Chapter XI: Part II: is dedicated to (1)

"The genius of mankind, especially to that form of it expressed in monistic philosophy, whose conceived perception is the highest attainment reached by man."

I can only echo Whistler's remark one day as he stood before an execrably bad drawing "God bless my soul"--uttered slowly and thoughtfully and then repeated.

The beauty of it is that the Editor adds a serious footnote, dissociating himself, and a Scarabee to whom I shewed the Work, read it with a clouded brow and then said: "I think it rather out of place in a paper of this sort." (Tableau.)

_October_ 12.

Down with influenza.

_October_ 13.

A Zeppelin raid last night. I am down with a temperature, but our little household remained quite calm, thank God. We heard guns going off, and I had a fit of trembling as I lay in bed. Many dead of heart failure owing to the excitement.

_October_ 14.

Still in bed. No raid last night. There were two raids on Wednesday, one at 9.30, and another at midnight. The first time the caretaker of the flats came up very alarmed to say "Zeppelins about," so we put out the lights. Then at midnight when everyone else was asleep I heard a big voice shout up from the street: "Lights out there. They're about again." Lay still in bed and waited. Distant gunfire.

_October_ 17.

Bad heart attack.

_October_ 18.

Heart intermits. Every three or four minutes. M---- said that I ought to be getting used to it by now! Phew!! Very nervy and pusillanimous. Taking strychnine in strong doses. I hope dear E---- does not catch the 'flu. She swallows quinine with large hopes.

_October_ 19.

Staying at R----. Had a ghastly journey down, changing trains twice at Clapham Junction and at Croydon, heart intermitting all the time in every position. Poor E---- with me. To-day surprised to find myself still alive.

_October_ 20.

Better to-day. After much persuasion, I have got E---- to let the flat so that we can get away into the country outside the Zeppelin zone.

_October_ 24.

Back in London again. Am better, bolstered up with arsenic and strychnine. Too nervously excited to do any work.

_October_ 25.

The letting of our flat is now in the hands of an agent, and E----, poor dear, is quite resigned to abandoning all her precious wallpapers, etc.

_November_ 7.

The flat is let and we are now living in rooms at ----, 20 miles out of London, to the Westward.

_November_ 8.

It is a great relief to be down in the country. Zeppelins terrify me. Have just had a delightful experience in reading Conrad's new book, _Victory_--a welcome relief from all the tension of the past two months. To outward view, I have been merely a youth getting married, catching the 'flu and giving up a London flat.

Inwardly, I have been whizzing around like a Catherine Wheel. Consider the items:

Concussion of the spine.

Resulting paralysis of left leg ten days before marriage.

Zeppelin raid (heard a cannon go off for the first time).

Severe cold in the head day before marriage (and therefore wild anxiety).

Successful marriage with abatement of cold.

Return to our home.

Ten days later, down with influenza.

A second Zeppelin raid.

Bad heart attack.

Then flat sub-let and London evacuated.

The record nauseates me. I am nauseated with myself and my self-centredness.... Suppose I have been "whizzing" as I call it--what then? They are but subjective trifles--meanwhile other men are seeing great adventures in Gallipoli and elsewhere. "The _Triumph_ is gone," exclaimed the Admiral who in a little group of naval officers on board the flagship had been watching H.M.S. _Triumph_ sink in the Ægean. He shuts his telescope with a click and returns in great dudgeon to his own quarters. How I envy all these men who are participating in this War--soldiers, sailors, war correspondents--all who live and throb and are not afraid. I am a timid youth, anæmic, wear spectacles, and am frightened by a Zep raid! How humiliating. I hate myself for a white-livered craven: I am suffocated for want of more life and courage. My damnable body is slowly killing off all my spirit and buoyancy. Even my mind is becoming blurred. My memory is like an old man's exactly. (Ask ----.)

* * * * *

Yet thro' all my nausea, here I remain happy to discuss myself and my little mishaps. I'm damned sick of myself and all my neurotic whimperings, and so I hereby and now intend to lead a new life and throw this Journal to the Devil. I want to mangle it, tear it to shreds. You smug, hypocritical readers! you'll get no more of me. All you say I know is true before you say it and I know _now_ all the criticism you are going to launch. So please spare yourself the trouble. You cannot enlighten me upon myself. I _know_. I disgust myself--and you, and as for you, you can go to the Devil with this Journal.

_Finis_

_November_ 27.

To-day, armed with a certificate from my Doctor in a sealed envelope and addressed "to the Medical Officer examining Mr. W.N.P. Barbellion," I got leave to attend the recruiting office and offer my services to my King and Country. At the time, the fact that the envelope was sealed caused no suspicion and I had been comfortably carrying the document about in my pocket for days past.

Of course I attended merely as a matter of form under pressure of the authorities, as I knew I was totally unfit--but not quite _how_ unfit. After receiving this precious certificate, I learnt that K---- was recruiting Doctor at W----, and he offered to "put me thro' in five minutes," as he knows the state of my health. So at a time agreed upon, I went to-day and was immediately rejected as soon as he had stethoscoped my heart. The certificate therefore was not needed, and coming home in the train I opened it out of curiosity....

I was quite casual and thought it would be merely interesting to see what M---- said.

It was.

