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

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СКАЧАТЬ 4.

      Last evening, after much mellifluous cajolery, induced her to kiss me. My private opinion about this whole affair is that all the time I have been at least twenty degrees below real love heat. In any case I am constitutionally and emotionally unfaithful. I said things which I did not believe just because it was dark and she was charming.

      September 5.

      Read Thomas à Kempis in the train. It made me so angry I nearly flung it out of the window. "Meddle not with things that be too deep for thee," he says, "but read such things as yield compunction to the heart rather than elevation to the head." Forsooth! Can't you see me?

      September 15.

      A puzzling afternoon: weather perfect, the earth green and humming like a top, yet a web of dream overlaid the great hill, and at certain moments, which recurred in a kind of pulsation, accompanied by subjective feelings of vague strife and effort, I easily succeeded in letting all I saw – the field and the blackberry bush, the whole valley and the apple orchards – change into something unreal, flimsy, gauzelike, immaterial, and totally unexperienced. Suddenly when the impression was most vivid, the whole of this mysterious tapestry would vanish away and I was back where 2 and 2 make 4. Oh! Earth! how jealously you guard your secrets!

      October 4.

      Sat at the Civil Service Commission in Burlington House for the exam, for the vacancy in the B.M. No luck at all with the papers. The whole of my nine months' assiduous preparation helped me in only two questions. In fine, I have not succeeded, I shall not obtain the appointment, and in a few weeks I shall be back in the wilds of

      N – again under the old regime, reporting platitudes from greasy guardians of the poor, and receiving condolences from people not altogether displeased at some one else's misfortune.

      October 14.

      Returned home from London. Felt horribly defeated in crossing the threshold. It was so obviously returning after an unsuccessful flight.

      October 22.

      Dissected a Squilla for which I paid 2s. 6d. to the Plymouth Marine Laboratory.

      October 23.

      Ambition

      Am attempting to feel after some practical philosophy of living – something that will enable me to accept disappointment with equanimity and Town Council meetings with a broad and tolerant smile. At present, ambition consumes me. I was ambitious before I was breeched. I can remember wondering as a child if I were a young Macaulay or Ruskin and secretly deciding that I was. My infant mind even was bitter with those who insisted on regarding me as a normal child and not as a prodigy. Since then I have struggled with this canker for many a day, and as success fails to arrive it becomes more gnawing.

      October 24.

      In the morning a Town Council and in the afternoon a Rural Council. With this abominable trash in my notebook waiting to be written up and turned into "copy," and with the dream pictures of a quiet studious life in Cromwell Road not yet faded from my mind, where can I turn for consolation? That I have done my best? That's only a mother's saying to her child.

      Perhaps after all it is a narrow life – this diving and delving among charming little secrets, plying diligently scalpel and microscope and then weaving the facts obtained into theoretic finespun. It is all vastly entertaining to the naturalist but it leaves the world unmoved. I sometimes envy the zealot with a definite mission in life. Life without one seems void. The monotonous pursuit of our daily vocations – the soldier, sailor, candlestick-maker – so they go on, never living but only working, never thinking but only hypnotising themselves by the routine and punctuality of their lives into just so many mechanical toys warranted to go for so long and then stop when Death takes them… It amazes me that men must spend their precious days of existence for the most part in slaving for food and clothing and the bare necessaries of existence.

      To sum up my despondency, what's the good of such a life? Where does it lead? Where am I going? Why should I work? What means this procession of nights and days wherein we are all seen moving along intent and stern as if we had some purpose or a goal?.. Of course to the man who believes in the next world and a personal God, it is quite another matter. The Christian is the Egoist par excellence. He does not mind annihilation by arduous labour in this world if in the next he shall have won eternal life… He is reckless of to-day, extravagant in the expenditure of his life. This intolerable fellow will be cheerful in a dungeon. For he flatters himself that God Almighty up in Heaven is all the time watching through the keyhole and marking him down for eternal life.

      October 26.

      The nose-snuffling, cynical man who studies La Rochefoucauld, and prides himself on a knowledge of human motives, is pleased to point out that every action and every motive is selfish, from the philanthropist who advertises himself by his charities to the fanatic who lays down his life for a cause. Even secret charities, for they give pleasure to the doer. So your cynic thinks he has thus, with one stroke of his psychological scalpel, laid human nature bare in all its depravities. All he has done really is to reclassify motives – instead of grouping them as selfish and unselfish (which is more convenient) he lumps them together as selfish, a method by which even he is forced to recognise different grades of selfishness. For example, the selfishness of a wife-beater is lower than the selfishness of a man who gives up his life for another.

      October 28.

      The result arrived. As I thought, I have failed, being fourth with only three vacancies.

      November 7.

      It is useless to bewail the course of fortune. It cannot be much credit to possess – though we may covet – those precious things, to possess which depends on circumstances outside our control.

      November 9.

      Dined at the Devonshire Club in St. James's Street, W., with Dr. H – and Mr. – , the latter showing the grave symptomatic phenomena of a monocle and spats. A dinner of eight courses. Only made one mistake – put my salad on my dish instead of on the side dish. Horribly nervous and reticent. I was apparently expected to give an account of myself and my abilities – and with that end in view, they gave me a few pokes in my cranial ribs. But I am a peculiar animal, and, before unbosoming myself, I would require a happier mise-en-scène than a West End Club, and a more tactful method of approach than ogling by two professors, who seemed to think I was a simple penny-in-the-slot machine. I froze from sheer nervousness and nothing resulted.

      November 11.

      Returned home and found a letter awaiting me from Dr. A – offering me £60 a year for a temporary job as assistant at the Plymouth Marine Laboratory.

      Left London horribly depressed. They evidently intend to shuffle me off.

      Read Geo. Gissing's novel, Born in Exile. Godwin Peak, with his intense pride of individuality, self-torturing capacities, and sentimental languishment, reminds me of myself.

      November 20.

      A purulent cold in the nose. My heart is weak. Palpitation after the least exertion. But I shall soon be swinging my cudgels in the battle of life, so it won't do to be hypochondriacal… Let all the powers of the world and the Devil attack me, yet I will win in the end – though the conquest may very well be one which no one but myself will view.

      Have accepted the Plymouth appointment.

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