PART I--THE JOURNAL BEGINS WHEN ITS AUTHOR IS A LITTLE OVER 13 YEARS

THE JOURNAL OF A DISAPPOINTED MAN

BY

W.N.P. BARBELLION

WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY H.G. WELLS

NEW YORK

GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY

1919

"I returned, and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift,

nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet

riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time

and chance happeneth to them all.

"For man also knoweth not his time; as the fishes that are taken in an

evil net, and as the birds that are caught in the snare; so are the sons

of men snared in an evil time, when it falleth suddenly upon them."

INTRODUCTION

By H.G. WELLS

Your egoist, like the solitary beasts, lives only for himself; your

altruist declares that he lives only for others; for either there may be

success or failure but for neither can there be tragedy. For even if the

altruist meets nothing but ingratitude, what has he to complain of? His

premises abolish his grounds of complaint. But both egoist and altruist

are philosophical abstractions. The human being by nature and necessity

is neither egoist nor altruist; he trims a difficult course between the

two; for the most part we are, within the limits of our powers of

expression, _egotists_, and our desire is to think and if possible talk

and write about this marvellous experiment of ourselves, with all the

world--or as much as we can conveniently assemble--for audience. There

is variety in our styles. Some drape the central figure; some let it

rather appear than call attention to it; some affect a needless

frankness: "_I_ am an egotist, mind you, and I pretend nothing else";

some by adopting a pose with accessories do at least develop so great

and passionate an interest in the accessories as to generalise and

escape more or less completely from self. An egotism like an eggshell is

a thing from which to escape; the art of life is that escape. The

fundamental art of life is to recover the sense of that great

self-forgetful continuous life from which we have individually budded

off. Many people have done this through religion, which begins with a

tremendous clamour to some saviour god or other to recognise us and ends

in our recognition of him; or through science, when your egotist begins

with: "Behold me! I, I your humble servant, am a scientific man, devoted

to the clear statement of truth," and ends with so passionate a

statement of truth that self is forgotten altogether.

In this diary of an intensely egotistical young naturalist, tragically

caught by the creeping approach of death, we have one of the most moving

records of the youthful aspects of our universal struggle. We begin with

one of those bright schoolboys that most of us like to fancy we once

were, that many of us have come to love as sons or nephews or younger

brothers, and this youngster is attracted by natural science, by the

employments of the naturalist and by the thought of being himself some

day a naturalist. From the very beginning we find in this diary the

three qualities, from the narrowest to broadest. "Observe me," he says

to himself, "I am observing nature." There is the self-conscious,

self-centred boy. But he also says "I am observing nature!" And at

moments comes the clear light. He forgets himself in the twilight cave

with the bats or watching the starlings in the evening sky, he becomes

just you and I and the mind of mankind gathering knowledge. And the

diary, as the keen edge of untimely fate cuts down into the sensitive

tissue, shows us presently, after outcries and sorrow and darkness of

spirit, the habits of the observer rising to the occasion. Not for him,

he realises, are the long life, the honours of science, the Croonian

lecture, the listening Royal Society, one's memory embalmed in specific

or generic names, the sure place in the temple of fame, that once filled

his boyish dreams. But here is something close at hand to go on

observing manfully to the end, in which self may be forgotten, and that

is his own tormented self, with desire still great and power and hope

receding. "I will go on with this diary," I read between the lines. "You

shall have at least one specimen, carefully displayed and labelled. Here

is a recorded unhappiness. When you talk about life and the rewards of

life and the justice of life and its penalties, what you say must square

with this."

Such is what we have here. It will be going beyond the necessities of

this preface to expatiate upon a certain thread of unpremeditated and

exquisite beauty that runs through the story this diary tells. To all

sensitive readers it will be plain enough, and those who cannot see it

plain do not deserve to have it underlined for them, that, still

unseeing, they may pretend to see. Nor need we dilate upon the

development of the quality of this diary from the rather fussy egotism

of the earlier half. But it may be well to add a few explanatory facts

that the opening chapters rather take for granted. Barbellion began life

at a material as well as a physical disadvantage; neither of his parents

were sturdy people, his mother died at last of constitutional heart

weakness, and his father belonged to that most unfortunate class, the

poor educated, who live lives of worry in straitened circumstances.

Barbellion's father was a newspaper reporter in a west country town, his

income rarely exceeded a couple of hundred pounds a year; the

educational facilities of the place were poor, and young Barbellion had

to get such learning as he could as a day boy at a small private school,

his father supplementing this meagre training and presently taking him

on as an apprentice reporter. How the passion for natural science arose

does not appear in this diary; we already find the naturalist formed in

the first schoolboy entries. An uncle, a chemist, seems to have

encouraged the tendency, and to have given him textbooks and other help.

Somehow at any rate he acquired a considerable amount of knowledge; by

the time he was eighteen he was already publishing quite excellent

observations of his own in such periodicals as the _Zoologist_, and by

the time he was twenty he could secure an appointment as assistant

naturalist to the director of a well-known marine biological station. It

was a success, as the reader will learn, gained only to be renounced.

His father was ill and he had to stand by his family; our economical

country cannot afford to make biologists out of men who can earn a

living as hack reporters. Poverty and science are sisters wherever the

flag of Britain waves; for how could the rich live if we wasted money on

that sort of thing? But the dream was not altogether abandoned, and in

1911 Barbellion got a post, one of the dozen or so of rare and coveted

opportunities to toil in a scientific atmosphere that our Empire

affords; he secured an assistantship at the Natural History Museum,

South Kensington, to which a living wage was attached, a fair equivalent

to a reporter's earnings. The rest of the story needs no helping out.

Let me only add that since 1911 Barbellion, in spite of his steadily

diminishing strength, has published articles in both British and

American periodicals, that entirely justify the statement that in him

biological science loses one of the most promising of its recent

recruits. His scientific work is not only full and exact but it has

those literary qualities, the grace, the power of handling, the breadth

of reference, which have always distinguished the best English

biological work, and which mark off at once the true scientific man from

the mere collector and recorder of items. With this much introduction

Barbellion may be left to tell the tragedy of his hopes and of the dark,

unforeseen, unforeseeable, and inexplicable fate that has overtaken

him.

PART I--THE JOURNAL BEGINS WHEN ITS AUTHOR IS A LITTLE OVER 13 YEARS

OLD.

_[The Following are Selected Entries.]_

1903

_January_ 3.

Am writing an essay on the life-history of insects and have abandoned

the idea of writing on "How Cats Spend their Time."

_January_ 17.

Went with L---- out catapult shooting. While walking down the main road

saw a Goldfinch, but very indistinctly--it might not have been one. Had

some wonderful shots at a tree creeper in the hedge about a foot away

from me. While near a stream, L---- spotted what he thought to be some

Wild Duck and brought one down, hitting it right in the head. He is a

splendid shot. We discovered on examining it that it was _not_ Wild Duck

at all but an ordinary tame Wild Duck--a hen. We ran away, and to-night

L---- tells me he saw the Farmer enter the poulterer's shop with the

bird in his hand.

_January_ 19.

Went to A---- Wood with S---- and L----. Saw a Barn Owl (_Strix

flammea_) flying in broad daylight. At A---- Woods, be it known, there

is a steep cliff where we were all out climbing to inspect and find all

the likely places for birds to build in, next spring. S---- and I got along

all right, but L----, being a bit too careless, let go his hold on a

tree and fell headlong down. He turned over and over and seemed to us to

pitch on the back of his neck. However, he got up as cheerfully as ever,

saying, "I don't like that--a bit of a nasty knock."

_February_ 8.

Joe became the mother of one kitten to-day. It was born at 1.20. It is

a tiny little thing. One would almost call it deformed. It is gray.

_March_ 18.

Our Goldfinch roosts at 5.30. Joe's kitten is a very small one. "Magpie"

is its name.

_March_ 28.

Went our usual ramble. But we were unfortunate from the very beginning.

First, when we reached the "Nightjar Field," we found there were two men

at the bottom of it cutting the hedge, so we decided not to venture on,

as Gimbo and Bounce were with us, and it would look like poaching. Later

on, we came to a splendid wood, but had to withdraw hastily from it, an

old farmer giving us a severe chase. There were innumerable rabbits in

the wood, so, of course, the dogs barked hard. I gave them a sound

beating when we got back out of danger, The old farmer is known as "Bale

the Bell-hanger."

_April_ 2.

I was glad yesterday to see the egg season so well in. I shall have to

get blow-pipes and egg drills. Spring has really arrived and even the

grasshoppers are beginning to stridulate, yet Burke describes these

little creatures as being "loud and troublesome" and the chirp

unpleasant. Like Samuel Johnson, he must have preferred brick walls to

green hedges. Many people go for a walk and yet are unable to admire

Nature simply because their power of observation is untrained. Of course

some are not suited to the study at all and do not trouble themselves

about it. In that case they should not talk of what they do not

understand.... I might have noticed that I have used the term "Study of

Nature." But it cannot be called a _study_. It _is_ a pastime of sheer

delight, with naught but beautiful dreams and lovely thoughts, where we

are urged forward by the fact that we are in God's world which He made

for us to be our comfort in time of trouble.... Language cannot express

the joy and happy forgetfulness during a ramble in the country. I do

not mean that all the ins and outs and exact knowledge of a naturalist

are necessary to produce such delight, but merely the common

objects--Sun, Thrush, Grasshopper, Primrose, and Dew.

_April_ 21.

S---- and I have made a little hut in the woods out of a large natural

hole in the ground by a big tree. We have pulled down branches all

around it and stuck in upright sticks as a paling. We are training ivy

to grow over the sticks. We smoke "Pioneer" cigarettes here and hide the

packets in a hole under the roots of the tree. It's like a sort of

cupboard.

_August_ 6.

In the evening, S---- and I cycled to S----, and when it was dark we

went down on the rocks and lit a fire which crackled and burnt in the

dusk of the evening.... Intend to do a bit to Beetles these hols. Rev.

J. Wood in the _B.O.P_. has incited me to take them up, and it is really

time, for at present I am as ignorant as I can hang together of the

Coleoptera.

_December_ 24.

Went out with L---- to try to see the squirrels again. We could not find

one and were just wondering if we should draw blank when L---- noticed

one clinging to the bark of a tree with a nut in its mouth. We gave it a

good chase, but it escaped into the thickest part of the fir tree, still

carrying the nut, and we gave up firing at it. Later on, L---- got

foolishly mischievous--owing, I suppose, to our lack of sport--and

unhinged a gate which he carried two yards into a copse, and threw it on

the ground. Just then, he saw the Squirrel again and jumped over the

hedge into the copse, chasing it from tree to tree with his catty.