"Some 18 months ago," it ran, "Mr. Barbellion shewed the just visible symptoms of ---- ----" and altho' this fact was at once communicated to my relatives it was withheld from me and M---- therefore asked the M.O. to respect this confidence and to reject me without stating on what grounds. He went on to refer to my patellar and plantar reflexes, by which time I had had enough, tore the paper up and flung it out of the railway carriage window.

I then returned to the Museum intending to find out what ---- ---- was in Clifford Allbutt's System of Medicine. I wondered whether it was brain or heart; and the very thought gave me palpitation. I hope it is heart--something short and sharp rather than lingering. But I believe it must be ---- of the brain, the opposite process of softening occurring in old age. I recall M----'s words to me before geting married: that I had this "nerve weakness," but I was more likely to succumb to pneumonia than to any nervous trouble, and that only 12 months' happiness would be worth while.

* * * * *

On the whole I am amazed at the calm way in which I take this news. I was a fool never to have suspected serious nerve trouble before. Does dear E---- know? What did M---- tell her when he saw her before our marriage?

_November_ 28.

As soon as I woke up in this clear, country air this morning, I thought: ---- ----. I have decided never to find out what it is. I shall find out in good time by the course of events.

A few years ago, the news would have scared me. But not so now. It only interests me. I have been happy, merry, and quite high-spirited to-day.

_December_ 5.

I believe it's creeping paralysis. My left leg goes lame after a short walk. Fortunately E---- does not take alarm.

_December_ 17.

Spent the last two days, both of us, in a state of unrelieved gloom. The clouds never lifted for a moment--it's awful. I scarcely have spoken a word.... And eugenically, what kind of an infant would even a Mark Tapley expect of a father with a medical history like mine, and a mother with a nervous system like hers?... Could anything be more unfortunate? And the War? What may not have happened by this time next year? My health is grotesque.

_December_ 20.

I wonder if she knows. I believe she does but I am afraid to broach the matter in case she doesn't. I think she must know something otherwise she would show more alarm over my leg, and when I went to the Recruiting Office she seemed to show no fear whatever lest they took me. Several times a day in the middle of a talk, or a meal, or a kiss, this problem flashes thro' my mind. I look at her but find no solution. However--for the present--the matter is not urgent.

[1] The English Dialect Dictionary derives the word from Old French _chiboule_, and gives a reference to Piers Plowman. Why hasn't such an old and useful word become a part of the English language like others also brought over at the time of the Norman Conquest?

1916

_February_ 1.

Since I last wrote--a month ago--I have recovered my buoyancy after a blow which kept me under water so long I thought I should never come up and be happy again.... I was reciting my woes to R----, and gaining much relief thereby, when we espied another crony on the other side of the street, crossed over at once, bandied words with him and then walked on, picking up the thread of my lugubrious story just where I had left off--secretly staggered at my emotional agility. I've got to this now,--I simply don't care.

_February_ 2.

"And she draiglet all her petticoatie, Coming thro' the rye." These words have a ridiculous fascination for me; I cannot resist their saccharine, affectionate, nay amorous jingle and keep repeating them aloud all over the house--as Lamb once kept reciting "Rose Aylmer."

_February_ 16.

We took possession of our country cottage to-day: very charming and overlooking a beautiful Park.

* * * * *

Have just discovered the Journal of the De Goncourts and been reading it greedily. Life has really been a commodity. I am boiling over with vitality, chattering amiably to everyone about nothing--argumentative, sanguine, serious, ridiculous. I called old R---- a Rapscallion, a Curmudgeon, and a Scaramouche, and E---- a trull, a drab, a trollop, a callet. "You certainly are a unique husband," said that sweet little lady, and I....

With me, one of the symptoms of delirium is always a melodramatic truculence! I shake my fist in R----'s face and make him explode with laughing.... The sun to-day, and the great, whopping white clouds all bellied out, made me feel inside quite a bright young dog wriggling its body in ecstatic delight let loose upon the green sward.

"You must come down for a week end," I said to R---- at lunch. "Come down as soon as you can. You will find every comfort. It is an enormous house--I have not succeeded in finding my way about it and--it's dangerous to lose yourself--makes you late for dinner. When you arrive our gilded janitor will say: 'I believe Mr. Barbellion is in the library.'"

"Black eunuchs wait on you at dinner, I suppose," R---- rejoined.

"Oh! yes and golden chandeliers and a marble stair-case--all in barbaric splendour."

"Yes, I shall certainly be glad to come down," said R----, phlegmatically.

And so on and so on. Words, idle words all day in a continuous rush. And I am sure that the match which fired the gun-powder was the discovery of the De Goncourts' Journal! It's extraordinary how I have been going on from week to week quite calmly for all the world as if I had read all the books and seen all the places and done everything according to the heart's desire. This book has really jolted me out of my complacency: to think that all this time, I have been dead to so much! Why I might have died unconscious that the De Goncourts had ever lived and written their colossal book and now I am aware of it, I am all in a fever to read it and take it up into my brain: I might die now before I have finished it--a thought that makes me wild with desire just as I once endured most awful pangs when I felt my health going, and believed that I might die before having ever been in love--to die and never to have been in love! --for an instant at a time this possibility used to make me writhe.

_March_ 22.

R---- has an unpleasant habit of making some scarifying announcement drawing forth an explosive query from me and then lapsing at once into an eleusinian silence: he appears to take a sensuous pleasure in the pause that keeps you expectant. I could forgive a man who keeps you on tenterhooks for two puffs in order to keep his pipe alight, but R---- shuts up out of sheer self-indulgence and goes on gazing at the horizon with the eyes of a seer (he thinks) trying to cod me he sees a portent there only revealed to God's elect.

