July 18.
Have had toothache for a week. Too much of a coward to have it out. Started for P— early in the morning to report Mr Duke, K.C. After a week’s pain, felt a little dicky. All the way in the train kept hardening myself to the task in front of me by recollecting the example of Zola, who killed pain with work. So all day to-day I have endeavoured to act as if I had no pain – the worst of all pains – toothache. By the time I got home I was rather done up, but the pain was actually less. This gave me a furious joy, and, after days of morose silence, to-night at supper I made them all laugh by bursting out violently with, ‘I don’t know whether you know it but I’ve had a horrible day to-day.’ I explained at length and received the healing ointment of much sympathy. Went to bed happy with tooth still aching. I fear it was scarcely playing the strict Zolaesque game to divulge the story of my sufferings … No, I am not a martyr or a saint. Just an ordinary devil who’s having a rough time.
August 17.
Prawning
Had a glorious time on the rocks at low tide prawning. Caught some Five-Bearded Rocklings and a large Cottus bubalis. The sun did not simply shine to-day – it came rushing down from the sky in a cataract and flooded the sands with light. Sitting on a rock, with prawning net over my knees I looked along three miles of flat hard and yellow sands. The sun poured down on them so heavily that it seemed to raise a luminous golden yellow dust for about three feet high.
On the rocks was a pretty flapper in a pink sunbonnet – also prawning in company of S—, the artist, who has sent her picture to the Royal Academy. They saw I was a naturalist, so my services were secured to pronounce my judgment on a ‘fish’ she had caught. It was a Squid, ‘an odd little beast’, in truth, as she said.
‘The same class of animal,’ I volunteered, ‘as the Cuttlefish and Octopus.’
‘Does it sting?’
‘Oh, no!’
‘Well, it ought to with a face like that.’ She laughed merrily, and the bearded but youthful artist laughed too.
‘I don’t know anything about these things,’ he said hopelessly.
‘Nor I,’ said the naturalist modestly. ‘I study fish.’
This was puzzling. ‘Fish?’ What was a Squid then?
… The artist would stop now and then and raise his glasses at a passing ship, and Maud’s face occasionally disappeared in the pink sunbonnet as she stooped over a pool to examine a seaweed or crab.
She’s a dear – and she gave me the Squid. What a merry little cuss!
September 1.
Went with Uncle to see a Wesleyan minister whose fame as a microscopist, according to Uncle, made it worth my while to visit him. As I expected, he was just a silly old man, a diatomaniac fond of pretty-pretty slides and not a scientific man at all. He lectures Bands of Hope on the Butterfly’s Life History and hates his next-door neighbour, who is also a microscopist and incidentally a scientific man, because he interests himself in ‘parasites and those beastly things’.
I remarked that his friend next door had shown me an Amphioxus.
‘Oh! I expect that’s some beastly bacteria thing,’ he said petulantly. ‘I can’t understand Wilkinson. He’s a pervert.’
I told him what Amphioxus was and laughed up my sleeve. He likes to think of Zoology as a series of pretty pictures illustrating beautiful moral truths. The old fellow’s saving grace was enthusiasm … Having focused an object for us, he would stand by, breathless, while we squinted down his gas-tube, and gave vent to tremendous expletives of surprise such as ‘Heavens’, or ‘Jupiter’. His eyes would twinkle with delight and straightway another miracle is selected for us to view. ‘They are all miracles,’ he said.
‘Those are the valves’ – washing his hands with invisible soap – ‘no one has yet been able to solve the problem of the Diatom’s valves. No one knows what they are – no, nor ever will know – why? – why can’t we see behind the valves? – because God is behind the valves – that is why!’ Amen.
October 1.
Telegraphed 1000 words of Lord —’s speech at T—. Spent the night at a comfortable country inn and read Moore’s lyrics. ‘Row gently here, my Gondolier’, ran through my head continuously. The Inn is an old one with a long narrow passage that leads straight from front door to back with wainscoted smoke room and parlours on each side. China dogs, bran on the floor, and the picture of Derby Day with horses galloping incredibly, the drone of an old crony in the bar, and a pleasant barmy smell. Slept in a remarkable bedroom full of massive furniture, draped with cloth and covered with trinkets. The bed had a tremendous hood over it like a catafalque, and lying in it made me think I was an effigy. Read Moore till the small hours and then found I had left my handbag downstairs. Lit a candle and went on a voyage of discovery. Made a considerable noise, but roused no one. Entered drawing-room, kitchen, pantries, parlour, bar – everywhere looking for my bag and dropping candle grease everywhere! Slept in my day shirt. Tired out and slept like a top.
November 3.
Aristotle’s Lantern
Dissected the Sea Urchin (Echinus esculentus). Very excited over my first view of Aristotle’s Lantern. These complicated pieces of animal mechanism never smell of musty age – after æons of evolution. When I open a Sea Urchin and see the Lantern, or dissect a Lamprey and cast eyes on the branchial basket, such structures strike me as being as finished and exquisite as if they had just a moment before been tossed me fresh from the hands of the Creator. They are fresh, young, they smell new.
December 3.
