The Journal of a Disappointed Man

by W. N. P. Barbellion

  June 15.

  I get tired of these inferior people drawn together to look after me and my household. If, as to-day, I utter a witticism, they hastily slur it over so as to resume the more quickly the flap-flap monotone of dull gossip. I had a suspicion once that my fun was at fault. I was ill and perhaps had softening of the brain and delusions. So I made an experiment: I foisted off as my own some of the acknowledged master-strokes of Samuel Foote and Oscar Wilde, but with the same result. So I breathed again.

  However, I except the old village woman come in to nurse me while E— is away. She is a dear, talks little and laughs a lot, is mousy quiet if I wish, has lost a son in the war, has another an elementary-school master who teaches sciences – ‘a fine scientist’. She keeps on feeling my feet and says, ‘They’re lovely warm’, or else is horrified because they are cold. Penelope she calls ‘little miss’ (I like this), and attempts to caress her with, ‘Well, my little pet.’ But P— is a ruthless imp and screams at her.

  I sat up in my chair to tea yesterday. It was all very quiet, and two mice crept out of their holes and audaciously ate the crumbs that fell from my plate. It is a very old cottage. In the ivy outside a nest of young starlings keep up a clamour. The Doctor has just been (three days since) and says I may live for thirty years. I trust and believe he is a damned liar.

  The prospect of getting the proofs makes me horribly restless. The probability of an air raid depresses me, as I am certain the bombs will rain on the printers. Oh! do hurry up! These proofs are getting on my mind.

  June 16.

  Malignant Fate

  I’m damned; my malignant fate has not forsaken me; after the agreement on each side has been signed, and the book partly set up in type, the publishers ask to be relieved of their undertaking. The fact is, the reader who accepted the MS. has been combed out, and his work continued by a member of the firm, a godly man, afraid of the injury to the firm’s reputation as publishers of school-books and bibles! H. G. Wells, who is writing an Introduction, will be amused! At the best, it means an exasperating delay till another publisher is found.

  June 17.

  E— comes home on Thursday.

  A robin sits warming her eggs in a mossy hole in the woodshed. A little piece of her russet breast just shows, her bill lies like a little dart over the rim of the nest, and her beady eyes gleam in a fury at the little old nurse in her white bonnet and apron who stands about a yard away, bending down with hands on her knees, looking in and laughing till the tears run down her face: ‘Poor little body, poor little body – she’s got one egg up on her back.’ They were a pretty duet. She is Flaubert’s ‘Cœur simple’.

  July 1.

  Turning out my desk I found the other day:

  ‘37, WEST FRAMBES AVE.,

  ‘COLUMBUS, OHIO.

  ‘September 30th, 1915.

  ‘MR. BRUCE CUMMINGS, ENGLAND.

  ‘DEAR SIR,

  ‘I wonder if you will pardon my impertinence in writing to you. You see I haven’t even your address; I am doing this in a vague way, but I wanted to tell you how much I appreciated your ‘Crying for the Moon’ which I read in the April Forum. You have expressed for me, at least, most completely the insatiable thirst for knowledge. I can’t live enough in the short time allotted to me, but I’ve seldom found anyone so eager, so desirous as you to secure all that this world has to offer in the way of knowledge. My undergraduate work was done at Ohio State University. Then for two years following I was a Fellow in English at the same school, and at present I am here as a laboratory assistant in psychology. Always I am taking as much work as possible to secure as varied a knowledge as possible. I am working now for my doctor’s degree; I have my master’s.

  ‘I have had the idea of trying only so much; I can’t get away from the Greek idea of Nemesis, but your article gave me the suggestion that one should try everything; better to be scorched than not to know anything about everything. And so this year I am trying to lead a fuller life. The article has inspired and helped me to attain a clearer vision of the meaning of Life. As one of your readers, allow me to thank you for the splendid treat you gave us. Pardon please this long message.

  ‘Respectfully,

  ‘(MISS) VERONA MACDOLLINGER.’

