The Journal of a Disappointed Man

by W. N. P. Barbellion

  ‘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 ½ oz. carbolic in ½ 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. ‘Um,’ 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 serpentulous 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 wheedl
ing 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 features 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!fn5 … 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 starfish’s water-vascular system than know the price of Consols. I should make a most industrious country gentleman with £5000 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.