The Journal of a Disappointed Man. W.N.P. Barbellion
27.
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.
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