  On its receipt, I was slightly flattered but chiefly scornful. I know the essay deserved better criticism. But now, I am touched – beggars can’t be choosers – and grateful. Dear Miss Verona Macdollinger! thank you so much for your sympathy, and your truly wonderful name. Perhaps you are married now and have lost it – perhaps there is a baby Verona. Perhaps … I don’t know, but I am curious about you.

  August 7.

  Four Weeks of Happiness

  In the cottage alone with E— and nurse. Four weeks of happiness – with the obvious reservation. I am in love with my wife! Oh! dear woman, what agony of mind, and what happiness you give me. To think of you alone struggling against the world, and you are not strong, you want a protector, someone’s strong arm. But we are happy, these few weeks – I record it because it’s so strange. I am deeply in love and long to have something so as to sacrifice it all with a passion, with a vehemence of self-abnegation.

  August 15.

  The Bishops are very preoccupied just now in justifying the ways of God to man. I presume it an even harder task to justify the ways of man to God. Why does not God stop the war? the people are asking – so the Bishops complain. But why did man make it? Man made the war and we know his reasons. God made the world, but He keeps His own counsel. Yet if man, who aspires to goodness and truth, can sincerely justify the war, I am willing to believe – this is my faith – that God can justify the world, its pain and suffering and death. We made the war and must assume responsibility.

  Yet why is not the world instantaneously redeemed by a few words of reproach coming from a dazzling figure in the Heavens, revealed unmistakably at the same instant to every man, woman and child in the world? Why not a sign from Heaven?

  September 1.

  Eighteen months ago I refused to take any more rat poison, with food so dear, and I refused to have any more truck with doctors. I insist on being left alone, this grotesque disease and I. Meanwhile I must elaborately observe it getting worse by inches. But I scoff at it. It’s so damned ridiculous, and I only give ground obstinately, for I have two supreme objects in life which I have not yet achieved, tho’ I am near, oh! so very near the victory. The days creep past shrouded in disappointment; still I cling to my spar – if not to-day, why then to-morrow, perhaps, and if not to-morrow it won’t be so bad – not so very bad because The Times Literary Supplement comes then; that lasts for two days, and then the Nation … My thoughts move about my languid brain like caterpillars on a ravaged tree. All the while I am getting worse – and they are all so slow: if they don’t hurry it will be too late – oh! make haste. But I must wait, and the caterpillars must crawl. They are ‘Looper’ caterpillars, I think, which span little spaces.

  September 2.

  A Splendid Dream

  It was a brilliantly fine day to-day, with the great avenue of blue sky and sunlight thro’ groups of clouds ranged on each side. I rolled along a very magnificent way bordered by tall silvered bracken and found two tall hedges. It irked me to remain on the hard road between those two high hedges fending me off from little groups of desirable birch-trees in the woodlands on each side. Suddenly I sprang from my chair, upset it, dumbfounded the nurse, and disappeared thro’ the hedge into the woods. I went straight up to the birches and they whispered joyously ‘Oh! he’s come back to us.’ I pressed my lips against their smooth, virginal cheeks. I flung myself down on the ground and passionately squeezed the cool soft leaf-mould as a man presses a woman’s breasts. I scraped away the surface leaves and, bending down, drew in the intoxicating smell of the earth’s naked flesh … It was a splendid dream. But I wonder if I could do it if absent-mindedly I forgot myself in an immense desire!

  September 3.

  Passed by the birche
s again to-day. Their leaves rustled as I approached, thrilling me like the liquefaction of Julia’s clothes. But I shook my head and went by. Instantly they ceased to flutter, and no doubt turned to address themselves to prettier and more responsive young men who will pass along that road in the years to come.

  September 4.

  Still no news. I have to reinforce all the strength of my soul to be able to sit and wait day by day, impotent and idle and alone …

  September 7.