Having lost it, he climbed a fir tree into a Squirrel's drey at the top

and sat there on the tree top, and I, below, was just going to lift the

gate back when I looked up and saw a farmer watching me, menacing and

silent. I promptly dropped the gate and fled. L---- from his Squirrel's

drey, not knowing what had happened, called out to me about the

nest--that there was nothing in it. The man looked up and asked him who

he was and who I was. L---- would not say and would not come down. The

farmer said he would come up. L---- answered that if he did he would

"gob" [_i.e_. spit] on him. Eventually L---- climbed down and asked the

farmer for a glass of cider. The latter gave him his boot and L---- ran

away.

1904

_January_ 23.

Went to the meet of the Stag hounds. Saw a hind in the stream at

L----with not a horse, hound, or man in sight. It looked quite

unconcerned and did not seem to have been hunted. I tried to head it,

but a confounded sheep-dog got there before me and drove it off in the

wrong direction. I _was_ mad, because if I had succeeded in heading it

and had there been a kill, I should have got a slot. Got home at 6.30,

after running and walking fifteen miles--tired out.

_April_ 5.

Just read _Stalky & Co_. Of Stalky, Beetle, and McTurk, I like Beetle

best.

_April_ 14.

Won the School Gymnasium championship (under fifteen).

_August_ 25.

Had quite an adventure to-day. D---- and I cycled to the Lighthouse at

----. On the way, in crossing the sands near the Hospital Ship we espied

a lame Curlew which could hardly fly. I gave chase, but it managed to

scramble over a gut full of water about two yards wide. D---- took off

his boots and stockings and carried me over on his back, and we both

raced across the sands to where the Curlew lay in an exhausted state. I

picked him up and carried him off under my arm, like the boy with the

Goose that laid the golden eggs. All the time, the bird screamed loudly,

opening its enormously long bill and struggling to escape. Arrived at

the gut again, we found that the incoming tide had made the gut wider

and deeper so that we were cut off from the mainland, and found it

necessary to wade across at once before it got deeper. As I had to carry

a pair of field-glasses as well as my boots and stockings, I handed over

the struggling bird to D----. While wading across, I suddenly sank to my

waist in a sandpit. This frightened me, and I was glad to reach the

other side in safety. But on arrival I found D----, but no Curlew. In

wading across the current, he grew flurried and let it go. The tide

swept it upstream, and the poor bird, I fear, perished by drowning....

Knocked up my friend P----, who is skipper of the ship _N_---- and asked

him if he had a fire so that I could dry myself. He replied that they

had no fire but that his "missus" would look out a pair of pants for me.

Before falling in with this plan unconditionally, I thought it best to

inspect the garment. However, it was quite clean--a pair of blue serge

seaman's trousers, very baggy in the seat and far too long. But I turned

up the bottoms and hid the baggy part underneath my overcoat. So, I got

back home!

_September_ 8.

Wet all day. Toothache.

_September_ 9.

Toothache.

_September_ 10.

Toothache.

_September_ 11.

Toothache.

_Xmas Day._

Mother and Dad wanted to give me one of G.A. Henty's, but, fearing lest

I did not want it, they did not put my name in it, so that if I wished I

could change it. Intend doing this. Am reading the _Origin of Species_.

It requires careful study, but I understand it so far and shall go on.

_December_ 26.

I have caught nothing in my traps yet. A little while ago I set a

springe and two horse-hair nooses in the reed bed for water rails. I

have bought a book on practical trapping.

1905

_January_ 15.

I am thinking that on the whole I am a most discontented mortal. I get

fits of what I call "What's the good of anything" mania. I keep asking

myself incessantly till the question wears me out: "What's the good of

going into the country _naturalising_? what's the good of studying so

hard? where is it going to end? will it lead anywhere?"

_February_ 17.

When I can get hold of any one interested in Natural History I talk away

in the most garrulous manner and afterwards feel ashamed of myself for

doing it.

_May_ 15.

_The Captain_, in answer to my letter, advises me to join one of the

ordinary professions and then follow up Nat. History as a recreation, or

else join Science Classes at S. Kensington, or else by influence get a

post in the Natural History Museum. But I shall see.

_June_ 9.

During dinner hour, between morning and afternoon school, went out on

the S---- B---- River Bank, and found another Sedge Warbler's nest. This

is the fifth I have found this year. People who live opposite on the

T---- V---- hear them sing at night and think they are Nightingales!

_June_ 27.

On reviewing the past egg-season, I find in all I have discovered 232

nests belonging to forty-four species. I only hope I shall be as

successful with the beetle-season.

_August_ 15.

A hot, sultry afternoon, during most of which I was stretched out on the

grass beside an upturned stone where a battle royal was fought between

Yellow and Black Ants. The victory went to the hardy little Yellows....

By the way, I held a Newt by the tail to-day and it emitted a squeak! So

that the Newt has a voice after all.

_August_ 26.

In bed with a feverish cold. I am afraid I have very few Nat. His.

observations to make. It is hard to observe anything at all when lying

in bed in a dull bedroom with one small window. Gulls and Starlings

pass, steam engines whistle, horses' feet clatter down the street, and

sometimes the voice of a passer-by reaches me, and often the loud laugh

that speaks the vacant mind. I can also hear my own cough echoing

through my head, and, by the evening, the few pages of Lubbock's _Ants,

Bees, and Wasps_ which I struggled to get through during the day rattle

through my brain till I am disgusted to find I have them by heart. The

clock strikes midnight and I wait for the morning. Oh! what a weary

world.

_October_ 13.

Down with another cold. Feeling pretty useless. It's a wonder I don't

develop melancholia.

_November_ 6.

By 7 a.m. H---- and I were down on the mudflats of the River with

field-glasses, watching Waders. Ringed Plover in great numbers.

1906

_January_ 13.

I have always had one ambition to be a great naturalist. That is, I

suppose, a child's fancy, and I can see my folly in hoping for such

great things. Still, there is no reason why I should not become a

_learned_ naturalist if I study hard. I hope that whatever I do I shall

do in the hope of increasing knowledge of truth and not for my own fame.

This entry may suggest that I am horribly conceited. But really I am as

humble as possible. I know I have advanced beyond many others, and I

know I shall advance further, but why be conceited?... What a short life

we have, and what heaps of glorious work to be done! Supper bell--so I

am off.... This reads like Isaac Walton's funny mixtures of the sublime

with the ridiculous. He discusses abstract happiness and the best salmon

sauce all in one breath.

_February_ 26.

Although it is a grand achievement to have added but one jot or tittle

to the sum of human knowledge it is grander still to have added a

thought. It is best for a man to try to be both poet and naturalist--not

to be too much of a naturalist and so overlook the beauty of things, or

too much of a poet and so fail to understand them or even perceive those

hidden beauties only revealed by close observation.

_March_ 17.

Woke up this morning covered with spots, chest inflamed, and bad cough.

H---- carted me down from the Attic to the Lower Bedroom, and when the

Dr. came he confirmed the general opinion that I had measles. It is

simply disgusting, I have somewhere near 10,000 spots on me.

_April_ 27.

Went to A---- Woods, where, strange to say, I again saw Mary. But she

had a tribe of friends with her, so did not speak, but watched her from

a distance through my field-glasses.

_May_ 8.

On interviewing my old friend Dr. H----, found I had chickenpox. This

instead of being a Diary of a Naturalist's observations[1] will be one

of infectious diseases.

_May_ 28.

[Letter from Editor of _Countryside_ to my brother saying that if the

_Countryside_ grew he might be able to offer me a billet. "Meanwhile he

will be able to get along with his pen ... he will soon make a living

and in time too a name."] This is a bit of all right. I shall always be

on the look-out for a job on a N.H. Journal.

_December_ 7.

Went to F---- Duckponds. Flocks of Wigeon and Teal on the water. Taking

advantage of a dip in the land managed to stalk them splendidly, and for

quite a long time I lay among the long grass watching them through my

field-glasses. But during the day Wild Duck are not particularly lively

or interesting birds. They just rest serenely on the water like floating

corks on a sheet of glass. Occasionally one will paddle around lazily.

But for the most part they show a great ennui and seem so sleepy and

tired that one would almost think to be able to approach and feed them

out of the hand. But I moved one hand carelessly and the whole flock was

up in a minute and whizzing across the river. Afterwards, at dusk, on

returning to the ponds, they had come back; but now that the sun was

down, those dozy, flapdoodle creatures of the afternoon were transformed

into quacking, quarrelsome, blustering birds that squabbled and chivvied

each other, every moment seizing the chance of a luxurious dip, flinging

the ice-cold water off their backs with a shake of the tail that seemed

to indicate the keenest-edged delight.

It was now quite dark. A Snipe rose at my feet and disappeared into the

darkness. Coots and Moorhens clekked, and a Little Grebe grew bold and

began to dive and fish quite close to me, methodically working its way

upstream and so quartering out its feeding area.

A happy half-hour! Alas! I enjoy these moments the more as they recede.

Not often do I realise the living present. That is always difficult. It

is the mere shades--the ghosts of the dead days--that are dearest to me.

Spent my last day at school. De Quincey says (or was it Johnson?) that

whenever we do anything for the last time, provided we have done it

regularly for years before, we are a little melancholy, even though it

has been distasteful to us.... True.

_December_ 14.

Signed my Death Warrant, _i.e._, my articles apprenticing me to

journalism for five years. By Jove! I shall work frantically during the

next five years so as to be ready at the end of them to take up a

Natural History appointment.

[1] Up to 1911, the Journal is mainly devoted to records of observations

in general Natural History and latterly in Zoology alone.

1907

_March_ 1.

As long as he has good health, a man need never despair. Without good

health, I _might_ keep a long while in the race, yet as the goal of my

ambition grew more and more unattainable I should surely remember the

words of Keats and give up: "There is no fiercer Hell than the failure

of a great ambition."

_March_ 14.

Have been reading through the Chemistry Course in the Harmsworth

_Self-Educator_ and learning all the latest facts and ideas about

radium. I would rather have a clear comprehension of the atom as a solar

system than a private income of £100 a year. If only I had eyes to go on

reading without a stop!

_May_ 1.

Met an old gentleman in E----, a naturalist with a great contempt for

the Book of Genesis. He wanted to know how the Kangaroo leapt from

Australia to Palestine and how Noah fed the animals in the Ark. He

rejects the Old T. theogony and advised me to read "Darwin and J.G.

Wood!" Silly old man!

_May_ 22.

To Challacombe and then walked across Exmoor. This is the first time I

have been on Exmoor. My first experience of the Moors came bursting in

on me with a flood of ideas, impressions, and delights. I cannot write

out the history of to-day. It would take too long and my mind is a

palpitating tangle. I have so many things to record that I cannot record

one of them. Perhaps the best thing to do would be to draw up an

inventory of things seen and heard and trust to my memory to fill in the

details when in the future I revert to this date. Too much joy, like too

much pain, simply makes me prostrate. It wounds the organism. It is too

much. I shall try to forget it all as quickly as possible so as to be

able to return to egg-collecting and bird-watching the sooner as a calm

and dispassionate observer. Yet these dear old hills. How I love them. I

cannot leave them without one friendly word. I wish I were a shepherd!

