Chapter V: Part II: In London (2)

Nothing very relevant could be gathered from casual remarks. The conversation was without exception monosyllabic: "Let go," or "Stand fast." But by close attention to certain obscure movements of the man on the ladder near the water's edge, it gradually came thro' to my consciousness that all these powerful, silent men were up against some bitter difficulty. I cannot say what it was. The burly monsters were silent about the matter.... In fact they appeared almost indifferent--and tired, oh! so very tired of the whole business. The attitude of the man nearest me was that for all he cared the pile could go on swinging in mid-air to the crack of Doom.

They continued slow, laborious efforts to overcome the secret difficulty. But these gradually slackened and finally ceased. One massive man after another abandoned his post in order to lean over the rails and gaze like a mystic into the depths of the sea. No one spoke. No one saw anything not even in the depths of the sea. One spat, and with round, sad eyes contemplated the trajectory of his brown bolus (he had been chewing) in its descent into the water.

The foreman, an original thinker, lit a cigarette, which relieved the tension. Then, slowly and with majesty, he turned on his heel, and walked away. With the sudden eclipse of the foreman's interest, the incident closed. I should have been scarcely surprised to find him behind the Harbour-master's Office playing "Shove-ha'penny" or skittles with the pile still swinging in mid-air.... After all it was only a bloody pile.

_June_ 11.

_Depression_

Suffering from depression.... The melancholy fit fell very suddenly. All the colour went out of my life, the world was dirty gray. On the way back to my hotel caught sight of H----, jumping into a cab, after a visit to S---- Sands. But the sight of him aroused no desire in me to shout or wave. I merely wondered how on earth he could have spent a happy day at such a Sandy place.

On arriving at ----, sank deeper into my morass. It suffocated me to find the old familiar landmarks coming into view ... the holiday-makers along the streets how I hated them--the Peg Top Hill how desolate--all as before--how dull. The very fact that they were all there as before in the morning nauseated me. The sea-coast here is magnificent, the town is pretty--I know that, of course. But all looked dreary and cheerless--just the sort of feeling one gets on entering an empty house with no fire on a winter's day and nowhere to sit down.... I felt as lonely and desolate as a man suddenly fallen from the clouds into an unknown town on the Antarctic Continent built of ice and inhabited by Penguins. Who are these people? I asked myself irritably. There perhaps on the other side of the street was my own brother. But I was not even faintly interested and told the cabman to drive on. The spray from the sea fogged my spectacles and made me weary.

_June_ 14.

_The Restlessness of the Sea_

The restlessness of the sea acts as a soporific on jangled nerves. You gaze at its incessant activities, unwillingly at first because they distract your attention from your own cherished worries and griefs,--but later you watch with complete self-abandon--it wrenches you out of yourself--and eventually with a kind of stupid hypnotic stare.

_Dr. Spurgeon_

The day has been overcast, but to-night a soft breeze sprang up and swept the sky clear as softly as a mop. The sun coming out shone upon a white sail far out in the channel, scarcely another vessel hove in sight. The white sail glittered like a piece of silver paper whenever the mainsail swung round as the vessel tacked. Its solitariness and whiteness in a desert of marine blue attracted the attention and held it till at last I could look at nothing else. The sight of it--so clean and white and fair--set me yearning for all the rarest and most exquisite things my imagination could conjure up--a beautiful girl, with fair and sunburnt skin, brown eyes, dark eyebrows, and small pretty feet; a dewdrop in a violet's face; an orange-tip butterfly swinging on an umbel of a flower.

The sail went on twinkling and began to exert an almost moral influence over me. It drew out all the good in me. I longed to follow it on white wings--an angel I suppose--to quit this husk of a body "as raiment put away," and pursue Truth and Beauty across the sea to the horizon, and beyond the horizon up the sky itself to its last tenuous confines, no doubt with a still small voice summoning me and the rest of the elect to an Agapemone, with Dr. Spurgeon at the door distributing tracts.

I can scoff like this now. But at the time my exaltation was very real. My soul strained in the leash. I was full of a desire for unattainable spiritual beauty. I wanted something. But I don't know what I want.

_June_ 16.

_My Sense of Touch_

My sense of touch has always been morbidly acute. I like to feel a cigarette locked in the extreme corner of my mouth. When I remove it from my mouth then I hold it probably up in the fork between two fingers. If I am waiting for a meal I finger the cool knives and forks. If I am in the country I plunge my hands with outspread fingers into a mass of large-topped grasses, then close my fingers, crush and decapitate the lot.

_June_ 27.

_Camping Out at S---- Sands_

A brilliant summer day. Up early, breakfasted, and, clad in sweater and trousers, walked up the sands to the boathouse with bare feet.

Everything was wonderful! I strode along over the level sands infatuated with the sheer ability to put one leg in front of the other and walk. I loved to feel the muscles of my thighs working, and to swing my arms in rhythm with the stride. The stiff breeze had blown the sky clear, and was rushing through my long hair, and bellowing into each ear. I strode as Alexander must have done!

Then I stretched my whole length out along a flat plank on the sands, which was as dry as a bone and warm. There was not a soul on the sands. Everything was bare, clean, windswept. My plank had been washed clean and white. The sands--3 miles of it--were hard and purified, level. My eye raced along in every direction--there was nothing--not a bird or a man--to stop it. In that immense windswept space nothing was present save me and the wind and the sea--a flattering moment for the egotist.

