The Jew wore spectacles and had a soft ingratiating voice and brown

doe-like eyes--a Jew in every respect. "Oh!" says he, in the oleaginous

Semitic way, and accurately taking up his cue (for all this was

rehearsed patter), "my wife says 'my face is my fortune.'"

"No wonder you're so hard up and 'ave got to take in lodgers. What's yer

name?"

"John Jones," in a demure wheedling voice.

"Hoo--that's not your name in your own bloody country--I expect it's

Hullabullinsky."

"Do you know what my name really is?"

"No."

"It's Assenheimopoplocatdwizlinsky Kovorod." (Loud laughter.)

"I shall call you 'ass' for short."

I was laughing loudly at these two clowns and the skipper observing as

much, shouted out to me,--

"Parlez-vous Francois, M'sieur?"

"Oui, oui," said I.

"Ah! lah, you're one of us--oh! what a game! what a bees' nest," and all

the time he went on selling caps and chucking them at the purchasers.

Perhaps one of the most extraordinary things I saw was a stream of young

men who, one after another, came up to a stall, paid a penny and

swallowed a glass of "nerve tonic"--a green liquid syphoned out of a

large jar--warranted a safe cure for

"Inward weakness, slightest flurry or body oppressed."

Another man was pulling teeth and selling tooth powder. Some of the

little urchins' teeth, after he had cleaned them as a demonstration,

were much whiter than their faces or his. This was "the original Chas.

Assenheim."

Mrs. Meyers, "not connected with any one else of the same name in the

Lane" was selling eels at 2d., 3d. and 6d. and doing a brisk trade too.

But I should go on for hours if I were to tell everything seen in this

remarkable lane during an hour and a half on a Sunday morning. Each

stall-holder sells only one kind of article--caps or clocks or songs,

braces, shawls, indecent literature, concertinas, gramophones, coats,

pants, reach-me-downs, epergnes. The thoroughfare was crowded with

people (I saw two Lascars in red fez caps) inspecting the goods

displayed and attentively observed by numerous policemen. The alarm

clocks were all going off, each gramophone was working a record (a

different one!) and every tradesman shouting his wares--a perfect

pandemonium.

_December_ 31.

_A Conversation_

"There is that easily calculable element in your nature, dear boy," I

said, "by which you forego the dignity of a free-willed human being and

come under an inflexible natural law. I can anticipate your movements,

intentions, and opinions long beforehand. For example, I know quite well

that every Saturday morning will see you with _The New Statesman_ under

your arm; I know that the words 'Wagner' or 'Shaw' uttered slowly and

deliberately in your ear will produce a perfectly definite reaction."

"I bet you can't predict what I am going to buy now,"

R---- replied gaily, advancing to the newspaper stall.

He bought the _Pink 'Un_ and I laughed....

"And so you read _Pragmatism_," he mused, "while the fate of the Empire

stands in the balance."

"Yes," said I, "and the Paris Academy of Sciences were discussing the

functions of _θ_ and the Polymorphism of Antarctic diatoms last

September when the Germans stood almost at the gates of Paris."

This was a lucky stroke for me, for he knew he was rubbing me on the

raw. We are, of course, great friends, but sometimes we get on one

another's nerves.

"I am polychromatic," I declaimed, "rhetorical, bass. You--besides being

a bally fool--are of a pretty gray colour, a baritone and you paint in

water-colours."

"Whereas you, of course, would paint in blood?" he answered facetiously.

His Oxford education has a firm hold on him. He says for example, "e

converso" instead of "on the other hand" and "entre nous" for "between

ourselves." He labels his paragraphs _α, β, γ_, instead of a, b, c, and

quotes Juvenal, knows Paris and Naples, visits the Alps for the winter

sports, all in the approved manner of dons.

Not infrequently he visits the East End to Study "how the poor live," he

lectures at Toynbee Hall, and calls the proletariat "the prolly." In

fact, he does everything according to the regulations, being a socialist

and an agnostic, a follower of Shaw and a devotee of Bunyan. "Erotic" he

is careful to pronounce _eròtic_ to show he knows Greek, and the "Duma,"

the _Dumà_, tho' he doesn't know Russian. Like any don, he is always

ready to discuss and give an opinion on any sub- supra- or circum-lunary

subject from bimetallism to the Symphony as an art-form.

"That's a dominant fifth," I said to him the other day; no answer.

"You ignorant devil," I said, "you don't know what a dominant fifth is!"

We made grimaces at one another.

"Who's the Master of the Mint?" I asked him. "That is an easy one."

"The Chancellor of the Exchequer," was the prompt reply.

"Oh! that's right," I said sarcastic and crestfallen. "Now tell me the

shortest verse in the Bible and the date of Rameses II."

We laughed. R---- is a very clever man and the most extraordinarily

versatile man I know. He is bound to make his mark. His danger is--too

many irons in the fire. Here are some of his occupations and

acquirements: Art (etching, drypoint, water-colours), music (a charming

voice), classics, French, German, Italian (both speaking and reading

knowledge), biology, etc., etc. He is for ever titillating his mind with

some new thing. "For God's sake, do leave it alone--you simply rag your

mind to death. Put it out to grass--go thro' an annual season of

complete abstinence from knowledge--an intellectual Lent."

No one more than he enjoys my ragging him like this--and I do it rather

well.

[1] "I could eat all the elephants of Hindustan and pick my teeth with

the Spire of Strassburg Cathedral."

[2] See January 2nd, 1915.

1915

_January_ 1.

I have grown so ridiculously hypercritical and fastidious that I will

refuse a man's invitation to dinner because he has watery blue eyes, or

hate him for a mannerism or an impediment or affectation in his speech.

Some poor devil who has not heard of Turner or Debussy or Dostoieffsky I

gird at with the arrogance of a knowledgeable youth of 17. Some oddity

who should afford a sane mind endless amusement, I write off as a _Insus

naturæ_ and dismiss with a flourish of contempt. My intellectual

arrogance--excepting at such times as I become conscious of it and pull

myself up--is incredible. It is incredible because I have no personal

courage and all this pride boils up behind a timid exterior. I quail

often before stupid but over-bearing persons who consequently never

realise my contempt of them. Then afterwards, I writhe to think I never

stood up to this fool; never uttered an appropriate word to interfere

with another's nauseating self-love. It exasperates me to be unable to

give a Roland for an Oliver--even servants and underlings "tick me

off"--to fail always in sufficient presence of mind to make the

satisfying rejoinder or riposte. I suffer from such a savage _amour

propre_ that I fear to enter the lists with a man I dislike on account

of the mental anguish I should suffer if he worsted me. I am therefore

bottled up tight--both my hates and loves. For a coward is not only

afraid to tell a man he hates him, but is nervous too of letting go of

his feeling of affection or regard lest it be rejected or not returned.

I shudder to think of such remarks as (referring to me), "He's one of my

admirers, you know" (sardonically), or, "I simply can't get rid of him."

If however my cork _does_ come out, there is an explosion, and placid

people occasionally marvel to hear violent language streaming from my

lips and nasty acid and facetious remarks.

Of course, to intimate friends (only about three persons in the wide,

wide world), I can always give free vent to my feelings, and I do so in

privacy with that violence in which a weak character usually finds some

compensation for his intolerable self-imposed reserve and restraint in

public. I can never marvel enough at the ineradicable turpitude of my

existence, at my _double-facedness_, and the remarkable contrast between

the face I turn to the outside world and the face my friends know. It's

like leading a double existence or artificially constructing a puppet to

dangle before the crowd while I fulminate behind the scenes. If only I

had the moral courage to play my part in life--to take the stage and be

myself, to enjoy the delightful sensation of making my presence felt,

instead of this vapourish mumming--then this Journal would be quite

unnecessary. For to me self-expression is a necessity of life, and what

cannot be expressed one way must be expressed in another. When colossal

egotism is driven underground, whether by a steely surface environment

or an unworkable temperament or as in my case by both, you get a truly

remarkable result, and the victim a truly remarkable pain--the pain one

might say of continuously unsuccessful attempts at parturition.

It is perhaps not the whole explanation to say that my milky affability

before, say bores or clods is sheer personal cowardice.... It is partly

real affability. I am so glad to have opposite me some one who is making

himself pleasant and affable and sympathetic that I forget for the

moment that he is an unconscionable time-server, a sycophant,

lick-spittle, toady, etc. My first impulse is always to credit folk with

being nicer, cleverer, more honest and amiable than they are. Then, on

reflection, I discover unpleasing characteristics, I detect their little

motives, and hate myself for not speaking. The fellow is intolerable,

why did I not tell him so? Bitter recriminations from my critical self

upon my flabby amiable half.

On the whole, then, I lead a pretty disgraceful inner life--excepting

when I pull myself together and smile benignly on all things with a

philosophical smugness, such as is by no means my mood at this present

moment. I am so envious that a reprint of one of Romney's Ramus girls

sends me into a dry tearless anger--for the moment till I turn over the

next page.... Inwardly I was exacerbated this morning when R----

recited, "Come and have a tiddle at the old Brown Bear," and explained

how a charming "young person" sang this at breakfast the other morning.

It was simply _too_ charming for him to hear.

To-night as I brushed my hair, I decided I was quite good-looking, and

_I believe_ I mused that E---- was really a lucky girl.... All that is

the matter with me is a colossal conceit and a colossal discontent,

qualities exaggerated where a man finds himself in an environment which

....

* * * * *

You observant people will notice that this explanation is something of a

self-defence whereby the virtue goes out of my confession. I plead

guilty, but great and unprecedented provocation as well. Intense pride

of individuality forbids that I should ever be other than, shall I say,

amiably disposed towards myself _au fond_, however displeased I may be

with my environment. It is indeed impossible without sending him to a

lunatic asylum ever to knock a man off the balance of his

self-esteem.... A man's loyalty to himself is the most pig-headed thing

imaginable.

_January_ 2.

_The Fire Bogey_

"This Box contains Manuscripts. One guinea will be paid to any one who

in case of danger from fire saves it from damage or loss."

Signed: W.N.P. BARBELLION.

I have had this printed in large black characters on a card, framed and

nailed to my "coffin" of Journals. I told the printer first to say _Two

Guineas_, but he suggested that One Guinea was quite enough. I agreed

but wondered how the devil _he_ knew what the Journals were

worth--nobody knows.

Next month, I expect I shall have a "hand" painted on the wall and

pointing towards the box. And the month after that I shall hire a

fireman to be on duty night and day standing outside No. 101 in a brass

helmet and his hatchet up at the salute.

These precious Journals! Supposing I lost them! I cannot imagine the

anguish it would cause me. It would be the death of my real self and as

I should take no pleasure in the perpetuation of my flabby, flaccid,

anæmic, amiable puppet-self, I should probably commit suicide.

_August_ 7.

Harvey who discovered the circulation of the blood also conducted a

great many investigations into the Anatomy and development of insects.

But all his MSS. and drawings disappeared in the fortunes of war, and

one half of his life work thus disappeared. This makes me feverish,

living as I do in Armageddon!