  Goodness the Chief Thing

  During the past twelve months I have undergone an upheaval, and the whole bias of my life has gone across from the intellectual to the ethical. I know that Goodness is the chief thing.

  September 24.

  Thatching: A Kodak Film

  Two brown men on a yellow round rick, thatching; in the background, a row of green elms; above, a windhover poised in mid-air; perpendicular silver streaks of rain; bright sunlight, and a rainbow encircling all. It was as simple as a diagram. One could have cut out the picture with a pair of scissors. I looked with a cold detached eye, for all the world as if the thatchers had no bellies nor immortal souls, as if the trees were timber and not vibrant vegetable life; I forgot that the motionless windhover contained a wonderful and complex anatomy, rapidly throbbing all the while, and that the sky was only a painted ceiling.

  But this simplification of the universe was such a relief. It was nice for once in a way not to be teased by its beauty or over-stimulated by its wonder. I merely received the picture like a photographic plate.

  September 25.

  Saw a long-tailed tit to-day. Exquisite little bird! It was three years since I saw one. I should like to show one to Hindenburg, and watch them in juxtaposition. I wonder what would be their mutual effect on each other. I once dissected a ‘specimen’ – God forgive me – but I didn’t find out anything.

  September 26.

  Emily Brontë

  It was over ten years ago that I read Wuthering Heights. Have just read it again aloud to E— and am delighted and amazed. When I came to the dreadfully moving passages of talk between Cathy and Heathcliff—

  ‘ “Let me alone, let me alone,” sobbed Catherine. “If I have done wrong, I’m dying for it. It is enough! You left me too! But I won’t upbraid you for it! I forgive you! Forgive me!”

  ‘ “It is hard to forgive, and to look at those eyes and feel those wasted hands,” he answered. “Kiss me again, and don’t let me see your eyes! I forgive you what you have done to me. I love my murderer – but yours? How can I?” ’—

  I had to stop and burst out laughing, or I should have burst into tears. E— came over and we read the rest of the chapter together.

  I can well understand the remark of Charlotte, a little startled and propitiatory – that having created the book, Emily did not know what she had done. She was the last person to appreciate her own work.

  Emily was fascinated by the beaux yeux of fierce male cruelty, and she herself once, in a furious rage, blinded her pet bulldog with blows from her clenched fist. Wuthering Heights is a story of fiendish cruelty and maniacal love passion. Its preternatural power is the singular result of three factors in rarest combination – rare genius, rare moorland surroundings, and rare character. One might almost write her down as Mrs Nietzsche – her religious beliefs being a comparatively minor divergence. However that may be, the young woman who wrote in the poem ‘A Prisoner’ that she didn’t care whether she went to Heaven or Hell so long as she was dead, is no fit companion for the young ladies of a seminary. ‘No coward soul is mine,’ she tells us in another poem, with her fist held to our wincing nose. I, for one, believe her. It would be idle to pretend to love Emily Brontë, but I venerate her most deeply. Even at this distance, I feel an immediate awe of her person. For her, nothing held any menace. She was adamant over her ailing flesh, defiant of death and the lightnings of her mortal anguish – and her name was Thunder!

  October 4.

  Raskolnikoff and Sonia

  This evening, E— being away in Wales for a few days, sat with Nurse, who with dramatic emphasis and real understanding read to me in the firelight St Matthew’s account of the trial of Jesus. It reminded me, of course, of Raskolnikoff and Sonia, in Crime and Punishment, reading the Bible together, though my incident was in a minor key. Nurse told me of the wrangle between Mr P and Miss B. over teaching the Sunday School children all about hell.

  October 5.

  Some London neurologist has injected a serum into a woman’s spine with beneficial results, and as her disease is the same as mine, they wish me to try it too. I may be able to walk again, to write, etc., my life prolonged!