* * * * *

At the foot of the cliffs on the return journey met an old man gathering sticks. As he ambled along dropping sticks into a long sack he called out casually, "Do you believe in Jesus Christ?" in the tone of voice in which one would say, "I think we shall have some rain before night." "Aye, aye," came the answer without hesitation from a boy lying on his back in the sands a few yards distant, "and that He died to save me."

Life is full of surprises like this. The only other sounds I have heard to-day were the Herring Gull's cackle. Your own gardener will one day look over his rake and give you the correct chemical formula for carbonic acid gas. I met a postman once reading Shelley as he walked his rounds.

_June_ 28.

I am writing this by the lamp in the cabin among the sandhills waiting for H---- to arrive from town with provisions. I wear a pair of bags, a dirty sweater, and go without hat or shoes and stockings. There is a "Deadwood Dick" atmosphere here. I'm a sort of bronco-breaker or rancher off duty writing home. In a minute I haven't the slightest doubt, H---- will gallop into the compound, tether his colt and come in "raising Cain" for a belly-full of red meat.... If I am going to live after all (touch wood) I shall go abroad and be in the open.

I eat greedily, am getting very sunburnt, am growing hairy (that means strength!), and utter portentous oaths. If I stayed here much longer I should grow a tail and climb trees.

After a supper of fried eggs and fried bread done to a nicety, turned in at ten, and both of us lay warm and comfortable in bed, smoking cigarettes and listening to Hoffmann's Barcarolle on the gramophone. We put the lamp out, and it pleased us to watch the glow of each other's cigarettes in the dark.... Neither of us spoke.... Went to sleep at midnight. Awoke at sunrise to hear an Owl still hooting, a Lark singing, and several Jackdaws clattering on our tin roof with their claws as they walked.

_July_ 1.

_In London Again_

Returned to London very depressed. Am not so well as I was three weeks ago. The sight of one eye is affected, and I am haunted by the possibility of blindness. Then I have a numb feeling on one side of my face, and my right arm is less mobile.

Left darling Mother in a very weak state in bed, with neuritis and a weak heart. She cried when I said "Goodbye," and asked me to go to Church as often as I could, and to read a portion of Scripture every day. I promised. Then she added, "For Dad's sake;" just as if I would not do it for her. Poor dear, she suffers a deal of pain. She does not know how ill I am. I have not told her.

_July_ 3.

Back at work. A terrible day. Thoughts of suicide--a pistol.

_July_ 8.

I get thro' each day with the utmost difficulty. I have to wrestle with every minute. Each hour is a conquest. The three quarters of an hour at lunch comes as a Godsend. I look forward to it all the morning, I enter into it with joyful relief with no thought of the dreadful moment impending when I must return and re-enter my room. By being wise like this, I manage to husband my spirits and am relatively cheerful for one hour in the middle of each difficult day.

_July_ 9.

Several times I have gone to bed and hoped I should never wake up. Life grows daily more impossible. To-day I put a slide underneath the microscope and looked at it. It was like looking at something thro' the wrong end of a telescope. I sat with eye glued to the ocular, so as to keep up a pretence of work in case some one came in. My mind was occupied with quite different affairs. If one is pondering on Life and Death, it is a terrible task to have to study Mites.

_July_ 10.

Am doing no work at all.... I sit motionless in my chair and beat the devil's tattoo with my thumbs and think, think, think in the same horrible circle hour after hour. I am unable to work. I haven't the courage to. I've lost my nerve.

At five I return "home" to the Boarding-house and get more desperate.

Two old maids sat down to dinner to-night, one German youth (a lascivious, ranting, brainless creature), a lady typist (who takes drugs they say), a dipsomaniac (who has monthly bouts--H---- carried him upstairs and put him to bed the other night), two invertebrate violinists who play in the Covent Garden Orchestra, a colonial lady engaged in a bedroom intrigue with a man who sits at my table. What are these people to me? I hate them all. They know it and are offended.

After dinner, put on my cap and rushed out anywhere to escape. Walked to the end of the street, not knowing where I was going or what doing. Stopped and stared with fixed eyes at the traffic in Kensington Road, undetermined what to do with myself and unable to make up my mind (volitional paralysis). Turned round, walked home, and went straight to bed 9 p.m., anxiously looking forward to to-morrow evening when I go to see her again, but at the same time wondering how on earth I am to get through to-morrow's round before the evening comes.... This is a hand-to-mouth existence. My own inner life is scorching up all outside interests. Zoology appears as a curious thing in a Bagdad bazaar. I sit in my room at the B.M. and play with it; I let it trickle thro' my fingers and roll away like a child playing with quicksilver.

_July_ 11.

Over to the flat. She was looking beautiful in a black dress, with a white silk blouse, and a Byron collar, negligently open in front as if a button had come out. She said I varied: sometimes I went up in her estimation, sometimes down; once I went down very low. I understood her to say I was now UP! Alleluia!

_July_ 14.

... It would take too long and I am too tired to write out all the varying phases of this day's life--all its impressions and petty miseries chasing one another across my consciousness or leap-frogging over my chest like gleeful fiends.[1]

_July_ 21.

