The Journal of a Disappointed Man

by W. N. P. Barbellion

  I told him this in the middle of one of his luxurious silences. ‘I will tell you,’ he said deliberately, ‘when we reach the Oratory.’ (We were in Brompton Road.)

  ‘Which side of it?’ I enquired anxiously. ‘This or that?’

  ‘That,’ said he, ‘will depend on how you behave in the meantime.’

  April 3.

  We met a remarkable Bulldog to-day in the street, humbly following behind a tiny boy to whom it was attached by a piece of string. At the time we were following in the wake of three magnificent Serbian Officers, and I was particularly interesting myself in the curious cut of their top boots. But the Bulldog was the Red Herring in our path.

  ‘Is that a Dog?’ I asked the little boy.

  He assured me that it was, and so it turned out to be, tho’ Bull-frog would have been a better name for it, the forelegs being more bandied, the back broader and the mouth wider than in any Bulldog I have ever seen. It was a super-Bulldog.

  We turned and walked on. ‘There,’ said R—, ‘now we have lost our Serbian Officers.’

  April 4.

  ‘May I use your microscope?’ he asked.

  ‘By all means,’ I said with a gesture of elaborate politeness.

  He sat down at my table, in my chair, and used my instrument – becoming at once absorbed and oblivious to my banter as per below:

  ‘As Scotchmen,’ I said, ‘are monuments rather than men, this latest raid on Edinboro’s worthy inhabitants must be called vandalism rather than murder.’

  No answer. I continued to stand by my chair.

  ‘How pleased Swift, Johnson, Lamb, and other anti-Caledonians would be …’

  ‘Hope you don’t mind my occupying your chair a little longer,’ the Scotchman said, ‘but this is a larva, has curious maxillæ …’ and his voice faded away in abstraction.

  ‘Oh! no – go on,’ I said, ‘I fear it is a grievous absence of hospitality on my part in not providing you with a glass of whisky. Can I offer you water, Sir?’

  No answer.

  Another enthusiast ushered himself in, was greeted with delight by the first and invited to sit down. I pulled out a chair for him and said:

  ‘Shave, sir, or hair cut?’

  ‘If you follow along to the top of the galea,’ No. 1 droned on imperturbably, ‘you will …’ etc.

  I got tired of standing and talking to an empty house but at last they got up, apologising and making for the door.

  I entreated them not to mention the matter – my fee should be nominal – I did it out of sheer love, etc.

  They thanked me again and would have said more but I added blandly:

  ‘You know your way out?’ They assured me they did (having worked in the place for 30 years and more) – I thanked God – and sat down to my table once more.

  (These reports of conversations are rather fatuous: yet they give an idea of the sort of person I have to deal with, and also the sort of person I am among this sort of person.)

  April 6.

  The Housefly Problem – 1916

  For weeks past we have all been in a terrible flutter scarcely paralleled by the outbreak of Armageddon in August, 1914. The spark which fired almost the whole building was a letter to The Times written by Dr —, making public an ignominious confession of ignorance on the part of Entomologists as to how the Housefly passed the winter. In reply, many correspondents wrote to say they hibernated, and one man was even so temerarious as to quote to us Entomologists the exact Latin name of the Housefly: viz., Musca domestica. We asked for specimens and enormous numbers of flies at once began to arrive at the Museum, alive and dead – and not a Housefly among them! So there was a terrible howdedo.

  One of the correspondents was named ‘Masefield’. ‘Not Masefield the poet?’ an excited dipterist asked. I reassured him.

  ‘I’ve a good mind,’ said Dr —, ‘to reply to this chap who’s so emphatic and give him a wigging – only he’s climbing down a bit in this second letter in to-day’s issue.’ I strongly advocated clemency.