I told him this in the middle of one of his luxurious silences. "I will tell you," he said deliberately, "when we reach the Oratory." (We were in Brompton Road.)

"Which side of it?" I enquired anxiously. "This or that?"

"That," said he, "will depend on how you behave in the meantime."

_April_ 3.

We met a remarkable Bulldog to-day in the street, humbly following behind a tiny boy to whom it was attached by a piece of string. At the time we were following in the wake of three magnificent Serbian Officers, and I was particularly interesting myself in the curious cut of their top boots. But the Bulldog was the Red Herring in our path.

"Is that a Dog?" I asked the little boy.

He assured me that it was, and so it turned out to be, tho' Bull-frog would have been a better name for it, the forelegs being more bandied, the back broader and the mouth wider than in any Bulldog I have ever seen. It was a super-Bulldog.

We turned and walked on. "There," said R----, "now we have lost our Serbian Officers."

_April_ 4.

"May I use your microscope?" he asked.

"By all means," I said with a gesture of elaborate politeness.

He sat down at my table, in my chair, and used my instrument--becoming at once absorbed and oblivious to my banter as per below:

"As Scotchmen," I said, "are monuments rather than men, this latest raid on Edinboro's worthy inhabitants must be called vandalism rather than murder."

No answer. I continued to stand by my chair.

"How pleased Swift, Johnson, Lamb, and other anti-Caledonians would be...."

"Hope you don't mind my occupying your chair a little longer," the Scotchman said, "but this is a larva, has curious maxillæ...." and his voice faded away in abstraction.

"Oh! no--go on," I said, "I fear it is a grievous absence of hospitality on my part in not providing you with a glass of whiskey. Can I offer you water, Sir?"

No answer.

Another enthusiast ushered himself in, was greeted with delight by the first and invited to sit down. I pulled out a chair for him and said:

"Shave, sir, or hair cut?"

"If you follow along to the top of the galea," No. I droned on imperturbably, "you will...." etc.

I got tired of standing and talking to an empty house but at last they got up, apologising and making for the door.

I entreated them not to mention the matter--my fee should be nominal--I did it out of sheer love, etc.

They thanked me again and would have said more but I added blandly:

"You know your way out?" They assured me they did (having worked in the place for 30 years and more)--I thanked God--and sat down to my table once more.

(These reports of conversations are rather fatuous: yet they give an idea of the sort of person I have to deal with, and also the sort of person I am among this sort of person.)

_April_ 6.

_The Housefly Problem_--1916

For weeks past we have all been in a terrible flutter scarcely paralleled by the outbreak of Armageddon in August, 1914. The spark which fired almost the whole building was a letter to the _Times_ written by Dr. ----, making public an ignominious confession of ignorance on the part of Entomologists as to how the Housefly passed the winter. In reply, many correspondents wrote to say they hibernated, and one man was even so temerarious as to quote to us Entomologists the exact Latin name of the Housefly: viz., _Musca domestica_. We asked for specimens and enormous numbers of flies at once began to arrive at the Museum, alive and dead--and not a Housefly among them! So there was a terrible howdedo.

One of the correspondents was named "Masefield." "Not Masefield the poet?" an excited dipterist asked. I reassured him.

"I've a good mind," said Dr. ----, "to reply to this chap who's so emphatic and give him a whigging--only he's climbing down a bit in this second letter in to-day's issue." I strongly advocated clemency.

But still the affair goes on. Every morning sees more letters and more flies sent by all sorts of persons--we seem to have set the whole world searching for Houseflies--Duchesses, signalmen, farmers, footmen. Every morning each fresh batch of flies is mounted on pins by experts in the Setting Room, and an Assistant's whole time is devoted to identifying, arranging, listing and reporting upon the new arrivals. At the last meeting of the Trustees a sample collection was displayed to show indubitably that the insects which hibernate in houses are not _Musca domestica_ but _Pollenia rudis_. I understand the Trustees were appreciative.

An observant eye can now discover state visits to our dipterists from interested persons carrying their flies with them, animated discussions in the corridor, knots of excited enthusiasts in the Lavatory, in the Library, everywhere--and everywhere the subject discussed is the same: How does the Housefly pass the winter? As one passes one catches: "In Bakehouses certainly they are to be found but...." or a wistful voice, "I wish I had caught that one in my bathroom three winters ago--I am certain it was a Housefly." The Doctor himself--a gallant Captain--wanders from room to room stimulating his lieutenants to make suggestions, and examining every answer to the great interrogative on its merits, no matter how humble or insignificant the person who makes it. Then of an afternoon he will entirely disappear, and word goes round that he has set forth to examine a rubbish heap in Soho or Pimlico. As the afternoon draws to its close someone enquires if he has come back yet; next morning a second asks if I had seen him, then a third announces mournfully that he has just been holding conversation with him, but that nothing at all was found in the rubbish heap.

The great sensation of all occurred last week when somebody ran along the corridor crying that Mr. ---- had just found a Housefly in his room. We were all soon agog with the news, and the excited Captain was presently espied setting out for the scene of operations with a killing bottle and net. The insect was promptly impounded and identified as a veritable _Musca domestica_. A consultation being held to sit on the body, a lady finally laid information that two "forced Houseflies" hatched the day before had escaped from her possession. She suggested Mr. ----'s specimen was one of them.

