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

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СКАЧАТЬ me – but you cannot destroy me: my little atoms would merely deride such heavy vengeance. Death can do no more than kill you.

      December 27.

      "It is a pleasure to note the success attending the career of Mr. W.N.P. Barbellion now engaged in scientific work on the staff of the Natural History Museum …" etc., etc.

      This is a cutting from the local paper – one of many that from time to time I once delightedly pasted in the pages of the Journal. Not so now.

      … At 23, I am a different being. Surrounded by all the stimulating environment of scientific research, I am cold and disdainful. I keep up the old appearances but underneath it is quite different. I am a hypocrite. I have to wear the mask and cothornoi, finding the part daily more difficult to bear. I am living on my immense initial momentum – while the machinery gradually slows up. My career! Gadzooks.

      1913

      January 3.

      From the drawing-room window I see pass almost daily an old gentleman with white hair, a firm step, broad shoulders, healthy pink skin, a sunny smile – always singing to himself as he goes – a happy, rosy-cheeked old fellow, with a rosy-cheeked mind… I should like to throw mud at him. By Jove, how I hate him. He makes me wince with my own pain. It is heartless, indecently so, for an old man to be so blithe. Life has, I suppose, never lain in wait for him. The Great Anarchist has spared him a bomb.

      January 19.

      My Aunt, aged 75, who has apparently concluded from my constant absences from Church that my spiritual life is in a parlous way, to-day read me her portion from a large book with a broad purple-tasseled bookmark. I looked up from "I Promessi Sposi" and said "Very nice." It was about someone whose soul was not saved and who Would not answer the door when it was knocked. It is jolly to be regarded as a wicked, libidinous youth by an aged maiden Aunt.

      January 22.

      This Diary reads for all the world as if I were not living in mighty London. The truth is I live in a bigger, dirtier city – ill-health. Ill-health, when chronic, is like a permanent ligature around one's life. What a fine fellow I'd be if I were perfectly well. My energy for one thing would lift the roof off…

      We conversed around the text: "To travel hopefully is better than to arrive and true success is to labour." She is – well, so graceful. My God! I love her, I love her, I love her!!!

      February 3.

A Confession

      H – B – invited me to tea to meet his fiancée.

      Rather pleased with the invitation – I don't know why, for my idea of myself is greater than my idea of him and probably greater than his idea of himself.

      Yet I went and got shaved, and even thought of buying a new pair of gloves, but poverty proved greater than vanity, so I went with naked hands. On arriving at Turnham Green, I removed my spectacles (well knowing how much they damage my personal appearance). However, the beauty of the thing was that, tho' I waited as agreed, he never turned up, and so I returned home again, crestfallen – and, with my spectacles on again.

      February 9.

      … "Now, W – , talk to me prettily," she said as soon as the door was closed on them.

      "Oh! make him read a book," whined her sister, but we talked of marriage instead – in all its aspects. Bless their hearts, I found these two dear young things simply sodden with the idea of it.

      In the middle I did a knee-jerk which made them scream with laughing – the patellar reflex was new to them, so I seized a brush from the grate, crossed to Her and gently tapped: out shot her foot, and – cried: "Oh, do do it to me as well." It was rare fun.

      "Oh! pretty knee, what do I see?

      And he stooped and he tied up my garter for me."

      February 10.

      News of Scott's great adventure! Scott dead a year ago!! The news, when I saw it to-night in the Pall Mall Gazette gave me cold thrills. I could have wept… What splendid people we humans are! If there be no loving God to watch us, it's a pity for His sake as much as for our own.

      February 15.

      Tried to kiss her in a taxi-cab on the way home from the Savoy – the taxi-cab danger is very present with us – but she rejected me quietly, sombrely. I apologised on the steps of the Flats and said I feared I had greatly annoyed her. "I'm not annoyed," she said, "only surprised" – in a thoughtful, chilly voice.

      We had had supper in Soho, and I took some wine, and she looked so bewitching it sent me in a fever, thrumming my fingers on the seat of the cab while she sat beside me impassive. Her shoulders are exquisitely modelled and a beautiful head is carried poised on a tiny neck.

      February 16.

      Walking up the steps to her flat to-night made me pose to H – (who was with me) as Sydney Carton in the picture in A Tale of Two Cities on the steps of the scaffold. He laughed boisterously, as he is delighted to know of my last evening's misadventure.

      At supper, a story was told of a man who knocked at the door of his lady's heart four times and at last was admitted. I remarked that the last part of the romance was weak. She disagreed. H – exclaimed, "Oh! but this man has no sentiment at all!"

      "So much the worse for him," chimed in the others.

      "He was 66 years of age," added Mrs. – .

      "Too old," said P. "What do you think the best age for a man to marry?"

      H.: "Thirty for a man, twenty-five for a woman."

      She: "That's right: it still gives me a little time."

      P.: "What do you think?" (to me).

      I replied sardonically, —

      "A young man may not yet and an old man not at all."

      "That's right, old wet blanket," chirruped P – .

      "You know," I continued, delighted to seize the opportunity to assume the role of youthful cynic, "Cupid and Death once met at an Inn and exchanged arrows, since when young men have died and old men have doted."

      H – was charming enough to opine that it was impossible to fix a time for love. Love simply came.

      We warned him to be careful on the boat going out.

      "Yes, I know," said H – (who is in love with P – ).

      "My brother had a dose of moonlight on board a boat when he sailed and he's been happy ever since."

      P.: "How romantic!"

      H.: "A great passion!"

      "The only difference," I interjected in a sombre monotone, "between a passion and a caprice is that the caprice lasts a little longer."

      "Sounds like a book," She said in contempt.

      It was – Oscar Wilde!

      P – insisted on my taking a biscuit. "Don't mind me," she said. "Just think I'm a waitress and take no notice at all."

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