At the "Ring of Bells" had a long yarn with the landlord, who, as he

told us the story of his life, was constantly interrupted but never

disconcerted by the exuberant loyalty and devotion of his wife--a stout,

florid, creamy woman, who capped every story with: "Ees quite honest,

sir; no 'arm at all in old Joshua."

_June_ 5.

A half-an-hour of to-day I spent in a punt under a copper beech out of

the pouring rain listening to Lady ----'s gamekeeper at A---- talk about

beasts and local politics--just after a visit of inspection to the

Heronry in the firs on the island in the middle of the Lake. It was

delightful to hear him describing a Heron killing an Eel with "a dap on

the niddick," helping out the figure with a pat on the nape of his thick

bull neck.

_July_ 22.

Am reading Huxley's _Crayfish_. H---- brought me in that magnificent

aculeate _Chrysis ignita_.

_August_ 15.

Met _her_ in the market with M----. I just lifted my hat and passed on.

She has the most marvellous brown eyes I have ever seen. She is

perfectly self-possessed. A bad sign this.

_August_ 18.

When I feel ill, cinema pictures of the circumstances of my death flit

across my mind's eye. I cannot prevent them. I consider the nature of

the disease and all I said before I died--something heroic, of course!

_August_ 31.

She is a ripping girl. Her eyes are magnificent. I have never seen any

one better looking.

_October_ 1.

In the afternoon dissected a Frog, following Milnes Marshall's Book. Am

studying Chemistry and attending classes at the Evening School and

reading Physiology (Foster's). Am also teaching myself German. I wish I

had a microscope.

_October_ 3.

What heaps of things to be done! How short the time to do them in! An

appetite for knowledge is apt to rush one off one's feet, like any other

appetite if not curbed. I often stand in the centre of the Library here

and think despairingly how impossible it is ever to become possessed of

all the wealth of facts and ideas contained in the books surrounding me

on every hand. I pull out one volume from its place and feel as if I

were no more than giving one dig with a pick in an enormous quarry. The

Porter spends his days in the Library keeping strict vigil over this

catacomb of books, passing along between the shelves and yet never

paying heed to the almost audible susurrus of desire--the desire every

book has to be taken down and read, to live, to come into being in

somebody's mind. He even hands the volumes over the counter, seeks them

out in their proper places or returns them there without once realising

that a Book is a Person and not a Thing. It makes me shudder to think of

Lamb's _Essays_ being carted about as if they were fardels.

_October_ 16.

Dissected an Eel. Cassell's _Natural History_ says the Air-bladder is

divided. This is not so in the one I opened. Found what I believe to be

the lymphatic heart in the tail beneath the vent.

1908

_March_ 10.

Am working frantically so as to keep up my own work with the daily

business of reporting. Shorthand, type-writing, German, Chemistry

classes, Electricity lectures, Zoology (including dissections) and field

work. Am reading Mosenthal's _Muscle and Nerve_.

_April_ 7.

Sectioned a leech. H---- has lent me a hand microtome and I have

borrowed an old razor. My table in the Attic is now fitted up quite like

a Laboratory. I get up every morning at 6 a.m. to dissect. Have worked

at the Anatomy of _Dytiscus, Lumbricus_, another Leech, and _Petromyzon

fluviatilis_ all collected by myself. The "branchial basket" of

_Petromyzon_ interested me vastly. But it's a brute to dissect.[1]

_May_ 1.

Cycled to the Lighthouse at the mouth of the Estuary. Underneath some

telegraph wires, picked up a Landrail in excellent condition. The colour

of the wings is a beautiful warm chestnut. While sweeping the sandhills

with my field-glasses in search of Ring Plover, which nest there in the

shingle beaches, I espied a Shelduck (_Tadorna_) squatting on a piece of

level ground. On walking up cautiously, found it was dead--a Drake in

splendid plumage and quite fresh and uninjured. Put him in my poacher's

pocket, alongside of the Landrail. My coat looked rather bulgy, for a

Shelduck is nearly as big as a Goose. Heard a Grasshopper Warbler--a

rare bird in North ----. Later, after much patient watching, saw the

bird in a bramble bush, creeping about like a mouse.

On the sea-shore picked up a number of Sea Mice (_Aphrodite_) and

bottled them in my jar of 70 per cent., as they will come in useful for

dissection. Also found the cranium of a _Scyllium_, which I will

describe later on.

Near the Lighthouse watched some fishermen bring in a large Salmon in a

seine net worked from the shore. It was most exciting. Cycled down three

miles of hard sand with the wind behind me to the village where I had

tea and--as if nothing could stay to-day's good luck--met Margaret ----.

I showed her one by one all my treasures--Rail, Duck, Skull, Sea Mice,

etc., and felt like Thomas Edward, beloved of Samuel Smiles. To her I

must have appeared a very ridiculous person.

"How do you know it's the skull of a dog-fish?" she asked, incredulous.

"How do I know anything?" I said, a little piqued.

On arriving home found T---- awaiting me with the news that he had

discovered a Woodpecker's nest. When will the luck cease? I have never

had such a flawless ten hours in _le grand air_. These summer days eat

into my being. The sea has been roaring into my ears and the sun blazing

down so that even the backs of my hands are sunburnt. And then: those

coal-black eyes. Ah! me, she _is_ pretty.

_May_ 2.

Dissected the Sheldrake. Very entertained to discover the extraordinary

asymmetry of the syrinx....

_May_ 3.

Dissected Corncrake, examining carefully the pessulus, bronchidesmus

(incomplete), _tympani-form and semi-lunar_ membranes of a very

interesting syrinx....

_May_ 6.

Dissected one of the Sea Mice. It has a remarkable series of hepatic

ducts running into the alimentary canal as in Nudibranchs....

_May_ 9.

_Spring in the Woods_

Among the Oak Saplings we seemed enveloped in a cloud of green. The tall

green grasses threw up a green light against the young green of the

Oaks, and the sun managed to trickle through only here and there. Bevies

of swinging bluebells grew in patches among the grass. Overhead in the

oaks I heard secret leaf whispers--those little noiseless noises. Birds

and trees and flowers were secretive and mysterious like expectant

motherhood. All the live things plotted together, having the same big

business in hand. Out in the sunlit meadows, there was a different

influence abroad. Here everything was gay, lively, irresponsible. The

brook prattled like an inconsequential schoolgirl. The Marsh Marigolds

in flamboyant yellow sunbonnets played ring-a-ring-a-roses.

An Oak Sapling should make an elderly man avuncular. There are so many

tremendous possibilities about a well-behaved young oak that it is

tempting to put a hand upon its shoulder and give some seasoned,

timberly advice.

_June_ 1.

_A Small Red Viper_

Went to L---- Sessions. After the Court rose, I transcribed my notes

quickly and walked out to the famous Valley of Rocks which Southey

described as the ribs of the old Earth poking through. At the bottom of

one of the hills saw a snake, a Red Viper. Put my boot on him quickly so

that he couldn't get away and then recognised him as a specimen of what

I consider to be the fourth species of British Serpent--_Vipera rubra_.

The difficulty was to know how to secure him. This species is more

ferocious than the ordinary _V. bera_, and I did not like the idea of

putting my hand down to seize him by the neck. I stood for some time

with my foot so firmly pressed down on its back that my leg ached and I

began to wonder if I had been bitten. I held on and presently hailed a

baker's cart coming along the road. The man got out and ran across the

grass to where I stood. I showed him what I had beneath my boot and he

produced a piece of string which I fastened around the snake's tail and

so gently hauled the little brute up. It already appeared moribund, but

I squashed its head on the grass with my heel to make certain. After

parting with the baker, to whom all thanks be given, I remember that

Adders are tenacious of life and so I continue to carry him at string's

length and occasionally wallop him against a stone. As he was lifeless I

wrapped him in paper and put him in my pocket--though to make assurance

doubly sure I left the string on and let its end hang out over my

pocket. So home by a two hours' railway journey with the adder in the

pocket of my overcoat and the overcoat on the rack over my head. Settled

down to the reading of a book on Spinoza's _Ethics_. At home it proved

to be quite alive, and, on being pulled out by the string, coiled up on

the drawing-room floor and hissed in a fury, to my infinite surprise.

Finished him off with the poker and so spoilt the skin.

_July_ 18.

Have had toothache for a week. Too much of a coward to have it out.

Started for P---- early in the morning to report Mr. Duke, K.C. After a

week's pain, felt a little dicky. All the way in the train kept

hardening myself to the task in front of me by recollecting the example

of Zola, who killed pain with work. So all day to-day I have endeavoured

to act as if I had no pain--the worst of all pains--toothache. By the

time I got home I was rather done up, but the pain was actually less.

This gave me a furious joy, and, after days of morose silence, to-night

at supper I made them all laugh by bursting out violently with, "I don't

know whether you know it but I've had a horrible day to-day." I

explained at length and received the healing ointment of much sympathy.

Went to bed happy with tooth still aching. I fear it was scarcely

playing the strict Zolaesque game to divulge the story of my

sufferings.... No, I am not a martyr or a saint. Just an ordinary devil

who's having a rough time.

_August_ 17.

_Prawning_

Had a glorious time on the rocks at low tide prawning. Caught some

Five-Bearded Rocklings and a large _Cottus bubalis_. The sun did not

simply shine to-day--it came rushing down from the sky in a cataract and

flooded the sands with light. Sitting on a rock, with prawning net over

my knees I looked along three miles of flat hard and yellow sands. The

sun poured down on them so heavily that it seemed to raise a luminous

golden yellow dust for about three feet high.

On the rocks was a pretty flapper in a pink sunbonnet--also prawning in

company of S----, the artist, who has sent her picture to the Royal

Academy. They saw I was a naturalist, so my services were secured to

pronounce my judgment on a "fish" she had caught. It was a Squid, "an

odd little beast," in truth, as she said. "The same class of animal," I

volunteered, "as the Cuttlefish and Octopus."

"Does it sting?"

"Oh, no!"

"Well, it ought to with a face like that." She laughed merrily, and the

bearded but youthful artist laughed too.

"I don't know anything about these things," he said hopelessly.

"Nor I," said the naturalist modestly. "I study fish."

This was puzzling. "Fish?" What was a Squid then?

... The artist would stop now and then and raise his glasses at a

passing ship, and Maud's face occasionally disappeared in the pink

sunbonnet as she stooped over a pool to examine a seaweed or crab.

She's a dear--and she gave me the Squid. What a merry little cuss!