  But still the affair goes on. Every morning sees more letters and more flies sent by all sorts of persons – we seem to have set the whole world searching for Houseflies – Duchesses, signalmen, farmers, footmen. Every morning each fresh batch of flies is mounted on pins by experts in the Setting Room, and an Assistant’s whole time is devoted to identifying, arranging, listing and reporting upon the new arrivals. At the last meeting of the Trustees a sample collection was displayed to show indubitably that the insects which hibernate in houses are not Musca domestica but Pollenia rudis. I understand the Trustees were appreciative.

  An observant eye can now discover state visits to our dipterists from interested persons carrying their flies with them, animated discussions in the corridor, knots of excited enthusiasts in the Lavatory, in the Library, everywhere – and everywhere the subject discussed is the same: How does the Housefly pass the winter? As one passes one catches: ‘In Bakehouses certainly they are to be found but …’ or a wistful voice, ‘I wish I had caught that one in my bathroom three winters ago – I am certain it was a Housefly.’ The Doctor himself – a gallant Captain – wanders from room to room stimulating his lieutenants to make suggestions, and examining every answer to the great interrogative on its merits, no matter how humble or insignificant the person who makes it. Then of an afternoon he will entirely disappear, and word goes round that he has set forth to examine a rubbish heap in Soho or Pimlico. As the afternoon draws to its close someone enquires if he has come back yet; next morning a second asks if I had seen him, then a third announces mournfully that he has just been holding conversation with him, but that nothing at all was found in the rubbish heap.

  The great sensation of all occurred last week when somebody ran along the corridor crying that Mr — had just found a Housefly in his room. We were all soon agog with the news, and the excited Captain was presently espied setting out for the scene of operations with a killing bottle and net. The insect was promptly impounded and identified as a veritable Musca domestica. A consultation being held to sit on the body, a lady finally laid information that two ‘forced Houseflies’ hatched the day before had escaped from her possession. She suggested Mr —’s specimen was one of them.

  ‘How would it get from your room to Mr —’s?’ she was immediately asked. And breathless, we all heard her answer deliberately and quite audibly that the fugitive may have gone out of her window, up the garden and in by Mr —’s window, or it may have gone out of her door, up the corridor and in by his door. I wanted to know why it should have entered Mr —’s room as he is not a dipterist but a microlepidopterist. They looked at me sternly and we slowly dispersed.

  This morning, the Dr. came to me with a newspaper cutting in his hand, saying, ‘The Times is behindhand.’ He handed me the slip. It was a clipping from to-day’s Times about a sackful of flies which had been taken from Wandsworth Clock Tower in a state of hibernation.

  ‘Behindhand?’ I asked timidly, for I felt that all the story was not in front of me.

  ‘Why, yes. Don’t you know?’

  I knew nothing, but was prepared for anything.

  ‘The Star, two days ago,’ he informed me, ‘had a paragraph about this – headed “Tempus fugit” ’ – this last in a resentful tone as tho’ the frivolous reporter were attempting to discredit our mystery.

  There was a long pause. Neither of us spoke. Then he slowly said:

  ‘I wonder why The Times is so behindhand. This is two days late.’

  May 5.

  Hulloa, old friend: how are you? I mean my Diary. I haven’t written to you for ever so long, and my silence as usual indicates happiness. I have been passing thro’ an unbroken succession of calm happy days, walking in the woods with my darling, or doing a little gentle gardening on coming home in the evening – and the War has been centuries away. Later on towards bedtime, E— reads Richard Jefferies, I play Patience and Mrs — makes garments for Priscilla.

  The only troubles ha
ve been a chimney which smokes and a neighbour’s dog which barks at night. So to be sure, I have made port after storm at last – and none too soon. To-day my cheerfulness had been rising in a crescendo till to-night it broke in such a handsome crest of pure delight that I cannot think of going to bed without recording it.

