The Journal of a Disappointed Man

by W. N. P. Barbellion

  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 hasps 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 inquiring 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!fn7

  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 E— 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’oeil, 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 agai
n … 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 farmyard 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.