PART II--IN LONDON

1912

_January_ 21.

Am at last beginning to get more content with the work at the Museum, so

that I muse on Bernard Shaw's saying, "Get what you like or you'll grow

to like what you get." I have a terrible suspicion that the security of

tenure here is like the lion's den in the fable--_Nulla vestiga

retrorsum_. Of course I am wonderfully proud of being at the Museum,

although I am disappointed and write as if I were quite blasé.

_January_ 25.

I should be disappointed if at the end of my career (if I live to see it

through) I do not win the F.R.S. I should very much like it.... My

nature is very mixed--ambitious above all things and yet soon giddy with

the audacity of my aspirations. The B.M. and my colleagues make me feel

most inferior in fact, but in theory--in the secrecy of my own

bedchamber--I feel that there are few men there my equal.

_April_ 26.

Down with influenza. A boarding-house with the 'flue!

_May_ 8.

Went home to recuperate, a beef jelly in one pocket and sal volatile in

the other. On arrival, my blanched appearance frightened Mother and the

others, so went to bed at once. "Fate's a fiddler, life's a dance."

_May_ 12.

Weak enough to sit down before dressing-table while I shave and brush my

hair. Dyspepsia appalling. The Doctor in Kensington seemed to think me

an awful wreck and asked if I were concealing----

Reading Baudelaire and Verlaine.

_May_ 24.

_Bathing_

Sat on a seat overlooking the sand-hills with stick between my legs like

an old man, and watched a buxom wench aet. 25 run down the path pursued

by "Rough" and two little girls in blue. Later they emerged from a

striped bathing tent in the glory of blue bathing dresses. It made me

feel quite an old man to see the girl galloping out over the hard level

sands to the breakers, a child clinging to each hand. Legs and arms

twinkled in the sun which shone with brilliance. If life were as level

as those sands and as beautiful as that trio of girls!

_May_ 26.

_Two Young Men Talking_

With H---- in his garden. He is a great enthusiast.

"I disapprove entirely of your taste in gardening," I said. "You object

to the 'ragged wilderness' style, I like it. You like lawns laid out for

croquet and your privet hedges pruned into 'God Save the King' or 'Dieu

et mon droit.' My dear boy, if you saw Mr. ----'s wilderness at

----you'd be so shocked you'd cut and run, and I imagine there'd be an

affecting reunion between you and your beloved geraniums. For my part, I

don't like geraniums: they're suburban, and all of a piece with

antimacassars and stuffed birds under glass bells. The colour of your

specimens, moreover," I rapped out, "is vulgar--like the muddied

petticoats of old market women."

H----, quite unmoved, replied slowly, "Well, here are some like the

beautiful white cambric of a lady of fashion. You've got no taste in

flowers--you're just six feet of grief and patience." We roared with

laughing.

"Do stop watering those damned plants," I exclaimed at last. But he

went on. I exclaimed again and out of sheer ridiculousness, in reply he

proceeded to water the cabbages, the gravel path, the oak tree--and me!

While I writhed with laughing.

_May_ 27.

_By the Sea_

Sat upon a comfortable jetty of rock and watched the waves without a

glimmer of an idea in my mind about anything--though to outward view I

might have been a philosopher in cerebral parturition with thoughts as

big as babies. Instead, little rustling dead leaves of thoughts stirred

and fluttered in the brain--the pimple _e.g._ I recollected on my Aunt's

nose, or the boyishness of Dr. ----'s handwriting, or Swinburne's lines:

"If the golden-crested wren Were a nightingale--why, then Something seen

and heard of men Might be half as sweet as when Laughs a child of

seven."

I continued in this pleasurable coma all the afternoon and went home

refreshed.

_May_ 29.

Have returned to London and the B.M. My first day at the M. Sat at my

table in a state of awful apathy.

At least temporarily, I am quite disenchanted of Zoology. I work--God

save the mark--in the Insect Room!

On the way home, purchased:--

Peroxide of hydrogen (pyorrhœa threatened). One bottle of physic (for

my appalling dyspepsia).

One flask of brandy for emergencies (as my heart is intermittent again).

Prussic acid next.

Must have been near pneumonia at R----. Auntie was nervous, and came in

during the night to see how I was.

_June_ 20.

It caused me anguish to see my article returned from the _Fortnightly_

and lying in a big envelope on the table when I returned home this

evening. I can't do any work because of it, and in desperation rushed

off to the stately pleasure domes of the White City, and systematically

went through all the thrills--from the Mountain Railway to the Wiggle

Woggle and the 'Witching Waves.

_June_ 21.

To-day I am easier. The cut worm forgives the plough. But how restless

this disappointment has made me.... I have no plans for recuperation and

cannot settle down to work.

_July_ 6.

On my doctor's advice, went to see Dr. P----, a lung specialist.

M----found a dull spot on one of my lungs, and, not feeling very sure,

and without telling me the nature of his suspicion, he arranged for Dr.

P---- to see me, allowing me to suppose he was a stomach authority as my

dyspepsia is bad.

Well: it is _not_ consumption, but my lungs and physique are such that

consumption might easily supervene. As soon as Dr. P---- had gone,

M----appended the following lugubrious yarn:--

Whenever I catch cold, I must go and be treated at once, all my leisure

must be spent out of doors, I must take cream and milk in prodigious

quantities and get fat at all costs. There is even a question of my

giving up work.

_July_ 10.

A young but fat woman sitting in the sun and oozing moisture is as nasty

as anything in Baudelaire.

_July_ 14.

_A "Brilliant Career"_

My old head master once prophesied for me "a brilliant career." That was

when I was in the Third Form. Now I have more than a suspicion that I am

one of those who, as he once pointed out, grow sometimes out of a

brilliant boyhood into very commonplace men. This continuous ill health

is having a very obvious effect on my work and activities. With what

courage I possess I have to face the fact that to-day I am unable to

think or express myself as well as when I was a boy in my teens--witness

this Journal!

I intend to go on however. I have decided that my death shall be

disputed all the way.

Oh! it is so humiliating to die! I writhe to think of being overcome by

so unfair an enemy before I have demonstrated myself to maiden aunts who

mistrust me, to colleagues who scorn me, and even to brothers and

sisters who believe in me.

As an Egotist I hate death because I should cease to be I.

Most folk, when sick unto death, gain a little consolation over the

notoriety gained by the fact of their decease. Criminals enjoy the pomp

and circumstance of their execution. Voltaire said of Rousseau that he

wouldn't mind being hanged if they'd stick his name on the gibbet. But

my own death would be so mean and insignificant. Guy de Maupassant died

in a grand manner--a man of intellect and splendid physique who became

insane. Tusitala's death in the South Seas reads like a romance. Heine,

after a life of sorrow, died with a sparkling witticism on his lips;

Vespasian with a jest.

But I cannot for the life of me rake up any excitement over my own

immediate decease--an unobtrusive passing away of a rancorous,

disappointed, morbid, and self-assertive entomologist in a West

Kensington Boarding House--what a mean little tragedy! It is hard not to

be somebody even in death.

* * * * *

A sing-song to-night in the drawing-room; all the boarding-house present

in full muster. There was a German, Schulz, who sat and leered at his

inamorata--a sensual-looking, pasty-faced girl--while she gave us

daggers-and-moonlight recitations with the most unwarranted

self-assurance (she boasts of a walking-on part at one of the theatres);

there was Miss M---- listening to her fiancé, Capt. O---- (home from

India), singing Indian Love Songs at her; there was Miss T----, a sour

old maid, who knitted and snorted, not fully conscious of this young

blood coursing around her; Mrs. Barclay Woods pursued her usual

avocation of imposing on us all the great weight of her immense social

superiority, clucking, in between, to her one chick--a fluffy girl of 18

or 19, who was sitting now in the draught, now too close to a "common"

musician of the Covent Garden Opera; finally our hostess, a divorcee,

who hated all males, even Tom-cats. We were a pathetic little

company--so motley, ill-assorted--who had come together not from love or

regard but because man is a gregarious animal. In fact, we sat secretly

criticising and contemning one another ... yet outside there were so

many millions of people unknown, and overhead the multitude of the stars

was equally comfortless.

_Later_: ... Zoology on occasion still fires my ambition! Surely I

cannot be dying yet.

Whatever misfortune befalls me I do hope I shall be able to meet it

unflinchingly. I do not fear ill-health in itself, but I do fear its

possible effect on my mind and character.... Already I am slowly

altering, as the Lord liveth. Already for example my sympathy with

myself is maudlin.

Whenever the blow shall fall, some sort of a reaction _must_ be given.

Heine flamed into song. Beethoven wrote the 5th Symphony. So what shall

I do when my time comes? I don't think I have any lyrics or symphonies

to write, so I shall just have to grin and bear it--like a dumb

animal.... As long as I have spirit and buoyancy I don't care what

happens--for I know that or so long I cannot be accounted a failure. The

only _real_ failure is one in which the victim is left spiritless,

dazed, dejected with blackness all around, and within, a knife slowly

and unrelentingly cutting the strings of his heart.

My head whirls with conflicting emotions, struggling, desperate ideas,

and a flood of impressions of all sorts of things that are never

sufficiently sifted and arranged to be caught down on paper. I am

brought into this world, hustled along it and then hustled out of it,

with no time for anything. I want to be on a great hill and square up

affairs.

_August_ 28.

... After tea, we all three walked in Kensington Gardens and sat on a

seat by the Round Pond. My umbrella fell to the ground, and I left it

there with its nose poking up in a cynical manner, as She remarked.