Again, all Malpighi's pictures, furniture, books and MSS. were destroyed

in a lamentable fire at his house in Bononia, occasioned it is said by

the negligence of his old wife.

About 1618, Ben Jonson suffered a similar calamity thro' a fire breaking

out in his study. Many unpublished MSS. perished.

A more modern and more tragic example I found recently in the person of

an Australian naturalist, Dr. Walter Stimpson, who lost all his MSS.,

drawings, and collections in the great fire of Chicago, and was so

excoriated by this irreparable misfortune that he never recovered from

the shock, and died the following year a broken man and unknown.

Of course the housemaid who lit the fire with the _French Revolution_ is

known to all, as well as Newton's "Fido, Fido, you little know what you

have done."

There are many dangers in preserving the labours of years in MS. form.

Samuel Butler (of _Erewhon_) advised writing in copying ink and then

pressing off a second copy to be kept in another and separate locality.

My own precautions for these Journals are more elaborate. Those who know

about it think I am mad. I wonder.... But I dare say I am a pathetic

fool--an incredible self-deceiver!

Anyhow--the "coffin" of raw material I sent down to T---- while I retain

the two current volumes. This is to avoid Zeppelins. E---- took the

"coffin" down for me on her way home from school, and at Taunton,

inquisitive porters mistaking it, I suppose, for an infant's coffin

carried it reverently outside the station and laid it down. She caught

them looking at it just in time before her train left. Under her

instructions they seized it by the brass handles and carried it back

again. I sit now and with a good deal of curiosity fondle the idea of

porters carrying about my Journals of confession. It's like being

tickled in the palm of the hand.... Two volumes of abstracted entries I

keep here, and, as soon as I am married, I intend to make a second copy

of these.... Then all in God's good time I intend getting a volume ready

for publication.

_January_ 30.

_Hearing Beethoven_

To the Queen's Hall and heard Beethoven's Fifth and Seventh Symphonies.

Before the concert began I was in a fever. I kept on saying to myself,

"I am going to hear the Fifth and Seventh Symphonies." I regarded myself

with the most ridiculous self-adulation--I smoothed and purred over

myself--a great contented Tabby cat--and all because I was so splendidly

fortunate as to be about to hear Beethoven's Fifth and Seventh

Symphonies.

It certainly upset me a little to find there were so many other people

who were singularly fortunate as well, and it upset me still more to

find some of them knitting and some reading newspapers as if they waited

for sausage and mashed.

How I gloried in the Seventh! I can't believe there was any one present

who gloried in it as I did! To be processing majestically up the steps

of a great, an unimaginable palace (in the "Staircase" introduction),

led by Sir Henry, is to have had at least a crowded ten minutes of

glorious life--a suspicion crossed the mind at one time "Good Heavens,

they're going to knight me." I cannot say if that were their intentions.

But I escaped however....

I love the way in which a beautiful melody flits around the Orchestra

and its various components like a beautiful bird.

_January_ 19.

_An Average Day_

After a morning of very mixed emotions and more than one annoyance ...

at last sat down to lunch and a little peace and quiet with R----. We

began by quoting verse at one another in open competition. Of course

neither of us listened to the other's verses. We merely enjoyed the

pleasure of recollecting and repeating our own. I began with Tom Moore's

"Row gently here, my Gondolier." R---- guessed the author rightly at

once and fidgeted until he burst out with, "The Breaths of kissing night

and day"--to me an easy one. I gave, "The Moon more indolently sleeps

to-night" (Baudelaire), and in reply he did a great stroke by reciting

some of the old French of Frangois Villon which entirely flummuxed me.

I don't believe we really love each other, but we cling to each other

out of ennui and discover in each other a certain cold intellectual

sympathy.

At the pay desk (Lyons' is our rendezvous) we joked with the cashier--a

cheerful, fat little girl, who said to R---- (indicating me),--

"He's a funny boy, isn't he?"

"Dangerous," chirped R----, and we laughed. In the street we met an

aged, decrepit newsvendor--very dirty and ragged--but his voice was

unexpectedly fruity.

"British Success," he called, and we stopped for the sake of the voice.

"I'm not interested," I said--as an appetiser.

"What! Not.... Just one sir: I haven't sold a single copy yet, and I've

a wife and four children."

"That's nothing to me--I've three wives and forty children," I remarked.

"What!" in affected surprise, turning to R----, "he's Brigham Young from

Salt Lake City. Yes I know it--I've been there myself and been dry ever

since. Give us a drink, sir--just one."

In consideration of his voice we gave him 2d. and passed on....

After giving a light to a Belgian soldier whose cigarette had gone out,

farther along we entered a queer old music shop where they sell

flageolets, serpents, clavichords, and harps. We had previously made an

appointment with the man to have Schubert's Unfinished Symphony played

to us, so as to recall one or two of the melodies which we can't recall

and it drives us crazy. "What is that one in the second movement which

goes like this?" and R---- whistled a fragment. "I don't know," I said,

"but let's go in here and ask." In the shop, a youth was kind enough to

say that if we cared to call next day, Madame A----, the harp player

would be home and would be ready to play us the symphony.

So this morning, before Madame's appearance, this kind and obliging

youth put a gramophone record of it on, to which we listened like two

intelligent parrots with heads sideways. Presently, the fat lady harpist

appeared and asked us just what we wanted to find out--a rather awkward

question for us, as we did not want to "find out" anything excepting how

the tunes went.

I therefore explained that as neither of us had sisters or wives, and we

both wanted, etc.... so would she...? In response, she smiled

pleasantly and played us the second movement on a shop piano. Meanwhile,

Henry the boy, hid himself behind the instruments at the rear of the

shop and as we signed to her she would say,--

"What's that, Henry?"

And Henry would duly answer from his obscurity, "Wood wind," or "Solo

oboe," or whatever it was, and the lad really spoke with authority. In

this way, I began to find out something about the work. Before I left, I

presented her with a copy of the score, which she did not possess and

because she would not accept any sort of remuneration.

"Won't you put your name on it?" she inquired.

I pointed gaily to the words "Ecce homo," which I had scribbled across

Schubert's name and said, "There you are." Madame smiled incredulously

and we said, "Good-bye."

It was a beautifully clement almost springlike day, and at the street

corner, in a burst of joyousness, we each bought a bunch of violets of

an old woman, stuck them on the ends of our walking-sticks, and marched

off with them in triumphant protest to the B.M. Carried over our

shoulders, our flowers amused the police and ----, who scarcely realised

the significance of the ritual. "This is my protest," said R----,

"against the war. It's like Oscar Wilde's Sunflower."

On the way, we were both bitterly disappointed at a dramatic meeting

between a man and woman of the artizan class which instead of beginning

with a stormy, "Robert, where's the rent, may I ask?" fizzled out into,

"Hullo, Charlie, why you _are_ a stranger."

At tea in the A.B.C. shop, we had a violent discussion on Socialism, and

on the station platform, going home, I said that before marriage I

intended saving up against the possibility of divorce--a domestic

divorce fund.

"Very dreadful," said R---- with mock gravity, "to hear a recently

affianced young man talk like that."

... What should I do then? Marry? I suppose so. Shadows of the

prison-house. At first I said I ought not to marry for two years. Then

when I am wildly excited with her I say "next week." We could. There are

no arrangements to be made. All her furniture--flat, etc. But I feel we

ought to wait until the War is over.

At dinner-time to-night I was feverish to do three things at once: write

out my day's Journal, eat my food, and read the _Journal_ of Marie

Bashkirtseff. Did all three--but unfortunately not at once, so that when

I was occupied with one I would surreptitiously cast a glance sideways

at the other--and repined.

After dinner, paid a visit to the ---- and found Mrs. ---- playing Patience.

I told her that 12,000 lives had been lost in the great Italian

earthquake. Still going on dealing out the cards, she said in her gentle

voice that that was dreadful and still absorbed in her cards inquired if

earthquakes had aught to do with the weather.

"An earthquake must be a dreadful thing," she gently piped, as she

abstractedly dealt out the cards for a new game in a pretty

Morris-papered room in Kensington.

_January_ 20.

_At a Public Dinner_

... The timorous man presently took out his cigarette-case and was going

to take out a cigarette, when he recollected that he ought first to

offer one to the millionaire on his right. Fortunately the cigarette

case was silver and the cigarettes appeared--from my side of the

dinner-table--to be fat Egyptians. Yet the timorous and unassuming

bug-hunter hesitated palpably. Ought he to offer his cigarettes? He

thought of his own balance at the bank and then of the millionaire's and

trembled. The case after all was only silver and the cigarettes were not

much more than a halfpenny each. Was it not impertinent? He sat a moment

studying the open case which he held in both hands like a hymn book,

while the millionaire ordered not wines--but a bass! At last courage

came, and he inoffensively pushed the cigarettes towards his friend.

"No, thanks!" smiled the millionaire, "I don't smoke." And so, 'twas a

unicorn dilemma after all.

_February_ 15.

Spent Xmas week at work in her studio, transcribing my Journals while

she made drawings. All unbeknown to her I was copying out entries of

days gone by--how scandalised she would be if...!

_February_ 22.

What an amazing Masque is Rotten Row on a Sunday morning! I sat on a

seat there this morning and watched awhile.

It was most exasperating to be in this kaleidoscope of human life

without the slightest idea as to who they all were. One man in

particular, I noticed--a first-class "swell"--whom I wanted to touch

gently on the arm, slip a half-a-crown into his hand and whisper,

"There, tell me all about yourself."

Such "swells" there were that out in the fairway, my little cockle-shell

boat was wellnigh swamped. To be in the wake of a really magnificent

Duchess simply rocks a small boat in an alarming fashion. I leaned over

my paddles and gazed up. They steamed past unheeding, but I kept my

nerve all right and pulled in and out quizzing and observing.

It is nothing less than scandalous that here I am aged 25 with no means

of acquainting myself with contemporary men and women even of my own

rank and station. The worst of it is, too, that I have no time to

lose--in my state of health. This accursed ill-health cuts me off from

everything. I make pitiful attempts to see the world around me by an

occasional visit (wind, weather, and health permitting) to Petticoat

Lane, the Docks, Rotten Row, Leicester Square, or the Ethical Church.

To-morrow I purpose going to the Christian Scientists'. Meanwhile, the

others participate in Armageddon.

_February_ 23.

_Looking for Lice at the Zoo_

The other day went to the Zoological Gardens, and, by permission of the

Secretary, went round with the keepers and searched the animals for

ectoparasites.

Some time this year I have to make a scientific Report to the Zoological

Society upon all the Lice which from time to time have been collected on

animals dying in the gardens and sent me for study and determination.

We entered the cages, caught and examined several Tinamous,

_Rhinochetus, Eurypygia_, and many more, to the tune of "The Policeman's

Holiday" whistled by a Mynah! It was great fun.

Then we went into the Ostrich House and thoroughly searched two Kiwis.

These, being nocturnal birds, were roosting underneath a heap of straw.

When we had finished investigating their feathers, they ran back to

their straw at once, the keeper giving them a friendly tap on the rear

to hurry them up a bit. They are just like little old women bundling

along.

