things. I like everything that is swift or immense: London, lightning,
Popocatepetl. I enjoy the smell of tar, of coal, of fried fish, or a
brass band playing a Liszt Rhapsody. And why should those foolish Mænads
shout Women's Rights just because they burn down a church? All bonfires
are delectable. Civilisation and top hats bore me. My own life is like a
tame rabbit's. If only I had a long tail to lash it in feline rage! I
would return to Nature--I could almost return to Chaos. There are times
when I feel so dour I would wreck the universe if I could.[1]

(1917: I think after three years of Armageddon I feel quite ready to go
back to top hats and civilisation.)

_July_ 8.

_Sunset in Kensington Gardens_

The instinct for worship occurs rhythmically--at morning and evening.
This is natural, for twice a day at sunrise and sunset--however
work-sodden we may be, however hypnotised by daily routine--our natural
impulse is (provided we are awake) to look to the horizon at the sun and
stand a moment with mute lips. During the course of the day or night, we
are too occupied or asleep--but sunrise is the great hour of the
departure and sunset is the arrival at the end. Everything puts on a
mysterious appearance--to-night the tops of the elms seemed
super-naturally high and, pushing up into the sky, had secret communion
with the clouds; the clouds seemed waiting for a ceremony, a way had
been prepared by the tapissier, a moment of suspense while one cloud
stretched to another like courtiers in whispered conversation; a rumour
of the approach; then slowly the news came thro' that the sun had
arrived for immediate departure.

_July_ 14.

Have finished my essay. But am written out--obviously. To-night I
struggled with another, and spent two hours sucking the end of my pen.
But after painfully mountainous parturition, all I brought forth were
the two ridiculous mice of one meretricious trope and one grammatical
solecism. I can sometimes sit before a sheet of paper, pen in hand,
unable to produce a word.

_July_ 19.

For a walk with R---- in the country, calling for tea at his Uncle's
house at ----. Played clock golf and made the acquaintance of Miss ----,
a tall, statuesque lady, with golden hair, as graceful as an antelope
and very comely, her two dear little feet clad in white shoes peeping
out (as R---- said) like two white mice one after the other as she
moved across the lawn.

Coming home I said to R---- histrionically, "Some golden-haired little
boy will some day rest his head upon her bosom, beautiful in line and
depth, all unconscious of his luck or of his part in a beautiful
picture--would that I were the father to make that group a _fait
accompli._" R----, with meticulous accuracy, always refers to her as
"that elegant virgin."

_July_ 25.

While sketching under Hammersmith Bridge yesterday, R---- heard a
whistle, and, looking up, saw a charming "young thing" leaning over the
Bridge parapet smiling like the blessed Damozel out of Heaven.

"Come down," he cried.

She did, and they discussed pictures while he painted. Later he walked
with her to the Broadway, saw her into a 'bus and said "Good-bye,"
without so much as an exchange of names.

"Even if she _were_ a whore," I said, "it's a pity your curiosity was so
sluggish. You should have seen her home, even if you did not go home
with her. Young man, you preferred to let go of authentic life at
Hammersmith Broadway, so as to return at once to your precious
water-colour painting."

"Perhaps," replied he enigmatically.

"Whatever you do, if ever you meet her again," I rejoined, "don't
introduce her to that abominable ----. He is abominably handsome, and I
hate him for it. To all his other distinctions he is welcome--parentage,
money, success, but I can never forgive him his good looks and the
inevitable marriage to some beautiful fair-skinned woman."

R. (reflectively): "Up to now, I was inclined to think that envy as a
_passion_ did not exist."

"Have you none?"

"Not much," he answered, and I believe it.

"Smug wretch, then. All I can say is, I may have instincts and passions
but I am not a pale water-colour artist.... What's the matter with you,"
I foamed, "is that you like pictures. If I showed you a real woman, you
would exclaim contemplatively, 'How lovely;' then putting out one hand
to touch her, unsuspectingly, you'd scream aghast, 'Oh! it's alive, I
hear it ticking.' 'Yes, my boy,' I answer severely with a flourish,
'_That_ is a woman's heart.'"

R---- exploded with laughter and then said, "A truce to your desire for
more life, for actual men and women. ... I know this that last night I
would not have exchanged the quiet armchair reading the last chapter of
Dostoieffsky's _The Possessed_ for a Balaclava Charge."

"A matter of temperament, I suppose," I reflected, in cold detachment.
"You see, I belong to the raw meat school. _You_ prefer life cooked for
you in a book. You prefer the confectioner's shop to cutting down the
wheat with your own scythe."

_July_ 26.

The B.M. is a ghastly hole. They will give me none of the apparatus I
require. If you ask the Trustees for a thousand pounds for the
propagation of the Gospel in foreign parts they say, "Yes." If you ask
for twenty pounds for a new microscope they say, "No, but we'll cut off
your nose with a big pair of scissors."

_July_ 27.

To a pedantic prosy little old maid who was working in my room this
morning, I exclaimed,--

"I'd sooner make a good dissection than go to a Lord Mayor's Banquet.
Turtle Soup ain't in it."

She was uninspired, and said, "Oom," and went on pinning insects. Then
more brightly, and with great punctilio in the pronunciation of her
words, having cleared her throat and drawn herself up with great
deliberation to deliver herself of a remark, she volunteered,--

"I whish I had nevah taken up such a brittle grooop as the Stones
(Stoneflies). One dare not loook at a Stone."

Poor dear little old maid. This was my turn to say "Oom."

"Pretty dismal work," I added ambiguously. Then with malice aforethought
I whistled a Harry Lauder tune, asked her if she had ever heard Willie
Solar sing, "You made me love you," and then absent-mindedly and in
succession inquired,--

"What's become of all the gold?"

"What's become of Waring?"

"What shall I sing when all is sung?"

To which several categorical interrogations she ventured no reply, but
presently in the usual voice,--

"I have placed an Agrionine in this drawer for security and, now I want
it, cannot find it."

"Life is like that," I said. "I never can find my Agrionines!"

_August_ 1.

All Europe is mobilising.

_August_ 2.

Will England join in?

_August_ 12.

We all await the result of a battle between two millions of men. The
tension makes me feel physically sick.

_August_ 21--_August_ 24.

In bed with a fever. I never visit the flat now, but her mother kindly
came over to see me.

_September_ 25.

[Living now in rooms alone.]

I have--since my return from Cornwall--placed all my journals in a
specially made cabinet. R---- came to dinner and after a glass or so of
Beaune and a cigarette, I open my "coffin"[2] (it is a long box with a
brass handle at each end), and with some show of deliberation select a
volume to read to him, drawing it from its division with lavish
punctiliousness, and inquiring with an oily voice, "A little of 1912?"
as if we were trying wines. R---- grins at the little farce and so
encourages me.

_September_ 26.

Doctor's Consulting Rooms--my life has been spent in them! Medical
specialists--Harley Street men--I have seen four and all to no purpose.
M---- wrote me the other day,--

"Come along and see me on Tuesday; some day I dare say we shall find
something we can patch."

He regards me with the most obvious commiseration and always when I come
away after a visit he shakes me warmly by the hand and says, "Good-bye,
old man, and good luck." More luck than the pharmacopœia.

My life has always been a continuous struggle with ill-health and
ambition, and I have mastered neither. I try to reassure myself that
this accursed ill-health will not affect my career. I keep flogging my
will in the hope of winning thro' in the end. Yet at the back of my mind
there is the great improbability that I shall ever live long enough to
realise myself. For a long time past my hope has simply been to last
long enough to convince others of what I might have done--had I lived.
That will be something. But even to do that I will not allow that I have
overmuch time. I have never at any time lived with any sense of
security. I have never felt permanently settled in this life--nothing
more than a shadowy _locum tenens_, a wraith, a festoon of mist likely
to disappear any moment.

At times, when I am vividly conscious of the insecurity of my tenure
here, my desires enter on a mad race to obtain fulfilment before it is
too late ... and as fulfilment recedes ambition obsesses me the more. I
am daily occupied in calculating with my ill-health: trying to
circumvent it, to carry on in spite of all. I conquer each day. Every
week is a victory. I am always surprised that my health or will has not
collapsed, that, by Jove! I am still working and still living.

One day it looks like appendicitis, another stoppage, another threatened
blindness, or I develop a cough and am menaced with consumption. So I go
on in a hurricane of bad dreams. I struggle like Laocoon with the
serpents--the serpents of nervous depression that press around the heart
tighter than I care to admit. I must use every kind of blandishment to
convince myself that my life and my work are worth while. Frequently I
must smother and kill (and it calls for prompt action) the shrill voice
that cries from the tiniest corner of my heart, "Are you quite sure you
are such an important fellow as you imagine?" Or I fret over the
condition of my brain, finding that I forget what I read, I lose in
acuteness of my perceptions. My brain is a tumefaction. But I won't give
in. I go on trying to recollect what I have forgotten, I harry my brain
all day to recall a word or name, I attack other folk importunately. I
write things down so as to look them up in reference books--I am always
looking up the things I remember I have forgotten....

There is another struggle, too, that often engrosses all my energies....
It is a horrible thing that with so large an ambition, so great a love
of life, I should nevertheless court disaster like this. Truly Sir
Thomas Browne you say, "Every man is his own Atropos."

In short, I lead an unfathomably miserable existence in this dark, gray
street, in these drab, dirty rooms--miserable in its emptiness of home,
love, human society. Now that I never visit the flat, I visit about two
houses in London--the Doctor's and R----'s Hotel. I walk along the
streets and stare in the windows of private houses, hungry for a little
society. It creates in me a gnawing, rancorous discontent to be seeing
people everywhere in London--millions of them--and then to realise my
own ridiculously circumscribed knowledge of them. I am passionately
eager to have acquaintances, to possess at least a few friends. If I die
to-morrow, how many persons shall I have talked to? or how many men and
women shall I have known? A few maiden aunts and one or two old fossils.
I am burning to meet real live men, I have masses of mental stuff I am
anxious to unload. But I am ignorant of people as of countries and live
in celestial isolation.

This, I fear, reads like a wail of self-commiseration. But I am trying
to give myself the pleasure of describing myself at this period
truthfully, to make a bid at least for some posthumous sympathy.
Therefore it shall be told that I who am capable of passionate love am
sexually starved, and endure the pangs of a fiendish solitude in rooms,
with an ugly landlady's face when ... I despair of ever finding a woman
to _love_. I never meet women of my own class, and am unprepossessing in
appearance and yet I fancy that once my reserve is melted I am not
without attractions. "He grows on you," a girl said of me once. But I am
hypercritical and hyperfastidious. I want too much.... I search daily in
the streets with a starved and hungry look. What a horrible and powerful
and hateful thing this love instinct is! I hate it, hate it, hate it. It
will not let me rest. I wish I were a eunuch.

"There's a beautiful young thing," R---- and I say to one another
sardonically, hoping thereby to conceal the canker within.

I could gnash my teeth and weep in anger--baulked, frustrated as I am at
almost every turn of life--in my profession, in my literary efforts, and
in my love of man and woman kind. I would utter a whole commination
service in my present state of mind.

_October_ 7.

To me woman is _the_ wonderful fact of existence. If there be any next
world and it be as I hope it is, a jolly gossiping place, with people
standing around the mantelpiece and discussing their earthly
experiences, I shall thump my fist on the table as my friends turn to me
on entering and exclaim in a loud voice, "WOMAN."

_October_ 11.

Since I grew up I have wept three times. The first time they were tears
of exasperation. Dad and I were sitting down side by side after a wordy
combat in which he had remained adamant and I was forced both by
conscience and argument to give in, to relinquish my dissections, and go
off to some inquest on a drowning fatality. The second time was when
Mother died, and the third was _to-day._ But I am calm now. To-day they
were tears of remorse....

On occasion bald confession in this Journal is sweet for the soul and
strengthens it. It gives me a kind of false backbone to communicate my
secrets: for I am determined that some day some one shall know. If God
really intervenes in our affairs, here is an opportunity. Let Him save
me. I challenge Him to save me from perishing in this ditch.... It is
not often I am cornered into praying but I did this morning, for I feel
defeated this day, and almost inarticulate in my misery.

Nietzsche in a newspaper I read to-day: "For myself I have felt
exceptionally blest having Hell's phantoms inside me to thrust at in the
dark, internal enemies to dominate till I felt myself an ecstatic
victor, wrenching at last good triumphant joys thro' the bars of my own
sickness and weakness--joys with which your notions of happiness, poor
sleek smug creatures, cannot compare! You must carry a chaos inside you
to give birth to a dancing star."

But Nietzsche is no consolation to a man who has once been weak enough
to be brought to his knees. There I am and there I think I have prayed a
little somehow to-day. But it's all in desperation, not in faith.
Internal chaos I have, but no dancing star. Dancing stars are the
consolation of genius.

_October_ 12.

Am better to-day. My better self is convinced that it is silly and
small-minded to think so much about my own puny destiny--especially at
times like these when--God love us all--there is a column of casualties
each day. The great thing to be thankful for is that I am _alive_ and
alive _now_, that I was alive _yesterday_, and even may be to-morrow.
Surely that is thrilling enough. What, then, have I to complain of? I'm
a lucky dog to be alive at all. My plight is bad, but there are others
in a worse one. I'm going to be brave and fight on the side of
Nietzsche. Who knows but that one day the dancing star may yet be born!

_October_ 13.

Spent the evening in my lodgings struggling with my will. Too flabby to
work, disinclined to read, a dreadful vague unrest possessing me. I
couldn't sit still in my chair, so walked around the table continuously
like a squirrel in a cage. I wanted to be going out somewhere, talking
to some one, to be among human beings.

Many an evening during the past few months, I have got up and gone down
the road to look across at the windows of the flat, to see if there were
a red light behind the curtains, and, if so, wonder if she were there,
and how she was. My pride would never allow me to visit there again on
my own initiative. K---- has managed to bring about a rapprochement but
I go very seldom. Pride again.

I wanted to do so to-night. I thought I would just go down the road to
look up at the windows. That seemed to be some comfort. Why do I wish to
do this? I do not know. From a mere inspection one would say that I am
in love. But remember I am also ill. Three times to-night I nearly put
on my boots and went down to have a look up! What ridiculous weakness!
Yet this room can be a frightful prison. Shall I? I cannot decide. I see
her figure constantly before me--gentle, graceful, calm, stretching
forth both hands and to me....

Seized a pack of cards and played Patience and went on playing Patience
because I was afraid to stop. Given a weak constitution, a great
ambition, an amorous nature, and at the same time a very fastidious one,
I might have known I was in for trouble.

_October_ 14.

_Marie Bashkirtseff_

Some time ago I noticed a quotation from one, Marie Bashkirtseff in a
book on Strindberg, and was struck with the likeness to a sentiment of
my own. Who _are_ you? I wondered.

This evening went to the Library and read about her in Mathilde Blind's
introductory essay to her Journal. I am simply astounded. It would be
difficult in all the world's history to discover any two persons with
temperaments so alike. She is the "very spit of me "! I devoured
Mathilde Blind's pages more and more astonished. We are identical! Oh,
Marie Bashkirtseff! how we should have hated one another! She feels as I
feel. We have the same self-absorption, the same vanity and corroding
ambition. She is impressionable, volatile, passionate--ill! So am I. Her
journal is my journal. All mine is stale reading now. She has written
down all my thoughts and forestalled me! Already I have found some
heart-rending parallels. To think I am only a replica: how humiliating
for a human being to find himself merely a duplicate of another. Is
there anything in the transmigration of souls? She died in 1886. I was
born in 1889.

_October_ 15.

A man is always looking at himself in the mirror if for no other reason
than to tie his tie and brush his hair. What does he think of his face?
He must have private opinions. But it is usually considered a little out
of taste to entertain opinions about one's personal appearance.

As for myself, some mirrors do me down pretty well, others depress me!
I am bound to confess I am biassed in favour of the friendly mirror. I
am not handsome, but I look interesting--I hope distinguished. My eyes
are deep-set ... but my worst moments are when the barber combs my hair
right down over my forehead, or when I see a really handsome man in Hyde
Park. Such occasions direct my gaze reflexly, and doubt like a thief in
the night forces the back door!

       *       *       *       *       *

To-day, M---- sent me dancing mad by suggesting that I copied R---- in
my manner of speech and opinions.

Now R---- has a damned pervasive way of conducting himself--for all the
world as if he were a high official of the Foreign Office. I, on the
contrary, am shy, self-conscious, easily overlooked, and this makes me
writhe. As we are inseparable friends--everybody assumes that I am his
tacky-lacky, a kind of appoggiatura to his big note. He, they suppose,
is my guide, philosopher, and Great Maecenas--Oxford befriending the
proletariat. The thought of it makes me sick--that any one should
believe I imbibe his ideas, echo his conceits, and even ape his gestures
and manner of voice.

"Lost yourself?" inquired a despicable creature the other morning as I
came out of R----'s room after finding him out. I could have shot him
dead! ... As for ---- more than one person thinks that he alone is the
brilliant author until at last he himself has got into the way of
thinking it.

"It makes me hate you like mad," I said to him to-day. "How can I
confront these people with the naked truth?" R---- chuckled
complacently.

"If I deny your alleged supremacy, as I did this morning, or if
suddenly, in a fit of spleen, I'm induced to declare that I loathe you
(as I sometimes do)"--(more chuckles) "that your breath stinks, your
eyes bulge, that you have swollen jugulars and a platter face: they will
think I am either jealous or insincere.... To be your Echo tho'!--my
God!" I spat. We then grinned at one another, and I, being bored, went
to the lavatory and read the newspaper secure from interruption.

_Resignation_

In the Tube, a young widow came in and sat in front of me--pale-faced,
grief-stricken, demure--a sort of "Thy Will be Done" look. The
adaptability of human beings has something in it that seems horrible. It
is dreadful to think how we have all accommodated ourselves to this War.
Christian resignation is a feeble thing. Why won't this demure widow
with a loud voice blaspheme against this iniquitous world that permits
this iniquitous war?

_October_ 21.

I myself (licking a stamp): "The taste of gum is really very nice."

R.: "I hate it."

I: "My dear fellow" (surprised and entreating), "envelope gum is simply
delicious."

R.: "I never lick stamps--it's dangerous--microbes."

I: "I always do: I shall buy a bookful and go away to the seaside with
them."

R.: "Yes, you'll need to."

(Laughter.)

Thus gaily and jauntily we went on to discuss wines, whiskies, and
Worthington's, and I rounded it up in a typical cock-eyed manner,--

"Ah! yes, it's only when the day is over that the day really
begins--what?"

_October_ 23.

I expressed to R---- to-day my admiration for the exploit of the brave
and successful Submarine Commander Max Kennedy Horton. (Name for you!)
R---- was rather cold. "His exploits," said this bloody fool, "involve
loss of life and scarcely make me deliriously eulogistic."

I cleared my throat and began,--

"Your precious sociology again--it will be the ruin of your career as an
artist. It is so interwoven into the fibre of your brain that you never
see anything except in relation to its State value. You are afraid to
approve of a lying, thieving rogue, however delightful a rascal he may
be, for fear of what Karl Marx might say.... You'll soon be drawing
landscapes with taxpayers in the foreground, or we shall get a picture
of Ben Nevis with Keir Hardie on the summit." And so on to our own
infinite mutual amusement.

The _English Review_ returns my Essay. I am getting simply furious with
an ambition I am unable to satisfy, among beautiful London women I
cannot get to know, and in ill-health that I cannot cure. Shall I ever
find any one? Shall I ever be really well? My one solace is that I do
not submit, it infuriates me, I resent it; I will never be resigned and
milky. I will keep my claws sharp and fight to the end.

_October_ 24.

Went to Mark Lane by train, then walked over the Tower Bridge, and back
along Lower Thames Street to London Bridge, up to Whitechapel, St.
Paul's, Fleet Street, and Charing Cross, and so home.

Near Reilly's Tavern, I saw a pavement artist who had drawn a loaf with
the inscription in both French and English: "This is easy to draw but
hard to earn." A baby's funeral trotted briskly over the Tower Bridge
among Pink's jam waggons, carts carrying any goods from lead pencils and
matches to bales of cotton and chests of tea.

In the St. Catherine's Way there is one part like a deep railway
cutting, the whole of one side for a long way, consisting of the
brickwall of a very tall warehouse with no windows in it and beautifully
curved and producing a wonderful effect. Walked past great blocks of
warehouses and business establishments--a wonderful sight; and
everywhere bacon factors, coffee roasters, merchants. On London Bridge,
paused to feed the sea-gulls and looked down at the stevedores. Outside
Billingsgate Market was a blackboard on an easel--for market prices--but
instead some one had drawn an enormously enlarged chalk picture of a
cat's rear and tail with anatomical details.

In Aldgate, stopped to inspect a street stall containing popular
literature--one brochure entitled _Suspended for Life_ to indicate the
terrible punishment meted out to ----, a League footballer. The
frontispiece enough to make a lump come in the juveniles' throats!
Another stall held domestic utensils with an intimation, "Anything on
this stall _lent_ for 1d." A newsvendor I heard exclaim to a
fellow-tradesman in the same line of business,--

"They come and look at your bloody plakaard and then passe on."

Loitered at a dirty little Fleet Street bookshop where Paul de Koch's
_The Lady with the Three Pairs of Stays_ was displayed prominently
beside a picture of Oscar Wilde.

In Fleet Street, you exchange the Whitechapel sausage restaurants for
Taverns with "snacks at the bar," and the chestnut roasters, with their
buckets of red-hot coals, for Grub Street camp followers, selling
_L'Indépendance Belge_ or pamphlets entitled, _Why We Went to War_.

In the Strand you may buy war maps, buttonhole flags, etc., etc. I
bought a penny stud. One shop was turned into a shooting gallery at
three shots a penny where the Inner Temple Barristers in between the
case for the defence and the case for the prosecution could come and
keep their eye in against the time the Germans come.

Outside Charing Cross Station I saw a good-looking, well-dressed woman
in mourning clothes, grinding a barrel organ....

Returned to the Library and read the _Dublin Review_ (article on Samuel
Butler), _North American Review_ (one on Henry James) and dined at seven.
After dinner, read: _Evening Standard, Saturday Westminster_, and the
_New Statesman_. Smoked six cigarettes and went to bed. To-morrow Fifth
Symphony of Beethoven.

_October_ 25.

_Too Late_

Yesterday's ramble has left me very sore in spirit. London was spread
out before me, a vast campagne. But I felt too physically tired to
explore. I could just amble along--a spectator merely--and automatically
register impressions. Think of the misery of that! I want to see the
Docks and Dockland, to enter East End public-houses and opium-dens, to
speak to Chinamen and Lascars: I want a first-rate, first-hand knowledge
of London, of London men, London women. I was tingling with anticipation
yesterday and then I grew tired and fretful and morose, crawled back
like a weevil into my nut. By 6.30 I was in a Library reading the
_Dublin Review_!

What a young fool I was to neglect those priceless opportunities of
studying and tasting life and character in North ----, at Borough
Council meetings, Boards of Guardians, and electioneering campaigns--not
to mention inquests, police courts, and country fairs. Instead of
appraising all these precious and genuine pieces of experience at their
true value, my diary and my mind were occupied only with--Zoology, if
you please. I ignored my exquisite chances, I ramped around, fuming and
fretting, full of contempt for my circumscribed existence, and impatient
as only a youth can be. What I shall never forgive myself is my present
inability to recall that life, so that instead of being able now to push
my chair back and entertain myself and others with descriptions of some
of those antique and incredible happenings, my memory is rigid and
formal: I remember only a few names and one or two isolated events. All
that time is just as if it had never been. My recollections form only an
indefinite smudge--odd Town Clerks, Town Criers (at least five of them
in wonderful garb), policemen (I poached with one), ploughing match
dinners (platters of roast beef and boiled potatoes and I, bespectacled
student of Zoology, sitting uncomfortably among valiant trenchermen
after their day's ploughing), election meetings in remote Exmoor
villages (and those wonderful Inns where I had to spend the night!)--all
are gone--too remote to bear recital--yet just sufficiently clear to
harass the mind in my constant endeavours to raise them all again from
the dead in my consciousness. I hate to think it is lost; that my youth
is buried--a cemetery without even headstones. To an inquest on a
drowned sailor--disclosing some thrilling story of the wild seas off the
coast--with a pitiful myopia--I preferred Wiedersheim's _Comparative
Anatomy of Vertebrates_. I used to carry Dr. Smith Woodward's
_Paleontology_ with me to a Board of Guardians meeting, mingling
_Pariasaurus_ and Holoptychians with tenders for repairs and reports
from the Master. Now I take Keats or Tschekov to the Museum!

London certainly lies before me. Certainly I am alive at last. Yet now
my energy is gone. It is too late. I am ill and tired. It costs me
infinite discomfort to write this entry, all the skin of my right hand
is permanently "pins and needles" and in the finger tips I have lost all
sense of touch. The sight of my right eye is also very bad and sometimes
I can scarcely read print with it, etc., etc. But why should I go on?

A trance-like condition supervenes in a semi-invalid forced to live in
almost complete social isolation in a great whirling city like London.
Days of routine follow each other as swiftly as the weaver's shuttle and
numb the spirit and turn palpitating life into a silent picture show.
Everywhere always in the street people--millions of them --whom I do not
know, moving swiftly along. I look and look and yawn and then one day as
to-day I wake up and race about beside myself--a swollen bag ready to
burst with hope, love, misery, joy, desperation.

_Apologia pro vita mea_

How may I excuse myself for continuing to talk about my affairs and for
continuing to write zoological memoirs during the greatest War of all
time?

Well, here are some precedents:--

Goethe sat down to study the geography of China, while his fatherland
agonised at Leipsig.

Hegel wrote the last lines of the _Phenomenology of Spirit_ within sound
of the guns of Jena.

While England was being rent in twain by civil war, Sir Thomas Browne,
ensconced in old Norwich, reflected on Cambyses and Pharaoh and on the
song the Sirens sang.

Lacépède composed his _Histoire des Poissons_ during the French
Revolution.

Then there were Diogenes and Archimedes.

This defence of course implicates me in an unbounded opinion of the
importance of my own work. "He is quite the little poet," some one said
of Keats. "It is just as if a man remarked of Buonaparte," said Keats,
in a pet, "that he's quite the little general."

_A Woman and a Child_

On the way to the Albert Hall came upon the most beautiful picture of
young maternity that ever I saw in my life. She was a delightfully
girlish young creature--a perfect phœnix of health and beauty. As she
stood with her little son at the kerb waiting for a 'bus, smiling and
chatting to him, a luminous radiance of happy, satisfied maternal love,
maternal pride, womanliness streamed from her and enveloped me.

We got on the same 'bus. The little boy, with his long hair and dressed
in velvet like little Lord Fauntleroy, said something to her--she smiled
delightedly, caught him up on her knees and kissed him. Two such pretty
people never touched lips before--I'm certain of it. It was impossible
to believe that this virginal creature was a mother--childbirth left no
trace. She must have just budded off the baby boy like a plant. Once, in
her glance, she took me in her purview, and I knew she knew I was
watching her. In travelling backwards from Kensington Gardens to the boy
again, her gaze rested on me a moment and I, of course, rendered the
homage that was due. As a matter of fact there was no direct evidence
that she was the mother at all.

_The Albert Hall Hag_

While waiting outside the Albert Hall, an extraordinarily weird contrast
thrust itself before me--she was the most pathetic piece of human jetsam
that ever I saw drifting about in this sea of London faces. Tall, gaunt,
cadaverous, the skin of her face drawn tightly over her cheekbones and
over a thin, pointed, hook-shaped nose, on her feet brown sandshoes,
dressed in a long draggle-tailed skirt, a broken-brimmed straw hat,
beneath which some scanty hair was scraped back and tied behind in a
knot--this wretched soul of some thirty summers (and what summers!)
stood in the road beside the waiting queue and weakly passed the bow
across her violin which emitted a slight scraping sound. She could not
play a tune and the fingers of her left hand never touched the
strings--they merely held the handle.

A policeman passed and, with an eye on the queue, muttered audibly, "Not
'arf," but no one laughed. Then she began to rummage in her skirt,
holding the violin by the neck in her right hand just as she must hold
her brat by the arm when at home. Simultaneously sounds issued from her
mouth in a high falsetto key; they were unearthly sounds, the tiny voice
of an articulating corpse underneath the coffin lid. For a moment no one
realised that she was reciting. For she continued to rummage in her
skirt as she squeaked, "Break, break, break, on thy cold gray stones, O
sea," etc. The words were scarcely audible tho' she stood but two yards
off. But she repeated the verse and I then made out what it was. She
seemed ashamed of herself and of her plight, almost without the courage
to foist this mockery of violin-playing on us--one would say she was
frightened by her own ugliness and her own pathos.

After conscientiously carrying out her programme but with the
distracted, uncomfortable air of some one scurrying over a painful
task--like a tired child gabbling its prayers before getting into
bed--she at length produced from her skirt pocket a small canvas money
bag which she started to hand around. This was the climax to this
harrowing incident--for each time she held out the bag, she smiled,
which stretched the skin still more tightly down over her malar
prominence and said something--an inarticulate noise in a very high
pitch. "A woman," I whispered to R----, "She claims to be a woman." If
any one hesitated a moment or struggled with a purse she would wait
patiently with bag outstretched and head turned away, the smile
vanishing at once as if the pinched face were but too glad of the
opportunity of a rest from smiling. She stood there, gazing
absently--two lifeless eyes at the bottom of deep socket holes in a head
which was almost a bare skull. She was perfunctorily carrying out an
objectionable task because she could not kill the will to live.

As she looked away and waited for you to produce the copper, she
thought, "Why trouble? Why should I wait for this man's aid?" The clink
of the penny recalled her to herself, and she passed on, renewing her
terrible grimacing smile.

Why didn't I do something? Why? Because I was bent on hearing
Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, if you please.... And she may have been a
well-to-do vagrant--well got up for the occasion--a clever
simulator?...

_October_ 28.

_Rigor Bordis_

Rigor bordis!--I write like this as if it were a light matter. But
to-night I was _in extremis_.... First I read the paper; then I finished
the book I was reading--"_Thus Spake Zarathustra_." Not knowing quite
what next to do, I took my boots off and poured out another cup of
coffee. But these manœuvres were only the feeble attempts of a
cowardly wretch to evade the main issue which was:--

How to occupy myself and keep myself sane during the hour and a half
before bedtime.

Before now I have tried going off to bed. But that does not work--I
don't sleep. Moreover, I have been in the grip of a horrible mental
unrest. To sit still in my chair, much less to lie in bed doing nothing
seemed ghastly. I experienced all the cravings of a dissolute neurotic
for a stimulus, but what stimulus I wanted I did not know. Had I known I
should have gone and got it. The dipsomaniac was a man to be envied.

Some mechanical means were necessary for sustaining life till bedtime. I
sat down and played a game of Patience--no one knows how I loathe
playing Patience and how much I despise the people who play it. Tiring
of that, sat back in my chair, yawned, and thought of a word I wanted to
look up in the Dictionary. This quest, forgotten until then, came like a
beam of bright light into a dark room. So looked the word up leisurely,
took out my watch, noted the time, and then stood up with elbows on the
mantelpiece and stared at myself in the glass.... I was at bay at last.
There was simply nothing I could do. I would have given worlds to have
some one to talk to. Pride kept me from ringing for the landlady. I must
stand motionless, back to the wall, and wait for the hour of my release.
I had but one idea, viz., that I was surely beaten in this game of life.
I was very miserable indeed. But being so miserable that I couldn't feel
more so, I began to recover after a while. I began to visualise my
lamentable situation, and rose above it as I did so. I staged it before
my mind's eye and observed myself as hero of the plot. I saw myself
sitting in a dirty armchair in a dirty house in a dirty London street,
with the landlady's dirty daughter below-stairs singing, "Little Grey
Home in the West," my head obscured in a cloud of depression, and in my
mind the thought that if life be a test of endurance I must hang on
grimly to the arms of the chair and sit tight till bedtime.

This attitude proved a useful means of self-defence. When I had
dramatised my misery, I enjoyed it, and acute mental pain turned into
merely aesthetic malaise.

_November_ 4.

A lurid day. Suffering from the most horrible physical languor. Wrote
the Doctor saying I was rapidly sliding down a steep place into the sea
(like the swine I am). Could I see him?

       *       *       *       *       *

Endured an hour's torture of indecision to-night asking myself whether I
should go over to ask her to be my wife or should I go to the Fabian
Society and hear Bernard Shaw. Kept putting off the decision even till
after dinner. If I went to the flat, I must shave; to shave required hot
water--the landlady had already cleared the table and was rapidly
retreating. Something must be done and at once. I called the old thing
back impulsively and ordered shaving water, consoling myself with the
reflection that it was still unnecessary to decide; the hot water could
be at hand in case the worst happened. If I decided on matrimony I could
shave forthwith. Should I? (After dark I always shave in the
sitting-room because of the better gaslight.)

Drank some coffee and next found myself slowly, mournfully putting on
hat and coat. You can't shave in hat and coat so I concluded I had
decided on Shaw. Slowly undid the front door latch and went off.

Shaw bored me. He is mid-Victorian. Sat beside a bulgy-eyed youth
reading the _Freethinker_.

_November_ 9.

In the evening asked her to be my wife. She refused. Once perhaps ...
but now....

I don't think I have any moral right to propose to any woman seeing the
state of my health and I did not actually intend or wish to.... It was
just to get it off my mind--a plain statement.... If I don't really and
truly love her it was a perfectly heartless comedy. But I have good
reason to believe I do. With me, moments of headstrong passion alternate
with moods of perfectly immobile self-introspection. It is a relief to
have spoken.

_November_ 10.

Very miserable. Asked R---- three times to come and have dinner with me.
Each time he refused. My nerves are completely jangled. _Tu l'as voulu,
George Dandin_--that's the rub.

_November_ 11.

She observed me carefully--I'm looking a perfect wreck _--tu l'as voulu,
George Dandin_--but it's mainly ill-health and not on her account.

I said,--

"Some things are too funny to laugh at."

"Is that why you are so solemn?"

"No," I answered, "I'm not solemn, I am laughing--some things are too
solemn to be serious about."

She saw me off at the door and smiled quietly--an amused faraway smile
of feline satisfaction....

_November_ 12.

Horrible nervous depression. Thinking of suicide with a pistol--a
Browning. Or of 10 days' mysterious disappearance, when I will go and
live in a good Hotel, spend all my money, and live among human beings
with eyes and noses and legs. This isolation. Am I going mad? If I
disappeared, it would be interesting to see if any one missed me.

_November_ 13.

Still thinking of suicide. It seems the only way out. This morning my
Essay was returned by the Editor of ----. One by one I have been
divested of all my most cherished illusions. Once my ambitions gave me
the fuel with which to keep myself alive. One after another they have
been foiled, and now I've nothing to burn. I am daily facing the fact
that my ambitions have overtaxed my abilities and health. For years, my
whole existence has rested on a false estimate of my own value, and my
life been revolving around a foolish self-deception. But I know myself
as I am at last--and am not at all enamoured. The future has nothing for
me. I am wearied of my life already. What is there for any of us to do
but die?

_November_ 14.

Before going over to-night bought _London Opinion_ deliberately in order
to find a joke or better still some cynicism about women to fire off at
her. Rehearsed one joke, one witticism from Oscar Wilde, and one
personal anecdote (the latter for the most part false), none of which
came off, tho' I succeeded in carrying off a nonchalant or even jaunty
bearing.

"Don't you ever swear?" I asked. "It's a good thing you know, swearing
is like pimples, better to come out, cleanses the moral system. The
person who controls himself must have lots of terrible oaths circulating
in his blood."

"Swearing is not the only remedy."

"I suppose you prefer the gilded pill of a curate's sermon: I prefer
pimples to pills."

Is it a wonder she does not love me?

       *       *       *       *       *

I wonder why I paint myself in such horrid colours--why have I this
morbid pleasure in pretending to those I love that I am a beast and a
cynic? I suffer, I suppose, from a lacerated self-esteem, from a painful
loneliness, from the consciousness of how ridiculous I have made myself,
and that most people if they knew would regard me with loathing and
disgust.

I am very unhappy. I am unhappy because she does not care for me, and I
am chiefly unhappy because I do not care for her. Instead of a passion,
only a dragging heavy chain of attraction ... some inflexible law makes
me gravitate to her, seizes me by the neck and suspends me over her, I
cannot look away....

