THE PSYCHOLOGY OF THE DIARIST: W. N. P. BARBELLION
“The life of the soul is different. There is nothing more
changing, more varied, more restless ... to describe the
incidents of one hour would require eternity.”--_Journal of
Eugénie de Guérin._
Bruce Frederick Cummings, an English entomologist and assistant at the
Natural History Museum, South Kensington, developed in early life an
infectious disease of the central nervous system called disseminated
sclerosis, which riddles the brain and spinal cord with little islets
of tissue resembling scars, and died of it October 22, 1919, in the
thirtieth year of his age. Six months before his death he published
a book entitled “The Journal of a Disappointed Man,” under the pen
name of W. N. P. Barbellion. It is not destined to live as long as
Pepys' “Diary” or Amiel's “Journal,” but it may outlive “The Journal
of Marie Bashkirtseff”--the three great diaries of the past century.
“The Journal of a Disappointed Man,” in conjunction with another called
“A Last Diary,” published after his death, may be looked upon as the
revelation of a conscious mind, as complete as the conscious mind can
make it. These books afford us opportunity to study the psychology
of one variety of self-revelation, just as the books of James Joyce
and Dorothy Richardson permit study of the subconscious mind, and
more specifically undirected or wishful thinking, technically called
autistic.
While absolute classification of people is always inaccurate and
misleading, still for the convenience of this study, in order to bring
into high relief the features which distinguish Barbellion's diaries
from the other three great self-revelations of the conscious mind,
the authors mentioned may be said to typify four distinct classes of
diarists. The immortal Pepys may be dismissed with the words: pedant,
philosopher, humourist. Amiel may be considered the mystic poet, with
emphasis upon the spiritual side of his nature; Marie Bashkirtseff, the
emotional artist whose talent was interpretive rather than creative;
and Barbellion, the man of science, direct, forceful, effective on
his objective side, but subjectively morbid and egocentric, unable to
estimate correctly his own limitations or to direct his emotions into
channels which would have made for happy living or sane thinking.
Cummings began to keep a diary when he was thirteen years old, and
after seventeen years he had accumulated twenty post-quarto volumes
of manuscript. Two years before his death he made an entry “Am busy
rewriting, editing and bowdlerising my Journal for publication against
the time when I shall have gone the way of all flesh. Reading it
through again, I see what a remarkable book I have written.” In it and
in another small volume published posthumously, called “The Joy of
Life,” he said,
“You will find much of Bruce Frederick Cummings as he appears
to his Maker. It is a study in the nude, with no appeal to
pemmicanised intellects, but there is meaty stuff in it, raw,
red or underdone.”
The noteworthy features of his life may be stated briefly. He was the
youngest child of a journalist known in the little town of Barnstable,
in Devon, as a shrewd and facile man, and of a timid, pious mother
of the lower middle class. A puny child, backward in development
mentally and physically, solitary, sensitive, shy, secretive, and
self-conscious, he displayed an uncommon interest in nature, birds,
fishes, insects, and all wild creatures. When he was fourteen he
determined to become a naturalist, but his father's illness obliged him
to contribute to the family maintenance. At sixteen he wrote,
“Signed my death warrant, i.e. my articles apprenticing me to
journalism for five years. By Jove, I shall work frantically
during these years so as to be ready at the end of them to take
up a natural history appointment.”
And work he did, for in little more than a year he was offered a small
appointment at the Plymouth Marine Laboratory, which he had to refuse
because of his father's complete incapacity. But after another year of
newspaper work and intensive study at night and at odd moments, he won
an appointment in competitive examination to the staff of the Natural
History Museum at South Kensington. There he remained six years, until
July, 1917, when he was compelled to resign owing to the progress
of his disease. In September, 1915, he married, after he had been
declared unfit for military duty and after the secret of his obscure
and baffling disease, and its outcome, had been revealed to some of his
family and to his fiancée.
Two months after he married, despite his infirm state, he offered his
services to his King and Country, having previously obtained from his
own physician a letter addressed to the Medical Officer Examining
Recruits. The recruiting officer promptly rejected him, so the letter
was not presented. On his way home Barbellion opened it and read his
death sentence. “On the whole, I am amazed at the calm way in which I
take this news.” At first he thought he would read up his disease in
some System of Medicine, but the next day he wrote,
“I have decided never to find out what it is. I shall find out
in good time by the course of events. A few years ago the news
would have scared me. But not so now. It only interests me. I
have been happy, merry, quite high spirited today.”
But this was soon followed by depression and despair, as the progress
of the disease was attested by the occurrence of rapidly increasing
incapacity to get about, to use his arm, and to see. At that time he
was ignorant of the fact that his wife had been informed of the nature
and outcome of his disease previous to their marriage, and he was very
much concerned lest she should find out. Within a year he discovered
that she had known from the beginning and he was “overwhelmed with
feelings of shame and self-contempt and sorrow for her.”
The last months of his life were made as comfortable as possible by
funds subscribed by a few literary men who had become interested in
him from the publication of some chapters of the book in the London
_Mercury_, and by the royalties from the publishers of the “Journal” in
book form.