The Penguins, of course, were the most amusing, and, after operating

fruitlessly for some time on a troublesome Adèle, I was amused to find,

on turning around, all the other Adèles clustered close around my feet

in an attitude of mute supplication.

The Armadillo required all the strength of two keepers to hold still

while I went over his carcass with lens and forceps. I was also allowed

to handle and examine the Society's two specimens of that amazing

creature the _Echidna_.

_Balœniceps rex_ like other royalty had to be approached decorously. He

was a big, ill-tempered fellow, and quite unmanageable except by one

keeper for whom he showed a preference. While we other conspirators hid

ourselves outside, this man entered the house quietly and approached the

bird with a gentle cooing sound. Then suddenly he grabbed the bill and

held on. We entered at the same moment and secured the wings, and I

began the search--without any luck. We must have made an amusing

picture--three men holding on for dear life to a tall, grotesque bird

with an imperial eye, while a fourth searched the feathers for

parasites!

_February_ 28.

What a boon is Sunday! I can get out of bed just when the spirit moves

me, dress and bath leisurely, even with punctilio. How nice to dawdle in

the bath with a cigarette, to hear the holiday sound of Church bells!

Then comes that supreme moment when, shaven, clean, warm and hungry for

breakfast and coffee, I stand a moment before the looking-glass and comb

out my towzled hair with a parting as straight as a line in Euclid. That

gives the finishing touch of self-satisfaction, and I go down to

breakfast ready for the day's pleasure. I hate this weekday strain of

having to be always each day at a set time in a certain place.

_March_ 3.

I often sit in my room at the B.M. and look out at the traffic with a

glassy, mesmerised face--a fainéant. How different from that extremely

busy youth who came to London in 1912. Say--could that lad be I? How

many hours do I waste day-dreaming. This morning I dreamed and dreamed

and could not stop dreaming--I had not the will to shake myself down to

my task.... My memories simply trooped the colour.

It surprised me to find how many of them had gone out of my present

consciousness and with what poignancy of feeling I recognised them

again! How selfishly for the most part we all live in our present selves

or in the selves that are to be.

Then I raced thro' all sorts of future possibilities--oh! when and how

is it all going to end? How do you expect me to settle down to

scientific research with all this internal unrest! The scientific man

above all should possess the "quiet mind in all changes of fortune"--Sir

Henry Wotton's _How happy is he born and taught_.

The truth is I am a hybrid: a mixture of two very distinct temperaments

and they are often at war. To keep two different natures and two

different mental habits simultaneously at work is next to impossible.

Consequently plenty of waste and fever and--as I might have discovered

earlier for myself--success almost out of the question. If only I were

pure-bred science or pure-bred art!

_March_ 4.

Life is a dream and we are all somnambuloes. We know that for a fact at

all times when we are most intensely alive--at crises of unprecedented

change, in sorrow or catastrophe, or in any unusual incident brought

swiftly to a close like a vision!

* * * * *

I sit here writing this--a mirage! Who am I? No one can say. What am I?

"A soap-bubble hanging from a reed."

Every man is an inexhaustible treasury of human personality. He can go

on burrowing in it for an eternity if he have the desire--and a taste

for introspection. I like to keep myself well within the field of the

microscope, and, with as much detachment as I can muster, to watch

myself live, to report my observations of what I say, feel, think. In

default of others, I am myself my own spectator and

self-appreciator--critical, discerning, vigilant, fond!--my own stupid

Boswell, shrewd if silly. This spectator of mine, it seems to me, must

be a very moral gentleman and eminently superior. His incessant

attentions, while I go on my way misconducting myself, goad me at times

into a surly, ill-tempered outbreak, like Dr. Johnson. I hate being

shadowed and reported like this. Yet on the whole--like old Samuel

again--I am rather pleased to be Boswelled. It flatters me to know that

at least one person takes an unremitting interest in all my ways.

And, mind you, there are people who have seen most things but have never

seen themselves walking across the stage of life. If someone shows them

glimpses of themselves they will not recognise the likeness. How do you

walk? Do you know your own idiosyncrasies of gait, manner of speech,

etc.?

I never cease to interest myself in the Gothic architecture of my own

fantastic soul.[1]

_March_ 6.

_The Punch and Judy Show_

Spent a most delightful half-an-hour to-day reading an account in the

_Encyclopædia Britannica_ (one of my favourite books--it's so "gey

disconnekkit") the history of the Punch and Judy Show. It's a delightful

bit of antiquarian lore and delighted me the more because it had never

occurred to me before that it had an ancient history. I am thoroughly

proud of this recent acquisition of knowledge and as if it were a

valuable freehold I have been showing it off saying, "Rejoice with

me--see what I have got here." I fired it off first in detail at ----;

and H---- and D---- will probably be my victims to-morrow. After all, it

is a charming little cameo of history: compact, with plenty of scope for

conjecture, theory, research, and just that combination of all three

which would suit my taste and capacity if I had time for a Monograph.

_March_ 22

I waste much time gaping and wondering. During a walk or in a book or in

the middle of an embrace, suddenly I awake to a stark amazement at

everything. The bare fact of existence paralyses me--holds my mind in

mort-main. To be alive is so incredible that all I do is to lie still

and merely breathe--like an infant on its back in a cot. It is

impossible to be interested in anything in particular while overhead the

sun shines or underneath my feet grows a single blade of grass. "The

things immediate to be done," says Thoreau, "I could give them all up to

hear this locust sing." All my energies become immobilised, even my

self-expression frustrated. I could not exactly master and describe how

I feel during such moments.

_March_ 23.

_Johnson_ v. _Yves Delage_

I expect we have all of us at one time or another heard ourselves

addressing to annoying, objectionable acquaintances some such stinging

castigation as Hazlitt's letter to Gifford, or Burke's letter to a Noble

Lord, or Johnson's letter to Lord Chesterfield, or Rousseau's letter to

the Archbishop of Paris. If only I could indulge myself! At this moment

I could glut my rancours on six different persons at least!

What a raging discontent I have suffered to-day! What cynicism, what

bitterness of spirit, what envy, hate, exasperation, childish petulance,

what pusillanimous feelings and desires, what crude efforts to flout

simple, ingenuous folk with my own thwarted, repressed

self-assertiveness!

A solemn fellow told me he had heard from Johnson who said he had

already had much success from collecting in moss.[2] With an icy

politeness I asked who Johnson was. Who the Hell is Johnson? As a _quid

pro quo_ I began to talk of Yves Delage, which left him as much in the

dark as he left me. Our Gods differ, we have a different hierarchy.

"Well, how's your soul?" said R----, bursting in with a sardonic smile.

I gave him a despairing look and said:

"Oh! a pink one with blue spots," and he left me to my fate.

Had tea with the ---- and was amazed to find on the music tray in the

drawing-room of these inoffensive artists a copy of ----'s Memoir on

_Synapta_. Within his hearing, I said, "Did you and Mrs. ---- find this

exciting reading?" And I held it up with a sneer. I felt I had laid bare

a nerve and forthwith proceeded to make it twinge. ----, of course, was

glib with an explanation, yet the question remains incalculable--just

how pleased that young man is with himself.

After tea went out into the Studio and watched these two enthusiasts

paint. I must have glowered at them. I--the energetic, ambitious,

pushing youth--of necessity sitting down doing nought, as unconsidered

as a child playing on the floor. I recollected my early days in my attic

laboratory and sighed. Where is my energy now?

Mrs. ---- plays Chopin divinely well. How I envied this man--to have a

wife play you Chopin!

_March_ 24.

It is fortunate I am ill in one way for I need not make my mind up about

this War. I am not interested in it--this filth and lunacy. I have not

yet made up my mind about myself. I am so steeped in myself--in my

moods, vapours, idiosyncrasies, so self-sodden, that I am unable to

stand clear of the data, to marshal and classify the multitude of facts

and thence draw the deduction what manner of man I am. I should like to

know--if only as a matter of curiosity. So what in God's name am I? A

fool, of course, to start with--but the rest of the diagnosis?

One feature is my incredible levity about serious matters. Nothing

matters, provided the tongue is not furred. I have coquetted with death

for so long now, and endured such prodigious ill-health that my main

idea when in a fair state of repair is to seize the passing moment and

squeeze it dry. The thing that counts is to be drunken; as Baudelaire

says, "One must be for ever drunken; that is the sole question of

importance. If you would not feel the horrible burden of time that

bruises your shoulders and bends you to the earth, you must be drunken

without cease."

Another feature is my insatiable curiosity. My purpose is to move about

in this ramshackle, old curiosity shop of a world sampling existence. I

would try everything, meddle lightly with everything. Religions and

philosophies I devour with a relish, Pragmatism and Bishop Berkeley and

Bergson have been my favourite bagatelles in turn. My consciousness is a

ragbag of things: all quips, quirks, and quillets, all excellent passes

of pate, all the "obsolete curiosities of an antiquated cabinet" take my

eye for a moment ere I pass on. In Sir Thomas Browne's _Pseudodoxia_, I

am interested to find "why Jews do not stink, what is the superstition

of sneezing after saluting, wherefore negroes are black," and so forth.

There is a poetic appropriateness that in A.D. 1915 I should be occupied

mainly in the study of Lice. I like the insolence of it.

They tell me that if the Germans won it would put back the clock of

civilisation for a century. But what is a meagre 100 years? Consider the

date of the first Egyptian dynasty! We are now only in A.D. 1915--surely

we could afford to chuck away a century or two? Why not evacuate the

whole globe and give the ball to the Boches to play with--just as an

experiment to see what they can make of it. After all there is no

desperate hurry. Have we a train to catch? Before I could be serious

enough to fight, I should want God first to dictate to me his programme

of the future of mankind.

_March_ 25.

Often in the middle of a quite vivid ten seconds of life, I find I have

switched myself off from myself to make room for the person of a

disinterested and usually vulgar spectator. Even in the thrill of a

devotional kiss I have overheard myself saying, "Hot stuff, this witch."

Or in a room full of agreeable and pleasant people, while I am being as

agreeable as I know how, comes the whisper in a cynical tone, "These

damned women." I am apparently a triple personality:

(1) The respectable youth.

(2) The foul-mouthed commentator and critic.

(3) The real but unknown I.

Curious that these three should live together amiably in the same

tenement!

_In a Crowd_

A crowd makes egotists of us all. Most men find it repugnant to them to

submerge themselves in a sea of their fellows. A silent, listening crowd

is potentially full of commotion. Some poor devils suffocating and

unable any longer to bear the strain will shout, "Bravo," or "Hear,

hear," at every opportunity. At the feeblest joke we all laugh loudly,

welcoming this means of self-survival. Hence the success of the

Salvation Army. To be preached at and prayed for in the mass for long on

end is what human nature can't endure in silence and a good deal of self

can be smuggled by an experienced Salvationist into "Alleluia" or "The

Lord be praised."

_Naming Cockroaches_

I had to determine the names of some exotic cockroaches to-day and

finding it very difficult and dull raised a weak smile in two

enthusiasts who know them as "Blattids" by rechristening them with great

frivolity, "Fat 'eds."