"It's not cynical," I said, "only a little knowing. Won't you let yours

fall down to keep it company? Yours is a lady umbrella and a

good-looking one--they might flirt together."

"Mine doesn't want to flirt," she answered stiffly.

_September_ 13.

_At C----, a tiny little village by the sea in N----._

Looking up from a rockpool, where I had been watching Gobies, I saw

three children racing across the sands to bathe, I saw a man dive from a

boat, and I saw a horse-man gallop his mare down to the beach and plunge

about in the line of breakers. The waters thundered, the mare whinnied,

the children shouted to one another, and I turned my head down again to

the rockpool with a great thumping heart of happiness: it was so lovely

to be conscious of the fact that out there this beautiful picture was

awaiting me whenever and as often as I chose to lift my head. I

purposely kept my head down, for the picture was so beautiful I did not

want to hurt it by breathing on it, and I kept my head down out of a

playful self-cheating delight; I decided not to indulge myself.

_September_ 16.

Out in the Bay dredging for Echinoderms with "Carrots." Brilliantly

fine. The haul was a failure, but, being out in a boat on a waveless sea

under a cloudless sky, I was scarcely depressed at this! We cruised

along from one little bay to another, past smugglers' caves and white

pebble beaches, the dredge all the while growling along the sea bottom,

and "Carrots" and I lying listless in the bows. I was _immensely happy_.

My mercury was positively ringing the bell.

Who, then, is "Carrots"? He is a fine brawny boat-man who jumps over the

rocks like a Chamois, swims like a Fish, pulls like an Ox, snorts like a

Grampus--a sort of compound zoological perfection, built eclectically.

_September_ 18.

_Early Boughies_

Up the village, Mrs. Beavan keeps a tiny little shop and runs a very

large garden. She showed us all about the garden, and introduced us to

her husband, whom we discovered in an apple tree--an old man, aged 76,

very hard of hearing, and with an impediment in his speech. He at once

began to move his mouth, and I caught odd jingles of sound that sounded

like nothing at all--at first, but which gradually resolved themselves

on close attention to such familiar landmarks as "Early Boughies,"

"Stubbits," "Ribstone Pippins" into a discourse on Apples.

The following curious conversation took place between me and the deaf

gaffer, aged 76, standing in the apple tree,--

"These be all appulls from Kent--I got 'em all from Kent."

"How long have you lived in C----?"

"Bunyard & Son--that's the firm--they live just outside the town of

Maidstone."

"Do you keep Bees here?"

"One of these yer appulls is called Bunyard after the firm--a fine fruit

too."

"Your good wife must be of great assistance to you in your work."

"Little stalks maybe, but a large juishy appull for all that."

Just then I heard Mrs. B---- saying to E----,--

"Aw yes, he's very active for 76. A little deaf, but he manages the

garden all 'eesulf, I bolsters 'un up wi' meat and drink--little and

often as they zay for children.... Now there's a bootifull tree, me

dear, that 'as almost beared itself to death, as you may say."

She picked an apple off it shouting to poor Tom still aloft,--

"Tom what's the name of this one?"

"You should come a bit earlier, zir," replied T. "'Tis late a bit now

doan't 'ee zee?"

"No--what's its name I want," shouted his spouse.

"Yes, yes, give the lady one to take home--there's plenty for all," he

said.

"What is the NAME? THE NAME OF THIS YER APPULL," screamed Mrs. B., and

old Tom moving his bones slowly down from the tree answered quite

unmoved,--

"Aw the name? Why, 'tis a common kind of appull--there's a nice tree of

'em up there."

"Oh! never mind, 'tis a Gladstone," said Mrs. B., turning to us.

"A very fine Appull," droned the old boy.

_September_ 28.

Back in town again. Wandered about in a somnambulistic way all the

afternoon till I found myself taking tea in Kew Gardens. I enjoyed the

wind in my face and hair. Otherwise there is nothing to be said--a

colourless day.

_October_ 10.

Came across the following arresting sentence: "Pale, anæmic, cadaverous,

bad teeth and disordered digestion and a morbid egotism." Yes, but my

teeth are _not_ bad.

_October_ 20.

_On the N. Downs_

Under the oak where I sat the ground was covered with dead leaves. I

kicked them, and I beat them with my stick, because I was angry that

they were dead. In the coppice, leaves were quietly and majestically

floating earthwards in the pomp of death. It was very thrilling to

observe them.

It was a curious sensation to realise that since the last time I sat

under the old oak I had been right up to the N. of England, then right

down to the S.W., and back once more to London town. I bragged about my

kinetic activity to the stationary oak and I scoffed at the old hill for

having to remain always in the same place.

It gave me a pleasing sense of infinite superiority to _come back_ and

see everything the same as before, to sit on the same old seat under the

same old oak. Even that same old hurdle was lying in the same position

among the bracken. How sorry I was for it! Poor wretch--unable to

move--to go to Whitby, to go to C----, to be totally ignorant of the

great country of London....

Day dreamed. My own life as it unrolls day by day is a source of

constant amazement, delight, and pain. I can think of no more

interesting volume than a detailed, intimate, psychological history of

my own life. I want a perfect comprehension at least of myself....

We are all such egotists that a sorrow or hardship--provided it is great

enough--flatters our self-importance. We feel that a calamity by

overtaking us has distinguished us above our fellows. A man likes not to

be ignored even by a railway accident. A man with a grievance is always

happy.

_October_ 23.

Over to see E----. Came away disillusioned.

_October_ 25.

Met her in Smith's book shop looking quite bewitching. Hang it all, I

thought I had finished. Went home with her, watched her make a pudding

in the kitchen, then we sat by the firelight in the drawing-room and had

supper. Scrumptious (not the supper).

_October_ 27.

Quarrelled with D----! The atmosphere is changed at the flat--my

character is ruined. D---- has told them I'm a loose fellow. I've always

contrived to give him that impression--I liked to be cutting my

throat--and now it's cut!

_November_ 1.

D---- came and carried me off to the flat, where they asked why I hadn't

been over--which, of course, pleased me immensely.

_November_ 6.

Doctor M---- is very gloomy about my health and talks of S. Africa,

Labrador, and so on. I'm not responding to his treatment as I should.

_November_ 11.

Met her this evening in Kensington Road. "I timed this well," said she,

"I thought I should meet you." Good Heavens, I am getting embroiled.

Returned to the flat with her and after supper called her "The Lady of

Shalott."

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

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

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

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

_November_ 15.

On M----'s advice went to see a stomach specialist--Dr. Hawkins. As I

got there a little too early walked up the street--Portland Place--on

the opposite side (from shyness) past an interminable and nauseating

series of night bells and brass plates, then down again on the right

side till I got to No. 66 which made me flutter--for ten doors ahead I

mused is the house I must call at. It made me shiver a little.

The specialist took copious notes of my evidence and after examining me

retired to consult with M----. What a parade of ceremony! On coming

back, the jury returned a verdict of "Not proven." I was told I ought to

go out and live on the prairies--and in two years I should be a _giant_!

But where are the prairies? What 'bus? If I get worse, I must take

several months' leave. I think it will come to this.

_November_ 16.

Arthur came down for the week end. He likes the Lady of Shalott. She is

"not handsome, but arresting, striking" and "capable of tragedy." That I

believe she has achieved already.... If she were a bit more gloomy and a

bit more beautiful, she'd be irresistible.

_November_ 22.

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

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

He: "You smoke only as _you_ could."

She: "How's that?"

H.: "Gracefully, of course."

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

H.: "Why not, if they are true. Flattery is when you tell an ugly woman

she is beautiful. Have you so poor an opinion of yourself to think all I

say of you is flattery?"

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

H.: "What a deliciously empty feeling that must be. ... But I don't

think you're so simple as all that. You bewilder me sometimes."

S.: "Why?"

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

S.: "Why?"

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

me.

_December_ 9.

It's a fearful strain to go on endeavouring to live up to time with a

carefully laid-out time-table of future achievements. I am hurrying on

with my study of Italian in order to read the Life of Spallanzani in

order to include him in my book--to be finished by the end of next year;

I am also subsidising Jenkinson's embryological lectures at University

College with the more detailed account of practical and experimental

work in his text-book; I have also started a lengthy research upon the

Trichoptera--all with a horrible sense of time fleeing swiftly and

opportunities for work too few ever to be squandered, and, in the

background, behind all this feverish activity, the black shadow that I

might die suddenly with nothing done--next year, next month, next week,

to-morrow, now!

Then sometimes, as to-night, I have misgivings. Shall I do these things

so well now as I might once have done them? Has not my ill-health

seriously affected my mental powers? Surely the boy of 1908-10 was

almost a genius or--seen at this distance--a very remarkable youth in

the fanatical zeal with which he sought to pursue, and succeeded in

gaining, his own end of a zoological education for himself.

It is a terrible suspicion to cross the mind of an ambitious youth that

perhaps, after all, he is a very commonplace mortal--that his life,

whether comedy or tragedy, or both, or neither, is any way

insignificant, of no account.

It is still more devastating for him to have to consider whether the

laurel wreath was not once within his grasp, and whether he must not

ascribe his own incalculable loss to his stomach simply.

_December_ 15.

A very bad heart attack. As I write it intermits every three or four

beats. Who knows if I shall live thro' to-night?

_December_ 16.

Here I am once more. A passable night. After breakfast the intermittency

recommenced--it is better now, with a dropped beat only about once per

half-hour, so that I am almost happy after yesterday, which was Hell.

The world is too good to give up without remonstrance at the beck of a

weak heart.