In the early days when I did my best to strangle my love--as one would a
bastard child--I took courage in the fact that for a man like me the
murder was necessary. There were books to write and to read, and name
and fame perhaps. To these everything must be sacrificed. ... That is
all gone now. No man could have withstood for ever that concentrated
essence of womanhood that flowed from her....

Still the declaration has made amends. She is pleased about it--it is a
scalp.

Yet how can I forgive her for saying she supposed it was a natural
instinct for a girl not to feel drawn to an invalid like me. That was
cruel tho' true.

_November_ 19.

I might be Captain Scott writing his last words amid Antarctic cold and
desolation. It is very cold. I am sitting hunched up by the fire in my
lodgings after a meal of tough meat and cold apple-tart. I am full of
self-commiseration--my only pleasure now. It is very cold and I cannot
get warm--try as I will.

My various nervous derangements take different forms. This time my
peripheral circulation is affected, and the hand, arm, and shoulder are
permanently cold. My right hand is blue--tho' I've shut up the window
and piled up a roaring fire. It's Antarctic cold and desolation. London
in November from the inside of a dingy lodging-house can be very
terrible indeed. This celestial isolation will send me out of my mind. I
marvel how God can stick it--lonely, damp, and cold in the clouds. That
is how I live too--but then I am not God.

I fall back on this Journal just as some other poor devil takes to
drink. I, too, have toyed with the idea of drinking hard. I have
frequented bars and billiards saloons and in fits of depression done my
best to forget myself. But I am not sufficiently fond of alcohol (and it
would take a lot to make _me_ forget myself). So I plunge into these
literary excesses and drown my sorrows in Stephens' Blue-black Ink. It
gives me a sulky pleasure to think that some day somebody will know....

It is humiliating to feel ill as I do. If I had consumption, the disease
would act as a stimulus--I could strike an attitude feverishly and be
histrionic. But to be merely "below par"--to feel like a Bunny rabbit
perennially "poorly," saps my character and mental vigour. I want to
crawl away and die like a rat in a hole. A bronzed healthy man makes me
wince. Healthy people regard a chronic sickly man as a leper. They
suspect him, something fishy.

_November_ 20.

Still at home ill.

If anything, R---- is more of a précieux than I am myself. At the
present moment he is tickling himself with the idea that he's in love
with a certain golden-haired damsel from the States. He reports to me
fragments of his conversations with her, how he snatches a fearful joy
by skirting dangerous conversational territory, or he takes a pencil and
deftly outlines her profile or the rondeur of her bosom. Or he
discourses at length on her nose or eye. I can well imagine him driving
a woman crazy and then collecting her tears in a bottle as mementoes.
Then whenever he requires a little heart stimulus he could take the
phial from his waistcoat pocket and watch the tears condensing.

"Why don't you marry her out of hand and be done with all this
dalliance? I can tell you what's the matter with you," I growled,
"you're a landscape artist.... You'll grow to resemble, that mean, Jewy,
secretive, petty creature, J.W.M. Turner, and allow no human being to
interfere with your art. A fine artist perhaps--but what a man! You'll
finish up with a Mrs. Danby."

"Yes," he answered, quoting Tennyson with great aptness, "and 'lose my
salvation for a sketch,' like Romney deserting his wife. If I were not
married I should have no wife to desert."

It is useless to argue with him. His cosmogony is wrongly centred in Art
not life. Life interests him--he can't altogether resign himself to the
cowl and the tonsured head, but he will not plunge. He insists on being
a spectator, watching the maelstrom from the bank and remarking
exquisitely, "Ah! there is a very fine sorrow," or, "What an exquisite
sensation." The other day after one of our furious conversational bouts
around this subject, I drew an insect, cut it out, and pinned the slip
in a collecting box. Then suddenly producing the box, and opening it
with a facetious grin, I said,--

"Here is a jolly little sorrow I caught this morning." The joke pleased
him and we roared, bellowed.

"That terrible forefinger of yours," he smiled.

"Like Cardinal Richelieu's eyes--piercing?" I suggested with
appreciation. (It is because I tap him on his shirt front in the space
between waistcoat and tie aggressively for emphasis in conversation.)

"You must regard my passion for painting," he began once more, "as a
sort of dipsomania--I really can't help myself."

I jumped on him vehemently,--

"Exactly, my pernickety friend; it's something abnormal and unnatural.
When, for purposes of self-culture, I see a man deliberately lop off
great branches of himself so as to divert his strength into one limb, I
know that if he is successful he'll be something as vulgar as a fat
woman at a country fair; and if he is unsuccessful he'll be just a
pathetic mutilation.... You are trying to pervert a natural instinct.
You want to paint, I believe. Quite so. But when a boy reaches the age
of puberty he does not grow a palette on his chin but hair.... Still,
now you recognise it as a bad habit, why need I say more?" ("Why
indeed?") "It's a vice, and I'm very sorry for you, old boy. I'll do all
I can--come and have some dinner with me to-night."

"Oh! thank you very much," says my gentleman, "but I'm not at all sorry
for myself."

"I thought as much. So that we are not so very much agreed after all.
We're not shaking hands after the boxing contest, but scowling at each
other from the ropes and shaping for another round."

"Your pulpit orations, my dear Barbellion, in full canonicals," he
reflected, "are worthy of a larger audience.... To find _you_ of all
people preaching. I thought you were philosopher enough to see the angle
of every one's vision and broadminded so as to see every point of view.
Besides, you are as afraid of marriage as I am, and for the same
reasons."

"I confess, when in the philosophic citadel of my own armchair," I
began, "I _do_ see every one's point of view. You sit on the other side
of the rug and put out the suggestion tentatively that murder may be a
moral act. I examine your argument and am disposed to accept it. But
when you slit up my brother's abdomen before my eyes, I am sufficiently
weak and human to punch you on the nose.... You are too cold and
Olympian, up above the snowline with a box of paints."

"It is very beautiful among the snows."

"I suppose so."

(Exit.)

_November_ 23.

Great physical languor, especially in the morning. It is Calvary to get
out of bed and shoulder the day's burden.

"What's been the matter?" they ask.

"Oh! senile decay--general histolysis of the tissues," I say, fencing.

To-night, I looked at myself accidentally in the glass and noticed at
once the alarming extent of my dejection. Quite unconsciously I turned
my head away and shook it, making the noise with my teeth and tongue
which means, "Dear, dear." M---- tells me these waves of ill-health are
quite unaccountable unless I were "leading a dissolute life, which you
do not appear to be doing." Damn his eyes.

_Reading Nietzsche_

Reading Nietzsche. What splendid physic he is to Pomeranian puppies like
myself! I am a hopeless coward. Thunderstorms always frighten me. The
smallest cut alarms for fear of blood poisoning, and I always dab on
antiseptics at once. But Nietzsche makes me feel a perfect mastiff.

_The Test for True Love_

The test for true love is whether you can endure the thought of cutting
your sweetheart's toe-nails--the onychiotomic test. Or whether you find
your Julia's sweat as sweet as otto of roses. I told her this to-night.
Probably she thinks I only "saw it in a book."

_Chopin_

On Sunday, went to the Albert Hall, and warmed myself at the Orchestra.
It is a wonderful sight to watch an orchestra playing from the gallery.
It spurts and flickers like a flame. Its incessant activity arrests the
attention and holds it just as a fire does--even a deaf man would be
fascinated. Heard Chopin's Funeral March and other things. It would be a
rich experience to be able to be in your coffin at rest and listen to
Chopin's Funeral March being played above you by a string orchestra with
Sir Henry Wood conducting.

Sir Henry like a melanic Messiah was crucified as usual, the Hungarian
Rhapsody No. 2 causing him the most awful agony....

_November_ 28.

_Rodin_

More than once lately have been to see and admire Rodin's recent gifts
to the nation exhibited at the Victoria and Albert Museum. The "Prodigal
Son" is Beethoven's Fifth Symphony done in stone. It was only on my
second visit that I noticed the small pebble in each hand--a superb
touch!--what a frenzy of remorse!

The "Fallen Angel" I loved most. The legs of the woman droop lifelessly
backwards in an intoxicating curve. The eye caresses it--down the thighs
and over the calves to the tips of the toes--like the hind limbs of some
beautiful dead gazelle. He has brought off exactly the same effect in
the woman in the group called "Eternal Spring," which I have only seen
in a photograph.

This morning at 9 a.m. lay in bed on my back, warm and comfortable, and,
for the first time for many weeks, with no pain or discomfort of any
kind. The mattress curved up around my body and legs and held me in a
soft warm embrace.... I shut my eyes and whistled the saccharine melody
for solo violin in Chopin's Funeral March. I wanted the moment prolonged
for hours. Ill-health chases the soul out of a man. He becomes a body,
purely physical.

_November_ 29.

This evening she promised to be my wife after a long silent ramble
together thro' dark London squares and streets! I am beside myself!

       *       *       *       *       *

_December_ 6.

I know now--I love her with passion. Health and ambition and sanity are
returning. Projects in view:--

(1) To make her happy and myself worthy.

(2) To get married.

(3) To prepare and publish a volume of this Journal.

(4) To write two essays for _Cornhill_ which shall surely induce the
Editor to publish and not write me merely long complimentary and
encouraging letters as heretofore.

Wired to A----, "The brave little pennon has been hauled down."

_December_ 7.

Have so many projects in view and so little time in which to get them
done! Moreover I am always haunted by the fear that I may never finish
them thro' physical or temperamental disabilities--a breakdown in health
or in purpose. I am one of those who are apt to die unexpectedly and no
one would be surprised. An inquest would probably be unnecessary. I
badly want to live say another twelve months. Hey! nonny-no! a man's a
fool that wants to die.

_December_ 9.

... I shook her angrily by the shoulders to-night and said, "Why do I
love you?--Tell me," but she only smiled gently and said, "I cannot
tell...." I ought not to love her, I know--every omen is against it....
Then I am full of self-love: an intellectual Malvolio proud of his
brains and air of distinction....

Then I am fickle, passionate, polygamous ... I am haunted by the memory
of how I have sloughed off one enthusiasm after another. I used to
dissect snails in a pie-dish in the kitchen while Mother baked the
cakes--the unravelling of the internal economy of a _Helix_ caused as
great an emotional storm as to-day the Unfinished Symphony does! I look
for the first parasol in Kensington Gardens with the same interest as
once I sought out the first snowdrop or listened for the first Cuckoo. I
am as anxious to identify an instrument in Sir Henry's Orchestra as once
to identify the song of a new bird in the woods. Nothing is further from
my intention or desire to continue my old habit of nature study. I never
read nature books--my old favourites--Waterton's _Wanderings_, Gilbert
White, _The Zoologist_, etc.--have no interest for me--in fact they give
me slight mental nausea even to glance at. Wiedersheim (good old
Wiedersheim) is now deposed by a text book on Harmony. My main desire
just now is to hear the best music. In the country I wore blinkers and
saw only zoology. Now in London, I've taken the bit in my mouth--and
it's a mouth of iron--wanting a run for all my troubles before Death
strikes me down.

All this evidence of my temperamental instability alarms and distresses
me on reflection and makes the soul weary. I wish I loved more steadily.
I am always sidetracking myself. The title of "husband" scares me.

_December_ 12.

_Sir Henry Wood conducting_

Went to the Queen's Hall, sat in the Orchestra and watched Sir Henry's
statuesque figure conducting thro' a forest of bows, "which pleased me
mightily." He would be worth watching if you were stone deaf. If you
could not hear a sound, the animation and excitement of an orchestra in
full swing, with the conductor cutting and slashing at invisible foes,
make a magnificent spectacle.

The face of Sir Henry Wood strikes me as very much like the traditional
pictures of Jesus Christ, tho' Sir Henry is dark--the melanic Messiah I
call him (very much to my own delight). Rodin ought to do him in
stone--Chesterfield's ideal of a man--a Corinthian edifice on Tuscan
foundations. In Sir Henry's case there can be no disputing the Tuscan
foundations. However swift and elegant the movements of his arms, his
splendid lower extremities remain as firm as stone columns. While the
music is calm and serene his right hand and baton execute in concert
with the left, perfect geometric curves around his head. Then as it
gathers in force and volume, when the bows begin to dart swiftly across
the fiddles and the trumpets and trombones blaze away in a
conflagration, we are all expectant--and even a little fearful, to
observe his sabre-like cuts. The tension grows ... I hold my breath....
Sir Henry snatches a second to throw back a lock of his hair that has
fallen limply across his forehead, then goes on in unrelenting pursuit,
cutting and slashing at hordes of invisible fiends that leap howling out
towards him. There is a great turmoil of combat, but the Conductor
struggles on till the great explosion happens. But in spite of that, you
see him still standing thro' a cloud of great chords, quite undaunted.
His sword zigzags up and down the scale--suddenly the closed fist of his
left hand shoots up straight and points to the zenith--like the arm of a
heathen priest appealing to Baal to bring down fire from Heaven.... But
the appeal avails nought and it looks as tho' it were all up for poor
Sir Henry. The music is just as infuriated--his body writhes with
it--the melanic Messiah crucified by the inappeasable desire to express
by visible gestures all that he feels in his heart. He surrenders --so
you think--he opens out both arms wide and baring his breast, dares them
all to do their worst--like the picture of Moffat the missionary among
the savages of the Dark Continent!

And yet he wins after all. At the very last moment he seems to summon
all his remaining strength and in one final and devastating sweep mows
down the orchestra rank by rank.... You awake from the nightmare to
discover the victor acknowledging the applause in a series of his
inimitable bows.

One ought to pack one's ears up with cotton wool at a concert where Sir
Henry conducts. Otherwise, the music is apt to distract one's attention.
R.L.S. wanted to be at the head of a cavalry charge--sword over
head--but I'd rather fight an orchestra with a baton.

_Beethoven's Fifth Symphony_

This symphony always works me up into an ecstasy; in ecstatic sympathy
with its dreadfulness I could stand up in the balcony and fling myself
down passionately into the arena below. Yet there were women sitting
alongside me to-day--knitting! It so annoyed and irritated me that at
the end of the first movement I got up and sat elsewhere. They would
have sat knitting at the foot of the Cross, I suppose.

At the end of the second movement, two or three other women got up and
went home to tea! It would have surprised me no more to have seen a cork
extract itself from its bottle and promenade.

_Tschaikovsky_

Just lately I've heard a lot of music including Tschaikovsky's
Pathétique and Fifth Symphonies, some Debussy, and odd pieces by Dukas,
Glinka, Smetana, Mozart. I am chock-full of impressions of all this
precious stuff and scarcely know what to write. As usual, the third
movement of the Pathétique produced a frenzy of exhilaration; I seemed
to put on several inches around my chest and wished to shout in a voice
of thunder. The conventions of a public concert hall are dreadfully
oppressive at such times. I could have eaten "all the elephants of
Hindustan and picked my teeth with the spire of Strassburg Cathedral."

In the last movement of the Fifth Symphony of that splendid fellow
Tschaikovsky, the orchestra seemed to gallop away leaving poor Landon
Ronald to wave his whip in a ridiculously ineffective way. They went on
crashing down chords, and just before the end I had the awful
presentiment that the orchestra simply could not stop. I sat still
straining every nerve in the expectancy that this chord or the next or
the next was the end. But it went on pounding down--each one seemed the
last but every time another followed as passionate and emphatic as the
one before, until finally, whatever this inhuman orchestra was
attempting to crush and destroy must have been reduced to shapeless
pulp. I wanted to board the platform and plead with them, elderly
gentlemen turned their heads nervously, everyone was breathless, we all
wanted to call "For God's sake, stop"--to do anything to still this
awful lust for annihilation.... The end came quickly in four drum beats
in quick succession. I have never seen such hate, such passionate
intensity of the will to destroy.... And Tschaikovsky was a Russian!

Debussy was a welcome change. "L'Après-midi d'un Faun" is a musical
setting to an oscitatory exercise. It is an orchestral yawn. Oh! so
tired!

Came away thoroughly delighted. Wanted to say to every one "Bally good,
ain't it?" and then we would all shake hands and go home whistling.

_December_ 14.

My rooms are littered with old concert programmes and the Doctor's
prescriptions (in the yellow envelopes of the dispenser) for my various
ailments and diseases, and books, books, books.

Among the latter those lying on my table at this moment are--

Plays of M. Brieux.

_Joseph Vance._

The Sequel to _Pragmatism: The Meaning of Truth_, by Wiliam James.

_Beyond Good and Evil._

Dostoievsky's _The Possessed._

Marie Bashkirtseff's _Journal._

I have found time to read only the first chapter of this last and am
almost afraid to go on. It would be so humiliating to find I was only
her duplicate.

On my mantelpiece stands a photograph of Huxley--the hero of my
youth--which old B---- has always taken to be that of my grandpapa! A
plaster-cast mask of Voltaire when first hung up made him chuckle with
indecent laughter. "A regular all-nighter. Who is it?" he said.

_December_ 15.

_Petticoat Lane_

This morning, being Sunday, went to Petticoat Lane and enjoyed myself.

On turning the corner to go into Middlesex Street, as it it now called,
the first thing I saw was a little girl--a Jewess--being tackled for
selling Belgian button-hole flags by two policemen who ultimately
marched her off to the police station.

In the Lane, first of all, was a "Royal Ascot Jockey Scales" made of
brass and upholstered in gaudy red velvet--a penny a time. A very fat
man was being weighed and looked a little distressed on being given his
ticket.

"Another stone," he told the crowd mournfully.

"You'll have to eat less pork," some one volunteered and we all laughed.

Next door to the Scales was a man selling gyroscopes. "Something
scientific, amusing as well as instructive, illustrating the principles
of gravity and stability. What I show you is what I sell--price one
shilling. Who?"

I stopped next at a stall containing nothing but caps,--"any size, any
colour, any pattern, a shilling apiece--now then!" This show was being
run by two men--a Jew in a fur cap on one side of the stall and a very
powerful-looking sort of Captain Cuttle on the other--a seafaring man,
almost as broad as he was long, with a game leg and the voice of a
skipper in a hurricane. Both these men were selling caps at a prodigious
pace, and with the insouciance of tradesmen sure of their custom. The
skipper would seize a cap, chuck it across to a timid prospective
purchaser, and, if he dropped it, chuck him over another, crying, with a
"yo-heave-ho" boisterousness, "Oh! what a game, what a bees' nest."

Upon the small head of another customer, he would squash down his
largest sized cap saying at once,--

"There, you look the finest gentleman--oh! ah! a little too large."

At which we all laughed, the customer looked silly, but took no offence.

"Try this," yells the skipper above the storm, and takes off his own
cap. "Oh! ye needn't be afraid--I washed my hair last--year."
(Laughter.)

Then to his partner, the Jew on the other side of the stall, "Oh! what a
face you've got. Here! 6d. for any one who can tell me what it is. Why
not take it to the trenches and get it smashed in?"

The Jew wore spectacles and had a soft ingratiating voice and brown
doe-like eyes--a Jew in every respect. "Oh!" says he, in the oleaginous
Semitic way, and accurately taking up his cue (for all this was
rehearsed patter), "my wife says 'my face is my fortune.'"

"No wonder you're so hard up and 'ave got to take in lodgers. What's yer
name?"

"John Jones," in a demure wheedling voice.

"Hoo--that's not your name in your own bloody country--I expect it's
Hullabullinsky."

"Do you know what my name really is?"

"No."

"It's Assenheimopoplocatdwizlinsky Kovorod." (Loud laughter.)

"I shall call you 'ass' for short."

I was laughing loudly at these two clowns and the skipper observing as
much, shouted out to me,--

"Parlez-vous Francois, M'sieur?"

"Oui, oui," said I.

"Ah! lah, you're one of us--oh! what a game! what a bees' nest," and all
the time he went on selling caps and chucking them at the purchasers.

Perhaps one of the most extraordinary things I saw was a stream of young
men who, one after another, came up to a stall, paid a penny and
swallowed a glass of "nerve tonic"--a green liquid syphoned out of a
large jar--warranted a safe cure for

"Inward weakness, slightest flurry or body oppressed."

Another man was pulling teeth and selling tooth powder. Some of the
little urchins' teeth, after he had cleaned them as a demonstration,
were much whiter than their faces or his. This was "the original Chas.
Assenheim."

Mrs. Meyers, "not connected with any one else of the same name in the
Lane" was selling eels at 2d., 3d. and 6d. and doing a brisk trade too.

But I should go on for hours if I were to tell everything seen in this
remarkable lane during an hour and a half on a Sunday morning. Each
stall-holder sells only one kind of article--caps or clocks or songs,
braces, shawls, indecent literature, concertinas, gramophones, coats,
pants, reach-me-downs, epergnes. The thoroughfare was crowded with
people (I saw two Lascars in red fez caps) inspecting the goods
displayed and attentively observed by numerous policemen. The alarm
clocks were all going off, each gramophone was working a record (a
different one!) and every tradesman shouting his wares--a perfect
pandemonium.

_December_ 31.

_A Conversation_

"There is that easily calculable element in your nature, dear boy," I
said, "by which you forego the dignity of a free-willed human being and
come under an inflexible natural law. I can anticipate your movements,
intentions, and opinions long beforehand. For example, I know quite well
that every Saturday morning will see you with _The New Statesman_ under
your arm; I know that the words 'Wagner' or 'Shaw' uttered slowly and
deliberately in your ear will produce a perfectly definite reaction."

"I bet you can't predict what I am going to buy now,"

R---- replied gaily, advancing to the newspaper stall.

He bought the _Pink 'Un_ and I laughed....

"And so you read _Pragmatism_," he mused, "while the fate of the Empire
stands in the balance."

"Yes," said I, "and the Paris Academy of Sciences were discussing the
functions of _θ_ and the Polymorphism of Antarctic diatoms last
September when the Germans stood almost at the gates of Paris."

This was a lucky stroke for me, for he knew he was rubbing me on the
raw. We are, of course, great friends, but sometimes we get on one
another's nerves.

"I am polychromatic," I declaimed, "rhetorical, bass. You--besides being
a bally fool--are of a pretty gray colour, a baritone and you paint in
water-colours."

"Whereas you, of course, would paint in blood?" he answered facetiously.

His Oxford education has a firm hold on him. He says for example, "e
converso" instead of "on the other hand" and "entre nous" for "between
ourselves." He labels his paragraphs _α, β, γ_, instead of a, b, c, and
quotes Juvenal, knows Paris and Naples, visits the Alps for the winter
sports, all in the approved manner of dons.

Not infrequently he visits the East End to Study "how the poor live," he
lectures at Toynbee Hall, and calls the proletariat "the prolly." In
fact, he does everything according to the regulations, being a socialist
and an agnostic, a follower of Shaw and a devotee of Bunyan. "Erotic" he
is careful to pronounce _eròtic_ to show he knows Greek, and the "Duma,"
the _Dumà_, tho' he doesn't know Russian. Like any don, he is always
ready to discuss and give an opinion on any sub- supra- or circum-lunary
subject from bimetallism to the Symphony as an art-form.

"That's a dominant fifth," I said to him the other day; no answer.

"You ignorant devil," I said, "you don't know what a dominant fifth is!"

We made grimaces at one another.

"Who's the Master of the Mint?" I asked him. "That is an easy one."

"The Chancellor of the Exchequer," was the prompt reply.

"Oh! that's right," I said sarcastic and crestfallen. "Now tell me the
shortest verse in the Bible and the date of Rameses II."

We laughed. R---- is a very clever man and the most extraordinarily
versatile man I know. He is bound to make his mark. His danger is--too
many irons in the fire. Here are some of his occupations and
acquirements: Art (etching, drypoint, water-colours), music (a charming
voice), classics, French, German, Italian (both speaking and reading
knowledge), biology, etc., etc. He is for ever titillating his mind with
some new thing. "For God's sake, do leave it alone--you simply rag your
mind to death. Put it out to grass--go thro' an annual season of
complete abstinence from knowledge--an intellectual Lent."

No one more than he enjoys my ragging him like this--and I do it rather
well.


[1] "I could eat all the elephants of Hindustan and pick my teeth with
the Spire of Strassburg Cathedral."

[2] See January 2nd, 1915.




1915


_January_ 1.

I have grown so ridiculously hypercritical and fastidious that I will
refuse a man's invitation to dinner because he has watery blue eyes, or
hate him for a mannerism or an impediment or affectation in his speech.
Some poor devil who has not heard of Turner or Debussy or Dostoieffsky I
gird at with the arrogance of a knowledgeable youth of 17. Some oddity
who should afford a sane mind endless amusement, I write off as a _Insus
naturæ_ and dismiss with a flourish of contempt. My intellectual
arrogance--excepting at such times as I become conscious of it and pull
myself up--is incredible. It is incredible because I have no personal
courage and all this pride boils up behind a timid exterior. I quail
often before stupid but over-bearing persons who consequently never
realise my contempt of them. Then afterwards, I writhe to think I never
stood up to this fool; never uttered an appropriate word to interfere
with another's nauseating self-love. It exasperates me to be unable to
give a Roland for an Oliver--even servants and underlings "tick me
off"--to fail always in sufficient presence of mind to make the
satisfying rejoinder or riposte. I suffer from such a savage _amour
propre_ that I fear to enter the lists with a man I dislike on account
of the mental anguish I should suffer if he worsted me. I am therefore
bottled up tight--both my hates and loves. For a coward is not only
afraid to tell a man he hates him, but is nervous too of letting go of
his feeling of affection or regard lest it be rejected or not returned.
I shudder to think of such remarks as (referring to me), "He's one of my
admirers, you know" (sardonically), or, "I simply can't get rid of him."

If however my cork _does_ come out, there is an explosion, and placid
people occasionally marvel to hear violent language streaming from my
lips and nasty acid and facetious remarks.

Of course, to intimate friends (only about three persons in the wide,
wide world), I can always give free vent to my feelings, and I do so in
privacy with that violence in which a weak character usually finds some
compensation for his intolerable self-imposed reserve and restraint in
public. I can never marvel enough at the ineradicable turpitude of my
existence, at my _double-facedness_, and the remarkable contrast between
the face I turn to the outside world and the face my friends know. It's
like leading a double existence or artificially constructing a puppet to
dangle before the crowd while I fulminate behind the scenes. If only I
had the moral courage to play my part in life--to take the stage and be
myself, to enjoy the delightful sensation of making my presence felt,
instead of this vapourish mumming--then this Journal would be quite
unnecessary. For to me self-expression is a necessity of life, and what
cannot be expressed one way must be expressed in another. When colossal
egotism is driven underground, whether by a steely surface environment
or an unworkable temperament or as in my case by both, you get a truly
remarkable result, and the victim a truly remarkable pain--the pain one
might say of continuously unsuccessful attempts at parturition.

It is perhaps not the whole explanation to say that my milky affability
before, say bores or clods is sheer personal cowardice.... It is partly
real affability. I am so glad to have opposite me some one who is making
himself pleasant and affable and sympathetic that I forget for the
moment that he is an unconscionable time-server, a sycophant,
lick-spittle, toady, etc. My first impulse is always to credit folk with
being nicer, cleverer, more honest and amiable than they are. Then, on
reflection, I discover unpleasing characteristics, I detect their little
motives, and hate myself for not speaking. The fellow is intolerable,
why did I not tell him so? Bitter recriminations from my critical self
upon my flabby amiable half.

On the whole, then, I lead a pretty disgraceful inner life--excepting
when I pull myself together and smile benignly on all things with a
philosophical smugness, such as is by no means my mood at this present
moment. I am so envious that a reprint of one of Romney's Ramus girls
sends me into a dry tearless anger--for the moment till I turn over the
next page.... Inwardly I was exacerbated this morning when R----
recited, "Come and have a tiddle at the old Brown Bear," and explained
how a charming "young person" sang this at breakfast the other morning.
It was simply _too_ charming for him to hear.

To-night as I brushed my hair, I decided I was quite good-looking, and
_I believe_ I mused that E---- was really a lucky girl.... All that is
the matter with me is a colossal conceit and a colossal discontent,
qualities exaggerated where a man finds himself in an environment which
....

       *       *       *       *       *

You observant people will notice that this explanation is something of a
self-defence whereby the virtue goes out of my confession. I plead
guilty, but great and unprecedented provocation as well. Intense pride
of individuality forbids that I should ever be other than, shall I say,
amiably disposed towards myself _au fond_, however displeased I may be
with my environment. It is indeed impossible without sending him to a
lunatic asylum ever to knock a man off the balance of his
self-esteem.... A man's loyalty to himself is the most pig-headed thing
imaginable.

_January_ 2.

_The Fire Bogey_

"This Box contains Manuscripts. One guinea will be paid to any one who
in case of danger from fire saves it from damage or loss."

Signed: W.N.P. BARBELLION.

I have had this printed in large black characters on a card, framed and
nailed to my "coffin" of Journals. I told the printer first to say _Two
Guineas_, but he suggested that One Guinea was quite enough. I agreed
but wondered how the devil _he_ knew what the Journals were
worth--nobody knows.

Next month, I expect I shall have a "hand" painted on the wall and
pointing towards the box. And the month after that I shall hire a
fireman to be on duty night and day standing outside No. 101 in a brass
helmet and his hatchet up at the salute.

These precious Journals! Supposing I lost them! I cannot imagine the
anguish it would cause me. It would be the death of my real self and as
I should take no pleasure in the perpetuation of my flabby, flaccid,
anæmic, amiable puppet-self, I should probably commit suicide.

_August_ 7.

Harvey who discovered the circulation of the blood also conducted a
great many investigations into the Anatomy and development of insects.
But all his MSS. and drawings disappeared in the fortunes of war, and
one half of his life work thus disappeared. This makes me feverish,
living as I do in Armageddon!

Again, all Malpighi's pictures, furniture, books and MSS. were destroyed
in a lamentable fire at his house in Bononia, occasioned it is said by
the negligence of his old wife.

About 1618, Ben Jonson suffered a similar calamity thro' a fire breaking
out in his study. Many unpublished MSS. perished.

A more modern and more tragic example I found recently in the person of
an Australian naturalist, Dr. Walter Stimpson, who lost all his MSS.,
drawings, and collections in the great fire of Chicago, and was so
excoriated by this irreparable misfortune that he never recovered from
the shock, and died the following year a broken man and unknown.

Of course the housemaid who lit the fire with the _French Revolution_ is
known to all, as well as Newton's "Fido, Fido, you little know what you
have done."

There are many dangers in preserving the labours of years in MS. form.
Samuel Butler (of _Erewhon_) advised writing in copying ink and then
pressing off a second copy to be kept in another and separate locality.
My own precautions for these Journals are more elaborate. Those who know
about it think I am mad. I wonder.... But I dare say I am a pathetic
fool--an incredible self-deceiver!

Anyhow--the "coffin" of raw material I sent down to T---- while I retain
the two current volumes. This is to avoid Zeppelins. E---- took the
"coffin" down for me on her way home from school, and at Taunton,
inquisitive porters mistaking it, I suppose, for an infant's coffin
carried it reverently outside the station and laid it down. She caught
them looking at it just in time before her train left. Under her
instructions they seized it by the brass handles and carried it back
again. I sit now and with a good deal of curiosity fondle the idea of
porters carrying about my Journals of confession. It's like being
tickled in the palm of the hand.... Two volumes of abstracted entries I
keep here, and, as soon as I am married, I intend to make a second copy
of these.... Then all in God's good time I intend getting a volume ready
for publication.

_January_ 30.

_Hearing Beethoven_

To the Queen's Hall and heard Beethoven's Fifth and Seventh Symphonies.

Before the concert began I was in a fever. I kept on saying to myself,
"I am going to hear the Fifth and Seventh Symphonies." I regarded myself
with the most ridiculous self-adulation--I smoothed and purred over
myself--a great contented Tabby cat--and all because I was so splendidly
fortunate as to be about to hear Beethoven's Fifth and Seventh
Symphonies.

It certainly upset me a little to find there were so many other people
who were singularly fortunate as well, and it upset me still more to
find some of them knitting and some reading newspapers as if they waited
for sausage and mashed.

How I gloried in the Seventh! I can't believe there was any one present
who gloried in it as I did! To be processing majestically up the steps
of a great, an unimaginable palace (in the "Staircase" introduction),
led by Sir Henry, is to have had at least a crowded ten minutes of
glorious life--a suspicion crossed the mind at one time "Good Heavens,
they're going to knight me." I cannot say if that were their intentions.
But I escaped however....

I love the way in which a beautiful melody flits around the Orchestra
and its various components like a beautiful bird.

_January_ 19.

_An Average Day_

After a morning of very mixed emotions and more than one annoyance ...
at last sat down to lunch and a little peace and quiet with R----. We
began by quoting verse at one another in open competition. Of course
neither of us listened to the other's verses. We merely enjoyed the
pleasure of recollecting and repeating our own. I began with Tom Moore's
"Row gently here, my Gondolier." R---- guessed the author rightly at
once and fidgeted until he burst out with, "The Breaths of kissing night
and day"--to me an easy one. I gave, "The Moon more indolently sleeps
to-night" (Baudelaire), and in reply he did a great stroke by reciting
some of the old French of Frangois Villon which entirely flummuxed me.

I don't believe we really love each other, but we cling to each other
out of ennui and discover in each other a certain cold intellectual
sympathy.

At the pay desk (Lyons' is our rendezvous) we joked with the cashier--a
cheerful, fat little girl, who said to R---- (indicating me),--

"He's a funny boy, isn't he?"

"Dangerous," chirped R----, and we laughed. In the street we met an
aged, decrepit newsvendor--very dirty and ragged--but his voice was
unexpectedly fruity.

"British Success," he called, and we stopped for the sake of the voice.

"I'm not interested," I said--as an appetiser.

"What! Not.... Just one sir: I haven't sold a single copy yet, and I've
a wife and four children."

"That's nothing to me--I've three wives and forty children," I remarked.

"What!" in affected surprise, turning to R----, "he's Brigham Young from
Salt Lake City. Yes I know it--I've been there myself and been dry ever
since. Give us a drink, sir--just one."

In consideration of his voice we gave him 2d. and passed on....

After giving a light to a Belgian soldier whose cigarette had gone out,
farther along we entered a queer old music shop where they sell
flageolets, serpents, clavichords, and harps. We had previously made an
appointment with the man to have Schubert's Unfinished Symphony played
to us, so as to recall one or two of the melodies which we can't recall
and it drives us crazy. "What is that one in the second movement which
goes like this?" and R---- whistled a fragment. "I don't know," I said,
"but let's go in here and ask." In the shop, a youth was kind enough to
say that if we cared to call next day, Madame A----, the harp player
would be home and would be ready to play us the symphony.

So this morning, before Madame's appearance, this kind and obliging
youth put a gramophone record of it on, to which we listened like two
intelligent parrots with heads sideways. Presently, the fat lady harpist
appeared and asked us just what we wanted to find out--a rather awkward
question for us, as we did not want to "find out" anything excepting how
the tunes went.

I therefore explained that as neither of us had sisters or wives, and we
both wanted, etc.... so would she...? In response, she smiled
pleasantly and played us the second movement on a shop piano. Meanwhile,
Henry the boy, hid himself behind the instruments at the rear of the
shop and as we signed to her she would say,--

"What's that, Henry?"

And Henry would duly answer from his obscurity, "Wood wind," or "Solo
oboe," or whatever it was, and the lad really spoke with authority. In
this way, I began to find out something about the work. Before I left, I
presented her with a copy of the score, which she did not possess and
because she would not accept any sort of remuneration.

"Won't you put your name on it?" she inquired.

I pointed gaily to the words "Ecce homo," which I had scribbled across
Schubert's name and said, "There you are." Madame smiled incredulously
and we said, "Good-bye."

It was a beautifully clement almost springlike day, and at the street
corner, in a burst of joyousness, we each bought a bunch of violets of
an old woman, stuck them on the ends of our walking-sticks, and marched
off with them in triumphant protest to the B.M. Carried over our
shoulders, our flowers amused the police and ----, who scarcely realised
the significance of the ritual. "This is my protest," said R----,
"against the war. It's like Oscar Wilde's Sunflower."

On the way, we were both bitterly disappointed at a dramatic meeting
between a man and woman of the artizan class which instead of beginning
with a stormy, "Robert, where's the rent, may I ask?" fizzled out into,
"Hullo, Charlie, why you _are_ a stranger."

At tea in the A.B.C. shop, we had a violent discussion on Socialism, and
on the station platform, going home, I said that before marriage I
intended saving up against the possibility of divorce--a domestic
divorce fund.