"These bloody insects," I said to an Australian entomologist of rare

quality.

"A good round oath," he answered quietly.

"If it was a square one it wouldn't roll properly," I said. It is nice

to find an entomologist with whom I can swear and talk bawdy.

_March_ 26.

_A Test of Happiness_

The true test of happiness is whether you know what day of the week it

is. A miserable man is aware of this even in his sleep. To be as

cheerful and rosy-cheeked on Monday as on Saturday, and at breakfast as

at dinner is to--well, make an ideal husband.

... It is a strange metempsychosis, this transformation of an

enthusiast--tense, excitable, and active, into a sceptic, nerveless,

ironical, and idle. That's what ill-health can do for a man. To be among

enthusiasts--zoologists, geologists, entomologists--as I frequently am,

makes me feel a very old man, regarding them as children, and provokes

painful retrospection and sugary sentimentality over my past flame now

burnt out.

I do wonder where I shall end up; what shall I be twenty years hence? It

alarms me to find I am capable of such remarkable changes in character.

I am fluid and can be poured into any mould. I have moments when I see

in myself the most staggering possibilities. I could become a wife

beater, and a drug-taker (especially the last). My curiosity is often

such a ridiculous weakness that I have found myself playing Peeping Tom

and even spying into private documents. In a railway carriage I will

twist my neck and risk any rudeness to see the title of the book my

neighbour is reading or how the letter she is reading begins.

_April_ 10.

"Why," asks Samuel Butler, "should not chicken be born and clergymen be

laid and hatched? Or why, at any rate, should not the clergyman be born

full grown and in Holy Orders not to say already beneficed? The present

arrangement is not convenient ... it is not only not perfect but so much

the reverse that we could hardly find words to express our sense of its

awkwardness if we could look upon it with new eyes...."

As soon as we are born, if we could but get up, bathe, dress, shave,

breakfast once for all, if we could "cut" these monotonous cycles of

routine. If once the sun rose it would stay up, or once we were alive we

were immortal!--how much forrarder we should all get--always at the

heart of things, working without let or hindrance in a straight line for

the millennium! Now we waltz along instead. Even planets die off and new

ones come in their place. How infinitely wearisome it seems. When an old

man dies what a waste, and when a baby is born what a redundancy of

labour in front!

_Two People I hate in particular_

The man walking along the pavement in front of me giving me no room to

pass under the satisfactory impression that he is the only being on the

pavement or in the street, city, country, world, universe: and it all

belongs to him even the moon and sun and stars.

The woman on the 'bus the other night--pouring out an interminable flow

of poisonous chatter into the ear of her man--poor, exhausted devil who

kept answering dreamily "Oom" and"Yes" and "Oom"--how I hated her for

his sake!

_April_ 11.

_Beethoven's Fifth Symphony_

If music moves me, it always generates images--a procession of

apparently disconnected images in my mind. In the Fifth Symphony, for

example, as soon as the first four notes are sounded and repeated, this

magic population springs spontaneously into being. A nude,

terror-stricken figure in headlong flight with hands pressed to the ears

and arms bent at the elbows--a staring, bulgy-eyed mad-woman such as one

sees in Raemakers' cartoons of the Belgian atrocities. A man in the

first onset of mental agony on hearing sentence of death passed upon

him. A wounded bird, fluttering and flopping in the grass. It is the

struggle of a man with a steam-hammer--Fate. As tho' thro' the walls of

a closed room--some mysterious room, a fearful spot--I crouch and listen

and am conscious that inside some brutal punishment is being meted out

--there are short intervals, then unrelenting pursuit, then hammerlike

blows--melodramatic thuds, terrible silences (I crouch and wonder what

has happened), and the pursuit begins again. I see clasped hands and

appealing eyes and feel very helpless and mystified outside. An

epileptic vision or an opium dream--_Dostoievsky_ or De Quincey set to

music.

In the Second Movement the man is broken, an unrecognisable vomit. I see

a pale youth sitting with arms hanging limply between the knees, hands

folded, and with sad, impenetrable eyes that have gazed on unspeakable

horrors. I see the brave, tearful smile, the changed life after personal

catastrophe, the Cross held before closing eyes, sudden absences of

mind, reveries, poignant retrospects, the rustle of a dead leaf of

thought at the bottom of the heart, the tortuous pursuit of past

incidents down into the silence of yesterday, the droning of comfortable

words, the painful collection of the wreckage of a life with intent to

"carry on" for a while in duty bound, for the widow consolation in the

child; a greyhound's cold wet nose nozzling into a listless hand, and

outside a Thrush singing after the storm, etc., etc.

In the Third Movement comes the crash by which I know something final

and dreadful has happened. Then the resurrection with commotion in

Heaven: tempests and human faces, scurryings to and fro, brazen

portcullises clanging to, never to open more, the distant roll of drums

and the sound of horses' hoofs. From behind the inmost veil of Heaven I

faintly catch the huzzas of a great multitude. Then comes a great

healing wind, then a few ghost-like tappings on the window pane till

gradually the Avenue of Arches into Heaven come into view with a solemn

cortege advancing slowly along.

Above the great groundswell of woe, Hope is restored and the Unknown

Hero enters with all pomp into his Kingdom, etc., etc.

I am not surprised to learn that Beethoven was once on the verge of

suicide.

_April_ 15.

There is an absurd fellow ... who insists on taking my pirouettes

seriously. I say irresponsibly, "All men are liars," and he replies with

jejuneness and exactitude of a pronouncing dictionary, "A liar is one

who makes a false statement with intent to deceive." What can I do with

him? "Did I ever meet a lady," he asked, "who wasn't afraid of mice?" "I

don't know," I told him, "I never experiment with ladies in that way."

He hates me.

_May_ 11.

This mysterious world makes me chilly. It is chilly to be alive among

ghosts in a nightmare of calamity. This Titanic war reduces me to the

size and importance of a debilitated housefly. So what is a poor egotist

to do? To be a common soldier is to become a pawn in the game between

ambitious dynasts and their ambitious marshals. You lose all

individuality, you become a "bayonet" or a "machine gun," or "cannon

fodder," or "fighting material."

_May_ 22.

Generosity may be only weakness, philanthropy (beautiful word),

self-advertisement, and praise of others sheer egotism. One can almost

hear a eulogist winding himself up to strike his eulogy that comes out

sententious, pompous, and full of self.

_May_ 23.

The following is a description of Lermontov by Maurice Baring:

"He had except for a few intimate friends an impossible temperament; he

was proud, over-bearing, exasperated and exasperating, filled with a

savage _amour-propre_ and he took a childish delight in annoying; he

cultivated 'le plaisir aristocratique de déplaire.' ... He could not

bear not to make himself felt and if he felt he was unsuccessful in this

by fair means he resorted to unpleasant ones. Yet he was warm-hearted,

thirsting for love and kindness and capable of giving himself up to love

if he chose.... At the bottom of all this lay no doubt a deep-seated

disgust with himself and with the world in general, and a complete

indifference to life resulting from large aspirations which could not

find an outlet and recoiled upon himself."

This is an accurate description of Me.

_May_ 26.

The time will come--it's a great way off--when a joke about sex will be

not so much objectionable as unintelligible. Thanks to Christian

teaching, a nude body is now an obscenity, of the congress of the sexes

it is indecent to speak and our birth is a corruption. Hence come a

legion of evils: reticence, therefore ignorance and therefore venereal

disease; prurience especially in adolescence, poisonous literature, and

dirty jokes. The mind is contaminated from early youth; even the

healthiest-minded girl will blush at the mention of _the wonder of

creation_. Yet to the perfectly enfranchised mind it should be as

impossible to joke about sex as about mind or digestion or physiology.

The perfectly enfranchised poet--and Walt Whitman in "The Song of

Myself" came near being it--should be as ready to sing of the incredible

raptures of the sexual act between "twin souls" as of the clouds or

sunshine. Every man or woman who has loved has a heart full of beautiful

things to say but no man dare--for fear of the police, for fear of the

coarse jests of others and even of a breakdown in his own

highmindedness. I wonder just how much wonderful lyric poetry has thus

been lost to the world!

_May_ 27.

_The Pool: A Retrospect_

From above, the pool looked like any little innocent sheet of water. But

down in the hollow itself it grew sinister. The villagers used to say

and to believe that it had no bottom and certainly a very great depth

in it could be _felt_ if not accurately gauged as one stood at the

water's edge. A long time ago, it was a great limestone quarry, but

to-day the large mounds of rubble on one side of it are covered with

grass and planted with mazzard trees, grown to quite a large girth. On

the other side one is confronted by a tall sheet of black, carboniferous

rock, rising sheer out of the inky water--a bare sombre surface on which

no mosses even--"tender creatures of pity," Ruskin calls them--have

taken compassion by softening the jagged edges of the strata or nestling

in the scars. It is an excellent example of "Contortion" as Geologists

say, for the beds are bent into a quite regular geometrical pattern

--syncline and anticline in waves--by deep-seated plutonic force that

makes the mind quake in the effort to imagine it.

On the top of this rock and overhanging the water--a gaunt,

haggard-looking Fir tree impends, as it seems in a perilous balance,

while down below, the pool, sleek and shiny, quietly waits with a

catlike patience.

In summer time, successive rows of Foxgloves one behind the other in

barbaric splendour are ranged around the grassy rubble slopes like

spectators in an amphitheatre awaiting the spectacle. Fire-bellied Efts

slip here and there lazily thro' the water. Occasionally a Grass-snake

would swim across the pool and once I caught one and on opening his

stomach found a large fire-bellied Eft inside. The sun beats fiercely

into this deep hollow and makes the water tepid. On the surface grows a

glairy Alga, which was once all green but now festers in yellow patches

and causes a horrible stench. Everything is absolutely still, air and

water are stagnant. A large _Dytiscus_ beetle rises to the surface to

breathe and every now and then large bubbles of marsh gas come sailing

majestically up from the depth and explode quietly into the fetid air.

The _horrificness_ of this place impressed me even when I was intent

only on fishing there for bugs and efts. Now, seen in retrospect, it

haunts me.

_May_ 28.

It is only by accident that certain of our bodily functions are

distasteful. Many birds eat the faeces of their young. The vomits of

some Owls are formed into shapely pellets, often of beautiful

appearance, when composed of the glittering multi-coloured elytra of

Beetles, etc. The common Eland is known to micturate on the tuft of hair

on the crown of its head, and it does this habitually, when lying down,

by bending its head around and down--apparently because of the aroma,

perhaps of sexual importance during mating time, as it is a habit of the

male alone.