"How would it get from your room to Mr. ----'s?" she

was immediately asked. And breathless, we all heard her answer deliberately and quite audibly that the fugitive may have gone out of her window, up the garden and in by Mr. ----'s window, _or_ it may have gone out of her door, up the corridor and in by his door. I wanted to know why it should have entered Mr. ----'s room as he is not a dipterist but a microlepidopterist. They looked at me sternly and we slowly dispersed.

This morning, the Dr. came to me with a newspaper cutting in his hand, saying, "_The Times_ is behindhand." He handed me the slip. It was a clipping from to-day's _Times_ about a sackful of flies which had been taken from Wandsworth Clock Tower in a state of hibernation.

"Behindhand?" I asked timidly, for I felt that all the story was not in front of me.

"Why, yes. Don't you know?"

I knew nothing, but was prepared for anything.

"_The Star_, two days ago," he informed me, "had a paragraph about this--headed 'Tempus fugit' "--this last in a resentful tone as tho' the frivolous reporter were attempting to discredit our mystery.

There was a long pause. Neither of us spoke. Then he slowly said:

"I wonder why _The Times_ is so behindhand. This is two days late."

_May_ 5.

Hulloa, old friend: how are you? I mean my Diary. I haven't written to you for ever so long, and my silence as usual indicates happiness. I have been passing thro' an unbroken succession of calm happy days, walking in the woods with my darling, or doing a little gentle gardening on coming home in the evening--and the War has been centuries away. Later on towards bedtime, E---- reads Richard Jefferies, I play Patience and Mrs. ---- makes garments for Priscilla.

The only troubles have been a chimney which smokes and a neighbour's dog which barks at night. So to be sure, I have made port after storm at last--and none too soon. To-day my cheerfulness has been rising in a crescendo till to-night it broke in such a handsome crest of pure delight that I cannot think of going to bed without recording it.

_Pachmann_

After sitting on the wall around the fountain in the middle of Trafalgar Square, eating my sandwiches and feeding the Pigeons with the crumbs, I listened for a moment to the roar of the traffic around three sides of the Square as I stood in the centre quite alone, what time one fat old pigeon, all unconcerned, was treading another. It was an extraordinary experience: motor horns tooted incessantly and it seemed purposelessly, so that one had the fancy that all London was out for a joy-ride--it was a great British Victory perhaps, or Peace Day.

Then walked down Whitehall to Westminster Bridge in time to see the 2 o'clock boat start upstream for Kew. I loitered by the old fellow with the telescope who keeps his pitch by Boadicea: I saw a piper of the Scots Guards standing near gazing across the river but at nothing in particular--just idling as I was. I saw another man sitting on the stone steps and reading a dirty fragment of newspaper. I saw the genial, red-faced sea-faring man in charge of the landing stage strolling up and down his small domain,--chatting, jesting, spitting, and making fast a rope or so. Everything was _alive_ to the finger tips, vividly shining, pulsating.

Arrived at Queen's Hall in time for Pachmann's Recital at 3.15.... As usual he kept us waiting for 10 minutes. Then a short, fat, middle-aged man strolled casually on to the platform and everyone clapped violently--so it was Pachmann: a dirty greasy looking fellow with long hair of dirty grey colour, reaching down to his shoulders and an ugly face. He beamed on us and then shrugged his shoulders and went on shrugging them until his eye caught the music stool, which seemed to fill him with amazement. He stalked it carefully, held out one hand to it caressingly, and finding all was well, went two steps backwards, clasping his hands before him and always gazing at the little stool in mute admiration, his eyes sparkling with pleasure, like Mr. Pickwick's on the discovery of the archeological treasure. He approached once more, bent down and ever so gently moved it about 7/8ths of an inch nearer the piano. He then gave it a final pat with his right hand and sat down.

He played Nocturne No. 2, Prelude No. 20, a Mazurka and two Etudes of Chopin and Schubert's Impromptu No. 4.

At the close we all crowded around the platform and gave the queer, old-world gentleman an ovation, one man thrusting up his hand which Pachmann generously shook as desired.

As an encore he gave us a Valse--"Valse, Valse," he exclaimed ecstatically, jumping up and down in his seat in time to the music. It was a truly remarkable sight: on his right the clamorous crowd around the platform; on his left the seat holders of the Orchestra Stalls, while at the piano bobbed this grubby little fat man playing divine Chopin divinely well, at the same time rising and falling in his seat, turning a beaming countenance first to the right and then to the left, crying, "Valse, Valse." He is as entertaining as a tumbler at a variety hall.

As soon as he had finished, we clapped and rattled for more, Pachmann meanwhile standing surrounded by his idolaters in affected despair at ever being able to satisfy us. Presently he walked off and a scuffle was half visible behind the scenes between him and his agent who sent him in once more.

The applause was wonderful. As soon as he began again it ceased on the instant, and as soon as he left off it started again immediately--nothing boisterous or rapturous but a steady, determined thunder of applause that came regularly and evenly like the roar from some machine.

_May_ 20.