Barbellion's appearance, as described by his brother A. J., in the
Preface to “The Last Diary,” was striking. He was more than six feet
tall, thin as a rake, and looked like a typical consumptive. His head
was large and crowned with thick brown hair which fell carelessly about
his brow; his face pale and sharply pointed; eyes deepset, lustrous and
wide apart; nose slightly irregular; mouth large and firm; and chin
like a rock. “Few people, except my barber, know how amourous I am.
He has to shave my sinuous lips.” He had an indescribable vividness
of expression, great play of features, and a musical voice. His hands
were strong and sensitive and he had a characteristic habit of beating
the air with them in emphasising an argument. He moved and walked
languidly, like a tired man, and stooped slightly, which gave him an
attitude of studiousness.
Barbellion's fame depends entirely upon “The Journal of a Disappointed
Man.” “Enjoying Life and Other Literary Remains” is commonplace and
might have been done by any one of countless writers whose years
transcend their reputations. “The Last Diary,” on the other hand, has a
note of superficiality which is prejudicial to permanence. It suggests
that it was done for effect and displays studious effort to be wise and
philosophical. Although the book contains many beautiful specimens of
sentiment and shows that Barbellion had enhanced his literary skill
and added to his capacity for expression and sequential statement, it
also shows that the processes of dissolution, physical and mental, were
going on apace.
So much for the outward facts of his life. The value of the record lies
entirely in the sincerity and completeness of the “portrait in the
nude” which the author has painted of himself and which furnishes the
basis for a psychological study of the original.
Three characteristics make the shape and colour of this portrait.
Whether seen in one comprehensive glance as a composite picture, or
subjected to a searching analysis of its separate parts, these three
facts must be reckoned with in any estimate of his life or of his
personality as a whole; or of the smallest act, thought, or emotion
which entered into it. The features or leading motives which shaped the
human study that Barbellion has given us in his diaries are what he
calls ambition to achieve fame, a passion for the study of zoology, and
a struggle against disease.
Every life which raises its possessor above the level of the clod
may be called a battleground. The battle, in Barbellion's case a
hard-fought one, was between ambition which inspired and actuated him
and disease which seriously handicapped him during most of his life and
finally caused his death--not, however, until after the victory had
been won, since the odds were between fame and sickness, not between
life and death. Judged, therefore, solely by the strength of the forces
involved in the conflict and not at all by the value of the stakes,
Barbellion's struggle and early death may claim a little of the glory
suggested in the lines “Oft near the sunset are great battles won.”
That the second motive mentioned, the love of zoology, entered into the
conflict only as an ally, and not even an essential one, of the desire
to become famous, has a special psychological interest. Unquestionable
and persistent as was this passion for the science, it did not seem
to form the basis for his ambition nor even to be inextricably bound
up with it, as is usually the case with persons possessed of one
strongly marked talent or taste combined with a dominant ambition. When
nature has favoured an individual with a gift in the way of desire
and ability to do one thing particularly well he usually concentrates
on it. In fact the desire to achieve success through the talent, and
the impulse for self-expression along the line of the talent, are so
closely related that it is impossible to disentangle them and to say
where the impulse for self-expression ends and the ambition to succeed
begins. Barbellion's diaries, however, present no such difficulty.
Conscious from early childhood of a great attraction to zoology for
the sheer love of the science, his early life-plan naturally took the
form of a career as a zoologist. Thwarted by circumstances, he still
held to the plan with an admirable persistence and a measure of success
which, considering his handicaps in the way of illness and lack of
opportunities for study and training, would have been satisfactory to a
less ambitious man. Such success would not, however, have given him the
fame which it was the ruling motive of his life to achieve. Whether or
not it was the recognition of this that determined the direction of his
ambition it is impossible to say. The fact that stands out with great
clearness, after reading his diaries, is that the consuming passion of
his life was the desire for fame for its own sake, to be known of men,
and to stand out from the mass of humanity as a man of distinction,
a successful man. This seemed to be the full measure of Barbellion's
ambition, and in this he succeeded, since the diaries have made him
famous as the author of a record which shows him to the world as the
winner of a losing game with life, though not as a scientist or as a
writer of distinction.
A closer analysis of the particular qualities of Barbellion's ambition
is the first step in an estimate of his personality.
The urge to keep a journal may come from within or from without the
individual. Barbellion does not tell us which it was with him. In late
childhood he began making frequent records of his doings, which were
those of a lonely romantic child interested in natural history. During
the first three years there is no record of thought, but beginning with
his sixteenth year it makes its appearance, and there is ample evidence
that he was not only mature beyond his years, but ambitious as well. He
says of himself,
“I was ambitious before I was breeched. I can remember wondering
as a child if I were a young Macaulay or Ruskin and secretly
deciding that I was. My infant mind even was bitter with those
who insisted on regarding me as a normal child and not as a
prodigy. Since then I have struggled with this canker for many a
day, and as success fails to arrive it becomes more gnawing.”
That the “canker” was eating its way into his soul as life progressed
and success seemed no nearer from day to day is evidenced by the
statements:
“I owe neither a knee nor a bare grammercy to any man. All that
I did I did by my own initiative, save one exception. R. taught
me to love music.”
“I am daily facing the fact that my ambitions have overtaxed my
abilities and health. For years my whole existence has rested on
a false estimate of my own value, and my life has been revolving
around a foolish self-deception. And I know myself as I am at
last and I am not at all enamoured.”