Before I went to sleep last night, my watch stopped--I at once observed

the cessation of its tick and wondered if it were an omen. I was

genuinely surprised to find myself still ticking when I awoke this

morning. A moment ago a hearse passed down the street.... Yes, but I'm

damned if I haven't a right to be morbid after yesterday. To be ill like

this in a boarding-house! I'd marry to-morrow if I had the chance.

_December_ 22.

_Sollas's "Ancient Hunters"_

Read Sollas's book _Ancient Hunters_--very thrilling--mind full of the

Aurignacians, Mousterians, Magdalenians! I have been peering down such

tremendous vistas of time and change that my own troubles have been

eclipsed into ridiculous insignificance. It has been really a Pillar of

Strength to me--a splendid tonic. Palæontology has its comfortable words

too. I have revelled in my littleness and irresponsibility. It has

relieved me of the harassing desire to live, I feel content to live

dangerously, indifferent to my fate; I have discovered I am a fly, that

we are all flies, that nothing matters. It's a great load off my life,

for I don't mind being such a micro-organism--to me the honour is

sufficient of belonging to the universe--such a great universe, so grand

a scheme of things. Not even Death can rob me of that honour. For

nothing can alter the fact that I _have_ lived; _I have been I_, if for

ever so short a time. And when I am dead, the matter which composes my

body is indestructible--and eternal, so that come what may to my "Soul,"

my dust will always be going on, each separate atom of me playing its

separate part--I shall still have some sort of a finger in the Pie.

When I am dead, you can boil me, burn me, drown me, scatter me--but you

cannot destroy me: my little atoms would merely deride such heavy

vengeance. Death can do no more than kill you.

_December_ 27.

"It is a pleasure to note the success attending the career of Mr. W.N.P.

Barbellion now engaged in scientific work on the staff of the Natural

History Museum ..." etc., etc.

This is a cutting from the local paper--one of many that from time to

time I once delightedly pasted in the pages of the Journal. Not so now.

... At 23, I am a different being. Surrounded by all the stimulating

environment of scientific research, I am cold and disdainful. I keep up

the old appearances but underneath it is quite different. I am a

_hypocrite_. I have to wear the mask and cothornoi, finding the part

daily more difficult to bear. I am living on my immense initial

momentum--while the machinery gradually slows up. My career! Gadzooks.

1913

_January_ 3.

From the drawing-room window I see pass almost daily an old gentleman

with white hair, a firm step, broad shoulders, healthy pink skin, a

sunny smile--always singing to himself as he goes--a happy, rosy-cheeked

old fellow, with a rosy-cheeked mind.... I should like to throw mud at

him. By Jove, how I hate him. He makes me wince with my own pain. It is

heartless, indecently so, for an _old_ man to be so blithe. Life has, I

suppose, never lain in wait for him. The Great Anarchist has spared him

a bomb.

_January_ 19.

My Aunt, aged 75, who has apparently concluded from my constant absences

from Church that my spiritual life is in a parlous way, to-day read me

her portion from a large book with a broad purple-tasseled bookmark. I

looked up from "_I Promessi Sposi_" and said "Very nice." It was about

someone whose soul was not saved and who would not answer the door when

it was knocked. It is jolly to be regarded as a wicked, libidinous youth

by an aged maiden Aunt.

_January_ 22.

This Diary reads for all the world as if I were not living in mighty

London. The truth is I live in a bigger, dirtier city--ill-health.

Ill-health, when chronic, is like a permanent ligature around one's

life. What a fine fellow I'd be if I were perfectly well. My energy for

one thing would lift the roof off....

We conversed around the text: "To travel hopefully is better than to

arrive and true success is to labour." She is--well, so graceful. My

God! I love her, I love her, I love her!!!

_February_ 3.

_A Confession_

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

Rather pleased with the invitation--I don't know why, for my idea of

myself is greater than my idea of him and probably greater than his idea

of himself.

Yet I went and got shaved, and even thought of buying a new pair of

gloves, but poverty proved greater than vanity, so I went with naked

hands. On arriving at Turnham Green, I removed my spectacles (well

knowing how much they damage my personal appearance). However, the

beauty of the thing was that, tho' I waited as agreed, he never turned

up, and so I returned home again, crestfallen--and, with my spectacles

on again.

_February_ 9.

... "Now, W----, talk to me prettily," she said as soon as the door was

closed on them.

"Oh! make him read a book," whined her sister, but we talked of marriage

instead--in all its aspects. Bless their hearts, I found these two dear

young things simply sodden with the idea of it.

In the middle I did a knee-jerk which made them scream with

laughing--the patellar reflex was new to them, so I seized a brush from

the grate, crossed to Her and gently tapped: out shot her foot, and

----cried: "Oh, do do it to me as well." It was rare fun.

"Oh! pretty knee, what do I see?

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

_February_ 10.

News of Scott's great adventure! Scott dead a year ago!! The news, when

I saw it to-night in the _Pall Mall Gazette_ gave me cold thrills. I

could have wept.... What splendid people we humans are! If there be no

loving God to watch us, it's a pity for His sake as much as for our own.

_February_ 15.

Tried to kiss her in a taxi-cab on the way home from the Savoy--the

taxi-cab danger is very present with us--but she rejected me quietly,

sombrely. I apologised on the steps of the Flats and said I feared I had

greatly annoyed her. "I'm not annoyed," she said, "only surprised"--in

a thoughtful, chilly voice.

We had had supper in Soho, and I took some wine, and she looked so

bewitching it sent me in a fever, thrumming my fingers on the seat of

the cab while she sat beside me impassive. Her shoulders are exquisitely

modelled and a beautiful head is carried poised on a tiny neck.

_February_ 16.

Walking up the steps to her flat to-night made me pose to H---- (who was

with me) as Sydney Carton in the picture in _A Tale of Two Cities_ on

the steps of the scaffold. He laughed boisterously, as he is delighted

to know of my last evening's misadventure.

At supper, a story was told of a man who knocked at the door of his

lady's heart four times and at last was admitted. I remarked that the

last part of the romance was weak. She disagreed. H---- exclaimed, "Oh!

but this man has no sentiment at all!"

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

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

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

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

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

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

I replied sardonically,--

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

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

"You know," I continued, delighted to seize the opportunity to assume

the role of youthful cynic, "Cupid and Death once met at an Inn and

exchanged arrows, since when young men have died and old men have

doted."

H---- was charming enough to opine that it was impossible to fix a time

for love. Love simply came.

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

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

"My brother had a dose of moonlight on board a boat when he sailed and

he's been happy ever since."

P.: "How romantic!"

H.: "A great passion!"

"The only difference," I interjected in a sombre monotone, "between a

passion and a caprice is that the caprice lasts a little longer."

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

It was--Oscar Wilde!

P---- insisted on my taking a biscuit. "Don't mind me," she said. "Just

think I'm a waitress and take no notice at all."

H.: "Humph! I never see him taking no notice of a waitress."

(Sneers and Curtain.)

_February_ 24.

H---- came home last night and told me that she said as he came away,

"Tell W---- I hate him." So it's all right. I shall go over to-morrow

again--Hurrah! My absence has been felt then.

_March_ 7.

Came home, lay on my bed, still dressed, and ruminated....

First a suspicion then a conviction came to me that I was a cad--a

callous, selfish, sensation-hunting cad.... For the time being the

bottom was knocked out of my smug self-satisfaction. For several long

half-hours I found myself drifting without compass or stars. I was quite

disorientated, temporarily thrown off the balance of my _amour propre_.

Then I got up, lit the gas and looking at myself in the mirror, found it

was really true,--I was a mean creature, wholly absorbed in self.

As an act of contrition, I ought to have gone out into the garden and

eaten worms. But the mirror brought back my self-consciousness and I

began to crawl back into my recently discarded skin--I began to be less

loathesome to myself. For as soon as I felt interested or amused or

curious over the fact that I had been really loathesome to myself I

began to regain my equilibrium. _Now_, I and myself are on comparatively

easy terms with one another. I am settled on the old swivel.... I take a

lot of knocking off it and if shot off soon return.

To-day, she was silent and melancholy but wonderfully fascinating. One

day I am desperate and the next cold and apathetic. Am I in love? God

knows! She came to the door to say "Good night," and I deliberately

strangled my desire to say something.

_March_ 9.

In bed till 12.30 reading Bergson and the O.T.

Over to the flat to supper. E---- was cold and silent. She spurned me.

No wonder. I talked volubly and quite brilliantly with the definite

purpose of showing up J----'s somnolence. I also pulled his leg. He

hates me. No wonder. After supper, he went in to her studio and remained

there alone with her while she worked. At 11 p.m. he was still there

when I came away in a whirlwind of jealousy, regrets, and rage. G----

said he was going to stay on until he saw "the blighter off the

premises." Neither of us would go in to turn him out.

I love her deeply and once my heart jumped when I thought I heard her

coming into the room. But it was only P----. Did not see her again--even

to say "Good-night."

_March_ 10.

Work in the evening in our bedroom--two poor miserable bachelors--H----

reading Equity Law, a rug around his legs before an empty grate, while I

am sitting at the table in top-coat, with collar up, and writing my

_magnum opus,_ which is to bring me fame, fortune and--E----!

H---- says that this morning I was putting on my shoes when he pointed

out a large hole in the heel of my sock.

"Damn! I shall have to wear boots," I said--at least he says I said it,

and I am quite ready to believe him. Such unconsciousness of self is

rare with me.

_March_ 15.

[At a public dinner at the Holborn Restaurant] J----replied to the toast

of the Ladies. Feeble! H---- and I stood and had a silent toast to E----

and N---- by just winking one eye at each other. He sat opposite me.