"Very dreadful," said R---- with mock gravity, "to hear a recently
affianced young man talk like that."

... What should I do then? Marry? I suppose so. Shadows of the
prison-house. At first I said I ought not to marry for two years. Then
when I am wildly excited with her I say "next week." We could. There are
no arrangements to be made. All her furniture--flat, etc. But I feel we
ought to wait until the War is over.

At dinner-time to-night I was feverish to do three things at once: write
out my day's Journal, eat my food, and read the _Journal_ of Marie
Bashkirtseff. Did all three--but unfortunately not at once, so that when
I was occupied with one I would surreptitiously cast a glance sideways
at the other--and repined.

After dinner, paid a visit to the ---- and found Mrs. ---- playing Patience.
I told her that 12,000 lives had been lost in the great Italian
earthquake. Still going on dealing out the cards, she said in her gentle
voice that that was dreadful and still absorbed in her cards inquired if
earthquakes had aught to do with the weather.

"An earthquake must be a dreadful thing," she gently piped, as she
abstractedly dealt out the cards for a new game in a pretty
Morris-papered room in Kensington.

_January_ 20.

_At a Public Dinner_

... The timorous man presently took out his cigarette-case and was going
to take out a cigarette, when he recollected that he ought first to
offer one to the millionaire on his right. Fortunately the cigarette
case was silver and the cigarettes appeared--from my side of the
dinner-table--to be fat Egyptians. Yet the timorous and unassuming
bug-hunter hesitated palpably. Ought he to offer his cigarettes? He
thought of his own balance at the bank and then of the millionaire's and
trembled. The case after all was only silver and the cigarettes were not
much more than a halfpenny each. Was it not impertinent? He sat a moment
studying the open case which he held in both hands like a hymn book,
while the millionaire ordered not wines--but a bass! At last courage
came, and he inoffensively pushed the cigarettes towards his friend.

"No, thanks!" smiled the millionaire, "I don't smoke." And so, 'twas a
unicorn dilemma after all.

_February_ 15.

Spent Xmas week at work in her studio, transcribing my Journals while
she made drawings. All unbeknown to her I was copying out entries of
days gone by--how scandalised she would be if...!

_February_ 22.

What an amazing Masque is Rotten Row on a Sunday morning! I sat on a
seat there this morning and watched awhile.

It was most exasperating to be in this kaleidoscope of human life
without the slightest idea as to who they all were. One man in
particular, I noticed--a first-class "swell"--whom I wanted to touch
gently on the arm, slip a half-a-crown into his hand and whisper,
"There, tell me all about yourself."

Such "swells" there were that out in the fairway, my little cockle-shell
boat was wellnigh swamped. To be in the wake of a really magnificent
Duchess simply rocks a small boat in an alarming fashion. I leaned over
my paddles and gazed up. They steamed past unheeding, but I kept my
nerve all right and pulled in and out quizzing and observing.

It is nothing less than scandalous that here I am aged 25 with no means
of acquainting myself with contemporary men and women even of my own
rank and station. The worst of it is, too, that I have no time to
lose--in my state of health. This accursed ill-health cuts me off from
everything. I make pitiful attempts to see the world around me by an
occasional visit (wind, weather, and health permitting) to Petticoat
Lane, the Docks, Rotten Row, Leicester Square, or the Ethical Church.
To-morrow I purpose going to the Christian Scientists'. Meanwhile, the
others participate in Armageddon.

_February_ 23.

_Looking for Lice at the Zoo_

The other day went to the Zoological Gardens, and, by permission of the
Secretary, went round with the keepers and searched the animals for
ectoparasites.

Some time this year I have to make a scientific Report to the Zoological
Society upon all the Lice which from time to time have been collected on
animals dying in the gardens and sent me for study and determination.

We entered the cages, caught and examined several Tinamous,
_Rhinochetus, Eurypygia_, and many more, to the tune of "The Policeman's
Holiday" whistled by a Mynah! It was great fun.

Then we went into the Ostrich House and thoroughly searched two Kiwis.
These, being nocturnal birds, were roosting underneath a heap of straw.
When we had finished investigating their feathers, they ran back to
their straw at once, the keeper giving them a friendly tap on the rear
to hurry them up a bit. They are just like little old women bundling
along.

The Penguins, of course, were the most amusing, and, after operating
fruitlessly for some time on a troublesome Adèle, I was amused to find,
on turning around, all the other Adèles clustered close around my feet
in an attitude of mute supplication.

The Armadillo required all the strength of two keepers to hold still
while I went over his carcass with lens and forceps. I was also allowed
to handle and examine the Society's two specimens of that amazing
creature the _Echidna_.

_Balœniceps rex_ like other royalty had to be approached decorously. He
was a big, ill-tempered fellow, and quite unmanageable except by one
keeper for whom he showed a preference. While we other conspirators hid
ourselves outside, this man entered the house quietly and approached the
bird with a gentle cooing sound. Then suddenly he grabbed the bill and
held on. We entered at the same moment and secured the wings, and I
began the search--without any luck. We must have made an amusing
picture--three men holding on for dear life to a tall, grotesque bird
with an imperial eye, while a fourth searched the feathers for
parasites!

_February_ 28.

What a boon is Sunday! I can get out of bed just when the spirit moves
me, dress and bath leisurely, even with punctilio. How nice to dawdle in
the bath with a cigarette, to hear the holiday sound of Church bells!
Then comes that supreme moment when, shaven, clean, warm and hungry for
breakfast and coffee, I stand a moment before the looking-glass and comb
out my towzled hair with a parting as straight as a line in Euclid. That
gives the finishing touch of self-satisfaction, and I go down to
breakfast ready for the day's pleasure. I hate this weekday strain of
having to be always each day at a set time in a certain place.

_March_ 3.

I often sit in my room at the B.M. and look out at the traffic with a
glassy, mesmerised face--a fainéant. How different from that extremely
busy youth who came to London in 1912. Say--could that lad be I? How
many hours do I waste day-dreaming. This morning I dreamed and dreamed
and could not stop dreaming--I had not the will to shake myself down to
my task.... My memories simply trooped the colour.

It surprised me to find how many of them had gone out of my present
consciousness and with what poignancy of feeling I recognised them
again! How selfishly for the most part we all live in our present selves
or in the selves that are to be.

Then I raced thro' all sorts of future possibilities--oh! when and how
is it all going to end? How do you expect me to settle down to
scientific research with all this internal unrest! The scientific man
above all should possess the "quiet mind in all changes of fortune"--Sir
Henry Wotton's _How happy is he born and taught_.

The truth is I am a hybrid: a mixture of two very distinct temperaments
and they are often at war. To keep two different natures and two
different mental habits simultaneously at work is next to impossible.
Consequently plenty of waste and fever and--as I might have discovered
earlier for myself--success almost out of the question. If only I were
pure-bred science or pure-bred art!

_March_ 4.

Life is a dream and we are all somnambuloes. We know that for a fact at
all times when we are most intensely alive--at crises of unprecedented
change, in sorrow or catastrophe, or in any unusual incident brought
swiftly to a close like a vision!

       *       *       *       *       *

I sit here writing this--a mirage! Who am I? No one can say. What am I?
"A soap-bubble hanging from a reed."

Every man is an inexhaustible treasury of human personality. He can go
on burrowing in it for an eternity if he have the desire--and a taste
for introspection. I like to keep myself well within the field of the
microscope, and, with as much detachment as I can muster, to watch
myself live, to report my observations of what I say, feel, think. In
default of others, I am myself my own spectator and
self-appreciator--critical, discerning, vigilant, fond!--my own stupid
Boswell, shrewd if silly. This spectator of mine, it seems to me, must
be a very moral gentleman and eminently superior. His incessant
attentions, while I go on my way misconducting myself, goad me at times
into a surly, ill-tempered outbreak, like Dr. Johnson. I hate being
shadowed and reported like this. Yet on the whole--like old Samuel
again--I am rather pleased to be Boswelled. It flatters me to know that
at least one person takes an unremitting interest in all my ways.

And, mind you, there are people who have seen most things but have never
seen themselves walking across the stage of life. If someone shows them
glimpses of themselves they will not recognise the likeness. How do you
walk? Do you know your own idiosyncrasies of gait, manner of speech,
etc.?

I never cease to interest myself in the Gothic architecture of my own
fantastic soul.[1]

_March_ 6.

_The Punch and Judy Show_

Spent a most delightful half-an-hour to-day reading an account in the
_Encyclopædia Britannica_ (one of my favourite books--it's so "gey
disconnekkit") the history of the Punch and Judy Show. It's a delightful
bit of antiquarian lore and delighted me the more because it had never
occurred to me before that it had an ancient history. I am thoroughly
proud of this recent acquisition of knowledge and as if it were a
valuable freehold I have been showing it off saying, "Rejoice with
me--see what I have got here." I fired it off first in detail at ----;
and H---- and D---- will probably be my victims to-morrow. After all, it
is a charming little cameo of history: compact, with plenty of scope for
conjecture, theory, research, and just that combination of all three
which would suit my taste and capacity if I had time for a Monograph.

_March_ 22

I waste much time gaping and wondering. During a walk or in a book or in
the middle of an embrace, suddenly I awake to a stark amazement at
everything. The bare fact of existence paralyses me--holds my mind in
mort-main. To be alive is so incredible that all I do is to lie still
and merely breathe--like an infant on its back in a cot. It is
impossible to be interested in anything in particular while overhead the
sun shines or underneath my feet grows a single blade of grass. "The
things immediate to be done," says Thoreau, "I could give them all up to
hear this locust sing." All my energies become immobilised, even my
self-expression frustrated. I could not exactly master and describe how
I feel during such moments.

_March_ 23.

_Johnson_ v. _Yves Delage_

I expect we have all of us at one time or another heard ourselves
addressing to annoying, objectionable acquaintances some such stinging
castigation as Hazlitt's letter to Gifford, or Burke's letter to a Noble
Lord, or Johnson's letter to Lord Chesterfield, or Rousseau's letter to
the Archbishop of Paris. If only I could indulge myself! At this moment
I could glut my rancours on six different persons at least!

What a raging discontent I have suffered to-day! What cynicism, what
bitterness of spirit, what envy, hate, exasperation, childish petulance,
what pusillanimous feelings and desires, what crude efforts to flout
simple, ingenuous folk with my own thwarted, repressed
self-assertiveness!

A solemn fellow told me he had heard from Johnson who said he had
already had much success from collecting in moss.[2] With an icy
politeness I asked who Johnson was. Who the Hell is Johnson? As a _quid
pro quo_ I began to talk of Yves Delage, which left him as much in the
dark as he left me. Our Gods differ, we have a different hierarchy.

"Well, how's your soul?" said R----, bursting in with a sardonic smile.

I gave him a despairing look and said:

"Oh! a pink one with blue spots," and he left me to my fate.

Had tea with the ---- and was amazed to find on the music tray in the
drawing-room of these inoffensive artists a copy of ----'s Memoir on
_Synapta_. Within his hearing, I said, "Did you and Mrs. ---- find this
exciting reading?" And I held it up with a sneer. I felt I had laid bare
a nerve and forthwith proceeded to make it twinge. ----, of course, was
glib with an explanation, yet the question remains incalculable--just
how pleased that young man is with himself.

After tea went out into the Studio and watched these two enthusiasts
paint. I must have glowered at them. I--the energetic, ambitious,
pushing youth--of necessity sitting down doing nought, as unconsidered
as a child playing on the floor. I recollected my early days in my attic
laboratory and sighed. Where is my energy now?

Mrs. ---- plays Chopin divinely well. How I envied this man--to have a
wife play you Chopin!

_March_ 24.

It is fortunate I am ill in one way for I need not make my mind up about
this War. I am not interested in it--this filth and lunacy. I have not
yet made up my mind about myself. I am so steeped in myself--in my
moods, vapours, idiosyncrasies, so self-sodden, that I am unable to
stand clear of the data, to marshal and classify the multitude of facts
and thence draw the deduction what manner of man I am. I should like to
know--if only as a matter of curiosity. So what in God's name am I? A
fool, of course, to start with--but the rest of the diagnosis?

One feature is my incredible levity about serious matters. Nothing
matters, provided the tongue is not furred. I have coquetted with death
for so long now, and endured such prodigious ill-health that my main
idea when in a fair state of repair is to seize the passing moment and
squeeze it dry. The thing that counts is to be drunken; as Baudelaire
says, "One must be for ever drunken; that is the sole question of
importance. If you would not feel the horrible burden of time that
bruises your shoulders and bends you to the earth, you must be drunken
without cease."

Another feature is my insatiable curiosity. My purpose is to move about
in this ramshackle, old curiosity shop of a world sampling existence. I
would try everything, meddle lightly with everything. Religions and
philosophies I devour with a relish, Pragmatism and Bishop Berkeley and
Bergson have been my favourite bagatelles in turn. My consciousness is a
ragbag of things: all quips, quirks, and quillets, all excellent passes
of pate, all the "obsolete curiosities of an antiquated cabinet" take my
eye for a moment ere I pass on. In Sir Thomas Browne's _Pseudodoxia_, I
am interested to find "why Jews do not stink, what is the superstition
of sneezing after saluting, wherefore negroes are black," and so forth.
There is a poetic appropriateness that in A.D. 1915 I should be occupied
mainly in the study of Lice. I like the insolence of it.

They tell me that if the Germans won it would put back the clock of
civilisation for a century. But what is a meagre 100 years? Consider the
date of the first Egyptian dynasty! We are now only in A.D. 1915--surely
we could afford to chuck away a century or two? Why not evacuate the
whole globe and give the ball to the Boches to play with--just as an
experiment to see what they can make of it. After all there is no
desperate hurry. Have we a train to catch? Before I could be serious
enough to fight, I should want God first to dictate to me his programme
of the future of mankind.

_March_ 25.

Often in the middle of a quite vivid ten seconds of life, I find I have
switched myself off from myself to make room for the person of a
disinterested and usually vulgar spectator. Even in the thrill of a
devotional kiss I have overheard myself saying, "Hot stuff, this witch."
Or in a room full of agreeable and pleasant people, while I am being as
agreeable as I know how, comes the whisper in a cynical tone, "These
damned women." I am apparently a triple personality:

(1) The respectable youth.

(2) The foul-mouthed commentator and critic.

(3) The real but unknown I.

Curious that these three should live together amiably in the same
tenement!

_In a Crowd_

A crowd makes egotists of us all. Most men find it repugnant to them to
submerge themselves in a sea of their fellows. A silent, listening crowd
is potentially full of commotion. Some poor devils suffocating and
unable any longer to bear the strain will shout, "Bravo," or "Hear,
hear," at every opportunity. At the feeblest joke we all laugh loudly,
welcoming this means of self-survival. Hence the success of the
Salvation Army. To be preached at and prayed for in the mass for long on
end is what human nature can't endure in silence and a good deal of self
can be smuggled by an experienced Salvationist into "Alleluia" or "The
Lord be praised."

_Naming Cockroaches_

I had to determine the names of some exotic cockroaches to-day and
finding it very difficult and dull raised a weak smile in two
enthusiasts who know them as "Blattids" by rechristening them with great
frivolity, "Fat 'eds."

"These bloody insects," I said to an Australian entomologist of rare
quality.

"A good round oath," he answered quietly.

"If it was a square one it wouldn't roll properly," I said. It is nice
to find an entomologist with whom I can swear and talk bawdy.

_March_ 26.

_A Test of Happiness_

The true test of happiness is whether you know what day of the week it
is. A miserable man is aware of this even in his sleep. To be as
cheerful and rosy-cheeked on Monday as on Saturday, and at breakfast as
at dinner is to--well, make an ideal husband.

... It is a strange metempsychosis, this transformation of an
enthusiast--tense, excitable, and active, into a sceptic, nerveless,
ironical, and idle. That's what ill-health can do for a man. To be among
enthusiasts--zoologists, geologists, entomologists--as I frequently am,
makes me feel a very old man, regarding them as children, and provokes
painful retrospection and sugary sentimentality over my past flame now
burnt out.

I do wonder where I shall end up; what shall I be twenty years hence? It
alarms me to find I am capable of such remarkable changes in character.
I am fluid and can be poured into any mould. I have moments when I see
in myself the most staggering possibilities. I could become a wife
beater, and a drug-taker (especially the last). My curiosity is often
such a ridiculous weakness that I have found myself playing Peeping Tom
and even spying into private documents. In a railway carriage I will
twist my neck and risk any rudeness to see the title of the book my
neighbour is reading or how the letter she is reading begins.

_April_ 10.

"Why," asks Samuel Butler, "should not chicken be born and clergymen be
laid and hatched? Or why, at any rate, should not the clergyman be born
full grown and in Holy Orders not to say already beneficed? The present
arrangement is not convenient ... it is not only not perfect but so much
the reverse that we could hardly find words to express our sense of its
awkwardness if we could look upon it with new eyes...."

As soon as we are born, if we could but get up, bathe, dress, shave,
breakfast once for all, if we could "cut" these monotonous cycles of
routine. If once the sun rose it would stay up, or once we were alive we
were immortal!--how much forrarder we should all get--always at the
heart of things, working without let or hindrance in a straight line for
the millennium! Now we waltz along instead. Even planets die off and new
ones come in their place. How infinitely wearisome it seems. When an old
man dies what a waste, and when a baby is born what a redundancy of
labour in front!

_Two People I hate in particular_

The man walking along the pavement in front of me giving me no room to
pass under the satisfactory impression that he is the only being on the
pavement or in the street, city, country, world, universe: and it all
belongs to him even the moon and sun and stars.

The woman on the 'bus the other night--pouring out an interminable flow
of poisonous chatter into the ear of her man--poor, exhausted devil who
kept answering dreamily "Oom" and"Yes" and "Oom"--how I hated her for
his sake!

_April_ 11.

_Beethoven's Fifth Symphony_

If music moves me, it always generates images--a procession of
apparently disconnected images in my mind. In the Fifth Symphony, for
example, as soon as the first four notes are sounded and repeated, this
magic population springs spontaneously into being. A nude,
terror-stricken figure in headlong flight with hands pressed to the ears
and arms bent at the elbows--a staring, bulgy-eyed mad-woman such as one
sees in Raemakers' cartoons of the Belgian atrocities. A man in the
first onset of mental agony on hearing sentence of death passed upon
him. A wounded bird, fluttering and flopping in the grass. It is the
struggle of a man with a steam-hammer--Fate. As tho' thro' the walls of
a closed room--some mysterious room, a fearful spot--I crouch and listen
and am conscious that inside some brutal punishment is being meted out
--there are short intervals, then unrelenting pursuit, then hammerlike
blows--melodramatic thuds, terrible silences (I crouch and wonder what
has happened), and the pursuit begins again. I see clasped hands and
appealing eyes and feel very helpless and mystified outside. An
epileptic vision or an opium dream--_Dostoievsky_ or De Quincey set to
music.

In the Second Movement the man is broken, an unrecognisable vomit. I see
a pale youth sitting with arms hanging limply between the knees, hands
folded, and with sad, impenetrable eyes that have gazed on unspeakable
horrors. I see the brave, tearful smile, the changed life after personal
catastrophe, the Cross held before closing eyes, sudden absences of
mind, reveries, poignant retrospects, the rustle of a dead leaf of
thought at the bottom of the heart, the tortuous pursuit of past
incidents down into the silence of yesterday, the droning of comfortable
words, the painful collection of the wreckage of a life with intent to
"carry on" for a while in duty bound, for the widow consolation in the
child; a greyhound's cold wet nose nozzling into a listless hand, and
outside a Thrush singing after the storm, etc., etc.

In the Third Movement comes the crash by which I know something final
and dreadful has happened. Then the resurrection with commotion in
Heaven: tempests and human faces, scurryings to and fro, brazen
portcullises clanging to, never to open more, the distant roll of drums
and the sound of horses' hoofs. From behind the inmost veil of Heaven I
faintly catch the huzzas of a great multitude. Then comes a great
healing wind, then a few ghost-like tappings on the window pane till
gradually the Avenue of Arches into Heaven come into view with a solemn
cortege advancing slowly along.

Above the great groundswell of woe, Hope is restored and the Unknown
Hero enters with all pomp into his Kingdom, etc., etc.

I am not surprised to learn that Beethoven was once on the verge of
suicide.

_April_ 15.

There is an absurd fellow ... who insists on taking my pirouettes
seriously. I say irresponsibly, "All men are liars," and he replies with
jejuneness and exactitude of a pronouncing dictionary, "A liar is one
who makes a false statement with intent to deceive." What can I do with
him? "Did I ever meet a lady," he asked, "who wasn't afraid of mice?" "I
don't know," I told him, "I never experiment with ladies in that way."

He hates me.

_May_ 11.

This mysterious world makes me chilly. It is chilly to be alive among
ghosts in a nightmare of calamity. This Titanic war reduces me to the
size and importance of a debilitated housefly. So what is a poor egotist
to do? To be a common soldier is to become a pawn in the game between
ambitious dynasts and their ambitious marshals. You lose all
individuality, you become a "bayonet" or a "machine gun," or "cannon
fodder," or "fighting material."

_May_ 22.

Generosity may be only weakness, philanthropy (beautiful word),
self-advertisement, and praise of others sheer egotism. One can almost
hear a eulogist winding himself up to strike his eulogy that comes out
sententious, pompous, and full of self.

_May_ 23.

The following is a description of Lermontov by Maurice Baring:

"He had except for a few intimate friends an impossible temperament; he
was proud, over-bearing, exasperated and exasperating, filled with a
savage _amour-propre_ and he took a childish delight in annoying; he
cultivated 'le plaisir aristocratique de déplaire.' ... He could not
bear not to make himself felt and if he felt he was unsuccessful in this
by fair means he resorted to unpleasant ones. Yet he was warm-hearted,
thirsting for love and kindness and capable of giving himself up to love
if he chose.... At the bottom of all this lay no doubt a deep-seated
disgust with himself and with the world in general, and a complete
indifference to life resulting from large aspirations which could not
find an outlet and recoiled upon himself."

This is an accurate description of Me.

_May_ 26.

The time will come--it's a great way off--when a joke about sex will be
not so much objectionable as unintelligible. Thanks to Christian
teaching, a nude body is now an obscenity, of the congress of the sexes
it is indecent to speak and our birth is a corruption. Hence come a
legion of evils: reticence, therefore ignorance and therefore venereal
disease; prurience especially in adolescence, poisonous literature, and
dirty jokes. The mind is contaminated from early youth; even the
healthiest-minded girl will blush at the mention of _the wonder of
creation_. Yet to the perfectly enfranchised mind it should be as
impossible to joke about sex as about mind or digestion or physiology.
The perfectly enfranchised poet--and Walt Whitman in "The Song of
Myself" came near being it--should be as ready to sing of the incredible
raptures of the sexual act between "twin souls" as of the clouds or
sunshine. Every man or woman who has loved has a heart full of beautiful
things to say but no man dare--for fear of the police, for fear of the
coarse jests of others and even of a breakdown in his own
highmindedness. I wonder just how much wonderful lyric poetry has thus
been lost to the world!

_May_ 27.

_The Pool: A Retrospect_

From above, the pool looked like any little innocent sheet of water. But
down in the hollow itself it grew sinister. The villagers used to say
and to believe that it had no bottom and certainly a very great depth
in it could be _felt_ if not accurately gauged as one stood at the
water's edge. A long time ago, it was a great limestone quarry, but
to-day the large mounds of rubble on one side of it are covered with
grass and planted with mazzard trees, grown to quite a large girth. On
the other side one is confronted by a tall sheet of black, carboniferous
rock, rising sheer out of the inky water--a bare sombre surface on which
no mosses even--"tender creatures of pity," Ruskin calls them--have
taken compassion by softening the jagged edges of the strata or nestling
in the scars. It is an excellent example of "Contortion" as Geologists
say, for the beds are bent into a quite regular geometrical pattern
--syncline and anticline in waves--by deep-seated plutonic force that
makes the mind quake in the effort to imagine it.

On the top of this rock and overhanging the water--a gaunt,
haggard-looking Fir tree impends, as it seems in a perilous balance,
while down below, the pool, sleek and shiny, quietly waits with a
catlike patience.

In summer time, successive rows of Foxgloves one behind the other in
barbaric splendour are ranged around the grassy rubble slopes like
spectators in an amphitheatre awaiting the spectacle. Fire-bellied Efts
slip here and there lazily thro' the water. Occasionally a Grass-snake
would swim across the pool and once I caught one and on opening his
stomach found a large fire-bellied Eft inside. The sun beats fiercely
into this deep hollow and makes the water tepid. On the surface grows a
glairy Alga, which was once all green but now festers in yellow patches
and causes a horrible stench. Everything is absolutely still, air and
water are stagnant. A large _Dytiscus_ beetle rises to the surface to
breathe and every now and then large bubbles of marsh gas come sailing
majestically up from the depth and explode quietly into the fetid air.
The _horrificness_ of this place impressed me even when I was intent
only on fishing there for bugs and efts. Now, seen in retrospect, it
haunts me.

_May_ 28.

It is only by accident that certain of our bodily functions are
distasteful. Many birds eat the faeces of their young. The vomits of
some Owls are formed into shapely pellets, often of beautiful
appearance, when composed of the glittering multi-coloured elytra of
Beetles, etc. The common Eland is known to micturate on the tuft of hair
on the crown of its head, and it does this habitually, when lying down,
by bending its head around and down--apparently because of the aroma,
perhaps of sexual importance during mating time, as it is a habit of the
male alone.

At lunch time, had an unpleasant intermittency period in my heart's
action and this rather eclipsed my anxiety over a probable Zeppelin
Raid. Went home to my rooms by 'bus, and before setting off to catch my
train for West Wycombe to stay for the week-end at a Farm with
E---- swallowed two teaspoonfuls of neat brandy, filled my flask, and
took a taxi to Paddington. At 3.50 started to walk to C---- H---- Farm
from W. Wycombe Station, where E---- has been lodging for some weeks
taking a rest cure after a serious nervous breakdown thro' overwork. As
soon as I stepped out of the train, I sniffed the fresh air and soon
made off down the road, happy to have left London and the winter and the
war far behind. The first man of whom I inquired the way happened to
have been working at the Farm only a few weeks ago, so I relied
implicitly on his directions, and as it was but a mile and a half
decided that my wobbly heart could stand the strain. I set out with a
good deal of pleasurable anticipation. I was genuinely looking forward
to seeing E----, altho' in the past few weeks our relations had become a
little strained, at least on my part, mainly because of her little
scrappy notes to me scribbled in pencil, undated, and dull! Yet I could
do with a volume of "Sonnets from the Portuguese." These letters chilled
me. In reply, I wrote with cold steel short, lifeless formal notes, for
I felt genuinely aggrieved that she should care so little how she wrote
to me or how she expressed her love. I became ironical with myself over
the prospect of marrying a girl who appeared so little to appreciate my
education and mental habits. [What a popinjay!--1917.] My petty spirit
grew disenchanted, out of love. I was false to her in a hundred
inconsiderable little ways and even deliberately planned the breaking
off of the engagement some months hence when she should be restored to
normal health.

But once in the country and, as I thought, nearing my love at every step
and at every bend in the road, even anticipating her arms around me with
real pleasure (for she promised to meet me half way), I on a sudden grew
eager for her again and was assured of a happy week-end with her. Then
the road grew puzzling and I became confused, uncertain of the way. I
began to murmur she should have given me instructions. Every now and
then I had to stop and rest as my heart was beating so furiously.
Espying a farm on the left I made sure I had arrived at my destination
and walked across a field to it and entered the yard where I heard some
one milking a cow in a shed. I shouted over the five-barred gate into
empty space, "Is this C---- H---- Farm?" A labourer came out of the shed
and redirected me. It was now ten to five. I was tired and out of sorts,
and carried a troublesome little handbag. I swore and cursed and found
fault with E---- and the Universe.

I trudged on, asking people, as I went, the way, finally emerging from
the cover of a beautiful wood thro' a wicket gate almost at the entrance
to the Farm I sought. At the front door we embraced affectionately and
we entered at once, I putting a quite good face upon my afternoon's
exertions--when I consider my unbridled fury of a short time before.
E----, as brown as a berry, conducted me to my bedroom and I nearly
forgot to take this obvious opportunity of kissing her again.

"How are you?" I asked.

"All right," she said, fencing.

"But really?"

"All right."

(A little nettled): "My dear, that isn't going to satisfy me. You will
have to tell me exactly how you are."

After tea, I recovered myself and we went for a walk together. The
beauty of the country warmed me up, and in the wood we kissed--I for my
part happy and quite content with the present state of our relations,
_i.e._, affectionate but not perfervid.

_May_ 29.

Got up early and walked around the Farm before breakfast. Everything
promises to be delightful--young calves, broods of ducklings, and
turkeys, fowls, cats and dogs. In the yard are two large Cathedral
barns, with enormous pent roofs sloping down to within about two feet of
the ground and entered by way of great double doors that open with the
slowness and solemnity of a Castle's portal studded with iron knobs. It
thrilled me to the marrow on first putting my head outside to be greeted
with the grunt of an invisible pig that I found scraping his back on the
other side of the garden wall.

In the afternoon, E---- and I sat together in the Beech Wood: E---- on a
deck chair and I on a rug on the ground. In spite of our beautiful
surroundings we did not progress very well, but I attributed her slight
aloofness to the state of her nerves. She is still far from recovered.
These wonderful Beech Woods are quite new to me. The forest beech is a
very different plant from the solitary tree. In the struggle to reach
the light the Forest Beech grows lean and tall and gives an
extraordinary suggestion of wiry powerful strength. On the margins of
the wood, Bluebells were mobilised in serried ranks. Great Tits
whistled--in the language of our allies--"Bijou, Bijou" and I agreed
with every one of them.

Some folk don't like to walk over Bluebells or Buttercups or other
flowers growing on the ground. But it is foolish to try to pamper Nature
as if she were a sickly child. She is strong and can stand it. You can
stamp on and crush a thousand flowers--they will all come up again next
year.

By some labyrinthine way which I cannot now recall, the conversation
worked round to a leading question by E.--if in times like these we
ought not to cease being in love? She was quite calm and serious. I said
"No, of course not, silly." My immediate apprehension was that she had
perceived the coldness in my letters and I was quite satisfied that she
was so well able to read the signs in the sky. "But you don't wish to go
on?" she persisted. I persisted that I did, that I had no misgivings, no
second thoughts, that I was not merely taking pity on her, etc. The wild
temptation to seize this opportunity for a break I smothered in
reflecting how ill she was and how necessary to wait first till she was
well again. These thoughts passed swiftly, vaguely like wraiths thro' my
mind: I was barely conscious of them. Then I recalled the sonnet about
coming in the rearward of a conquered woe and mused thereon. But I took
no action. [Fortunately--for me. 1916.]

Presently with cunning I said that there was no cloud on my horizon
whatever--only her "letters disappointed me a little--they were so
cold," but "as soon as I saw you again, darling, those feelings
disappeared."

As soon as they were spoken I knew they were not as they might seem, the
words of a liar and hypocrite. They _became_ true. E---- looked very
sweet and helpless and I loved her again as much as ever.

"It's funny," she said, "but I thought your letters were cold. Letters
are so horrid."

The incident shews how impossible is intellectual honesty between
lovers. Truth is at times a hound which must to kennel.

"Write as you would speak," said I. "You know I'm not one to carp about
a spelling mistake!"

The latter remark astonished me. Was it indeed I who was speaking? All
the week I had been fuming over this. Yet I was honest: the Sun and E.'s
presence were dispelling my ill-humours and crochets. We sealed our
conversation with a kiss and swore never to doubt each other again. E.'s
spell was beginning to act. It is always the same. I cannot resist the
actual presence of this woman. Out of her sight, I can in cold blood
plan a brutal rupture. I can pay her a visit when the first kiss is a
duty and the embrace a formality. But after 5 minutes I am as passionate
and devoted as before. It is always thus. After leaving her, I am angry
to think that once more I have succumbed.

In the evening we went out into a field and sat together in the grass.
It is beautiful. We lay flat on our backs and gazed up at the sky.

       *       *       *       *       *

S.H. has died of enteric at Malta. In writing to Mrs. H., instead of
dwelling on what a splendid fellow he was I belaboured the fact that I
still remembered our boyish friendship in every detail and still kept
his photo on my mantelpiece and altho' "in later years" I didn't suppose
we "had a great deal in common I discovered that a friendship even
between two small boys cannot wholly disappear into the void."
Discussing myself when I ought to have been praising him! Ugh! She will
think what a conceited, puff-breasted Jackanapes. These phrases have
rankled in my mind ever since I dropped the letter into the letter-box.
"Your Stanley, Mrs. H., was of course a very inferior sort of person and
naturally, you could hardly expect me to remain friendly with him but
rest assured I hadn't forgotten him," etc.

_The Luxury of Lunacy_

Yesterday, I read a paper at the Zoological Society about lice. There
was a goodly baldness of sconce and some considerable length of beard
present that listened or appeared to listen to my innocent remarks with
great solemnity and sapience.... I badly wanted to tell them some horrid
stories about human lice but I had not the courage. I wanted to jolt
these middle-aged gentlemen by performing a few tricks but I am too
timid for such adventures. But before going to sleep I imagined a
pandemonium in which with a perfectly glacial manner I produced lice
alive from my pockets, conjured them down from the roof in a rain, with
the skilful sleight of hand drew them out of the chairman's beard, made
the ladies scream as I approached, dared to say they were all lousy and
unclean and finished up with an eloquent apostrophe after the manner of
Thomas de Quincey (and of Sir Walter Raleigh before him) beginning:

"O just, subtle and eloquent avenger, pierce the hides of these
abominable old fogies, speckle their polished calvaria with the scarlet
blood drops...."

But I hadn't the courage. Shelley in a crowded omnibus suddenly burst
out: "O let us sit upon the ground and tell sad stories of the deaths of
Kings, etc." I've always wanted to do something like that and when I
have £5 to spare I hope to pull the communication cord of an express
train--my hands tingle as often as I look at it. Dr. Johnson's courage
in tapping the lamp-posts is really everyone's envy tho' we laugh at him
for it and say, green-eyed, that he was mad. In walking along the
pavement, I sometimes indulge myself in the unutterable, deeply rooted
satisfaction of stepping on a separate flagstone where this is possible
with every stride. And if this is impossible or not easy, there arises
in me a vague mental uneasiness, some subconscious suspicion that the
world is not properly geometrical and that the whole universe perhaps is
working out of truth. I am also rather proud of my courageous
self-surrender to the daemon of laughter, especially in those early days
when H. and I used to sit opposite one another and howl like hyenas.
After the most cacophonous cachinnations as soon as we had recovered
ourselves he or I would regularly remark in serious and confidential
tones, "I say--we _really_ are going mad." But what a delightful luxury
to be thus mad amid the great, spacious, architectural solemnity with
gargoyles and effigies of a scientific meeting! Some people never do
more than chuckle or smile--and they are often very humorous happy
people, ignorant nevertheless of the joy of riding themselves on the
snaffle and losing all control.

While boating on ---- last summer, we saw two persons, a man and a girl
sitting together on the beach reading a book with heads almost touching.

"I wonder what they're reading?" I said, and I was dying to know. We
made a few facetious guesses.

"Shall I ask?"

"Yes, do," said Mrs. ----.

The truth is we all wanted to know. We were suddenly mad with curiosity
as we watched the happy pair turning over leaf after leaf.

While R---- leaned on his oars, I stood up in the boat and threatened to
shout out a polite enquiry--just to prove that the will is free. But
seeing my intention the boat-load grew nervous and said seriously, "No,"
which unnerved me at the last moment so I sat down again. Why was I so
afraid of being thought a lunatic by two persons in the distance whom I
had never seen and probably would never see again? Besides I _was_ a
lunatic--we all were.

In our post-prandial perambulations about S. Kensington G---- and I
often pass the window of a photographer's shop containing always a
profusion of bare arms, chests, necks, bosoms belonging to actresses,
aristocrats and harlots--some very beautiful indeed. Yet on the whole
the window annoys us, especially one picture of a young thing with an
arum lily (ghastly plant!) laid exquisitely across her breast.

"Why do we suffer this?" I asked G----, tapping the window ledge as we
stood.

"I don't know," he answered lamely--morose. (Pause while the two
embittered young men continue to look in and the beautiful young women
continue to look out.)