Hard at work dissecting a Dogfish. Ruridecanal Conference in the afternoon. I enjoy this double life I lead. It amazes me to be laying bare the brain of a dogfish in the morning and in the afternoon to be taking down in shorthand what the Bishop says on Mission Work.
December 4.
Went to the Veterinary Surgeon and begged of him the skull of a horse. Carried the trophy home under my arm – bare to the public view. ‘Why, Lor’, ’tis an ole ’orse’s jib,’ M— said when I got back.
1909
March 7.
My programme of work is: (1) Continue German. (2) Sectioning embryo of (a) Fowl, (b) Newt. (3) Paper on Arterial System of Newts. (4) Psychology of Newts. (5) General Zoological Reading.
May 2.
To C— Hill. Too much taken with the beauty of the Woods to be able to do any nesting. Here are some of the things I saw: the bark on several of the trees in the mazzard orchards rubbed into a beautifully smooth, polished surface by the Red Devon Cows when scratching where it itched; I put my hand on the smooth almost cherry-red patch of bark and felt delighted and grateful that cows had fleas: the young shoots of the whortleberry plants on the hill were red tipped with the gold of an almost horizontal sun. I caught a little lizard which slipped across my path … Afar off down in the valley I had come through, in a convenient break in a holly bush, I could just see a Cow sitting on her matronly haunches in a field. She flicked her ears and two starlings settled on her back. A Rabbit swept out of a sweet-brier bush and a Magpie flew out of the hedge on my right.
In another direction I could see a field full of luscious, tall, green grass. Every stalk was so full of sap that had I cut one I am sure it would have bled great green drops. In the field some lambs were sleeping; one woke up and looked at me with the back of its head to the low sun, which shone through its two small ears and gave them a transparent pink appearance.
No sooner am I rebaptised in the sun than I have to be turning home again. No sooner do ‘the sudden lilies push between the loosening fibres of the heart’ than I am whisked back into the old groove – the daily round. If only I had more time! – more time in which to think, to love, to observe, to frame my disposition, to direct as far as in me lies the development and unfolding of my character, if only I could direct all my energies to the great and difficult profession of life, of being man instead of trifling with one profession that bores me and dabbling in another.
June 5.
On Lundy Island
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Frankie is blowing Seagulls’ eggs in the scullery. His father, after a day’s work at the farm, is at his supper very hungry, yet immensely interested, and calls out occasionally, –
‘’Ow you’re getting on, Foreman?’
‘All right, Capt.,’ says Frankie affectionately, and the unpleasant asthmatic, wheezy noise of the egg-blowing goes on … There are three dogs asleep under the kitchen table; all three belong to different owners and neither one to A—.
June 6.
Out egg-collecting with the Lighthouse Keepers. They walk about the cliffs as surefooted as cats, and feed their dogs on birds’ eggs collected in a little bag at the end of a long pole. One dog ate three right off in as many minutes, putting his teeth through and cracking the shell, then lapping up the contents. Crab for tea.
June 7.
After a glorious day at the N. end of the Island with the Puffins, was forced to-night to take another walk, as the smell of Albert’s tobacco, together with that of his stockinged feet and his boots removed, was asphyxiating.
June 9.
The governess is an awfully pretty girl. We have been talking together to-day and she asked me if I were a naturalist. I said ‘Yes.’ She said, ‘Well, I found a funny little beetle yesterday and Mr S— said I ought to have given it to you.’ Later, I felt she was looking at me, so I looked at her, across the beach. Yes! it was true. When our eyes met she gave me one of the most provokingly pretty smiles, then turned and went up the cliff path and so out of my life – to my everlasting regret.
Return to-night in a cattle steamer.
June 18.
Dr —, M.A., F.R.S., D.C.L., LL.D., called in the office to-day, and seeing Dad typing, said, ‘Are you Mr Barbellion?’ Dad replied in the affirmative, whereupon the Doctor handed him his card, and Dad said he thought it was his son he wanted to see. He is an old gentleman aged eighty or thereabouts, with elastic-sided boots, an umbrella, and a guardian nephew – a youngster of about sixty. But I paid him due reverence as a celebrated zoologist and at his invitation [and to my infinite pride] accompanied him on an excursion to the coast, where he wanted to see Philoscia Couchii, which I readily turned up for him.
I chanced to remark that I thought torsion in gastropods one of the most fascinating and difficult problems in Zoology. Why should a snail be twisted round?
‘Humph,’ said he, ‘why do we stand upright?’ I was not such a fool as to argue with him, so pretended his reply was a knock-out. But it enabled me to size him up intellectually.
In the evening dined with him at his hotel … He knows Wallace and Haeckel personally, and I sat at his feet with my tongue out listening to personal reminiscences of these great men. However, he seemed never to have heard of Gaskell’s Theory on the Origin of Vertebrates.
June 27.
Walked to V—. As usual, Nature with clockwork regularity had all her taps turned on – larks singing, cherries ripening, and bees humming. It all bored me a little. Why doesn’t she vary it a little?
August 8.
A cold note from Dr — saying that he cannot undertake the responsibility of advising me to give up journalism for zoology.