Spent a quiet day. Sat at my escritoire in the Studio this morning writing an Essay, with a large 4-fold window on my left, looking on to woods and fields, with Linnets, Greenfinches, Cuckoos calling. This afternoon while E---- rested awhile I sat on the veranda in the sun and read _Antony and Cleopatra_.... Yes, I'm in harbour at last. I'd be the last to deny it but I cannot believe it will last. It's too good to last and it's all too good to be even true. E---- is too good to be true, the home is too good to be true, and this quiet restful existence is too wonderful to last in the middle of a great war. It's just a little deceitful April sunshine, that's all....[1]

Had tea at the ----. A brilliant summer's evening. Afterwards, we wandered into the garden and shrubbery and sat about on the turf of the lawn, chatting and smoking. Mr. ---- played with a rogue of a white Tomcat called Chatham, and E---- talked about our neighbour, "Shamble legs," about garden topics, etc. Then I strolled into the drawing-room where Cynthia was playing Chopin on a grand piano. Is it not all perfectly lovely?

How delicious to be silent, lolling on the Chesterfield, gazing abstractedly thro' the lattice window and listening to the lulling charities of Nocturne No. 2, Op. 37! The melody in the latter part of this nocturne took me back at once to a cloudless day in an open boat in the Bay of Combemartin, with oars up and the water quietly and regularly lapping the gunwales as we rose and fell. A state of the most profound calm and happiness took possession of me.

_June_ 2.

From the local paper:

"A comrade in the Gloucesters writing to a friend at ---- mentions that Pte. J---- has been fatally shot in action. J---- was well known here for years as an especially smart young newsvendor."

_June_ 3.

What a bitter disappointment it is to realise that people the most intimately in love with one another are really separated by such a distance. A woman is calmly knitting socks or playing Patience while her husband or sweetheart lies dead in Flanders. However strong the tie that binds them together yet they are insufficiently _en rapport_ for her to sense even a catastrophe--and she must wait till the War Office forsooth sends her word. How humiliating that the War Office must do what Love cannot. Human love seems then such a superficial thing. Every person is a distinct egocentric being. Each for himself and the Devil take the hindmost. "Ah! but she didn't know." "Yes, but she _ought_ to have known." Mental telepathy and clairvoyance should be common at least to all lovers.

This morning in bed I heard a man with a milkcart say in the road to a villager at about 6.30 a.m., "... battle ... and we lost six cruisers." This was the first I knew of the Battle of Jutland. At 8 a.m. I read in the _Daily News_ that the British Navy had been defeated, and thought it was the end of all things. The news took away our appetites. At the railway station, the _Morning Post_ was more cheerful, even reassuring, and now at 6.30 p.m. the Battle has turned into a merely regrettable indecisive action. We breathe once more.

_June_ 4.

It has now become a victory.

_June_ 11.

Old systems of Classification: Rafinesc's Theory of Fives, Swainson's Theory of Sevens, Edward Newman's book called _Sphinx Vespiformis_ tracing fives throughout the animal world, Sir Thomas Browne's Quincunx, chasing fives throughout the whole of nature--in the words of Coleridge, "quincunxes in Heaven above, quincunxes in the Earth below, quincunxes in the mind of man, in optic nerves, in roots of trees, in leaves, in everything!"

* * * * *

Old false trails:

The Philosopher's Stone (Balthazar Clæs).[2]

A universal catholicon (Bishop Berkeley's tar-water). Mystical numbers (as per above).

* * * * *

My father was Sir Thomas Browne and my mother Marie Bashkirtseff. See what a curious hybrid I am!

* * * * *

I toss these pages in the faces of timid, furtive, respectable people and say: "There! that's me! You may like it or lump it, but it's true. And I challenge you to follow suit, to flash the searchlight of your self-consciousness into every remotest corner of your life and invite everybody's inspection. Be candid, be honest, break down the partitions of your cubicle, come out of your burrow, little worm." As we are all such worms we should at least be honest worms.

* * * * *

My gratitude to E---- for plucking me out of the hideous miseries of my life in London is greater than I can express. If I were the cheap hero of a ladies' novel I should immolate my journals as a token, and you would have a pretty picture of a pale young man watching his days go up in smoke by the drawing-room fire. But I have more confidence in her sterling good sense, and if I cannot be loved for what I am, I do not wish to be loved for what I am not.

Since the fateful Nov. 27th, my life has become entirely posthumous. I live now in the grave and am busy furnishing it with posthumous joys. I accept my fate with great content, my one-time restless ambition lies asleep now, my one-time, furious self-assertiveness is anæsthetised by this great War; the War and the discovery about my health together have plucked out of me that canker of self-obsession. I sit at home here in this country cottage in perfect isolation--flattened out by a steam hammer (tho' it took Armageddon to do it!), yet as cheerful and busy as a Dormouse laying up store for the winter. For I am almost resigned to the issue in the knowledge that some day, someone will know, perhaps somebody will understand and--immortal powers!--even sympathise, "the quick heart quickening from the heart that's still."

_July_ 19.

_Omniscience_

An omniscient Caledonian asked me to-day:

"Where are the Celebes? Are they E. or N.E. of the Sandwich Group?"

I marked him down at once as my legitimate prey. Sitting back in my chair, I replied slowly in my most offensive manner:

"The Island of Celebes is of enormous size and curious shape situated in the Malay Archipelago."

The Caledonian made no sign. Instead of grinning at his error and confessing to a "floater," he endeavoured to carry on by remarking, "That of course would be N. of Papua," just for all the world as if his error was a minor one of latitude and longitude.