As the “Journal” progresses it becomes evident that the author's hopes
for the realisation of his ambition rested entirely on its publication,
and it is in the expressions concerning his hopes and fears in
connection with the book that the struggle of the soul in its death
grip with advancing disease and threatening failure is most poignantly
expressed. Three years before he died he said,
“It is the torture of Tantalus to be so uncertain. I should be
relieved to know even the worst. I would almost gladly burn
my MSS. in the pleasure of having my curiosity satisfied. I
go from the nadir of disappointment to the zenith of hope and
back several times a week, and all the time I am additionally
harassed by the perfect consciousness that it is all petty and
pusillanimous to desire to be known and appreciated, that my
ambition is a morbid diathesis of the mind. I am not such a fool
either as not to see that there is but little satisfaction in
posthumous fame, and I am not such a fool as not to realise that
all fame is fleeting, and that the whole world itself is passing
away.”
A few months later, after a reference to his infant daughter, he said,
“If only I could rest assured that after I am dead these
Journals will be as tenderly cared for--as tenderly as this
blessed infant! It would be cruel if even after I have paid
the last penalty, my efforts and sufferings should continue to
remain unknown or disregarded. What would I give to know the
effect I shall produce when published! I am tortured by two
doubts--whether these MSS. (the labour and hope of many years)
will survive accidental loss and whether they really are of
value. I have no faith in either.”
Again he wrote:
“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 taterdemalion 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 retrospective
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....”
It is more than probable that the hope of getting the “Journal”
published was suggested by acquaintance with “The Journal of
Marie Bashkirtseff” when Barbellion was twenty-four years old. On
encountering a quotation from her in a book on Strindberg at that time,
he noted,
“It would be difficult in all the world's history to discover
any two persons with temperaments so alike. She is the very spit
of me. We are identical. Oh, Marie Bashkirtseff, how we should
have hated one another! She feels as I feel. We are of the
same self-absorption, the same vanity and corroding ambition.
She is impressionable, volatile, passionate--ill, so am I. Her
Journal is my Journal. She has written down all my thoughts
and forestalled me. Is there anything in the transmigration of
souls? She died in 1886. I was born in 1889.”
Barbellion's own estimate of what he calls his ambition is well summed
up in the following words:
“My life appears to have been a titanic struggle between
consuming ambition and adverse fortune. Behold a penniless youth
thirsting for knowledge introduced into the world out of sheer
devilment, with a towering ambition, but cursed with ill health
and a two-fold nature, pleasure loving as well as labour loving.”
It would be interesting to find out in what way he was pleasure loving.
As far as I can see from reading the “Journal,” the only pleasure that
he sought was the occasional pleasure of contemplating nature, which
was really a part of his work, and from hearing music.
“You can search all history and fiction for an ambition more
powerful than mine and not find it. No, not Napoleon, nor
Wilhelm II, nor Keats. No, I am not proud of it, not at all. The
wonder is that I remain sane, the possessed of such a demon.”
In the same way it is difficult to find evidence of this colossal
ambition, save his statement of it. In reality he was ambitious for one
thing: call it favour, applause, publicity, notoriety, or what not. He
wanted to do something in literature which would focus the vision of
the world upon him, and to accomplish this he devoted an incredible
energy and labour to the production of a diary which was the record of
aggressive, directed, logical thinking. He may have had capacity for
creative literature, or he may have developed such capacity, but he did
not display it. His career can be compared with no other because of
the immeasurable handicap of his illness. But if it were not for this
illness, it would be interesting to compare him with Huysmans, who,
working as a clerk in a Governmental office in Paris, produced a series
of books which gave him a commanding and perhaps a permanent place in
French literature.
Unquestionably some resemblance exists between the passion for fame,
or whatever it may be called, that Barbellion and Marie Bashkirtseff
had in common, although in the case of the latter its relation to a
definite talent was more evident. But that in either of the two cases
it partook in any great measure of the nature of what is generally
understood as ambition--the ambition, for instance, of Napoleon,
Wilhelm II, or Keats to whom Barbellion compares himself--is not
proved by either of their self-revelations. There is a quality well
known to psychologists that may be described as the passion to attract
attention, which is a distinguishing attribute of the neurotic
temperament. It sometimes acts as an urge to the expression of a talent
in case the possessor of the temperament is also the possessor of a
talent--which is by no means infrequent and which was undoubtedly
true in the case of Marie Bashkirtseff. It, however, exists in
innumerable other cases where the neurotic has been gifted by nature
with no special talent or ability for expression of any kind. The mere
reiteration, therefore, of a passion to focus the attention of the
world upon himself, while it would invite questions as to his balance
or the lack of it, affords no proof of mental qualities upon which the
hope of achieving such distinction might reasonably be placed.
The next question which arises in relation to Barbellion's ambition
or desire for distinction is: What were his intellectual possessions?
And the first step in answering this question is the examination of
his interests. By a man's admirations, as by his friends, you may know
him. He identified himself, in a measure, with Keats; he had great
admiration for Sir Thomas Browne; James Joyce was a writer after his
own heart; and he admired Dostoievsky and Francis Thompson.