If I had been asked to reply to this toast I should have said with the

greatest gusto, something as follows,--

[Here follows the imaginary speech in full, composed the same night

before going to sleep.]

Yet I am taken for a soft fool! My manner is soft, self-conscious, shy.

What a lot of self-glorification I lose thereby! What a lot of

self-torture I gain in its stead!

_March_ 17.

To-day went to the B.M. but did very little work. Thought over the

matter carefully and decided to ask E---- to marry me. Relief to be able

to decide. I was happy too.

Yesterday P---- came in to us from E----'s studio and said,--

"E---- sends her love."

"To whom?" H---- inquired.

"I don't know," P---- replied, smiling at me.

_March_ 18.

Had a long conversation with H---- last night. He says all E----

intended to convey was that the quarrel was over.... I felt relieved,

because I have no money, but--a large ambition. Then I am selfish, and

have not forgotten that I want to spend my holidays in the Jura, and

next year three weeks at the Plymouth Laboratory.

_March_ 19.

Went over to see E----. We had an awkward half-an-hour alone together.

She was looking bewitching! I am plunging more and more into love. Had

it on the tip of my tongue once. I am dreadfully fond of her.

"I have a most profound gloom over me," I said.

"Why don't you try and get rid of it?" she asked.

"I can't until Zeus has pity and rolls away the clouds."

_April_ 21.

We are sitting up in our beds which are side by side in a room on the

top story of a boarding house in ---- Road.

It is 11.30 p.m. and I am leaning over one one side lighting the oil

lamp so as to boil the kettle to make Ovaltine before going to sleep.

"Whom have I seduced?" I screamed. "You rotter, don't you know that a

dead passion full of regrets is as terrible as a dead body full of

worms? There, I talk literature, my boy, if you were only Boswell

enough to take it down.... As for K----, I shall never invite him to

dinner again. He comes to me and whines that nobody loves him, and so I

say, 'Oh! poor lad, never mind, if you're bored, why, come to my rooms

of an evening and hear me talk--you'll have the time of your life.' And

now he's cheeky."

H. (sipping his drink and very much preoccupied with it) replied

abstractedly, "When you die you'll go to Hell." (I liked his Homeric

simplicity.) "You ought to be buried in a fireproof safe."

Silence.

H. (returning to the attack), "I hope she turns you down."

"Thank you," I said.

"As for P----," he resumed, "she's double-Dutch to me."

"Go to the Berlitz School," I suggested, "and learn the language."

"You bally fool.... All you do is to sit there and smile like a

sanguinary cat. Nothing I say ever rouses you. I believe if I came to

you and said, 'Here, Professor, is a Beetle with 99 legs that has lived

on granite in the middle of the Sahara for 40 days and 40 nights,' you'd

simply answer, 'Yes, and that reminds me I've forgotten to blow my

nose.'"

The two pyjamaed figures shake with laughing, the light goes out and the

sanguinary conversation continues on similar lines until we fall asleep.

_April_ 26.

_Two Months' Sick Leave_

In a horrible panic--the last few days--I believe I am developing

locomotor ataxy. One leg, one arm, and my speech are affected, _i.e._

the right side and my speech centre. M---- is serious.... I hope the

disease, whatever it is, will be sufficiently lingering to enable me to

complete my book.

R---- is a dear man. I shall not easily forget his kindness during this

terrible week.... Can the Fates have the audacity?... Who can say?

_April_ 27.

I believe there can be no doubt that I have had a slight partial

paralysis of my right side (like Dad). I stutter a little in my speech

when excited, I cannot write properly (look at this handwriting), and my

right leg is rocky at the knee. My head swims.

It is too inconceivably horrible to be buried in the Earth in such

splendid spring weather. Who can tell me what is in store for me?...

Life opens to me, I catch a glimpse of a vision, and the doors clang to

again noiselessly. It is dark. That will be my history. Am developing a

passionate belief in my book and a fever of haste to complete it before

the _congé définitif_.

_April_ 29.

Saw M---- again, who said my symptoms were alarming certainly, but he

was sure no definite diagnosis could be made.

_April_ 30.

Went with M---- to see a well-known nerve specialist--Dr. H----. He

could find no symptoms of a definite disease, tho' he asked me

suspiciously if I had ever been with women.

Ordered two months' complete rest in the country. H---- chased me round

his consulting room with a drum-stick, tapping my nerves and cunningly

working my reflexes. Then he tickled the soles of my feet and pricked me

with a pin--all of which I stood like a man. He wears a soft black hat,

looks like a Quaker, and reads the _Verhandlungen d. Gesellschaft d.

Nervenarzten_.

M---- is religious and after I had disclosed my physique to him

yesterday (for the 99th time) he remained on his knees by the couch in

his consulting room (after working my reflexes) for a moment or two in

the attitude of prayer. When the Doctor prays for you--better call in

the undertaker. My epitaph "He played Ludo well." The game anyhow

requires moral stamina--ask H----.

_May_ 5.

At R----. Mugged about all day. Put on a gramophone record--then crawled

up into a corner of the large, empty drawing room and ate my heart out.

Heart has a bitter taste--if it's your own.

_May_ 6.

Sat in the "morning room" feeling ill. In the chair opposite sat Aunt

Fanny, aged 86, knitting. I listened to the click of her needles, while

out in the garden a thrush sang, and there was a red sunset.

_May_ 8.

Before I left R----, A---- [My brother] had written to Uncle enclosing

my doctor's letter. I don't know the details except that Dr. M----

emphasised the seriousness and yet held out hope that two months' rest

would allay the symptoms.

_May_ 11.

_At Home_

I made some offensive remark to H---- whom I met in the street. This set

him off.

"You blighter, I hope you marry a loose woman. May your children be all

bandy-legged and squint-eyed, may your teeth drop out, and your toes

have bunions," and so on in his usual lengthy commination.

I turned to the third man.

"Bob--this!--after all I've done for that young man! I have even gone

out of my Way to cultivate in him a taste for poetry--until he is now,

in fact, quite wrapped up in it--indeed, so much so, that for a time he

was nothing but a brown paper parcel labelled Poetry."

H. (doggedly): "When are you going to die?"

"That Master H----," I answered menacingly, "is on the knees of the

Gods."

H.: "I shan't believe you're dead till I see your tombstone. I shall

then say to the Sexton, 'Is he really dead, then?' and the Sexton will

say, 'Well, 'ee's buried onny way.'"

Bob was not quite in sympathy with our boisterous spirits.

_May_ 15.

_Gardening_

Sought out H---- as he was watering his petunias in the garden. He

informed me he was going to London on Monday.

H.: "Mother is coming too."

B.: "Why?"

H.: "Oh! I'm buying my kit--shirts and things. I sail at the beginning

of July."

B.: "I suppose shirts are difficult to buy. You wouldn't know what to do

with one if you had one. Your mother will lead you by the hand into a

shop and say, 'H----, dear, this is a shirt,' and you'll reply with

pathos, 'Mother what are the wild shirts saying?'"

H.: "You're a B.F." (goes on watering).

"I wonder what you'd do if you were let loose in a big garden," I began.

H.: "I should be as happy as a bird. I should hop about, chirrup and lay

eggs. You should have seen my tomato plants last year--one was as tall

as father."

B.: "Now tell me of the Gooseberry as big as Mother."

Mutual execrations. Then we grinned and cackled at each other, emitting

weird and ferocious cachinnations. Several times a day in confidential,

serious tones--after one of these explosions--we say, "I really believe

we're mad." You never heard such extraordinary caterwaulings. Our snappy

conversations are interrupted with them every minute or so!

_Stagnancy_

A stagnant day. Lay still in the Park all day with just sufficient

energy to observe. The Park was almost empty. Every one but me at work.

Nothing is more dreary than a pleasure ground on workdays. There was one

man a little way off throwing a ball to a clever dog. Behind me on the

path, some one came along wheeling a pram. I listened in a kind of coma

to the scrunching of the gravel in the distance a long time after the

pram was out of sight. Far away--the tinkle of Church bells in a village

across the river, and, in front, the man still throwing the ball to his

clever dog.

_May_ 25.

_Death_

... I suppose the truth is I am at last broken to the idea of Death. Once

it terrified me and once I hated it. But now it only annoys me. Having

lived with the Bogey for so long, and broken bread with him so often, I

am used to his ugliness, tho' his persistent attentions bore me. Why

doesn't he do it and have done with me? Why this deference, why does he

pass me everything but the poison? Why am I such an unconscionably long

time dying?

What embitters me is the humiliation of having to die, to have to be

pouring out the precious juices of my life into the dull Earth, to be no

longer conscious of what goes on, no longer moving abroad upon the Earth

creating attraction and repulsions, pouring out one's ego in a stream.

To think that the women I have loved will be marrying and forget, and

that the men I have hated will continue on their way and forget I ever

hated them--the ignominy of being dead! What voluble talker likes his

mouth to be stopped with earth, who relishes the idea of the carrion

worm mining in the seat of the intellect?

_May_ 29.

_Renunciation_

Staying at the King's Hotel, ----. Giddiness very bad. Death seems

unavoidable. A tumour on the brain?

Coming down here in the train, sat in corner of the compartment, twined

one leg around the other, rested my elbow on the window ledge, and gazed

out helplessly at the exuberant green fields, green woods, and green

hedgerows. The weather was perfect, the sun blazed down.