  Pachmann

  After sitting on the wall around the fountain in the middle of Trafalgar Square, eating my sandwiches and feeding the Pigeons with the crumbs, I listened for a moment to the roar of the traffic around three sides of the Square as I stood in the centre quite alone, what time one fat old pigeon, all unconcerned, was treading another. It was an extraordinary experience: motor horns tooted incessantly and it seemed purposelessly, so that one had the fancy that all London was out for a joy-ride – it was a great British Victory perhaps, or Peace Day.

  Then walked down Whitehall to Westminster Bridge in time to see the 2 o’clock boat start upstream for Kew. I loitered by the old fellow with the telescope who keeps his pitch by Boadicea: I saw a piper of the Scots Guards standing near gazing across the river but at nothing in particular – just idling as I was. I saw another man sitting on the stone steps and reading a dirty fragment of newspaper. I saw the genial, red-faced sea-faring man in charge of the landing stage strolling up and down his small domain, – chatting, jesting, spitting, and making fast a rope or so. Everything was alive to the finger tips, vividly shining, pulsating.

  Arrived at Queen’s Hall in time for Pachmann’s Recital at 3.15 … As usual he kept us waiting for 10 minutes. Then a short, fat, middle-aged man strolled casually on to the platform and everyone clapped violently – so it was Pachmann: a dirty greasy looking fellow with long hair of dirty grey colour, reaching down to his shoulders and an ugly face. He beamed on us and then shrugged his shoulders and went on shrugging them until his eye caught the music stool, which seemed to fill him with amazement. He stalked it carefully, held out one hand to it caressingly, and finding all was well, went two steps backwards, clasping his hands before him and always gazing at the little stool in mute admiration, his eyes sparkling with pleasure, like Mr Pickwick’s on the discovery of the archæological treasure. He approached once more, bent down and ever so gently moved it about ⅞ths of an inch nearer the piano. He then gave it a final pat with his right hand and sat down.

  He played Nocturne No. 2, Prelude No. 20, a Mazurka and two Études of Chopin and Schubert’s Impromptu No. 4.

  At the close we all crowded around the platform and gave the queer, old-world gentleman an ovation, one man thrusting up his hand which Pachmann generously shook as desired.

  As an encore he gave us a Valse – ‘Valse, Valse,’ he exclaimed ecstatically, jumping up and down in his seat in time to the music. It was a truly remarkable sight: on his right the clamorous crowd around the platform; on his left the seat holders of the Orchestra Stalls, while at the piano bobbed this grubby little fat man playing divine Chopin divinely well, at the same time rising and falling in his seat, turning a beaming countenance first to the right and then to the left, and crying, ‘Valse, Valse.’ He is as entertaining as a tumbler at a variety hall.

  As soon as he had finished, we clapped and rattled for more, Pachmann meanwhile standing surrounded by his idolaters in affected despair at ever being able to satisfy us. Presently he walked off and a scuffle was half visible behind the scenes between him and his agent who sent him in once more.

  The applause was wonderful. As soon as he began again it ceased on the instant, and as soon as he left off it started again immediately – nothing boisterous or rapturous but a steady, determined thunder of applause that came regularly and evenly like the roar from some machine.

  May 20.

  Spent a quiet day. Sat at my escritoire in the Studio this morning writing an Essay, with a large 4-fold window on my left, looking on to woods and fields, with Linnets, Greenfinches, Cuckoos calling. This afternoon while E— rested awhile I sat on the veranda in the sun and read Antony and Cleopatra … Yes, I’m in harbour at last. I’d be the last to deny it but I cannot believe it will last. It’s too good to last and it’s all too good to be even true. E— is too good to be true, the home is too good to be true, and this quiet restful existence is too wonderful to last in the middle of a great war. It’s just a little deceitful April sunshine, that’s all …fn2

  Had tea at the —. A brilliant summer’s evening. Afterwards, we wandered into the garden and shrubbery and sat about on the turf of the lawn, chatting and smoking. Mr — played with a rogue of a white Tomcat called Chatham, and E— talked about our neighbour, ‘Shamble legs’, about garden topics, etc. Then I strolled into the drawing-room where Cynthia was playing Chopin on a grand piano. Is it not all perfectly lovely?