At lunch time, had an unpleasant intermittency period in my heart's

action and this rather eclipsed my anxiety over a probable Zeppelin

Raid. Went home to my rooms by 'bus, and before setting off to catch my

train for West Wycombe to stay for the week-end at a Farm with

E---- swallowed two teaspoonfuls of neat brandy, filled my flask, and

took a taxi to Paddington. At 3.50 started to walk to C---- H---- Farm

from W. Wycombe Station, where E---- has been lodging for some weeks

taking a rest cure after a serious nervous breakdown thro' overwork. As

soon as I stepped out of the train, I sniffed the fresh air and soon

made off down the road, happy to have left London and the winter and the

war far behind. The first man of whom I inquired the way happened to

have been working at the Farm only a few weeks ago, so I relied

implicitly on his directions, and as it was but a mile and a half

decided that my wobbly heart could stand the strain. I set out with a

good deal of pleasurable anticipation. I was genuinely looking forward

to seeing E----, altho' in the past few weeks our relations had become a

little strained, at least on my part, mainly because of her little

scrappy notes to me scribbled in pencil, undated, and dull! Yet I could

do with a volume of "Sonnets from the Portuguese." These letters chilled

me. In reply, I wrote with cold steel short, lifeless formal notes, for

I felt genuinely aggrieved that she should care so little how she wrote

to me or how she expressed her love. I became ironical with myself over

the prospect of marrying a girl who appeared so little to appreciate my

education and mental habits. [What a popinjay!--1917.] My petty spirit

grew disenchanted, out of love. I was false to her in a hundred

inconsiderable little ways and even deliberately planned the breaking

off of the engagement some months hence when she should be restored to

normal health.

But once in the country and, as I thought, nearing my love at every step

and at every bend in the road, even anticipating her arms around me with

real pleasure (for she promised to meet me half way), I on a sudden grew

eager for her again and was assured of a happy week-end with her. Then

the road grew puzzling and I became confused, uncertain of the way. I

began to murmur she should have given me instructions. Every now and

then I had to stop and rest as my heart was beating so furiously.

Espying a farm on the left I made sure I had arrived at my destination

and walked across a field to it and entered the yard where I heard some

one milking a cow in a shed. I shouted over the five-barred gate into

empty space, "Is this C---- H---- Farm?" A labourer came out of the shed

and redirected me. It was now ten to five. I was tired and out of sorts,

and carried a troublesome little handbag. I swore and cursed and found

fault with E---- and the Universe.

I trudged on, asking people, as I went, the way, finally emerging from

the cover of a beautiful wood thro' a wicket gate almost at the entrance

to the Farm I sought. At the front door we embraced affectionately and

we entered at once, I putting a quite good face upon my afternoon's

exertions--when I consider my unbridled fury of a short time before.

E----, as brown as a berry, conducted me to my bedroom and I nearly

forgot to take this obvious opportunity of kissing her again.

"How are you?" I asked.

"All right," she said, fencing.

"But really?"

"All right."

(A little nettled): "My dear, that isn't going to satisfy me. You will

have to tell me exactly how you are."

After tea, I recovered myself and we went for a walk together. The

beauty of the country warmed me up, and in the wood we kissed--I for my

part happy and quite content with the present state of our relations,

_i.e._, affectionate but not perfervid.

_May_ 29.

Got up early and walked around the Farm before breakfast. Everything

promises to be delightful--young calves, broods of ducklings, and

turkeys, fowls, cats and dogs. In the yard are two large Cathedral

barns, with enormous pent roofs sloping down to within about two feet of

the ground and entered by way of great double doors that open with the

slowness and solemnity of a Castle's portal studded with iron knobs. It

thrilled me to the marrow on first putting my head outside to be greeted

with the grunt of an invisible pig that I found scraping his back on the

other side of the garden wall.

In the afternoon, E---- and I sat together in the Beech Wood: E---- on a

deck chair and I on a rug on the ground. In spite of our beautiful

surroundings we did not progress very well, but I attributed her slight

aloofness to the state of her nerves. She is still far from recovered.

These wonderful Beech Woods are quite new to me. The forest beech is a

very different plant from the solitary tree. In the struggle to reach

the light the Forest Beech grows lean and tall and gives an

extraordinary suggestion of wiry powerful strength. On the margins of

the wood, Bluebells were mobilised in serried ranks. Great Tits

whistled--in the language of our allies--"Bijou, Bijou" and I agreed

with every one of them.

Some folk don't like to walk over Bluebells or Buttercups or other

flowers growing on the ground. But it is foolish to try to pamper Nature

as if she were a sickly child. She is strong and can stand it. You can

stamp on and crush a thousand flowers--they will all come up again next

year.

By some labyrinthine way which I cannot now recall, the conversation

worked round to a leading question by E.--if in times like these we

ought not to cease being in love? She was quite calm and serious. I said

"No, of course not, silly." My immediate apprehension was that she had

perceived the coldness in my letters and I was quite satisfied that she

was so well able to read the signs in the sky. "But you don't wish to go

on?" she persisted. I persisted that I did, that I had no misgivings, no

second thoughts, that I was not merely taking pity on her, etc. The wild

temptation to seize this opportunity for a break I smothered in

reflecting how ill she was and how necessary to wait first till she was

well again. These thoughts passed swiftly, vaguely like wraiths thro' my

mind: I was barely conscious of them. Then I recalled the sonnet about

coming in the rearward of a conquered woe and mused thereon. But I took

no action. [Fortunately--for me. 1916.]

Presently with cunning I said that there was no cloud on my horizon

whatever--only her "letters disappointed me a little--they were so

cold," but "as soon as I saw you again, darling, those feelings

disappeared."

As soon as they were spoken I knew they were not as they might seem, the

words of a liar and hypocrite. They _became_ true. E---- looked very

sweet and helpless and I loved her again as much as ever.

"It's funny," she said, "but I thought your letters were cold. Letters

are so horrid."

The incident shews how impossible is intellectual honesty between

lovers. Truth is at times a hound which must to kennel.

"Write as you would speak," said I. "You know I'm not one to carp about

a spelling mistake!"

The latter remark astonished me. Was it indeed I who was speaking? All

the week I had been fuming over this. Yet I was honest: the Sun and E.'s

presence were dispelling my ill-humours and crochets. We sealed our

conversation with a kiss and swore never to doubt each other again. E.'s

spell was beginning to act. It is always the same. I cannot resist the

actual presence of this woman. Out of her sight, I can in cold blood

plan a brutal rupture. I can pay her a visit when the first kiss is a

duty and the embrace a formality. But after 5 minutes I am as passionate

and devoted as before. It is always thus. After leaving her, I am angry

to think that once more I have succumbed.

In the evening we went out into a field and sat together in the grass.

It is beautiful. We lay flat on our backs and gazed up at the sky.

* * * * *

S.H. has died of enteric at Malta. In writing to Mrs. H., instead of

dwelling on what a splendid fellow he was I belaboured the fact that I

still remembered our boyish friendship in every detail and still kept

his photo on my mantelpiece and altho' "in later years" I didn't suppose

we "had a great deal in common I discovered that a friendship even

between two small boys cannot wholly disappear into the void."

Discussing myself when I ought to have been praising him! Ugh! She will

think what a conceited, puff-breasted Jackanapes. These phrases have

rankled in my mind ever since I dropped the letter into the letter-box.

"Your Stanley, Mrs. H., was of course a very inferior sort of person and

naturally, you could hardly expect me to remain friendly with him but

rest assured I hadn't forgotten him," etc.

_The Luxury of Lunacy_

Yesterday, I read a paper at the Zoological Society about lice. There

was a goodly baldness of sconce and some considerable length of beard

present that listened or appeared to listen to my innocent remarks with

great solemnity and sapience.... I badly wanted to tell them some horrid

stories about human lice but I had not the courage. I wanted to jolt

these middle-aged gentlemen by performing a few tricks but I am too

timid for such adventures. But before going to sleep I imagined a

pandemonium in which with a perfectly glacial manner I produced lice

alive from my pockets, conjured them down from the roof in a rain, with

the skilful sleight of hand drew them out of the chairman's beard, made

the ladies scream as I approached, dared to say they were all lousy and

unclean and finished up with an eloquent apostrophe after the manner of

Thomas de Quincey (and of Sir Walter Raleigh before him) beginning:

"O just, subtle and eloquent avenger, pierce the hides of these

abominable old fogies, speckle their polished calvaria with the scarlet

blood drops...."

But I hadn't the courage. Shelley in a crowded omnibus suddenly burst

out: "O let us sit upon the ground and tell sad stories of the deaths of

Kings, etc." I've always wanted to do something like that and when I

have £5 to spare I hope to pull the communication cord of an express

train--my hands tingle as often as I look at it. Dr. Johnson's courage

in tapping the lamp-posts is really everyone's envy tho' we laugh at him

for it and say, green-eyed, that he was mad. In walking along the

pavement, I sometimes indulge myself in the unutterable, deeply rooted

satisfaction of stepping on a separate flagstone where this is possible

with every stride. And if this is impossible or not easy, there arises

in me a vague mental uneasiness, some subconscious suspicion that the

world is not properly geometrical and that the whole universe perhaps is

working out of truth. I am also rather proud of my courageous

self-surrender to the daemon of laughter, especially in those early days

when H. and I used to sit opposite one another and howl like hyenas.

After the most cacophonous cachinnations as soon as we had recovered

ourselves he or I would regularly remark in serious and confidential

tones, "I say--we _really_ are going mad." But what a delightful luxury

to be thus mad amid the great, spacious, architectural solemnity with

gargoyles and effigies of a scientific meeting! Some people never do

more than chuckle or smile--and they are often very humorous happy

people, ignorant nevertheless of the joy of riding themselves on the

snaffle and losing all control.

While boating on ---- last summer, we saw two persons, a man and a girl

sitting together on the beach reading a book with heads almost touching.

"I wonder what they're reading?" I said, and I was dying to know. We

made a few facetious guesses.

"Shall I ask?"

"Yes, do," said Mrs. ----.

The truth is we all wanted to know. We were suddenly mad with curiosity

as we watched the happy pair turning over leaf after leaf.

While R---- leaned on his oars, I stood up in the boat and threatened to

shout out a polite enquiry--just to prove that the will is free. But

seeing my intention the boat-load grew nervous and said seriously, "No,"

which unnerved me at the last moment so I sat down again. Why was I so

afraid of being thought a lunatic by two persons in the distance whom I

had never seen and probably would never see again? Besides I _was_ a

lunatic--we all were.

In our post-prandial perambulations about S. Kensington G---- and I

often pass the window of a photographer's shop containing always a

profusion of bare arms, chests, necks, bosoms belonging to actresses,

aristocrats and harlots--some very beautiful indeed. Yet on the whole

the window annoys us, especially one picture of a young thing with an

arum lily (ghastly plant!) laid exquisitely across her breast.

"Why do we suffer this?" I asked G----, tapping the window ledge as we

stood.

"I don't know," he answered lamely--morose. (Pause while the two

embittered young men continue to look in and the beautiful young women

continue to look out.)

Thoroughly disgruntled I said at last: "If only we had the courage of

our innate madness, the courage of children, lunatics and men of genius,

we should get some stamp paper, and stick a square beneath each

photograph with our comments."