Barbellion's objective intellect stands out rather clearly in his
record, particularly as the evidence is written more forcibly between
the lines than in his statements. Deduction, induction, and analysis
are rather high. In fact, he possessed wisdom, ingenuity, caution, and
perception; that is, the elements of objective thought. He showed no
great ability to estimate the nature and bearing of his surroundings
or to devise ways of dealing with them so as to turn them to his
advantage, but had it not been for illness he might have done so. As to
the actual results of his intellectual efforts, naturalists say he made
some important contributions to their science; and, although these were
trifling, they were in the right direction. His working life really
ended at twenty-five, an age at which the working life of most men of
science has scarcely begun.
It is almost entirely upon his subjective thought, that is upon his
estimate of himself, that the value of his record rests. Everyone
in his progress through life and his intercourse with his fellows
measures himself more or less deliberately against, and estimates his
own capacity relatively to, theirs, not only with respect to wisdom,
cleverness, or caution, but with respect to special accomplishments.
Besides this relative estimate, he learns to form an absolute estimate
of his intellectual powers. He knows what he can understand at once,
what he has to study hard before he can understand, and what is wholly
beyond his comprehension. Some people habitually underestimate their
ability; others, the majority, overestimate it. It is very difficult
to say, from the literary remains of Barbellion, whether he was of the
latter class or not. He had literary taste, a prodigious appetite,
and he displayed considerable capacity for assimilation. It is
quite possible that, as the result of these, he might have revealed
constructive imagination; but his life was very brief, it was riddled
with illness, and he matured slowly.
Barbellion's estimate of himself may be fairly judged by the epitome
of his whole life which he made in an entry of August 1, 1917, in
connection with his retirement from the staff of the British Museum:
“I was the ablest junior on the staff and one of the ablest
zoologists in the place, but my ability was always muffled by
the inferior work given me to do. My last memoir was the best
of its kind in treatment, method and technique--not the most
important--that ever was issued from the institution. It was
trivial because the work given me was always trivial, the idea
being that as I had enjoyed no academic career I was unsuited
to fill other posts then vacant--two requiring laboratory
training--which were afterwards filled by men of less powers
than my own. There was also poor equipment for work and I had
to struggle for success against great odds. In time I should
have revolutionised the study of Systematic Zoology, and the
anonymous paper I wrote in conjunction with R. in the _American
Naturalist_ was a rare _jeu d'esprit_, and my most important
scientific work. In the literary world I fared no better. I
first published an article at fifteen, over my father's name. My
next story was unexpectedly printed in the _Academy_ at the age
of nineteen. The American _Forum_ published an article, but for
years I received back rejected manuscript from every conceivable
kind of publication from _Punch_ to the _Hibbert Journal_.
Recently, there has been evidence of a more benevolent attitude
towards me on the part of London editors. A certain magnificent
quarterly has published one or two of my essays.... I fear,
however, the flood-tide has come too late.”
In regard to one of the essays, he noted that it called forth
flattering comment in _Public Opinion_, but that it did not impress
anybody else, even E., his wife, who did not read the critique,
although she read twice a pleasant paragraph in the press noticing some
drawings of a friend.
It was one of Barbellion's persecutory ideas that he was not
appreciated at his full value.
“Ever since I came into the world I have felt an alien in this
life, a refugee by reason of some prenatal extradiction. I
always felt alien to my father and mother. I was different from
them. I knew and was conscious of the detachment. I admired
my father's courage and happiness of soul, but we were very
far from one another. I loved my mother, but we had little in
common.”
When his mother warned him that he was in danger of being friendless
all his life because of his preference for acerbities to amenities he
replied, “I don't want people to like me. I shan't like them. Theirs
will be the greater loss.”
His family feeling seems to have been concentrated largely on his
brother, A. J., who prefixed a brief account of his life and character
to “The Last Diary.”
Of him Barbellion said,
“He is a most delightful creature and I love him more than
anyone else in the wide world. There is an almost feminine
tenderness in my love.”
There were times when, despite his habitual self-appreciation,
Barbellion sold his stock fairly low, and especially after he had been
in London for two or three years and realised what little progress
he was making in the world and how small the orbit of his activity
remained.
“I have more than a suspicion that I am one of those who grow
sometimes out of a brilliant boy into a very commonplace man.”
In speaking of his personal appearance he said, “I am not handsome, but
I look interesting, I hope distinguished”; and at another time,
“If sometimes you saw me in my room by myself, you would say
that 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 upon others.
This, I believe, is not so much vanity as curiosity.”
Naturally Barbellion's estimate of himself and of his potentialities
varied from time to time, but he never rated his abilities lower than
the sum total of his accomplishments would seem to justify, save in
hours of extreme depression and discouragement. When twenty-one years
of age he wrote,
“Sometimes I think I am going mad. I live for days in the
mystery and tears of things so that the commonest object, the
most familiar face--even my own--becomes ghostly, unreal,
enigmatic. I get into an attitude of almost total scepticism,
nescience, solipsism even, in a world of dumb, sphinx-like
things that cannot explain themselves. The discovery of how I am
situated--a sentient being on a globe in space overshadows me. I
wish I were just nothing.”
A more hopeful note, and one that is of interest in that it foreshadows
the plan of publication of the diary, is sounded after he had been
working in the museum for less than a year.
“My own life as it unrolls itself day by day is a source of
constant amazement, delight and pain. I can think of no more
interesting volume than a distilled, intimate, psychological
history of my own life. I want a perfect comprehension at
least of myself. We are all such egoists that a sorrow
or hardship--provided it is great enough--flatters our
self-importance.”