Thoroughly enjoyed the journey up to town this morning. I secretly gloated over the fact that the train was dashing along over the rails to London bearing me and all the rest of the train's company upon their pursuits--wealth, fame, learning. I was inebriated with the speed, ferocity, and dash of living.... If the train had charged into the buffers I should have hung my head out of the window and cheered. If a man had got in my way, I'd have knocked him down. The wheels of the carriage were singing a lusty song in which I joined.

_July_ 30.

... We talked of men and women, and she said she thought men were neither angels nor devils but just men. I said I thought women were either angels or devils.

"I am afraid to ask you which you think me."

"You needn't," I said shortly.

_August_ 9.

Horribly upset with news from home. Mother is really ill. The Doctor fears serious nerve trouble and says she will always be an invalid. This is awful, poor dear! It's dreadful, and yet I have a tiny wish buried at the bottom of my heart that she may be removed early from us rather than linger in pain of body and mind. Especially do I hope she may not live to hear any grievous news of me.... What irony that she should lose the use of her right arm only two years after Dad's death from paralysis. It is cruel for it reminds her of Dad's illness.... What, too, would she think if she could have heard M----'s first words to me yesterday on one of my periodical visits to his consulting room, "Well, how's the _paralysis_?"

* * * * *

In the evening went over to see her. She was wearing a black silk gown and looked handsome.... She is always the same sombre, fascinating, lissom, soft-voiced She! She herself never changes.... What am I to do? I cannot give her up and yet I do not altogether wish to take her to my heart. It distresses me to know how to proceed. I am a wily fish.

_August_ 10.

Sat in the gardens with her. We sat facing the sun for a while until she was afraid of developing freckles and turned around, deliberately turning her back on good King Sol.... I said it was disrespectful.

"Oh! he doesn't mind," she said. "He's a dear. He kissed me and said, 'Turn round my dear if you like.'"

Isn't she tantalising?

I wanted to say sarcastically, "I wonder you let him kiss you," but there was a danger of the remark reviving the dead.

_August_ 14.

I tried my best, I've sought every loophole of escape, but I am quite unable to avoid the melancholy fact that her thumbs are--lamentable. I am genuinely upset about it for I like her. No one more than I would be more delighted if they were otherwise.... Poor dear! how I love her! That's why I'm so concerned about her thumbs.

_August_ 21.

A wire from A---- came at 11.50 saying "Darling Mother passed peacefully away yesterday afternoon." ... Yesterday afternoon I was writing Zoology and all last night I slept soundly.... It was quite sudden. Caught the first train home.

_August_ 23.

The funeral.

_August_ 31.

Staying at the Hotel du Guesclin at Cancale near St. Malo with my dear A----.

This flood of new experiences has knocked my diary habit out of gear. To be candid, I've forgotten all about myself. I've been too engrossed in living to stand the strain of setting down and in cold blood writing out all the things seen and heard. If I once began I should blow thro' these pages like a whirlwind.... But what a waste of time with M. le batelier waiting outside with his bisque to take us mackerel fishing!...

_September_ 8.

Returned to Southampton yesterday. Have spent the night at Okehampton in Devonshire _en route_ for T---- Rectory. This morning we hatched the ridiculous idea of hiring two little Dartmoor ponies and riding out from the town. A---- rides fairly well tho' he has not been astride a beast for years. As for me, I cannot ride at all! Yet I had the idea that I could easily manage a pretty little pony with brown eyes and a long tail. On going out into the Inn yard, was horrified--two horses saddled--one a large traction beast.... I climbed on to the smaller one, walked him out of the yard and down the road in good style without accident. Once in the country, however, my animal, the fresher of the two, insisted on a smart trot which shook me up a good deal so that I hardly kept my seat. This eventually so annoyed the animal that it began to fidget and zigzag across the road--no doubt preparing to break away at a stretch gallop when once it had rid itself of the incomprehensible pair of legs across its back.

I got off quickly and swopped horses with A----.

Walked him most of the way, while A---- cantered forward and back to cheer me on. Ultimately however this beast, too, got sick of walking and began to trot. For a time I stood this well and began to rise in my saddle quite nicely. After two miles, horrible soreness supervened, and I had to get off--very carefully, with a funny feeling in my legs--even looked down at them to assure myself they were not bandy! In doing so, the horse--this traction monster--stepped on my toe and I swore.

On nearing the village, L---- arrived, riding A----'s animal and holding his sides for laughing at me as I crawled along holding the carthorse by the bridle. Got on again and rode into the Rectory grounds in fine style like a dashing cavalier, every one jeering at me from the lawn.

_September_ 28.

Having lived on this planet now for the space of 24 years, I can claim with some cogency that I am qualified to express some sort of opinion about it. I therefore hereby record that I find myself in an absorbingly interesting place where I live, move and have my being, dominated by one monstrous feature above all others--the mystery of it all! Everything is so astonishing, my own existence so incredible!

Nothing explains itself. Every one is dumb. It is like walking about at a masqued Ball.... Even I myself am a mystery to me. How wonderful and frightening that is--to feel yourself--your innermost and most substantial possession to be a mystery, incomprehensible. I look at myself in the mirror and mock at myself. On some days I am to myself as strange and unfamiliar as a Pterodactyl. There is a certain grim humour in finding myself here possessed of a perfectly arbitrary arrangement of lineaments when I never asked to be here and never selected my own attributes. To the dignity of a human being it seems like a coarse practical joke.... My own freakish physique is certainly a joke.