A hellish cold in the head. Also a swingeing inflammation of the eyes. Just heard them singing in the Chapel over the way: ‘God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes.’ Hope so, I’m sure.
August 9.
A transformation. After a long series of drab experiences in Sheffield, etc., the last being the climax of yesterday, an anti-cyclone arrived this morning and I sailed like an Eagle into cloudless, windless weather! The Academy has published my article, my cold is suddenly better, and going down by the sea this afternoon met Mary —!
August 20.
Had an amusing letter from my maiden-aunt, who does not like ‘the agnostic atmosphere’ in my Academy article. Poor dear! She is sorry if I really feel like that, and, if I do, what a pity to put it into print. Then a Bible reference to the Epistle to the Romans.
Xmas Day.
Feeling ill – like a sloppy Tadpole. My will is paralysed. I visit the Doctor regularly to be stethoscoped, ramble about the streets, idly scan magazines in the Library and occasionally drink – with palpitation of the heart as a consequence. In view of the shortness, bitterness, and uncertainty of life, all scientific labour for me seems futile.
1910
January 10.
Better, but still very dicky: a pallid animal: a weevil in a nut. I have a weak heart, an enervated nervous system; I suffer from lack of funds with which to carry on my studies; I hate newspaper-reporting – particularly some skinny-witted speaker like —; and last, but not least, there are women; all these worries fight over my body like jackals over carrion. Yet Zoology is all I want. Why won’t Life leave me alone?
January 15.
Reading Hardy’s novels. He is altogether delightful in the subtlety with which he lets you perceive the first tiny love presentiments between his heroes and heroines – the casual touch of the hands, the peep of a foot or ankle underneath the skirt – all these in Hardy signify the cloud no bigger than a man’s hand. They are the susurrus of the breeze before the storm, and you await what is to follow with palpitating heart.
February 3.
For days past have been living in a state of mental ebullition. All kinds of pictures of Love, Life, and Death have been passing through my mind. Now I am too indolent and nerveless to set them down. Physically I am such a wreck that to carry out the least intention, such as putting on my boots, I have to flog my will like an Arab with a slave ‘in a sand of Ayaman’. Three months ago when I got up before breakfast to dissect rabbits, dogfish, frogs, newts, etc., this would have seemed impossible.
February 6.
Still visit Dr —’s surgery each week. I have two dull spots at the bottom of each lung. What a fine expressive word is gloom. Let me write it: GLOOM … One evening coming home in the train from L— Country Sessions I noticed a horrible, wheezy sound whenever I breathed deep. I was scared out of my life, and at once thought of consumption. Went to the Doctor’s next day, and he sounded me and reassured me. I was afraid to tell him of the little wheezy sound at the apex of each lung, and I believed he overlooked it. So next day, very harassed, I went back to him again and told him. He hadn’t noticed it and looked glum. Have to keep out of doors as much as possible.
The intense internal life I lead, worrying about my health, reading (eternally reading), reflecting, observing, feeling, loving and hating – with no outlet for superfluous steam, cramped and confined on every side, without any friends or influence of any sort, without even any acquaintances excepting my colleagues in journalism (whom I contemn) – all this will turn me into the most self-conscious, conceited, mawkish, gauche creature in existence.
March 6.
The facts are undeniable: Life is pain. No sophistry can win me over to any other view. And yet years ago I set out so hopefully and healthfully – what are birds’ eggs to me now? My ambition is enormous but vague. I am too distributed in my abilities ever to achieve distinction.
March 22.
Had a letter from the Keeper of Zoology at the British Museum, advising me of three vacancies in his Dept., and asking me if I would like to try etc. … So that Dr —’s visit to me bore some fruit.fn3 Spent the morning day-dreaming … Perhaps this is the flood tide at last! I shall work like a drayhorse to pull through if I am nominated … I await developments in a frightfully turbulent state of mind. I have a frantic desire to control the factors which are going to affect my future so permanently. And this ferocious desire, of course, collides with a crash all day long with the fact that however much I desire there will still remain the unalterable logic of events.
April 7.
… How delicious all this seemed! To be alive – thinking, seeing, enjoying, walking, eating – all quite apart from the amount of money in your purse or the prospects of a career. I revelled in the sensuous enjoyment of my animal existence.
June 2.
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Up to now my life has been one of great internal strife and struggle – the struggle with a great ambition and a weak will – unequal to the task of coping with it. I have planned on too big a scale, perhaps. I have put too great a strain on my talents, I have whipped a flagging will, I have been for ever cogitating, worrying, devising means of escape. Meanwhile, the moments have gone by unheeded and unenjoyed.
June 10.
Legginess is bad enough in a woman, but bandy legginess is impossible.
Solitude is good for the soul. After an hour of it, I feel as lofty and imperial as Marcus Aurelius.
The best girl in the best dress immediately looks disreputable if her stockings be downgyved.
Some old people on reaching a certain age go on living out of habit – a bad habit too.
How much I can learn of a stranger by his laugh.
Bees, Poppies, and Swallows! – and all they mean to him who really knows them! Or a White Gull on a piece of floating timber, or a troop of shiny Rooks close on the heels of a ploughman on a sunny autumn day.
The Journal of a Disappointed Man Page 3