_September_ 1.

Went with Uncle to see a Wesleyan minister whose fame as a microscopist,

according to Uncle, made it worth my while to visit him. As I expected,

he was just a silly old man, a diatomaniac fond of pretty-pretty slides

and not a scientific man at all. He lectures Bands of Hope on the

Butterfly's Life History and hates his next-door neighbour, who is also

a microscopist and incidentally a scientific man, because he interests

himself in "parasites and those beastly things."

I remarked that his friend next door had shown me an Amphioxus.

"Oh! I expect that's some beastly bacteria thing," he said petulantly.

"I can't understand Wilkinson. He's a pervert."

I told him what _Amphioxus_ was and laughed up my sleeve. He likes to

think of Zoology as a series of pretty pictures illustrating beautiful

moral truths. The old fellow's saving grace was enthusiasm.... Having

focused an object for us, he would stand by, breathless, while we

squinted down his gas-tube, and gave vent to tremendous expletives of

surprise such as "Heavens," or "Jupiter." His eyes would twinkle with

delight and straightway another miracle is selected for us to view.

"They are all miracles," he said.

"Those are the valves"--washing his hands with invisible soap--"no one

has yet been able to solve the problem of the Diatom's valves. No one

knows what they are--no, nor ever will know--why?--why can't we see

behind the valves?--because God is behind the valves--that is why!"

Amen.

_October_ 1.

Telegraphed 1,000 words of Lord ----'s speech at T----.

Spent the night at a comfortable country inn and read Moore's lyrics.

"Row gently here, my Gondolier," ran through my head continuously. The

Inn is an old one with a long narrow passage that leads straight from

front door to back with wainscoted smoke room and parlours on each side.

China dogs, bran on the floor, and the picture of Derby Day with horses

galloping incredibly, the drone of an old crony in the bar, and a

pleasant barmy smell. Slept in a remarkable bedroom full of massive

furniture, draped with cloth and covered with trinkets. The bed had a

tremendous hood over it like a catafalque, and lying in it made me think

I was an effigy. Read Moore till the small hours and then found I had

left my handbag downstairs. Lit a candle and went on a voyage of

discovery. Made a considerable noise, but roused no one. Entered

drawing-room, kitchen, pantries, parlour, bar--everywhere looking for my

bag and dropping candle grease everywhere! Slept in my day shirt. Tired

out and slept like a top.

_November_ 3.

_Aristotle's Lantern_

Dissected the Sea Urchin (_Echinus esculentus_). Very excited over my

first view of Aristotle's Lantern. These complicated pieces of animal

mechanism never smell of musty age--after æons of evolution. When I open

a Sea Urchin and see the Lantern, or dissect a Lamprey and cast eyes on

the branchial basket, such structures strike me as being as finished and

exquisite as if they had just a moment before been tossed me fresh from

the hands of the Creator. They are fresh, young, they smell _new_.

_December_ 3.

Hard at work dissecting a Dogfish. Ruridecanal Conference in the

afternoon. I enjoy this double life I lead. It amazes me to be laying

bare the brain of a dogfish in the morning and in the afternoon to be

taking down in shorthand what the Bishop says on Mission Work.

_December_ 4.

Went to the Veterinary Surgeon and begged of him the skull of a horse.

Carried the trophy home under my arm--bare to the public view. "Why,

Lor', 'tis an ole 'orse's jib," M---- said when I got back.

[1] There are numerous drawings of dissections scattered through the

Journal about this period.

1909

_March_ 7.

My programme of work is: (1) Continue German. (2) Sectioning embryo of

(_a_) Fowl, (_b_) Newt. (3) Paper on Arterial System of Newts. (4)

Psychology of Newts. (5) General Zoological Reading.

_May_ 2.

To C---- Hill. Too much taken with the beauty of the Woods to be able to

do any nesting. Here are some of the things I saw: the bark on several

of the trees in the mazzard orchards rubbed into a beautifully smooth,

polished surface by the Red Devon Cows when scratching where it itched;

I put my hand on the smooth almost cherry-red patch of bark and felt

delighted and grateful that cows had fleas: the young shoots of the

whortle-berry plants on the hill were red tipped with the gold of an

almost horizontal sun. I caught a little lizard which slipped across my

path.... Afar off down in the valley I had come through, in a convenient

break in a holly bush, I could just see a Cow sitting on her matronly

haunches in a field. She flicked her ears and two starlings settled on

her back. A Rabbit swept out of a sweet-brier bush, and a Magpie flew

out of the hedge on my right.

In another direction I could see a field full of luscious, tall, green

grass. Every stalk was so full of sap that had I cut one I am sure it

would have bled great green drops. In the field some lambs were

sleeping; one woke up and looked at me with the back of its head to the

low sun, which shone through its two small ears and gave them a

transparent pink appearance.

No sooner am I rebaptized in the sun than I have to be turning home

again. No sooner do "the sudden lilies push between the loosening fibres

of the heart" than I am whisked back into the old groove--the daily

round. If only I had more time!--more time in which to think, to love,

to observe, to frame my disposition, to direct as far as in me lies the

development and unfolding of my character, if only I could direct all my

energies to the great and difficult profession of life, of being man

instead of trifling with one profession that bores me and dabbling in

another.

_June_ 5.

_On Lundy Island_

Frankie is blowing Seagulls' eggs in the scullery. His father, after a

day's work at the farm, is at his supper very hungry, yet immensely

interested, and calls out occasionally,--

"'Ow you're getting on, Foreman?"

"All right, Capt.," says Frankie affectionately, and the unpleasant

asthmatic, wheezy noise of the egg-blowing goes on.... There are three

dogs asleep under the kitchen table; all three belong to different

owners and neither one to A----.

_June_ 6.

Our egg-collecting with the Lighthouse Keepers. They walk about the

cliffs as surefooted as cats, and feed their dogs on birds' eggs

collected in a little bag at the end of a long pole. One dog ate three

right off in as many minutes, putting his teeth through and cracking the

shell, then lapping up the contents. Crab for tea.

_June_ 7.

After a glorious day at the N. end of the Island with the Puffins, was

forced to-night to take another walk, as the smell of Albert's tobacco,

together with that of his stockinged feet and his boots removed, was

asphyxiating.

_June_ 9.

The governess is an awfully pretty girl. We have been talking together

to-day and she asked me if I were a naturalist. I said "Yes." She said,

"Well, I found a funny little beetle yesterday and Mr. S---- said I

ought to have given it to you." Later, I felt she was looking at me, so

I looked at her, across the beach. Yes! it was true. When our eyes met

she gave me one of the most provokingly pretty smiles, then turned and

went up the cliff path and so out of my life--to my everlasting regret.

Return to-night in a cattle steamer.

_June_ 18.

Dr.----, M.A., F.R.S., D.C.L., LL.D., called in the office to-day, and

seeing Dad typing, said, "Are you Mr. Barbellion?" Dad replied in the

affirmative, whereupon the Doctor handed him his card, and Dad said he

thought it was his son he wanted to see. He is an old gentleman aged

eighty or thereabouts, with elastic-sided boots, an umbrella, and a

guardian nephew--a youngster of about sixty. But I paid him due

reverence as a celebrated zoologist and at his invitation [and to my

infinite pride] accompanied him on an excursion to the coast, where he

wanted to see _Philoscia Couchii_, which I readily turned up for him.

I chanced to remark that I thought torsion in gastropods one of the most

fascinating and difficult problems in Zoology. Why should a snail be

twisted round?

"Humph," said he, "why do we stand upright?" I was not such a fool as to

argue with him, so pretended his reply was a knock-out. But it enabled

me to size him up intellectually.

In the evening dined with him at his hotel.... He knows Wallace and

Haeckel personally, and I sat at his feet with my tongue out listening

to personal reminiscences of these great men. However, he seemed never

to have heard of Gaskell's Theory on the Origin of Vertebrates.

_June_ 27.

Walked to V----. As usual, Nature with clockwork regularity had all her

taps turned on--larks singing, cherries ripening, and bees humming. It

all bored me a little. Why doesn't she vary it a little?

_August_ 8.

A cold note from Dr. ---- saying that he cannot undertake the

responsibility of advising me to give up journalism for zoology.

A hellish cold in the head. Also a swingeing inflammation of the eyes.

Just heard them singing in the Chapel over the way: "God shall wipe away

all tears from their eyes." Hope so, I'm sure.

_August_ 9.

A transformation. After a long series of drab experiences in Sheffield,

etc., the last being the climax of yesterday, an anti-cyclone arrived

this morning and I sailed like an Eagle into cloudless, windless

weather! _The Academy_ has published my article, my cold is suddenly

better, and going down by the sea this afternoon met Mary ----!

_August_ 20.

Had an amusing letter from my maiden-aunt F----, who does not like "the

agnostic atmosphere" in my _Academy_ article. Poor dear! She is sorry if

I really feel like that, and, if I do, what a pity to put it into print.

Then a Bible reference to the Epistle to the Romans.

_Xmas Day_.

Feeling ill--like a sloppy Tadpole. My will is paralysed. I visit the

Doctor regularly to be stethoscoped, ramble about the streets, idly scan

magazines in the Library and occasionally rink--with palpitation of the

heart as a consequence. In view of the shortness, bitterness, and

uncertainty of life, all scientific labour for me seems futile.

1910

_January_ 10.

Better, but still very dicky: a pallid animal: a weevil in a nut. I have

a weak heart, an enervated nervous system; I suffer from lack of funds

with which to carry on my studies; I hate

newspaper-reporting--particularly some skinny-witted speaker like ----;

and last, but not least, there are women; all these worries fight over

my body like jackals over carrion. Yet Zoology is all I want. Why won't

Life leave me alone?

_January_ 15.

Reading Hardy's novels. He is altogether delightful in the subtlety with

which he lets you perceive the first tiny love presentiments between his

heroes and heroines--the casual touch of the hands, the peep of a foot

or ankle underneath the skirt--all these in Hardy signify the cloud no

bigger than a man's hand. They are the susurrus of the breeze before the

storm, and you await what is to follow with palpitating heart.

_February_ 3.

For days past have been living in a state of mental ebullition. All

kinds of pictures of Love, Life, and Death have been passing through my

mind. Now I am too indolent and nerveless to set them down. Physically I

am such a wreck that to carry out the least intention, such as putting

on my boots, I have to flog my will like an Arab with a slave "in a sand

of Ayaman." Three months ago when I got up before breakfast to dissect

rabbits, dogfish, frogs, newts, etc., this would have seemed impossible.

_February_ 6.

Still visit Dr. ----'s surgery each week. I have two dull spots at the

bottom of each lung. What a fine expressive word is _gloom_. Let me

write it: GLOOM....