_October_ 4.

_In London Again_

K---- comes in from her dancing class, nods to me, hugs her sister around the neck and says,--

"Oh! you dear thing, you've got a cold."

"I shouldn't do that," I remark, green-eyed, "she's in an awful wax to-night."

She: "Oh! I don't mind K----!"

(Laughter!)

_October_ 8.

Heard a knock at the door last night, and, thinking it was R----, I unbolted it and let in a tramp who at once asked God to bless me and crown all my sorrow with joy. An amiable fellow to be sure--so I gave him some coppers and he at once repeated with wonderful fervour, "God bless you, sir."

"I wish He would," I answered, "I have a horrible cold."

"Ah, I know, I gets it myself and the hinfluenza--have you had that, sir?"

In ten minutes I should have told him all my personal history. But he was thirsting for a drink and went off quickly and left me with my heart unburthened. London is a lonely place.

To-day journeyed to ---- where I gave evidence as an _expert_ in Economic Entomology at the County Court in a case concerning damage to furniture by mites for which I am paid £8 8s. fee and expenses and travelled first class. What irony! (See June 30, 1911.)

_October_ 11.

I may be a weak, maundering, vacillating fool but I cannot help loving her on one day, being indifferent the next and on some occasions even disliking her.... To-day she was charming, with a certain warm glossy perfection on her face and hair.... And she loves me--I could swear it. "And when a woman woos ..." etc. How difficult for a vain and lonely man to resist her. She tells me many times in many dainty ways that she loves me without so much as stopping her work to talk.

I wish I were permanently and irresistibly enamoured. I want a _bouleversement_....

_October_ 13.

Went to see a Harley Street oculist about the sight of one eye, which has caused a lot of trouble and worry of late and continuously haunted me with the possibility of blindness. At times, I see men as trees walking and print becomes hopelessly blurred.

The Specialist however is reassuring. The eye is healthy --no neuritis--but the adjustment muscles have been thrown out of gear by the nervous troubles of last spring.

* * * * *

Was ever man more sorely tempted? Here am I lonely and uncomfortable in diggings with a heart like nascent oxygen.... Shall I? Yes, but.... And I have neither health nor wealth.

_October_ 22.

_The British Museum Reading Room_

I saw it for the first time to-day! Gadzooks!! This is the only fit ejaculation to express my amazement! It's a pagan temple with the Gods in the middle and all around, various obscure dark figures prostrating themselves in worship.

For any one who is not simply a Sheep or Cow or whose nervous organisation is a degree more sensitive than the village blacksmith's, it is a besetting peril to his peace of mind to be constantly moving about an independent being, with loves and hates, and a separate identity among other separate identities, who prowl and prowl around like the hosts of Midian--ready to snarl, fight, seize you, bore you, exasperate you, to arouse all your passions, call up all the worst from the depths where they have lain hidden.... A day spent among my fellows goads me to a frenzy by the evening. I am no longer fit for human companionship. People string me up to concert pitch. I develop suspicions of one that he is prying, of another that he patronises. Others make me horribly anxious to stand well in their eyes and horribly curious to know what they think of me. Others I hate and loathe--for no particular reason. There is a man I am acquainted with concerning whom I know nothing at all. He may be Jew, Gentile, Socinian, Pre-adamite, Anabaptist, Rosicrucian--I don't know, and I don't care, for I hate him. I should like to smash his face in. I don't know why.... In the whole course of our tenuous acquaintance we have spoken scarce a dozen words to each other. Yet I should like to blow up his face with dynamite. If I had £200 a year private income I should be in wait for him to-morrow round a corner and land him one--just to indicate my economic independence. He would call for the police and the policeman--discerning creature--on arrival, would surely say, "With a face like that, I'm not surprised."

* * * * *

R---- said to me this morning, "Well, have you heard?" with an exuberance of curiosity that made my blood boil--he was referring to my Essay still at the bar of the opinion of the Editor of the _English Review_. "You beast," I snapped and walked off.

R---- shouted with laughter for he realizes my anger with him is only semi-serious: it is meant and not meant: meant, for it is justified by the facts; not meant, for I can't be too serious over anything _au fond_.

* * * * *

Of all the grim and ridiculous odds and ends of chance that Fortune has rolled up to my feet, my friendship with a man like B---- is the grimmest and most ridiculous. He is a bachelor of sixty, rather good-looking, of powerful physique and a faultless constitution.... His ignorance is colossal and he once asked whether Australia, for example, tho' surrounded by water, is not connected up with other land underneath the sea. Being himself a child in intelligence (tho' commercially cunning), he has a great respect for my brains. Being himself a strong man, he views my ill-health with much contempt. His private opinion is that I am in consumption. When asked once by a lady if I were not going to be "a great man" one day, he replied, "Yes--if he lives." I ought to walk six miles a day, drink a bottle of stout with my dinner, and eat plenty of _onions_. His belief in the curative properties of onions is strong as death....

His system of prophylaxis may be quickly summarised,--

(1) Hot whisky _ad lib_. and off to bed.

(2) A woman.

These two sterling preventives he has often urged upon me at the same time tipping out a quantity of anathemas on doctors and physic....

He is a cynic. He scoffs at the medical profession, the Law, the Church, the Press. Every man is guilty until he is proved innocent. The Premier is an unscrupulous character, the Bishop a salacious humbug. No doctor will cure, for it pays him to keep you ill. Every clergyman puts the Sunday-school teacher in the family way. His mouth is permanently distorted by cynicism.