Thoroughly disgruntled I said at last: "If only we had the courage of
our innate madness, the courage of children, lunatics and men of genius,
we should get some stamp paper, and stick a square beneath each
photograph with our comments."

Baudelaire describes how he dismissed a glass vendor because he had no
coloured glasses--"glasses of rose and crimson, magical glasses, glasses
of Paradise"--and, stepping out on to his balcony, threw a flowerpot
down on the tray of glasses as soon as the man issued into the street
below, shouting down furiously, "The Life Beautiful! The Life
Beautiful."

Bergson's theory is that laughter is a "social gesture" so that when a
man in a top hat treads on a banana skin and slips down we laugh at him
for his lack "of living pliableness." At this rate we ought to be
profoundly solemn at Baudelaire's action and moreover a "social gesture"
is more likely to be an expression of society's will to conformity in
all its members rather than any dangerous "living pliableness." Society
hates living pliableness and prefers drill, routine, orthodoxy,
conformity. It hated the living pliableness of Turner, of Keats, of
Samuel Butler and a hundred others.

But to return to lunacy: the truth is we are all mad fundamentally and
are merely schooled into sanity by education. Pascal wrote: "Men are so
necessarily mad that not to be mad would amount to another form of
madness." And, in fact, the man who has succeeded in extirpating this
intoxication of life is usually said to be "temporarily insane." In
those melancholy interludes of sanity when the mind becomes rationalised
we all know how much we have been deceived and gulled, what an
extraordinary spectacle humanity presents rushing on in noise and tumult
no one knows why or whither. Look at that tailor in his shop--why does
he do it? Some day in the future he thinks he will.... But the day
never comes and he is nevertheless content.

_May_ 30.

A brilliantly sunny day. This funny old farm-house where we are staying
quite delights me. It is pleasant, too, to dawdle over dressing, to put
away shaving tackle for a day or so, to jump out of bed in the morning
and thrust my head out of the window into the fresh and stock-scented
air of the garden, listen to the bird chorus or watch a "scrap" in the
poultry-run. Then all unashamed, I dress myself before a dear old lady
in a flowery print gown concealing 4 thin legs and over the top of the
mirror a piece of lace just like a bonnet, caught up in front by a
piece of pink ribbon. On the walls Pear's Soap Annuals, on a side table
_Swiss Family Robinson_ and _Children of the New Forest_. Then there are
rats under the floors, two wooden staircases which wind up out of sight,
two white dairies, iron hapses on all the doors and a privy at the top
of the orchard. (Tell me--how do you explain the psychosis of a being
who on a day must have seized hammer and nail and an almanac picture of
a woman in the snow with a basket of goodies--"An Errand of
Mercy"--carried all three to the top of the orchard and nailed the
picture up on the dirty wall in the semi-darkness of an earth-closet?)

Got up quite early before breakfast and went birds'-nesting.... It would
take too long and be too sentimental for me to record my feelings on
looking into the first nest I found--a Chaffinch's, the first wild
bird's eggs I have seen for many years. As I stood with an egg between
thumb and forefinger, my memories flocked down like white birds and
surrounded me. I remained still, fed them with my thoughts and let them
perch upon my person--a second St. Francis of Assisi. Then I shoo'ed
them all away and prepared for the more palpitating enjoyment of to-day.

After breakfast we sat in the Buttercup field--my love and I--and
"plucked up kisses by the roots that grew upon our lips." The sun was
streaming down and the field thickly peopled with Buttercups. From where
we sat we could see the whole of the valley below and Farmer Whaley--a
speck in the distance--working a machine in a field. We watched him
idly. The gamekeeper's gun went off in one of the covers. It was jolly
to put our heads together right down deep in the Buttercups and
luxuriously follow the pelting activities of the tiny insects crawling
here and there in the forest of grass, clambering over a broken blade
athwart another like a wrecked tree or busily enquiring into some low
scrub at the roots. A chicken came our way and he seemed an enormous
bird from the grass-blade's point of view. How nice to be a chicken in
a field of Buttercups and see them as big as Sunflowers! or to be a
Gulliver in the Beech Woods! to be so small as to be able to climb a
Buttercup, tumble into the corolla and be dusted yellow or to be so big
as to be able to pull up a Beech-tree with finger and thumb! If only a
man were a magician, could play fast and loose with rigid Nature? what a
multitude of rich experiences he could discover for himself!

I looked long and steadily this morning at the magnificent torso of a
high forest Beech and tried to project myself into its lithe tiger-like
form, to feel its electric sap vitalising all my frame out to the tip of
every tingling leaf, to possess its splendid erectness in my own bones.
I could have flung my arms around its fascinating body but the austerity
of the great creature forbad it. Then a Hawk fired my ambition!--to be a
Hawk, or a Falcon, to have a Falcon's soul, a Falcon's heart--that
splendid muscle in the cage of the thorax--and the Falcon's pride and
sagacious eye![3]

When the sun grew too hot we went into the wood where waves of Bluebells
dashed up around the foot of the Oak in front of us.... I never knew
before, the delight of offering oneself up--an oblation of one's whole
being; I even longed for some self-sacrifice, to have to give up
something for her sake. It intoxicated me to think I was making another
happy....

After a lunch of scrambled eggs and rhubarb and cream went up into the
Beech Wood again and sat on a rug at the foot of a tree. The sun
filtered in thro' the greenery casting a "dim, religious light."

"It's like a cathedral," I chattered away, "stained glass windows,
pillars, aisles--all complete."

"It would be nice to be married in a Cathedral like this," she said.
"At C---- Hall Cathedral, by the Rev. Canon _Beech_...."

"Sir Henry Wood was the organist."

"Yes," she said, "and the Rev. Blackbird the precentor."

We laughed over our silliness!

Shrew-mice pattered over the dead leaves and one came boldly into view
under a bramble bush--she had never seen one before. Overhead, a ribald
fellow of a Blackbird whistled a jaunty tune. E---- laughed. "I am sure
that Blackbird is laughing at us," she said. "It makes me feel quite
hot."

This evening we sat on the slope of a big field where by lowering our
eyes we could see the sun setting behind the grass blades--a very pretty
sight which I do not remember ever to have noted before. A large blue
_Carabus_ beetle was stumbling about, Culvers cooed in the woods near
by. It was delightful to be up 600 feet on a grassy field under the
shadow of a large wood at sunset with my darling.

_May_ 31.

Sitting at tea in the farm house to-day E---- cried suddenly, pointing
to a sandy cat in the garden:

"There,--he's the father of the little kittens in the barn and I'll tell
you how we know. P---- noticed the kittens had big feet and later on saw
that old Tom stalking across the garden with big feet of exactly the
same kind."

"So you impute the paternity of the kittens to the gentleman under the
laurel bushes?"

I looked at the kittens to-night and found they had extra toes. "Mr.
Sixtoes," as W---- calls him also possesses six toes, so the
circumstantial evidence looks black against him.

_June_ 1.

In the Beech Wood all the morning. Heigh-ho! it's grand to lie out as
straight as a line on your back, gaze upwards into the tree above, and
with a caressing eye follow its branches out into their multitudinous
ramifications forward and back--luxurious travel for the tired eye. ...
Then I would shut my eyes and try to guess where her next kiss would
descend. Then I opened my eyes and watched her face in the most
extravagant detail, I counted the little filaments on her precious mole
and saw the sun thro' the golden down of her throat....

Sunlight and a fresh wind. A day of tiny cameos, little _coups
d'œil_, fleeting impressions snapshotted on the mind: the glint on
the keeper's gun as he crossed a field a mile away below us, sunlight
all along a silken hawser which some Spider engineer had spun between
the tops of two tall trees spanning the whole width of a bridle path,
the constant patter of Shrew-mice over dead leaves, the pendulum of a
Bumble-bee in a flower, and the just perceptible oscillation of the tree
tops in the wind. While we are at meals the perfume of Lilac and Stocks
pours in thro' the window and when we go to bed it is still pouring in
by the open lattice.

_June_ 2.

Each day I drop a specially selected Buttercup in past the little
"Peeler," at the apex of the "V" to lie among the blue ribbons of her
camisoles--those dainty white leaves that wrap around her bosom like the
petals around the heart of a Rose. Then at night when she undresses, it
falls out and she preserves it.

In the woods, hearing an extra loud patter on the leaves, we turned our
heads and saw a Frog hopping our way. I caught him and gave an
elementary lesson in Anatomy. I described to her the brain, the pineal
organ in Anguis, Sphenodon's pineal eye, etc. Then we fell to kissing
again.... Every now and then she raises her head and listens (like a
Thrush on the lawn) thinking she hears someone approach. We neither of
us speak much ... and at the end of the day, the nerve endings on my
lips are tingling.

       *       *       *       *       *

Farmer Whaley is a funny old man with a soft pious voice. When he feeds
the Fowls, he sucks in a gentle, caressing noise between his lips for
all the world as if he fed them because he loved them, and not because
he wants to fatten them up for killing. His daughter Lucy, aged 22,
loves all the animals of the farm and they all love her; the Cows stand
monumentally still while she strokes them down the blaze or
affectionately waggles their dewlaps. This morning, she walked up to a
little Calf in the farm-yard scarce a fortnight old which started to
"back" in a funny way, spraddling out its legs and lowering its head.
Miss Lucy laughed merrily and cried "Ah! you funny little thing," and
went off on her way to feed the Fowls who all raced to the gate as soon
as they heard her footsteps. She brought in two double-yolked Ducks'
eggs for us to see and marvel at. In the breakfast room stands a stuffed
Collie dog in a glass case. I'd as soon embalm my grandmother and keep
her on the sideboard.

I asked young George, the farm-boy, what bird went like this: I whistled
it. He looked abashed and said a Chaffinch. I told Miss Lucy who said
George was a silly boy, and Miss Lucy told Farmer Whaley who said George
ought to know better--it was a Mistle-Thrush.

The letters are brought us each morning by a tramp with a game leg who
secretes his Majesty's Mails in a shabby bowler hat, the small packages
and parcels going to the roomy tail pocket of a dirty morning coat. A
decayed gentleman of much interest to us.

_June_ 3.

We have made a little nest in the wood and I lead her into it by the
hand over the briars and undergrowth as if conducting her to the grand
piano on a concert platform. I kissed her....

Then in a second we switch back to ordinary conversation. In an ordinary
conversational voice I ask the trees, the birds, the sky.

"What's become of all the gold?"

"What's become of Waring?"

"What is Love? 'Tis not hereafter."

"Where are the snows of yesteryear?"

"Who killed Cock Robin?"

"Who's who?"

And so on thro' all the great interrogatives that I could think of till
she stopped my mouth with a kiss and we both laughed.

"Miss Penderkins," I say. "Miss Penderlet, Miss Pender-au-lait, Miss
Pender-filings."

What do I mean? she cries. "What's the point of the names? Why take my
name in vain? Why? What? How?"

She does not know that clever young men sometimes trade on their
reputation among simpler folk by pretending that meaningless remarks
conceal some subtlety or cynicism, some little Attic snap.

       *       *       *       *       *

I have been teaching her to distinguish the songs of different birds and
often we sit a long while in the Cathedral Wood while I say, "What's
that?" and "What's that?" and she tells me. It is delightful to watch
her dear serious face as she listens.... This evening I gave a _viva
voce_ examination as per below:

"What does the Yellow Hammer say?"

"What colour are the Hedge Sparrow's eggs?"

"Describe the Nightjar's voice."

"How many eggs does it lay?"

"Oh! you never told me about the Nightjar," she cried outraged.

"No: it's a difficult question put in for candidates taking honours."

Then we rambled on into Tomfoolery. "Describe the call-note of a motor
omnibus." "Why does the chicken cross the road?" and "What's
that?"--when a railway engine whistled in the distance.

Measure by this our happiness!

_June_ 4.

At a quarter past eight, this morning, the horse and trap were awaiting
me outside, and bidding her "Goodbye" I got in and drove off--she riding
on the step down so far, as the gate. Then we waved till we were out of
sight. Back in London by 10 a.m. She makes slow progress, poor dear--her
nerves are still very much of a jangle. But I am better, my heart is
less wobbly.

_June_ 5.

R---- cannot make me out. He says one day I complain bitterly at not
receiving a Portuguese sonnet once a week, and the next all is well and
Love reigneth. "Verily a Sphinx."

_June_ 7.

Spent the afternoon at the Royal Army Medical College in consultation
with the Professor of Hygiene. Amid all the paraphernalia of research,
even when discussing a serious problem with a serious Major, I could not
take myself seriously. I am incurably trivial and always feel myself an
irresponsible youth, wondering and futile, among owlish grown-ups.

At 4 p.m. departed and went down on Vauxhall Bridge and watched a
flour-barge being unloaded before returning to the Museum. I could
readily hang on behind a cart, stare at an accident, pull a face at a
policeman and then run away.

_June_ 20.

... It annoys me to find the _laissez-faire_ attitude of our relatives.
Not one with a remonstrance for us and yet all the omens are against our
marriage. In the state of my nervous system and in the state of hers--we
have both had serious nervous break-downs--how impossible it seems! Yet
they say all the old conventional things to us, about our happiness and
so on!...

... Am I a moral monster? Surely a man who can combine such calculating
callousness with really generous impulses of the heart is--what?

The truth is I think I am in love with her: but I am also mightily in
love with myself. One or the other has to give.

_June_ 25.

If sometimes you saw me in my room by myself, you would say I was a
ridiculous coxcomb. For I walk about, look out of the window then at the
mirror--turning my head sideways perhaps so as to see it in profile. Or
I gaze down into my eyes--my eyes always impress me--and wonder what
effect I produce on others. This, I believe, is not so much vanity as
curiosity. I know I am not prepossessing in appearance--my nose is
crooked and my skin is blotched. Yet my physique--because it is
mine--interests me. I like to see myself walking and talking. I should
like to hold myself in my hand in front of me like a Punchinello and
carefully examine myself at my leisure.

_June_ 28.

Saw my brother A---- off at Waterloo en route for Armageddon. Darling
fellow. He shook hands with P---- and H----, and P---- wished him
"Goodbye, and good luck." Then he held my hand a moment, said "Goodbye,
old man," and for a second gave me a queer little nervous look. I could
only say "Goodbye," but we understand each other perfectly.... It is
horrible. I love him tenderly.

_June_ 29.

_Sleep_

Sleep means unconsciousness: unconsciousness is a solemn state--you get
it for example from a blow on the head with a mallet. It always
weightily impresses me to see someone asleep--especially someone I love
as to-day, stretched out as still as a log--who perhaps a few minutes
ago was alive, even animated. And there is nothing so welcome, unless it
be the sunrise, as the first faint gleam of recognition in the
half-opened eye when consciousness like a mighty river begins to flow in
and restore our love to us again.

When I go to bed myself, I sometimes jealously guard my faculties from
being filched away by sleep. I almost fear sleep: it makes me
apprehensive--this wonderful and unknowable Thing which is going to
happen to me for which I must lay myself out on a bed and wait, with an
elaborate preparedness. Unlike Sir Thomas Browne, I am not always so
content to take my leave of the sun and sleep, if need be, into the
resurrection. And I sometimes lie awake and wonder when the mysterious
Visitor will come to me and call me away from this thrilling world, and
how He does it, to which end I try to remain conscious of the gradual
process and to understand it: an impossibility of course involving a
contradiction in terms. So I shall never know, nor will anybody else.

_July_ 2.

I've had such a successful evening--you've no idea! The pen simply flew
along, automatically easy, page after page in perfect sequence. My style
trilled and bickered and rolled and ululated in an infinite variety; you
will find in it all the subtlest modulations, inflections and suavities.
My afflatus came down from Heaven in a bar of light like the
Shekinah--straight from God, very God of very God. I worked in a golden
halo of light and electric sparks came off my pen nib as I scratched the
paper.

_July_ 3.

_The Clever Young Man_

Argued with R---- this morning. He is a type specimen of the clever
young man. We both are. Our flowers of speech are often forced hot-house
plants, paradoxes and cynicisms fly as thick as driving rain and Shaw is
our great exemplar. I could write out an exhaustive analysis of the
clever young man, and being one myself can speak from "inspired sources"
as the newspapers say.

A common habit is to underline and memorise short, sharp, witty remarks
he sees in books and then on future occasions dish them up for his own
self-glorification. If the author be famous he begins, "As ---- says,
etc." If unknown the quotation is quietly purloined. He is always very
self-conscious and at the same time very self-possessed and very
conceited. You tell me with tonic candour that I am insufferably
conceited. In return, I smile, making a sardonic avowal of my good
opinion of myself, my theory being that as conceit is, as a rule,
implicit and, as a rule, blushingly denied, you will mistake my impudent
confession for bluff and conclude there is really something far more
substantial and honest beneath my apparent conceit. If, on the other
hand, I am conceited, why I have admitted it--I agree with you--but tho'
there is no virtue in the confession being quite detached and
unashamed--still you haven't caught me by the tail. It is very difficult
to circumvent a clever young man. He is as agile as a monkey.

His principal concern of course is to arouse and maintain a reputation
for profundity and wit. This is done by the simple mechanical formula of
antithesis: if you like winkles he proves that cockles are inveterately
better; if you admire Ruskin he tears him to ribbons. If you want to
learn to swim--as it is safer, he shows it is more dangerous to know how
to swim and so on. I know his whole box of tricks. I myself am now
playing the clever young man by writing out this analysis just as if I
were not one myself.

You doubt my cleverness? Well, some years ago in R----'s presence I
called ----"the Rev. Fastidious Brisk,"--the nickname be it recalled
which Henley gave to Stevenson (without the addition of "Rev."). At the
time I had no intention of appropriating the witticism as I quite
imagined R---- was acquainted with it. His unexpected explosion of
mirth, however, made me uncomfortably uncertain of this, yet for the
life of me I couldn't muster the honesty to assure him that my feather
was a borrowed one. A few weeks later he referred to it again as
"certainly one of my better ones"--but still I remained dumb and the
time for explanations went for once and all. Now see what a pretty
pickle I am in: the name "Brisk" or "F.B." is in constant use by us for
this particular person--he goes by no other name, meanwhile I sit and
wonder how long it will be before R---- finds me out. There are all
sorts of ways in which he might find out: he might read about it for
himself, someone might tell him or--worst of all--one day when we are
dining out somewhere he will announce to the whole company my brilliant
appellation as a little after-dinner diversion: I shall at once observe
that the person opposite me _knows_ and is about to air his knowledge;
then I shall look sternly at him and try to hold him: he will hesitate
and I shall land him with a left and right: "I suppose you've read
Henley's verses on Stevenson?" I remark easily and in a moment or so
later the conversation has moved on.

_August_ 1.

Am getting married at ---- Register Office on September 15th. It is
impossible to set down here all the labyrinthine ambages of my will and
feelings in regard to this event. Such incredible vacillations, doubts,
fears. I have been living at a great rate below surface recently. "If
you enjoy only twelve months' happiness," the Doctor said to me, "it is
worth while." But he makes a recommendation.... At his suggestion E----
went to see him and from his own mouth learnt all the truth about the
state of my health, to prevent possible mutual recriminations in the
future.[4] To marry an introspective dyspeptic--what a prospect for
her!... I exercise my microscopic analysis on her now as well as on
myself.... This power in me is growing daily more automatic and more
repugnant. It is a nasty morbid unhealthy growth that I want to hide if
I cannot destroy. It amounts to being able at will to switch myself in
and out of all my most cherished emotions; it is like the case in Sir
Michael Foster's _Physiology_ of a man who, by pressing a tumour in his
neck could stop or at any rate control the action of his heart.

_August_ 2.

House pride in newly-wed folk, for example, H. and D. to-day at Golder's
Green or the Teignmouth folk, is very trying to the bachelor visitor.
They will carry a chair across the room as tenderly as tho' it were a
child and until its safe transit is assured, all conversation goes by
the board. Or the wife suddenly makes a remark to the husband _sotto
voce_, both thereupon start up simultaneously (leaving the fate of
Warsaw undecided) while you, silenced by this unexpected manœuvre, wilt
away in your chair, the pregnant phrase still-born on your lips.
Presently they re-enter the room with the kitten that was heard in the
scullery or with a big stick used to flourish at a little Tomtit on the
rose tree. _She_ apologises and both settle down again, recompose their
countenances into a listening aspect and with a devastating politeness,
pick up the poor, little, frayed-out thread of the conversation where it
left off with: "Europe? you were saying...." I mobilise my scattered
units of ideas but it is all a little chilly for the lady of the house
if she listens with her face and speaks with her lips--her heart is far
from me: she fixes a glassy eye on the tip of my cigarette, waiting to
see if the ash will fall on her carpet.

_August_ 6.

The most intimate and extensive journal can only give each day a
relatively small sifting of the almost infinite number of things that
flow thro' the consciousness. However vigilant and artful a diarist may
be, plenty of things escape him and in any event re-collection is not
re-creation....

To keep a journal is to have a secret liaison of a very sentimental
kind. A _journal intime_ is a super-confidante to whom everything is
told and confessed. For an engaged or married man to have a secret
super-confidante who knows things which are concealed from his lady
seems to me to be deliberate infidelity. I am as it were engaged to two
women and one of them is being deceived. The word "Deceit" comes up
against me in this double life I lead, and insists I shall name a plain
thing bluntly. There is something very like sheer moral obliquity in
these entries behind her back.... Is this journal habit slowly
corrupting my character? Can an engaged or married man conscientiously
continue to write his _journal intime_?

This question of giving up my faithful friend after September I must
consider.

Of course most men have something to conceal from someone. Most married
men are furtive creatures, and married women too. But I have a Gregers
Werle-like passion for life to be lived on a foundation of truth in
every intercourse. I would have my wife know all about me and if I
cannot be loved for what I surely am, I do not want to be loved for what
I am not. If I continue to write therefore she shall read what I have
written....

My Journal keeps open house to every kind of happening in my soul.
Provided it is a veritable autochthon--I don't care how much of a
tatterdemalion or how ugly or repulsive--I take him in and--I fear
sponge him down with excuses to make him more creditable in other's
eyes. You may say why trouble whether you do or whether you don't tell
us all the beastly little subterranean atrocities that go on in your
mind. Any eminently "right-minded" _Times_ or _Spectator_ reader will
ask: "Who in Faith's name is interested in your introspective
muck-rakings--in fact, who the Devil are you?" To myself, a person of
vast importance and vast interest, I reply,--as are other men if I could
but understand them as well. And in the firm belief that whatever is
inexorably true however unpleasant and discreditable (in fact true
things can never lack a certain dignity), I would have you know Mr.
_Times_- and Mr. _Spectator-reader_ that actual crimes have many a time
been enacted in the secrecy of my own heart and the only difference
between me and an habitual criminal is that the habitual criminal has
the courage and the nerve and I have not. What, then, may these crimes
be? Nothing much--only murders, theft, rape, etc. None of them, thank
God; fructify in action--or at all events only the lesser ones. My
outward and visible life if I examine it is merely a series of
commonplace, colourless and thoroughly average events. But if I analyse
myself, my inner life, I find I am both incredibly worse and incredibly
better than I appear. I am Christ and the Devil at the same time--or as
my sister once called me--a child, a wise man, and the Devil all in one.
Just as no one knows my crimes so no one knows of my good actions. A
generous impulse seizes me round the heart and I am suddenly moved to
give a poor devil a £5 note. But no one knows this because by the time I
come to the point I find myself handing him a sixpenny-bit and am quite
powerless to intervene. Similarly my murders end merely in a little
phlegm.

_August_ 7.

_Two Adventures_

On a 'bus the other day a woman with a baby sat opposite, the baby
bawled, and the woman at once began to unlace herself, exposing a large,
red udder, which she swung into the baby's face. The infant, however,
continued to cry and the woman said,--

"Come on, there's a good boy--if you don't, I shall give it to the
gentleman opposite."

Do I look ill-nourished?

"'Arma virumque cano,'" a beggar said to me this morning in the High
Street, "or as the boy said, 'Arms and the man with a dog,' mistaking
the verb for the noun. Oh! yes, sir, I remember my Latin. Of course, I
feel it's rather invidious my coming to you like this, but everything is
absolutely 'non est' with me," and so on.

"My dear sir," I answered expansively, "I am as poor as you are. You at
least have seen better days you say--but I never have."

He changed in a minute his cringeing manner and rejoined:

"No, I shouldn't think you had," eyeing me critically and slinking off.

Am I _so_ shabby?

_August_ 8.

By Jove! I hope I live! ... Why does an old crock like myself go on
living? It causes me genuine amazement. I feel almost ashamed of myself
because I am not yet dead seeing that so many of my full-blooded
contemporaries have perished in this War. I am so grateful for being
allowed to live so long that nothing that happens to me except death
could upset me much. I should be happy in a coal mine.

_August_12.

Suffering from indigestion. The symptoms include:

Excessive pandiculation,

Excessive oscitation,

Excessive eructation,

Dyspnœa,

Sphygmic flutters,

Abnormal porrigo,

A desiccated epidermis.

_August_ 16.

_Lice or "Creeping Ferlies"_[5]

I probably know more about Lice than was ever before stored together
within the compass of a single human mind! I know the Greek for Louse,
the Latin, the French, the German, the Italian. I can reel off all the
best remedies for Pediculosis: I am acquainted with the measures adopted
for dealing with the nuisance in the field by the German Imperial Board
of Health, by the British R.A.M.C., by the armies of the Russians, the
French, the Austrians, the Italians. I know its life history and
structure, how many eggs it lays and how often, the anatomy of its
brain and stomach and the physiology of all its little parts. I have
even pursued the Louse into ancient literature and have read old medical
treatises about it, as, for example, the _De Phthiriasi_ of Gilbert de
Frankenau. Mucius the lawgiver died of this disease so also did the
Dictator Scylla, Antiochus Epiphanes, the Emperor Maximilian, the
philosopher Pherecydes, Philip II. of Spain, the fugitive Ennius,
Callisthenes, Alcman and many other distinguished people including the
Emperor Arnauld in 899. In 955, the Bishop of Noyon had to be sewn up in
a leather sack before he could be buried. (See _Des Insectes reputés
venimeux_, par M. Amoureux Fils, Doctor of Medicine in the University of
Montpellier, Paris, 1789.) In Mexico and Peru, a poll-tax of Lice was
exacted and bags of these treasures were found in the Palace of
Montezuma (see Bingley, _Animal Biog_., first edition, iii.). In the
_United Service Magazine_ for 1842 (clix., 169) is an account of the
wreck of the _Wager_, a vessel found adrift, the crew in dire straits
and Captain Cheap lying on the deck--"like an ant-hill."

So that as an ancient writer puts it, "you must own that for the
quelling of human pride and to pull down the high conceits of mortal
man, this most loathesome of all maladies (Pediculosis) has been the
inheritance of the rich, the wise, the noble and the mighty--poets,
philosophers, prelates, princes, Kings and Emperors."

In his well-known _Bridgewater Treatise_, the Rev. Dr. Kirby, the Father
of English Entomology, asked: "Can we believe that man in his pristine
state of glory and beauty and dignity could be the receptacle of prey so
loathesome as these unclean and disgusting creatures?" (Vol. I., p. 13).
He therefore dated their creation _after_ the Fall.

The other day a member of the staff of the Lister Institute called to
see me on a lousy matter, and presently drew some live Lice from his
waistcoat pocket for me to see. They were contained in pill boxes with
little bits of muslin stretched across the open end thro' which the
Lice could thrust their little hypodermic needles when placed near the
skin. He feeds them by putting these boxes into a specially constructed
belt and at night ties the belt around his waist and all night sleeps in
Elysium. He is not married.

In this fashion, he has bred hundreds from the egg upwards and even
hybridised the two different species!

In the enfranchised mind of the scientific naturalist, the usual
feelings of repugnance simply do not exist. Curiosity conquers
prejudice.

_August_ 27.

Am spending my summer holidays in the Lakes at Coniston with G---- and
R----.... I am simply consumed with pride at being among the mountains
at last! It is an enormous personal success to have arrived at Coniston!

_August_ 29.

Climbed a windy eminence on the other side of the Lake and had a
splendid view of Helvellyn--like a great hog's back. It is fine to walk
over the elastic turf with the wind bellowing into each ear and swirling
all around me in a mighty sea of air until I was as clean-blown and
resonant as a sea-shell. I moved along as easily as a disembodied spirit
and felt free, almost transparent. The old earth seemed to have soaked
me up into itself, I became dissolved into it, my separate body was
melted away from me, and Nature received me into her deepest
communion--until, UNTIL I got on the lee side of a hedge where the calm
brought me back my gaol of clay.

_September_ 1.

Fourteen days hence I shall be a married man. But I feel most dejected
about it. When I fell down the other day, I believe I slightly concussed
my spinal column, with the result that my 1913 trouble has returned, but
this time on the _left_ side! paralysis and horrible vertigo and
presentiments of sudden collapse as I walk.

_September_ 2.

I fear I have been overdoing it in this tempting mountain region.
Walking too far, etc. So I am slacking. It was fortunate I did not get
concussion of the brain--I came within an inch of it: the hair of my
head brushed the ground.

_A Buxom Rogue in Earthenware_

I knocked at the door of Sunbeam Cottage the other morning to know if
they had a boat for hire. The door was promptly opened by a plump,
charming little wench of about 17, and I caught a glimpse of the kitchen
with its gunrack holding two fowling pieces, a grandfather clock in one
corner and a dresser full of blueish china.

"We don't let our boat out for hire," she answered with a smile so
honest and natural and spontaneous that I was already saying to myself I
had never met with anything like it at all when she stretched up her
bare, dairy-maid arm--strong, creamy and soft, just reached a big key
strung to a wooden block and lying on the top shelf of the dresser and
at once handed it to me with:

"But you are quite welcome to use it and here is the key to the
boathouse."

I now felt certain that she was one in a million and thanked her most
awfully. I have never met such swiftly-moving generosity.

"It's very nice on the Lake just now," she said. "I like to lie in the
boat with a book and let her drift."

I asked her if she would not come too, but this tight little fairy was
too busy in the house. She is Clara Middleton done in earthenware.

Subsequently R---- and I often visited the cottage and we became great
friends, her mother showing us some letters she received as a girl from
John Ruskin--a great friend of hers. The gamekeeper himself said that
for his part he could never read Ruskin's books--it was like driving a
springless cart over a rocky road. We all laughed and I said he was
prejudiced in view of the letters which began: "My darling," and
finished up "Yr loving J.R."

But Mrs. ---- said he had never read them, and Madge (ah! that name!)
said her father had never shewn the least interest in them at which we
laughed again, and the gamekeeper laughed too. He is such a jolly
man--they all are delightfully simple, charming folk and we talked of
Beasts and Birds that live on the mountains.

_September_ 4.

Bathed in the Lake from the boat. It was brilliantly fine. R---- dipped
her paddles in occasionally just to keep the boat from grounding. Then I
clambered over the bows and stood up to dry myself in the sun like one
of Mr. Tuke's young men.

_September_ 7.

My 26th birthday. In London again. Went straight to the Doctor and
reported myself. I quite expected him to forbid the marriage as I could
scarcely hobble to his house. To my amazement, he apparently made light
of my paralysis, said it was a common accident to bruise the _os
coccyx_, etc.

_September_ 8.

Am staying at ---- for a few days to rest and try to be better by that
fateful 11th, when I am married.

_Later_: My first experience of a Zeppelin raid. Bombs dropped only a
quarter of a mile away and shrapnel from the guns fell on our roof. We
got very pannicky and went into a neighbour's house, where we cowered
down in our dressing-gowns in absolute darkness while bombs exploded and
the dogs barked.

I was scared out of my life and had a fit of uncontrollable trembling.
Later we rang up ---- and ----, and thank Heavens both are safe. A great
fire is burning in London, judging by the red glare. At midnight sat and
drank sherry and smoked a cigar with Mr. ----, my braces depending from
my trousers like a tail and shewing in spite of dressing-gown. Then went
home and had some neat brandy to steady my heart. H---- arrived soon
after midnight. A motor-omnibus in Whitechapel was blown to bits. Great
scenes in the city.

_September_ 9.

Very nervy to-day. Hobbled down the road to see the damage done by the
bombs.

_September_ 10.

A swingeing cold in the head thro' running about on the night of the
raid. Too feeble to walk far, so Mrs. ---- went into the town for me and
purchased my wedding-ring, which cost £2 5s. 0d.



[1] 1917. I am now editing my own Journal--bowdlerising my own book!

[2] A method of collecting insects in winter by shaking moss over white
paper.

[3] 1917. Cf. Sainte-Beuve's Essay on Maurice de Guérin: "Il aimait à se
répandre et presque à se ramifier dans la Nature. Il a exprimé en mainte
occasion cette sensation diffuse, errante; il y avait des jours ou, dans
son amour ou calme, il enviait la vie forte et muette qui règne sons
l'écorce des chênes; il rêvait à je ne sais quelle métamorphose en
arbre...."

[4] Cf. 1916, November 6.

[5] Cf. Burns's poem "On a Louse."




PART III--MARRIAGE


_September_ 12.

This evening we walked thro' the Churchyard reading tombstone
inscriptions. What a lot of men have had wives!

I can't make out what has come over folk recently: the wit, wisdom and
irony on the old tombstones have given place to maudlin sentiment and
pious Bible references. Then on the anniversary of the death the custom
among poorer classes is to publish such pathetic doggerel as the
following--cuttings I have taken from time to time from the local
newspaper in ----:

     "Her wish:

     "'Farewell dear brother, Mother, sisters,
     My life was passed in love for thee.
     Mourn not for me nor sorrow take
     But love my husband for my sake
     Until the call comes home to thee,
     Live thou in peace and harmony.'"

Again:

     "A day of remembrance sad to recall
     But still in my heart he is loved best of all
     No matter how I think of him--his name I oft recall;
     There is nothing left to answer me but his photo on the wall."

Or:

     "One year has passed since that sad day,
     When one we loved was called away.
     God took her home; it was His will,
     Forget her?--No, we never will."

These piteous screeds fill me with loving-kindness and with contempt
alternately in a pendulum-like rhythm. What is the truth about them? Is
the grief of these people as mean and ridiculous as their rhymes? Or is
it a pitiful inarticulateness? Or is it merely vulgar advertisement of
their sorrow? Or does it signify a passionate intention never to
forget?--or a fear of forgetting, the rhymes being used as a fillip to
the memory? Or--most miserable of all--is it just a custom, and one
followed in order to appear respectable in others' eyes? Are they poor
souls? or contemptible fools?

_September_ 14.

There is a ridiculous Cocker spaniel at the house where we are staying.
He must have had a love affair and been jilted, or else he's a sort of
village idiot. The landlady says he's not so silly as he looks--but he
looks very silly: he languishes sentimentally, and when we laugh at him
he looks "hurt." To-day we took him up on the Down and it seemed to
brighten him up. Really, he is sane enough, with plenty of commonsense
and good manners. But he is kept at home in the garden so much, lolling
about all day, that as E---- said, having nothing to do, he falls in love.

The _Saturday Review_ writes: The effect of the "Brides and the Bath"
Case on people with any trace of _nice feeling_ is perhaps not
particularly mischievous, tho' the thing is repulsive and hateful to
them.... To gloat over the details of repulsive horrors, simply _from
motives of curiosity_--this is bad and degrading.

What a lot of repulsive things the nice refined people who read the
_Saturday Review_ must find in the world just now. For example the War.
"Simply from motives of curiosity." Why certainly, no other than these,
concerning one of the most remarkable murders in the annals of crime.
And murders anyhow are damned interesting--which the _Saturday Review_
isn't.

_Chipples_

I was surprised to discover the other day that when I talked of Chipples
no one understood what I meant! It proves to be a dialect word familiar
to all residents in Devonshire and designating spring onions. Anyway
you won't find it in Murray's Dictionary; yet etymologically it is an
extremely interesting word and a thoroughly good word with a splendid
pedigree. To wit:

Italian: Cipollo.

Spanish: Cebolla.

French: Ciboule.

Latin: Cæpulla, dim. of cæpa (_cf_. cive, civot).

Now how did this pretty little alien manage to settle down among simple
Devon folk? What has been the relation between Italy and--say Appledore,
or Plymouth?[1]

_October_ 6.

In London once more, living at her flat and using her furniture.

