The Journal of a Disappointed Man. W.N.P. Barbellion
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.
At first, when we are very young, Death arouses our curiosity, as it did Cain in the beginning.4 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.
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.
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 Byron's poem.