The Journal of a Disappointed Man

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.