He is vain and believes all women are in love with him. When playing the Gallant, he turns on a special voice, wears white spats, and looks like a Newmarket "Crook."

"I lost my 'bus," a girl says to him. "Lost your bust," he answers, in broad Scotch. "I can't see that you've done that." ... His sexual career has been a remarkable one, he claiming to have brought many women to bed, and actually to have lain with women of almost all European nationalities, for he has been a great traveller....

This man is my devoted friend!... And truth to tell I get on with him better than I do with most people. I like his gamey flavour, his utter absence of self-consciousness, and his doggy loyalty to myself--his weaker brother. He may be depraved in his habits, coarse in his language, boorish in his manners, ludicrous in the wrongness of all his views. But I like him just because he is so hopeless. I get on with him because it is so impossible to reclaim him--my missionary spirit is not intrigued. If he only dabbled in vice (for an experiment), if he had pale, watery ideas about current literature--if--to use his own favourite epithet--he were _genteel_, I should quarrel.

_October_ 30.

Having developed a passion for a piece of sculpture by R. Boeltzig called the Reifenwerferin--the most beautiful figure of a woman. I am already devoted to Rodin's "Kiss" and have a photo of it framed in my bedroom. Have written to Bruciani's.

I suspect that my growing appreciation of the plastic art is with me only distilled sensuality. I enjoy my morning bath for the same reason. My bath is a daily baptism. I revel in the pleasure of the pain of the cold water. I whistle gleefully because I am clean and cool and nude early in the morning with the sun still low, before the day has been stained by clothes, dirt, pain, exasperation, death.... How I love myself as I rub myself down!--the cool, pink skin--I could eat it! I want to be all day in a cold bath to enjoy the pain of mortifying the flesh--it is so beautiful, so soft, so inscrutable--if I cut out chunks of it, it would only bleed.

_November_ 8.

The other morning R---- said hyperbolically that he hadn't slept all night for fear that, before he had time to put an arresting hand on my shoulder and say "Don't," I might have gone and become "Entangled." ...

... No, I'm as firm as a rock, my dear. But in imagination the affair was continued as follows,--

She: "I am fond of you, you know."

He: "I wish you wouldn't say these things to me--they're quite embarrassing."

She: "Oh! my dear, I'm not serious, you know--you're such a vain young man."

He: "Well, it's equally embarrassing any way."

She: "Then I _am_ serious."

Tears.

I say: "I wish you would take me only for what I am--a blackguard with no good intentions, yet no very evil ones--but still a blackguard, whom you seem to find has engaging manners."

I breathe freely hoping to have escaped this terrible temptation and turn to go. But she, looking up smiling thro' a curtain of wet eyelashes, asks,--

"Won't the blackguard stop a little longer?" In a moment my earth works, redoubts, and bastions fall down, I rush forward impetuously into her arms shouting, "I _will_, I _will_, I will as long as for eternity."

(Curtain.)

I dramatised this little picture and much more last night before going to sleep when I was in a fever. I should succumb at once to the first really skilful coquette.

_November_ 9.

_Ludo_

We played Ludo together this evening and she won 2s. 6d. Handsomely gowned in black and wearing black ornaments, she sat with me in the lamplight on the sofa in the Morris Room, with the Ludo board between us placed on a large green cushion. Her face was white as parchment and her hair seemed an ebony black. I lolled in the opposite corner, a thin, elongated youth, with fair hair all stivvered up, dressed in a light-brown lounge suit with a good trouser crease, a soft linen collar and--a red tie! Between us, on its green cushion the Ludo board with its brilliantly coloured squares:--all of it set before a background formed by the straight-backed, rectangular, settle-like sofa, with a charming covering which went with the rest of the scheme.

"Rather decorative,"---- remarked in an audible voice, turning her head on one side and quizzing. I can well believe it was. _She_ looked wholly admirable.

_November_ 21.

_My Nightmare_

Can't get rid of my cough. I have so many things to do--I am living in a fever of haste to get them done. Yet this cough hinders me. There is always something which drags me back from the achievement of my desires. It's like a nightmare; I see myself struggling violently to escape from a monster which draws continuously nearer, until his shadow falls across my path, when I begin to run and find my legs tied, etc. The only difference is that mine is a nightmare from which I never wake up. The haven of successful accomplishment remains as far off as ever. Oh! make haste.

_November_ 29.

The _English Review_ has returned my Essay!--This is a keen disappointment to me. "I wish I could use this, but I am really too full," the Editor writes. To be faintly encouraged and delicately rejected--why I prefer the printed form.

_December_ 1.

_More Irony_

Renewed my cold--I do nothing all day but blow my nose, cough, and curse Austin Harrison.

M---- thinks the lungs are all right. "There is nothing there, I think," said he, this morning. Alleluia! I've had visions of consumption for weeks past and M---- himself has been expecting it. I always just escape: I always almost get something, do something, go somewhere, I have dabbled in a variety of diseases, but never got one downright[2]--but only enough to make me feel horribly unfit and very miserable without the consolation of being able to regard myself as the heroic victim of some incurable disorder. Instead of being Stevenson with tuberculosis, I've only been Jones with dyspepsia. So, too, in other directions, big events have always just missed me: by Herculean efforts I succeeded in giving up newspaper journalism and breaking thro' that steel environment--but only to become an Entomologist! I once achieved success in an Essay in the _Academy_, which attracted attention--a debut, however, that never developed. I had not quite arrived. It is always _not quite_.