Certainly, I was rather sorry for myself at the thought of leaving it

all. But I girded up my loins and wrapped around me for a while the

mantle of a nobler sentiment; _i.e._ I felt sorry for the others as

well--for the two brown carters in the road ambling along with a timber

waggon, for the two old maids in the same compartment with me knitting

bedsocks, for the beautiful Swallows darting over the stream, for the

rabbit that lopped into the fern just as we passed--they too were all

leaving it.

The extent of my benign compassion startled me--it was so unexpected.

Perhaps for the first time in my life I forgot all about my own

miserable ambitions--I forgave the successful, the time-servers, the

self-satisfied, the overweening, the gracious and condescending--all, in

fact, who hitherto have been thorns in my flesh and innocently enough

have goaded me to still fiercer efforts to win thro'. "Poor people," I

said. "Leave them alone. Let them be happy if they can." With a

submissive heart, I was ready to sit down in the rows of this world's

failures and never have thought one bitter word about success. To all

those persons who in one way or another had foiled my purposes I

extended a pardon with Olympian gravity, and, strangest of all, I could

have melted such frosty moral rectitudes with a genuine interest in the

careers of my struggling contemporaries. With perfect self-abnegation, I

held out my hand to them and wished them all "God Speed."

It was a strange metempsychosis. Yet of a truth it is no use being

niggardly over our lives. We are all of us "shelling out." And we can

afford to be generous, for we shall all--some early, some late--be

bankrupt in the end. For my part, I've had a short and boisterous voyage

and shan't be sorry to get into port. I give up all my plans, all my

hopes, all my loves and enthusiasms without remonstrance. I renounce

all--I myself am already really dead.

_May_ 30.

Last night the sea was as flat as a pavement, a pretty barque with all

her sails out to catch the smallest puff of wind--the tiniest

inspiration--was nevertheless without motion--a painted ship on a

tapestry of violet. H---- Hill was an immense angular mass of indigo

blue. Even rowing boats made little progress and the water came off the

languid paddles in syrupy clots. Everything was utterly still, the air

thick--like cottonwool to the touch and very stifling; vitality in

living things leaked away under a sensuous lotus influence.

Intermittently after the darkness had come, Bullpoint Lighthouse shone

like the wink of a lascivious eye.

* * * * *

Pottering about all day on the Pier and Front, listening to other

people's talk, catching snippets of conversation--not edifying. If there

were seven wise men in the town, I would not save it. Damn the place!

_May_ 31.

... I espied her first in the distance and turned my head away quickly

and looked out to sea. A moment after, I began to turn my head round

again slowly with the cautiousness and air of suspicion of a Tortoise

poking its head out from underneath his shell. I was terrified to

discover that in the meantime she had come and sat down on the seat

immediately behind me with her back to mine. We sat like this back to

back for some time and I enjoyed the novel experience and the tension. A

few years ago, the bare sight of her gave me palpitation of the heart,

and, on the first occasion that I had the courage to stop to speak, I

felt livid and the skin on my face twitched uncontrollably.

Presently I got up and walked past--in the knowledge that she must now

be conscious of my presence after a disappearance of three years. Later

we met face to face and I broke the ice. She's a pretty girl.... So too

is her sister.

Few people, except my barber, know how amorous I am. He has to shave my

sinuous lips.

_June_ 3.

Spent many dreadful hours cogitating whether to accept their invitation

to dinner.... I wanted to go for several reasons. I wanted to see her in

a home-setting for the first time, and I wanted to spend the evening

with three pretty girls. I also had the idea of displaying myself to the

scrutinising gaze of the family as the hero of the old romance: and of

showing Her how much I had progressed since last we met and what a

treasure she had lost.

On the other hand, I was afraid that the invitation was only a casual

one, I feared a snuffy reception, a frosty smile and a rigid hand. Could

I go up and partake of meat at their board, among brothers and sisters

taking me for an ogre of a jilt, and she herself perhaps opposite me

making me blush perpetually to recall our one-time passionate kisses,

our love letters and our execrable verses to each other! There seemed

dreadful possibilities in such an adventure. Yet I badly wanted to

experience the piquant situation.

At 7 p.m., half an hour before I was due, decided on strong measures. I

entered a pub and took a stiff whisky and soda, and then set off with a

stout heart to take the icy family by storm--and if need be live down my

evil reputation by my amiability and urbanity!

I went--and of course everything passed off in the most normal manner.

She is a very pretty girl--like velvet. Before dinner, we walked in the

garden--and talked only of flowers.

_June_ 4.

On the Hill, this morning, felt the thrill of the news of my own Death:

I mean I imagined I heard the words,--

"You've heard the news about B----?"

Second Voice: "No, what?"

"He's dead."

Silence.

Won't all this seem piffle if I don't die after all! As an artist in

life I _ought_ to die; it is the only artistic ending --and I ought to

die now or the Third Act will fizzle out in a long doctor's bill.

_June_ 5.

_A New Pile in the Pier_

Watched some men put a new pile in the pier. There was all the usual

paraphernalia of chains, pulleys, cranes, and ropes, with a massive

wooden pile swinging over the water at the end of a long wire hawser.

Everything was in the massive style--even the men--very powerful men,

slow, ruminative, silent men.

Nothing very relevant could be gathered from casual remarks. The

conversation was without exception monosyllabic: "Let go," or "Stand

fast." But by close attention to certain obscure movements of the man on

the ladder near the water's edge, it gradually came thro' to my

consciousness that all these powerful, silent men were up against some

bitter difficulty. I cannot say what it was. The burly monsters were

silent about the matter.... In fact they appeared almost

indifferent--and tired, oh! so very tired of the whole business. The

attitude of the man nearest me was that for all he cared the pile could

go on swinging in mid-air to the crack of Doom.

They continued slow, laborious efforts to overcome the secret

difficulty. But these gradually slackened and finally ceased. One

massive man after another abandoned his post in order to lean over the

rails and gaze like a mystic into the depths of the sea. No one spoke.

No one saw anything not even in the depths of the sea. One spat, and

with round, sad eyes contemplated the trajectory of his brown bolus (he

had been chewing) in its descent into the water.

The foreman, an original thinker, lit a cigarette, which relieved the

tension. Then, slowly and with majesty, he turned on his heel, and

walked away. With the sudden eclipse of the foreman's interest, the

incident closed. I should have been scarcely surprised to find him

behind the Harbour-master's Office playing "Shove-ha'penny" or skittles

with the pile still swinging in mid-air.... After all it was only a

bloody pile.

_June_ 11.

_Depression_

Suffering from depression.... The melancholy fit fell very suddenly. All

the colour went out of my life, the world was dirty gray. On the way

back to my hotel caught sight of H----, jumping into a cab, after a

visit to S---- Sands. But the sight of him aroused no desire in me to

shout or wave. I merely wondered how on earth he could have spent a

happy day at such a Sandy place.

On arriving at ----, sank deeper into my morass. It suffocated me to

find the old familiar landmarks coming into view ... the holiday-makers

along the streets how I hated them--the Peg Top Hill how desolate--all

as before--how dull. The very fact that they were all there as before in

the morning nauseated me. The sea-coast here is magnificent, the town is

pretty--I know that, of course. But all looked dreary and

cheerless--just the sort of feeling one gets on entering an empty house

with no fire on a winter's day and nowhere to sit down.... I felt as

lonely and desolate as a man suddenly fallen from the clouds into an

unknown town on the Antarctic Continent built of ice and inhabited by

Penguins. Who are these people? I asked myself irritably. There perhaps

on the other side of the street was my own brother. But I was not even

faintly interested and told the cabman to drive on. The spray from the

sea fogged my spectacles and made me weary.

_June_ 14.

_The Restlessness of the Sea_

The restlessness of the sea acts as a soporific on jangled nerves. You

gaze at its incessant activities, unwillingly at first because they

distract your attention from your own cherished worries and griefs,--but

later you watch with complete self-abandon--it wrenches you out of

yourself--and eventually with a kind of stupid hypnotic stare.

_Dr. Spurgeon_

The day has been overcast, but to-night a soft breeze sprang up and

swept the sky clear as softly as a mop. The sun coming out shone upon a

white sail far out in the channel, scarcely another vessel hove in

sight. The white sail glittered like a piece of silver paper whenever

the mainsail swung round as the vessel tacked. Its solitariness and

whiteness in a desert of marine blue attracted the attention and held it

till at last I could look at nothing else. The sight of it--so clean and

white and fair--set me yearning for all the rarest and most exquisite

things my imagination could conjure up--a beautiful girl, with fair and

sunburnt skin, brown eyes, dark eyebrows, and small pretty feet; a

dewdrop in a violet's face; an orange-tip butterfly swinging on an umbel

of a flower.

The sail went on twinkling and began to exert an almost moral influence

over me. It drew out all the good in me. I longed to follow it on white

wings--an angel I suppose--to quit this husk of a body "as raiment put

away," and pursue Truth and Beauty across the sea to the horizon, and

beyond the horizon up the sky itself to its last tenuous confines, no

doubt with a still small voice summoning me and the rest of the elect to

an Agapemone, with Dr. Spurgeon at the door distributing tracts.

I can scoff like this now. But at the time my exaltation was very real.

My soul strained in the leash. I was full of a desire for unattainable

spiritual beauty. I wanted something. But I don't know what I want.

_June_ 16.

_My Sense of Touch_

My sense of touch has always been morbidly acute. I like to feel a

cigarette locked in the extreme corner of my mouth. When I remove it

from my mouth then I hold it probably up in the fork between two

fingers. If I am waiting for a meal I finger the cool knives and forks.