_The Chalcidoidea_

The Chalcidoidea are minute winged insects that parasitise other
insects, and in the _Memoirs of the Queensland Museum_ (Vol. I., 1912)
you shall find an enormous catalogue of them by a person named Girault
who writes the following dedication:

"I respectfully dedicate this little portion of work to science, common
sense or true knowledge. I am convinced that human welfare is so
dependent upon science that civilisation would not endure without it,
and that what is meant by progress would be impossible. Also I am
convinced that the great majority of mankind are too ignorant, that
education is too archaic and impractical as looked at from the
standpoint of intrinsic knowledge. There is too little known of the
essential unity of the Universe and of things included, for instance,
man himself. Opinions and prejudices rule in the place of what is
true...."

Part II. is dedicated to:

"The genius of mankind, especially to that form of it expressed in
monistic philosophy, whose conceived perception is the highest
attainment reached by man."

I can only echo Whistler's remark one day as he stood before an
execrably bad drawing "God bless my soul"--uttered slowly and
thoughtfully and then repeated.

The beauty of it is that the Editor adds a serious footnote,
dissociating himself, and a Scarabee to whom I shewed the Work, read it
with a clouded brow and then said: "I think it rather out of place in a
paper of this sort." (Tableau.)

_October_ 12.

Down with influenza.

_October_ 13.

A Zeppelin raid last night. I am down with a temperature, but our little
household remained quite calm, thank God. We heard guns going off, and I
had a fit of trembling as I lay in bed. Many dead of heart failure owing
to the excitement.

_October_ 14.

Still in bed. No raid last night. There were two raids on Wednesday, one
at 9.30, and another at midnight. The first time the caretaker of the
flats came up very alarmed to say "Zeppelins about," so we put out the
lights. Then at midnight when everyone else was asleep I heard a big
voice shout up from the street: "Lights out there. They're about again."
Lay still in bed and waited. Distant gunfire.

_October_ 17.

Bad heart attack.

_October_ 18.

Heart intermits. Every three or four minutes. M---- said that I ought to
be getting used to it by now! Phew!! Very nervy and pusillanimous.
Taking strychnine in strong doses. I hope dear E---- does not catch the
'flu. She swallows quinine with large hopes.

_October_ 19.

Staying at R----. Had a ghastly journey down, changing trains twice at
Clapham Junction and at Croydon, heart intermitting all the time in
every position. Poor E---- with me. To-day surprised to find myself still
alive.

_October_ 20.

Better to-day. After much persuasion, I have got E---- to let the flat so
that we can get away into the country outside the Zeppelin zone.

_October_ 24.

Back in London again. Am better, bolstered up with arsenic and
strychnine. Too nervously excited to do any work.

_October_ 25.

The letting of our flat is now in the hands of an agent, and E----, poor
dear, is quite resigned to abandoning all her precious wallpapers, etc.

_November_ 7.

The flat is let and we are now living in rooms at ----, 20 miles out of
London, to the Westward.

_November_ 8.

It is a great relief to be down in the country. Zeppelins terrify me.
Have just had a delightful experience in reading Conrad's new book,
_Victory_--a welcome relief from all the tension of the past two months.
To outward view, I have been merely a youth getting married, catching
the 'flu and giving up a London flat.

Inwardly, I have been whizzing around like a Catherine Wheel. Consider
the items:

Concussion of the spine.

Resulting paralysis of left leg ten days before marriage.

Zeppelin raid (heard a cannon go off for the first time).

Severe cold in the head day before marriage (and therefore wild
anxiety).

Successful marriage with abatement of cold.

Return to our home.

Ten days later, down with influenza.

A second Zeppelin raid.

Bad heart attack.

Then flat sub-let and London evacuated.

The record nauseates me. I am nauseated with myself and my
self-centredness.... Suppose I have been "whizzing" as I call it--what
then? They are but subjective trifles--meanwhile other men are seeing
great adventures in Gallipoli and elsewhere. "The _Triumph_ is gone,"
exclaimed the Admiral who in a little group of naval officers on board
the flagship had been watching H.M.S. _Triumph_ sink in the Ægean. He
shuts his telescope with a click and returns in great dudgeon to his own
quarters. How I envy all these men who are participating in this
War--soldiers, sailors, war correspondents--all who live and throb and
are not afraid. I am a timid youth, anæmic, wear spectacles, and am
frightened by a Zep raid! How humiliating. I hate myself for a
white-livered craven: I am suffocated for want of more life and courage.
My damnable body is slowly killing off all my spirit and buoyancy. Even
my mind is becoming blurred. My memory is like an old man's exactly.
(Ask ----.)

       *       *       *       *       *

Yet thro' all my nausea, here I remain happy to discuss myself and my
little mishaps. I'm damned sick of myself and all my neurotic
whimperings, and so I hereby and now intend to lead a new life and throw
this Journal to the Devil. I want to mangle it, tear it to shreds. You
smug, hypocritical readers! you'll get no more of me. All you say I know
is true before you say it and I know _now_ all the criticism you are
going to launch. So please spare yourself the trouble. You cannot
enlighten me upon myself. I _know_. I disgust myself--and you, and as
for you, you can go to the Devil with this Journal.

_Finis_

_November_ 27.

To-day, armed with a certificate from my Doctor in a sealed envelope and
addressed "to the Medical Officer examining Mr. W.N.P. Barbellion," I
got leave to attend the recruiting office and offer my services to my
King and Country. At the time, the fact that the envelope was sealed
caused no suspicion and I had been comfortably carrying the document
about in my pocket for days past.

Of course I attended merely as a matter of form under pressure of the
authorities, as I knew I was totally unfit--but not quite _how_ unfit.
After receiving this precious certificate, I learnt that K---- was
recruiting Doctor at W----, and he offered to "put me thro' in five
minutes," as he knows the state of my health. So at a time agreed upon,
I went to-day and was immediately rejected as soon as he had
stethoscoped my heart. The certificate therefore was not needed, and
coming home in the train I opened it out of curiosity....

I was quite casual and thought it would be merely interesting to see
what M---- said.

It was.

"Some 18 months ago," it ran, "Mr. Barbellion shewed the just visible
symptoms of ---- ----" and altho' this fact was at once communicated to
my relatives it was withheld from me and M---- therefore asked the M.O.
to respect this confidence and to reject me without stating on what
grounds. He went on to refer to my patellar and plantar reflexes, by
which time I had had enough, tore the paper up and flung it out of the
railway carriage window.

I then returned to the Museum intending to find out what ---- ---- was
in Clifford Allbutt's System of Medicine. I wondered whether it was
brain or heart; and the very thought gave me palpitation. I hope it is
heart--something short and sharp rather than lingering. But I believe it
must be ---- of the brain, the opposite process of softening occurring in
old age. I recall M----'s words to me before geting married: that I had
this "nerve weakness," but I was more likely to succumb to pneumonia
than to any nervous trouble, and that only 12 months' happiness would be
worth while.

       *       *       *       *       *

On the whole I am amazed at the calm way in which I take this news. I
was a fool never to have suspected serious nerve trouble before. Does
dear E---- know? What did M---- tell her when he saw her before our
marriage?

_November_ 28.

As soon as I woke up in this clear, country air this morning, I thought:
---- ----. I have decided never to find out what it is. I shall find out
in good time by the course of events.

A few years ago, the news would have scared me. But not so now. It only
interests me. I have been happy, merry, and quite high-spirited to-day.

_December_ 5.

I believe it's creeping paralysis. My left leg goes lame after a short
walk. Fortunately E---- does not take alarm.

_December_ 17.

Spent the last two days, both of us, in a state of unrelieved gloom. The
clouds never lifted for a moment--it's awful. I scarcely have spoken a
word.... And eugenically, what kind of an infant would even a Mark
Tapley expect of a father with a medical history like mine, and a mother
with a nervous system like hers?... Could anything be more unfortunate?
And the War? What may not have happened by this time next year? My
health is grotesque.

_December_ 20.

I wonder if she knows. I believe she does but I am afraid to broach the
matter in case she doesn't. I think she must know something otherwise
she would show more alarm over my leg, and when I went to the Recruiting
Office she seemed to show no fear whatever lest they took me. Several
times a day in the middle of a talk, or a meal, or a kiss, this problem
flashes thro' my mind. I look at her but find no solution. However--for
the present--the matter is not urgent.


[1] The English Dialect Dictionary derives the word from Old French
_chiboule_, and gives a reference to Piers Plowman. Why hasn't such an
old and useful word become a part of the English language like others
also brought over at the time of the Norman Conquest?




1916


_February_ 1.

Since I last wrote--a month ago--I have recovered my buoyancy after a
blow which kept me under water so long I thought I should never come up
and be happy again.... I was reciting my woes to R----, and gaining
much relief thereby, when we espied another crony on the other side of
the street, crossed over at once, bandied words with him and then walked
on, picking up the thread of my lugubrious story just where I had left
off--secretly staggered at my emotional agility. I've got to this
now,--I simply don't care.

_February_ 2.

"And she draiglet all her petticoatie, Coming thro' the rye." These
words have a ridiculous fascination for me; I cannot resist their
saccharine, affectionate, nay amorous jingle and keep repeating them
aloud all over the house--as Lamb once kept reciting "Rose Aylmer."

_February_ 16.

We took possession of our country cottage to-day: very charming and
overlooking a beautiful Park.

       *       *       *       *       *

Have just discovered the Journal of the De Goncourts and been reading it
greedily. Life has really been a commodity. I am boiling over with
vitality, chattering amiably to everyone about nothing--argumentative,
sanguine, serious, ridiculous. I called old R---- a Rapscallion, a
Curmudgeon, and a Scaramouche, and E---- a trull, a drab, a trollop, a
callet. "You certainly are a unique husband," said that sweet little
lady, and I....

With me, one of the symptoms of delirium is always a melodramatic
truculence! I shake my fist in R----'s face and make him explode with
laughing.... The sun to-day, and the great, whopping white clouds all
bellied out, made me feel inside quite a bright young dog wriggling its
body in ecstatic delight let loose upon the green sward.

"You must come down for a week end," I said to R---- at lunch. "Come down
as soon as you can. You will find every comfort. It is an enormous
house--I have not succeeded in finding my way about it and--it's
dangerous to lose yourself--makes you late for dinner. When you arrive
our gilded janitor will say: 'I believe Mr. Barbellion is in the
library.'"

"Black eunuchs wait on you at dinner, I suppose," R---- rejoined.

"Oh! yes and golden chandeliers and a marble stair-case--all in barbaric
splendour."

"Yes, I shall certainly be glad to come down," said R----,
phlegmatically.

And so on and so on. Words, idle words all day in a continuous rush. And
I am sure that the match which fired the gun-powder was the discovery of
the De Goncourts' Journal! It's extraordinary how I have been going on
from week to week quite calmly for all the world as if I had read all
the books and seen all the places and done everything according to the
heart's desire. This book has really jolted me out of my complacency: to
think that all this time, I have been dead to so much! Why I might have
died unconscious that the De Goncourts had ever lived and written their
colossal book and now I am aware of it, I am all in a fever to read it
and take it up into my brain: I might die now before I have finished
it--a thought that makes me wild with desire just as I once endured most
awful pangs when I felt my health going, and believed that I might die
before having ever been in love--to die and never to have been in love!
--for an instant at a time this possibility used to make me writhe.

_March_ 22.

R---- has an unpleasant habit of making some scarifying announcement
drawing forth an explosive query from me and then lapsing at once into
an eleusinian silence: he appears to take a sensuous pleasure in the
pause that keeps you expectant. I could forgive a man who keeps you on
tenterhooks for two puffs in order to keep his pipe alight, but
R---- shuts up out of sheer self-indulgence and goes on gazing at the
horizon with the eyes of a seer (he thinks) trying to cod me he sees a
portent there only revealed to God's elect.

I told him this in the middle of one of his luxurious silences. "I will
tell you," he said deliberately, "when we reach the Oratory." (We were
in Brompton Road.)

"Which side of it?" I enquired anxiously. "This or that?"

"That," said he, "will depend on how you behave in the meantime."

_April_ 3.

We met a remarkable Bulldog to-day in the street, humbly following
behind a tiny boy to whom it was attached by a piece of string. At the
time we were following in the wake of three magnificent Serbian
Officers, and I was particularly interesting myself in the curious cut
of their top boots. But the Bulldog was the Red Herring in our path.

"Is that a Dog?" I asked the little boy.

He assured me that it was, and so it turned out to be, tho' Bull-frog
would have been a better name for it, the forelegs being more bandied,
the back broader and the mouth wider than in any Bulldog I have ever
seen. It was a super-Bulldog.

We turned and walked on. "There," said R----, "now we have lost our
Serbian Officers."

_April_ 4.

"May I use your microscope?" he asked.

"By all means," I said with a gesture of elaborate politeness.

He sat down at my table, in my chair, and used my instrument--becoming
at once absorbed and oblivious to my banter as per below:

"As Scotchmen," I said, "are monuments rather than men, this latest raid
on Edinboro's worthy inhabitants must be called vandalism rather than
murder."

No answer. I continued to stand by my chair.

"How pleased Swift, Johnson, Lamb, and other anti-Caledonians would
be...."

"Hope you don't mind my occupying your chair a little longer," the
Scotchman said, "but this is a larva, has curious maxillæ...." and his
voice faded away in abstraction.

"Oh! no--go on," I said, "I fear it is a grievous absence of hospitality
on my part in not providing you with a glass of whiskey. Can I offer you
water, Sir?"

No answer.

Another enthusiast ushered himself in, was greeted with delight by the
first and invited to sit down. I pulled out a chair for him and said:

"Shave, sir, or hair cut?"

"If you follow along to the top of the galea," No. I droned on
imperturbably, "you will...." etc.

I got tired of standing and talking to an empty house but at last they
got up, apologising and making for the door.

I entreated them not to mention the matter--my fee should be nominal--I
did it out of sheer love, etc.

They thanked me again and would have said more but I added blandly:

"You know your way out?" They assured me they did (having worked in the
place for 30 years and more)--I thanked God--and sat down to my table
once more.

(These reports of conversations are rather fatuous: yet they give an
idea of the sort of person I have to deal with, and also the sort of
person I am among this sort of person.)

_April_ 6.

_The Housefly Problem_--1916

For weeks past we have all been in a terrible flutter scarcely
paralleled by the outbreak of Armageddon in August, 1914. The spark
which fired almost the whole building was a letter to the _Times_
written by Dr. ----, making public an ignominious confession of
ignorance on the part of Entomologists as to how the Housefly passed the
winter. In reply, many correspondents wrote to say they hibernated, and
one man was even so temerarious as to quote to us Entomologists the
exact Latin name of the Housefly: viz., _Musca domestica_. We asked for
specimens and enormous numbers of flies at once began to arrive at the
Museum, alive and dead--and not a Housefly among them! So there was a
terrible howdedo.

One of the correspondents was named "Masefield." "Not Masefield the
poet?" an excited dipterist asked. I reassured him.

"I've a good mind," said Dr. ----, "to reply to this chap who's so
emphatic and give him a whigging--only he's climbing down a bit in this
second letter in to-day's issue." I strongly advocated clemency.

But still the affair goes on. Every morning sees more letters and more
flies sent by all sorts of persons--we seem to have set the whole world
searching for Houseflies--Duchesses, signalmen, farmers, footmen. Every
morning each fresh batch of flies is mounted on pins by experts in the
Setting Room, and an Assistant's whole time is devoted to identifying,
arranging, listing and reporting upon the new arrivals. At the last
meeting of the Trustees a sample collection was displayed to show
indubitably that the insects which hibernate in houses are not _Musca
domestica_ but _Pollenia rudis_. I understand the Trustees were
appreciative.

An observant eye can now discover state visits to our dipterists from
interested persons carrying their flies with them, animated discussions
in the corridor, knots of excited enthusiasts in the Lavatory, in the
Library, everywhere--and everywhere the subject discussed is the same:
How does the Housefly pass the winter? As one passes one catches: "In
Bakehouses certainly they are to be found but...." or a wistful voice,
"I wish I had caught that one in my bathroom three winters ago--I am
certain it was a Housefly." The Doctor himself--a gallant
Captain--wanders from room to room stimulating his lieutenants to make
suggestions, and examining every answer to the great interrogative on
its merits, no matter how humble or insignificant the person who makes
it. Then of an afternoon he will entirely disappear, and word goes round
that he has set forth to examine a rubbish heap in Soho or Pimlico. As
the afternoon draws to its close someone enquires if he has come back
yet; next morning a second asks if I had seen him, then a third
announces mournfully that he has just been holding conversation with
him, but that nothing at all was found in the rubbish heap.

The great sensation of all occurred last week when somebody ran along
the corridor crying that Mr. ---- had just found a Housefly in his room.
We were all soon agog with the news, and the excited Captain was
presently espied setting out for the scene of operations with a killing
bottle and net. The insect was promptly impounded and identified as a
veritable _Musca domestica_. A consultation being held to sit on the
body, a lady finally laid information that two "forced Houseflies"
hatched the day before had escaped from her possession. She suggested
Mr. ----'s specimen was one of them.

"How would it get from your room to Mr. ----'s?" she

was immediately asked. And breathless, we all heard her answer
deliberately and quite audibly that the fugitive may have gone out of
her window, up the garden and in by Mr. ----'s window, _or_ it may have
gone out of her door, up the corridor and in by his door. I wanted to
know why it should have entered Mr. ----'s room as he is not a dipterist
but a microlepidopterist. They looked at me sternly and we slowly
dispersed.

This morning, the Dr. came to me with a newspaper cutting in his hand,
saying, "_The Times_ is behindhand." He handed me the slip. It was a
clipping from to-day's _Times_ about a sackful of flies which had been
taken from Wandsworth Clock Tower in a state of hibernation.

"Behindhand?" I asked timidly, for I felt that all the story was not in
front of me.

"Why, yes. Don't you know?"

I knew nothing, but was prepared for anything.

"_The Star_, two days ago," he informed me, "had a paragraph about
this--headed 'Tempus fugit' "--this last in a resentful tone as tho' the
frivolous reporter were attempting to discredit our mystery.

There was a long pause. Neither of us spoke. Then he slowly said:

"I wonder why _The Times_ is so behindhand. This is two days late."

_May_ 5.

Hulloa, old friend: how are you? I mean my Diary. I haven't written to
you for ever so long, and my silence as usual indicates happiness. I
have been passing thro' an unbroken succession of calm happy days,
walking in the woods with my darling, or doing a little gentle gardening
on coming home in the evening--and the War has been centuries away.
Later on towards bedtime, E---- reads Richard Jefferies, I play Patience
and Mrs. ---- makes garments for Priscilla.

The only troubles have been a chimney which smokes and a neighbour's dog
which barks at night. So to be sure, I have made port after storm at
last--and none too soon. To-day my cheerfulness has been rising in a
crescendo till to-night it broke in such a handsome crest of pure
delight that I cannot think of going to bed without recording it.

_Pachmann_

After sitting on the wall around the fountain in the middle of Trafalgar
Square, eating my sandwiches and feeding the Pigeons with the crumbs, I
listened for a moment to the roar of the traffic around three sides of
the Square as I stood in the centre quite alone, what time one fat old
pigeon, all unconcerned, was treading another. It was an extraordinary
experience: motor horns tooted incessantly and it seemed purposelessly,
so that one had the fancy that all London was out for a joy-ride--it was
a great British Victory perhaps, or Peace Day.

Then walked down Whitehall to Westminster Bridge in time to see the 2
o'clock boat start upstream for Kew. I loitered by the old fellow with
the telescope who keeps his pitch by Boadicea: I saw a piper of the
Scots Guards standing near gazing across the river but at nothing in
particular--just idling as I was. I saw another man sitting on the stone
steps and reading a dirty fragment of newspaper. I saw the genial,
red-faced sea-faring man in charge of the landing stage strolling up and
down his small domain,--chatting, jesting, spitting, and making fast a
rope or so. Everything was _alive_ to the finger tips, vividly shining,
pulsating.

Arrived at Queen's Hall in time for Pachmann's Recital at 3.15.... As
usual he kept us waiting for 10 minutes. Then a short, fat, middle-aged
man strolled casually on to the platform and everyone clapped
violently--so it was Pachmann: a dirty greasy looking fellow with long
hair of dirty grey colour, reaching down to his shoulders and an ugly
face. He beamed on us and then shrugged his shoulders and went on
shrugging them until his eye caught the music stool, which seemed to
fill him with amazement. He stalked it carefully, held out one hand to
it caressingly, and finding all was well, went two steps backwards,
clasping his hands before him and always gazing at the little stool in
mute admiration, his eyes sparkling with pleasure, like Mr. Pickwick's
on the discovery of the archeological treasure. He approached once more,
bent down and ever so gently moved it about 7/8ths of an inch nearer
the piano. He then gave it a final pat with his right hand and sat down.

He played Nocturne No. 2, Prelude No. 20, a Mazurka and two Etudes of
Chopin and Schubert's Impromptu No. 4.

At the close we all crowded around the platform and gave the queer,
old-world gentleman an ovation, one man thrusting up his hand which
Pachmann generously shook as desired.

As an encore he gave us a Valse--"Valse, Valse," he exclaimed
ecstatically, jumping up and down in his seat in time to the music. It
was a truly remarkable sight: on his right the clamorous crowd around
the platform; on his left the seat holders of the Orchestra Stalls,
while at the piano bobbed this grubby little fat man playing divine
Chopin divinely well, at the same time rising and falling in his seat,
turning a beaming countenance first to the right and then to the left,
crying, "Valse, Valse." He is as entertaining as a tumbler at a variety
hall.

As soon as he had finished, we clapped and rattled for more, Pachmann
meanwhile standing surrounded by his idolaters in affected despair at
ever being able to satisfy us. Presently he walked off and a scuffle was
half visible behind the scenes between him and his agent who sent him in
once more.

The applause was wonderful. As soon as he began again it ceased on the
instant, and as soon as he left off it started again
immediately--nothing boisterous or rapturous but a steady, determined
thunder of applause that came regularly and evenly like the roar from
some machine.

_May_ 20.

Spent a quiet day. Sat at my escritoire in the Studio this morning
writing an Essay, with a large 4-fold window on my left, looking on to
woods and fields, with Linnets, Greenfinches, Cuckoos calling. This
afternoon while E---- rested awhile I sat on the veranda in the sun and
read _Antony and Cleopatra_.... Yes, I'm in harbour at last. I'd be the
last to deny it but I cannot believe it will last. It's too good to
last and it's all too good to be even true. E---- is too good to be
true, the home is too good to be true, and this quiet restful existence
is too wonderful to last in the middle of a great war. It's just a
little deceitful April sunshine, that's all....[1]

Had tea at the ----. A brilliant summer's evening. Afterwards, we
wandered into the garden and shrubbery and sat about on the turf of the
lawn, chatting and smoking. Mr. ---- played with a rogue of a white
Tomcat called Chatham, and E---- talked about our neighbour, "Shamble
legs," about garden topics, etc. Then I strolled into the drawing-room
where Cynthia was playing Chopin on a grand piano. Is it not all
perfectly lovely?

How delicious to be silent, lolling on the Chesterfield, gazing
abstractedly thro' the lattice window and listening to the lulling
charities of Nocturne No. 2, Op. 37! The melody in the latter part of
this nocturne took me back at once to a cloudless day in an open boat in
the Bay of Combemartin, with oars up and the water quietly and regularly
lapping the gunwales as we rose and fell. A state of the most profound
calm and happiness took possession of me.

_June_ 2.

From the local paper:

"A comrade in the Gloucesters writing to a friend at ---- mentions that
Pte. J---- has been fatally shot in action. J---- was well known here
for years as an especially smart young newsvendor."

_June_ 3.

What a bitter disappointment it is to realise that people the most
intimately in love with one another are really separated by such a
distance. A woman is calmly knitting socks or playing Patience while her
husband or sweetheart lies dead in Flanders. However strong the tie that
binds them together yet they are insufficiently _en rapport_ for her to
sense even a catastrophe--and she must wait till the War Office forsooth
sends her word. How humiliating that the War Office must do what Love
cannot. Human love seems then such a superficial thing. Every person is
a distinct egocentric being. Each for himself and the Devil take the
hindmost. "Ah! but she didn't know." "Yes, but she _ought_ to have
known." Mental telepathy and clairvoyance should be common at least to
all lovers.

This morning in bed I heard a man with a milkcart say in the road to a
villager at about 6.30 a.m., "... battle ... and we lost six cruisers."
This was the first I knew of the Battle of Jutland. At 8 a.m. I read in
the _Daily News_ that the British Navy had been defeated, and thought it
was the end of all things. The news took away our appetites. At the
railway station, the _Morning Post_ was more cheerful, even reassuring,
and now at 6.30 p.m. the Battle has turned into a merely regrettable
indecisive action. We breathe once more.

_June_ 4.

It has now become a victory.

_June_ 11.

Old systems of Classification: Rafinesc's Theory of Fives, Swainson's
Theory of Sevens, Edward Newman's book called _Sphinx Vespiformis_
tracing fives throughout the animal world, Sir Thomas Browne's Quincunx,
chasing fives throughout the whole of nature--in the words of Coleridge,
"quincunxes in Heaven above, quincunxes in the Earth below, quincunxes
in the mind of man, in optic nerves, in roots of trees, in leaves, in
everything!"

       *       *       *       *       *

Old false trails:

The Philosopher's Stone (Balthazar Clæs).[2]

A universal catholicon (Bishop Berkeley's tar-water). Mystical numbers
(as per above).

       *       *       *       *       *

My father was Sir Thomas Browne and my mother Marie Bashkirtseff. See
what a curious hybrid I am!

       *       *       *       *       *

I toss these pages in the faces of timid, furtive, respectable people
and say: "There! that's me! You may like it or lump it, but it's true.
And I challenge you to follow suit, to flash the searchlight of your
self-consciousness into every remotest corner of your life and invite
everybody's inspection. Be candid, be honest, break down the partitions
of your cubicle, come out of your burrow, little worm." As we are all
such worms we should at least be honest worms.

       *       *       *       *       *

My gratitude to E---- for plucking me out of the hideous miseries of my
life in London is greater than I can express. If I were the cheap hero
of a ladies' novel I should immolate my journals as a token, and you
would have a pretty picture of a pale young man watching his days go up
in smoke by the drawing-room fire. But I have more confidence in her
sterling good sense, and if I cannot be loved for what I am, I do not
wish to be loved for what I am not.

Since the fateful Nov. 27th, my life has become entirely posthumous. I
live now in the grave and am busy furnishing it with posthumous joys. I
accept my fate with great content, my one-time restless ambition lies
asleep now, my one-time, furious self-assertiveness is anæsthetised by
this great War; the War and the discovery about my health together have
plucked out of me that canker of self-obsession. I sit at home here in
this country cottage in perfect isolation--flattened out by a steam
hammer (tho' it took Armageddon to do it!), yet as cheerful and busy as
a Dormouse laying up store for the winter. For I am almost resigned to
the issue in the knowledge that some day, someone will know, perhaps
somebody will understand and--immortal powers!--even sympathise, "the
quick heart quickening from the heart that's still."

_July_ 19.

_Omniscience_

An omniscient Caledonian asked me to-day:

"Where are the Celebes? Are they E. or N.E. of the Sandwich Group?"

I marked him down at once as my legitimate prey. Sitting back in my
chair, I replied slowly in my most offensive manner:

"The Island of Celebes is of enormous size and curious shape situated in
the Malay Archipelago."

The Caledonian made no sign. Instead of grinning at his error and
confessing to a "floater," he endeavoured to carry on by remarking,
"That of course would be N. of Papua," just for all the world as if his
error was a minor one of latitude and longitude.

Ignoring his comment, I continued:

"From the Zoogeographical point of view, Celebes is unequalled in
importance, having the strangest fauna almost of any island on the face
of the globe. Then there's 'Wallace's Line,'" I said, being purposely
obscure.

The Caledonian said nought but "looked hurt." It was so obvious that he
didn't know, and it was so obvious that I knew that he didn't know, that
after my farcical truculence I expected the tension to dissolve in
laughter. Yet it is hard for a Caledonian to say "God be merciful to me,
ignorant devil that I am." So I pursued him with more information about
"Wallace's Line," with an insouciant air, as much as to say, "Wallace's
Line of course you heard discussed before you were breached."

"Some do say, you know, that the Line is 'all my eye and Betty Martin,'
_e.g._, R----."

This gave him his first opportunity of finding his feet in this
perilously deep water. So he said promptly, eager to seem knowledgeable
with an intelligent rejoinder:

"As! yes, R---- is an authority on Fishes."

I assented. "At the last meeting of the British Ass. he tore the idea to
shreds."

The drowning Caledonian seized at any straw:

"Fishes, however, are not of paramount importance in cases of
geographical distribution, are they?"

I knew he was thinking of _marine_ fishes, but I did not illumine him,
and merely said:

"Oh! yes, of very great importance," at which he looked still more
"hurt," decamped in silence and left me conqueror of the field but
without the spoils of victory: it was impossible to bring him to say "I
do not know"--four mono-syllables was all I wanted from the man who for
months past has been lecturing me on all things from Music and the Drama
to Philosophy, Painting and--Insects.

_July_ 20.

The cradle came a few days ago but I had not seen it until this morning
when I unlocked the cupboard door, looked in and shuddered.

"That's the skeleton in our cupboard," I said on coming down to
breakfast. She laughed, but I really meant it.

E---- keeps a blue bowl replenished with flaming Poppies in our room.
The cottage is plagued with Ear-wigs which fly in at night and get among
the clothes and bedlinen. This morning, dressing, she held up her
chemise to the light saying: "I always do this--you can see their little
heathen bodies then against the light...." Isn't she charming?

_July_ 30.

The other day R---- and I were sitting on a stile on the uplands in
perfect summer weather and talking of happy days before the War--he was
in khaki and I was resting my "gammy" leg.... As we talked, we let our
eyes roam, resting luxuriously wherever we pleased and occasionally
interrupting the conversation with "Look at that cow scratching herself
against the Oak," or "Do you see the oats waving?" In the distance we
saw a man and a boy walking up towards us along the path thro' the corn,
but the eye having momentarily scrutinised them wandered away and the
conversation never paused. When next I looked, they were much
nearer--crossing the furrows in the potato field in fact, and we both
stopped talking to watch--idly. The boy seemed to be about 10 years old,
and it amused us to see his great difficulty in stepping across the
furrows.

"Poor little chap," R---- said, and we laughed.

Then the boy stumbled badly and all at once the man lifted his
walking-stick and beat him, saying ill-naturedly, "Step between the
furrows," and again, "Step between the furrows." Our enchanting little
picture was transfigured in an instant. The "charming little boy" was a
natural idiot--a gross, hefty creature perhaps 30 years of age, very
short and very thick, dressed in a little sailor suit. I said,
"Heavens," and R---- looked positively scared. We stood aside for them
to get over the stile, the "boy" still suffering from his over exertion,
breathing stertorously like a horse pulling uphill and still evidently
fearful of the big stick behind. He scrambled over the stile as best he
could, rolling a wild eye at us as he did so--a large, bulgy eye with
the lower lid swollen and sore, like the eye of a terrified ox on the
way to the slaughter house. So much then for our little picture of
charming childhood! The man followed close at his heels and looked at me
with stern defiant eyes. "Yes, that is my son," his eyes declaimed, "and
I'll thank you to avert your gaze or by the Lord I'll beat you too."

_A Yellow Cat_

Last week, I saw a yellow cat perched up quite high on a window ledge at
the S---- Underground Station in celestial detachment from the crowd of
serious, black-coated gentlemen hustling along to and from the trains.
He had his back turned to us, but as I swept past in the stream, I was
forced to look back a moment, and caught the outline of his whiskers--it
made me smile intensely to myself and secretly I gave the palm to the
cat for wisdom.

_July_ 31.

This War is so great and terrible that hyperbole is impossible. And yet
my gorge rises at those fatuous journalists continually prating about
this "Greatest War of all time," this "Great Drama," this "world
catastrophe unparalleled in human history," because it is easy to see
that they are really more thrilled than shocked by the immensity of the
War. They indulge in a vulgar Yankee admiration for the Big Thing. Why
call this shameful Filth by high sounding phrases--as if it were a
tragedy from Euripides? We ought to hush it up, not brag about it, to
mention it with a blush instead of spurting it out brazen-faced.

Mr. Garvin, for example, positively gloats over the War each week in the
_Observer_: "Last week was one of those pivotal occasions on which
destiny seems to swing"--and so on every week, you can hear him,
historical glutton smacking his lips with an offensive relish.

For my part, I never seem to be in the same mind about the War twice
following. Sometimes I am wonderstruck and make out a list of all the
amazing events I have lived to see since August, 1914, and sometimes and
more often I am swollen with contempt for its colossal imbecility. And
sometimes I am swept away with admiration for all the heroism of the
War, or by some particularly noble self-sacrifice, and think it is
really all worth while. Then--and more frequently--I remember that this
War has let loose on the world not only barbarities, butcheries and
crimes, but lies, lies, lies--hypocrisies, deceits, ignoble desires for
self-aggrandizement, self-preservation such as no one before ever
dreamed existed in embryo in the heart of human beings.

The War rings the changes on all the emotions. It twangs all my strings
in turn and occasionally all at once, so that I scarcely know how to
react or what to think. You see, here am I, a compulsory spectator, and
all I can do is to reflect. A Zeppelin brought down in flames that lit
up all London--now that makes me want to write like Mr. Garvin. But a
Foreign Correspondent's eager discussion of "Italy's aspirations in the
Trentino," how Russia insists on a large slice of Turkey, and so forth,
makes me splutter. How insufferably childish to be slicing up the
earth's surface! How immeasureably "above the battle" I am at times.
What a prig you will say I am when I sneer at such contemptible little
devilries as the Bodies' trick of sending over a little note, "Warsaw is
fallen," into our trenches, or as ours in reply: "Gorizia!"

"There is no difference in principle between the case of a man who loses
a limb in the service of his country and that of the man who loses his
reason, both have an obvious claim to the grateful recognition of the
State."--A morning paper.

A jejune comment like this makes me grin like a gargoyle! Hark to the
fellow--this leader-writer over his cup of tea. But it is a lesson to
show how easily and quickly we have all adapted ourselves to the War.
The War is everything; it is noble, filthy, great, petty, degrading,
inspiring, ridiculous, glorious, mad, bad, hopeless yet full of hope. I
don't know what to think about it.

_August_ 13.

I hate elderly women who mention their legs. It makes me shudder.

       *       *       *       *       *

I had two amusing conversations this morning, one with a jealous old man
of 70 summers who, in spite of his age, is jealous--I can find no other
term--of me in spite of mine, and the other with a social climber. I
always tell the first of any of my little successes and regularly hand
him all my memoirs as they appear, to which he as regularly protests
that he reads very little now.

"Oh! never mind," I always answer gaily, "you take it and read it going
down in the train--it will amuse you." He submits but is always silent
next time I see him--a little, admonitory silence. Or, I mention I am
giving an address at ----, and he says "Oom," and at once begins his
reminiscences, which I have heard many times before, and am sometimes
tempted to correct him when, his memory failing, he leaves out an
essential portion of his story. Thus do crabbed age and boastful youth
tantalise one another.

To the social climber I said slyly:

"You seem to move in a very distinguished entourage during your week
ends."

He smiled a little self-consciously, hesitated a moment and then said:

"Oh! I have a few nice friends, you know."

Now I am sorry, but though I scrutinised this lick-spittle and arch
belly-truck rider very closely, I am quite unable to say whether that
smile and unwonted diffidence meant simple pleasure at the now certain
knowledge that I was duly impressed, or whether it was genuine confusion
at the thought that he had perhaps been overdoing it.

Curiously enough, all bores of whatever kind make a dead set at me. I am
always a ready listener and my thrusts are always gentle. Hence the
pyramids! I constantly act as phlebotomist to the vanity of the young
and to the anecdotage of the senile and senescent.

_August_ 13.

... I stood by his chair and looked down at him, and surveyed carefully
the top of his head, neck, and collar, and with admirable restraint and
calm, considered my most reasonable contempt of him. In perfect silence,
we remained thus, while I looked down at a sore spot in the centre of
his calvarium which he scratches occasionally, and toyed with the fine
flower of my scorn.... But it is a dangerous license to take. One never
knows....

_Equilibrium Restored_

To clear away the cobwebs and to purge my soul of evil thoughts and
bitter feelings, went for a walk this evening over the uplands. Among
the stubble, I sat down for a while with my back against the corn pook
and listened to the Partridges calling. Then wandered around the edge of
this upland field with the wind in my face and a shower of delicious,
fresh rain pattering down on the leaves and dry earth. Then into a wood
among tall forest Beeches and a few giant Larches where I rested again
and heard a Woodpecker tapping out its message aloft.