  How delicious to be silent, lolling on the Chesterfield, gazing abstractedly thro’ the lattice window and listening to the lulling charities of Nocturne No. 2, Op. 37! The melody in the latter part of this nocturne took me back at once to a cloudless day in an open boat in the Bay of Combemartin, with oars up and the water quietly and regularly lapping the gunwales as we rose and fell. A state of the most profound calm and happiness took possession of me.

  June 2.

  From the local paper:

  ‘A comrade in the Gloucesters writing to a friend at — mentions that Pte. J— has been fatally shot in action. J— was well known here for years as an especially smart young newsvendor.’

  June 3.

  What a bitter disappointment it is to realise that people the most intimately in love with one another are really separated by such a distance. A woman is calmly knitting socks or playing Patience while her husband or sweetheart lies dead in Flanders. However strong the tie that binds them together yet they are insufficiently en rapport for her to sense even a catastrophe – and she must wait till the War Office forsooth sends her word. How humiliating that the War Office must do what Love cannot. Human love seems then such a superficial thing. Every person is a distinct egocentric being. Each for himself and the Devil take the hindmost. ‘Ah! but she didn’t know.’ ‘Yes, but she ought to have known.’ Mental telepathy and clairvoyance should be common at least to all lovers.

  This morning in bed I heard a man with a milkcart say in the road to a villager at about 6.30 a.m., ‘… battle … and we lost six cruisers.’ This was the first I knew of the Battle of Jutland. At 8 a.m. I read in the Daily News that the British Navy had been defeated, and thought it was the end of all things. The news took away our appetites. At the railway station, the Morning Post was more cheerful, even reassuring, and now at 6.30 p.m. the Battle has turned into a merely regrettable indecisive action. We breathe once more.

  June 4.

  It has now become a victory.

  June 11.

  Old systems of Classification: Rafinesc’s Theory of Fives, Swainson’s Theory of Sevens, Edward Newman’s book called Sphinx Vespiformis tracing fives throughout the animal world, Sir Thomas Browne’s Quincunx chasing fives throughout the whole of nature – in the words of Coleridge, ‘quincunxes in Heaven above, quincunxes in the Earth below, quincunxes in the mind of man, in optic nerves, in roots of trees, in leaves, in everything!’

  Old false trails:

  The Philosopher’s Stone (Balthazar Clæs).fn3

  A universal catholicon (Bishop Berkeley’s tar-water).

  Mystical numbers (as per above).

  My father was Sir Thomas Browne and my mother Marie Bashkirtseff. See what a curious hybrid I am!

  I toss these pages in the faces of timid, furtive, respectable people and say: ‘There! that’s me! You may like it or lump it, but it’s true. And I challenge you to follow suit, to flash the searchlight of your self-consciousness into every remotest corner of your life and invite everybody’s inspection. Be candid, be honest, break down the partitions of your cubicle, come out of your burrow, little worm.’ As we are all such worms we should at least be honest worms.

  My gratitude to E— for plucking me out of the hideous miseries of my life in London i
s greater than I can express. If I were the cheap hero of a ladies’ novel I should immolate my journals as a token, and you would have a pretty picture of a pale young man watching his days go up in smoke by the drawing-room fire. But I have more confidence in her sterling good sense, and if I cannot be loved for what I am, I do not wish to be loved for what I am not.

  Since the fateful Nov. 27th, 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. I sit at home here in this country cottage in perfect isolation – flattened out by a steam hammer (tho’ it took Armageddon to do it!), yet as cheerful and busy as a Dormouse laying up store for the winter. 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’.

  July 19.

  Omniscience

  An omniscient Caledonian asked me to-day:

  ‘Where are the Celebes? Are they E. or N.E. of the Sandwich Group?’