Yesterday, I received a state visit from the Editor of the _Furniture Record_ seeking advice on how to eradicate mites from upholstering! I received him ironically--but little did he understand.

I shot up like a ball on a bagatelle board all steamy into zoology (my once beloved science) but at once rolled dead into the very low hole of Economic Entomology! Curse.... Why can't I either have a first-rate disease or be a first-rate zoologist?

Now just think what a much better figure I should have cut, from the artistic view point, had I remained a newspaper reporter who had taught himself prodigious embryology out of F.M. Balfour's Textbook, who had cut sections of fowls' eggs and newt embryos with a hand microtome, who had passionately dissected out the hidden, internal anatomy of a great variety of animals, who could recite Wiedersheim's _Comparative Anatomy of Vertebrates_ and patter off the difference between a nephridium and a cœlomic duct without turning a hair--or the phylogenetic history (how absorbing!) of the kidney--pronephros, mesonephros and metanephros and all the ducts!... All this, over now and wasted. My hardly-won knowledge wrenched away is never brought into use--it lies piled up in my brain rotting. I could have become a first-rate comparative anatomist.

_December_ 3.

Cold better. So back at work--gauging ale at Dunfermline as R---- puts it.

_December_ 9.

In the evening found it quite impossible to stay in the house any longer: some vague fear drove me out. I was alarmed to be alone or to be still. It is my cough, I think.

Had two glasses of port at the Kensington Hotel, conversed with the barmaid, and then came home.

_December_ 10.

"Don't be an old fossil," she said to me to-night, irrelevantly.

"_A propos_ of what?" I inquired.

"Mother, here's W---- proposing to E----! Do come," cried ----, with intent to confuse. I laughed heartlessly.

Dear, dear, where will it all end? It's a sad business when you fall in love with a girl you don't like.

_December_ 26.

Spent a romping day at the Flat. Kissed her sister twice under the mistletoe, and in the evening went to a cinema. After supper made a mock heroic speech and left hilarious.

[1] "The life of the Soul is different; there is nothing more changing, more varied, more restless ... to describe the incidents of one hour would require an eternity."--_Journal of Eugénie de Guérin_.

[2] See entry for November 27, 1915.

1914

_February_ 4.

... Finally and in conclusion I have fallen ill again, have again resumed my periodical visits to the Doctor, and am swallowing his rat-poison in a blind faith as aforetime. In fact, I am in London, leading the same solitary life, seeing no one, talking to no one, and daily struggling with this demon of ill-health. Can no one exorcise him? The sight of _both_ my eyes is affected now. Blindness?

B---- continues whoring, drinking, sneering. R---- as usual, devoid of emotion, cold, passionless, Shavian, and self-absorbed, still titillates his mind with etching, sociology, music, etc., and I have at last ceased to bore him with what he probably calls the febrile utterances of an overwrought mind.

Such is my world! Oh! I forgot--on the floor below me is a corpse--that of an old gentleman who passed away suddenly in the night. In the small hours, the landlady went for the Doctor over the way, but he refused to come, saying the old man was too aged. So the poor gentleman died alone--in this rat hole of a place.

_February_ 7.

Intending to buy my usual 3d. packet of Goldflakes, entered a tobacconist's in Piccadilly, but once inside surprised to find myself in a classy west-end establishment, which frightened my flabby nature into buying De Reszke's instead. I hadn't the courage to face the aristocrat behind the counter with a request for Goldflakes--probably not stocked. What would he think of me? Besides, I shrank from letting him see I was not perfectly well-to-do.

_February_ 14.

I wonder what this year has in store for me? The first twenty-four years of my life have hunted me up and down the keyboard--I have been right to the top and also to the bottom--very happy and very miserable. Yet I prefer the life that is a hunt and an adventure. I don't really mind being chased like this. I almost thrive on the excitement. If I knew always where to look with any degree of certainty for my next day's life I should yawn! "What if to-day be sweet," I say, and never look ahead. To me, next week is next century.

The danger and uncertainty of my life make me cherish and hug closely to my heart various little projects that otherwise would seem unworthy. I work at them quickly, frantically, sometimes, afraid to whisper to a living soul what expectations I dare to harbour in my heart. What if _now_ the end be near? Not a word! Let me go onward.

_February_ 15.

To-day I have reviewed the situation carefully, exhaustively. I have peered into every aspect of my life and achievements and everything I have seen nauseates me. I can find no ray of comfort in anything I have done or in anything I might do. My life seems to have been a wilderness of futile endeavour. I started wrong from the very beginning. At the moment of my birth I was coming into the world in the wrong place and under wrong conditions. Why seek to overcome such colossal initial disadvantages? In this mood I found fault with my parentage, my inheritance, all my mental and physical disabilities....