One evening coming home in the train from L---- County Sessions I

noticed a horrible, wheezy sound whenever I breathed deep. I was scared

out of my life, and at once thought of consumption. Went to the Doctor's

next day, and he sounded me and reassured me. I was afraid to tell him

of the little wheezy sound at the apex of each lung, and I believed he

overlooked it. So next day, very harassed, I went back to him again and

told him. He _hadn't_ noticed it and looked glum. Have to keep out of

doors as much as possible.

The intense internal life I lead, worrying about my health, reading

(eternally reading), reflecting, observing, feeling, loving and

hating--with no outlet for superfluous steam, cramped and confined on

every side, without any friends or influence of any sort, without even

any acquaintances excepting my colleagues in journalism (whom I

contemn)--all this will turn me into the most self-conscious, conceited,

mawkish, gauche creature in existence.

_March_ 6.

The facts are undeniable: Life is pain. No sophistry can win me over to

any other view. And yet years ago I set out so hopefully and

healthfully--what are birds' eggs to me _now_? My ambition is enormous

but vague. I am too distributed in my abilities ever to achieve

distinction.

_March_ 22.

Had a letter from the Keeper of Zoology at the British Museum, advising

me of three vacancies in his Dept., and asking me if I would like to

try, etc.... So that Dr. ----'s visit to me bore some fruit.[1] Spent

the morning day-dreaming.... Perhaps this is the flood tide at last! I

shall work like a drayhorse to pull through if I am nominated.... I

await developments in a frightfully turbulent state of mind. I have a

frantic desire to control the factors which are going to affect my

future so permanently. And this ferocious desire, of course, collides

with a crash all day long with the fact that however much I desire there

will still remain the unalterable logic of events.

_April_ 7.

... How delicious all this seemed! To be alive--thinking, seeing,

enjoying, walking, eating--all quite apart from the amount of money in

your purse or the prospects of a career. I revelled in the sensuous

enjoyment of my animal existence.

_June_ 2.

Up to now my life has been one of great internal strife and

struggle--the struggle with a great ambition and a weak will--unequal to

the task of coping with it. I have planned on too big a scale, perhaps.

I have put too great a strain on my talents, I have whipped a flagging

will, I have been for ever cogitating, worrying, devising means of

escape. Meanwhile, the moments have gone by unheeded and unenjoyed.

_June_ 10.

Legginess is bad enough in a woman, but bandy legginess is impossible.

Solitude is good for the soul. After an hour of it, I feel as lofty and

imperial as Marcus Aurelius.

The best girl in the best dress immediately looks disreputable if her

stockings be downgyved.

Some old people on reaching a certain age go on living out of habit--a

bad habit too.

How much I can learn of a stranger by his laugh.

Bees, Poppies, and Swallows!--and all they mean to him who really knows

them! Or a White Gull on a piece of floating timber, or a troop of shiny

Rooks close on the heels of a ploughman on a sunny autumn day.

_June_ 30.

My egoism appals me. Likewise the extreme intensification of the

consciousness of myself. Whenever I walk down the High Street on a

market day, my self-consciousness magnifies my proportions to the size

of a Gulliver--so that it is grievous to reflect that in spite of that

the townsfolk see me only as an insignificant bourgeois youth who

reports meetings in shorthand.

_July_ 17.

We sang to-night in Church, "But when I know Thee as Thou art, I'll

praise Thee as I ought." Exactly! Till then, farewell. We are a great

little people, we humans. If there be no next world, still the Spirit of

Man will have lived and uttered its protest.

_July_ 22.

_Our Simian Ancestry_

How I hate the man who talks about the "brute creation," with an ugly

emphasis on _brute_. Only Christians are capable of it. As for me, I am

proud of my close kinship with other animals. I take a jealous pride in

my Simian ancestry. I like to think that I was once a magnificent hairy

fellow living in the trees and that my frame has come down through

geological time _via_ sea jelly and worms and Amphioxus, Fish,

Dinosaurs, and Apes. Who would exchange these for the pallid couple in

the Garden of Eden?

_August_ 9.

I do not ever like going to bed. For me each day ends in a little

sorrow. I hate the time when it comes to put my books away, to knock out

my pipe and say "Good-night," exchanging the vivid pleasures of the day

for the darkness of sleep and oblivion.

_August_ 23.

Spent the afternoon and evening till ten in the woods with Mary ----.

Had tea in the Haunted House, and after sat in the Green Arbor until

dark, when I kissed her. "Achilles was not the worse warrior for his

probation in petticoats."

_September_ 1.

I hope to goodness she doesn't think I want to marry her. In the Park in

the dark, kissing her. I was testing and experimenting with a new

experience.

_September_ 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.

_November_ 30.

Struggling in the depths again within the past few days with heart

attacks. Am slowly getting better of them and trying to forget as soon

as may be visions of sudden death, coffins, and obituary notices.

_December_ 2.

_Death_

At first, when we are very young, Death arouses our curiosity, as it did

Cain in the beginning.[2] It is a strange and very rare phenomenon which

we cannot comprehend, and every time we hear of some one's death, we try

to recall that person's appearance in life and are disappointed if we

can't. The endeavour is to discover what it is, this Death, to compare

two things, the idea of the person alive and the idea of him dead. At

last some one we know well dies--and that is the first shock.... I shall

never forget when our Matron died at the D---- School.... As the years

roll on, we get used to the man with the scythe and an acquaintance's

death is only a bit of gossip.

Suppose the Hellfire of the orthodox really existed! We have no

assurance that it does not! It seems incredible, but many incredible

things are true. We do not _know_ that God is not as cruel as a Spanish

inquisitor. Suppose, then, He is! If, after Death, we wicked ones were

shovelled into a furnace of fire--we should have to burn. There would be

no redress. It would simply be the Divine Order of things. It is

outrageous that we should be so helpless and so dependent on any

one--even God.

_December_ 9.

Sometimes I think I am going mad. I live for days in the mystery and

tears of things so that the commonest object, the most familiar

face--even my own--become ghostly, unreal, enigmatic. I get into an

attitude of almost total scepticism, nescience, solipsism even, in a

world of dumb, sphinx-like things that cannot explain themselves. The

discovery of how I am situated--a sentient being on a globe in space

overshadows me. I wish I were just nothing.

_Later_: While at a public meeting, the office-boy approached me and

immediately whispered without hesitation,--

"Just had a telephone message to say that your father is at the

T----Railway Station, lying senseless. He has evidently had an

apoplectic fit."

(How those brutal words, "lying senseless," banged and bullied and

knocked me down. Mother was waiting for me at the door in a dreadful

state and expecting the worst.)

Met the train with the Doctor, and took him home in the cab--still

alive, thank God, but helpless. He was brave enough to smile and shake

me by the hand--with his left, though he was speechless and the right

side of his body helpless. A porter discovered him at the railway

terminus lying on the floor of a second-class carriage.

_December_ 10.

He is a trifle better. It is fifteen years since he had the first

paralytic stroke.

Am taking over all his work and have written at once resigning the

Plymouth appointment.

_December_ 23.

It really did require an effort to go upstairs to-day to his bedroom and

say cheerfully I was not going to P. after all, and that the matter was

of no consequence to me. I laughed gaily and Dad was relieved. A

thundering good joke. What annoys me is that other folk--the brainless,

heartless mob, as Schopenhauer remarks, still continue to regard me as

one of themselves.... I had nearly escaped into a seaside laboratory,

and now suddenly to be flung back into the dirt and sweat of the

newspaper world seems very hard, and it _is_ very hard.

_December_ 26.

_Windy Ash_

With the dog for a walk around Windy Ash. It was a beautiful winter's

morning--a low sun giving out a pale light but no warmth--a luminant,

not a fire--the hedgerows bare and well trimmed, an Elm lopped close

showing white stumps which glistened liquidly in the sun, a Curlew

whistling overhead, a deeply cut lane washed hard and clean by the

winter rains, a gunshot from a distant cover, a creeping Wren, silent

and tame, in a bramble bush, and over the five-barred gate the granite

roller with vacant shafts. I leaned on the gate and saw the great whisps

of cloud in the sky like comets' tails. Everything cold, crystalline.

[1] He had spoken about me to the Museum authorities, and it was his

influence which got me the nomination to sit for the examination.

[2] In Byron's poem.

1911

_January_ 2.

As a young man--a _very_ young man--my purpose was to plough up all

obstacles, brook no delays, and without let or hindrance win through to

an almost immediate success! But witness 1910! "My career" so far has

been like the White Knight's, who fell off behind when the horse

started, in front when it stopped, and sideways occasionally to vary the

monotony.

_January_ 30.

Feeling ill and suffering from attacks of faintness. My ill health has

produced a change in my attitude towards work. As soon as I begin to

feel the least bit down, I am bound to stop at once as the idea of

bending over a desk or a dissecting dish, of reading or studying,

nauseates me when I think that perhaps to-morrow or next day or next

week, next month, next year I may be dead. What a waste of life it seems

to work! Zoology is repugnant and philosophy superfluous beside the

bliss of sheer living--out in the cold polar air or indoors in a chair

before a roaring fire with hands clasped, watching the bustling,

soothing activity of the flames.

Then, as soon as I am well again, I forget all this, grow discontented

with doing nothing and work like a Tiger.

_February_ 11.

Walked in the country. Coming home, terrified by a really violent attack

of palpitation. Almost every one I met I thought would be the

unfortunate person who would have to pick me up. As each one in the

street approached me, I weighed him in the balance and considered if he

had presence of mind and how he would render first aid. After my friend,

P.C. ----, had passed, I felt sorry that the tragedy had not already

happened, for he knows me and where I live. At length, after sundry

leanings over the river wall, arrived at the Library, which I entered,

and sat down, when the full force of the palpitation was immediately

felt. My face burned with the hot blood, my hand holding the paper shook

with the angry pulse, and my heart went bang! bang! bang! and I could

feel its beat in the carotids of the neck and up along the Torcular

herophili and big vessels in the occipital region of the head. Drew in

each breath very gently for fear of aggravating the fiend. Got home

(don't know how) and had some sal volatile. Am better now but very

demoralised.

_February_ 13.

Feel like a piece of drawn threadwork, or an undeveloped negative, or a

jelly fish on stilts, or a sloppy tadpole, or a weevil in a nut, or a

spitchcocked eel. In other words and in short--ill.

_February_ 16.

After some days with the vision of sudden death constantly before me,

have come to the conclusion that it's a long way to go to die. Am coming

back anyhow. Yet these are a few terrible pages in my history.

_March_ 4.