If I am in the country I plunge my hands with outspread fingers into a

mass of large-topped grasses, then close my fingers, crush and

decapitate the lot.

_June_ 27.

_Camping Out at S---- Sands_

A brilliant summer day. Up early, breakfasted, and, clad in sweater and

trousers, walked up the sands to the boathouse with bare feet.

Everything was wonderful! I strode along over the level sands infatuated

with the sheer ability to put one leg in front of the other and walk. I

loved to feel the muscles of my thighs working, and to swing my arms in

rhythm with the stride. The stiff breeze had blown the sky clear, and

was rushing through my long hair, and bellowing into each ear. I strode

as Alexander must have done!

Then I stretched my whole length out along a flat plank on the sands,

which was as dry as a bone and warm. There was not a soul on the sands.

Everything was bare, clean, windswept. My plank had been washed clean

and white. The sands--3 miles of it--were hard and purified, level. My

eye raced along in every direction--there was nothing--not a bird or a

man--to stop it. In that immense windswept space nothing was present

save me and the wind and the sea--a flattering moment for the egotist.

* * * * *

At the foot of the cliffs on the return journey met an old man gathering

sticks. As he ambled along dropping sticks into a long sack he called

out casually, "Do you believe in Jesus Christ?" in the tone of voice in

which one would say, "I think we shall have some rain before night."

"Aye, aye," came the answer without hesitation from a boy lying on his

back in the sands a few yards distant, "and that He died to save me."

Life is full of surprises like this. The only other sounds I have heard

to-day were the Herring Gull's cackle. Your own gardener will one day

look over his rake and give you the correct chemical formula for

carbonic acid gas. I met a postman once reading Shelley as he walked his

rounds.

_June_ 28.

I am writing this by the lamp in the cabin among the sandhills waiting

for H---- to arrive from town with provisions. I wear a pair of bags, a

dirty sweater, and go without hat or shoes and stockings. There is a

"Deadwood Dick" atmosphere here. I'm a sort of bronco-breaker or rancher

off duty writing home. In a minute I haven't the slightest doubt, H----

will gallop into the compound, tether his colt and come in "raising

Cain" for a belly-full of red meat.... If I am going to live after all

(touch wood) I shall go abroad and be in the open.

I eat greedily, am getting very sunburnt, am growing hairy (that means

strength!), and utter portentous oaths. If I stayed here much longer I

should grow a tail and climb trees.

After a supper of fried eggs and fried bread done to a nicety, turned in

at ten, and both of us lay warm and comfortable in bed, smoking

cigarettes and listening to Hoffmann's Barcarolle on the gramophone. We

put the lamp out, and it pleased us to watch the glow of each other's

cigarettes in the dark.... Neither of us spoke.... Went to sleep at

midnight. Awoke at sunrise to hear an Owl still hooting, a Lark singing,

and several Jackdaws clattering on our tin roof with their claws as they

walked.

_July_ 1.

_In London Again_

Returned to London very depressed. Am not so well as I was three weeks

ago. The sight of one eye is affected, and I am haunted by the

possibility of blindness. Then I have a numb feeling on one side of my

face, and my right arm is less mobile.

Left darling Mother in a very weak state in bed, with neuritis and a

weak heart. She cried when I said "Goodbye," and asked me to go to

Church as often as I could, and to read a portion of Scripture every

day. I promised. Then she added, "For Dad's sake;" just as if I would

not do it for her. Poor dear, she suffers a deal of pain. She does not

know how ill I am. I have not told her.

_July_ 3.

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

_July_ 8.

I get thro' each day with the utmost difficulty. I have to wrestle with

every minute. Each hour is a conquest. The three quarters of an hour at

lunch comes as a Godsend. I look forward to it all the morning, I enter

into it with joyful relief with no thought of the dreadful moment

impending when I must return and re-enter my room. By being wise like

this, I manage to husband my spirits and am relatively cheerful for one

hour in the middle of each difficult day.

_July_ 9.

Several times I have gone to bed and hoped I should never wake up. Life

grows daily more impossible. To-day I put a slide underneath the

microscope and looked at it. It was like looking at something thro' the

wrong end of a telescope. I sat with eye glued to the ocular, so as to

keep up a pretence of work in case some one came in. My mind was

occupied with quite different affairs. If one is pondering on Life and

Death, it is a terrible task to have to study Mites.

_July_ 10.

Am doing no work at all.... I sit motionless in my chair and beat the

devil's tattoo with my thumbs and think, think, think in the same

horrible circle hour after hour. I am unable to work. I haven't the

courage to. I've lost my nerve.

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

Two old maids sat down to dinner to-night, one German youth (a

lascivious, ranting, brainless creature), a lady typist (who takes drugs

they say), a dipsomaniac (who has monthly bouts--H---- carried him

upstairs and put him to bed the other night), two invertebrate

violinists who play in the Covent Garden Orchestra, a colonial lady

engaged in a bedroom intrigue with a man who sits at my table. What are

these people to me? I hate them all. They know it and are offended.

After dinner, put on my cap and rushed out anywhere to escape. Walked to

the end of the street, not knowing where I was going or what doing.

Stopped and stared with fixed eyes at the traffic in Kensington Road,

undetermined what to do with myself and unable to make up my mind

(volitional paralysis). Turned round, walked home, and went straight to

bed 9 p.m., anxiously looking forward to to-morrow evening when I go to

see her again, but at the same time wondering how on earth I am to get

through to-morrow's round before the evening comes.... This is a

hand-to-mouth existence. My own inner life is scorching up all outside

interests. Zoology appears as a curious thing in a Bagdad bazaar. I sit

in my room at the B.M. and play with it; I let it trickle thro' my

fingers and roll away like a child playing with quicksilver.

_July_ 11.

Over to the flat. She was looking beautiful in a black dress, with a

white silk blouse, and a Byron collar, negligently open in front as if

a button had come out. She said I varied: sometimes I went up in her

estimation, sometimes down; once I went down very low. I understood her

to say I was now UP! Alleluia!

_July_ 14.

... It would take too long and I am too tired to write out all the

varying phases of this day's life--all its impressions and petty

miseries chasing one another across my consciousness or leap-frogging

over my chest like gleeful fiends.[1]

_July_ 21.

Thoroughly enjoyed the journey up to town this morning. I secretly

gloated over the fact that the train was dashing along over the rails to

London bearing me and all the rest of the train's company upon their

pursuits--wealth, fame, learning. I was inebriated with the speed,

ferocity, and dash of living.... If the train had charged into the

buffers I should have hung my head out of the window and cheered. If a

man had got in my way, I'd have knocked him down. The wheels of the

carriage were singing a lusty song in which I joined.

_July_ 30.

... We talked of men and women, and she said she thought men were

neither angels nor devils but just men. I said I thought women were

either angels or devils.

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

"You needn't," I said shortly.

_August_ 9.

Horribly upset with news from home. Mother is really ill. The Doctor

fears serious nerve trouble and says she will always be an invalid. This

is awful, poor dear! It's dreadful, and yet I have a tiny wish buried at

the bottom of my heart that she may be removed early from us rather

than linger in pain of body and mind. Especially do I hope she may not

live to hear any grievous news of me.... What irony that she should lose

the use of her right arm only two years after Dad's death from

paralysis. It is cruel for it reminds her of Dad's illness.... What,

too, would she think if she could have heard M----'s first words to me

yesterday on one of my periodical visits to his consulting room, "Well,

how's the _paralysis_?"

* * * * *

In the evening went over to see her. She was wearing a black silk gown

and looked handsome.... She is always the same sombre, fascinating,

lissom, soft-voiced She! She herself never changes.... What am I to do?

I cannot give her up and yet I do not altogether wish to take her to my

heart. It distresses me to know how to proceed. I am a wily fish.

_August_ 10.

Sat in the gardens with her. We sat facing the sun for a while until she

was afraid of developing freckles and turned around, deliberately

turning her back on good King Sol.... I said it was disrespectful.

"Oh! he doesn't mind," she said. "He's a dear. He kissed me and said,

'Turn round my dear if you like.'"

Isn't she tantalising?

I wanted to say sarcastically, "I wonder you let him kiss you," but

there was a danger of the remark reviving the dead.

_August_ 14.

I tried my best, I've sought every loophole of escape, but I am quite

unable to avoid the melancholy fact that her thumbs are--lamentable. I

am genuinely upset about it for I like her. No one more than I would be

more delighted if they were otherwise.... Poor dear! how I love her!

That's why I'm so concerned about her thumbs.

_August_ 21.

A wire from A---- came at 11.50 saying "Darling Mother passed peacefully

away yesterday afternoon." ... Yesterday afternoon I was writing Zoology

and all last night I slept soundly.... It was quite sudden. Caught the

first train home.

_August_ 23.

The funeral.

_August_ 31.

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

A----.

This flood of new experiences has knocked my diary habit out of gear. To

be candid, I've forgotten all about myself. I've been too engrossed in

living to stand the strain of setting down and in cold blood writing out

all the things seen and heard. If I once began I should blow thro' these

pages like a whirlwind.... But what a waste of time with M. le batelier

waiting outside with his bisque to take us mackerel fishing!...

_September_ 8.

Returned to Southampton yesterday. Have spent the night at Okehampton in

Devonshire _en route_ for T---- Rectory. This morning we hatched the

ridiculous idea of hiring two little Dartmoor ponies and riding out from

the town. A---- rides fairly well tho' he has not been astride a beast

for years. As for me, I cannot ride at all! Yet I had the idea that I

could easily manage a pretty little pony with brown eyes and a long

tail. On going out into the Inn yard, was horrified--two horses

saddled--one a large traction beast.... I climbed on to the smaller one,

walked him out of the yard and down the road in good style without

accident. Once in the country, however, my animal, the fresher of the

two, insisted on a smart trot which shook me up a good deal so that I

hardly kept my seat. This eventually so annoyed the animal that it

began to fidget and zigzag across the road--no doubt preparing to break

away at a stretch gallop when once it had rid itself of the

incomprehensible pair of legs across its back.