At the age of twenty-five Barbellion had reached the depth of
depression and discouragement.
“I have peered into every aspect of my life and achievement and
everything I have seen nauseates me. My life seems to have been
a wilderness of futile endeavour. I started wrong from the very
beginning. I came into the world in the wrong place and under
the wrong conditions. As a boy I was preternaturally absorbed in
myself and preternaturally discontented. I harassed myself with
merciless cross examinations.”
A year later he checked up on such moods and said,
“My sympathy with myself is so unfailing that I don't deserve
anybody else's. In many respects, however, this Journal I
believe gives the impression that I behave myself in the public
gaze much worse than I actually do.”
Man is invariably judged finally by his conduct. Opinion is often
formed of him from what he says, but the last analysis is a review and
estimate of the several activities which together constitute conduct.
Conduct is the pursuit of ends. The conduct that is conditioned by
taking thought does not by any means embrace all one's activities. The
biological discoveries of the latter half of the Nineteenth Century
showed conclusively that the ultimate end to which all life is directed
and toward which every living being strives is the continuation of the
race to which the individual belongs. Life becomes, therefore, a trust,
not a gift, and the only way in which the obligation it entails can
be discharged is by transmitting life to a new generation. Barbellion
had bodily characteristics which permit the biologist to say that his
gonadal redex was dominant, and throughout the diary there are frequent
entries showing that, despite his shyness, self-consciousness, and lack
of “Facility” (using the word in its Scottish sense), the opposite sex
made profound appeal to him. His conduct from early youth would seem to
indicate that he held with the Divine Poet--
“--In alte dolcezze
Non si puo gioir, se non amando.”
But his love was evanescent and he was continually asking himself if it
was real or but the figment of desire.
“To me woman is _the_ wonderful fact of existence. If there be
any next world and it be as I hope it is, a jolly gossiping
place with people standing around the mantelpiece and discussing
their earthly experiences, I shall thump my fist on the table as
my friends turn to me on entering and exclaim in a loud voice,
'Woman!'”
Here and there in the “Journal” there are entries which would indicate
that his conduct with women transgressed conventions, though perhaps in
harmony with custom. When he was twenty-five he went to see the “Irish
Play Boy,” and sitting in front of him was a charming little Irish
girl, accompanied by a man whose appearance and manner were repulsive.
He flirted with her successfully. Later, haunted with the desire to
meet her, he sent a personal advertisement to a newspaper hoping that
her eye would encounter it. The advertisement and the money were
returned, as it was suspected that he was a white slave trafficker.
His admiration of the Don Juan type of man is evidenced by an entry in
which he referred to his friendship with a bachelor of sixty, a devotee
of love and strong drink.
“This man is my devoted friend and truth to tell I get on with
him better than I do with most people. I like his gamey flavour,
his utter absence of self-consciousness and his doggy loyalty
to myself. He may be depraved in his habits, coarse in his
language, boorish in his manners, ludicrous in the wrongness of
his views, but I like him just because he is so hopeless. If he
only dabbled in vice, if he had pale, watery ideas about current
literature, if he were genteel, I should quarrel.”
The entries that show Barbellion's attitude toward what may be called
the minor activities of social life are illuminating. These are the
latest activities to be acquired and, in a way, testify to or set forth
the individual's development or limitations.
Companionship with one's fellows is necessary to the mental health of
man, and it is of prime necessity that he should secure their good
opinion. The loss of esteem and the knowledge that he is reprobated and
held in contempt and aversion causes a stress that invariably has its
baneful effect, particularly upon a sensitive, self-conscious youth.
Barbellion was the type of individual who sits in ready judgment on
his fellows, and oftentimes his judgment was violently prejudiced. He
had little community feeling. As a youngster he was ostracised by his
school fellows because he was different, and he felt alien. He never
played games with them, but went off on long solitary rambles after
school hours. Nor did he form intimacies with his masters.
“I presented such an invertebrate, sloppy, characterless
exterior that no one felt curious enough to probe further into
my ways of life. It was the same in London. I was alien to my
colleagues. Among them only R. has ventured to approach my life
and seek a communion with me. My wife and child seem at a remote
distance from me.”
In another connection he says,
“A day spent among my fellows goads me to a frenzy by the
evening. I am no longer fit for human companionship. People
string me up to concert pitch. I develop suspicions of one that
he is prying, or of another that he patronises. Others make
me horribly anxious to stand well in their eyes and horribly
curious to know what they think of me. Others I hate and loathe
for no particular reason. There is a man I am acquainted with
concerning whom I know nothing at all. I should like to smash
his face in. I don't know why.”
Barbellion retained many infantile traits in his adult years and these
were displayed in his attitude and conduct toward people.
At twenty-six he said,
“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 Dostoievsky I gird at with the arrogance
of a knowledgeable youth of seventeen.... 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 so tight--both my hates
and loves ... 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. 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 pain--the pain one
might say of continuously unsuccessful attempts at parturition.”
This may seem adorned and artificial, but to me it is the most
illuminating entry in the “Journal” and reveals many of his limitations.
