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 colours.
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. M’Whirr 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.
11.0. A— came downstairs and had a little supper.
12.0. 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.fn6
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 flagstaff 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 for 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 em
endation of an otherwise uninteresting incident.
October 24.
Un 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 fretsawing 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 drooling. At 7.5 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,fn7 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 aposiopeses.
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—. Playe
d the negligent flâneur, 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.
The Journal of a Disappointed Man Page 6
