The Journal of a Disappointed Man

by W. N. P. Barbellion

  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 fæces 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 crotchets. 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 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 dæmon 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 inquiry – just to prove that the will is free. But seeing my intention the boatload 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.