At twenty-eight he made the entry,
“The men I meet accept me as an entomologist and _ipso facto_,
an enthusiast in the science. That is all they know of me, and
all they want to know of me, or of any man. Surely no man's
existence was ever quite such a duplicity as mine. I smile
bitterly to myself ten times a day, as I engage in all the
dreary technical jargon of professional talk with them. How
they would gossip over the facts of my life if they knew! How
scandalised they would be over my inner life's activities, how
resentful of enthusiasm other than entomological!”
It would have contributed to his peace of mind had he studied more
closely the writings of the immortal physician of Norwich, from whom he
believed he had spiritual descent:
“No man can justly censure or condemn another; because indeed
no man truly knows another. This I perceive in myself; for I am
in the dark to all the world; and my nearest friends behold me
but in a cloud. Those that know me superficially think less
of me than I do of myself; those of my near acquaintance think
more; God who truly knows me knows that I am nothing. Further
no man can judge another, because no man knows himself; for we
censure others but as they disagree from that humour which we
fancy laudable in ourselves, and commend others but for that
wherein they seem to quadrate and consent with us. So that in
conclusion, all is but that we all condemn, self-love.”
Self-love, or over-appreciation of self, was Barbellion's most serious
stumbling-block. He never got himself in the right perspective
with the world, and it is unlikely, even though his brief life had
been less tragic, that he would have succeeded in doing so. He was
temperamentally unfit.
Barbellion's friends say that he was courteous and soft mannered, but
his own estimate of capacity for display of the amenities is so at
variance with this that we are forced to believe the manner they saw
was veneer.
The following description of Lermontov by Maurice was, he averred, an
exact picture of himself:
“He had, except for a few intimate friends, an impossible
temperament; he was proud; overbearing, exasperated and
exasperating, filled with a savage _amour-propre_, and he took
a childish delight in annoying; he cultivated 'le plaisir
aristocratique de deplair.'... He could not bear not to make
himself felt and if he was unsuccessful in this by fair means he
resorted to unpleasant ones.”
Two years later he expressed much the same opinion of his social
characteristics when he described himself as something between
a monkey, a chameleon, and a jellyfish and made himself out an
intellectual bully. He was honest enough not to omit an invariable
trait of the bully--cowardice. He says,
“The humiliating thing is that almost any strong character
hypnotises me into complacency, especially if he is a
stranger.... But by Jove, I wreak vengeance on my familiars,
and on those brethren even weaker than myself. They get my
concentrated gall, my sulphurous fulminations, and would wonder
to read this confession.”
In order that any community may exist and thrive each individual
must do things for the common welfare. He must regulate his activity
so as not to impair or jeopardise the property and self-respect of
his neighbours. He must contribute to its existence and development
by an active execution of deeds that draw more closely the bonds of
fellowship and knit more securely the fabric of society. He must
exercise self-restraint in those countless ways by which the conduct
of a person in the presence of others is shorn of indulgences which he
allows himself when alone, and he must perform those ceremonies and
benevolences which constitute politeness and courtesy. The unwritten
law which compels these in order that he may have a reputation for
“normalcy” is even more inexorable than the written law which compels
him to pay taxes and serve on juries and does not permit him to beat
carpets or rugs in the open. Although Barbellion seemed to be very
keen in participating in the defence of the country against external
foes, his diary does not reveal that he had any desire to undertake
municipal, political, or social duties. Illness may explain this, but
illness did not keep him from recording the desire to do so or the
regret that he was prevented from participation in the full life.
Every estimate of Barbellion must take his illness into consideration.
Readily might he subscribe to Sir Thomas Browne's statement, “For the
world, I count it not as an inn, but an hospital; and a place not to
live, but to die in.” In the first entries of the diary he speaks of
being ill, and although the disease of which he died is not habitually
associated with mental or emotional symptoms, it is nevertheless
so horribly incapacitating and is accompanied by such distressing
evidences of disturbed bodily functions that it invariably tinges
the victim's thoughts with despondency and tinctures his emotional
activities with despair.
Barbellion capitalised his infirmity to an extraordinary degree. He
says we are all such egotists that a sorrow or hardship, provided it is
great enough, flatters our self-importance. We feel that a calamity by
overtaking us has distinguished us above our fellows. Were it not for
his illness his book would never have found a publisher, for it is not
a psychological history of his own life--which he believed would make
such an interesting volume--but a Pepysian record of his doings, which,
taken _in toto_, is fairly drab. It was the display of equanimity,
resignation, and courage when confronted with the inevitable, and the
record of his thoughts during that time that give the book its value
and vogue. He was constantly fighting disease and cognisant of his
waning strength.
“I do not fear ill health in itself, but I do fear its possible
effect on my mind and character. Already my sympathy with myself
is maudlin. As long as I have spirit and buoyancy I don't care
what happens, for I know that so long I cannot be counted a
failure.”
This is one of the keynotes of his character--that he shall not be
counted a failure. The other--and it is the same--keynote, is that he
shall be a success; that he will make a noise in the world.
The entries after he had got a two-months' sick leave are pathetic. He
was on the point of proposing marriage; he had been to see a well-known
nerve specialist who said that a positive diagnosis could not be made;
he had set out for his holiday at the seaside and had a most depressing
time. When he returned to London he was no better; in fact he was much
worse, and had thoughts of suicide. After he had found out the nature
of his disease he expressed himself with great fortitude, saying,
“My life has become entirely posthumous. I live now in the grave
and am busy furnishing it with posthumous joys. I accept my fate
with great content, my one-time restless ambition lies asleep
now, my one-time furious self-assertiveness is anæsthetised
by this great war; the war and the discovery about my health
together have plucked out of me that canker of self-obsession
... for I am almost resigned to the issue in the knowledge that
some day, someone will know, perhaps somebody will understand
and--immortal powers!--even sympathise, 'the quick heart
quickening from the heart that's still.'”
