Chapter XIV: Part II: is dedicated to (4)

I wept too, and it relieved us to cry. We blew our noses. "People who cry in novels," E---- observed with detachment, "never blow their noses. They just weep." ... But the thunder clouds soon come up again.

_October_ 1.

The immediate future horrifies me.

_October_ 2.

Poushkin (as we have named the cat) is coiled up on my bed, purring and quite happy. It does me good to see him.

But consider: A paralytic, a screaming infant, two women, a cat and a canary, shut up in a tiny cottage with no money, the war still on, and food always scarcer day by day. "Give us this day, our daily bread."

I want to be loved--above all, I want to love. My great danger is lest I grow maudlin and say petulantly, "Nobody loves me, nobody cares." I must have more courage and more confidence in other people's good-nature. Then I can love more freely.

_October_ 3.

I am grateful to-day for some happy hours plucked triumphantly from under the very nose of Fate, and spent in the warm sun in the garden. They carried me out at 12, and I stayed till after tea-time. A Lark sang, but the Swallows--dear things--have gone. E---- picked two Primroses. I sat by some Michaelmas Daisies and watched the Bees, Flies, and Butterflies.

_October_ 6.

In fits of maudlin self-compassion I try to visualise Belgium, Armenia, Serbia, etc., and usually cure myself thereby.

_October_ 12.

It is winter--no autumn this year. Of an evening we sit by the fire and enjoy the beautiful sweet-smelling wood-smoke, and the open hearth with its big iron bar carrying pot-hook and hanger. E---- knits warm garments for the Baby, and I play Chopin, César-Franck hymns, Three Blind Mice (with variations) on a mouth-organ, called "The Angels' Choir," and made in Germany.... You would pity me would you? I am lonely, penniless, paralysed, and just turned twenty-eight. But I snap my fingers in your face and with equal arrogance I pity you. I pity you your smooth-running good luck and the stagnant serenity of your mind. I prefer my own torment. I am dying, but you are already a corpse. You have never really lived. Your body has never been flayed into tingling life by hopeless desire to love, to know, to act, to achieve. I do not envy you your absorption in the petty cares of a commonplace existence.

Do you think I would exchange the communion with my own heart for the toy balloons of your silly conversation? Or my curiosity for your flickering interests? Or my despair for your comfortable Hope? Or my present tawdry life for yours as polished and neat as a new three-penny bit? I would not. I gather my mantle around me and I solemnly thank God that I am not as some other men are.

I am only twenty-eight, but I have telescoped into those few years a tolerably long life: I have loved and married, and have a family; I have wept and enjoyed; struggled and overcome, and when the hour comes I shall be content to die.

_ October_ 14 _to_ 20.

Miserable.

_October_ 21.

Self-disgust.

FINIS.

[Barbellion died on December 31.]

[1] John Wesley _rewrote_ his journals from entries in rough draft.

[2] I once received from an editor a very encouraging letter which gave me a great deal of pleasure and made me hope he was going to open the pages of his magazine to me. But three weeks after he committed suicide by jumping out of his bedroom window.

[3] The Egoist explains himself again.

[4] Writing difficult to decipher.

SYNOPSIS