This must be a form of incipient insanity. Even as a boy, I can remember being preternaturally absorbed in myself and preternaturally discontented. I was accustomed to exhaust my mind by the most harassing cross-examinations--no Counsel at the Bar ever treated a witness more mercilessly. After a day of this sort of thing, when silently and morbidly in every spare moment, at meals, in school, or on a walk, I would incessantly ply the questions, "What is the ultimate value of your work, _cui bono_?" etc. I went to bed in the evening with a feeling of hopelessness and dissatisfaction--haggard with considerations and reconsiderations of my outlook, my talent, my character, my future. In bed, I tossed from side to side, mentally exhausted with my efforts to obtain some satisfying conclusion--always hopeful, determined to the last to be able to square up my little affairs before going to sleep. But out of this mazy, vertiginous mass of thinking no satisfaction ever came. _Now_, I thought--or the _next moment_--or as soon as I review and revise myself in this or in that aspect, I shall be content. And so I went on, tearing down and reforming, revising and reviewing, till finally from sheer exhaustion and very unhappy I fell asleep.

Next morning I was all right.

_February_ 20.

Am feeling very unwell. My ill-health, my isolation, baulked ambitions, and daily breadwinning all conspire to bring me down. The idea of a pistol and the end of it grows on me day by day.

_February_ 21.

After four days of the most profound depression of spirits, bitterness, self-distrust, despair, I emerged from the cloud to-day quite suddenly (probably the arsenic and strychnine begins to take effect) and walked up Exhibition Road with the intention of visiting the Science Museum Library so as to refer to Schafer's _Essentials of Histology_ (I have to watch myself carefully so that I may act _at once_ as soon as the balance of mind is restored). In the lobby was a woman screaming as if in pain, with a passer-by at her side saying sternly, "What is the matter with you?" as if she were making herself ridiculous by suffering pain in public.

I passed by quickly, pretending not to notice lest--after all--I should be done out of my _Essentials of Histology._ Even in the Library I very nearly let the opportunity slide by picking up a book on squaring the circle, the preface and introduction of which I was forced to read.

_March_ 4.

_The Entomological Society_

There were a great many Scarabees present who exhibited to one another poor little pinned insects in collecting-boxes ... It was really a one-man show, Prof. Poulton, a man of very considerable scientific attainments, being present, and shouting with a raucous voice in a way that must have scared some of the timid, unassuming collectors of our country's butterflies and moths. Like a great powerful sheep-dog, he got up and barked, "Mendelian characters," or "Germ plasm," what time the obedient flock ran together and bleated a pitiful applause. I suppose, having frequently heard these and similar phrases fall from the lips of the great man at these reunions, they have come to regard them as symbols of a ritual which they think it pious to accept without any question. So every time the Professor says, "Allelomorph," or some such phrase, they cross themselves and never venture to ask him what the hell it is all about.

_March_ 7.

_A Scots Fir_

Have been feeling very "down" of late, but yesterday I saw a fine Scots Fir by the roadside--tall, erect, as straight as a Parthenon pillar. The sight of it restored my courage. It had a tonic effect. Quite unconsciously I pulled my shoulders back and walked ahead with renewed vows never to flinch again. It is a noble tree. It has strength as a giant, and a giant's height, and yet kindly withal, the branches drooping down graciously towards you--like a kind giant extending its hands to a child.

_March_ 22.

_A Stagnant Day_

Went to bed late last night so I slept on soundly till 9 a.m. Went down to the bath-room, but found the door was shut, so went back to my bedroom again, lay down and dosed a while, thinking of nothing in particular. Went down again--door still locked--swore--returned once more to my room and reclined on the bed, with door open, so that I could hear as soon as the bath-room door opened.... Rang the bell, and Miss ---- brought up a jug of hot water to shave with, and a tumbler of hot water to drink (for my dyspepsia). She, on being interrogated, said there was some one in the bath-room. I said I wanted a bath too, so as she passed on her way down she shouted, "Hurry up, Mr. Barbellion wants a bath as well." Her footsteps then died away as she descended lower into the basement, where the family lives, sleeps, and cooks our food.

At length, hearing the door open, I ejaculated, "the Lord be praised," rushed down, entered the bath-room and secured it from further intruders. I observed that Miss ---- senior had been bathing her members, and that the bath, tho' empty, was covered inside with patches of soap --unutterably black! Oh! Miss ----!

Dressed leisurely and breakfasted. When the table was cleared wrote a portion of my essay on _Spallanzani_....

Then, being giddy and tired, rang for dinner. Miss ---- laid the table. She looked very clean. I said, "Good-morning," and she suitably replied, and I went on reading, the _Winning Post_. Felt too slack to be amiable. Next time she came in, I said as pleasantly as I could, "Is it all ready?" and being informed proceeded to eat forthwith.

In the afternoon, took a 'bus to Richmond. No room outside, so had to go inside--curse--and sit opposite a row--curse again--of fat, ugly, elderly women, all off to visit their married daughters, the usual Sunday jaunt. At Hammersmith got on the outside, and at Turnham Green was caught in a hail storm. Very cold all of a sudden, so got off and took shelter in the doorway of a shop, which was of course closed, the day being Sunday. Rain, wind, and hail continued for some while, as I gazed at the wet, almost empty street, thinking, re-thinking and thinking over again the same thought, viz., that the 'bus ride along this route was exceptionally cheap--probably because of competition with the trams.