Ignoring his comment, I continued:

"From the Zoogeographical point of view, Celebes is unequalled in importance, having the strangest fauna almost of any island on the face of the globe. Then there's 'Wallace's Line,'" I said, being purposely obscure.

The Caledonian said nought but "looked hurt." It was so obvious that he didn't know, and it was so obvious that I knew that he didn't know, that after my farcical truculence I expected the tension to dissolve in laughter. Yet it is hard for a Caledonian to say "God be merciful to me, ignorant devil that I am." So I pursued him with more information about "Wallace's Line," with an insouciant air, as much as to say, "Wallace's Line of course you heard discussed before you were breached."

"Some do say, you know, that the Line is 'all my eye and Betty Martin,' _e.g._, R----."

This gave him his first opportunity of finding his feet in this perilously deep water. So he said promptly, eager to seem knowledgeable with an intelligent rejoinder:

"As! yes, R---- is an authority on Fishes."

I assented. "At the last meeting of the British Ass. he tore the idea to shreds."

The drowning Caledonian seized at any straw:

"Fishes, however, are not of paramount importance in cases of geographical distribution, are they?"

I knew he was thinking of _marine_ fishes, but I did not illumine him, and merely said:

"Oh! yes, of very great importance," at which he looked still more "hurt," decamped in silence and left me conqueror of the field but without the spoils of victory: it was impossible to bring him to say "I do not know"--four mono-syllables was all I wanted from the man who for months past has been lecturing me on all things from Music and the Drama to Philosophy, Painting and--Insects.

_July_ 20.

The cradle came a few days ago but I had not seen it until this morning when I unlocked the cupboard door, looked in and shuddered.

"That's the skeleton in our cupboard," I said on coming down to breakfast. She laughed, but I really meant it.

E---- keeps a blue bowl replenished with flaming Poppies in our room. The cottage is plagued with Ear-wigs which fly in at night and get among the clothes and bedlinen. This morning, dressing, she held up her chemise to the light saying: "I always do this--you can see their little heathen bodies then against the light...." Isn't she charming?

_July_ 30.

The other day R---- and I were sitting on a stile on the uplands in perfect summer weather and talking of happy days before the War--he was in khaki and I was resting my "gammy" leg.... As we talked, we let our eyes roam, resting luxuriously wherever we pleased and occasionally interrupting the conversation with "Look at that cow scratching herself against the Oak," or "Do you see the oats waving?" In the distance we saw a man and a boy walking up towards us along the path thro' the corn, but the eye having momentarily scrutinised them wandered away and the conversation never paused. When next I looked, they were much nearer--crossing the furrows in the potato field in fact, and we both stopped talking to watch--idly. The boy seemed to be about 10 years old, and it amused us to see his great difficulty in stepping across the furrows.

"Poor little chap," R---- said, and we laughed.

Then the boy stumbled badly and all at once the man lifted his walking-stick and beat him, saying ill-naturedly, "Step between the furrows," and again, "Step between the furrows." Our enchanting little picture was transfigured in an instant. The "charming little boy" was a natural idiot--a gross, hefty creature perhaps 30 years of age, very short and very thick, dressed in a little sailor suit. I said, "Heavens," and R---- looked positively scared. We stood aside for them to get over the stile, the "boy" still suffering from his over exertion, breathing stertorously like a horse pulling uphill and still evidently fearful of the big stick behind. He scrambled over the stile as best he could, rolling a wild eye at us as he did so--a large, bulgy eye with the lower lid swollen and sore, like the eye of a terrified ox on the way to the slaughter house. So much then for our little picture of charming childhood! The man followed close at his heels and looked at me with stern defiant eyes. "Yes, that is my son," his eyes declaimed, "and I'll thank you to avert your gaze or by the Lord I'll beat you too."

_A Yellow Cat_

Last week, I saw a yellow cat perched up quite high on a window ledge at the S---- Underground Station in celestial detachment from the crowd of serious, black-coated gentlemen hustling along to and from the trains. He had his back turned to us, but as I swept past in the stream, I was forced to look back a moment, and caught the outline of his whiskers--it made me smile intensely to myself and secretly I gave the palm to the cat for wisdom.

_July_ 31.

This War is so great and terrible that hyperbole is impossible. And yet my gorge rises at those fatuous journalists continually prating about this "Greatest War of all time," this "Great Drama," this "world catastrophe unparalleled in human history," because it is easy to see that they are really more thrilled than shocked by the immensity of the War. They indulge in a vulgar Yankee admiration for the Big Thing. Why call this shameful Filth by high sounding phrases--as if it were a tragedy from Euripides? We ought to hush it up, not brag about it, to mention it with a blush instead of spurting it out brazen-faced.

Mr. Garvin, for example, positively gloats over the War each week in the _Observer_: "Last week was one of those pivotal occasions on which destiny seems to swing"--and so on every week, you can hear him, historical glutton smacking his lips with an offensive relish.

For my part, I never seem to be in the same mind about the War twice following. Sometimes I am wonderstruck and make out a list of all the amazing events I have lived to see since August, 1914, and sometimes and more often I am swollen with contempt for its colossal imbecility. And sometimes I am swept away with admiration for all the heroism of the War, or by some particularly noble self-sacrifice, and think it is really all worth while. Then--and more frequently--I remember that this War has let loose on the world not only barbarities, butcheries and crimes, but lies, lies, lies--hypocrisies, deceits, ignoble desires for self-aggrandizement, self-preservation such as no one before ever dreamed existed in embryo in the heart of human beings.