This ramble in beautiful B----shire country restored my mental and
spiritual poise. I came home serene and perfectly balanced--my
equilibrium was something like the just perceptible oscillation of tall
Larch-tree tops on the heights of a cliff and the sea below with a just
perceptible swell on a calm and perfect June day. I felt exquisite
--superb. I could have walked all the way home on a tight rope.

_September_ 2.

Just recently, I have been going fairly strong. I get frequent colds and
sometimes show unpleasant nerve symptoms, but I take a course of arsenic
and strychnine every month or so in tabloid form, and this helps me over
bad patches.

Under the beatific influence of more comfortable health, the rare flower
of my ambition has raised its head once more: my brain has bubbled with
projects. To wit:

(1) An investigation of the Balancers in Larval Urodeles.

(2) The Present Parlous State of Systematic Zoology (for "Science
Progress").

(3) The Anatomy of the Psocidæ.

Etc.

The strength of my ambition at any given moment is the measure of my
state of health. It must really be an extraordinarily tenacious thing to
have hung on thro' all my recent experiences. Considerately enough this
great Crab lets go of my big toe when I am sunk low in health, yet
pinches devilishly hard as now when I am well.[3]

_A Bad Listener_

When I begin to speak, T---- will sometimes interrupt with his loud,
rasping voice. I usually submit to this from sheer lack of lung power or
I may have a sore throat. But occasionally after the fifth or sixth
interruption I lose my equanimity and refuse to give him ground. I keep
straight on with what I intended to say, only in a louder voice; he
assumes a voice louder still, but not to be denied, I pile Pelion on
Ossa and finally overwhelm him in a thunder of sound. For example:

"The other day"--I begin quietly collecting my thoughts to tell the
story in detail, "I went to the----"

"Ah! you must come and see my pictures----" he breaks in; but I go on
and he goes on and as I talk, I catch phrases: "St. Peters" or"Michael
Angelo" or "Botticelli" in wondrous antiphon with my own "British
Museum" and "I saw there," "two Syracusan," "tetradrachms," until very
likely I reach the end of my sentence before he does his, or perhaps his
rasp drives my remarks out of my head. But that makes no difference, for
rather than give in I go on improvising in a louder and louder voice
when suddenly, at length made aware of the fact that I am talking too,
he stops! leaving me bellowing nonsense at the top of my voice, thus:
"and I much admired these Syracusan tetradrachms, very charming indeed,
I like them, the Syracusan tetradrachms I mean you know, and it will be
good to go again and see them (louder) if possible and the weather keeps
dry (louder) and the moon and the stars keep in their courses, if the
slugs on the thorn (loudest)----" he stops, hears the last few words of
my remarks, pretends to be appreciative but wonders what in Heaven's
name I can have been talking about.

_September_ 3.

This is the sort of remark I like to make: Someone says to me: "You
_are_ a pessimist."

"Ah! well," I say, looking infernally deep, "pessimism is a good policy;
it's like having your cake and eating it at the same time."

Chorus: "Why?"

"Because if the future turns out badly you can say, 'I told you so,' to
your own satisfaction, and if all is well, why you share everyone else's
satisfaction."

Or I say: "No, I can't swim; and I don't want to!"

Chorus: "Why?"

"Because it is so dangerous."

Chorus: "Why?"

The Infernally Wise Youth: "For several reasons. If you are a swimmer
you are likely to be oftener near water and oftener in danger than a
non-swimmer. Further, as soon as you can swim even only a little, then
as an honourable man, it behoves you to plunge in at once to save a
drowning person, whereas, if you couldn't swim it would be merely
tempting Providence."

Isn't it sickening?

_A Jolt_

Yesterday the wind was taken out of my sails. Racing along with
spinnaker and jib, feeling pretty fit and quite excited over some
interesting ectoparasites just collected on some Tinamous, I suddenly
shot into a menacing dead calm: that stiflingly still atmosphere which
precedes a Typhoon. That is to say, my eye caught the title of an
enormous quarto memoir in the _Trans. Roy. Soc._, Edinburgh: The
Histology of ---- ----.

I was browsing in the library at the time when this hit me like a
carelessly handled gaff straight in the face. I almost ran away to my
room.

       *       *       *       *       *

My Pink Form just received amazes me! To be a soldier? C'est incroyable,
ma foi! The possibility even is distracting! To send me a notice
requesting me to prepare myself for killing men! Why I should feel no
more astonished to receive a War Office injunction under dire penalties
to perform miracles, to move mountains, to raise from the dead: My reply
would be: "I cannot." I should sit still and watch the whole universe
pass to its destruction rather than raise a hand to knife a fellow. This
may be poor, anæmic; but there it is, a positive fact.

       *       *       *       *       *

There are moments when I have awful misgivings: Is this blessed Journal
worth while? I really don't know, and that's the harassing fact of the
matter. If only I were sure of myself, if only I were capable of an
impartial view! But I am too fond of myself to be able to see myself
objectively. I wish I knew for certain what I am and how much I am
worth. There are such possibilities about the situation; it may turn out
tremendously, or else explode in a soap bubble. It is the torture of
Tantalus to be so uncertain. I should be relieved to know even the
worst. I would almost gladly burn my MSS. in the pleasure of having my
curiosity satisfied. I go from the nadir of disappointment to the zenith
of hope and back several times a week, and all the time I am
additionally harassed by the perfect consciousness that it is all petty
and pusillanimous to desire to be known and appreciated, that my
ambition is a morbid diathesis of the mind. I am not such a fool either
as not to see that there is but little satisfaction in posthumous fame,
and I am not such a fool as not to realise that all fame is fleeting,
and that the whole world itself is passing away.

       *       *       *       *       *

I smile with sardonic amusement when I reflect how the War has changed
my status. Before the War I was an interesting invalid. Now I am a lucky
dog. Then, I was a star turn in tragedy; now I am drowned and ignored in
an overcrowded chorus. No valetudinarian was ever more unpleasantly
jostled out of his self-compassion. It is difficult to accustom myself
to the new role all at once: I had begun to lose the faculty for
sympathising in others' griefs. It is hard to have to realise that in
all this slaughter, my own superfluous life has become negligible and
scarcely anyone's concern but my own. In this colossal _sauve-qui-peut_
which is developing, who can stay to consider a useless mouth? Am I not
a comfortable parasite? And, God forgive me, an Egotist to boot?

The War is searching out everyone, concentrating a beam of inquisitive
light upon everyone's mind and character and publishing it for all the
world to see. And the consequence to many honest folk has been a keen
personal disappointment. We ignoble persons had thought we were better
than we really are. We scarcely anticipated that the War was going to
discover for us our emotions so despicably small by comparison, or our
hearts so riddled with selfish motives. In the wild race for security
during these dangerous times, men and women have all been sailing so
closehauled to the wind that their eyes have been glued to their own
forepeaks with never a thought for others: fathers have vied with one
another in procuring safe jobs for their sons, wives have been bitter
and recriminating at the security of other wives' husbands. The men
themselves plot constantly for staff appointments, and everyone is
pulling strings who can. Bereavement has brought bitterness and immunity
indifference.

And how pathetically some of us cling still to fragments of the old
regime that has already passed--like ship-wrecked mariners to floating
wreckage, to the manner of the conservatoire amid the thunder of all
Europe being broken up; to our newspaper gossip and parish teas, to our
cherished aims--wealth, fame, success--in spite of all, _ruat coelum!_
Mr. A.C. Benson and his trickling, comfortable Essays, Mr. Shaw and his
Scintillations--they are all there as before, revolving like haggard
windmills in a devastated landscape! A little while ago, I read in the
local newspaper which I get up from the country two columns concerning
the accidental death of an old woman, while two lines were used to
record the death of a townsman at the front from an aerial dart. Behold
this poor rag! staggering along under the burden of the War in a
passionate endeavour to preserve the old-time interest in an old woman's
decease. Yet more or less we are all in the same case: I still write my
Journal and play Patience of an evening, and an old lady I know still
reads as before the short items of gossip in the papers, neglecting
articles and leaders.... We are like a nest of frightened ants when
someone lifts the stone. That is the world just now.

_September_ 5.

... I was so ashamed of having to fall back upon such ignominious
publications for my literary efforts that on presenting him with two
copies, I told the following lie to save my face:

"They were two essays of mine left over at the beginning of the War, you
know. My usual channel became blocked so I had to have recourse to
these."

"Where do you publish as a rule?" he innocently asked.

"Oh! several in the _Manchester Guardian_," I told him out of vanity.
"But of course every respectable journal now has closed down to
extra-war topics."

I lie out of vanity. And then I confess to lying--out of vanity too. So
that one way or another I am determined to make kudos out of myself.
Even this last reflection is written down with an excessive appreciation
of its wit and the intention that it shall raise a smile.

_September_ 9.

Still nothing to report. The anxiety is telling on us all. The nurse has
another case on the 22nd.

       *       *       *       *       *

I looked at myself in the mirror this morning--nude, a most revolting
picture. An emaciated human being is the most unlovely thing in
creation. Some time ago a smart errand boy called out "Bovril" after me
in the street.

On my way to the Station met two robust, brawny curates on the way to
the daily weekday service--which is attended only by two decrepit old
women in black, each with her prayer-book caught up to her breast as if
she were afraid it might gallop off. That means a parson apiece--and in
war time too.

_September_ 10.

My sympathy with myself is so unfailing that I don't deserve anybody
else's. In many respects, however, this Journal I believe gives the
impression that I behave myself in the public gaze much worse than I
actually do. You must remember that herein I let myself go at a stretch
gallop: in life I rein in, I am almost another person. Would you believe
it, E---- says I am full of quick sympathy with others and
extraordinarily cheerful, nay gay. Verily I lead a curious double
existence: among most people, I pass for a complaisant, amiable,
mealy-mouthed, furry if conceited creature. Here I stand revealed as a
contemptuous, arrogant malcontent. My life has embittered me _an fond_,
I have the crabbed temper of the disappointed man insufficiently
developed yet to be very plainly visible beneath my innate affable,
unassuming, humble, diffident, cheerful characteristics. With fools on
every hand I am becoming insolent, aggressive, self-declamatory. Last
evening came home and got down Robert Buchanan's sonnet, "When He
returns and finds the world so drear," and felt constrained to read it
out to E----. I poured out its acid sentiment with the base revenge of a
vitriol thrower, and then became quiescent.

It is a helpless feeling, sitting still and watching circumstances
pounding away at my malleable character and moulding it wrongly.

_September_ 14.

_An American Neighbour_

We have a delightful American neighbour here whose life revolves like
the fly-wheel of an engine. Even when not in eruption his volcanic
energy is always rumbling and can be heard. Seeing he is a globe
trotter, I was surprised to observe his most elaborate precautions for
catching the train and getting a seat when he takes his wife and family
to town. He first of all plants himself and all his property down at a
certain carefully selected point along the platform as if he were in the
wild west lying in wait for a Buffalo. Then as the train comes in, his
eye fixes on an empty compartment as it passes and he dashes off after
it in furious pursuit up the platform, shouting to his family to follow
him. Having lassooed the compartment, squaw and piccaninnies are hustled
in as if there was not a moment to lose, what time the black-coated,
suburban Englishmen look on in pain and silence, and then slowly with
offensive deliberation enter their respective carriages.

_The Stockbroker_

Another neighbour who interests me is mainly notable for his
extraordinary gait. He is a man with a large, round head, a large round,
dissolute looking face and fairly broad shoulders, below which
everything tapers away to a pair of tiny feet neatly booted. These two
little feet are excessively sensitive to road surface--one would say he
had special sense organs on his toes, to judge by the manner in which he
picks out his path along the country road in short, quick, fussy steps:
his feet seem to dissect out the road as if boning a herring. A big
bunion is as good as a sense organ, but his feet are too small and
elegant.

_September_ 24.

The second nurse arrived to-day. Great air raid last night of which we
heard nothing, thank God!

My nerves are giving way under the strain.... One leg (the left) drags
abominably.... We shall want a bath-chair as well as a perambulator.

Crawled up thro' the path-fields to the uplands and sat in a field in
the sun with my back against a haystack. I was so immobile in my
dejection that Flies and Grass-hoppers came and perched about me. This
made me furious. "I am not dead yet," I said, "get away," and I would
suddenly drive them off.... In horrible dejection....

Even my mental powers are disintegrating--that's the rub. Some quite
recent incidents I cannot remember even when reminded of them: they seem
to have passed clean out of my mind--a remarkable sensation this.

My sensibility is dulled too. It chagrins me to find that my present
plight by no means overwhelms me with anguish as it would have done
once. It only worries me. I am just a worried ox.

_September_ 26.

The numbness in my right hand is getting very trying. ... The Baby puts
the lid on it all. Can't you see the sordid picture? I can, and it
haunts me. To be paralysed with a wife and child and no money--ugh!

Retribution proceeds with an almost mathematical accuracy of measure. It
would necessitate a vernier rather than a chain. There is no mercy in
Cause and Effect. It is inhuman clockwork. Every single act expended
brings one its precise equivalent in return....

_September_ 28.

Still nothing to report.

I am astonished at the false impression these entries give of myself.
The picture is incomplete anyhow. It represents the cloud of forebodings
over my inner self but does not show the outward front I present to
others. This is one of almost constant gaiety--unforced and quite
natural. Ask E----, who said yesterday I was like a schoolboy.

     "Camerade, I give you my hand!
     I give you my love more precious than money,
     I give you myself before preaching or law;
     Will you give me yourself? Will you come, travel with me?
     Shall we stick by each other as long as we live?"

She cut this out of her copy of Walt Whitman and gave it me soon after
our engagement. It is very precious to me.

(On Sept. 29th, on the Doctor's advice I went away by the sea alone, my
nerves being all unstrung. For an account of the miseries of this
journey, see Dec. 12th _infra_).

_October_ 3.

A wire to say Susan arrived 2.15 p.m. All well.

_October_ 5.

Home again with my darling. She is the most wonderful darling woman. Our
love is for always. The Baby is a monster.

_October_ 23.

The fact that I can't write, finally bottles me up.[4] Damn! Damn! Damn!
If only I can get my Essay on Journal Writers done. E---- goes on well.
I have a thousand things to say.

_October_ 27.

Still awaiting a reprieve. I hate alarming the Doctor--he's such a
cheerful man so I conceal my symptoms, quite a collection by now.

The prospect of breaking the news to her makes me miserable. I hide away
as much as possible lest she should see. I _must_ speak when she is well
again.

_October_ 28.

Life has been very treacherous to me--this, the greatest treachery of
all. But I don't care. I exult over it. Last night I lay awake and
listened to the wind in the trees and was full of exultation.

Now I can only talk, but nobody to talk to. Shall hire a row of
broomsticks. More and more, the War appears to me a tragic hoax.

_November_ 1.

E---- has had a set-back and is in bed again. However sclerotic my nerve
tissue, I feel as flaccid as a jelly.

My God! how I loathe the prospect of death.

_November_ 3.

I must have some music or I shall hear the paralysis creeping. That is
why I lie in bed and whistle.

"My dear Brown, what am I to do?"[5] (I like to dramatise myself like
that--it is an anodyne).

I feel as if I were living alone on Ascension Island with the tide
coming up continuously, up and up and up.

_November_ 6.

She has known _all_ from the beginning! M---- warned her _not_ to marry
me. How brave and loyal of her! What an ass I have been. I am
overwhelmed with feelings of shame and self-contempt and sorrow for her.
She is quite cheerful and an enormous help.

_November_ 12.

What a wreck my existence has become and--dragging down others with me.

If only I could rest assured that after I am dead these Journals will be
tenderly cared for--as tenderly as this blessed infant! It would be
cruel if even after I have paid the last penalty, my efforts and
sufferings should continue to remain unknown or disregarded. What I
would give to know the effect I shall produce when published! I am
tortured by two doubts--whether these MSS. (the labour and hope of many
years) will survive accidental loss and whether they really are of any
value. I have no faith in either.

_November_ 14.

In fits of panic, I keep saying to myself: "My dear Brown, what am I to
do?" But where is Brown? Brown, you devil! where are you?

... To think how I have acted the Prince to her when really I am only a
beggar!

_November_ 16.

A little better and more cheerful: altho' my impregnable colon still
holds out.

It would be nice if a physician from London one of these days were to
gallop up hotspur, tether his horse to the gate post and dash in waving
a reprieve--the discovery of a cure!

... I was in an impish mood and said: "Oh! dear, I'm full of misery."

"Don't be silly," she said, "so am I."

_November_ 17.

E---- has been telling me some of her emotions during and after her
fateful visit to my Doctor just before our marriage. He did not spare
her and even estimated the length of my life after I had once taken to
my bed--about 12 months. I remember his consulting room so well--all its
furniture and the photograph of Madam Blavatsky over the door, and I
picture her to myself sitting opposite to him in a sullen silence
listening to the whole lugubrious story. Then she said at last: "All
this won't make any difference to me." She went home to her mother in a
dream, along the streets I have followed so often. I can follow all her
footsteps in imagination and keep on retracing them. It hurts, but I do
so because it seems to make her some amends for my being childishly
unconscious at the time. Poor darling woman--if only I had known! My
instinct was right--I felt in my bones it was wrong to marry, yet here
was M---- urging me on. "You marry," her mother said to her, "I'll stand
by you," which was right royal of her. There followed some trying months
of married life with this white hot secret in her bosom as a barricade
to perfect intimacy; me she saw always under this cloud of crude
disgusting pathos making her say a hundred times to herself: "He doesn't
know;" then Zeppelin raids and a few symptoms began to grow obvious,
until what before she had to take on trust from the Doctor came
diabolically true before her eyes. Thank God that's all over at last. I
know her now for all she is worth--her loyalty and devotion, her courage
and strength. If only I had something to give her in return! something
more than the dregs of a life and a constitutional pessimism. I greatly
desire to make some sacrifice, but I am so poor these days, so very much
a pauper on her charity, there is no sacrifice I can make. Even my life
would scarcely be a sacrifice in the circumstances--it is hard not to be
able to give when one _wants_ to give.

_November_ 20.

In the doldrums. Tired of this damnable _far niente_,--I am being gently
smothered under a mountain of feathers. I should like to engage upon
some cold, hard, glittering intellectualism.

"I want to read Kant," I said. The Baby slept, E---- was sewing and
N---- writing letters. I leaned back in my armchair beside the bookshelf
and began to read out the titles of my books in a loud voice.

"My dear!" E---- said.

"I am caressing my past," I answered. "Wiedersheim's _Comparative
Anatomy of Vertebrates_, Smith Woodward's _Vertebrate Palæontology_--why
it's like visiting old prospects and seeing how the moss has grown over
the stones."

I hummed a comic song and then said: "As I can't burn the house down, I
shall go to bed."

N----: "You can talk if you like, it won't interfere."

E----: "He's talking to his besoms."

"Certainly," I said to N----, absent-mindedly.

E----: "You ought to have said 'Thank you.'"

I blew out my cheeks and E---- laughed.

N----: "How do you spell 'regimental'?"

I told her--wrongly, and E---- said I was in a devilish mood.

"If we say that we have no sin" I chanted in reply, "we deceive
ourselves and the truth is not in us." I next gave a bit out of a
speech by Disraeli with exaggerated rhetorical gestures.

E---- (with pity): "Poor young man."

Presently she came over and in a tired way put her arms around my neck
so I immediately began to sing "Rock of Ages, cleft for me," in the
bass, which immediately reminded me of dear old Dad, whose favourite
hymn it was.... Then I imitated the Baby. And then to bed fretful and
very bitter.

_November_ 27.

... I wish I could die of heart failure--and at once! What a luxury that
would be as compared with my present prospect!

A Tomtit on the fence this morning made me dissolve in tears:--self-pity
I believe. I remember Tomtits in ----shire. Put on a gramophone record
and--ugh! but I'm too sick to write.

_November_ 28.

The shock I gave my spinal column in 1915 up in the Lakes undoubtedly
re-awakened activity among the bacteria. Luck for you! I, of all persons
to concuss my spine!!

... I listen to the kettle singing, I look at the pictures in the fire,
read a bit, ask what time it is, see the Baby "topped and tailed," yawn,
blow my nose, put on a gramophone record--I have the idea of passing on
the midnight with no pain to the tune of some healing ragtime.

_November_ 29.

The anniversary of our engagement day two years ago. How mad the idea of
marriage seemed to me--and my instinct was right: if only I had known!
Yet she says she does not regret anything.

       *       *       *       *       *

This morning I turned to read with avidity accounts of the last hours of
Keats, Gibbon, Oscar Wilde and Baudelaire. I gained astonishing comfort
out of this, especially in the last ... who died of G.P.I. in a Brussels
Hospital.

       *       *       *       *       *

E---- is awfully courageous and,--as usual ready to do everything in her
power. How can I ever express sufficient gratitude to these two dear
women (and my wife, above all) for casting in their lot knowingly with
mine?

_December_ 1.

I believe I am good for another 12 months without abnormal worries. Just
now, of course, the Slug ain't exactly on the thorn--on the cabbage in
fact as E---- suggested. The Grasshopper is much of a burden and the
voice of the Turtle has gone from my land (where did all these Bible
phrases come from?). The first bark of the Wolf (God save us, 'tis all
the Animal Kingdom sliding down my penholder) was heard with the
reduction in her work to-day, and I suspect there's worse to come with a
sovereign already only worth 12s. 6d.

_December_ 4.

The Baby touch is the most harrowing of all. If we were childless we
should be merely unfortunate, but an infant....

_December_ 11.

Am receiving ionisation treatment from an electrical therapeutist--a
quack! He is a sort of electrician--still, if he mends my bells I'll
kiss his boots. As for ----, he is no better than a byreman, and I call
him Hodge. This is not the first time I have felt driven to act behind
the back of the Profession. In 1912, being desperate, and M---- worse
than a headache, I greedily and credulously sucked in the advice of my
boarding-house proprietor and went to see a homœopathist in Finsbury
Circus. He proved to be a charlatan at 10s. 6d. a time, and tho' I
realised it at once, I religiously travelled about for a month or more
with tinctures and drop-bottle. I could write a book on the Doctors I
have known and the blunders they have made about me.... The therapeutist
took me for 33. I feel 63. I am 27. What a wreck I am, and....

_December_ 12.

It is so agreeable to be able to write again that I write now for the
sheer physical pleasure of being able to use a pen and form letters.

_An Adventure in Search of Health_

About the end of September, I began to feel so ill that Nurse went for
the Doctor who assured me that E---- was all right--I need not
worry--"You go away at once and get some fresh air," and so forth. "I
feel quite ill," I said, struggling to break the news.

"Sort of nervous?" he enquired good-naturedly, "run down? I should get
right away at once."

I began tentatively. "Well, I have a rather long medical history and
perhaps ... you ... might care to read the certificate of my London
Doctor?"

I went to my escritoire and returned with M----'s letter addressed to
"The M.O. examining Mr. B."

Hodge pulled out the missive, studied the brief note carefully and long,
at the same time drawing in his breath--deeply, and gnawing the back of
his hand.

"I know all about it," I said to relieve him.

"Is it quite certain? about this disease?" he said presently. "You are
very young for it."

"I think there is no doubt," and he began to put me thro' the usual
tricks.

"I should go right away at once," he said, "and go on with your arsenic.
And whatever you do--don't worry--your wife is all right."

After beseeching him to keep silence about it as I thought she did not
know, I shewed him out and locked up the certificate again.

Next morning I felt thoroughly cornered: I was not really fit enough to
travel; my hand and leg were daily growing more and more paralysed and
J---- wired to say she could not put me up as they were going away for
the week end. So I wired back engaging rooms, as with the nurse in the
house and E---- as she was, I simply could not stay at home....

On the way to the Station I was still in two minds whether or not to
pull the taxi up at the Nursing Home and go inside, but harassing debate
as it was, our rapidly diminishing bank balance finally drove me on.

---- came up to London with me and sought out a comfortable corner seat,
but by the time the train left, a mother and a crying child had got in
and everywhere else was full. A girl opposite who saw ---- hand me a
brandy flask and knew I was ill, looked at me compassionately.

At Reading, another woman with a baby got in and both babies cried in
chorus, jangling my nerves to bits!--until I got out into the corridor,
by a miracle not falling down, with one leg very feeble and treacherous.
All seats were taken, excepting a first-class compartment where I looked
in enviously at a lucky youth stretched out asleep full length along the
empty seat.

All the people and the noise of the train began to make me fret, so I
sought out the repose of a lavatory where I remained eating sandwiches
and an apple for the best part of an hour. It was good to be alone.

Later on, I discovered an empty seat in a compartment occupied by
persons whose questionable appearance my short sight entirely failed to
make me aware of until I got inside with them. They were a family of
Sheenies, father, mother and three children, whose joint emanations in a
closed-up railway carriage made an effluvium like to kill a regiment of
guards. They were E. end pawnbrokers or dealers in second-hand clothes.

I was too nervous to appear rude by immediately with-drawing, so I said
politely to the man clad in second-hand furs: "Is that seat taken?"

He affected to be almost asleep. So I repeated. He stared at me and then
said:

"Oh! yes ... but you can have it for a bit if you like."

I sat down timorously on the extreme edge of the seat and stared at, but
could not read, my newspaper out of sheer nervous apprehension. My sole
idea was to get out as soon as I decorously could. Out of the corner of
my eye, I observed the three children--two girls and a boy--all garbed
in black clothes and wearing large clumsy boots with nails and scutes on
the soles. The girls had large inflorescences of bushy hair which they
swung about as they turned their heads and made me shudder. The mother's
face was like a brown, shrivelled apple, topped with a black bonnet and
festooned on each side with ringlets of curly dark hair. Around her neck
a fur tippet: as I live--second-hand clothes dealers from Whitechapel.

The man I dare not look at: I sat beside him and merely imagined.

At ----, I got a decent seat and arrived at T---- jaded, but still
alive, with no one to meet me. Decent rooms on the sea-front.

Next morning J---- went away for the week end and I could not possibly
explain how ill I was: she might have stayed at home.

To preserve my sanity, Saturday afternoon, took a desperate remedy by
hiring a motor-car and travelling to Torquay and back _via_
Babbacombe....

On the Sunday, feeling suddenly ill, I sent for the local medico whom I
received in the drab little room by lamplight after dinner. "I've a
tingling in my right hand," I said, "that drives me nearly silly."

"And on the soles of your feet?" he asked at once.

I assented, and he ran thro' at once all the symptoms in series.

"I see you know what my trouble is," I said shyly. And we chatted a
little about the War, about disease, and I told him of the recent memoir
on the histology of the disease ---- in the _Trans. Roy. Soc_, Edin.
which interested him. Then he went away again--very amiable, very polite
--an obvious _non possumus_....

On Monday at 4 went up to ---- to tea as previously arranged, but found
the house shut up so returned to my rooms in a rage.

After tea, having read the newspapers inside out, sat by the open window
looking out on to the Marine Parade. It was dusk, a fine rain was
falling, and the parade and sea-front were deserted save for an
occasional figure hurrying past with mackintosh and umbrella. Suddenly
as I sat looking out on this doleful scene, a dirge from nowhere in
particular sounded on my ears which I soon recognised as "Robin Adair,"
sung very _lento_ and very _maestoso_ by a woman, with a flute obligato
played by some second person. The tide was right up, and the little
waves murmured listlessly at long intervals: never before I think have I
been plunged into such an abyss of acute misery.

Next day the wire came. But it was too late. The day after that, I was
worse, a single ray of sunshine being the rediscovery of the
second-hand-clothes family from Whitechapel taking the air together on
the front. This dreary party was traipsing along, the parents in their
furs giving an occasional glance at the sea uncomfortably, as if they
only noticed it was wet, and the children still in black and still
wearing their scuted boots, obviously a little uncomfortable in a place
so clean and windswept. I think they all came to the seaside out of
decorum and for the satisfaction of feeling that they could afford it
like other folk, and that old-clothes was as profitable a business as
another.

On Thursday, returned home as I was afraid of being taken ill and having
to go into the public hospital. Arrived home and went to bed and here we
are till Jan. 1st on 3 months' sick leave. However, the swingeing
urtication in my hands and feet has now almost entirely abated and
to-day I went out with E---- and the perambulator, _which I pushed_.

_December_ 13.

_A Baby-Girl_

Walked down the bottom of the road and hung over some wooden railings. A
little village baby-girl aged not more than 3 was hovering about near
me while I gazed abstractedly across the Park at the trees. Presently,
she crawled through the railings into the field and picked up a few dead
leaves--a baby picking up dead leaves! Then she threw them down, and
kicked them. Then moved on again--rustling about intermittently like a
winter Thrush in the shrubbery. At last, she had stumbled around to
where I was leaning over the railings. She stood immediately in front of
me and silently looked up with a steady reproachful gaze: "Ain't you
'shamed, you lazy-bones?" till I could bear her inquisitorial gaze no
longer, and so went and hung over some more railings further on.

_Service_

He asked for a Tennyson. She immediately went upstairs in the dark, lit
a match and got it for him.

He asked for a Shakespeare. And without a moment's hesitation, she went
upstairs again, lit another match and got that for him.

And I believe if he had said "Rats," she would have shot out silently
into the dark and tried to catch one for him. Only a woman is capable of
such service.

_Hardy's Poetry_


                                "You did not come,
     And marching time drew on and wore me numb--
     Yet less for loss of your dear presence there
     Than that I thus found lacking in your make
     That high compassion which can overbear
     Reluctance for pure loving-kindness' sake
     Grieved I, _when, as the hope-hour stroked its sum_,
                                     You did not come."

I thoroughly enjoy Hardy's poetry for its masterfulness, for his sheer
muscular compulsion over the words and sentences. In his rough-hewn
lines he yokes the recalcitrant words together and drives them along
mercilessly with something that looks like simple brute strength.
Witness the triumphant last line in the above where the words are
absolute bondslaves to his exact meaning, his indomitable will. All
this pleases me the more for I know to my cost what stubborn, sullen,
hephæstian beasts words and clauses can sometimes be. It is nice to see
them punished. Hardy's poetry is Michael Angelo rather than Greek,
Browning not Tennyson.

_December_ 14.

What a day! After a night of fog signals, I awoke this morning to find
it still foggy and the ground covered with a grey rime. All day the fog
has remained: I look out now thro' the yellowish atmosphere across a
field which is frosted over, the grass and brambles stiff and glassy. My
back is aching and the cold is so intense that unless I crouch over the
fire hands and feet become immediately stone-cold. All day I have
crouched over the fire, reading newspapers, listening to fog signals and
the screaming of the baby.... I have been in a torpor, like a Bat in a
cavern--really dead yet automatically hanging on to life by my hind
legs.

_December_ 15.

"To stand upon one's guard against Death exasperates her malice and
protracts our sufferings." W.S. Landor.

_December_ 19.

The Parson called, over the christening of the baby. I told him I was an
agnostic. "There are several interesting lines of thought down here," he
said wearily, passing his hand over his eyes. I know several men more
enthusiastic over Fleas and Worms than this phlegmatic priest, over
Jesus Christ.

_December_ 20.

The reason why I do not spend my days in despair and my nights in
hopeless weeping simply is that I am in love with my own ruin. I
therefore deserve no sympathy, and probably shan't get it: my own
profound self-compassion is enough. I am so abominably self-conscious
that no smallest detail in this tragedy eludes me. Day after day I sit
in the theatre of my own life and watch the drama of my own history
proceeding to its close. Pray God the curtain falls at the right moment
lest the play drag on into some long and tedious anticlimax.

We all like to dramatise ourselves. Byron was dramatising himself when,
in a fit of rhetorical self-compassion, he wrote:

"Oh! could I feel as I have felt or be what I have been, Or weep as I
could once have wept o'er many a vanished scene."

Shelley, too, being an artist could not stand insensible to his own
tragedy and Francis Thompson suggests that he even anticipated his own
end from a passage in _Julian and Maddalo_, "... if you can't swim,
Beware of Providence." "Did no earthly _dixisti_," Thompson asks, "sound
in his ears as he wrote it?"

In any event, it was an admirable ending from the dramatic point of
view; Destiny is often a superb dramatist. What more perfect than the
death of Rupert Brooke at Scyros in the Ægean?[6] The lives of some men
are works of art, perfect in form, in development and in climax. Yet how
frequently a life eminently successful or even eminently ruinous is also
an unlovely, sordid, ridiculous or vulgar affair! Every one will concede
that it must be a hard thing to be commonplace and vulgar even in
misfortune, to discover that the tragedy of your own precious life has
been dramatically bad, that your life even in its ruins is but a poor
thing, and your own miseries pathetic from their very insignificance;
that you are only Jones with chronic indigestion rather than Guy de
Maupassant mad, or Coleridge with a great intellect being slowly
dismantled by opium.

If only I could order my life by line and level, if I could control or
create my own destiny and mould it into some marble perfection! In
short, if life were an art and not a lottery! In the lives of all of us,
how many wasted efforts, how many wasted opportunities, false starts,
blind--how many lost days--and man's life is but a paltry three score
years and ten: pitiful short commons indeed.

Sometimes, as I lean over a five-barred gate or gaze stupidly into the
fire, I garner a bitter-sweet contentment in making ideal
reconstructions of my life, selecting my parents, the date and place of
my birth, my gifts, my education, my mentors and what portions out of
the infinity of knowledge shall gain a place within my mind--that sacred
glebe-land to be zealously preserved and enthusiastically cultivated.
Whereas, my mind is now a wilderness in which all kinds of useless
growths have found an ineradicable foothold. I am exasperated to find I
have by heart the long addresses of a lot of dismal business
correspondents and yet can't remember the last chapters of Ecclesiastes:
what a waste of mind-stuff there! It irks me to be acquainted even to
nausea with the spot in which I live, I whose feet have never traversed
even so much as this little island much less carried me in triumph to
Timbuctoo, Honolulu, Rio, Rome.

_December_ 21.

This continuous preoccupation with self sickens me--as I look back over
these entries. It is inconceivable that I should be here steadily
writing up my ego day by day in the middle of this disastrous war....
Yesterday I had a move on. To-day life wearies me. I am sick of myself
and life. This beastly world with its beastly war and hate makes me
restless, dissatisfied, and full of a longing to be quit of it. I am as
full of unrest as an autumn Swallow. "My soul," I said to them at
breakfast with a sardonic grin, "is like a greyhound in the slips. I
shall have to wear heavy boots to prevent myself from soaring. I have
such an uplift on me that I could carry a horse, a dog, a cat, if you
tied them on to my homing spirit and so transformed my Ascension into an
adventure out of Baron Munchausen." With a gasconnade of contempt, I
should like to turn on my heel and march straight out of this wretched
world at once.

_December_ 22.

_Gibbon's Autobiography_

This book makes me of all people (and especially just now) groan
inwardly. "I am at a loss," he says, referring to the _Decline and
Fall_, "how to describe the success of the work without betraying the
vanity of the writer.... My book was on every table and almost on every
toilette." It makes me bite my lips. Rousseau and his criticism of "I
sighed as a lover; I obeyed as a son," and Gibbon on his dignity in
reply make one of the most ludicrous incidents in literary history. "...
that extraordinary man whom I admire and pity, should have been less
precipitate in condemning the moral character and conduct of a
stranger!" Oh my giddy Aunt! Isn't this _rich_? Still, I am glad you did
not marry her: we could ill spare Madam de Staël, Madam Necker's
daughter, that wonderful, vivacious and warmhearted woman.

"After the morning has been occupied with the labours of the library, I
wish to unbend rather than exercise my mind; and in the interval between
tea and supper, I am far from disdaining the innocent amusement of a
game of cards." How Jane Austen would have laughed at him! The passage
reminds me of the Rev. Mr. Collins saying:

"Had I been able I should have been only too pleased to give you a song,
for I regard music as a harmless diversion and perfectly compatible with
the profession of a clergyman."