Baudelaire describes how he dismissed a glass vendor because he had no

coloured glasses--"glasses of rose and crimson, magical glasses, glasses

of Paradise"--and, stepping out on to his balcony, threw a flowerpot

down on the tray of glasses as soon as the man issued into the street

below, shouting down furiously, "The Life Beautiful! The Life

Beautiful."

Bergson's theory is that laughter is a "social gesture" so that when a

man in a top hat treads on a banana skin and slips down we laugh at him

for his lack "of living pliableness." At this rate we ought to be

profoundly solemn at Baudelaire's action and moreover a "social gesture"

is more likely to be an expression of society's will to conformity in

all its members rather than any dangerous "living pliableness." Society

hates living pliableness and prefers drill, routine, orthodoxy,

conformity. It hated the living pliableness of Turner, of Keats, of

Samuel Butler and a hundred others.

But to return to lunacy: the truth is we are all mad fundamentally and

are merely schooled into sanity by education. Pascal wrote: "Men are so

necessarily mad that not to be mad would amount to another form of

madness." And, in fact, the man who has succeeded in extirpating this

intoxication of life is usually said to be "temporarily insane." In

those melancholy interludes of sanity when the mind becomes rationalised

we all know how much we have been deceived and gulled, what an

extraordinary spectacle humanity presents rushing on in noise and tumult

no one knows why or whither. Look at that tailor in his shop--why does

he do it? Some day in the future he thinks he will.... But the day

never comes and he is nevertheless content.

_May_ 30.

A brilliantly sunny day. This funny old farm-house where we are staying

quite delights me. It is pleasant, too, to dawdle over dressing, to put

away shaving tackle for a day or so, to jump out of bed in the morning

and thrust my head out of the window into the fresh and stock-scented

air of the garden, listen to the bird chorus or watch a "scrap" in the

poultry-run. Then all unashamed, I dress myself before a dear old lady

in a flowery print gown concealing 4 thin legs and over the top of the

mirror a piece of lace just like a bonnet, caught up in front by a

piece of pink ribbon. On the walls Pear's Soap Annuals, on a side table

_Swiss Family Robinson_ and _Children of the New Forest_. Then there are

rats under the floors, two wooden staircases which wind up out of sight,

two white dairies, iron hapses on all the doors and a privy at the top

of the orchard. (Tell me--how do you explain the psychosis of a being

who on a day must have seized hammer and nail and an almanac picture of

a woman in the snow with a basket of goodies--"An Errand of

Mercy"--carried all three to the top of the orchard and nailed the

picture up on the dirty wall in the semi-darkness of an earth-closet?)

Got up quite early before breakfast and went birds'-nesting.... It would

take too long and be too sentimental for me to record my feelings on

looking into the first nest I found--a Chaffinch's, the first wild

bird's eggs I have seen for many years. As I stood with an egg between

thumb and forefinger, my memories flocked down like white birds and

surrounded me. I remained still, fed them with my thoughts and let them

perch upon my person--a second St. Francis of Assisi. Then I shoo'ed

them all away and prepared for the more palpitating enjoyment of to-day.

After breakfast we sat in the Buttercup field--my love and I--and

"plucked up kisses by the roots that grew upon our lips." The sun was

streaming down and the field thickly peopled with Buttercups. From where

we sat we could see the whole of the valley below and Farmer Whaley--a

speck in the distance--working a machine in a field. We watched him

idly. The gamekeeper's gun went off in one of the covers. It was jolly

to put our heads together right down deep in the Buttercups and

luxuriously follow the pelting activities of the tiny insects crawling

here and there in the forest of grass, clambering over a broken blade

athwart another like a wrecked tree or busily enquiring into some low

scrub at the roots. A chicken came our way and he seemed an enormous

bird from the grass-blade's point of view. How nice to be a chicken in

a field of Buttercups and see them as big as Sunflowers! or to be a

Gulliver in the Beech Woods! to be so small as to be able to climb a

Buttercup, tumble into the corolla and be dusted yellow or to be so big

as to be able to pull up a Beech-tree with finger and thumb! If only a

man were a magician, could play fast and loose with rigid Nature? what a

multitude of rich experiences he could discover for himself!

I looked long and steadily this morning at the magnificent torso of a

high forest Beech and tried to project myself into its lithe tiger-like

form, to feel its electric sap vitalising all my frame out to the tip of

every tingling leaf, to possess its splendid erectness in my own bones.

I could have flung my arms around its fascinating body but the austerity

of the great creature forbad it. Then a Hawk fired my ambition!--to be a

Hawk, or a Falcon, to have a Falcon's soul, a Falcon's heart--that

splendid muscle in the cage of the thorax--and the Falcon's pride and

sagacious eye![3]

When the sun grew too hot we went into the wood where waves of Bluebells

dashed up around the foot of the Oak in front of us.... I never knew

before, the delight of offering oneself up--an oblation of one's whole

being; I even longed for some self-sacrifice, to have to give up

something for her sake. It intoxicated me to think I was making another

happy....

After a lunch of scrambled eggs and rhubarb and cream went up into the

Beech Wood again and sat on a rug at the foot of a tree. The sun

filtered in thro' the greenery casting a "dim, religious light."

"It's like a cathedral," I chattered away, "stained glass windows,

pillars, aisles--all complete."

"It would be nice to be married in a Cathedral like this," she said.

"At C---- Hall Cathedral, by the Rev. Canon _Beech_...."

"Sir Henry Wood was the organist."

"Yes," she said, "and the Rev. Blackbird the precentor."

We laughed over our silliness!

Shrew-mice pattered over the dead leaves and one came boldly into view

under a bramble bush--she had never seen one before. Overhead, a ribald

fellow of a Blackbird whistled a jaunty tune. E---- laughed. "I am sure

that Blackbird is laughing at us," she said. "It makes me feel quite

hot."

This evening we sat on the slope of a big field where by lowering our

eyes we could see the sun setting behind the grass blades--a very pretty

sight which I do not remember ever to have noted before. A large blue

_Carabus_ beetle was stumbling about, Culvers cooed in the woods near

by. It was delightful to be up 600 feet on a grassy field under the

shadow of a large wood at sunset with my darling.

_May_ 31.

Sitting at tea in the farm house to-day E---- cried suddenly, pointing

to a sandy cat in the garden:

"There,--he's the father of the little kittens in the barn and I'll tell

you how we know. P---- noticed the kittens had big feet and later on saw

that old Tom stalking across the garden with big feet of exactly the

same kind."

"So you impute the paternity of the kittens to the gentleman under the

laurel bushes?"

I looked at the kittens to-night and found they had extra toes. "Mr.

Sixtoes," as W---- calls him also possesses six toes, so the

circumstantial evidence looks black against him.

_June_ 1.

In the Beech Wood all the morning. Heigh-ho! it's grand to lie out as

straight as a line on your back, gaze upwards into the tree above, and

with a caressing eye follow its branches out into their multitudinous

ramifications forward and back--luxurious travel for the tired eye. ...

Then I would shut my eyes and try to guess where her next kiss would

descend. Then I opened my eyes and watched her face in the most

extravagant detail, I counted the little filaments on her precious mole

and saw the sun thro' the golden down of her throat....

Sunlight and a fresh wind. A day of tiny cameos, little _coups

d'œil_, fleeting impressions snapshotted on the mind: the glint on

the keeper's gun as he crossed a field a mile away below us, sunlight

all along a silken hawser which some Spider engineer had spun between

the tops of two tall trees spanning the whole width of a bridle path,

the constant patter of Shrew-mice over dead leaves, the pendulum of a

Bumble-bee in a flower, and the just perceptible oscillation of the tree

tops in the wind. While we are at meals the perfume of Lilac and Stocks

pours in thro' the window and when we go to bed it is still pouring in

by the open lattice.

_June_ 2.

Each day I drop a specially selected Buttercup in past the little

"Peeler," at the apex of the "V" to lie among the blue ribbons of her

camisoles--those dainty white leaves that wrap around her bosom like the

petals around the heart of a Rose. Then at night when she undresses, it

falls out and she preserves it.

In the woods, hearing an extra loud patter on the leaves, we turned our

heads and saw a Frog hopping our way. I caught him and gave an

elementary lesson in Anatomy. I described to her the brain, the pineal

organ in Anguis, Sphenodon's pineal eye, etc. Then we fell to kissing

again.... Every now and then she raises her head and listens (like a

Thrush on the lawn) thinking she hears someone approach. We neither of

us speak much ... and at the end of the day, the nerve endings on my

lips are tingling.

* * * * *

Farmer Whaley is a funny old man with a soft pious voice. When he feeds

the Fowls, he sucks in a gentle, caressing noise between his lips for

all the world as if he fed them because he loved them, and not because

he wants to fatten them up for killing. His daughter Lucy, aged 22,

loves all the animals of the farm and they all love her; the Cows stand

monumentally still while she strokes them down the blaze or

affectionately waggles their dewlaps. This morning, she walked up to a

little Calf in the farm-yard scarce a fortnight old which started to

"back" in a funny way, spraddling out its legs and lowering its head.

Miss Lucy laughed merrily and cried "Ah! you funny little thing," and

went off on her way to feed the Fowls who all raced to the gate as soon

as they heard her footsteps. She brought in two double-yolked Ducks'

eggs for us to see and marvel at. In the breakfast room stands a stuffed

Collie dog in a glass case. I'd as soon embalm my grandmother and keep

her on the sideboard.

I asked young George, the farm-boy, what bird went like this: I whistled

it. He looked abashed and said a Chaffinch. I told Miss Lucy who said

George was a silly boy, and Miss Lucy told Farmer Whaley who said George

ought to know better--it was a Mistle-Thrush.

The letters are brought us each morning by a tramp with a game leg who

secretes his Majesty's Mails in a shabby bowler hat, the small packages

and parcels going to the roomy tail pocket of a dirty morning coat. A

decayed gentleman of much interest to us.

_June_ 3.

We have made a little nest in the wood and I lead her into it by the

hand over the briars and undergrowth as if conducting her to the grand

piano on a concert platform. I kissed her....

Then in a second we switch back to ordinary conversation. In an ordinary

conversational voice I ask the trees, the birds, the sky.

"What's become of all the gold?"

"What's become of Waring?"

"What is Love? 'Tis not hereafter."

"Where are the snows of yesteryear?"

"Who killed Cock Robin?"

"Who's who?"

And so on thro' all the great interrogatives that I could think of till

she stopped my mouth with a kiss and we both laughed.

"Miss Penderkins," I say. "Miss Penderlet, Miss Pender-au-lait, Miss

Pender-filings."

What do I mean? she cries. "What's the point of the names? Why take my

name in vain? Why? What? How?"

She does not know that clever young men sometimes trade on their

reputation among simpler folk by pretending that meaningless remarks

conceal some subtlety or cynicism, some little Attic snap.

* * * * *

I have been teaching her to distinguish the songs of different birds and

often we sit a long while in the Cathedral Wood while I say, "What's

that?" and "What's that?" and she tells me. It is delightful to watch

her dear serious face as she listens.... This evening I gave a _viva

voce_ examination as per below:

"What does the Yellow Hammer say?"

"What colour are the Hedge Sparrow's eggs?"