Barbellion's account of his experience with physicians engenders
sadness. He went from general practitioner to chest specialists,
digestion specialists, ophthalmologists, neurologists, without ever
getting the smallest intimation of the nature of his illness, until it
had progressed to an advanced stage. For a long time, indeed, it seemed
to baffle all the physicians who were consulted. One of the distresses
of the diary is that it testifies that doctors are far from omniscient.
Nearly always he was advised to go and live on the prairies; and, like
all sufferers from incurable diseases, the quacks finally got him.
With the spectre of disease always lurking in the background, when
not taking an evident part in the drama of Barbellion's life, it is
inevitable that his attitude toward death should colour his thoughts to
a very marked degree. As early as 1912, when he was twenty-three years
old, he wrote, “As an egoist I hate death because I should cease to be
I”; and the next year,
“What embitters me is the humiliation of having to die, to
have to be pouring out the precious juices of my life into
the dull earth, to be no longer conscious of what goes on, no
longer moving abroad upon the earth creating attractions and
repulsions, pouring out one's ego in a stream. To think that the
women I have loved will be marrying and forget, and that the men
I have hated will continue on their way and forget I ever hated
them--the ignominy of being dead!”
If this latter entry had been written a few years later, one might
suspect the influence of Rupert Brooke. As the date stands, one can
only infer that Barbellion, in spite of his much vaunted morbidness,
possessed a little of the zest of life which so richly flavoured the
genius of that young poet.
The entries in the “Journal” after the nature of his disease had been
made known to him express a marked difference in his attitude toward
death. In 1917 he said,
“I ask myself; what are my views on death, the next world, God?
I look into my mind and discover I am too much of a mannikin to
have any. As for death, I am a little bit of trembling jelly of
anticipation. I am prepared for anything, but I am the complete
agnostic; I simply don't know. To have views, faith, beliefs,
one needs a backbone. This great bully of a universe overwhelms
me. The stars make me cower. I am intimidated by the immensity
surrounding my own littleness. It is futile and presumptuous
for me to opine anything about the next world. But I _hope_
for something much freer and more satisfying after death, for
emancipation of the spirit and, above all, for the obliteration
of this puny self, this little, skulking, sharp-witted ferret.”
This, one might almost say, shows Barbellion at his best.
A power of fancy which is displayed in few other connections throughout
the book made him say, during the same year,
“What a delightful thing the state of death would be if the dead
passed their time haunting the places they loved in life and
living over again the dear delightful past--if death were one
long indulgence in the pleasures of memory! If the disembodied
spirit forgot all the pains of its previous existence and
remembered only the happiness! Think of me flitting about the
orchards and farmyards in----birdnesting, walking along the
coast among the seabirds, climbing Exmoor, bathing in streams
and in the sea, haunting all my old loves and passions, cutting
open with devouring curiosity Rabbits, Pigeons, Frogs, Dogfish,
Amphioxus; think of me, too, at length unwillingly deflected
from these cherished pursuits in the raptures of first love,
cutting her initials on trees and fences instead of watching
birds, day-dreaming over _Parker and Haswell_ and then bitterly
reproaching myself later for much loss of precious time. How
happy I shall be if Death is like this; to be living over again
and again all my ecstasies, over first times.... My hope is that
I may haunt these times again, that I may haunt the places, the
books, the bathes, the walks, the desires, the hopes, the first
(and last) loves of my life all transfigured and beatified by
sovereign Memory.”
Nothing in the diaries illustrates more strikingly Barbellion's zest
for living than these allusions to death. In the first decade of life,
the average person gives no thought as to whether he will live or die;
in the second decade he rarely becomes concerned with thoughts of death
unless they are forced upon him by painful or persistent illness. In
the third decade, when the fear of death is very common, Barbellion
knew that he must soon die. This flair for life, which he must have
possessed to a marked degree, is evidenced in his love of nature and in
his appreciation of beauty and of literature to an immensely greater
extent than in contact with his fellows. His pleasure in æsthetics was
real and profound, and included an appreciation of sound, colour, and
form, both in nature and in art. His capacity for the appreciation of
beauty of sound was greater than for the beauty of colour or form.
Although apparently he had never studied music, he said of Beethoven's
Fifth Symphony that it “always worked me up into an ecstasy”; and after
listening to music by Tschaikovsky, Debussy, and others that, “I am
chock-full of all this precious stuff and scarcely know what to write.”
Whether or not his suspicion that “my growing appreciation of the
plastic art is with me only distilled sensuality” was true, the
appreciation was unquestionably genuine, as shown by his comment on
Rodin's “The Prodigal Son” that it was “Beethoven's Fifth Symphony
done in stone. It was only on my second visit that I noticed the small
pebble in each hand--a superb touch--what a frenzy of remorse!,” and
on “The Fallen Angel” that “The legs of the woman droop lifelessly
backwards in an intoxicating curve. The eye caresses it--down the
thighs and over the calves to the tips of the toes--like the hind legs
of some beautiful dead gazelle.”