  They little know what they ask of me. Whatever the widow may have expressed, I doubt not Jesus received scant gratitude from the widow’s son at Nain for his resurrection – and I have been dead these eighteen months. Death is sweet. All my past life is ashes, and the prospect of beginning anew leaves me stone cold. They can never understand – I mean my relatives – what a typhoon I have come through, and just as I am crippling into port I have no mind to put to sea again! I am too tired now to shoulder the burden of Hope again. This chance, had it been earlier, had been welcome, but in this present mood Life seems more of a menace than Death ever did. At the best it would be whinings and pinings and terrible regrets. And how could I endure to be watching her struggles, and, if further misfortune came, how could I meet her eyes?

  In short, you see, I funk it, yet I am sure the best thing for her would be to wipe out this past, forget it and start fresh. Memory even of these sad years would lose its outline in course of time. My pity merely enervates; and sympathy takes on an almost cynical appearance where help is needed.

  November 2.

  The war news is fine! For weeks past I have gained full possession of my soul and lived in dignity and serenity of spirit as never before. It has been a gradual process, but I am changed, a better man, calm, peaceful, and, by Jove! top dog. May God forgive me all my follies. My darling E—, I know, is secretly travelling along the same mournful road as I have travelled these many years, and am now arrived at the end of, and I must lend her all the strength I can. But it is hard to try to undo what I have done to her. Time is our ally, but it moves so slowly.

  November 3 to November 26.

  Posterity will know more about these times than we do. Men are now too preoccupied to digest the volume of history in each day’s newspaper.

  On the 11th my newspaper never came at all, and I endured purgatory. Heard the guns and bells and felt rather weepy. In the afternoon Nurse wheeled me as far as the French Horn, where I borrowed a paper and sat out in the rain reading it.

  Some speculators have talked wildly about the prospect of modern civilisation, in default of a League of Nations, becoming extinct. Modern civilisation can never be extinguished by anything less than a secular cataclysm or a new Ice Age. You cannot analogise the Minoan civilisation which has clean vanished. The world now is bigger than Crete, and its history henceforward will be a continuous development without any such lacuna as that between Ancient Greece and our Elizabethans. Civilisation in its present form is ours to hold and to keep in perpetuity, for better, for worse. There can be no monstrous deflection in its evolution at this late period any more than we can hope to cultivate the pineal eye on top of our heads – useful as it would be in these days of aeroplanes. But the chance is gone – evolution has swept past. Perhaps on some other planet mortality may have had more luck. There are, peradventure, happy creatures somewhere in this great universe who generate their own light like glow-worms, or can see in the dark like owls, or who have wings like birds. Or there may be no mortality, only immortality, no stomachs, no ’flu, no pills – and no kisses, which would be a pity! But it’s no good we earth-dwellers repining now. It is too late. Such things can never be – not in our time, anyhow! So far as I personally am concerned, I am just now very glad man is only bipedal. To be a centipede and have to lie in bed would be more than even
I could bear.

  If the civilisations of Ancient Greece or Ancient Rome had permeated the whole world they would never have become extinct.

  We are now entered on the kingless republican era. The next struggle, in some ways more bitter and more protracted than this, will be between capital and labour. After that, the millennium of Mr Wells and the Spiritistic age. After the aeroplane, the soul. Few yet realise what a transformation awaits the patient investigations of the psychical researchers. We know next to nothing about the mind force and spirit workings of man. But there will be a tussle with hoary old materialists like Edward Clodd.

  November 26.

  The Old Lady Shows her Coins

  My old nurse lapses into bizarre malapropisms. She is afraid the Society for the Propagation of Cruelty to Animals will find fault with the way we house our hens; for boiling potatoes she prefers to use the camisole (casserole)! She says Mr Bolflour, arminstance, von Tripazz, and so on. Yesterday, in the long serenity of a dark winter’s night, with a view to arouse my interest in life, she went and brought some heirloom treasures from the bottom of her massive trunk – some coins of George I. ‘Of course, they’re all obsolute now,’ she said. ‘What! absolutely obsolute?’ I enquired in surprise. The answer was in the informative.