... The Doctor's orders "Cease Work" have brought on in an aggravated

form my infatuation for zoological research. I lie in bed and

manufacture rolling periods in praise of it, I get dithyrambic over the

zoologists themselves--Huxley, Wallace, Brooks, Lankester. I chortle to

reflect that in zoology there are no stock exchange ambitions, there is

no mention of slum life, Tariff Reform is not included. In the repose of

the spacious laboratory by the seaside or in the halls of some great

Museum, life with its vulgar struggles, its hustle and obscenity,

scarcely penetrates. Behind those doors, life flows slowly, deeply. I am

ascetic and long for the monastic seclusion of a student's life.

_March_ 5.

_From One Maiden Lady to Another_. (_Authentic_)

"My dear Sister,--You have been expecting to hear from me I know, I have

had inflammation to my eyes twice in 3 weeks so I thought I had better

let the Doctor see and he says it is catarrh of the eyes and windpipe. I

am inhaling and taking lozenges and medicine. You will be sorry to learn

Leonora Mims has been taken to a Sanatorium with Diptheria, we heard

yesterday, she is better, poor Mrs. Mims herself quite an invalid, she

has to walk with a stick, I believe you know she has had to have her

breast cut off, they keep a servant as she can't do anything, old Mrs.

Point is 87 I think it is so they too have a lot of trouble, Fred Mims

has just got married....

"Poor old Mrs. Seemsoe is just the same, she doesn't know anybody but

she talks, the nurse put a grape in her mouth but she didn't know what

to do with it, I think it is very sad. She was taken about a fortnight

before Easter. Will you tell me dear if this is right receipt for

clothes 1/2 oz. carbolic in 1/2 pint of rose water. Harry Gammon's 2

little children have measles, poor Maisie has gone with her Aunt Susan,

poor old Joe Gammon they say had very little to leave, we don't know

where Robert gets his money from. I dare say you saw that Tom Sagg has

married another of Ned Smith's daughters and we hear these Smith girls

are rare housekeepers and this girl that has married Tom Sagg has made

all her own linen. Mrs. Wilkins, the butcher's wife is going to have a

little one after 15 years, our Vicar has been laid up with an abscess,

he told us about his brother the other day, he says as brothers they

love each other very much. We have 3 very sad cases of men ill in the

village. We had 4 but one man died of cancer.

"Yr loving Sister Amy."

Voilà!

_March_ 7.

If I die I should like to be buried in the cherry orchards at V----.

How the beastly mob loves a tragedy! The sudden death of the Bank

Manager is simply thrilling the town, and the newspapers sell like hot

cakes. Scarcely before the body is cold the coincidence of his death on

the anniversary of his birth is discussed in every household; every one

tells everybody else where they saw him last "he looked all right then."

The policeman and the housemaid, the Mayor and the Town Clerk, the

cabman and the billposter, stand and discuss the deceased gentleman's

last words or what the widow's left with. "Ah! well, it is very sad,"

they remark to one another with no emotion and continue on their way.

_March_ 10.

On coming downstairs in the evening played Ludo with H----. At one stage

I laughed so much in conjunction with that harlequin H---- that I got

cramp in the abdominal muscles and the tears trickled down my face.

_March_ 13.

H---- and I play Ludo incessantly. We've developed the gambling fever,

and our pent-up excitement every now and then explodes in fiendish

cackles, and Mother looks up over her spectacles and says, "William,

William, they'll hear in the street presently."

_A Character_

For this world's unfortunates, his is the ripe sympathy of a

well-developed nature, standing in strong contrast with the rest of his

personality, which is wholly self-centred, a little ungenerous, and what

strong men of impeccable character call "weak." If you are ill he is

delightful, if you are robust or successful he can be very

objectionable. To an influenza victim he goes out of his way to carry a

book, but if you tell him with gusto you have passed your exam, he says,

"Oh, but there's not much behind it, is there?" "Oh! no," I answer,

comforting him, "it is really a misfortune to be a success." And so only

the bankrupts, dipsos (as he calls them), ne'er-do-weels, and sudden

deaths ever touch his heart or tap his sympathy. He is a short, queery,

dressy little fellow, always spruce and clean. His joy consists in a

glass of beer, a full stomach, a good cigar, or a pretty girl to flirt

with. He frequents drinking saloons and billiard rooms, goes to dances

and likes to be thought a lady's man. "Urn," he will say, with the air

of a connoisseur, "a little too broad in the beam," as some attractive

damsel walks down the street. Any day about twelve you can see both of

us, "the long and the short of it" (he is only half my height and I call

him .5), walking together in the Park, and engaged in the most heated

discussion over some entirely trivial matter, such as whether he would

marry a woman with sore eyes, etc., etc. More than once we have caught

cabmen idle on the cab-rank or policemen on point duty jerking their

thumbs backward at us and expressing some facetious remarks which we

longed to overhear. I usually walk in the gutter to bring my height down

a bit.

A good raconteur himself, he does not willingly suffer a story from

another. The varmint on occasion finishes your joke off for you, which

is his delicate way of intimating that he has heard it before. He is a

first-class mimic, and sends every one into a thousand fits while he

gives you in succession the Mayor and all the Corporation. He also

delights me at times by mimicking me. His mind is receptive rather than

creative: it picks up all sorts of gaudy ideas by the wayside like a

magpie, and I sometimes enjoy the exquisite sensation of hearing some of

these petty pilferings (which he has filched from me) laid at my feet as

if they were his own. The ideas which are his own are always

unmistakable.

His favourite poems are Omar and the Ballad of Reading Jail, his

favourite drinks Medoc or a Cherry Mixture. Me he describes as

_serpentilous_ with _Gibbon-like arms,_ pinheaded, and so on. He amuses

me. In fact I love him.

_March_ 16.

No one will ever understand without personal experience that an

exceedingly self-conscious creature like myself driven in on himself to

consume himself is the unhappiest of men. I have come to loathe myself:

my finicking, hypersensitive, morbid nature, always thinking, talking,

writing about myself for all the world as if the world beyond did not

exist! I am rings within rings, circles concentric and intersecting, a

maze, a tangle: watching myself behave or misbehave, always reflecting

on what impression I am making on others or what they think of me.

Introduce me to a stranger and I swell out as big as Alice.

Self-consciousness makes me pneumatic, and consequently so awkward and

clumsy and swollen that I don't know how to converse--and God help the

other fellow.

_Later_: Youth is an intoxication without wine, some one says. Life is

an intoxication. The only sober man is the melancholiac, who,

disenchanted, looks at life, sees it as it really is, and cuts his

throat. If this be so, I want to be very drunk. The great thing is to

live, to clutch at our existence and race away with it in some great

and enthralling pursuit. Above all, I must beware of all ultimate

questions--they are too maddeningly unanswerable--let me eschew

philosophy and burn Omar.

In this week's _T.P.'s Weekly_ a youth advertises:--"Young thinkers

interested in philosophy, religion, social reform, the future of

humanity, and all freethought, please communicate with 'Evolution,' aged

21!" All right for 21.

_Later_: I have in mind some work on the vascular system of larval

newts. In the autumn I see a large piece of work to be done in animal

psychology--namely, frequency of stimulus and its relation to habit

formation. Yet the doctor advises long rest and the office work remains

to be done. I must hack my way through somehow. I sit trying to

disentangle these knots; then some one plays a dreamy waltz and all my

fine edifices of the will vanish in mist. Is it worth while? Why not

float with the tide? But I soon throw off these temptations. If I live,

I shall play a fine game! I am determined. A lame-dog life is of no use.

_April_ 17.

_Railway Travel_

A journey in a railway train makes me sentimental. If I enter the

compartment a robust-minded, cheerful youth, fresh and whistling from a

walk by the sea, yet, as soon as I am settled down in one corner and the

train is rattling along past fields, woods, towns, and painted stations,

I find myself indulging in a saccharine sadness--very toothsome and

jolly. I pull a long face and gaze out of the window wistfully and look

sad. But I am really happy--and incredibly sentimental.

The effect is produced, I suppose, by the quickly changing panoramic

view of the country, and as I see everything sliding swiftly by, and

feel myself being hurtled forward willy-nilly, I am sub-conscious of the

flight of Time, of the eternal flux, of the trajectory of my own

life.... Timid folk, of course, want some Rock of Ages, something

static. They want life a mill pond rather than the torrent which it is,

a homely affair of teacups and tabby cats rather than a dangerous

expedition.

_April_ 22.

Who will rid me of the body of this death? My body is chained to me--a

dead weight. It is my warder. I can do nothing without first consulting

it and seeking its permission. I jeer at its grotesqueness. I chafe at

the thongs it binds on me. On this bully I am dependent for everything

the world can give me. How can I preserve my _amour propre_ when I must

needs be for ever wheedling and cajoling a despot with delicate meats

and soft couches?--I who am proud, ambitious, and full of energy! In the

end, too, I know it intends to carry me off.... I should like though to

have the last kick and, copying De Quincey, arrange to hand it over for

dissection to the medical men--out of revenge.

"Hope thou not much; fear thou not at all"--my motto of late.

_April_ 30.

I can well imagine looking back on these entries later on and blushing

at the pettiness of my soul herein revealed.... Only be charitable, kind

reader. There are three Johns, and I am much mistaken if in these pages

there will not be found something of the John known to himself, and an

inkling, perhaps, of the man as he is known to his Creator. As a timid

showman afraid that unless he emphasises the feature of his exhibit,

they will be overlooked, let me, hat in hand, point out that I know I am

an ass, that I am still hoping (in spite of ill health) that I am an

enthusiast.

_May_ 2.

Maeterlinck's _Wisdom and Destiny_ is distilled Marcus Aurelius. I am

rather tired of these comfortable philosophers. If a man be harassed by

Fate with a red rag and a picador let him turn and rend him--or try to,

anyway.

_May_ 8.

_Staying by the Sea_

I have been living out of doors a lot lately and am getting sunburnt. It

gives me infinite pleasure to be sunburnt--to appear the man of the open

air, the open road, and the wild life. The sun intoxicates me to-day.

The sea is not big enough to hold me nor the sky for me to breathe in. I

feel I should like to be swaying with all the passions, throbbing with

life and a vast activity of heart and sinew--to live magnificently--with

an unquenchable thirst to drink to the lees, to plumb the depth of every

joy and every sorrow, to see my life flash in the heat. Ah! Youth!

Youth! Youth!!! In these moments of ecstasy my happiness is torrential.

I have the soul of the poppy flaming in me then. I am rather like the

poppy in many ways.... It is peculiarly appropriate. It must be my

flower! I am the poppy!!

_May_ 9.

L---- was digging up the ground in his garden to-day and one shovelful

came up thick and shapely. He laid the sod on its back gently without

breaking it and said simply, "Doesn't it come up nice?" His face was

radiant!--Real happiness lies in the little things, in a bit of garden

work, in the rattle of the teacups in the next room, in the last chapter

of a book.

_May_ 14.