The War rings the changes on all the emotions. It twangs all my strings in turn and occasionally all at once, so that I scarcely know how to react or what to think. You see, here am I, a compulsory spectator, and all I can do is to reflect. A Zeppelin brought down in flames that lit up all London--now that makes me want to write like Mr. Garvin. But a Foreign Correspondent's eager discussion of "Italy's aspirations in the Trentino," how Russia insists on a large slice of Turkey, and so forth, makes me splutter. How insufferably childish to be slicing up the earth's surface! How immeasureably "above the battle" I am at times. What a prig you will say I am when I sneer at such contemptible little devilries as the Bodies' trick of sending over a little note, "Warsaw is fallen," into our trenches, or as ours in reply: "Gorizia!"

"There is no difference in principle between the case of a man who loses a limb in the service of his country and that of the man who loses his reason, both have an obvious claim to the grateful recognition of the State."--A morning paper.

A jejune comment like this makes me grin like a gargoyle! Hark to the fellow--this leader-writer over his cup of tea. But it is a lesson to show how easily and quickly we have all adapted ourselves to the War. The War is everything; it is noble, filthy, great, petty, degrading, inspiring, ridiculous, glorious, mad, bad, hopeless yet full of hope. I don't know what to think about it.

_August_ 13.

I hate elderly women who mention their legs. It makes me shudder.

* * * * *

I had two amusing conversations this morning, one with a jealous old man of 70 summers who, in spite of his age, is jealous--I can find no other term--of me in spite of mine, and the other with a social climber. I always tell the first of any of my little successes and regularly hand him all my memoirs as they appear, to which he as regularly protests that he reads very little now.

"Oh! never mind," I always answer gaily, "you take it and read it going down in the train--it will amuse you." He submits but is always silent next time I see him--a little, admonitory silence. Or, I mention I am giving an address at ----, and he says "Oom," and at once begins his reminiscences, which I have heard many times before, and am sometimes tempted to correct him when, his memory failing, he leaves out an essential portion of his story. Thus do crabbed age and boastful youth tantalise one another.

To the social climber I said slyly:

"You seem to move in a very distinguished entourage during your week ends."

He smiled a little self-consciously, hesitated a moment and then said:

"Oh! I have a few nice friends, you know."

Now I am sorry, but though I scrutinised this lick-spittle and arch belly-truck rider very closely, I am quite unable to say whether that smile and unwonted diffidence meant simple pleasure at the now certain knowledge that I was duly impressed, or whether it was genuine confusion at the thought that he had perhaps been overdoing it.

Curiously enough, all bores of whatever kind make a dead set at me. I am always a ready listener and my thrusts are always gentle. Hence the pyramids! I constantly act as phlebotomist to the vanity of the young and to the anecdotage of the senile and senescent.

_August_ 13.

... I stood by his chair and looked down at him, and surveyed carefully the top of his head, neck, and collar, and with admirable restraint and calm, considered my most reasonable contempt of him. In perfect silence, we remained thus, while I looked down at a sore spot in the centre of his calvarium which he scratches occasionally, and toyed with the fine flower of my scorn.... But it is a dangerous license to take. One never knows....

_Equilibrium Restored_

To clear away the cobwebs and to purge my soul of evil thoughts and bitter feelings, went for a walk this evening over the uplands. Among the stubble, I sat down for a while with my back against the corn pook and listened to the Partridges calling. Then wandered around the edge of this upland field with the wind in my face and a shower of delicious, fresh rain pattering down on the leaves and dry earth. Then into a wood among tall forest Beeches and a few giant Larches where I rested again and heard a Woodpecker tapping out its message aloft.

This ramble in beautiful B----shire country restored my mental and spiritual poise. I came home serene and perfectly balanced--my equilibrium was something like the just perceptible oscillation of tall Larch-tree tops on the heights of a cliff and the sea below with a just perceptible swell on a calm and perfect June day. I felt exquisite --superb. I could have walked all the way home on a tight rope.

_September_ 2.

Just recently, I have been going fairly strong. I get frequent colds and sometimes show unpleasant nerve symptoms, but I take a course of arsenic and strychnine every month or so in tabloid form, and this helps me over bad patches.

Under the beatific influence of more comfortable health, the rare flower of my ambition has raised its head once more: my brain has bubbled with projects. To wit:

(1) An investigation of the Balancers in Larval Urodeles.

(2) The Present Parlous State of Systematic Zoology (for "Science Progress").

(3) The Anatomy of the Psocidæ.

Etc.