"When I contemplate the common lot of mortality," Gibbon writes, "I must
acknowledge I have drawn a high prize in the lottery of life," and he
goes on to count up all his blessings with the most offensive
delight--his wealth, the good fortune of his birth, his ripe years, a
cheerful temper, a moderate sensibility, health, sound and peaceful
slumbers from infancy, his valuable friendship with Lord Sheffield, his
rank, fame, etc., etc., _ad nauseam_. He rakes over his whole life for
things to be grateful for. He intones his happiness in a long recitative
of thanksgiving that his lot was not that of a savage, of a slave, or a
peasant; he washes his hands with imaginary soap on reflecting on the
bounty of Nature which cast his birth in a free and civilised country,
in an age of science and philosophy, in a family of honourable rank and
decently endowed with the gifts of fortune--sleek, complacent,
oleaginous and salacious old gentleman, how I would love to have bombed
you out of your self-satisfaction!

_Masefield's "Gallipoli"_

It amused me to discover the evident relish with which the author of _In
the Daffodil Fields_ emphasises the blood and the flowers in the attack
on Achi Baba. It's all blood and beautiful flowers mixed up together to
Masefield's great excitement.

     "A swear word in a city slum
      A simple swear word is to some--
      To Masefield something more."

                              MAX BEERBOHM.

Still, to call Gallipoli "bloody Hell" is, after all, only a
pedantically exact description. You understand, tho', a very remarkable
book--a work of genius.

_December_ 23.

To be cheerful this Xmas would require a _coup de théâtre_--some sort of
psychological sleight of hand.

I get downstairs at 10 and spend the day reading and writing, without a
soul to converse with. Everything comes to me second-hand--thro' the
newspapers, the world of life thro' the halfpenny _Daily News_, and the
world of books thro' the _Times Literary Supplement_. For the rest I
listen to the kettle singing and make symphonies out of it, or I look
into the fire to see the pictures there....

_December_ 24.

Everyone I suppose engaged in this irony of Xmas. What a solemn lunatic
the world is.

Walked awhile in a beautiful lane close by, washed hard and clean and
deeply channelled by the recent rain. On the hill-top, I could look
right across the valley to the uplands, where on the sky line a few Firs
stood in stately sequestration from common English Oaks, like a group of
ambassadors in full dress. In the distance a hen clucked, I saw a few
Peewits wheeling and watched the smoke rising from our cottage
perpendicularly into the motionless air. There was a clement quiet and a
clement warmth, and in my heart a burst of real happiness that made me
rich even beside less unfortunate beings and beyond what I had ever
expected to be again.

_December_ 26.

"In thus describing and illustrating my intellectual torpor, I use terms
that apply more or less to every part of the years during which I was
under the Circean spells of opium. But for misery--"

(Why do I waste my energy with this damned Journal? I stop. I hate it. I
am going out for a walk in the fog.)

_December_ 31.

_Reminiscences_

For the past few days I have been living in a quiet hermitage of
retrospect. My memories have gone back to the times--remote,
inaccessible, prehistoric--before ever this Journal was begun, when I
myself was but a jelly without form and void--that is, before I had
developed any characteristic qualities and above all the dominant one, a
passion for Natural History.

One day a school friend, being covetous of certain stamps in my
collection, induced me to "swop" them for his collection of birds' eggs
which he showed me nestling in the bran at the bottom of a box. He was a
cunning boy and thought he had the better of the bargain. He little
realised--nor did I--the priceless gift he bestowed when his little fat
dirty hands decorated, I remember, with innumerable warts, picked out
the eggs and gave them to me. In fact, a smile momentarily crossed his
face, he turned his head aside, he spat in happy contemplation of the
deal.

I continued eagerly to add to the little collection of Birds' eggs, but
for a long time it never occurred to me to go out into the country
myself and collect them,--I just _swopped,_ until one day our errand
boy, who stuttered, had bandy legs, and walked on the outside of his
feet with the gait of an Anthropoid, said to me, "I will sh-how you how
to find Birds' n-nests if you like to come out to the w-woods." So one
Saturday, when the backyard was cleaned down and the coal boxes filled,
he and I started off together to a wood some way down the river bank,
where he--my good and beneficent angel--presently showed me a Thrush's
nest in the fork of a young Oak tree. Never-to-be-forgotten moment! The
sight of those blue speckled eggs lying so unexpectedly, as I climbed up
the tree, on the other side of an untidy tangle of dried moss and grass,
in a neat little earthenware cup, caused probably the first tremor of
real emotion at a beautiful object. The emotion did not last long! In a
moment I had stolen the eggs and soon after smashed them--in trying to
blow them, schoolboy fashion.

Then, I rapidly became an ardent field naturalist. My delight in Birds
and Birds' eggs spread in a benignant infection to every branch of
Natural History. I collected Beetles, Butterflies, plants, Birds' wings,
Birds' claws, etc. Dr. Gordon Staples in the _Boy's Own Paper_, taught
me how to make a skin, and I got hold of a Mole and then a Squirrel (the
latter falling to my prowess with a catapult), stuffed them and set them
up in cases which I glazed myself. I even painted in suitable
backgrounds, in the one case a mole-hill, looking, I fear, more like a
mountain, and in the other, a Fir tree standing at an impossible angle
of 45°. Then I read a book on trapping, and tried to catch Hares. Then I
read Sir John Lubbock's _Ants, Bees and Wasps_, and constructed an
observation Ants' nest (though the Ants escaped).

In looking back to these days, I am chiefly struck by my extraordinary
ignorance of the common objects of the countryside, for although we
lived in the far west country, the house, without a garden, was in the
middle of the town, and all my seniors were as ignorant as I. Nature
Study in the schools did not then exist, I had no benevolent
paterfamilias to take me by the hand and point out the common British
Birds; for my father's only interest was in politics. I can remember
coming home once all agog with a wonderful Bird I had seen--like a tiny
Magpie, I said. No one could tell me that it was, of course, only a
little Pied Wagtail.

The absence of sympathy or of congenial companionship, however, had
absolutely no effect in damping my ardour. As I grew older my
egg-collecting companions fell away, some took up the law, or tailoring,
or clerking, some entered the Church, while I became yearly more
engrossed. In my childhood my enthusiasm lay like a watch-spring, coiled
up and hidden inside me, until that Thrush's nest and eggs seized hold
of it by the end and pulled it out by degrees in a long silver ribbon. I
kept live Bats in our upstairs little-used drawing-room, and Newts and
Frogs in pans in the backyard. My mother tolerated these things because
I had sufficiently impressed her with the importance to science of the
observations which I was making and about to publish. Those on Bats
indeed were thought fit to be included in a standard work
--Barrett-Hamilton's _Mammals of Great Britain and Ireland_. The
published articles served to bring me into correspondence with other
naturalists, and I shall never forget my excitement on receiving for the
first time a letter of appreciation. It was from the author of several
natural history books, to

               "W.N.P. BARBELLION, ESQ.,
                  Naturalist,
                           Downstable,"

and illustrated with a delightful sketch of Ring Plovers feeding on the
saltings. This letter was carefully pasted into my diary, where it still
remains.

After all, it is perhaps unfair to say that I had no kindred spirit with
me in my investigations. Martha, the servant girl who had been with us
for 30 years, loved animals of all sorts and--what was strange in a
country girl--she had no fear of handling even such things as Newts and
Frogs. My Batrachia often used to escape from their pans in the yard
into Martha's kitchen, and, not a bit scandalised, she would sometimes
catch one marching across the rug or squeezing underneath a cupboard.
"Lor'!" would be her comment as she picked the vagrant up and took it
back to its aquarium, "can't 'em travel?" Martha had an eye for
character in animals. In the long dynasty of cats we possessed one at
length who by association of opposite ideas we called Marmaduke because
he ought to have been called Jan Stewer. "A chuff old feller, 'idden
'ee?" Martha used to ask me with pride and love in her eyes. "He purrs
in broad Devon," I used to answer. Marmaduke need only wave the tip of
his tail to indicate to her his imperative desire to promenade. Martha
knew if no one else did that every spring "Pore 'Duke," underneath his
fur, used to come out in spots. "'Tiz jus' like a cheel 'e gets a bit
spotty as the warm weather cums along." Starlings on the washhouse roof,
regularly fed with scraps, were ever her wonder and delight. "Don' 'em
let it down, I zay?" In later years, when I was occupied in the top
attic, making dissections of various animals that I collected, she would
sometimes leave her scrubbing and cleaning in the room below to thrust
her head up the attic stairs and enquire, "'Ow be 'ee gettin' on then?"
Her unfeigned interest in my anatomical researches gave me real
pleasure, and I took delight in arousing her wonder by pointing out and
explaining the brain of a Pigeon or the nervous system of a Dog-fish, or
a Frog's heart taken out and still beating in the dissecting dish. She,
in reply, would add reflections upon her own experiences in preparing
meat for dinner--anecdotes about the "maw" of an old Fowl, or the great
"pipe" of a Goose. Then, suddenly scurrying downstairs, she would say,
"I must be off or I shall be all be'ind like the cow's tail." Now the
dignified interest of the average educated man would have chilled me.

By the way, years later, when he was a miner in S. Wales, that historic
errand-boy displayed his consciousness of the important role he once
played by sending me on a postcard congratulations on my success in the
B.M. appointment. It touched me to think he had not forgotten after
years of separation.


[1] So it proved. See September 26 _et seq._

[2] In "La Recherche de l'Absolu" (Balzac).

[3] See September 3 (next entry), "_A Jolt_," and September 24
(_infra_).

[4] The handwriting is painfully laboured, very large across a page and
so crooked as to be almost undecipherable in places.

[5] This is from a letter written by the dying Keats in Naples to his
friend Brown.

[6] Contrast with it Wordsworth rotting at Rydal Mount or Swinburne at
Putney.




1917


_January_ 1.

The New Year came in like a thief in the night--noiselessly; no bells,
no syrens, no songs by order of the Government. Nothing could have been
more appropriate than a burglarious entry like this--seeing what the
year has come to filch from us all in the next 12 months.

_January_ 20.

I am over 6 feet high and as thin as a skeleton; every bone in my body,
even the neck vertebrae, creak at odd intervals when I move. So that I
am not only a skeleton but a badly articulated one to boot. If to this
is coupled the fact of the creeping paralysis, you have the complete
horror. Even as I sit and write, millions of bacteria are gnawing away
my precious spinal cord, and if you put your ear to my back the sound of
the gnawing I dare say could be heard. The other day a man came and set
up a post in the garden for the clothes' line. As soon as I saw the post
I said "gibbet"--it looks exactly like one, and I, for sure, must be the
malefactor. Last night while E---- was nursing the baby I most
delightfully remarked: "What a little parasite--why you are Cleopatra
affixing the aspic--'Tarry, good lady, the bright day is done, and we
are for the dark.'"

The fact that such images arise spontaneously in my mind, show how
rotten to the core I am.

... The advent of the Baby was my _coup de grâce._ The little creature
seems to focus under one head all my personal disasters and more than
once a senseless rage has clutched me at the thought of a baby in
exchange for my ambition, a nursery for the study. Yet, on the whole, I
find it a good and satisfying thing to see her, healthy, new, intact on
the threshold: I grow tired of my own dismal life just as one does of a
suit of dirty clothes. My life and person are patched and greasy; hers
is new and without a single blemish or misfortune.... Moreover, she
makes her mother happy and consoles her grandmother too.

_January_ 21.

_Death_

What a delightful thing the state of Death would be if the dead passed
their time haunting the places they loved in life and living over again
the dear delightful past--if death were one long indulgence in the
pleasures of memory! if the disembodied spirit forgot all the pains of
its previous existence and remembered only the happiness! Think of me
flitting about the orchards and farm-yards in ---- birdsnesting, walking
along the coast among the seabirds, climbing Exmoor, bathing in streams
and in the sea, haunting all my old loves and passions, cutting open
with devouring curiosity Rabbits, Pigeons, Frogs, Dogfish, Amphioxus;
think of me, too, at length unwillingly deflected from these cherished
pursuits in the raptures of first love, cutting her initials on trees
and fences instead of watching birds, day-dreaming over _Parker and
Haswell_ and then bitterly reproaching myself later for much loss of
precious time. How happy I shall be if Death is like this: to be living
over again and again all my ecstasies, over first times--the first time
I found a Bottle Tit's nest, the first time I succeeded in penetrating
into the fastnesses of my El Dorado--Exmoor, the first time I gazed upon
the internal anatomy of a Snail, the first time I read Berkeley's
_Principles of Human Understanding_ (what a soul-shaking epoch that
was!), and the first time I kissed her! My hope is that I may haunt
these times again, that I may haunt the places, the books, the bathes,
the walks, the desires, the hopes, the first (and last) loves of my life
all transfigured and beatified by sovereign Memory.

_January_ 26.

Out of doors to-day it's like the roaring forties! Every tree I passed
in the lane was a great wind instrument, bellowing out a passionate
song, and the sky was torn to ribbons. It is cold enough to freeze the
nose off a brass Monkey, but very exhilarating. I stood on the hill and
squared my fists to the wind and bade everything come on. I sit writing
this by the fire and am thoroughly scourged and purified by this great
castigating wind.... I think I will stick it out--I will sit quite still
in my chair and defy this sculking footpad--let the paralysis creep into
every bone, I will hang on to the last and watch it skulking with my
most hideous grimace.

_January_ 27.

Still freezing and blowing. Coming back from the village, tho' I was
tired and hobbling badly, decided to walk up the lane even if it meant
crawling home on hands and knees.

The sky was a quick-change artist to-day. Every time you looked you saw
a different picture. From the bottom of the hill I looked up and saw
above me--it seemed at an immense and windy height--a piece of blue,
framed in an irregular edge of white woolly cloud seen thro' the crooked
branches of an Oak. It was a narrow crooked lane, sunk deep in the soil
with large smooth surfaces of stone like skulls bulging up in places
where the rain had washed away the soil.

Further on, the sun was lying low almost in the centre of a
semi-circular bend in the near horizon. It frosted the wool of a few
sheep seen in silhouette, and then slowly disappeared in mist. On the
right-hand side was a cottage with the smoke being wrenched away from
the chimney top, and on the left a group of stately Firs, chanting a
requiem like a cathedral choir.

_January_ 28.

Still blowing and bitterly cold. Along the path fields in the Park I
stopped to look at a thick clump of Firs standing aloof on some high
ground and guarded by an outside ring of honest English Oaks, Ashes and
Elms. They were a sombre mysterious little crowd intent, I fancied, on
some secret ritual of the trees. The high ground on which they stood
looked higher and more inaccessible than it really was, the clump was
dark green, almost black, and in between their trunks where all was
obscurity, some hardy adventurer might well have discovered a Grand Lama
sitting within his Penetralia. But I had no taste for any such
profanity, and even as I looked the sun came out from behind a cloud
very slowly, bringing the picture into clearer focus, chasing away
shadows and bringing out all the colours. The landscape resumed its
homely aspect: an English park with Firs in it.

_January_ 29.

Last night, I pulled aside the window curtain of our front door and
peeped out. Just below the densely black projecting gable of the house I
saw the crescent moon lying on her back in a bed of purple sky, and I
saw our little white frosted garden path curving up towards the garden
gate. It was a delicious _coup d'œil_, and I shewed it to E----.

_January_ 31.

Showers of snow at intervals, the little flakes rocking about lazily or
spiralling down, while the few that eventually reached the ground would
in a moment or so be caught up in a sudden furious puff of wind, and
sent driving along the road with the dust.

My usual little jaunt up the lane past the mossy farm-house. Home to
toasted tea-cakes and a pinewood fire, with my wife chattering prettily
to the baby. After tea, enchanted by the reading of a new book--_Le
Journal de Maurice de Guérin_--or rather the introduction to it by
Sainte-Beuve. I devoured it! I have spent a devouring day; under a calm
exterior I have burnt up the hours; all of me has been athrob; every
little cell in my brain has danced to its own little tune. For to-day,
Death has been an impossibility. I have felt that anyhow to-day I could
not die--I have laughed at the mere thought of it. If only this mood
would last! If I could feel thus always, then I could fend off Death for
an immortality of life.

But suddenly, as now, the real horror of my life and future comes on me
in a flash. For a second I am terrified by the menace of the future, but
fortunately only for a second. For I've learnt a trick which I fear to
reveal; it is so valuable and necessary to me that if I talked of it or
vulgarised it my secret might be stolen away. Not a word then!

_Later_. I have just heard on the gramophone, some Grieg, and it has
charged my happiness with disrupting voltage of desire. Oh! if only I
had health, I could make the welkin ring! I shall leave so little behind
me, such a few paltry pages beside what I have it in me to do. It
shatters me.

_February_ 1.

Looking back, I must say I like the splendid gusto with which I lived
thro' yesterday: that mettlesome fashion in which I took the lane, and
at the top, how I swung around to sweep my gaze across to the uplands
opposite with snow falling all the time. Then in the evening, the almost
complete absorption in the new book when I forgot everything _pro tem_.
It was quite like the old days.

_February_ 2.

_Crowd Fever_

After four months' sick leave, returned to work and London.

An illness like mine rejuvenates one--for the time being! A pony and
jingle from the old "Fox and Hounds Inn" took me to the Station, and I
enjoyed the feel of the wheels rolling beneath me over the hard road. In
the train, I looked out of the window as interested as any schoolboy. On
the Underground I was delighted with the smooth, quiet way with which
the "Metro" trains glide into the Station. I had quite forgotten this.
Then, when my hand began to get better, I rediscovered the pleasures of
penmanship and kept on writing, with my tongue out. And I re-enjoyed the
child's satisfaction in coaxing a button to slip into its hole: all
grown-up people have forgotten how difficult and complex such operations
are.

This morning how desirable everything seemed to me! The world
intoxicated me. Moving again among so many human beings gave me the
crowd-fever, and started again all the pangs of the old familiar hunger
for a fuller life, that centrifugal elan in which I feared for the
disruption and scattering of my parts in all directions. Temporarily I
lost the hegemony of my own soul. Every man and woman I met was my
enemy, threatening me with the secession of some inward part. I was
alarmed to discover how many women I could passionately love and with
how many men I could form a lasting friendship. Within, all was anarchy
and commotion, a cold fright seized me lest some extraordinary event was
about to happen: some general histolysis of my body, some sudden
disintegration of my personality, some madness, some strange death....
I wanted to crush out the life of all these men and women in a great
Bear's hug, my God! this sea of human faces whom I can never recognise,
all of us alive together beneath this yellow catafalque of fog on the
morning of the announcement of world famine and world war!...

       *       *       *       *       *

To-night, I have lost this paroxysm. For I am home again by the
fireside. All the multitude have disappeared from my view. I have lost
them, every one. I have lost another day of my life and so have they,
and we have lost each other. Meanwhile the great world spins on
unrelentingly, frittering away lightly my precious hours (surely a small
stock now?) while I sit discomfited by the evening fire and nurse my
scraped hands that tingle because the spinning world has wrenched itself
out of my feeble grasp.

_February_ 3.

This morning on arriving at S. Kensington, went straight to a Chemist's
shop, but finding someone inside, I drew back, and went on to another.

"Have you any morphia tabloids?" I asked a curly-haired, nice-looking,
smiling youth, who leaned with both hands on the counter and looked at
me knowingly, as if he had had unlimited experience of would-be morphi
nomaniacs.

"Yes, plenty of them," he said, fencing. And then waited.

"Can you supply me?" I asked, feeling very conscious of myself.

He smiled once more, shook his head and said it was contrary to the
Defence of the Realm Act.

I made a sorry effort to appear ingenuous, and he said:

"Of course, it is only a palliative."

With a solemn countenance intended to indicate pain I answered:

"Yes, but palliatives are very necessary sometimes," and I walked out of
the hateful shop discomfited.

_February_ 6.

Am busy re-writing,[1] editing and bowdlerising my journals for
publication against the time when I shall have gone the way of all
flesh. No one else would prepare it for publication if I don't. Reading
it through again, I see what a remarkable book I have written. If only
they will publish it!

_February_ 7.

_Chinese Lanterns_

The other morning as I dressed, I could see the sun like a large yellow
moon rising on a world, stiff, stark, its contours merely indicated
beneath a winding-sheet of snow. Further around the horizon was another
moon--the full moon itself--yellow likewise, but setting. It was the
strangest picture I ever saw. I might well have been upon another
planet; I could not have been more surprised even at a whole ring of
yellow satellites arranged at regular intervals all around the horizon.

In the evening of the same day, I drove home from the Station in a
little governess-cart, over a snow-clogged road. The cautious little
pony picked out her way so carefully in little
strides--pat-pat-pat--wherever it was slippery, and the Landlord of the
Inn sat opposite me extolling all the clever little creature's merits.
It was dusk, and for some reason of the atmosphere the scraps of cloud
appeared as blue sky and the blue sky as cloud, beneath which the full
moon like a great Chinese lantern hung suspended so low down it seemed
to touch the trees and hills. How have folk been able to "carry on" in a
world so utterly strange as this one during the past few days! I marvel
that beneath such moons and suns, the peoples of the world have not
ceased for a while from the petty business of war during at least a few
of our dancing revolutions around this furnace of a star. One of these
days I should not be surprised if this fascinated earth did not fall
into it like a moth into a candle. And where would our Great War be
then?

_February_ 28.

_The Strangeness of my Life_

Consider the War: and the current adventures of millions of men on land,
sea and air; and the incessant labours of millions of men in factory and
workshop and in the field; think of the hospitals and all they hold, of
everyone hoping, fearing, suffering, waiting--of the concentration of
all humanity on the one subject--the War. And then think of me, poor
little me, deserted and forgotten, a tiny fragment sunk so deep and
helplessly between the sheer granite walls of my environment that scarce
an echo reaches me of the thunder among the mountains above. I read
about the War in a ha'penny paper, and see it in the pictures of the
_Daily Mirror_. For the rest, I live by counting the joints on insects'
legs and even that much effort is almost beyond my strength.

That is strange enough. But my life is stranger still by comparison. And
this is the marvel: that every day I spend by the waters of Babylon,
weeping and neglected among enthusiasts, enthusiastically counting
joints, while every evening I return to Zion to my books, to Hardy's
poems, to Maurice de Guérin's Journals, to my own memoirs. Mine is a
life of consummate isolation, and I frequently marvel at it.

The men I meet accept me as an entomologist and _ipso facto_, an
enthusiast in the science. That is all they know of me, and all they
want to know of me, or of any man. Surely no man's existence was ever
quite such a duplicity as mine. I smile bitterly to myself ten times a
day, as I engage in all the dreary technical jargon of professional talk
with them. How they would gossip over the facts of my life if they knew!
How scandalised they would be over my inner life's activities, how
resentful of enthusiasm other than entomological!

I find it very irksome to keep up this farce of concealment. I would
love to declare myself. I loathe, hate and detest the secrecy of my real
self: the continuous restraint enforced on me ulcerates my heart and
makes harmonious social existence impossible with those who do not know
me thoroughly. "On dit qu'au jugement dernier le secret des consciences
sera révélé à tout l'univers; je voudrais qu'il en fut ainsi de moi dès
aujourd'hui et que la vue de mon âme fut ouvert à tous venants." Maurice
de Guérin.

_March_ 1.

It is curious for me to look at my tubes and microscope and realise that
I shall never require them again for serious use. Life is a dreadful
burden to me at the Museum. I am too ill for any scientific work so I
write labels and put things away. I am simply marking time on the edge
of a precipice awaiting the order, "Forward."

It is excoriating to be thus wasting the last few precious days of my
life in such mummery merely to get bread to eat. They might at least let
me die in peace, and with fitting decorum. It is so ignoble to be
tinkering about in a Museum among Scarabees and insects when I ought to
be reflecting on life and death.

I ask myself what ought to be my most appropriate reaction in such
circumstances as the present? Why, of course, to carry on as if all were
normal, and the future unknown: why, so I do, to outward view, for the
sake of the others. Yet that is no reason why in my own inward parts I
should not at times indulge in a little relaxation. It is a relief to
put off the mailed coat, to sit awhile by the green-room fire and have
life as it really is, all to myself. But the necessity of living will
not let me alone. I must be always mumming.

My life has been all isolation and restriction. And it now appears even
my death is to be hedged around with prohibitions. Drugs for
example--how beneficent a little laudanum at times in a case like mine!
and how happy I could be if I knew that in my waistcoat pocket I carried
a kindly, easy means of shuffling off this coil when the time comes as
come it must. It horrifies me to consider how I might break the life of
E---- clean in two, and sap her courage by a lingering, dawdling dying.
But there is the Defence of the Realm Act. It is a case of a Scorpion in
a ring of fire but without any sting in its tail.

_March_ 2.

I ask myself: what are my views on death, the next world, God? I look
into my mind and discover I am too much of a mannikin to have any. As
for death, I am a little bit of trembling jelly of anticipation. I am
prepared for anything, but I am the complete agnostic; I simply don't
know. To have views, faith, beliefs, one needs a backbone. This great
bully of a universe overwhelms me. The stars make me cower. I am
intimidated by the immensity surrounding my own littleness. It is futile
and presumptuous for me to opine anything about the next world. But I
_hope_ for something much freer and more satisfying after death, for
emancipation of the spirit and above all for the obliteration of this
puny self, this little, skulking, sharp-witted ferret.

_A Potted Novel_

(1)

He was an imaginative youth, and she a tragedy queen. So he fell in love
with her because she was melancholy and her past tragic. "She is
_capable_ of tragedy, too," he said, which was a high encomium.

But he was also an ambitious youth and all for dalliance in love.
"Marriage," said he sententiously, "is an economic trap." And then, a
little wistfully: "If she were a bit more melancholy and a bit more
beautiful she would be quite irresistible."

(2)

But he was a miserable youth, too, and in the anguish of loneliness and
lovelessness a home tempted him sorely. Still, he dallied. _She_ waited.
Ill-health after all made marriage impossible.

(3)

Yet love and misery drove him towards it. So one day he closed his eyes
and offered himself up with sacrificial hands.... "Too late," she said.
"Once perhaps ... but now...." His eyes opened again, and in a second
Love entered his Temple once more and finally ejected the money
changers.

(4)

So they married after all, and he was under the impression she had made
a good match. He had ill-health perhaps, yet who could doubt his
ultimate fame?

Then the War came, and he had the hardihood to open a sealed letter from
his Doctor to the M.O. examining recruits.... Stars and staggers!! So
it was she who was the victim in marriage! That harassing question: Did
she know? What an ass he had been all through, what superlative egoism
and superlative conceit!

(5)

Then a baby came. He broke under the strain and daily the symptoms grew
more obvious. Did she know?... The question dazed him.

Well, she _did_ know, and had married him for love, nevertheless,
against every friendly counsel, the Doctor's included.

(6)

And now the invalid's gratitude is almost cringeing, his admiration
boundless and his love for always. It is the perfect _rapprochement_
between two souls, one that was honeycombed with self-love and lost in
the labyrinthine ways of his own motives and the other straight, direct,
almost imperious in love and altogether adorable.

_Finis_

_March_ 5.

At home ill again. Yesterday was a day of utter dreariness. All my
nerves were frozen, my heart congealed. I had no love for anyone ... no
emotion of any sort. It was a catalepsy of the spirit harder to bear
than fever or pain.... To-day, life is once more stirring in me, I am
slowly awaking to the consciousness of acute but almost welcome misery.

_March_ 6.

An affectionate letter from H---- that warmed the cockles of my
heart--poor frozen molluscs. A---- has written only once since August.

_March_ 7.

I am, I suppose, a whey-faced, lily-livered creature ... yet even an
infantry subaltern has a chance....

My dear friend ---- has died and a _Memorial_ Exhibition of his pictures
is being held at the Goupil Gallery. The most fascinating man I ever
met. I was attracted by him almost as one is attracted by a charming
woman: by little ways, by laughing eyes, by the manner of speech. And
now he is dead, of a lingering and painful disease.

_March_ 8.

_Death_

Have been reading Sir Oliver Lodge's _Raymond_. I do not deny that I am
curious about the next world, or about the condition of death. I am and
always have been. In my early youth, I reflected continually on death
and hated it bitterly. But now that my end is near and certain, I
consider it less and am content to wait and see. As, for all practical
purposes, I have done with life, and my own existence is often a burden
to me and is like to become a burden also to others, I wish I possessed
the wherewithal to end it at my will. With two or three tabloids in my
waistcoat pocket, and my secret locked in my heart, how serenely I would
move about among my friends and fellows, conscious that at some
specially selected moment--at midnight or high noon--just when the
spirit moved me, I could quietly slip out to sea on this Great
Adventure. It would be well to be able to control this: the time, the
place, and the manner of one's exit. For what disturbs me in particular
is how I shall conduct myself; I am afraid lest I become afraid, it is a
fear of fear. By means of my tabloids, I could arrange my death in an
artistic setting, say underneath a big tree on a summer's day, with an
open Homer in my hand, or more appropriately, a magnifying glass and
Miall and Denny's _Cockroach._ It would be stage-managing my own demise
and surely the last thing in self-conscious elegance!

I think it was De Quincey who said Death to him seemed most awful in the
summer. On the contrary the earth is warm then, and would welcome my old
bones. It is on a cold night by the winter fire that the churchyard
seems to me the least inviting: especially horrible it is the first
evening after the funeral.

_March_ 10.

Have had a relapse. My hand I fear is going. Food prices are leaping up.
Woe to the unfit and the old and the poor in these coming days! We shall
soon have nothing left in our pantries, and a piece of Wrigley's chewing
gum will be our only comfort.

       *       *       *       *       *

When I come to quit this world I scarcely know which will be the greater
regret: the people I have never met, or the places I have never seen. In
the world of books, I rest fairly content: I have read my fair share.

To-day I read down the column of to-morrow's preachers with the most
ludicrous avidity, ticking off the Churches I have visited: St. Paul's
and the Abbey, the Ethical Church in Bayswater and Westminster
Cathedral. But the Unitarians, the Christadelphians, the Theosophists,
the Church of Christ Scientist, the Buddhist Society, the Brompton
Oratory, the Church of Humanity, the New Life Centre; all these
adventures I intended one day to make.... It is not much fun ticking off
things you have done from a list if you have done very little. I get
more satisfaction out of a list of books. But Iona and the Hebrides,
Edinburgh, Brussels, Buenos Ayres, Spitzbergen (when the flowers are
out), the Niagara Falls (by moonlight), the Grindelwald, Cairo--these
names make me growl and occasionally yelp like a hurt puppy, although to
outward view I am sitting in an armchair blowing smoke-rings.

_March_ 11.

_The Graph of Temperament_

In this Journal, my pen is a delicate needle point, tracing out a graph
of temperament so as to show its daily fluctuations: grave and gay, up
and down, lamentation and revelry, self-love and self-disgust. You get
here all my thoughts and opinions, always irresponsible and often
contradictory or mutually exclusive, all my moods and vapours, all the
varying reactions to environment of this jelly which is I. I snap at
any idea that comes floating down, particularly if it is gaudy or
quixotic, no matter if it is wholly incompatible with what I said the
day before. People unpleasantly refer me back, and to escape I have to
invent some sophistry. I unconsciously imitate the mannerisms of folk I
am particularly taken with. Other people never fail to tell me of my
simulations. If I read a book and like it very much, by a process of
peaceful penetration, the author takes possession of my whole
personality just as if I were a medium giving a sitting, and for some
time subsequently his ideas come spurting up like a fountain making a
pretty display which I take to be my own. Other people say of me, "Oh! I
expect he read it in a book."

I am something between a Monkey, a Chameleon, and a Jellyfish. To any
bully with an intellect like a blunderbuss, I have always timidly held
up my hands and afterwards gnashed my teeth for my cowardice. In
conversation with men of alien sentiment I am self-effacing to my
intense chagrin, often from mere shyness. I say, "Yes ... yes ... yes,"
to nausea, when it ought to be "No ... no ... no." I become my own
renegade, an amiable dissembler, an ass in short. It is a torture to
have a sprightly mind blanketed by personal timidity and a feeble
presence. The humiliating thing is that almost any strong character
hynotises me into complacency, especially if he is a stranger; I find
myself for the time being in really sincere agreement with him, and only
later, discover to myself his abominable doctrines. Then I lie in bed
and have imaginary conversations in which I get my own back.

But, by Jove, I wreak vengeance on my familiars, and on those brethren
even weaker than myself. They get my concentrated gall, my sulphurous
fulminations, and would wonder to read this confession.

_Cynicism_

For an unusually long time after I grew up, I maintained a beautiful
confidence in the goodness of mankind. Rumours did reach me, but I
brushed them aside as slanders. I was an ingénu, unsuspecting,
credulous. I thoroughly believed that men and women and I were much
better than we actually are. I have not come to the end of my
disillusions even now. I still rub my eyes on occasion. I simply can't
believe that we are such humbugs, hypocrites, self-deceivers. And
strange to say it is the "good" people above all who most bitterly
disappoint me. Give me a healthy liar, or a thief, or a vagabond, and he
arouses no expectations, and so I get no heart-burning. It is the good,
the honest, the true, who cheat me of my boyhood's beliefs.... I am a
cynic then, but not a reckless cynic--a careworn unhappy cynic without
the cynic's pride. "It is easy to be cynical," someone admonished me.
"Unfortunately it is," I said.

We are so cold, so aloof, so self-centred even the warmest friends. Men
of piety love God, but their love for each other is so commonly but a
poor thing. My own affections are always frosted over with the
Englishman's reserve. I hesitate as if I were not sure of them. I am
afraid of self-deception, I hate to find out either myself or others.
And yet I am always doing so. Mine is a restlessly analytical brain. I
dissect everyone, even those I love, and my discoveries frequently sting
me to the quick. "To the pure all things are pure," whence I should
conclude I suppose that it is the beam in my own eye. But I would not
tolerate being deceived concerning either my own beam or other people's
motes.

_March_ 12.

_Archæopteryx and Mudflats_

Yesterday I collected two distinct and several twinges and hereby save
them up. They were more than that--they were pangs, and pangs that
twanged.

(Why do I make fun of my suffering?)

One was when I saw the well-known figure of the _Archæopteryx_ remains
in the slab of Lithographic sandstone of Bavaria: a reproduction in an
illustrated encyclopædia. The other was when someone mentioned mud, and
I thought of the wide estuary of the T----, its stretches of mudflats
and its wild-fowl. We were turning over some pages and she said:

"What's that?"

"_Archæopteryx_," said I.

"Whatever is _Archæopteryx_?"

"An extinct bird," I answered mournfully.

Like an old amour, my love of palæontology and anatomy, and all the high
hopes I entertained of them, came smarting to life again, so I turned
over the page quickly.

But why need I explain to you, O my Journal? To others, I could not
explain. I was tongue-tied.

"I used to get very muddy," I remarked lamentably, "in the old days when
stalking birds on the mudflats."

And they rather jeered at such an occupation in such a place, just as
those beautiful sights and sounds of zostera-covered mud-banks,
twinkling runnels, swiftly running thin-legged waders, their whistles
and cries began to steal over my memory like a delicate pain.

To my infinite regret, I have no description, no photograph or sketch,
no token of any sort to remember them by. And their doom is certain.
Heavens! how I wasted my impressions and experiences then! Swinburne has
some lines about saltings which console me a little, but I know of no
other descriptions by either pen or brush.

_March_ 15.

How revolting it is to see some barren old woman love-sick over a baby,
bestowing voluptuous kisses on its nose, eyes, hands, feet, utterly
intoxicated and chattering incessantly in the "little language," and
hopping about like an infatuated cock grouse.

_May_ 5.

The nurse has been here now for over five weeks. One day has been pretty
much the same as another. I get out of bed usually about tea-time and
sit by the window and churn over past, present, and future. However, the
Swallows have arrived at last, though they were very late, and there
are also Cuckoos, Green Wood-peckers, Moorhens, calling from across the
park. At night, when the moon is up, I get a great deal of fun out of an
extremely self-inflated Brown Owl, who hoots up through the breadth and
length of the valley, and then I am sure, listens with satisfaction to
his echo. Still, I have much sympathy with that Brown Owl and his
hooting.

What I do (goodness knows what E---- does), is to drug my mind with
print. I am just a rag-bag of Smollett, H.G. Wells, Samuel Butler, the
_Daily News_, the Bible, the _Labour Leader, Joseph Vance_, etc., etc.
Except for an occasional geyser of malediction when some particularly
acrid memory comes uppermost in my mind, I find myself submitting with a
surprising calm and even cheerfulness. That agony of frustration which
gnawed my vitals so much in 1913 has disappeared, and I, who expected to
go down in the smoke and sulphur of my own fulminations, am quite as
likely to fold my hands across my chest with a truly Christian
resignation. Joubert said, "Patience and misfortune, courage and death,
resignation and the inevitable, generally come together. Indifference to
life generally arises with the impossibility of preserving it"--how
cynical that sounds.