Returned home. I hate living in this little town. If some one dies, he

is sure to be some one you had a joke with the night before. A

suicide--ten to one--implicates your bosom friend, or else the little

man at the bookshop cut him down. There have been three deaths since I

came home--I knew them all. It depresses me. The town seems a mortuary

with all these dead bodies lying in it. Lucky for you, if you're a fat,

rubicund, unimaginative physician.

_May_ 16.

Two more people dead--one a school friend. Sat on a seat on the river

bank and read the _Journal of Animal Behaviour_. It made me long to be

at work. I foamed at the mouth to be sitting there perforce in an

overcoat on a seat doing nothing like a pet dove. A weak heart makes

crossing a road an adventure and turns each day into a dangerous

expedition.

_May_ 18.

A dirty ragamuffin on the river's bank held up a tin can to me with the

softly persuasive words,--

"'Ere, Mister, BAIT."

"What are you going to do with it?"

"Fish."

"What for?"

"Salmon."

We have all tried to catch salmon with a bent pin. No matter though if

no salmon be caught. Richard Jefferies said, "If there be no immortality

still we shall have had the glory of that thought."

_May_ 19.

_Old Diaries_

Spent some happy time reading over old diaries. I was grieved and

surprised to find how much I had forgotten. To forget the past so easily

seems scarcely loyal to oneself. I am so selfishly absorbed in my

present self that I have grown not to care a damn about that ever

increasing collection of past selves--those dear, dead gentlemen who one

after the other have tenanted the temple of this flesh and handed on the

torch of my life and personal identity before creeping away silently and

modestly to rest.

_June_ 6.

Brilliantly fine and warm. Unable to resist the sun, so I caught the ten

train to S---- and walked across the meadow (buttercups,

forget-me-nots, ragged robins) to the Dipper stream and the ivy bridge.

Read ardently in Geology till twelve. Then took off my boots and socks,

and waded underneath the right arch of the bridge in deep water, and

eventually sat on a dry stone at the top of the masonry just where the

water drops into the green salmon pool in a solid bar. Next I waded

upstream to a big slab of rock tilted at a comfortable angle. I lay flat

on this with my nether extremities in water up to my knees. The sun

bathed my face and dragon flies chased up and down intent on murder. But

I cared not a tinker's Demetrius about Nature red in tooth and claw. I

was quite satisfied with Nature under a June sun in the cool atmosphere

of a Dipper stream. I lay on the slab completely relaxed, and the cool

water ran strongly between my toes. Surely I was never again going to be

miserable. The voices of children playing in the wood made me extra

happy. As a rule I loathe children. I am too much of a youth still. But

not this morning. For these were fairy voices ringing through enchanted

woods.

_June_ 8.

Brilliantly fine and warm. Went by train to C---- Woods. Took

first-class return on account of the heat. Crossed the meadow and up the

hill to the mill leat, where we bathed our feet and read. Ate a powerful

lunch and made several unsuccessful grabs at Caddie flies. I want one to

examine the mouth parts. After lunch we sat on the foot-bridge over the

stream, and I rested on it flat in the face of the sun. The sun seemed

to burn into my very bones, purging away everything that may be dark or

threatening there. The physical sensation of the blood flow beneath the

skin was good to feel, and the heat made every tissue glow with a

radiant well-being. When I got up and opened my eyes all the colours of

the landscape vanished under the silvery whiteness of the intense

sunlight.

We put on our boots and socks (our feet seemed to have swollen to a very

large size) and wandered downstream to a little white house, a

gamekeeper's cottage, where the old woman gave us cream and milk and

home-made bread in her beautiful old kitchen with open hearth. China

dogs, of course, and on the wall an old painting representing the person

of a page boy (so she said) who was once employed up at the squire's. An

unwholesome atmosphere of pigs pervaded the garden, but as this is not

pretty I ought to leave it out....

_June_ 14.

Brilliantly fine. Went by the early train to S----. Walked to the ivy

bridge and then waded upstream to the great slab of rock where I spread

myself in the sun as before. The experiment was so delightful it is

worth repeating a hundred times. In this position I read of the decline

and fall of Trilobites, of the Stratigraphy of the Lias and so on.

Geology is a very crushing science, yet I enjoyed my existence this

morning with the other flies about that stream.

_June_ 20.

Sat at Liverpool University for the practical exam. Zoology, Board of

Education.

At the close the other students left but I went on working. Prof.

Herdman asked me if I had finished. I said "No," so he gave me a little

more time. Later he came up again, and again I said "No," but he replied

that he was afraid I must stop. "What could you do further?" he asked,

picking up a dish of plankton. I pointed out a _Sagitta_, an

_Oikopleura_, and a _Noctiluca_, and he replied, "Of course I put in

more than you were expected to identify in the time, so as to make a

choice possible." Then he complimented me on my written papers which

were sent in some weeks ago, and looking at my practical work he added,

"And this, too, seems to be quite excellent."

I thanked him from the bottom of a greedy and grateful heart, and he

went on, "I see you describe yourself in your papers as a journalist,

but can you tell me exactly what has been your career in Zoology?" I

answered of course rather proudly that I had had _no_ career in Zoology.

"But what school or college have you worked at?" he persisted.

"None," I said a little doggedly. "What I know I have taught myself."

"So you've had no training in Zoology at all?"

"No, sir."

"Well, if you've taught yourself all you know, you've done remarkably

well."

He still seemed a little incredulous, and when I explained how I got a

great many of my marine animals for dissection and study at the Plymouth

Marine Laboratory, he immediately asked me suspiciously if I had ever

worked there. We shook hands, and he wished me all success in the

future, to which I to myself devoutly said Amen.

Came home very elated at having impressed some one at last.

Now for Dublin.

_June_ 30.

Oeconomic biology may be very useful but I am not interested in it. Give

me the pure science. I don't want to be worrying my head over remedies

for potato disease nor cures for fleas in fowls. Heaven preserve me from

ever becoming a County Council lecturer or a Government

Entomologist![1]... Give me the recluse life of a scholar or

investigator, full of leisure, culture, and delicate skill. I would

rather know Bergson than be able to stay at the Ritz Hotel. I would

rather be able to dissect a star-fish's water-vascular system than know

the price of Consols. I should make a most industrious country gentleman

with £5,000 a year and a deer park.... My idea is to withdraw from the

_mobile vulgus_ and spend laborious days in the library or laboratory.

The world is too much with us. I long for the monotony of monastic life!

Father Wasmann and the Abbé Spallanzani are the type. Let me set my

face towards them. Such lives afford poor material for novelists or

dramatists, but so much the better. Hamlet makes fine reading, but I

don't want to be Hamlet myself.

_July_ 6.

In the afternoon went out dredging in fifteen fathoms off the pier at

I----, but without much success.... Got a large number of interesting

things, however, in the tow net, including some advanced eggs of

_Loligo_ and a _Tomopteris_....

_July_ 7.

Went to the trout stream again. After stretching a muslin net crosswise

on the water for insects floating down, sat on the footbridge and read

Geology for the Dublin Examination. Later, waded downstream to a hazel

bush on the right bank beneath a shady oak. Squatted right down on the

bush, which supported me like an arm-chair--and, with legs dangling in

the cool water, opened a Meredith and enjoyed myself.

_July_ 28.

Had to write backing out of the Dublin Examination for which I am

nominated to sit. I am simply not fit for the racket of such a journey

in my present state of health. My chances of success, too, are not such

as to warrant my drawing on Dad for the money. He is still ill, and

secretly agitated, I fear, because I am so bent on giving up his work.

It looks, however, as if newspaper journalism is to be my fate. It was

the refinement of torture having to write.

_July_ 31.

Had a letter from Dr. S---- enough to wring tears from a monument.

Sat like a valetudinarian in the Park all day getting fresh air--among

the imbeciles, invalids, and children. Who cares? "But, gentlemen, you

_shall_ hear."

_August_ 4.

Still another chance--quite unexpectedly received a second nomination

this morning to sit for another exam, for two vacancies in the British

Museum. Good luck this.

_August_ 11.

Very hot, so went to S----, and bathed in the salmon pool. Stretched

myself out in the water, delighted to find that I had at last got to the

very heart of the countryside. I was not just watching from the

outside--on the bank. I was in it, and plunging in it, too, up to my

armpits. What did I care about the British Museum or Zoology then? All

but the last enemy and object of conquest I had overcome--for the moment

perhaps even Death himself was under heel--I was immortal--in that

minute I was always prostrate in the stream--sunk deep in the bosom of

old Mother Earth who cannot die!

_August_ 14.

At 4 p.m. to the Salmon Pool for a bathe. 87.3 in the shade. The meadow

was delicious in the sunshine. It made me want to hop, flirt my tail,

sing. I felt ever such a bright-eyed wily bird!

_August_ 17.

Caught the afternoon train to C----, but unfortunately forgot to take

with me either watch or tubes (for insects). So I applied to the

station-master, a youth of about eighteen, who is also signalman,

porter, ticket-collector, and indeed very factotal--even to the extent

of providing me with empty match boxes. I agreed with him to be called

by three halloos from the viaduct just before the evening train came in.

Then I went up to the leat, set up my muslin net in it for insects

floating down, and then went across to the stream and bathed.

Afterwards, went back and boxed the insects caught, and returned to the

little station, with its creepers on the walls and over the roof, all

as delightfully quiet as ever, and the station youth as delightfully

silly. Then the little train came around the bend of the line--green

puffing engine and red coaches, like a crawling caterpillar of gay

colour.

_August_ 20.

A trapper killed a specimen of _Tropidonotus natrix_ and brought it to

me. I gave him sixpence for it and am just going to dissect it.

_August_ 21.

There are folk who notice nothing. (Witness Capt. McWhirr in Conrad's

_Typhoon_.) They live side by side with genius or tragedy as innocent as

babies; there are heaps of people who live on a mountain, a volcano,

even, without knowing it. If the stars of Heaven fell and the Moon were

turned into blood some one would have to direct their attention to

it.... Perhaps after all, the most obvious things are the most difficult

to see. We all recognise Keats now, but suppose he was only "the boy

next door"--why should I read his verses?

_August_ 27.

_Preparing a Snake's Skull_

Prepared the skull of grass snake. I fancy I scooped out the eyes with

patent delight--I suppose symbolically, as though, on behalf of the rest

of suffering humanity, I were wiping off the old score against the beast

for its behaviour in the Garden of Eden.

_September_ 5.

At 2.30 Dad had three separate "strokes" of paralysis in as many

minutes, the third leaving him helpless. They sent for me in the

Library, where I was reading, and I hurried home. Just as I entered the

bedroom where he and Mother were another attack came on, and it was with

the utmost difficulty that with her help I managed to get him from the

chair to the bed. He struggled with his left arm and leg and made

inarticulate noises which sounded as if they might be groans. I don't

know if he was in pain. Dear Mother.

_September_ 14.