The next 'bus took me to Richmond. Two young girls sat in front, and kept looking back to know if I was "game." I looked _through_ them. Walked in the Park just conscious of the singing of Larks and the chatter of Jays, but harassed mentally by the question, "To whom shall I send my essay, when finished?" To shelter from the rain sat under an oak where four youths joined me and said, "Worse luck," and "Not half," and smoked cigarettes. They gossipped and giggled like girls, put their arms around each other's necks. At the dinner last night, they said, they had Duck and Tomato Soup and Beeswax ("Beesley, you know, the chap that goes about with Smith a lot") wore a fancy waistcoat with a dinner jacket. When I got up to move on, they became convulsed with laughter. I scowled.

Had tea in the Pagoda tea-rooms, dry toast and brown bread and butter. Two young men opposite me were quietly playing the fool.

"Hold my hand," one said audibly enough for two lovers to hear, comfortably settled up in a corner. Even at a side view I could see them kissing each other in between mouthfuls of bread and butter and jam.

On rising to go, one of the two hilarious youths removed my cap and playfully placed it on top of the bowler which his friend was wearing.

"My cap, I think," I said sharply, and the young man apologised with a splutter. I glared like a kill-joy of sixty.

On the 'bus, coming home, thro' streets full of motor traffic and all available space plastered with advertisements that screamed at you, I espied in front three pretty girls, who gave me the "Glad Eye." One had a deep, musical voice, and kept on using it, one of the others a pretty ankle and kept on showing it.

At Kew, two Italians came aboard, one of whom went out of his way to sit among the girls. He sat level with them, and kept turning his head around, giving them a sweeping glance as he did so, to shout remarks in Italian to his friend behind. He thought the girls were prostitutes, I think, and he may have been right. I was on the seat behind this man and for want of anything better to do, studied his face minutely. In short, it was fat, round, and greasy. He wore black moustachios with curly ends, his eyes were dark shining, bulgy, and around his neck was wrapped a scarf inside a dirty linen collar, as if he had a sore throat. I sat behind him and hated him steadily, perseveringly.

At Hammersmith the three girls got off, and the bulgy-eyed Italian watched them go with lascivious eyes, looking over the rail and down at them on the pavement--still interested. I looked down too. They crossed the road in front of us and disappeared.

Came home and here I am writing this. This is the content of to-day's consciousness. This is about all I have thought, said, or done, or felt. A stagnant day!

_March_ 26.

Home with a bad influenza cold. In a deplorable condition. The best I could do was to sit by the fire and read newspapers one by one from the first page to the last till the reading became mechanical. I found myself reading an account of the Lincoln Handicap and a column article on Kleptomania, while advertisements of new books were devoured with relish as delicacies. My mind became a morass of current Divorce Court News, Society Gossip--"if Sir A. goes Romeward, if Miss B. sings true"--and advertisements. I went on reading because I was afraid to be alone with myself.

B---- arrived at tea and after saying he felt very "pin-eyed" swallowed a glass of Bols gin--the Gin of Antony Bols--and recovered sufficiently to inform me delightedly that he had just won £50. He told me all the story; meanwhile, I, tired of wiping and blowing my nose, sat in the dirty armchair hunched up with elbows on knees and let it drip on to the dirty carpet. B----, of course, noticed nothing, which was fortunate.

Some kinds of damned fool would have been kindly and sympathetic. I must say I like old B----. I like him for his simpleness and utter absence of self-consciousness, which make him as charming as a child. Moreover, he often makes me a present of invaluable turf tips. Of course, he is a liar, but his lies are harmless and on his mouth like milk on an infant's. My own lies are much more dangerous. And when you are ill, to be treated as tho' you were well is good for hypochondriacs.

_April_ 15.

H----'s wedding. Five minutes before time, I am told I made a dramatic entry into the church clad in an audaciously light pair of Cashmere trousers, lemon-coloured gloves, with top hat and cane. The latter upset the respectability frightfully--it is not _comme il faut_.

_April_ 16.

... If I am to admit the facts they are that I eagerly anticipate love, look everywhere for it, long for it, am unhappy without it. She fascinates me--admitted. I could, if I would, surrender myself. Her affection makes me long to do it. I am sick of living by myself. I am frightened of myself. My life is miserable alone, and sometimes desperately miserable when I long for a little sympathy to be close at hand.

I have often tried to persuade R---- to share a flat with me, because I don't really wish to marry. I struggle against the idea, I am egotist enough to wish to shirk the responsibilities.

But then I am a ridiculously romantic creature with a wonderful ideal of a woman I shall never meet or if I do she won't want me--"that (wholly) impossible She." R---- in a flat with me would partly solve my difficulties. I don't love her enough for marriage. Mine must be a grand passion, a _bouleversement_--for I am capable of it.

_April_ 17.

_A Humble Confession_

The Hon. ----, son and heir of Lord ----, to-day invited me to lunch with him in ---- Square. He's a handsome youth of twenty-five, with fair hair and blue eyes.... and O! such an aristocrat. Good Lord.

But to continue: the receipt of so unexpected an invitation from so glorious a young gentleman at first gave me palpitation of the heart. I was so surprised that I scarcely had enough presence of mind to listen to the rest of his remarks and later, it was only with the greatest difficulty that I could recall the place where we arranged to meet. His remarks, too, are not easy to follow, as he talks in a stenographic, Alfred-Jingle-like manner, jerking out disjected members of sentences, and leaving you to make the best of them or else to Hell with you--by the Lord, I speak English, don't I? If I said, "I beg your pardon," he jerked again, and left me often equally unenlightened.