Above his appreciation of æsthetic beauty, however, Barbellion
realised, theoretically at least, that the topmost levels of pleasure
and pain are constituted of qualities dependent upon achievements of
the moral order--of duty well done, of happiness conferred, of services
rendered, of benefits bestowed; or of the antithesis, of remorse for
abstention and neglect of these or for active misdeeds. He says in “The
Last Diary,”
“Under the lens of scientific analysis natural beauty
disappears. The emotion of beauty and the spirit of analysis
and dissection cannot exist contemporaneously. But just as
man's scientific analysis destroys beauty, so his synthetic
art creates it. And man creates beauty, nature supplying the
raw materials. Because there is beauty in man's own heart, he
naïvely assumes its possession by others and so projects it into
nature. But he sees in her only the truth and goodness that are
in himself. Natural beauty is everyone's mirror.”
Barbellion's strong sense of moral values was always coloured by his
passion--which was almost a mania for receiving appreciation and
applause. Although he denied wanting to be liked, respected, and
admired, yet he clamoured for it. He displayed pain upon receiving the
marks of disapprobation, and reproof he disliked and despised.
He was singularly free from spontaneous disorder of will; that is, of
delay, vacillation, and precipitation. The only evidence he gave of
vacillation was about his marriage, and that showed his good judgment.
He was much more inclined to precipitation than to vacillation, and
for a neurotic individual he was strangely without obsession--that
is the morbid desire to do some act which the would-be performer
discountenances and struggles not to do.
With all his sensitiveness, Barbellion seemed to have been not
without an element of cruelty. This was of the refined, indirect sort
and was chiefly noticeable in references to his wife. While he was
contemplating a proposal of marriage he made an entry in his diary,
“I tried my best, I have sought every loophole of escape, but
I am quite unable to avoid the melancholy fact that her thumbs
are lamentable. Poor dear, how I love her! That is why I am so
concerned about her thumbs.”
In speaking of his fiancée's letters, he once wrote,
“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.”
Two years later he added to this entry “What a popinjay!” But then
two years later he was a confirmed invalid and she was making great
sacrifice to take care of him.
In another place he taunted her, after admitting her letters
disappointed him with their coldness, and added, “Write as you would
speak. You know I am not one to carp about a spelling mistake”; and at
another time he recorded,
“My life here has quite changed its orientation. I am no longer
an intellectual snob. If I were E. and I would have parted ere
now. I never like to take her to the British Museum because
there all the values are intellectual.”
Of his wife the diaries give a very vague picture. Once he exclaimed,
“To think that she of all women, with a past such as hers, should be
swept into my vicious orbit!” but no information is given regarding
this past. The idea of marriage was in his thoughts for several years,
but his attitude was one of doubt and vacillation. In 1914 he wrote:
“I wish I loved more steadily. I am always sidetracking myself.
The title of 'husband' scares me.”
When he finally recorded his marriage as having taken place at the
Registry Office he added,
“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 and fears.”
“The function of the private journal is one of observation, experiment,
analysis, contemplation; the function of the essay is to provoke
reflection,” wrote Amiel. Barbellion's observation was of himself and
of nature; his experiment how to adjust himself to the world; his
analysis almost exclusively of his ego; and his contemplation the
mystery of life and death. A “sport” in the biological sense, that
is, differing markedly from his immediate ancestors, he fell afoul of
infection early in life. From the beginning it scarred and debilitated
him.
He was an egotist and proud of it. He did not realise that the ego
is a wall which limits the view rising higher with every emotional
or intellectual growth. There is a certain degree of greatness from
which, when a man reaches it, he can always look over the top of the
wall of his egotism. Barbellion never reached it. He was a man above
the ordinary, capable of originality and of learning from experience,
clever at his profession, apt at forming general ideas, sometimes
refined and sometimes gross; a solitary, full of contradictions, ironic
or ingenuous by fits, tormented by sexual images and sentimental ideas,
and possessed by the desire to become famous, but haunted by the fear
that he would not live to see his desire accomplished.
He had the misfortune to be without faith or ability to acquire it, but
in compensation he was given to an envious degree immunity to fear, and
he endured disease and faced death with courage and resignation. If we
contrast his thought and conduct with that of another egotist, Robert
Louis Stevenson, after he came to know the number of days that remained
for him, as thought and conduct are recorded in the “Vailima Letters,”
Barbellion suffers from the comparison, for Stevenson was devoid of
vanity and selfishness. But the comparison would not be a just one, for
euphoria is a feature of the disease with which Stevenson contended,
and despair of Barbellion's. Moreover, Stevenson was a Celt and had
a sense of humour. Everyone likes to think that his distinguishing
characteristic is a sense of humour. Barbellion believed he possessed
it tremendously. He may have, but his books do not reveal it.
He forced himself without academic training upon a most conservative
institution, a close corporation, archaically conventionalised, and he
gave earnest that he could mount the ladder of preferment quickly and
gracefully.
He saw himself with the lucidity of genius, but his admirers will not
admit that he was the man he said he was. One admirer does.
Would that he had added to his litany: _Defenda me, Dios, de me!_--The
Lord deliver me from myself. Had he done so, he would have accomplished
to a greater degree the object of life: to be happy and to make others
happy.