Dad cannot live long. Mother bears up wonderfully well. Tried to do some

examination work but failed utterly. A---- is watching in the sick-room

with Mother who will not leave.

8.30. The nurse says he will not live through the night.

8.45. Telegraphed for A---- to come.

11.00. A---- came downstairs and had a little supper.

12.00. Went to bed. H---- and the others lit a fire and we have all sat

around it silent, listening to its murmur. Every one felt cold. Dad has

been unconscious for over an hour.

1.45 a.m. Heard a noise, then heard Mother coming downstairs past my

bedroom door with some one--sobbing. I knew it must be all over.

H----was helping her down. Waited in my bedroom in the dark for three

parts of an hour, when H---- came up, opened the door slowly and said,

"He's gone, old man." It was a tremendous relief to know that since he

had to die his sufferings and cruel plight were over. Fell asleep from

sheer exhaustion and slept soundly.

_September_ 18.

The funeral. _It is not death but the dreadful possibilities of life

which are so depressing_.[2]

_September_ 21.

_A Day in Autumn_

A cool, breezy autumn day. The beach was covered with patches of soapy

foam that shook tremulously in the wind--all the rocks and everything

were drenched with water, and the spray came off the breaking waves like

steam. A red sun went lower and lower and the shadows cast by the rocks

grew very long and grotesque. Underneath the breaking waves, the hollows

were green and dark like sea caverns. Herring gulls played about in the

air balancing themselves as they faced the breeze, then sweeping

suddenly around and downwards with the wind behind them. We all sat down

on the rocks and were very quiet, almost monosyllabic. We pointed out a

passing vessel to one another or chucked a bit of shingle into the sea.

You would have said we were bored. Yet deep down in ourselves we were

astir and all around us we could hear the rumours of divine passage,

soft and mysterious as the flight of birds migrating in the dark.

The wind rose and tapped the line against the flag-staff at the

Coastguard Station. It roared through my hair and past my ears for an

hour on end till I felt quite windswept and bleak. On the way home we

saw the wind darting hither and thither over the long grass like a

lunatic snake. The wind! Oh! the wind--I have an enormous faith in the

curative properties of the wind. I feel better already.

_October_ 17.

Staying in Surrey. Exam. over and I feel fairly confident--after an

agony for a few days before on account of the development of a cold

which threatened to snatch the last chance out of my hands.

_Justifiable Mendacity_

Sitting on a gate on the N. Downs I saw a long way below me in the

valley a man standing in a chalk pit and wielding a stick vigorously.

For some reason or another the idea came to me that it would be

interesting if he were in the act of killing a Snake--he so far away

below and I above and unnoticed quietly watching him. At dinner

to-night, this revised version of the story came out quite pat and

natural and obviously interested the assembly. I added graphically that

the man was too far away from me to be able to say what _species_ of

Snake it was he was killing. I possess the qualifications of an

artistic liar. Yet I can't regard such a story as a lie--it was rather a

justifiable emendation of an otherwise uninteresting incident.

_October_ 24.

_Une Caractère_

... She is a tiny little old lady, very frail and very delicate, with a

tiny voice like the noise of a fretsaw. She talks incessantly about

things which do not interest you, until your face gets stiff with

forcing a polite smile, and your voice cracked and your throat dry with

saying, "Yes," and "Really."

To-night I attend the Zoological Society to read my first paper, so I am

really in a fluster and want to be quiet. Therefore to prevent her from

talking I write two letters which I represent as urgent. At 6.15

desperate, so went out for a walk in the dark London streets. Returned

to supper and to Her. After the wife, the husband is intellectual

pyrotechnics. Referring to the Museum,--

"Would you have there, I suppose, any insects, in a case like, what you

might say to study to yourself when no one is by?" he inquired.

6.40. It is now one hour before I need leave for the meeting, and

whether I sigh, cough, smoke, or read the paper, she goes on. She even

refuses to allow me to scan the lines below photos in the _Illustrated

London News._ I write this as the last sole resource to escape her

devastating prattle and the ceaseless hum of her tiny gnat-like mind.

She thinks (because I told her so) that I am preparing notes for the

evening meeting.

_Later_: Spent an absolutely damnable day. Am sick, tired, bored,

frantic with her voice which I have been able to share with no one

except the intellectual giant, her husband, at tea time. In order to

break the flow of chatter, I would rudely interrupt and go on talking,

by this means keeping my end up for as long as I could, and enjoying a

short respite from the fret-sawing voice. But I tired of this and it was

of no permanent value. When I broke in, she still went on for a few

sentences unable to stop, and lo! here was the spectacle of two persons

alone together in a room both talking at the same time and neither

listening. I persisted though--and she had to stop. Once started, I was

afraid to stop--scared at the certain fact of the voice beginning to saw

again. After a while the fountain of my artificial garrulity dried up,

and the Voice at once leaped into the breach, resuming--amazing and

incredible as it seems--at the precise point where it had left off. At 7

I am quite exhausted and sit on the opposite side of the hearth, staring

with glassy eyes, arms drooping at my sides and mouth druling. At 7.05

her cough increases, and she has to stop to attend to it. With a

fiendish smile I push back my chair, and quietly watch her cough.... She

coughs continuously now and can talk no longer. Thank God! 8 p.m., left

for the meeting, where I read my paper in a state of awful

nervousness.... I read out all I had to say and kept them amused for

about ten minutes. I was very excited when Dr. ---- got up and praised

the paper,[3] saying it was interesting, and hoping I should continue

the experiments. The chairman, Sir John Rose Bradford, asked a question,

I answered it and then sat down. After the meeting we went upstairs to

the library, had tea and chatted with some of the big people.... Zoology

is certainly delightful, yet it seems to me the Zoologists are much as

other people. I like Zoology. I wish I could do without Zoologists....

_October_ 30.

Home once more. The Natural History Museum impressed me enormously. It

is a magnificent building--too magnificent to work there--to follow

one's profession in a building like that seems an altogether too

grandiose manner of life. A pious zoologist might go up to pray in

it--but not to earn his daily bread there.

_October_ 31.

I'm in, in, in!!!!!!!!! being first with 141 marks to spare. Old

M----[the servant] rushes up to my sister's bedroom with the news just

after 7 a.m., and she says, "Fine, fine," and comes down in her

nightgown to my bedroom, where we drink our morning cup of tea

together--and talk! I'm delighted. What a magnificent obstacle race it

has been! Still one ditch--the medical exam! Wired to friends.

_November_ 1.

This is the sort of letter which is balm to me:--"My darling W----,--I

need hardly tell you how absolutely delighted we were at the grand news

of this morning. You must be feeling a huge glow of satisfaction with

the knowledge of your object attained through untold difficulties. I

don't wish to butter you up, or to gush, but I must honestly say that I

feel tip-top proud of my old Beano. I admire your brains more than ever,

and also your indomitable pluck and grit, and your quiet bravery in

disappointment and difficulty...."

_November_ 14.

The three most fascinating books in Science that I have so far read are

(easily):--1. Darwin's _Expression of the Emotions_. 2. Gaskell's

_Origin of Vertebrates_. 3. Bergson's _Le Rire_.

Went to the dentist in the afternoon. Evening chiefly occupied in

reading _Le Rire_. By my halidom, it is an extraordinarily interesting

book!

_November_ 29.

... I am always looking out for new friends--assaying for friendship....

There is no more delightful adventure than an expedition into a rich,

many-sided personality. Gradually over a long probation--for deep minds

are naturally reticent--piece after piece is added to the geography of

your friend's mind, and each piece pleases or entertains, while in

return you let him steal away piece after piece of your own territory,

perhaps saving a bit up here and there--such as an enthusiasm for

Francis Thompson's poetry--and then letting it go unexpectedly. It's a

delightful reciprocity.

I dream of "the honeyed ease of the Civil Servant's working day"

(Peacock). Yet the French say _Songes sont mensonges_.

_December_ 13.

In the Park it was very dark and she said,--

"If I lose you I shan't be able to find my way home."

"Oh! I'll look after you," I said.

Both being of the same mind at the same time we sat down on a seat

together when a fortunate thing happened. It began to rain. So I offered

her part of my overcoat. She nestled in under my arm and I kissed her

out of hand. _Voilà_! A very pretty little girl, 'pon my word.

_December_ 20.

The thing is obsessing me. After an early supper called and found my

lady ready to receive me. No one else at home. So walked into the

oak-panelled room with the red-curtained windows, took off my coat and

scarf. She followed and switched off the light. There was a roaring fire

in the grate. She is very amorous and I am not Hippolytus, so we were

soon closely engaged in the large chair before the fire. As we sailed

thus, close hauled to the wind, with double entendres and she trembled

in the storm (and I was at the helm) the garden gate slammed and both of

us got up quickly. I next heard a key turn in the lock and a foot in the

passage: "Mr. ----" she said....

She switched on the light, went out swiftly into the passage, and

meeting him conducted him to her office, while I as swiftly put on

overcoat and scarf, and slipped out through the open door, stumbling

over his bicycle, but of course not stopping to pick it up. Later she

telephoned to say it was all right. Very relieved!... She recalls

Richepin's _La Glu_.

_December_ 21.

She is a fine sedative. Her movements are a pleasant adagio, her voice

piano to pianissimo, her conversation breaks off in thrilling

aposiopoeses.

An awful comedy this morning--for as soon as I was securely "gagged" the

dentist went out of the room. She approached, leered at me helpless, and

said provokingly, "Oh! you do look funny." Minx. On returning he said to

her, "Would you like to hold his hand?"

She: "Oh! not just now."

And they grinned at one another and at me waiting to be tortured.

_December_ 23.

... On the Station waited for an hour for the train. Gave her a box of

sweets and the _Bystander_. We walked up the platform to extreme end in

the dark and kissed! But it was very windy and cold. (I noticed that!)

So we entered an empty luggage guard's van on rail beside platform left

there by shunters. Here we were out of the wind and far better off. But

a shunter came along and turned us out. She gave me a silver match-box.

But I believe for various reasons that it is one of her own and not a

new one. Said "Good-bye."

_December_ 28.

At R----. Played the negligent _flaneur_, reclining on the Chesterfield,

leaning against the grand piano, or measuring my length on the mat

before the fire.

_December_ 31.

To-morrow I begin duties at the British Museum of Natural History. I

cannot quite imagine myself a Museum assistant. Before I get there I

know I shall be the strangest assistant on the staff. It will be

singing my song in a Strange land and weeping--I hope not too

bitterly--down by the waters of a very queer Babylon.

Still, I have burnt my bridges like Cæsar--or burnt my ships like

Cortez. So forward!

[1] See entry for October 8, 1913.

[2] Italics added 1917.

[3] The paper was "Distant Orientation in Batrachia"--detailing

experiments on the homing faculty in newts.