"Describe the Nightjar's voice."

"How many eggs does it lay?"

"Oh! you never told me about the Nightjar," she cried outraged.

"No: it's a difficult question put in for candidates taking honours."

Then we rambled on into Tomfoolery. "Describe the call-note of a motor

omnibus." "Why does the chicken cross the road?" and "What's

that?"--when a railway engine whistled in the distance.

Measure by this our happiness!

_June_ 4.

At a quarter past eight, this morning, the horse and trap were awaiting

me outside, and bidding her "Goodbye" I got in and drove off--she riding

on the step down so far, as the gate. Then we waved till we were out of

sight. Back in London by 10 a.m. She makes slow progress, poor dear--her

nerves are still very much of a jangle. But I am better, my heart is

less wobbly.

_June_ 5.

R---- cannot make me out. He says one day I complain bitterly at not

receiving a Portuguese sonnet once a week, and the next all is well and

Love reigneth. "Verily a Sphinx."

_June_ 7.

Spent the afternoon at the Royal Army Medical College in consultation

with the Professor of Hygiene. Amid all the paraphernalia of research,

even when discussing a serious problem with a serious Major, I could not

take myself seriously. I am incurably trivial and always feel myself an

irresponsible youth, wondering and futile, among owlish grown-ups.

At 4 p.m. departed and went down on Vauxhall Bridge and watched a

flour-barge being unloaded before returning to the Museum. I could

readily hang on behind a cart, stare at an accident, pull a face at a

policeman and then run away.

_June_ 20.

... It annoys me to find the _laissez-faire_ attitude of our relatives.

Not one with a remonstrance for us and yet all the omens are against our

marriage. In the state of my nervous system and in the state of hers--we

have both had serious nervous break-downs--how impossible it seems! Yet

they say all the old conventional things to us, about our happiness and

so on!...

... Am I a moral monster? Surely a man who can combine such calculating

callousness with really generous impulses of the heart is--what?

The truth is I think I am in love with her: but I am also mightily in

love with myself. One or the other has to give.

_June_ 25.

If sometimes you saw me in my room by myself, you would say I was a

ridiculous coxcomb. For I walk about, look out of the window then at the

mirror--turning my head sideways perhaps so as to see it in profile. Or

I gaze down into my eyes--my eyes always impress me--and wonder what

effect I produce on others. This, I believe, is not so much vanity as

curiosity. I know I am not prepossessing in appearance--my nose is

crooked and my skin is blotched. Yet my physique--because it is

mine--interests me. I like to see myself walking and talking. I should

like to hold myself in my hand in front of me like a Punchinello and

carefully examine myself at my leisure.

_June_ 28.

Saw my brother A---- off at Waterloo en route for Armageddon. Darling

fellow. He shook hands with P---- and H----, and P---- wished him

"Goodbye, and good luck." Then he held my hand a moment, said "Goodbye,

old man," and for a second gave me a queer little nervous look. I could

only say "Goodbye," but we understand each other perfectly.... It is

horrible. I love him tenderly.

_June_ 29.

_Sleep_

Sleep means unconsciousness: unconsciousness is a solemn state--you get

it for example from a blow on the head with a mallet. It always

weightily impresses me to see someone asleep--especially someone I love

as to-day, stretched out as still as a log--who perhaps a few minutes

ago was alive, even animated. And there is nothing so welcome, unless it

be the sunrise, as the first faint gleam of recognition in the

half-opened eye when consciousness like a mighty river begins to flow in

and restore our love to us again.

When I go to bed myself, I sometimes jealously guard my faculties from

being filched away by sleep. I almost fear sleep: it makes me

apprehensive--this wonderful and unknowable Thing which is going to

happen to me for which I must lay myself out on a bed and wait, with an

elaborate preparedness. Unlike Sir Thomas Browne, I am not always so

content to take my leave of the sun and sleep, if need be, into the

resurrection. And I sometimes lie awake and wonder when the mysterious

Visitor will come to me and call me away from this thrilling world, and

how He does it, to which end I try to remain conscious of the gradual

process and to understand it: an impossibility of course involving a

contradiction in terms. So I shall never know, nor will anybody else.

_July_ 2.

I've had such a successful evening--you've no idea! The pen simply flew

along, automatically easy, page after page in perfect sequence. My style

trilled and bickered and rolled and ululated in an infinite variety; you

will find in it all the subtlest modulations, inflections and suavities.

My afflatus came down from Heaven in a bar of light like the

Shekinah--straight from God, very God of very God. I worked in a golden

halo of light and electric sparks came off my pen nib as I scratched the

paper.

_July_ 3.

_The Clever Young Man_

Argued with R---- this morning. He is a type specimen of the clever

young man. We both are. Our flowers of speech are often forced hot-house

plants, paradoxes and cynicisms fly as thick as driving rain and Shaw is

our great exemplar. I could write out an exhaustive analysis of the

clever young man, and being one myself can speak from "inspired sources"

as the newspapers say.

A common habit is to underline and memorise short, sharp, witty remarks

he sees in books and then on future occasions dish them up for his own

self-glorification. If the author be famous he begins, "As ---- says,

etc." If unknown the quotation is quietly purloined. He is always very

self-conscious and at the same time very self-possessed and very

conceited. You tell me with tonic candour that I am insufferably

conceited. In return, I smile, making a sardonic avowal of my good

opinion of myself, my theory being that as conceit is, as a rule,

implicit and, as a rule, blushingly denied, you will mistake my impudent

confession for bluff and conclude there is really something far more

substantial and honest beneath my apparent conceit. If, on the other

hand, I am conceited, why I have admitted it--I agree with you--but tho'

there is no virtue in the confession being quite detached and

unashamed--still you haven't caught me by the tail. It is very difficult

to circumvent a clever young man. He is as agile as a monkey.

His principal concern of course is to arouse and maintain a reputation

for profundity and wit. This is done by the simple mechanical formula of

antithesis: if you like winkles he proves that cockles are inveterately

better; if you admire Ruskin he tears him to ribbons. If you want to

learn to swim--as it is safer, he shows it is more dangerous to know how

to swim and so on. I know his whole box of tricks. I myself am now

playing the clever young man by writing out this analysis just as if I

were not one myself.

You doubt my cleverness? Well, some years ago in R----'s presence I

called ----"the Rev. Fastidious Brisk,"--the nickname be it recalled

which Henley gave to Stevenson (without the addition of "Rev."). At the

time I had no intention of appropriating the witticism as I quite

imagined R---- was acquainted with it. His unexpected explosion of

mirth, however, made me uncomfortably uncertain of this, yet for the

life of me I couldn't muster the honesty to assure him that my feather

was a borrowed one. A few weeks later he referred to it again as

"certainly one of my better ones"--but still I remained dumb and the

time for explanations went for once and all. Now see what a pretty

pickle I am in: the name "Brisk" or "F.B." is in constant use by us for

this particular person--he goes by no other name, meanwhile I sit and

wonder how long it will be before R---- finds me out. There are all

sorts of ways in which he might find out: he might read about it for

himself, someone might tell him or--worst of all--one day when we are

dining out somewhere he will announce to the whole company my brilliant

appellation as a little after-dinner diversion: I shall at once observe

that the person opposite me _knows_ and is about to air his knowledge;

then I shall look sternly at him and try to hold him: he will hesitate

and I shall land him with a left and right: "I suppose you've read

Henley's verses on Stevenson?" I remark easily and in a moment or so

later the conversation has moved on.

_August_ 1.

Am getting married at ---- Register Office on September 15th. It is

impossible to set down here all the labyrinthine ambages of my will and

feelings in regard to this event. Such incredible vacillations, doubts,

fears. I have been living at a great rate below surface recently. "If

you enjoy only twelve months' happiness," the Doctor said to me, "it is

worth while." But he makes a recommendation.... At his suggestion E----

went to see him and from his own mouth learnt all the truth about the

state of my health, to prevent possible mutual recriminations in the

future.[4] To marry an introspective dyspeptic--what a prospect for

her!... I exercise my microscopic analysis on her now as well as on

myself.... This power in me is growing daily more automatic and more

repugnant. It is a nasty morbid unhealthy growth that I want to hide if

I cannot destroy. It amounts to being able at will to switch myself in

and out of all my most cherished emotions; it is like the case in Sir

Michael Foster's _Physiology_ of a man who, by pressing a tumour in his

neck could stop or at any rate control the action of his heart.

_August_ 2.

House pride in newly-wed folk, for example, H. and D. to-day at Golder's

Green or the Teignmouth folk, is very trying to the bachelor visitor.

They will carry a chair across the room as tenderly as tho' it were a

child and until its safe transit is assured, all conversation goes by

the board. Or the wife suddenly makes a remark to the husband _sotto

voce_, both thereupon start up simultaneously (leaving the fate of

Warsaw undecided) while you, silenced by this unexpected manœuvre, wilt

away in your chair, the pregnant phrase still-born on your lips.

Presently they re-enter the room with the kitten that was heard in the

scullery or with a big stick used to flourish at a little Tomtit on the

rose tree. _She_ apologises and both settle down again, recompose their

countenances into a listening aspect and with a devastating politeness,

pick up the poor, little, frayed-out thread of the conversation where it

left off with: "Europe? you were saying...." I mobilise my scattered

units of ideas but it is all a little chilly for the lady of the house

if she listens with her face and speaks with her lips--her heart is far

from me: she fixes a glassy eye on the tip of my cigarette, waiting to

see if the ash will fall on her carpet.

_August_ 6.

The most intimate and extensive journal can only give each day a

relatively small sifting of the almost infinite number of things that

flow thro' the consciousness. However vigilant and artful a diarist may

be, plenty of things escape him and in any event re-collection is not

re-creation....

To keep a journal is to have a secret liaison of a very sentimental

kind. A _journal intime_ is a super-confidante to whom everything is

told and confessed. For an engaged or married man to have a secret

super-confidante who knows things which are concealed from his lady

seems to me to be deliberate infidelity. I am as it were engaged to two

women and one of them is being deceived. The word "Deceit" comes up

against me in this double life I lead, and insists I shall name a plain

thing bluntly. There is something very like sheer moral obliquity in

these entries behind her back.... Is this journal habit slowly

corrupting my character? Can an engaged or married man conscientiously

continue to write his _journal intime_?

This question of giving up my faithful friend after September I must

consider.

Of course most men have something to conceal from someone. Most married

men are furtive creatures, and married women too. But I have a Gregers

Werle-like passion for life to be lived on a foundation of truth in

every intercourse. I would have my wife know all about me and if I

cannot be loved for what I surely am, I do not want to be loved for what

I am not. If I continue to write therefore she shall read what I have

written....

My Journal keeps open house to every kind of happening in my soul.

