The Journal of a Disappointed Man. W.N.P. Barbellion

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СКАЧАТЬ her in Smith's book shop looking quite bewitching. Hang it all, I thought I had finished. Went home with her, watched her make a pudding in the kitchen, then we sat by the firelight in the drawing-room and had supper. Scrumptious (not the supper).

      October 27.

      Quarrelled with D – ! The atmosphere is changed at the flat – my character is ruined. D – has told them I'm a loose fellow. I've always contrived to give him that impression – I liked to be cutting my throat – and now it's cut!

      November 1.

      D – came and carried me off to the flat, where they asked why I hadn't been over – which, of course, pleased me immensely.

      November 6.

      Doctor M – is very gloomy about my health and talks of S. Africa, Labrador, and so on. I'm not responding to his treatment as I should.

      November 11.

      Met her this evening in Kensington Road. "I timed this well," said she, "I thought I should meet you." Good Heavens, I am getting embroiled. Returned to the flat with her and after supper called her "The Lady of Shalott."

      "I don't think you know what you're talking about" – this stiffly.

      "Perhaps not," I answered. "I leave it to you."

      "Oh! but it rests with you," she said.

      Am I in love? God knows – but I don't suppose God cares.

      November 15.

      On M – 's advice went to see a stomach specialist – Dr. Hawkins. As I got there a little too early walked up the street – Portland Place – on the opposite side (from shyness) past an interminable and nauseating series of night bells and brass plates, then down again on the right side till I got to No. 66 which made me flutter – for ten doors ahead I mused is the house I must call at. It made me shiver a little.

      The specialist took copious notes of my evidence and after examining me retired to consult with M – . What a parade of ceremony! On coming back, the jury returned a verdict of "Not proven." I was told I ought to go out and live on the prairies – and in two years I should be a giant! But where are the prairies? What 'bus? If I get worse, I must take several months' leave. I think it will come to this.

      November 16.

      Arthur came down for the week end. He likes the Lady of Shalott. She is "not handsome, but arresting, striking" and "capable of tragedy." That I believe she has achieved already… If she were a bit more gloomy and a bit more beautiful, she'd be irresistible.

      November 22.

      He: "Have a cigarette? I enjoy lighting your cigarettes."

      She: "I don't know how to smoke properly."

      He: "You smoke only as you could."

      She: "How's that?"

      H.: "Gracefully, of course."

      S.: "Do you think I like pretty things being said to me?"

      H.: "Why not, if they are true. Flattery is when you tell an ugly woman she is beautiful. Have you so poor an opinion of yourself to think all I say of you is flattery?"

      S.: "Yes. I am only four bare walls, – with nothing inside."

      H.: "What a deliciously empty feeling that must be. … But I don't think you're so simple as all that. You bewilder me sometimes."

      S.: "Why?"

      H.: "I feel like Sindbad the Sailor."

      S.: "Why?"

      H.: "Because I'm not George Meredith." The title of "husband" frightens me.

      December 9.

      It's a fearful strain to go on endeavouring to live up to time with a carefully laid-out time-table of future achievements. I am hurrying on with my study of Italian in order to read the Life of Spallanzani in order to include him in my book – to be finished by the end of next year; I am also subsidising Jenkinson's embryological lectures at University College with the more detailed account of practical and experimental work in his text-book; I have also started a lengthy research upon the Trichoptera – all with a horrible sense of time fleeing swiftly and opportunities for work too few ever to be squandered, and, in the background, behind all this feverish activity, the black shadow that I might die suddenly with nothing done – next year, next month, next week, to-morrow, now!

      Then sometimes, as to-night, I have misgivings. Shall I do these things so well now as I might once have done them? Has not my ill-health seriously affected my mental powers? Surely the boy of 1908-10 was almost a genius or – seen at this distance – a very remarkable youth in the fanatical zeal with which he sought to pursue, and succeeded in gaining, his own end of a zoological education for himself.

      It is a terrible suspicion to cross the mind of an ambitious youth that perhaps, after all, he is a very commonplace mortal – that his life, whether comedy or tragedy, or both, or neither, is any way insignificant, of no account.

      It is still more devastating for him to have to consider whether the laurel wreath was not once within his grasp, and whether he must not ascribe his own incalculable loss to his stomach simply.

      December 15.

      A very bad heart attack. As I write it intermits every three or four beats. Who knows if I shall live thro' to-night?

      December 16.

      Here I am once more. A passable night. After breakfast the intermittency recommenced – it is better now, with a dropped beat only about once per half-hour, so that I am almost happy after yesterday, which was Hell. The world is too good to give up without remonstrance at the beck of a weak heart.

      Before I went to sleep last night, my watch stopped – I at once observed the cessation of its tick and wondered if it were an omen. I was genuinely surprised to find myself still ticking when I awoke this morning. A moment ago a hearse passed down the street… Yes, but I'm damned if I haven't a right to be morbid after yesterday. To be ill like this in a boarding-house! I'd marry to-morrow if I had the chance.

      December 22.

Sollas's "Ancient Hunters"

      Read Sollas's book Ancient Hunters– very thrilling – mind full of the Aurignacians, Mousterians, Magdalenians! I have been peering down such tremendous vistas of time and change that my own troubles have been eclipsed into ridiculous insignificance. It has been really a Pillar of Strength to me – a splendid tonic. Palæontology has its comfortable words too. I have revelled in my littleness and irresponsibility. It has relieved me of the harassing desire to live, I feel content to live dangerously, indifferent to my fate; I have discovered I am a fly, that we are all flies, that nothing matters. It's a great load off my life, for I don't mind being such a micro-organism – to me the honour is sufficient of belonging to the universe – such a great universe, so grand a scheme of things. Not even Death can rob me of that honour. For nothing can alter the fact that I have lived; I have been I, if for ever so short a time. And when I am dead, the matter which composes my body is indestructible – and eternal, so that come what may to my "Soul," my dust will always be going on, each separate atom of me playing its separate part – I shall still have some sort of a finger in СКАЧАТЬ