_May_ 8.

This and another volume of my Journal are temporarily lodged in a drawer
in my bedroom. It appears to me that as I become more static and
moribund, they become more active and aggressive. All day they make a
perfect uproar in their solitary confinement--although no one hears it.
And at night they become phosphorescent, though nobody sees it. One of
these days, with continued neglect they will blow up from spontaneous
combustion like diseased gunpowder, the dismembered diarist being thus
hoist upon his own petard.

_June_ 1.

We discuss post mortem affairs quite genially and without restraint. It
is the contempt bred of familiarity I suppose. E---- says widows' weeds
have been so vulgarised by the war widows that she won't go into deep
mourning. "But you'll wear just one weed or two for me?" I plead, and
then we laugh. She has promised me that should a suitable chance arise,
she will marry again. Personally, I wish I could place my hand on the
young fellow at once, so as to put him thro' his paces--shew him where
the water main runs and where the gas meter is, and so on.

You will observe what a relish I have for my own _macabre_, and how
keenly I appreciate the present situation. Nobody can say I am not
making the best of it. One might call it pulling the hangman's beard.
Yet I ought, I fancy, to be bewailing my poor wife and fatherless child.

_June_ 15.

I sit all day in my chair, moving 8 feet to my bed at night, and 8 feet
from it to my chair in the morning--and wait. The assignation is
certain. "Life is a coquetry with Death that wearies me, Too sure of the
amour."

_July_ 5.

It is odd that at this time of the breaking of nations, Destiny, with
her hands so full, should spare the time to pursue a non-combatant atom
like me down such a labyrinthine side-track. It is odd to find her
determined to destroy me with such tremendous thoroughness--one would
have thought it sufficient merely to brush the dust off my wings. Why
this deliberate, slow-moving malignity? Perhaps it is a punishment for
the impudence of my desires. I wanted everything so I get nothing. I
gave nothing so I receive nothing. I am not offering up my life
willingly--it is being taken from me piece by piece, while I watch the
pilfering with lamentable eyes.

I have tendered my resignation and retire on a small gratuity.

_July_ 7.

My hand gets a little better. But it's a cat and mouse game, and so
humiliating to be the mouse.

... Parental affection comes to me only in spasms, and if they hurt,
they do not last long. Curiously enough, as in the case of very old
people, my consciousness reverts more easily to conditions long past. I
seem unable to apprehend all the significance of having a nine-months
old daughter, but some Bullfinches or Swallows seen thro' the window
rouse me more. No one can deny I have loved Birds to intoxication. In my
youth, birds' eggs, and little nestlings and chickens sent me into such
raptures I could never tell it to you adequately.... I am too tired to
write more.

_July_ 23.

Reading Pascal again. If Shelley was "gold dusty from tumbling among the
stars," Pascal was bruised and shaken. The one was delighted, and the
other frightened. I like Pascal's prostration before the infinities of
Time, Space and the Unknown. Somehow, he conveys this more vividly than
the uplift afforded him by religion.

_July_ 25.

I don't believe in the twin-soul theory of marriage. There are plenty of
men any one of whom she might have married and lived with happily, and
simpler men than I am. Methinks there are large tracts could be sliced
off my character and she would scarcely feel the want of them. To think
that she of all women, with a past such as hers, should be swept into my
vicious orbit! Yet she seems to bear Destiny no resentment, so I bear it
for her and enough for two. At our engagement I gave her my own ring to
wear as a pledge--we thought it nicer than buying a new one. It was a
signet ring with a dark smooth stone. Strange to say it never once
occurred to me till now that it was a mourning ring in memory of a
great-uncle of mine, actually with an inscription on the inside.

_July_ 26.

As long as I can hold a pen, I shall, I suppose, go on trickling ink
into this diary!

I am amusing myself by reading the _Harmsworth Encyclopædia_ in 15
volumes, _i.e._, I turn over the pages and read everything of interest
that catches my eye.

I get out of bed about ten, wash and sit by the window in my blue
striped pyjama suit. It is so hot I need no additional clothing.
E---- comes in, brushes my hair, sprinkles me with lavender water, lights
my cigarette, and gives me my book-rest and books. She forgets nothing.

From my window I look out on a field with Beech hedge down one side and
beyond, tall trees--one showing in outline exactly like the profile of a
Beefeater's head, more especially at sunset each evening when the tree
next behind is in shadow. The field is full of blue Scabious plants,
Wild Parsley and tall grass--getting brown now in the sun. Great numbers
of White Butterflies are continually rocking themselves across--they go
over in coveys of four or five at a time--I counted 50 in five minutes,
which bodes ill for the cabbages. Not even the heaviest thunder showers
seem to debilitate their kinetic ardour. They rock on like white
aeroplanes in a hail of machine-gun bullets.

Then there are the Swallows and Martins cutting such beautiful figures
thro' the air that one wishes they carried a pencil in their bills as
they fly and traced the lines of flight on a Bristol board. How I hanker
after the Swallows! so free and gay and vigorous. This autumn, as they
prepare to start, I shall hang on every twitter they make, and on every
wing-beat; and when they have gone, begin sadly to set my house in
order, as when some much loved visitors have taken their departure. I am
appreciating things a little more the last few days.

_August_ 1.

_A Jeremiad_

When I resigned my appointment last month, no one knows what I had to
give up. But I know. Tho' if I say what I know no one is compelled to
believe me excepting out of charity. It will never be discovered whether
what I am going to state is not simply despairing bombast. My few
intimate friends and relatives are entirely innocent of science, not to
say zoology, and all they realise is the significant fact that I am
prone to go extravagant lengths in conversation. But you may take it or
leave it: I was the ablest junior on the staff and one of the ablest
zoologists in the place--but my ability was always muffled by the
inferior work they gave me to do. My last memoir published last December
was the best of its kind in treatment, method and technique that ever
issued from the institution--I do not say the most important. It was
trivial--my work always was trivial because they put me in a mouldy
department where all the work was trivial and the methods used as
primitive, slipshod and easy as those of Fabricius, the idea being that
as I had enjoyed no academic career I was unsuited to fill other posts
then vacant--one, work on the Cœlenterates and another on _Vermes_,
both rarely favoured by amateurs and requiring laboratory training.
Later, I had the mortification of seeing these posts filled by men whose
powers I by no means felt inclined to estimate as greater than my own.
Meanwhile, I who had been dissecting for dear life up and down the whole
Animal Kingdom in a poorly equipped attic laboratory at home, with no
adequate instruments, was bitterly disappointed to find still less
provision made even in a so-called Scientific Institution so grandly
styled the British Museum (N.H.). On my first arrival I was presented
with a pen, ink, paper, ruler, and an enormous instrument of steel which
on enquiry I found to be a paper cutter. I asked for my microscope and
microtome. I ought to have asked what Form I was in.

So I had to continue my struggle against odds, and only within the last
year or so began to squeeze the authorities with any success. In time I
should have revolutionised the study of Systematic Zoology, and the
anonymous paper I wrote in conjunction with R---- in the _American
Naturalist_ was a rare _jeu d'esprit_, and my most important scientific
work.

       *       *       *       *       *

In the literary world I have fared no better. My first published article
appeared at the age of 15 over my father's name, my motive being not so
much modesty as cunning--if the literary world (!) ragged it
unmercifully, there was still a chance left for me to make good.

My next achievement of any magnitude was the unexpected printing of a
story in the _Academy_ after I had unsuccessfully badgered almost every
other newspaper. This was when I was 19. No proof had been sent me and
no intimation of its acceptance. Moreover, there were two ugly printer's
errors. I at once wrote off to correct them in the next issue. My letter
was neither published nor acknowledged. I submitted, but presently wrote
again, politely hinting that my cheque was overdue. But--screams of
silence, and I thought it wise not to complain in view of future
printing favours. I soon discovered that the journal had changed hands
and was probably on its last legs at the time of my success. As soon as
it grew financially sound again no more of my stories were accepted.

A more recent affair I had with the American _Forum,_ which delighted me
by publishing my article, but did not pay--tho' the Editor went out of
his way to write that "payment was on publication." I did not venture to
remonstrate as I had another article on the stocks which they also
printed without paying me. In spite of uniform failure, my literary
ambition has never flagged.[2] I have for years past received my
rejected MSS. back from every conceivable kind of periodical, from
_Punch_ to the _Hibbert Journal_. At one time I used to file their
rejection forms and meditated writing a facetious essay on them. But I
decided they were too monotonously similar. My custom was when the
ordinary avenues to literary fame had failed me--the half-crown Reviews
and the sixpenny Weeklies--to seek out at a library some obscure
publication--a Parish Magazine or the local paper--anything was grabbed
as a last chance. On one of these occasions I discovered the
_Westminster Review_ and immediately plied them with a manuscript and
the usual polite note. After six weeks, having no reply, I wrote again
and waited for another six weeks. My second remonstrance met with a
similar fate, so I went into the city to interview the publishers, and
to demand my manuscript back. The manager was out, and I was asked to
call again. After waiting about for some time, I left my card, took my
departure and decided I would write. The same evening I told the
publishers that the anonymous editor would neither print my article nor
return it. Would they kindly give me his name and address so that I
could write personally. After some delay they replied that although it
was not the custom to disclose the editor's name, the following address
would find her. She was a lady living in Richmond Row, Shepherd's Bush.
I wrote to her at once and received no answer. Meanwhile, I had observed
that no further issues of the review had appeared on the bookstalls, and
the book-sellers were unable to give me any information. I wrote again
to the address--this time a playful and facetious letter in which I said
I did not propose to take the matter into court, but if it would save
her any trouble I would call for the MS. as I lived only a few minutes'
walk distant. I received no answer. I was busy at the time and kept
putting off executing my firm purpose of visiting the good lady until
one evening as I was casually reading the _Star_ coming home in the
'bus, I read an account of how some charitably disposed woman had
recently visited the Hammersmith Workhouse and removed to her own home a
poor soul who was once the friend of George Eliot, George Henry Lewes,
and other well-known literary persons of the sixties and had, until it
ceased publication a few months before, edited the once notable
_Westminster Review_.

Recently, however, there has been evidence of a more benevolent attitude
towards me on the part of London editors. A certain magnificent
quarterly has published one or two of my essays, and one of these called
forth two pages of quotation and flattering comment in _Public Opinion_,
which thrill me to the marrow. I fear, however, the flood-tide has come
too late.

       *       *       *       *       *

If this achievement impressed me it did not seem to impress anyone else.
A---- regarded it as a joke and laughed incredulously when someone told
him of "P.O.'s" eulogy. You see I am still his foolish little brother. I
am secretly very nettled too because E---- treated the whole matter very
indifferently. She did not even take the trouble to read the paper's
critique, and tho' she volunteered to buy several copies to send to
friends, she never remembered to do so, and the whole affair has passed
out of her mind.

Now a pleasant paragraph that appeared in the press noticing some
drawings of a friend of her friend, she read twice and marched off to
Francesca with it in great glee. Another successful young person got his
photo into the picture papers--a man we know only by hearsay, and yet it
impressed her until I recalled, what strange to say she had quite
forgotten, how the photographers wished to publish her own photograph in
the picture papers at the time of our marriage. But she scornfully
refused. (And so did I.)

But what a queer woman!... [And I, too, a queer man, drunken with
wormwood and gall.]

_August_ 6.

E---- and I were very modern in our courtship. Our candour was mutual
and complete--parents and relatives would be shocked and staggered if
they knew.... You see I am a biologist and we are both freethinkers.
_Voilà_!... I hate all reticence and concealment.... There is a good
deal of that ass, Gregers Werle, in my nature.

_August_ 7.

_My Gastrocnemius_

I become dreadfully emaciated. This morning, before getting off the bed
I lifted my leg and gazed wistfully along all its length. My flabby
_gastrocnemius_ swung suspended from the _tibia_ like a gondola from a
Zeppelin. I touched it gently with the tip of my index finger and it
oscillated.

_August_ 17.

My beloved wife comes home this evening after a short, much needed
holiday.

_August_ 27.

My gratuity has turned out to be unexpectedly small. I hoped at least
for one year's salary. And the horrible thing is I might live for
several years longer! No one was ever more enthusiastic for death than I
am at this moment. I hate this world with its war, and I bitterly regret
I never managed to buy laudanum in time. There are only E---- and dear
R---- and one or two others--the rest of the people I know I hate _en
bloc_. If only I could get at them. I hate to have to leave them to
themselves without getting my own back.

_August_ 31.

My darling sweetheart, you ask me why I love you. I do not know. All I
know is that I _do_ love you, and beyond measure. Why do _you_ love
me--surely a more inscrutable problem. You do not know. No one ever
knows. "The heart has its reasons which the reason knows not of." We
love in obedience to a powerful gravitation of our beings, and then try
to explain it by recapitulating one another's characters just as a man
forms his opinions first and then thinks out reasons in support.

What delights me is to recall that our love has _evolved._ It did not
suddenly spring into existence like some beautiful sprite. It developed
slowly to perfection--it was forged in the white heat of our
experiences. That is why it will always remain.

_September_ 1.

Your love, darling, impregnates my heart, touches it into calm, strongly
beating life so that when I am with you, I forget I am a dying man. It
is too difficult to believe that when we die true love like ours
disappears with our bodies. My own experience makes me feel that human
love is the earnest after death of a great reunion of souls in God who
is love. When as a boy I was bending the knee to Haeckel, the saying,
"God is Love," scarcely interested me. I am wiser now. You must not
think I am still anything but an infidel (as the churchmen say),--I
should hate not to be taken for an infidel--and you must not be
surprised that an embittered, angry, hateful person like myself should
believe in a Gospel of Love. I am embittered because an intense desire
to love has in many instances[3] been baulked by my own idealising yet
also analytical mind. I have wanted to love men blindly, yet I am always
finding them out, and the disappointment chills the heart. Hence my
malice and venom: which, dear, do not misconstrue. I am as greedy as an
Octopus, ready out of love to take the whole world into my inside--that
seat of the affections!--but I am also as sensitive as an Octopus, and
quickly retract my arms into the rocky, impregnable recess where I live.

_September_ 2.

But am I dying? I have no presentiments--no conviction--like the people
you read of in books. Am I, after all, in love? "I dote yet doubt;
suspect yet strongly love." It is all a matter of degree. Beside Abélard
and Héloïse, our love may be just glassy affection. It is a great and
difficult question to decide. I love no one else but E----, that, at
least, is a certainty, and I have never loved anyone more.

_September_ 3.

My bedroom is on the ground floor as I cannot mount the stairs. But the
other day when they were all out, I determined to clamber upstairs if
possible, and search in the bedrooms for a half bottle of laudanum,
which Mrs. ---- told me she found the other day in a box--a relic of the
time when ---- had to take it to relieve pain.

I got off the bed on to the floor and crawled around on hands and knees
to the door, where I knelt up straight, reached the handle and turned
it. Then I crawled across the hall to the foot of the stairs, where I
sat down on the bottom step and rested. It is a short flight of only 12
steps and I soon reached the top by sitting down on each and raising
myself up to the next one with my hands.

Arrived at the top, I quickly decided on the most likely room to search
first, and painfully crawled along the passage and thro' the bathroom by
the easiest route to the small door--there are two. The handles of all
the doors in the house are fixed some way up above the middle, so that
only by kneeling with a straight back could I reach them from the floor.
This door in addition was at the top of a high but narrow step, and I
had to climb on to this, balance myself carefully, and then carefully
pull myself up towards the handle by means of a towel hung on the
handle. After three attempts I reached the handle and found the door
locked on the inside.

I collapsed on the floor and could have cried. I lay on the floor of the
bathroom resting with head on my arm, then set my teeth and crawled
around the passage along two sides of a square, up three more steps to
the other door which I opened and then entered. I had only examined two
drawers containing only clothes, when a key turned in the front door
lock and E---- entered with ---- and gave her usual whistle.

I closed the drawers and crawled out of the room in time to hear
E---- say in a startled voice to her mother: "Who's that upstairs?" I
whistled, and said that being bored I had come up to see the cot: which
passed at that time all right.

Next morning my darling asked me why I went upstairs. I did not answer,
and I think she knows.

_September_ 4.

I am getting ill again, and can scarcely hold the pen. So good-bye
Journal--only for a time perhaps.

       *       *       *       *       *

Have read this blessed old Journal out to E----. It required some
courage, and I boggled at one or two bits and left them out.

_September_ 5.

_Leap-frog_

Some girls up the road spent a very wet Sunday morning playing leap-frog
in their pyjamas around the tennis lawn. It makes me envious. To think I
never thought of doing that! and now it is too late. They wore purple
pyjamas too. I once hugged myself with pride for undressing in a cave by
the sea and bathing in the pouring rain, but that seems tame in
comparison.

_Liebestod_

A perfect autumn morning--cool, fine and still. What sweet music a horse
and cart make trundling slowly along a country road on a quiet morning!
I listened to it in a happy mood of abstraction as it rolled on further
and further away. I put my head out of the window so as to hear it up to
the very last, until a Robin's notes relieved the nervous tension and
helped me to resign myself to my loss. The incident reminded me of the
Liebestod in "Tristan," with the Robin taking the part of the harp.

For days past my emotions have been undergoing kaleidoscopic changes,
not only from day to day but from hour to hour. For ten minutes at a
time I am happy or miserable, or revengeful, venomous, loving, generous,
noble, angry, or murderous--you could measure them with a stop-watch.
Hell's phantoms course across my chest. If I could lie on this bed as
quiet and stony as an effigy on a tomb! But a moment ago I had a sharp
spasm at the sudden thought that never, never, never again should I walk
thro' the path-fields to the uplands.

_September_ 7.

My 28th birthday.

Dear old R---- (the man I love above all others) has been in a military
hospital for months. It is a great hardship to have our intercourse
almost completely cut off.

Dear old Journal, I love you! Good-bye.

_September_ 29.

I could never have believed so great misery compatible with sanity. Yet
I am quite sane. How long I or any man can remain sane in this condition
God knows.... It is a consummate vengeance this inability to write.[4] I
cannot help but smile grimly at the astuteness of the thrust. To be
sure, how cunning to deprive me of my one secret consolation! How
amusing that in this agony of isolation such an aggressive egotist as I
should have his last means of self-expression cut off. I am being slowly
stifled.

_Later. (In E.'s handwriting.)_

Yesterday we shifted into a tiny cottage at half the rental of the other
one, and situated about two miles further out from the village.... A
wholly ideal and beautiful little cottage you may say. But a
"camouflaged" cottage. For in spite of the happiness of its exterior it
contains just now two of the most dejected mortals even in this present
sorrow-laden world.

_September_ 30.

Last night, E---- sitting on the bed by me, burst into tears. It was my
fault. "I can stand a good deal but there must come a breaking point."
Poor, poor girl, my heart aches for you.

I wept too, and it relieved us to cry. We blew our noses. "People who
cry in novels," E---- observed with detachment, "never blow their noses.
They just weep." ... But the thunder clouds soon come up again.

_October_ 1.

The immediate future horrifies me.

_October_ 2.

Poushkin (as we have named the cat) is coiled up on my bed, purring and
quite happy. It does me good to see him.

But consider: A paralytic, a screaming infant, two women, a cat and a
canary, shut up in a tiny cottage with no money, the war still on, and
food always scarcer day by day. "Give us this day, our daily bread."

I want to be loved--above all, I want to love. My great danger is lest I
grow maudlin and say petulantly, "Nobody loves me, nobody cares." I must
have more courage and more confidence in other people's good-nature.
Then I can love more freely.

_October_ 3.

I am grateful to-day for some happy hours plucked triumphantly from
under the very nose of Fate, and spent in the warm sun in the garden.
They carried me out at 12, and I stayed till after tea-time. A Lark
sang, but the Swallows--dear things--have gone. E---- picked two
Primroses. I sat by some Michaelmas Daisies and watched the Bees, Flies,
and Butterflies.

_October_ 6.

In fits of maudlin self-compassion I try to visualise Belgium, Armenia,
Serbia, etc., and usually cure myself thereby.

_October_ 12.

It is winter--no autumn this year. Of an evening we sit by the fire and
enjoy the beautiful sweet-smelling wood-smoke, and the open hearth with
its big iron bar carrying pot-hook and hanger. E---- knits warm garments
for the Baby, and I play Chopin, César-Franck hymns, Three Blind Mice
(with variations) on a mouth-organ, called "The Angels' Choir," and made
in Germany.... You would pity me would you? I am lonely, penniless,
paralysed, and just turned twenty-eight. But I snap my fingers in your
face and with equal arrogance I pity you. I pity you your smooth-running
good luck and the stagnant serenity of your mind. I prefer my own
torment. I am dying, but you are already a corpse. You have never really
lived. Your body has never been flayed into tingling life by hopeless
desire to love, to know, to act, to achieve. I do not envy you your
absorption in the petty cares of a commonplace existence.

Do you think I would exchange the communion with my own heart for the
toy balloons of your silly conversation? Or my curiosity for your
flickering interests? Or my despair for your comfortable Hope? Or my
present tawdry life for yours as polished and neat as a new three-penny
bit? I would not. I gather my mantle around me and I solemnly thank God
that I am not as some other men are.

I am only twenty-eight, but I have telescoped into those few years a
tolerably long life: I have loved and married, and have a family; I have
wept and enjoyed; struggled and overcome, and when the hour comes I
shall be content to die.

_ October_ 14 _to_ 20.

Miserable.

_October_ 21.

Self-disgust.

FINIS.

[Barbellion died on December 31.]


[1] John Wesley _rewrote_ his journals from entries in rough draft.

[2] I once received from an editor a very encouraging letter which gave
me a great deal of pleasure and made me hope he was going to open the
pages of his magazine to me. But three weeks after he committed suicide
by jumping out of his bedroom window.

[3] The Egoist explains himself again.

[4] Writing difficult to decipher.




SYNOPSIS

PART I: AT HOME

   Rambles and bathes, 2, 3, 4, 9, 11, 20, 37, 45, 46, 48, 49
   Natural History and Zoology, 9, 12, 13, 20, 29
   Leaves school, 10
   Newspaper reporting, 17, 19
   Ambition, 8, 10, 13, 26, 29
   Calf-love, 8, 12, 23, 28
   The Wesleyan Minister Microscopist, 18
   Conversation with Prof. Herdman, 46
   Ill-health, 10, 24, 25, 35, 42, 48 (Jul. 31)
   Heart attacks, 33, 36
   On Death, 33, 38, 43, 44
   Sits for British Museum exam., 29
   Failure, 30, 31, 32
   Appointment to Laboratory at Plymouth, 32
   Everything "ghostly, unreal, enigmatic," 29, 33
   Self-consciousness, 27, 40
   The Poppy, 43
   Appointment resigned and his father's illness, 34
   His father's death, 50, 51
   Success and appointment to B.M., 55
   A youthful Passion, 56, 57

PART II: IN LONDON

   Disillusionment, 59, 61, 93, 94, 132, 178, 185
   Life in a boarding-house, 63, 78, 79, 94, 99, 107
   Ambition, 71, 73, 109
   An affair in a taxicab, 75
   Self-disgust, 77
   In love, 78, 96, 107
   Conversations: (a) with E., 65, 69, 70, 75, 76, 79, 95, 96, 99,
                      104, 151, 152
                  (b) with H., 82, 83
                  (c) with R., 131, 140, 141, 142, 154, 155, 165,
   Ill-health, 59, 62, 69, 72, 74, 100, 107, 110, 114, 134-5, 153, 156
   On Death, 62, 63, 84, 88
   Heart attacks, 71, 72, 120, 122
   Nervous breakdown, 80, 81, 82
   Meets an old love, 86, 87
   Holidays: (_a_) at C----, by the sea in North ----, 65, 66, 67
             (_b_) at home, 82
             (_c_) in Brittany and on Dartmoor (_riding a pony_), 97
   Life in rooms, 102, 107, 108, 114, 138, 148, 149, 153
   His brother, 121, 206
   Discussions on marriage, 123, 124
   In his sitting-room, 162
   The fascination of London, 74, 142-145
       (_a_) Petticoat Lane, 163
       (_b_) Rotten Row, 176
   Goes to concerts, 127, 161, 172
   A lovers' quarrel, 126
   He struggles with himself, 135, 137, 138
   Engaged, 150, 158
   Fears his inconstancy, 159, 185
   Self-analysis, 167 _et seq_., 182, 183
   Day-dreams: Life a dream, 178, 179, 188
   The War, 182
   Holidays: (_a_) on a Buckinghamshire farm, 191-205
             (_b_) at the Lakes, 215-217
   Should a husband keep a private journal? 210
   Marriage, 205, 209, 215

PART III: MARRIAGE

   Zeppelin raid and influenza, 222
   Living in the country, 223, 227, 228
   Reads his doctor's certificate after visit to recruiting-office, 225, 238
   Self-disgust, 223, 224, 225, 247, 250 (_nude_), 267
   Mental agony, 226, 227
   Conversations: with R., 229
                  with Scarabees, 230, 239, 243
   Halcyon days, 233, 235, 238
   A natural idiot climbs a stile on uplands, 240
   Tension, 250, 252
   The War, 237 (_Jutland_), 242, 247, 248, 249
   Another nervous breakdown, 253
   How E. knew all the time, 255, 256
   Self-compassion, 251, 304
   Home ill, 257 ("_in the doldrums_"), 259, 265
   Returns to work, 278
   Ill again, 285
   From an invalid's view-point, 292, 293 (_by his bedroom window_)
   Post-mortem affairs, 291
   Resigns appointment, 294, 299
   Self-consciousness and self-dramatization, 255, 265, 267
   A badly articulated skeleton, 274
   Cold weather in January, 276, 277, 278
   On Death, 275, 283, 286, 291
   His phosphorescent Journals, 291
   Morphia and laudanum, 280, 300
   Great misery, 303, 305




INDEX OF NAMES

   A----, 21, 51, 82, 97, 98, 121, 158, 206, 285, 298
   _"Academy," The_, 23, 24, 106, 296
   _Adventure in Search of Health, An_, 260
   A Kempis, Thomas, 28
   _Albert Hall, Hag, The_, 147
   _Ambition_, 29
   "_American Naturalist_," 295
   _American Neighbour, An_, 251
   _Apologia pro mea vita_, 145
   _Archæopteryx and Mudflats_, 289
   _Aristotle's Lantern_, 19
   _At a Public Dinner_, 175
   _At C----, a tiny little village by the Sea in N_----, 65
   _At Home_, 82
   _At the Albert Hall_, 127
   Austen, Jane, 268
   _Average Day, An_, 172

   B----, 102, 107, 114, 118, 119
   _Baby-Girl, A_, 263
   _Bad Listener, A_, 246
   Baring, Maurice, 188
   _Bathing_, 60
   Baudelaire, 60, 62, 173, 183, 197, 198, 258
   Beerbohm, Max, 269
   _Beethoven's Fifth Symphony_, 161, 186
   Benson, A.C., 249
   Bergson, 47, 55, 78, 183, 198
   Berkeley, 275
   Blind Mathilde, 139
   Boeltzig, R., 103
   Bradford, Sir John Rose, 54
   Brieux, 162
   _"Brilliant Career," A_, 62
   British Museum, 26, 29, 49, 57, 59, 61, 79, 94, 132, 174, 178,
    225, 274, 282, 283, 295
   _British Museum Reading Room, The_, 100
   Brooke, Rupert, 266
   Browne, Sir Thomas, 146, 183, 238
   Buchanan, Robert, 251
   Bunyan, 166
   Burke, 2
   Burlington House, 29
   Burton, 125
   Butler, Samuel, 143, 171, 185, 291
   _Buxom Rogue in Earthenware, A_, 216
   _By the Sea_, 61
   Byron, 266

   _Camping out at S---- Sands_, 91
   Carlyle, 120, 171
   Cassell's _Natural History_, 13
   _Chalcidoidea, The_, 221
   _Character, A_, 39
   _Chinese Lanterns_, 280
   _Chipples_, 220
   _Chopin_, 157
   _Clever Young Man, The_, 207
   Coleridge, 266
   _Confession, A_, 74
   Conrad, 50, 223
   _Crowd Fever_, 278
   _Cynicism_, 288

   D----, 69, 180
   Darwin, 6, 55
   _Day in Autumn, A_, 51
   _Death_, 33, 84, 275, 286
   Debussy, 161, 162, 167
   De Goncourt, 227, 228
   De Guérin, 200, 277, 282
   De Maupassant, Guy, 63, 266
   _Depression_, 89
   De Quincey, 10, 42, 126, 187, 196, 286
   Devonshire Club, 32
   _Dinosaurs_, 129
   Disraeli, 258
   _Dr. Spurgeon_, 90
   Dostoieffsky, 132, 163, 167, 187
   Duke, Mr., K.C., 17

   E----, 68, 78, 79, 107, 171, 191, 192, 193, 194, 201, 209, 220, 223, 226,
    228, 233, 235, 236, 238, 240, 251, 253, 254, 255, 256, 257, 259, 260,
    261, 263, 274, 277, 283, 291, 292, 294, 298, 299, 300, 301, 302, 303,
    304
   _Early Boughies_, 66
   _Empress of Ireland_, 127
   _English Review_, 101, 105, 142
   _Equilibrium Restored_, 245
   _Entomological Society, The_, 110

   Father, 34, 50, 51, 137
   _Finis_, 225, 285
   _Fire Bogey, The_, 170
   _Foolish Bird, A_, 118
   "_Fortnightly_," 61
   "_Forum_," 296
   Foster, Sir Michael, 209
   _From one Maiden Lady to another (authentic)_, 37

   G----, 78, 197, 215
   _Gardening_,83
   Gaskel, 23, 55
   Gibbon, 129, 258
   _Gibbon's Autobiography_, 268
   Gissing, George, 32
   Goethe, 146
   _Graph of Temperament, The,_ 287

   H----, 7, 8, 13, 38, 51, 60, 75, 76, 77, 78, 79, 80, 82, 83, 89, 92,
    94, 114, 180, 196, 206, 218, 285
   Haeckel, 23, 300
   _Harmsworth Encyclopædia_, 294
   Harmsworth _Self-Educator_, 10
   Hardy, 24, 282
   _Hardy's Poetry_, 264
   _Hearing Beethoven_, 172
   Hegel, 146
   Henley, 208, 209
   Herdman, Prof., 46
   Hervey, 170
   Horton, Max Kennedy, 141
   _Housefly Problem, The_--1916, 231
   _Humble Confession, A_, 115
   Huxley, 37, 163

   "_Illustrated London News_," 53
   _In a Crowd_, 184
   _In London_, 59
   _In London again_, 93, 99

   J----, 78, 263
   James, 163, 166
   Jefferies, Richard, 44, 233
   _Jeremiad, A_, 294
   Johnson, 2, 10, 180, 181, 196, 230
   _Johnson_ v. _Yves Delage_, 181
   _Jolt, A_, 247
   Jonson, Ben, 171
   Joubert, 291
   _Justifiable Mendacity_, 52

   K----, 80, 99, 138, 225
   Kant, 257
   Keats, 10, 145, 146, 258

   L----, 1, 3, 4, 43, 98
   Lacépède, 146
   Lamb, Charles, 13, 120, 227, 230
   Landor, W.S., 265
   La Rochefoucauld, 31
   _Leap-frog_, 302
   Lodge, Sir Oliver, 286
   _Liebestod_, 302
   _Lice or "Creeping Ferlies_," 213
   _Looking for Lice at the Zoo_, 177
   Lubbock, 7
   _Ludo_, 104
   _Lupus_, 125
   _Luxury of Lunacy, The_, 195

   M----, 12, 20, 62, 69, 70, 80, 81, 96, 105, 106, 134, 140, 156,
    222, 225, 226, 255, 250, 259, 260
   Macaulay, 30
   Maeterlinck, 42
   Malpighi, 171
   _Marie Bashkirtseff_, 139, 163, 175, 238
   Mary, 8, 23, 28
   _Masefield's "Gallipoli,"_ 269
   _Measuring Lice_, 125
   Moffat, 161
   Moore, Tom, 173
   _More Irony_, 105
   Mosenthal, 13
   Mother, 34, 50, 51, 59, 93, 95, 97, 137
   Mozart, 161
   _My Gastrocnemius_, 208
   _My Nightmare_, 105
   _My Sense of Touch_, 91

   N----, 29, 78, 121, 122, 257, 261
   _Naming Cockroaches_, 184
   Natural History Museum, 6, 54
   _New Pile in the Pier, A_, 88
   Newton, 171
   Nietzsche, 137, 156

   _Old Diaries_, 44
   _Omniscience_, 239
   _On Lighting Chloe's Cigarette,_ 119
   _On Lundy Island_, 21
   _On the N. Downs_, 68
   _Our Simian Ancestry_, 27

   P----, 76, 78, 79, 80
   _Pachmann_, 234
   Pascal, 293
   _Petticoat Lane_, 163
   Piers Plowman, 221
   Plymouth Marine Laboratory, 29, 32,47, 79
   _Pool: a Retrospect, The_, 189
   _Potted Novel, A_, 284
   _Prawning_, 17
   _Preparing a Snake's Skull_, 50
   "_Punch_," 296
   _Punch and Judy Show, The,_ 180

   R----, 81, 99, 101, 104, 107, 115, 119, 120, 122, 123, 124,
    127, 128, 130, 131, 132, 133, 134, 135, 136, 140, 141, 148,
    151, 154, 166, 167, 169, 172, 173, 174, 175, 182, 197, 205,
    207, 208, 209, 215, 2l6, 217, 227, 228, 229, 230, 239, 240,
    241, 295, 299, 303
   _Raemakers_, 186
   _Railway Travel_, 41
   _Raleigh, Sir Walter_, 129, 196
   _Reading Nietzsche_, 156
   _Reminiscences_, 270
   _Renunciation_, 85
   _Resignation_, 141
   _Restlessness of the Sea, The,_ 90
   Richepin, 57
   Richelieu, Cardinal, 155
   _Rigor Bordis_, 148
   _Rodin_, 103, 157, 160
   Romney, 169
   Rousseau, 63, 181, 268
   Ruskin, 30, 190, 208, 216

   S----, 1, 3
   Saintsbury, Prof. Geo., 126
   Sainte-Beuve, 200, 277
   Schäfer, 110
   Schopenhauer, 34
   Schubert, 173, 174
   _Scots Fir, A_, 111
   Scott, 75, 153
   _Service_, 264
   Shakespeare, 264
   Shaw, Bernard, 59, 150, 166, 249
   Shelley, 196, 266, 293
   _Sir Henry Wood conducting_, 159
   _Sleep_, 206
   _Small Red Viper, A_, 16
   Smiles, Samuel, 14
   Smollett, 291
   _Sollas's "Ancient Hunters,"_ 72
   Southey, 16
   Spallanzani, 47, 71, 112
   Spinoza, 16
   _Spring in the Woods_, 15
   _Staying by the Sea_, 43
   _Stagnancy_, 84
   _Stagnant Day, A_, 111
   Stevenson, 63, 106, 161, 208, 209
   _Stockbroker, The_, 252
   _Strangeness of my Life, The,_ 281
   Strindberg, 139
   Susan, 254
   _Sunset in Kensington Gardens_, 130
   Swift, 230
   Swinburne, 61, 290

   T----, 14, 171, 246

   "_T.P.'s Weekly_," 41
   Tennyson, 154, 264
   _Test for True Love, The_, 157
   _Test of Happiness, A_, 185
   Thompson, Francis, 266
   Thoreau, 181
   _Too Late_, 144
   _Tschaikovsky_, 161, 162
   Turner, J.M.W., 154, 167
   _Two Adventures_, 212
   _Two Months' Sick Leave_, 80
   _Two People I hate in particular,_ 186
   _Two Young Men Talking_, 60

   _Une Caractère_, 53

   Verlaine, 60
   Villon, Francois, 173
   Voltaire, 63, 163

   Wagner, 166
   Wallace, 23, 37
   Walton, Isaac, 8
   Wasmann, Father, 47
   Waterton, 159
   Wells, H.G., 291
   Whistler, 222
   White, Gilbert, 159
   Whitman, Walt, 189, 253
   Wilde, Oscar, 76, 143, 152, 175, 258
   _Windy Ash_,35
   _Wiedersheim_, 106, 145, 159, 257
   _Woman and a Child, A_, 146
   Wood, Sir Henry, 157, 159, 172, 201
   Woodward, Dr. Smith, 145

   _Yellow Cat, A_, 241

   Zola, 17