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

Walked him most of the way, while A---- cantered forward and back to

cheer me on. Ultimately however this beast, too, got sick of walking and

began to trot. For a time I stood this well and began to rise in my

saddle quite nicely. After two miles, horrible soreness supervened, and

I had to get off--very carefully, with a funny feeling in my legs--even

looked down at them to assure myself they were not bandy! In doing so,

the horse--this traction monster--stepped on my toe and I swore.

On nearing the village, L---- arrived, riding A----'s animal and holding

his sides for laughing at me as I crawled along holding the carthorse by

the bridle. Got on again and rode into the Rectory grounds in fine style

like a dashing cavalier, every one jeering at me from the lawn.

_September_ 28.

Having lived on this planet now for the space of 24 years, I can claim

with some cogency that I am qualified to express some sort of opinion

about it. I therefore hereby record that I find myself in an absorbingly

interesting place where I live, move and have my being, dominated by one

monstrous feature above all others--the mystery of it all! Everything is

so astonishing, my own existence so incredible!

Nothing explains itself. Every one is dumb. It is like walking about at

a masqued Ball.... Even I myself am a mystery to me. How wonderful and

frightening that is--to feel yourself--your innermost and most

substantial possession to be a mystery, incomprehensible. I look at

myself in the mirror and mock at myself. On some days I am to myself as

strange and unfamiliar as a Pterodactyl. There is a certain grim humour

in finding myself here possessed of a perfectly arbitrary arrangement

of lineaments when I never asked to be here and never selected my own

attributes. To the dignity of a human being it seems like a coarse

practical joke.... My own freakish physique is certainly a joke.

_October_ 4.

_In London Again_

K---- comes in from her dancing class, nods to me, hugs her sister

around the neck and says,--

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

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

to-night."

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

(Laughter!)

_October_ 8.

Heard a knock at the door last night, and, thinking it was R----, I

unbolted it and let in a tramp who at once asked God to bless me and

crown all my sorrow with joy. An amiable fellow to be sure--so I gave

him some coppers and he at once repeated with wonderful fervour, "God

bless you, sir."

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

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

sir?"

In ten minutes I should have told him all my personal history. But he

was thirsting for a drink and went off quickly and left me with my heart

unburthened. London is a lonely place.

To-day journeyed to ---- where I gave evidence as an _expert_ in Economic

Entomology at the County Court in a case concerning damage to furniture

by mites for which I am paid £8 8s. fee and expenses and travelled first

class. What irony! (See June 30, 1911.)

_October_ 11.

I may be a weak, maundering, vacillating fool but I cannot help loving

her on one day, being indifferent the next and on some occasions even

disliking her.... To-day she was charming, with a certain warm glossy

perfection on her face and hair.... And she loves me--I could swear it.

"And when a woman woos ..." etc. How difficult for a vain and lonely man

to resist her. She tells me many times in many dainty ways that she

loves me without so much as stopping her work to talk.

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

_bouleversement_....

_October_ 13.

Went to see a Harley Street oculist about the sight of one eye, which

has caused a lot of trouble and worry of late and continuously haunted

me with the possibility of blindness. At times, I see men as trees

walking and print becomes hopelessly blurred.

The Specialist however is reassuring. The eye is healthy --no

neuritis--but the adjustment muscles have been thrown out of gear by the

nervous troubles of last spring.

* * * * *

Was ever man more sorely tempted? Here am I lonely and uncomfortable in

diggings with a heart like nascent oxygen.... Shall I? Yes, but.... And

I have neither health nor wealth.

_October_ 22.

_The British Museum Reading Room_

I saw it for the first time to-day! Gadzooks!! This is the only fit

ejaculation to express my amazement! It's a pagan temple with the Gods

in the middle and all around, various obscure dark figures prostrating

themselves in worship.

For any one who is not simply a Sheep or Cow or whose nervous

organisation is a degree more sensitive than the village blacksmith's,

it is a besetting peril to his peace of mind to be constantly moving

about an independent being, with loves and hates, and a separate

identity among other separate identities, who prowl and prowl around

like the hosts of Midian--ready to snarl, fight, seize you, bore you,

exasperate you, to arouse all your passions, call up all the worst from

the depths where they have lain hidden.... A day spent among my fellows

goads me to a frenzy by the evening. I am no longer fit for human

companionship. People string me up to concert pitch. I develop

suspicions of one that he is prying, of another that he patronises.

Others make me horribly anxious to stand well in their eyes and horribly

curious to know what they think of me. Others I hate and loathe--for no

particular reason. There is a man I am acquainted with concerning whom I

know nothing at all. He may be Jew, Gentile, Socinian, Pre-adamite,

Anabaptist, Rosicrucian--I don't know, and I don't care, for I hate him.

I should like to smash his face in. I don't know why.... In the whole

course of our tenuous acquaintance we have spoken scarce a dozen words

to each other. Yet I should like to blow up his face with dynamite. If I

had £200 a year private income I should be in wait for him to-morrow

round a corner and land him one--just to indicate my economic

independence. He would call for the police and the policeman--discerning

creature--on arrival, would surely say, "With a face like that, I'm not

surprised."

* * * * *

R---- said to me this morning, "Well, have you heard?" with an

exuberance of curiosity that made my blood boil--he was referring to my

Essay still at the bar of the opinion of the Editor of the _English

Review_. "You beast," I snapped and walked off.

R---- shouted with laughter for he realizes my anger with him is only

semi-serious: it is meant and not meant: meant, for it is justified by

the facts; not meant, for I can't be too serious over anything _au

fond_.

* * * * *

Of all the grim and ridiculous odds and ends of chance that Fortune has

rolled up to my feet, my friendship with a man like B---- is the

grimmest and most ridiculous. He is a bachelor of sixty, rather

good-looking, of powerful physique and a faultless constitution.... His

ignorance is colossal and he once asked whether Australia, for example,

tho' surrounded by water, is not connected up with other land underneath

the sea. Being himself a child in intelligence (tho' commercially

cunning), he has a great respect for my brains. Being himself a strong

man, he views my ill-health with much contempt. His private opinion is

that I am in consumption. When asked once by a lady if I were not going

to be "a great man" one day, he replied, "Yes--if he lives." I ought to

walk six miles a day, drink a bottle of stout with my dinner, and eat

plenty of _onions_. His belief in the curative properties of onions is

strong as death....

His system of prophylaxis may be quickly summarised,--

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

(2) A woman.

These two sterling preventives he has often urged upon me at the same

time tipping out a quantity of anathemas on doctors and physic....

He is a cynic. He scoffs at the medical profession, the Law, the Church,

the Press. Every man is guilty until he is proved innocent. The Premier

is an unscrupulous character, the Bishop a salacious humbug. No doctor

will cure, for it pays him to keep you ill. Every clergyman puts the

Sunday-school teacher in the family way. His mouth is permanently

distorted by cynicism.

He is vain and believes all women are in love with him. When playing the

Gallant, he turns on a special voice, wears white spats, and looks like

a Newmarket "Crook."

"I lost my 'bus," a girl says to him. "Lost your bust," he answers, in

broad Scotch. "I can't see that you've done that." ... His sexual career

has been a remarkable one, he claiming to have brought many women to

bed, and actually to have lain with women of almost all European

nationalities, for he has been a great traveller....

This man is my devoted friend!... And truth to tell I get on with him

better than I do with most people. I like his gamey flavour, his utter

absence of self-consciousness, and his doggy loyalty to myself--his

weaker brother. He may be depraved in his habits, coarse in his

language, boorish in his manners, ludicrous in the wrongness of all his

views. But I like him just because he is so hopeless. I get on with him

because it is so impossible to reclaim him--my missionary spirit is not

intrigued. If he only dabbled in vice (for an experiment), if he had

pale, watery ideas about current literature--if--to use his own

favourite epithet--he were _genteel_, I should quarrel.

_October_ 30.

Having developed a passion for a piece of sculpture by R. Boeltzig

called the Reifenwerferin--the most beautiful figure of a woman. I am

already devoted to Rodin's "Kiss" and have a photo of it framed in my

bedroom. Have written to Bruciani's.

I suspect that my growing appreciation of the plastic art is with me

only distilled sensuality. I enjoy my morning bath for the same reason.

My bath is a daily baptism. I revel in the pleasure of the pain of the

cold water. I whistle gleefully because I am clean and cool and nude

early in the morning with the sun still low, before the day has been

stained by clothes, dirt, pain, exasperation, death.... How I love

myself as I rub myself down!--the cool, pink skin--I could eat it! I

want to be all day in a cold bath to enjoy the pain of mortifying the

flesh--it is so beautiful, so soft, so inscrutable--if I cut out chunks

of it, it would only bleed.

_November_ 8.

The other morning R---- said hyperbolically that he hadn't slept all

night for fear that, before he had time to put an arresting hand on my

shoulder and say "Don't," I might have gone and become "Entangled." ...

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

was continued as follows,--

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

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

embarrassing."

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

man."

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

She: "Then I _am_ serious."

Tears.

I say: "I wish you would take me only for what I am--a blackguard with

no good intentions, yet no very evil ones--but still a blackguard, whom

you seem to find has engaging manners."