The strength of my ambition at any given moment is the measure of my state of health. It must really be an extraordinarily tenacious thing to have hung on thro' all my recent experiences. Considerately enough this great Crab lets go of my big toe when I am sunk low in health, yet pinches devilishly hard as now when I am well.[3]

_A Bad Listener_

When I begin to speak, T---- will sometimes interrupt with his loud, rasping voice. I usually submit to this from sheer lack of lung power or I may have a sore throat. But occasionally after the fifth or sixth interruption I lose my equanimity and refuse to give him ground. I keep straight on with what I intended to say, only in a louder voice; he assumes a voice louder still, but not to be denied, I pile Pelion on Ossa and finally overwhelm him in a thunder of sound. For example:

"The other day"--I begin quietly collecting my thoughts to tell the story in detail, "I went to the----"

"Ah! you must come and see my pictures----" he breaks in; but I go on and he goes on and as I talk, I catch phrases: "St. Peters" or"Michael Angelo" or "Botticelli" in wondrous antiphon with my own "British Museum" and "I saw there," "two Syracusan," "tetradrachms," until very likely I reach the end of my sentence before he does his, or perhaps his rasp drives my remarks out of my head. But that makes no difference, for rather than give in I go on improvising in a louder and louder voice when suddenly, at length made aware of the fact that I am talking too, he stops! leaving me bellowing nonsense at the top of my voice, thus: "and I much admired these Syracusan tetradrachms, very charming indeed, I like them, the Syracusan tetradrachms I mean you know, and it will be good to go again and see them (louder) if possible and the weather keeps dry (louder) and the moon and the stars keep in their courses, if the slugs on the thorn (loudest)----" he stops, hears the last few words of my remarks, pretends to be appreciative but wonders what in Heaven's name I can have been talking about.

_September_ 3.

This is the sort of remark I like to make: Someone says to me: "You _are_ a pessimist."

"Ah! well," I say, looking infernally deep, "pessimism is a good policy; it's like having your cake and eating it at the same time."

Chorus: "Why?"

"Because if the future turns out badly you can say, 'I told you so,' to your own satisfaction, and if all is well, why you share everyone else's satisfaction."

Or I say: "No, I can't swim; and I don't want to!"

Chorus: "Why?"

"Because it is so dangerous."

Chorus: "Why?"

The Infernally Wise Youth: "For several reasons. If you are a swimmer you are likely to be oftener near water and oftener in danger than a non-swimmer. Further, as soon as you can swim even only a little, then as an honourable man, it behoves you to plunge in at once to save a drowning person, whereas, if you couldn't swim it would be merely tempting Providence."

Isn't it sickening?

_A Jolt_

Yesterday the wind was taken out of my sails. Racing along with spinnaker and jib, feeling pretty fit and quite excited over some interesting ectoparasites just collected on some Tinamous, I suddenly shot into a menacing dead calm: that stiflingly still atmosphere which precedes a Typhoon. That is to say, my eye caught the title of an enormous quarto memoir in the _Trans. Roy. Soc._, Edinburgh: The Histology of ---- ----.

I was browsing in the library at the time when this hit me like a carelessly handled gaff straight in the face. I almost ran away to my room.

* * * * *

My Pink Form just received amazes me! To be a soldier? C'est incroyable, ma foi! The possibility even is distracting! To send me a notice requesting me to prepare myself for killing men! Why I should feel no more astonished to receive a War Office injunction under dire penalties to perform miracles, to move mountains, to raise from the dead: My reply would be: "I cannot." I should sit still and watch the whole universe pass to its destruction rather than raise a hand to knife a fellow. This may be poor, anæmic; but there it is, a positive fact.

* * * * *

There are moments when I have awful misgivings: Is this blessed Journal worth while? I really don't know, and that's the harassing fact of the matter. If only I were sure of myself, if only I were capable of an impartial view! But I am too fond of myself to be able to see myself objectively. I wish I knew for certain what I am and how much I am worth. There are such possibilities about the situation; it may turn out tremendously, or else explode in a soap bubble. It is the torture of Tantalus to be so uncertain. I should be relieved to know even the worst. I would almost gladly burn my MSS. in the pleasure of having my curiosity satisfied. I go from the nadir of disappointment to the zenith of hope and back several times a week, and all the time I am additionally harassed by the perfect consciousness that it is all petty and pusillanimous to desire to be known and appreciated, that my ambition is a morbid diathesis of the mind. I am not such a fool either as not to see that there is but little satisfaction in posthumous fame, and I am not such a fool as not to realise that all fame is fleeting, and that the whole world itself is passing away.

* * * * *

I smile with sardonic amusement when I reflect how the War has changed my status. Before the War I was an interesting invalid. Now I am a lucky dog. Then, I was a star turn in tragedy; now I am drowned and ignored in an overcrowded chorus. No valetudinarian was ever more unpleasantly jostled out of his self-compassion. It is difficult to accustom myself to the new role all at once: I had begun to lose the faculty for sympathising in others' griefs. It is hard to have to realise that in all this slaughter, my own superfluous life has become negligible and scarcely anyone's concern but my own. In this colossal _sauve-qui-peut_ which is developing, who can stay to consider a useless mouth? Am I not a comfortable parasite? And, God forgive me, an Egotist to boot?

The War is searching out everyone, concentrating a beam of inquisitive light upon everyone's mind and character and publishing it for all the world to see. And the consequence to many honest folk has been a keen personal disappointment. We ignoble persons had thought we were better than we really are. We scarcely anticipated that the War was going to discover for us our emotions so despicably small by comparison, or our hearts so riddled with selfish motives. In the wild race for security during these dangerous times, men and women have all been sailing so closehauled to the wind that their eyes have been glued to their own forepeaks with never a thought for others: fathers have vied with one another in procuring safe jobs for their sons, wives have been bitter and recriminating at the security of other wives' husbands. The men themselves plot constantly for staff appointments, and everyone is pulling strings who can. Bereavement has brought bitterness and immunity indifference.