Provided it is a veritable autochthon--I don't care how much of a

tatterdemalion or how ugly or repulsive--I take him in and--I fear

sponge him down with excuses to make him more creditable in other's

eyes. You may say why trouble whether you do or whether you don't tell

us all the beastly little subterranean atrocities that go on in your

mind. Any eminently "right-minded" _Times_ or _Spectator_ reader will

ask: "Who in Faith's name is interested in your introspective

muck-rakings--in fact, who the Devil are you?" To myself, a person of

vast importance and vast interest, I reply,--as are other men if I could

but understand them as well. And in the firm belief that whatever is

inexorably true however unpleasant and discreditable (in fact true

things can never lack a certain dignity), I would have you know Mr.

_Times_- and Mr. _Spectator-reader_ that actual crimes have many a time

been enacted in the secrecy of my own heart and the only difference

between me and an habitual criminal is that the habitual criminal has

the courage and the nerve and I have not. What, then, may these crimes

be? Nothing much--only murders, theft, rape, etc. None of them, thank

God; fructify in action--or at all events only the lesser ones. My

outward and visible life if I examine it is merely a series of

commonplace, colourless and thoroughly average events. But if I analyse

myself, my inner life, I find I am both incredibly worse and incredibly

better than I appear. I am Christ and the Devil at the same time--or as

my sister once called me--a child, a wise man, and the Devil all in one.

Just as no one knows my crimes so no one knows of my good actions. A

generous impulse seizes me round the heart and I am suddenly moved to

give a poor devil a £5 note. But no one knows this because by the time I

come to the point I find myself handing him a sixpenny-bit and am quite

powerless to intervene. Similarly my murders end merely in a little

phlegm.

_August_ 7.

_Two Adventures_

On a 'bus the other day a woman with a baby sat opposite, the baby

bawled, and the woman at once began to unlace herself, exposing a large,

red udder, which she swung into the baby's face. The infant, however,

continued to cry and the woman said,--

"Come on, there's a good boy--if you don't, I shall give it to the

gentleman opposite."

Do I look ill-nourished?

"'Arma virumque cano,'" a beggar said to me this morning in the High

Street, "or as the boy said, 'Arms and the man with a dog,' mistaking

the verb for the noun. Oh! yes, sir, I remember my Latin. Of course, I

feel it's rather invidious my coming to you like this, but everything is

absolutely 'non est' with me," and so on.

"My dear sir," I answered expansively, "I am as poor as you are. You at

least have seen better days you say--but I never have."

He changed in a minute his cringeing manner and rejoined:

"No, I shouldn't think you had," eyeing me critically and slinking off.

Am I _so_ shabby?

_August_ 8.

By Jove! I hope I live! ... Why does an old crock like myself go on

living? It causes me genuine amazement. I feel almost ashamed of myself

because I am not yet dead seeing that so many of my full-blooded

contemporaries have perished in this War. I am so grateful for being

allowed to live so long that nothing that happens to me except death

could upset me much. I should be happy in a coal mine.

_August_12.

Suffering from indigestion. The symptoms include:

Excessive pandiculation,

Excessive oscitation,

Excessive eructation,

Dyspnœa,

Sphygmic flutters,

Abnormal porrigo,

A desiccated epidermis.

_August_ 16.

_Lice or "Creeping Ferlies"_[5]

I probably know more about Lice than was ever before stored together

within the compass of a single human mind! I know the Greek for Louse,

the Latin, the French, the German, the Italian. I can reel off all the

best remedies for Pediculosis: I am acquainted with the measures adopted

for dealing with the nuisance in the field by the German Imperial Board

of Health, by the British R.A.M.C., by the armies of the Russians, the

French, the Austrians, the Italians. I know its life history and

structure, how many eggs it lays and how often, the anatomy of its

brain and stomach and the physiology of all its little parts. I have

even pursued the Louse into ancient literature and have read old medical

treatises about it, as, for example, the _De Phthiriasi_ of Gilbert de

Frankenau. Mucius the lawgiver died of this disease so also did the

Dictator Scylla, Antiochus Epiphanes, the Emperor Maximilian, the

philosopher Pherecydes, Philip II. of Spain, the fugitive Ennius,

Callisthenes, Alcman and many other distinguished people including the

Emperor Arnauld in 899. In 955, the Bishop of Noyon had to be sewn up in

a leather sack before he could be buried. (See _Des Insectes reputés

venimeux_, par M. Amoureux Fils, Doctor of Medicine in the University of

Montpellier, Paris, 1789.) In Mexico and Peru, a poll-tax of Lice was

exacted and bags of these treasures were found in the Palace of

Montezuma (see Bingley, _Animal Biog_., first edition, iii.). In the

_United Service Magazine_ for 1842 (clix., 169) is an account of the

wreck of the _Wager_, a vessel found adrift, the crew in dire straits

and Captain Cheap lying on the deck--"like an ant-hill."

So that as an ancient writer puts it, "you must own that for the

quelling of human pride and to pull down the high conceits of mortal

man, this most loathesome of all maladies (Pediculosis) has been the

inheritance of the rich, the wise, the noble and the mighty--poets,

philosophers, prelates, princes, Kings and Emperors."

In his well-known _Bridgewater Treatise_, the Rev. Dr. Kirby, the Father

of English Entomology, asked: "Can we believe that man in his pristine

state of glory and beauty and dignity could be the receptacle of prey so

loathesome as these unclean and disgusting creatures?" (Vol. I., p. 13).

He therefore dated their creation _after_ the Fall.

The other day a member of the staff of the Lister Institute called to

see me on a lousy matter, and presently drew some live Lice from his

waistcoat pocket for me to see. They were contained in pill boxes with

little bits of muslin stretched across the open end thro' which the

Lice could thrust their little hypodermic needles when placed near the

skin. He feeds them by putting these boxes into a specially constructed

belt and at night ties the belt around his waist and all night sleeps in

Elysium. He is not married.

In this fashion, he has bred hundreds from the egg upwards and even

hybridised the two different species!

In the enfranchised mind of the scientific naturalist, the usual

feelings of repugnance simply do not exist. Curiosity conquers

prejudice.

_August_ 27.

Am spending my summer holidays in the Lakes at Coniston with G---- and

R----.... I am simply consumed with pride at being among the mountains

at last! It is an enormous personal success to have arrived at Coniston!

_August_ 29.

Climbed a windy eminence on the other side of the Lake and had a

splendid view of Helvellyn--like a great hog's back. It is fine to walk

over the elastic turf with the wind bellowing into each ear and swirling

all around me in a mighty sea of air until I was as clean-blown and

resonant as a sea-shell. I moved along as easily as a disembodied spirit

and felt free, almost transparent. The old earth seemed to have soaked

me up into itself, I became dissolved into it, my separate body was

melted away from me, and Nature received me into her deepest

communion--until, UNTIL I got on the lee side of a hedge where the calm

brought me back my gaol of clay.

_September_ 1.

Fourteen days hence I shall be a married man. But I feel most dejected

about it. When I fell down the other day, I believe I slightly concussed

my spinal column, with the result that my 1913 trouble has returned, but

this time on the _left_ side! paralysis and horrible vertigo and

presentiments of sudden collapse as I walk.

_September_ 2.

I fear I have been overdoing it in this tempting mountain region.

Walking too far, etc. So I am slacking. It was fortunate I did not get

concussion of the brain--I came within an inch of it: the hair of my

head brushed the ground.

_A Buxom Rogue in Earthenware_

I knocked at the door of Sunbeam Cottage the other morning to know if

they had a boat for hire. The door was promptly opened by a plump,

charming little wench of about 17, and I caught a glimpse of the kitchen

with its gunrack holding two fowling pieces, a grandfather clock in one

corner and a dresser full of blueish china.

"We don't let our boat out for hire," she answered with a smile so

honest and natural and spontaneous that I was already saying to myself I

had never met with anything like it at all when she stretched up her

bare, dairy-maid arm--strong, creamy and soft, just reached a big key

strung to a wooden block and lying on the top shelf of the dresser and

at once handed it to me with:

"But you are quite welcome to use it and here is the key to the

boathouse."

I now felt certain that she was one in a million and thanked her most

awfully. I have never met such swiftly-moving generosity.

"It's very nice on the Lake just now," she said. "I like to lie in the

boat with a book and let her drift."

I asked her if she would not come too, but this tight little fairy was

too busy in the house. She is Clara Middleton done in earthenware.

Subsequently R---- and I often visited the cottage and we became great

friends, her mother showing us some letters she received as a girl from

John Ruskin--a great friend of hers. The gamekeeper himself said that

for his part he could never read Ruskin's books--it was like driving a

springless cart over a rocky road. We all laughed and I said he was

prejudiced in view of the letters which began: "My darling," and

finished up "Yr loving J.R."

But Mrs. ---- said he had never read them, and Madge (ah! that name!)

said her father had never shewn the least interest in them at which we

laughed again, and the gamekeeper laughed too. He is such a jolly

man--they all are delightfully simple, charming folk and we talked of

Beasts and Birds that live on the mountains.

_September_ 4.

Bathed in the Lake from the boat. It was brilliantly fine. R---- dipped

her paddles in occasionally just to keep the boat from grounding. Then I

clambered over the bows and stood up to dry myself in the sun like one

of Mr. Tuke's young men.

_September_ 7.

My 26th birthday. In London again. Went straight to the Doctor and

reported myself. I quite expected him to forbid the marriage as I could

scarcely hobble to his house. To my amazement, he apparently made light

of my paralysis, said it was a common accident to bruise the _os

coccyx_, etc.

_September_ 8.

Am staying at ---- for a few days to rest and try to be better by that

fateful 11th, when I am married.

_Later_: My first experience of a Zeppelin raid. Bombs dropped only a

quarter of a mile away and shrapnel from the guns fell on our roof. We

got very pannicky and went into a neighbour's house, where we cowered

down in our dressing-gowns in absolute darkness while bombs exploded and

the dogs barked.

I was scared out of my life and had a fit of uncontrollable trembling.

Later we rang up ---- and ----, and thank Heavens both are safe. A great

fire is burning in London, judging by the red glare. At midnight sat and

drank sherry and smoked a cigar with Mr. ----, my braces depending from

my trousers like a tail and shewing in spite of dressing-gown. Then went

home and had some neat brandy to steady my heart. H---- arrived soon

after midnight. A motor-omnibus in Whitechapel was blown to bits. Great

scenes in the city.

_September_ 9.

Very nervy to-day. Hobbled down the road to see the damage done by the

bombs.

_September_ 10.

A swingeing cold in the head thro' running about on the night of the

raid. Too feeble to walk far, so Mrs. ---- went into the town for me and

purchased my wedding-ring, which cost £2 5s. 0d.

[1] 1917. I am now editing my own Journal--bowdlerising my own book!

[2] A method of collecting insects in winter by shaking moss over white

paper.

[3] 1917. Cf. Sainte-Beuve's Essay on Maurice de Guérin: "Il aimait à se

répandre et presque à se ramifier dans la Nature. Il a exprimé en mainte

occasion cette sensation diffuse, errante; il y avait des jours ou, dans

son amour ou calme, il enviait la vie forte et muette qui règne sons

l'écorce des chênes; il rêvait à je ne sais quelle métamorphose en

arbre...."

[4] Cf. 1916, November 6.

[5] Cf. Burns's poem "On a Louse."