I breathe freely hoping to have escaped this terrible temptation and

turn to go. But she, looking up smiling thro' a curtain of wet

eyelashes, asks,--

"Won't the blackguard stop a little longer?" In a moment my earth works,

redoubts, and bastions fall down, I rush forward impetuously into her

arms shouting, "I _will_, I _will_, I will as long as for eternity."

(Curtain.)

I dramatised this little picture and much more last night before going

to sleep when I was in a fever. I should succumb at once to the first

really skilful coquette.

_November_ 9.

_Ludo_

We played Ludo together this evening and she won 2s. 6d. Handsomely

gowned in black and wearing black ornaments, she sat with me in the

lamplight on the sofa in the Morris Room, with the Ludo board between us

placed on a large green cushion. Her face was white as parchment and

her hair seemed an ebony black. I lolled in the opposite corner, a thin,

elongated youth, with fair hair all stivvered up, dressed in a

light-brown lounge suit with a good trouser crease, a soft linen collar

and--a red tie! Between us, on its green cushion the Ludo board with its

brilliantly coloured squares:--all of it set before a background formed

by the straight-backed, rectangular, settle-like sofa, with a charming

covering which went with the rest of the scheme.

"Rather decorative,"---- remarked in an audible voice, turning her head

on one side and quizzing. I can well believe it was. _She_ looked wholly

admirable.

_November_ 21.

_My Nightmare_

Can't get rid of my cough. I have so many things to do--I am living in a

fever of haste to get them done. Yet this cough hinders me. There is

always something which drags me back from the achievement of my desires.

It's like a nightmare; I see myself struggling violently to escape from

a monster which draws continuously nearer, until his shadow falls across

my path, when I begin to run and find my legs tied, etc. The only

difference is that mine is a nightmare from which I never wake up. The

haven of successful accomplishment remains as far off as ever. Oh! make

haste.

_November_ 29.

The _English Review_ has returned my Essay!--This is a keen

disappointment to me. "I wish I could use this, but I am really too

full," the Editor writes. To be faintly encouraged and delicately

rejected--why I prefer the printed form.

_December_ 1.

_More Irony_

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

Austin Harrison.

M---- thinks the lungs are all right. "There is nothing there, I think,"

said he, this morning. Alleluia! I've had visions of consumption for

weeks past and M---- himself has been expecting it. I always just escape:

I always almost get something, do something, go somewhere, I have

dabbled in a variety of diseases, but never got one downright[2]--but

only enough to make me feel horribly unfit and very miserable without

the consolation of being able to regard myself as the heroic victim of

some incurable disorder. Instead of being Stevenson with tuberculosis,

I've only been Jones with dyspepsia. So, too, in other directions, big

events have always just missed me: by Herculean efforts I succeeded in

giving up newspaper journalism and breaking thro' that steel

environment--but only to become an Entomologist! I once achieved success

in an Essay in the _Academy_, which attracted attention--a debut,

however, that never developed. I had not quite arrived. It is always

_not quite_.

Yesterday, I received a state visit from the Editor of the _Furniture

Record_ seeking advice on how to eradicate mites from upholstering! I

received him ironically--but little did he understand.

I shot up like a ball on a bagatelle board all steamy into zoology (my

once beloved science) but at once rolled dead into the very low hole of

Economic Entomology! Curse.... Why can't I either have a first-rate

disease or be a first-rate zoologist?

Now just think what a much better figure I should have cut, from the

artistic view point, had I remained a newspaper reporter who had taught

himself prodigious embryology out of F.M. Balfour's Textbook, who had

cut sections of fowls' eggs and newt embryos with a hand microtome, who

had passionately dissected out the hidden, internal anatomy of a great

variety of animals, who could recite Wiedersheim's _Comparative Anatomy

of Vertebrates_ and patter off the difference between a nephridium and a

cœlomic duct without turning a hair--or the phylogenetic history (how

absorbing!) of the kidney--pronephros, mesonephros and metanephros and

all the ducts!... All this, over now and wasted. My hardly-won

knowledge wrenched away is never brought into use--it lies piled up in

my brain rotting. I could have become a first-rate comparative

anatomist.

_December_ 3.

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

it.

_December_ 9.

In the evening found it quite impossible to stay in the house any

longer: some vague fear drove me out. I was alarmed to be alone or to be

still. It is my cough, I think.

Had two glasses of port at the Kensington Hotel, conversed with the

barmaid, and then came home.

_December_ 10.

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

"_A propos_ of what?" I inquired.

"Mother, here's W---- proposing to E----! Do come," cried ----, with

intent to confuse. I laughed heartlessly.

Dear, dear, where will it all end? It's a sad business when you fall in

love with a girl you don't like.

_December_ 26.

Spent a romping day at the Flat. Kissed her sister twice under the

mistletoe, and in the evening went to a cinema. After supper made a mock

heroic speech and left hilarious.

[1] "The life of the Soul is different; there is nothing more changing,

more varied, more restless ... to describe the incidents of one hour

would require an eternity."--_Journal of Eugénie de Guérin_.

[2] See entry for November 27, 1915.

1914

_February_ 4.

... Finally and in conclusion I have fallen ill again, have again

resumed my periodical visits to the Doctor, and am swallowing his

rat-poison in a blind faith as aforetime. In fact, I am in London,

leading the same solitary life, seeing no one, talking to no one, and

daily struggling with this demon of ill-health. Can no one exorcise him?

The sight of _both_ my eyes is affected now. Blindness?

B---- continues whoring, drinking, sneering. R---- as usual, devoid of

emotion, cold, passionless, Shavian, and self-absorbed, still titillates

his mind with etching, sociology, music, etc., and I have at last ceased

to bore him with what he probably calls the febrile utterances of an

overwrought mind.

Such is my world! Oh! I forgot--on the floor below me is a corpse--that

of an old gentleman who passed away suddenly in the night. In the small

hours, the landlady went for the Doctor over the way, but he refused to

come, saying the old man was too aged. So the poor gentleman died

alone--in this rat hole of a place.

_February_ 7.

Intending to buy my usual 3d. packet of Goldflakes, entered a

tobacconist's in Piccadilly, but once inside surprised to find myself in

a classy west-end establishment, which frightened my flabby nature into

buying De Reszke's instead. I hadn't the courage to face the aristocrat

behind the counter with a request for Goldflakes--probably not stocked.

What would he think of me? Besides, I shrank from letting him see I was

not perfectly well-to-do.

_February_ 14.

I wonder what this year has in store for me? The first twenty-four years

of my life have hunted me up and down the keyboard--I have been right to

the top and also to the bottom--very happy and very miserable. Yet I

prefer the life that is a hunt and an adventure. I don't really mind

being chased like this. I almost thrive on the excitement. If I knew

always where to look with any degree of certainty for my next day's life

I should yawn! "What if to-day be sweet," I say, and never look ahead.

To me, next week is next century.

The danger and uncertainty of my life make me cherish and hug closely to

my heart various little projects that otherwise would seem unworthy. I

work at them quickly, frantically, sometimes, afraid to whisper to a

living soul what expectations I dare to harbour in my heart. What if

_now_ the end be near? Not a word! Let me go onward.

_February_ 15.

To-day I have reviewed the situation carefully, exhaustively. I have

peered into every aspect of my life and achievements and everything I

have seen nauseates me. I can find no ray of comfort in anything I have

done or in anything I might do. My life seems to have been a wilderness

of futile endeavour. I started wrong from the very beginning. At the

moment of my birth I was coming into the world in the wrong place and

under wrong conditions. Why seek to overcome such colossal initial

disadvantages? In this mood I found fault with my parentage, my

inheritance, all my mental and physical disabilities....

This must be a form of incipient insanity. Even as a boy, I can remember

being preternaturally absorbed in myself and preternaturally

discontented. I was accustomed to exhaust my mind by the most harassing

cross-examinations--no Counsel at the Bar ever treated a witness more

mercilessly. After a day of this sort of thing, when silently and

morbidly in every spare moment, at meals, in school, or on a walk, I

would incessantly ply the questions, "What is the ultimate value of your

work, _cui bono_?" etc. I went to bed in the evening with a feeling of

hopelessness and dissatisfaction--haggard with considerations and

reconsiderations of my outlook, my talent, my character, my future. In

bed, I tossed from side to side, mentally exhausted with my efforts to

obtain some satisfying conclusion--always hopeful, determined to the

last to be able to square up my little affairs before going to sleep.

But out of this mazy, vertiginous mass of thinking no satisfaction ever

came. _Now_, I thought--or the _next moment_--or as soon as I review and

revise myself in this or in that aspect, I shall be content. And so I

went on, tearing down and reforming, revising and reviewing, till

finally from sheer exhaustion and very unhappy I fell asleep.

Next morning I was all right.

_February_ 20.

Am feeling very unwell. My ill-health, my isolation, baulked ambitions,

and daily breadwinning all conspire to bring me down. The idea of a

pistol and the end of it grows on me day by day.

_February_ 21.

After four days of the most profound depression of spirits, bitterness,

self-distrust, despair, I emerged from the cloud to-day quite suddenly

(probably the arsenic and strychnine begins to take effect) and walked

up Exhibition Road with the intention of visiting the Science Museum

Library so as to refer to Schafer's _Essentials of Histology_ (I have to

watch myself carefully so that I may act _at once_ as soon as the

balance of mind is restored). In the lobby was a woman screaming as if

in pain, with a passer-by at her side saying sternly, "What is the

matter with you?" as if she were making herself ridiculous by suffering

pain in public.